Housekeeping and Happy New Year

I'll be ringing in 2020 tonight, and with then be heading to Louisiana for a few days of post-holiday vacation. As well as being the last post of 2019, this will also likely be my last entry for awhile. There are now officially less than three months remaining until Corinne's and my wedding, and preparing for that event is going to take up an increasing amount of my spare time between now and then (that, in fact, I one of the reasons we are heading to Louisiana this weekend).

But before I do that, a few housekeeping/meta-blogging items I've meant to take care of but haven't done so until now:

First, in keeping with a tradition of archiving family obituaries on this blog, I'm (finally) posting my grandfather Horace Gray's obituary, which I have retroblogged to the day of his passing, August 9, 2000. Hard to believe that he will have been gone twenty years this coming summer.

I'm also making a couple of changes to the blogroll on the right side of this page, starting with my college football links. Since Deadspin has been gutted by its new corporate overlords, it no longer warrants a link. The Every Day Should Be Saturday folks have moved on to the Banner Society (the final post on EDSBS - a dissertation combining life, college football and "Free Bird" - being absolutely epic), so I am replacing the former with a link to the latter.

Finally, and with a bit of sadness, I have deleted my "Dubai" blogroll. As much fun as it was to have played a (small) part of that city's blogosphere a dozen or so years ago, the simple fact is that Dubai is no longer part of my life. I was last there over seven years ago, I am no longer at a job that requires me to travel there, and I doubt I will be heading back there for any reason anytime soon. Furthermore, most of the blogs I linked to have either become dormant (an exception being Alexander McNabb's  Fake Plastic Souks) or their writers have moved.

Everybody be safe tonight, and may you have a wonderful 2020!

Drone taxis

Coming this summer to... where else?

There’s been lots of talk in recent years about self-driving cars. Now, it appears as if self-flying passenger drones are next -- and they could flying in one major city as soon as this July. 

That’s according to a plan revealed Monday in Dubai, where the head of the Dubai Roads and Transportation Authority said it wants to develop passenger-carrying drones as a way to move people around the United Arab Emirates’ biggest city. Officials said flights could begin in July, though few other details were offered.

The Associated Press reports the drone type being pursued for Dubai’s passenger service is the Chinese-made EHang 184, “an egg-shaped craft with four legs sticking out, each with two small propellers.”

The drone, which can travel about 30 miles on a single battery charge, would be completely automated. Passengers would select a destination on a touch screen in front of the seat; the drone’s flight would be monitored remotely from a control room staffed with Dubai RTA personnel and the passenger would have no control over the drone.

That sounds a bit scary, but according to the co-founder of EHang the drone will have software that calculates the most optimal route for the passenger and avoids collisions with other drones. It will also have back-up systems to take over in the case of any primary system failures. Truth be told, these drone taxis might end up being safer than Dubai’s regular taxis!

One problem with the drones (aside from the cost of the fare, which is likely to be substantial) is that they can only carry a person weighing up to 220 pounds. Which means that my fat ass is going to have to lose some weight before I can get in one.

Retroblogging

This blog didn't really begin in earnest until the late spring of 2006. However, I had been blogging for at least two years earlier, on my old, out-of-date website that I finally put out if its misery a couple of weeks ago.

There were some things I wrote on my first "blog" that I wanted to keep. For example, posts regarding Kirby's birth, posts about Hurricanes Rita and Katrina, the exploits of the Cougars and the Astros, my trip to Japan, my very first trip to Dubai.

So I went through all of them, decided which ones I wanted to keep, and moved them to this blog. I backdated them to the date I originally published them on my old website. I generally cut and pasted them as they were originally written, only lightly editing them. I didn't even strip out the hyperlinks in many of them, even though a lot of them are now unfortunately dead.

I note at the bottom of each post the date they were "retroblogged" (today, August 23, 2015) and in many cases add a sentence or two to update what I wrote.

