Where The Sky And Beyond Is The Limit…

Sometimes you are figuring out how on earth you get to something or somewhere. Well, dear reading ladies and gentlemen, let me tell you something. As we speak I am writing down my experiences of having been two days in Dubai, whilst enjoying the CD Nothing But the Beat from David Guetta being two hours of flying away from the next destination: Hong Kong.

The fact that I once picked up the phone at a time I was asleep, it must have been around 10:30AM on the November 22nd, 2004, when a lady working for Randstadt gently asked me whether I was interested to start working for only two afternoons at the Unilever PeopleLink department in Vlaardingen, ultimately made me sitting in this airplane from Emirates. I hesitated for a while, thought twice, and eventually responded with “Sure, why not”, quickly suited myself up like Mr. Awesomeness ‘HIMYM Barney’ and drove in my Pimp My Ride Fiat Uno all the way from the Tjalkaan 65, Rotterdam, to the Olivier van Noortlaan 120, Vlaardingen. By that time I could not have imagined that this decision would in due course result in being on my way towards Southeast Asia where I will stay for a period of about two months.
Ever since I set foot on the Unilever PeopleLink premises, I drove the route to Vlaardingen approximately five hundred times, got to learn the ropes applicable to a multinational organization and gradually became quite experienced within the fieldwork of HR. It continued with a spell in Prague that lasted so far 4 years and 9 months, when in late September the decision was taken that my exact job role was about to be made redundant. In short: when you would believe in a predestined future – which I do – then you could state that I was meant to be in the plane at this time and that all recent developments have had its good reasoning.

OK, I am getting off-track. Something I also expect to get once and a while throughout my journey, but let’s get back to the core of this story for now. ‘Where The Sky And Beyond Is The Limit” is namely a composition of eight words that instantly came to my mind when I asked myself what exactly depicted my experiences ever since the plane got airborne in Amsterdam last Thursday at 3:30PM?
After a very pleasant flight with Emirates – you can choose out of all imaginable movies, TV series, music, documentaries and you are being taken care of in a very professional manner – the eagle landed in Dubai, the capital city of one of the seven emirates. I got picked up by a friend around midnight and after a short ride in his big, fancy car, I arrived at his apartment where I would crash for the next three nights. The way from the airport to his apartment, that is located practically on the artificially created beaches in the shape of Dubai’s national symbol of a palm, already showed me the city’s beauty: illuminated skyscrapers everywhere, an infrastructure where the creators of Sim City 3000 could only have dreamt of and cars that are in The Netherlands only seen once per year at the Amsterdam Rai.

After a short sleep we headed towards the biggest shopping mall of the world. The mall features – amongst others – a waterfall and an amazing aquarium that is home to colorful fish and where leopard sharks, eagle stingrays and white-tip reef sharks star as the main characters. The highlight of the day was having a coffee in front of the world’s highest building, the Burj Khalifa, that towers over the other buildings with its enormous height of 828m. God knows how they built this architectonical masterpiece, but my oh my, He did a great job: simply mesmerizing. Afterwards I was confronted with the sight of close to another thousand skyscrapers, before we cruised towards the beach where we had an afternoon snack, some ice coffee (drinking alcohol is strictly prohibited in Dubai in public; buying and drinking alcohol at home even requires an official drinking license granted exceptionally by the local authorities) and some interesting talks with my friend’s brother-in-law and a guy nicknamed Sharky after his surname Al-Sharqi (the son of the ruler of another emirate: Fujairah). Since this guy partially resembles Uncle Scrooge – his family swims in money, although he is anything but greedy) I have been enjoying an afternoon looking at showing off Ferraris, Mustangs, Bentleys and Rolls-Royces and the best of breed parading expat wome,n without having spent one single Dirham, which is Dubai’s local currency. There was also a very rare encounter: Dubai’s equivalent of Mark Rutte (for the non-Dutch, he is the Dutch Barack Obama), his Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum was just sauntering by without any bodyguard alongside the boulevard and although I would rather bump into an endangered mammal species that does not belong to the Homo Sapiens family, it was stressed out that I should cherish this moment.

I was told that one would not have experienced Dubai properly without having experienced a serious night out full of partying. What we did not think of though, was that on Friday night it was close to a prerequisite to wear a Scream mask, to cover the face with fake blood or to put an axe on the head that visibly splits your skull into two pieces. Since none of these attributes were packed in my backpack and to avoid the Halloween party people, we went to a club named the Rattle Snake. The locals already warned us that the so-called ‘hooker/non-hooker ratio’ over there is 90%/10%, but naive as we are, we did not believe that in such a sophisticated city as Dubai there would be a place comparable with the Rio Bar or the Yab Yum. Our humble belief turned out to be a big mistake, since during my walk from the entrance to the bar I already witnessed two Ukrainian, three Vietnamese, one Congolean and an unidentifiable lady with Asian ancestors that undressed me with their eyes. You might now say: “Dennis, what’s the difference with what you experience in the Czech Republic?”, but note that there is one major difference that we should not lose out of sight: They didn’t speak Czech and they were really after our money J…
The Ché Bar was the next destination, where we entered the normal life again: partying people dressed up in a wide variety of costumes. I have seen a bumblebee, a predator, dozens of Catwomen and the inevitable occasional devil. A couple of shots were tossed down and at the time it was 3AM, when all the clubs switch on their lights, I went home with a satisfied feeling: the city and its people really impressed me.

The Saturday (in Dubai the last day of the weekend) was characterized by mostly relaxation: some sunbathing at the swimming pool, taking pictures of the stunning skylines, a visit to another shopping mall that has the biggest indoor ski center as their attraction (trekpleister) and a football match at night. Playing soccer will be commemorated for the next two months, since the Nike shoes with size 9.5 will ascertain that those toe nails that were not blue yet from the marathon preparations will shortly turn in all the colors of the rainbow. At least it was worth the pain: we drew 10-10 and the locals were shown that Dutch football players are – not to put it too arrogantly – simply superior to others.

In order to avoid you to fall asleep by the time that you finish this epistle – if you are not snoring in the meanwhile –, I will now close off this update by concluding that Dubai is a city that is a must-see for everyone. The architecture, the multi-cultural population (80% expatriates), the different standards, the incredible wealth, in combination with a bearable climate throughout the autumn and winter months, make this city being one of the grandest in the world.
And in case you have any prejudices and believe that visiting Dubai is not worth the effort, let me take this immediately away. You definitely will not regret paying a visit to the city where phantasy became reality and where – what we considered to be – futuristic already belongs to the present.

We will catch up after I have spent my days in Hong Kong.

Dennis

PS. I am updating my blog out of Hong Kong where I stay in the Best Western Hotel in the Causeway Bay District. The time difference with The Netherlands and the Czech Republic is +7 hours, so I better get some sleep to enjoy my days in Hong Kong to the fullest. The first impression is good: again skyscrapers all over the place.