On Sunday I returned home from my daughter's wedding. It was my third visit to Dubai. The place is certainly different. Somebody I met there summed it up as being like The Truman Show. I think she was spot on. The place is unnaturally clean. Everybody speaks English, even Asians who were born in Dubai and whose ancestors have never lived in the UK or the States. As my son remarked, the buildings look as though they belong in Sim City. Each one is plonked down as an autonomous item in the way a child might place his lego constructions on a play-mat. It defies reality in the same way that an economy based on sub-prime mortgages does. On Sunday we flew into Fiumicino. There are certainly some parallels between Ancient Rome and Dubai. Both were the stupor mundi of their day. But Rome was sustainable because it was built in a fertile region not a desert, and its wealth came from running a huge empire, not from bubble economics. I hope for my daughter and son-in-law's sake the bubble lasts a few more years before it bursts and the skyscrapers collapse back into the lone and level sands.
No comments:
Post a Comment