Thus, every entry now on this blog from 2004, all but one entry from 2005, and one entry from 2006 are imports from my old website. There are 40 of them in total. They all carry the "retroblog" tag.
Some what I think are the more noteworthy of these "retroblogs" are as follows:

July 18, 2004: Local homeowners complain about development in spite of Houston's lack of zoning

August 21, 2004: Kirby's birth

October 12, 2004: Astros get past the Atlanta Braves to win their first-ever postseason series

November 16, 2004: 2004 Presidential Election thoughts (aka, they both sucked)

November 22. 2004: The Coogs conclude a disappointing season

December 27, 2004: Houston experiences a White Christmas

March 15, 2005: Disco lives! at the University of North Texas library

April 25, 2005: Political instability continues in Ecuador as another president is forced out of office

September 8, 2005: Pondering the future of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina

September 25, 2005: The disaster that was the Hurricane Rita evacuation

October 12, 2005: The "Kat-Rita Bowl:" Houston 35, Tulane 14 in Lafayette

October 20, 2005: The Astros are going to the World Series (and I'm going to Japan!)

December 7, 2005: College football teams that got Screwed and Shafted by bowl selection committees

December 10, 2005: Pictures and a review of my trip to Japan in October 2005

February 19, 2006: Pictures and a review of my trip to Dubai in January 2006

It was truly interesting to go back and read all of those old blog entries - many of which I hadn't looked at in years - to see how things were and what my life was like a decade ago.

There is still some material I saved from my old website that I might put on this blog in the future, but I probably won't be backdating them as I did with the above posts.

A word about MH17

Commercial aviation disasters always disturb me, but I am especially horrified and haunted by the incident involving MH17, the Malaysian airliner carrying 298 people - 2/3rds of them Dutch citizens - that was shot down over Eastern Ukraine last Thursday.

Horrified, because hundreds of innocent people minding their own business on a flight between Amsterdam and Kuala Lumpur were slaughtered due to a conflict they had nothing to do with.

Haunted, because I have flown over that part of Ukraine several times before, during my travels to and from Dubai. In fact, the most direct route between IAH and DXB goes right over this area of conflict in Eastern Ukraine. Try it yourself on a globe or on Google Earth.

At the time I was making all those trips to Dubai and back, Eastern Ukraine was not embroiled in the conflict that it is today. But my flights took me over other areas of strife, such as Georgia, Transnistria, Armenia and Azerbaijan, and of course, Iraq. I remember well the many times I stared out my airplane window as I flew over those areas, aware of the tension and outright violence occurring thousands of feet below but blithely assuming that those fighting would not have the wherewithal or desire to shoot down a third-party commercial airliner flying thirty-five thousand feet overhead.

As last Thursday's horror proves, however, that blithe assumption was wrong. And MH17 could have been any flight. Including, at another time or under another circumstance, my own.

My heart goes out to the families and friends of the victims of those whose lives were claimed by this barbaric attack, and I hope that the thugs responsible for this catastrophe are one day brought to justice.

Does a Coca-Cola ad campaign assist or exploit Dubai laborers?

Take three minutes to watch this recent advertisement from Coca-Cola. Go ahead. I'll wait.

Did this video make you feel all warm and fuzzy? You can admit it. What a wonderful thing for Coca-Cola to do, right?

However, the realities behind this ad campaign aren't quite so warm and fuzzy, as The New Yorker's Vauhini Vara explains:

The lives of Dubai’s migrant laborers are filled with hardship. Foreigners—including thousands of migrant workers from South Asia—make up more than eighty-eight per cent of residents of the United Arab Emirates, of which Dubai is a commercial and cultural center, according to a report this year from Human Rights Watch. The report found that recruiters in countries like India and Pakistan often charge fees of several thousand dollars to migrant laborers to facilitate their trips to the U.A.E. and their employment once they arrive. Once workers reach their destination, employers sometimes confiscate their passports, the report said, and laborers are barred from organizing or bargaining collectively.

For some people, “Hello Happiness” was a poignant reminder of those difficult circumstances. “Almost made me cry,” one person commented on YouTube. But that view was far from universal. “No offense, but ‘Happiness’ would be working conditions that don’t cause thousands of deaths, non-exploitative contracts, fair wages,” another person wrote. The question is whether Coca-Cola is shedding light on a little-known human-rights crisis and, in its own small way, helping to alleviate the troubles of the victims of that crisis, or whether it is adding to the exploitation of migrant workers in the Middle East and Asia.

