Everything's tickedy-boo.

I'm back in Dubai sorting, culling and packing.  How can people accumulate so much stuff'?  We arrived in Dubai with one suitcase each but we'll need a 40 foot container (possibly two) to leave.

It seems like Sunday was the start of an official 'Everything's Tickedy-Boo in Dubai' campaign. The media has bombarded the public with positive stories; Business Bay is surging ahead, there are blokes are on the radio saying property prices have reached their lowest point and the market is bouncing back. Meanwhile, down at the shops, Deira City Centre is confident of an expanding retail market and will be building 55 new shops.  Who these potential property buyers are, where they'll come from and most interesting, why they would buy in Dubai is not explained and the commentators have obviously never heard the expression 'Once bitten, twice shy'. Dubai's reputation as a safe place for investment has been muddied by the property market implosion.  What rules there were, were shown to be woefully inadequate to deal with the fallout.  Currently there are ongoing complaints and some law suits by investors who have lost their money on developments that have been shelved for the foreseeable future.  Reputation, like virginity, is something that once lost, cannot be restored (yeh I know about the operation but you see my point?)  There would need to be a vast number of people move into Dubai to get rid of the current glut of property units, (those people won't be coming from the construction industry) and did anyone say the magic word "visa"?  Where are the jobs for these people?  It also comes as a rude shock to prospective purchasers when they find that their 'residence visa' in Dubai only lasts for 6 months at a time and then they have to leave and request a renewal. So why would they?  There are markets that welcome their investment, Malaysia for example and its "My Second Home" programme. In response to the current oversupply in Dubai developers are holding back on releasing development units.  The hotel sector is reportedly taking the biggest hit, with one example being the shelving of the Kempinski hotel on the Palm Jumeirah which will remain a shell for the next two years  Ulrich Eckhardt, Kempinski’s head of the Middle East and Africa said “I’m concerned about what I consider poor planning from those in a position to approve new hotels.  He continued, "Building permission was granted without studying “existing inventory, growth rates and future demand." (Just because you get permission to build doesn't mean you have to do it surely?  I would have thought the hotel company itself would have taken a look at the state of the market but there you go....)

With oil prices rising due to the Libyan crisis the number of international travellers is expected to fall, and let's face it, the Middle East is not currently the holiday destination of choice.
Back to the Deira City Centre expansion, Q1: How long ago did they shut their 'luxury arcade' due to lack of custom? Q2: Will the expansion take over more of the car park? Will Deira CC end up like Doha City Centre in Qatar?  Doha CC is a shopping mall almost the size of Mall of the Emirates but with the car park space of Spinneys in Jumeira. Oh yes and Frederick's of Hollywood is opening 10 shops in the Middle East this despite, and this may come as a surprise to many readers, the lingerie market here being saturated - a strange irony isn't it?

Finally, the metro (which I would use regularly if it ran to anywhere near where I work from anywhere near where I live) and which according to local media carries, I don't know, about 17 zillion passengers every week, is cutting back on staff and decreasing the frequency of services.

But everything's tickedy boo.....

U-turn on alcohol in food ban

As was expected, there's been a u-turn on the ban on alcohol in food in Dubai..  I was wondering how they were going to flambe dishes.  And, as usual, the negative publicity has been as the result of a "misunderstanding".  The chefs thought the circular meant what it said when it stated clearly in English “Use of alcohol in preparation and cooking of food is strictly prohibited. Display and sale of food products containing alcohol as an ingredient is strictly prohibited...”  Seems the words 'strictly prohibited' mean something else, like for example, business as usual.
Source: The National
Photo: Blend Stock Photos
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On second thought, waiter, maybe I’ll have that order of coq au vin.
Hotels and restaurants in Dubai will be allowed to serve food cooked with alcohol after the municipality yesterday retracted its ban on such dishes.
In fact, there may never have been a ban. The confusion was a result of restaurateurs “misunderstanding” a circular sent to them.
The apparent U-turn came as a relief to chefs and hoteliers who feared huge losses if they were forced to remove from their menus all dishes containing alcohol.
Chefs from leading hotels in Dubai had approached the municipality on Sunday asking for a review of the decision.
Khalid Sharif al Awadhi, the director of the Food Control Department at Dubai Municipality, said that food containing alcohol could be served, provided it is segregated from other food and clearly labelled.
“We are asking them that any alcohol content in food should be declared,” he said. “We have found violations where hotels are not clearly stating alcohol content in their food.
“This is why we issued the new circular,” Mr al Awadhi explained.
He said alcohol should be handled like other “non-halal products”, such as pork.
A municipality circular sent to all hotels last week clearly stated that food in alcohol would be strictly prohibited. “Use of alcohol in preparation and cooking of food is strictly prohibited. Display and sale of food products containing alcohol as an ingredient is strictly prohibited,” said the circular, seen by The National.
Ahmed al Ali, the head of food inspections, had said on Sunday that alcohol in food would not be allowed even if clearly labelled.
Mr al Awadhi said yesterday that the circular was misunderstood. The municipality will meet with chefs from leading hotels later this week to communicate the regulation and clear the confusion.
Restaurant owners said they were waiting to hear from Dubai Municipality before they made changes to their menus.
Yann Chevris, the general manager of Nozomi at Al Habtoor Grand hotel, said: “I think I will wait for the final word before we do anything. We will have to follow the regulations, anyway. We are in a country with different rules because of the religious aspect of it and we have to respect that.”
He said that a restriction of alcohol in cooking would be a handicap for chefs as alcohol is used in numerous sauces and desserts.
“I think the more restriction on them on how they cook or what they can cook is a restriction on their originality and the freedom of creating,” Mr Chevris said.
“We will change some dishes if we have to and maybe it will challenge people to work around it.”
Uwe Micheel, the president of the Emirates Culinary Guild, said he knew what changes to expect: “It will be similar to how we handle pork.”
This would mean separate storage, clear labelling communicated to patrons “and when it’s on the buffet it is separate from the other foods”.
He added: “I think it is fine and we must not forget we are in a Muslim country and we have a lot of Muslims coming into the restaurants.”
A scholar from the Islamic Affairs Authority’s fatwa centre, the only body in the UAE authorised to issue religious edicts, said the use of alcohol in cooking was unequivocally forbidden.
“It is not allowed to put alcohol in food because it is impure,” he said. “Just the fact that it touches the food makes it impure even if [the alcohol] evaporates.”
The affair raised questions about the law in Abu Dhabi, which is usually considered more conservative in matters cultural and religious.
According to Fareed al Zubi, the chief lawyer at the capital’s Department of Economic Development, the law in Abu Dhabi prohibits the use of alcohol in food unless the establishment, such as a hotel, has a special licence issued by the tourism authorities and the menus clearly label which items have alcohol in them.
Reema Baroudi, the director of communications and public relations at the Intercontinental in Abu Dhabi, said less than one per cent of meals in her hotel were prepared with alcohol, and those were clearly labelled.
“It would not be a big issue” if Abu Dhabi decided to ban the use of alcohol in cooking, she said. “We have not received any instructions from the Abu Dhabi Tourism Authority, but if we do we will just have to comply.”