I can see both sides of the argument. On one hand, this Coca-Cola ad is giving a voice and a face to the "invisible armies" of South Asian laborers who are toiling in merciless desert heat as they build Dubai's soaring skyscrapers and gleaming shopping malls. It clearly references the long days, hard work, crowded camps and low wages these men must endure, thereby eliciting compassion for their circumstances.

On the other hand, there does seem to be something unscrupulous and even cynical about this campaign, especially considering that only five of these special phone booths were made and that they were operational for only about a month while the advertisement was being produced. Afterwards, the "happiness" being provided to these laborers came to an end; the phone booths were dismantled and the laborers went back to having to pay approximately one-half of their day's wages if they wanted to make a three-minute phone call back home. Furthermore, the ad makes no reference to some of the more troubling realities of labor work in Dubai: dangerous working conditions, unethical recruiters and contractors, the inability to collectively bargain. Vara continues:

I sent links to the ads to Nicholas McGeehan, a Gulf researcher for Human Rights Watch who has studied labor conditions in Dubai. I was interested in his take on the questions of appropriateness and ethics that some viewers had raised. The videos, he said, were “odious.” For one thing, he said, Coke is not only using these low-income workers to advertise its product, it is also requiring them to buy soft drinks themselves—at nearly a tenth of their typical daily wages, he pointed out—to use the special phone booth. On top of that, he feels that the ads normalize and even glorify the hardship faced by migrant workers—at least some of whom may be working against their will. “If this was two hundred years ago, would it be appropriate for Coke to do adverts in the plantations of the Deep South, showing slaves holding cans of Coke?” he asked. “It is a normalization of a system of structural violence, of a state-sanctioned trafficking system.”

The comparison to slavery is a bit overwrought, as I've said before: these workers came to Dubai voluntarily, to earn wages that, while comparatively small, are simply not currently available in places like Sri Lanka, Kerala or Bangladesh. Yes, some of them might have been lured by underhanded recruiters, and yes, some of them might be facing unacceptable working conditions, but it's not quite the same as being captured, brought to Dubai in chains and auctioned off to big developers like Nakheel or Emaar.

That being said, I do find the ad somewhat creepy. The thing that bothers me the most is not that laborers were used in its making, or that they were required to buy a Coca-Cola product if they wanted to use the telephone booths, but that only five of these kiosks were built and that they were only operational for a month. That just seems cruel. Why not build more of them so more laborers can access them, or leave them operational for a longer period of time, if not permanently? Surely that's something that a multi-billion-dollar corporation like Coca-Cola could afford to do in the name of creating long-term goodwill as well as brand loyalty in the developing world.

"Happiness," indeed.

Will the Persian Gulf become the world's air travel hub?

Welcome to the new "global travel crossroads" of the Persian Gulf:

It's 1 a.m. and the sprawling airport in this desert city is bustling. Enough languages fill the air to make a United Nations translator's head spin.

Thousands of fliers arrive every hour from China, Australia, India and nearly everywhere else on the planet. Few venture outside the terminal, which spans the length of 24 football fields. They come instead to catch connecting flights to somewhere else.

If it weren't for three ambitious and rapidly expanding government-owned airlines — Emirates Airline, Etihad Airways and Qatar Airways — they might have never come to the Middle East.

For generations, international fliers have stopped over in London, Paris and Amsterdam. Now, they increasingly switch planes in Dubai, Doha and Abu Dhabi, making this region the new crossroads of global travel. The switch is driven by both the airports and airlines, all backed by governments that see aviation as the way to make their countries bigger players in the global economy.

Passengers are won over by their fancy new planes and top-notch service. But the real key to the airlines' incredible growth is geography. Their hubs in Qatar and the United Arab Emirates are an eight-hour flight away from two-thirds of the world's population, including a growing middle class in India, China and Southeast Asia that is eager to travel.

I might add two more airlines to this list: flydubai, the low-cost carrier that operates out of Dubai's Terminal 2, and Air Arabia, another low-cost carrier which operates from the airport in neighboring Sharjah. While both of these airlines are regional in nature (flydubai's fleet is comprised entirely of Boeing 737 aircraft while Air Arabia uses only Airbus A320s, so neither airline offers long-haul flights), they are just two more examples of the tremendous aviation hub this corner of the Middle East has become. 

Like the article explains, it's all about geography. Not only is two-thirds of humanity within an eight-hour flight of these airports, but the region's warm, arid climate means that weather-related delays are exceedingly rare. These airlines have other advantages as well, and that doesn't always sit well with the international carriers with whom they are competing:

European airlines have suggested that the Gulf carriers benefit from access to discounted oil, a favorable tax climate and non-union labor, particularly low-wage immigrant workers from India and Pakistan.

But the biggest perk comes from Middle East governments who are investing heavily in attractive, efficient airports.

The Qatari government is building a $15.5 billion airport in Doha, designed to handle 24 million people each year, nearly six times the capacity of the existing facility. In Abu Dhabi, the capital of the United Arab Emirates, the government is building a sprawling terminal twice the size of The Mall of America.

And construction was just completed in Dubai of a concourse designed exclusively for Emirates' fleet of Airbus A380s. The new building has entire floors dedicated to first and business class customers who board directly from lounges, never interacting with coach passengers.

There are also grumblings that these carriers might be directly subsidized by the oil-rich governments that own them. These airlines deny those charges, not that there's anything their American, European or East Asian competitors could do about it even if they were.

Regardless, these airlines are poised to upset the "old order" the international aviation realm. European carriers stand to lose the most as Emirates, Qatar and Etihad expand their services, but American carriers are nervous as well.

"I think they are a clear threat, much more so to our European and Asian colleagues, but nonetheless a threat to U.S. airlines as well," Jeff Smisek, CEO of United Continental Holdings Inc., said at an investor conference last March. "They have a very good product. And they have the total and absolute support of their governments."

Meanwhile, Smisek's own product - United Airlines - is anything but "very good." So he has reason to be concerned.

However, as many advantages that these airlines might have, it's still a bit too early to say that the future of international air travel belongs to Qatar and the UAE. For one thing, their geographical advantage still doesn't allow them to compete significantly in the lucrative trans-Atlantic and trans-Pacific markets; while I guess it is theoretically possible for a traveler from Chicago to Paris or from San Francisco to Toyko to change planes in Dubai, I'm guessing not many people are going to do that. Geography, furthermore, is as much a liability as it is in asset: the Middle East is volatile. A significant event in the region - war, terrorism or unrest - could seriously impact all of these airlines. There's also the fact that Emirates, Etihad and Qatar are expanding rapidly, putting in large jet orders and adding destinations at a dizzying pace. What happens if they grow too quickly and are forced to retrench? We've seen that happen all too often in the airline industry.

But what intrigues me the most about these airlines is how tightly they are clustered together. Dubai and Abu Dhabi are less than 100 miles apart, and Doha is closer to Abu Dhabi than Houston is to Dallas. Even Air Arabia's hub at Sharjah's airport is only about ten miles away from flydubai's hub at Dubai International. Will there be enough demand to comfortably support all of these closely-bunched airlines? What if Bahrain or Oman want to get in on the action and start expanding their own carriers? Will market conditions eventually force one or more of them out of business, leaving opulent airport terminals deserted and gleaming A380s and Dreamliners grounded, or will the sheikhs to whom these carriers ultimately belong pour money into money-losing carriers, to proud to let them fail?

For now, though, these Middle Eastern airports and airlines continue to grow and become more vital to the global aviation industry. Which is why, even though I've changed jobs and no longer travel to Dubai for business, I have a feeling that I'll be passing through there again one day.