Dubai: Not a melting pot, more of a tossed salad

A very interesting article on the friction that results from cultural differences and expectations in Dubai.  The article is from the Gulf News and written by Mishaal Al Gergawi who's an Emirati commentator on socio-economic and cultural affairs in the UAE.
Picture: Art Parts Clip Art
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Everyone has heard about the case of the British woman who was celebrating her engagement with her fiancé in a Dubai hotel on New Year's Eve. The next day the woman claims she was raped by a staff member of the hotel while lying semiconscious in the toilet.
The couple reports the case to the police and, upon questioning, admit to having consumed alcohol and having sex out of wedlock. Since this is illegal in the UAE, the police charge them both with illegal drinking and adultery.
Things become further complicated once it becomes clear that the woman is Muslim because her actions contravene Sharia law. Of course, the original rape accusation is also recognised as a separate case, but this charge was proven to be false after reviewing CCTV footage.
Law
Are the police wrong to file two separate cases? No, not technically at least. The official statement has made it clear that such admissions to breaking the law cannot be ignored. But is that really what we're talking about here? No. There is a larger issue at stake here. I have heard that unmarried couples who had vacations to Dubai planned have been reconsidering.
Are they overreacting? No. The rape factor is insignificant here. The message that comes to any tourist's mind while planning a vacation when considering Dubai is this: There are hotels that are licensed to sell me alcohol but I can be arrested for consuming it. There are hotel rooms that I can check into but I can be arrested for having sexual relations with my partner in them. Is this really the Dubai we know? Is this the city that prides itself on tolerance and harmonious coexistence?
It is one thing, though still controversial in my view, to prosecute unmarried couples who cohabit or have extra-marital relations. After all, they are residents in your city and by choosing to live here they must observe its values. But it is a completely different thing to prosecute tourists, people who are coming to your city for a short vacation, for consuming alcohol in licensed bars and restaurants and having sex privately in their hotel room.
What is the big idea here? Are we telling the world only come if you're married? Why do we expect people to come to our country and completely abandon their personal values? Yes, these are personal values.
The ability and choice to have a relationship with someone in a private space is an extremely personal value. This is completely different from the now infamous public beach sex case of 2008. This was sex that occurred in the privacy of a legally occupied hotel room.
How did this private action offend anyone? And to demonstrate the inherent contradiction, I wonder why the hotel allowed them to check into the same room in the first place. The same applies to the alcohol situation. That's akin to Switzerland's ban of the minarets because it offends the Swiss Christian population and France's proposed legislation to ban the burqa because it is un-European to cover one's face.
Tolerance
The issue at hand is much more than the unfortunate application of the UAE's law. The bedrock of Dubai is an unwritten social contract between the government, its locals and residents where the latter two groups are free to conduct their lives in as liberal or conservative a fashion as they please as long as it doesn't upset Dubai's delicate identity; this balancing act is the essence of Dubai's appeal.
This is why this incident and the message Dubai is sending by prosecuting this couple is more dangerous than the ill-timed and ill-managed debt standstill request by Dubai World just before the holidays.
Dubai is not unique because of its world-class infrastructure or business-friendly climate; these things can be replicated. It is unique because of its ability to accept people from around the world with different, and often contradictory values, provided they adhere to the lifestyle range that Dubai is willing to accept in the public sphere.
It was always understood that this would not be exercised in private spaces and spaces designated for specific activities. If this case is actually the beginning of a campaign to end this understanding then we will be living in a very different city very soon.
Dubai is not a melting pot, it is a tossed salad. No one changes when they come here; they simply apply Dubai's dressing which makes it work. Now if someone starts changing this salad, removing the tomatoes, citing that cucumber and lettuce are enough, then I'm not sure the salad would taste the same. I like my salad just fine, please don't reinvent it for me.
As for the police, who remind us that they cannot ignore such offences, I in turn remind them that they, and we, are better off focusing on clamping down on what seems to be an untouchable reality. Yes, I am referring to prostitution. I would like to see the police focus on this before arresting foreigners who do not even live here for simply having different values than their own. Dubai doesn't need such misguided vigilance. I have no doubt that the couple will receive a pardon because if they don't then much of what we've heard would've been rhetoric all along.