Amazing Dubai panorama

A photographer used special equipment to take a 2.5-gigapizel, 360-degree panoramic photograph from the spire of the Burj Khalifa:

The image is composed from over 70 individual photos. Dubai based photographer Gerald Donovan created the shot using a mechanised panoramic tripod head to take a series of 48 panoramic images, each shot at a resolution of 80 megapixels. These were then stitched together with manually shot images to 'fill-in' gaps caused by equipment installed at the top of the tower such as the lightning conductor and aircraft beacons. The result is an image that can be zoomed, tilted and rotated, giving viewers a sense of how it must feel to sit atop the world's highest building.  

Everything from Ajman and Sharjah at the north end to the Dubai Marina (and beyond that, in the haze, the cranes and waters of Jebel Ali) at the south end is visible. I spent way too much time panning and zooming, and was able to pick out several landmarks, including my former employer's office building (which actually made me a little sad). The amount of stuff still under construction in and around the Emirate is also mind-boggling.


It really is quite amazing and is worth a look, even if you never plan to visit Dubai. See for yourself here.

Flights to Beijing and geographic illiteracy

Houston is apparently on the verge of nonstop flights to mainland China:

Parker said the city hopes to make a formal announcement in the "next couple weeks" and identified China as the likely destination country, while downplaying the news: "This is not a secret. I have been working on a direct flight to China almost since the day I took office," she said.

Parker was questioned by reporters after councilman Andrew Burks mentioned a nonstop flight from Houston to Beijing on Wednesday. Burks was unavailable for comment, but one of his staff members told the Chronicle later that Burks had confirmed nonstop flights between Houston and Beijing four times a week would begin in July on Air China, the country's flag carrier, headquartered in Beijing. 

That's a good thing for the city's international prestige and economy, not to mention its large Chinese population. Unless, of course, you dislike or distrust the People's Republic of China (which, judging from the comments on this article, a lot of people do), in which case you probably don't think this is a good thing.

I think it's a good thing. This bit of geographic illiteracy by the Chronicle, however, is not a good thing:

Houston has one other nonstop flight to Asia: United Airlines' daily morning nonstop from Bush Intercontinental Airport to the Tokyo area's Narita airport.

A nonstop to Beijing would be Houston's first to the Asian mainland.

Well, other than those nonstop flights to Doha and Dubai offered by Qatar Airways and Emirates, respectively. Both cities are located on the Arabian Peninsula, which, last time I checked, is indeed part of the continent of Asia.

In Dubai, no mall is big enough

Has Dubai learned its lesson from its economic meltdown? When they announce stuff like this, I can't help but wonder:

After years of downsized ambitions because of a debt crisis, Dubai has unveiled plans for a new tourism-retail hub that will include a shopping complex that would outclass the Dubai Mall, billed as the world's biggest.

State news agency WAM says the planned development on the city's desert outskirts will include luxury hotels and a major theme park, a goal derailed by Dubai's fiscal meltdown in 2009.

No timetable was announced Sunday for the Mohammed Bin Rashid City.

Of all the things Dubai needs right now, I honestly don't think "another giant mall" is one of them. Between Deira City Centre, the Burjuman, Ibn Battuta Mall, Mall of the Emirates and Dubai Mall, Dubai has the "massive mall" thing pretty well covered. But apparently Sheikh Mohammed doesn't think so:

A massive new development unveiled yesterday by the Ruler of Dubai is to include the world's biggest shopping mall and more than 100 hotels.

Mohammed Bin Rashid City, which is also to encompass sprawling parkland, was announced yesterday by Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid, Vice President of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai, and comes amid a resurgence in the emirate's economy.

"The current facilities available in Dubai need to be scaled up in line with the future ambitions for the city," Sheikh Mohammed said.

The development - a joint venture between Emaar Properties and Dubai Holding - is to be located between Sheikh Zayed Road, Emirates Road and Al Khail Road.

MBR City represents a revival of the Mohammed Bin Rashid Gardens project, first announced in 2008. The 2008 masterplan had suggested the Gardens project would cover 74 square kilometres, and cost $60bn (Dh220bn). It is not yet clear how closely the new plan is based on that.

 Plan for Mohammed bin Rashid City. (source: The National)

"Between Sheikh Zayed Road, Emirates Road and Al Khail Road" isn't the most helpful description of this proposed development's location because these three roads generally run parallel to each other. But upon closer inspection of the pictures accompanying The National article, it looks like MBR City will occupy the currently-empty space bounded by Al Barsha, Al Quoz, Nad Al Sheba and what currently exists of Dubailand. Reading between the lines, in fact, makes me think that this project is intended to replace that stagnated development:

The Mall of the World is to be partly developed by Universal Studios. Under the 2008 plan, a Universal Studios theme park was to be situated in the proposed Dubailand theme park, but that project has been on hold. It is not yet clear whether the original plan will now be incorporated within the mall.

The original plan for Dubailand included a golf course called The Tiger Woods, in partnership with the famous golfer.

Although that has stalled, yesterday's statement said MBR City would include "a number of golf courses under well-known international names".

While I'm glad that Dubai's economy is finally on the mend, this development, with the world's biggest mall, 100 hotels and multiple golf courses, seems eerily reminiscent of the speculative and superlative ("World's biggest this!" "World's tallest that!") development frenzy that got Dubai into so much trouble in 2008. Dubai's rulers and developers would do well to avoid repeating that frenzy, because as Alexander McNabb explained a couple of weeks ago, it was in fact a nightmare. He notes:

Through the recession, Dubai has slowly but surely been investing in the infrastructure it was ramping up to try and meet the demands of the boom. It's in better shape now than ever it was to encompass expansion and growth with confidence and a new maturity.

The million dollar question is whether we, collectively, have learned our lesson. Whether we can build for the future without being pitched back into the nightmare of the boom.

In the case of MBR City, it's actually a sixty billion dollar question. Stay tuned.

A scene from Blade Runner?

Nope, it's just Dubai. I took this picture from the front of a Red Line train as it departed Al Jafiliya Station on the afternoon of Thursday August 30th. That's the base of the Etisalat Tower to the left; the Dubai World Trade Centre is directly ahead and a portion of one of the Emirates Towers can be seen directly behind it. Directly to the left of the DTWC is the spire of the Burj Khalifa.

I was generally impressed with the Dubai Metro; it was easy to understand and use (we transportation planners call it "legibility"). For all the wondering about whether anybody would actually use it, the trains were rather packed whenever I rode it. However, the trains themselves operated at somewhat slower speeds than what I would normally expect from a fully-grade-separated metro. Also, the in-vehicle air conditioning system simply couldn't keep up with Dubai's summertime heat.

All in all, though, the Dubai Metro appears to have accomplished its intended goal: it's made getting around Dubai without a car easier and more convenient. 

My favorite Starbucks in the entire world...

...has to be the one located in center dome of the Persian Court of Ibn Battuta Mall. The ornate detail and the size of the dome (pictures just don't do it justice!) make this an especially evocative and pleasant place to enjoy a cup of coffee.

It is snack-dab in the middle of a rather large shopping mall, so it can get noisy at times. But the venue is so nice that I'm willing to overlook that fact. Now, if only the wifi was free...

Back in the UAE

It had been four years since I was last in Dubai, and given my current work assignments I hadn’t really been expecting to come back here anytime soon. So imagine my surprise when last week, while I was vacationing in Colorado, I got an email asking me if I could make a quick trip out here to help put together a proposal. (Here, folks, is another reason why you should not check your work e-mail while you are on vacation…)

So my son and I returned from Colorado last Thursday, and Friday afternoon I began the journey out here. Due to the last-minute nature of this trip, my preferred method of getting from Houston to Dubai – non-stop via Emirates – was not available. I had to fly United to Frankfurt and Lufthansa from Frankfurt to Dubai.

Of all the ways to get from Houston to Dubai, I’ve decided that connecting through Europe is the least desirable option. It just makes the trip seem that much longer and more difficult. This is especially true in the case of Lufthansa’s Frankfurt hub; the airport is massive, confusing and not at all user-friendly (at least when compared to other European hubs such as Amsterdam Schiphol, which is also large but is much easier to navigate). The in-flight service on Lufthansa itself was good, however.

I want to see in detail how the city has changed since my last visit here three years and nine months ago, but since I’m only here for the work week I don’t know how much sightseeing (or restaurant-visiting) I’ll be able to do this time around. However, even from the little I’ve seen so far, it’s clear to me that the financial crisis of a few years ago has had a major impact on this city.

For one thing, there seems to be a lot less active construction. Yes, cranes still dot the skyline and there is still some roadbuilding activity, but the pace has slowed considerably and a lot of projects that were underway when I was last here still have not been completed. For example, the two towers in Healthcare City near my office that are still unfinished; one of my co-workers here says that work only recently restarted after being on hiatus for awhile.

I’ve also noticed that traffic does not seem to be as bad as it was four years ago. Maybe that’s because a lot of projects that were underway at that time have now been completed and therefore the transportation network has more capacity – the Dubai Metro, for example, is operational and I will definitely ride it while I am here – but maybe that’s also because there simply aren’t as many cars on the road as there used to be. There simply aren’t as many drivers.

There seem to be a lot of vacant storefronts. My office here has downsized greatly – we used to occupy four floors of our building, but now we only occupy two, and of all the people I worked with when I was here in 2008 only a handful still remain.

Finally, there’s the “pace” of Dubai, which from a completely subjective point of view seems to have slowed. There are still people here and they are still busy, but they don’t seem to be as frenetic. The city seems quieter (less traffic and construction noise, perhaps?). Workers and pedestrians that used to scurry now stroll. There used to be a palpable, if difficult-to-describe, “buzz” to Dubai. It just doesn’t seem to be there anymore.

Again, I’ve only been here for a couple of days and I’ve only seen a small portion of the city. Maybe my perceptions will change as I see more of Dubai. It also should be noted that it’s August and Ramadan only ended a week ago, so a lot of people are probably still on vacation. But on the other hand, after being hit so hard by the economic crisis of 2008 and 2009, and after being made a poster child of that crisis by the world’s media, it’s to be expected that things in this city are going to be different than what I was used to.

And maybe that’s not entirely a bad thing. I few years ago I wrote that Dubai could use the slowdown to "catch its collective breath and find relief from the 'construction fatigue' caused by manic development." From my perspective, that seems to have happened.

And yes, it’s good to be back. Even if it's just for a week.

UAE national murdered near Texas Medical Center

Although I've long since become desensitized to the violence that happens in this city, I am nevertheless disgusted by this story:

A 28-year-old military officer from the United Arab Emirates who came to Houston to care for his cancer-stricken father was shot to death by robbers Sunday.

Salem Saif Al Mazrouei was killed about 10:30 p.m., shortly after he and his father returned from prayers at a mosque to their rented apartment in a gated complex in the 8100 block of El Mundo, police said.

The family has been staying at the apartment in south Houston while the father undergoes treatment at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center.

Al Mazrouei and his father had just returned from prayers at the mosque on Almeda near Old Spanish Trail and had stopped by their apartment to gather sweets for what was probably a Ramadan gathering at another apartment in the same complex. The two were followed inside their apartment by two thugs who tried to rob them. When he and his father tried to escape, Al Mazrouei was fatally shot. The criminals then took off in his rented Toyota Avalon, which was later found on the other side of highway 288.

Although the Chronicle article doesn't mention it, a story about this crime in The National suggests that the father and son, who are from the emirate of Ras al Khaimah in the northern part of the UAE, might have been targeted because they were wearing "national dress," i.e. robe and headdress:

“They were wearing their traditional Middle Eastern dress, and by some accounts you could assume they were targeted because of that, but we don’t know that for certain right now,” said Officer M Miller, a Houston police homicide investigator.

If that's the case, then this might be a hate crime in addition to being a carjacking, robbery and murder. But the investigation is ongoing, and the murderers remain at large.

I am repulsed by this crime not only because it is a senseless murder, but also because it happened to a person whose family had decided to come all the way to Houston from the Emirates to seek cancer treatment for their father.

The National article speaks highly of the M. D. Anderson Cancer Center, and Sheikh Kalifa Bin Zayed Al Nahyan, President of the UAE and Ruler of Abu Dhabi, donated $150 million to M.D. Anderson earlier this year, which says a lot about the esteem with which M.D. Anderson is held in the UAE.

Since this site still gets a fair amount of web traffic from the UAE, I would like to say this to anyone from there that might be reading this, be they Emirati or expat: these scumbags are not representative of the people of Houston. Right now there is nothing to suggest that this crime is anything other than an isolated incident, and the thugs who committed it will eventually be caught and brought to justice. Do not let this horrible crime deter you from seeking treatment at M.D. Anderson.

Salem Saif Al Mazrouei leaves behind a wife and 2-month-old son in the UAE. I extend my condolences to the Al Mazrouei family.

UPDATE: both suspects in Al Mazrouei's murder have been apprehended.

Oops, nevermind...

Received the "we think we have our staffing needs worked out, so we don't need you to come over here after all" e-mail from the Dubai office on Sunday morning.

That's right. The day before I was supposed to leave.

Needless to say, I'm a bit annoyed right now.

From Mardi Gras to the Middle East

My company's Dubai office has requested my presence there to work on some business development items. It's been over two years since my last trip, so it will be interesting to see how things have changed since I was last there. I'm especially looking forward to seeing the completed Burj Kalifa and riding the Dubai Metro for the first time.

But before I do that, I'm heading over to New Orleans to participate in tomorrow's Krewe of Pygmalion parade. A friend of mine is a float lieutenant for that event, and several months ago he recruited myself and several other people to be bead-throwers on his float. So that's what I'm going to be doing tomorrow afternoon. Being a participant in a New Orleans Mardi Gras parade is most definitely a "bucket list" item for me, and I'm obviously looking forward to it.

I'll spend Sunday hanging out in New Orleans, and then on Monday I'm going to fly from New Orleans to Bush Intercontinental and then from Bush Intercontinental to Dubai on Emirates 212. I'll be in Dubai for three weeks, if all goes according to plan.

New Orleans to Dubai in one day - this is going to be a bit of a culture shock!

It's rather serendipitous that the Dubai office has summoned me over there right now, because as of March 25th - two days after my scheduled flight back - I will no longer be able to earn OnePass miles on Emirates! (Just another reason why Continental's merger with evil United sucks.)

The next several days are going to be rather interesting ones for me, to say the least. Laissez les bon temps rouler!

Frontier shifts flights from IAH to Hobby

As of this afternoon, Frontier's Denver-Houston service has shifted from Bush Intercontinental to Hobby Airport:

"Hobby Airport offers great benefits to Frontier's guests," said Daniel Shurz, Frontier’s vice president of strategy and planning. "In addition to its easy-to-use refurbished terminal, Hobby offers convenient access to downtown Houston as well as to great tourist attractions such as NASA and Galveston."

Not to mention less congestion on both the airside and landside ends of the airport.

However, there's probably another good reason for this shift, as discussed on this flyertalk.com thread. United's merger with Continental gives the combined airline the dominant position on this hub-to-hub route which will be difficult for Frontier to compete against. Frontier executives likely thought that it would be a better idea to move to Hobby and take their chances against Southwest, which already offers service to Denver.

Southwest, for its part, has been preparing for their competitor's arrival; over the past couple of months they've put up billboards along local freeways reminding people of their own Hobby-to-Denver service.

Fare war, anyone?

In other local aviation news, Emirates added a second daily nonstop between Bush Intercontinental and Dubai at the beginning of this month. A local blog was hoping that this would mean the appearance of the A380 Super-Jumbo in Houston, but, alas, the second flight will be serviced by another Boeing 777.

It's good to see that IAH-DXB is such a strong route for Emirates, and this second daily option will be of obvious benefit to me if I get called back my company's Dubai office. As of right now I am uncertain if that will ever happen, however.

Cool Dubai timelapses

Regardless of the problems that Dubai might be having right now, it really is a visually stunning city.

Room with a view: Dubai timelapse tests from Atlantis hotel from Philip Bloom on Vimeo.

Hat tip: Andrew Sullivan.

The world's tallest building

Although it technically became the world's tallest building over two years ago, the Tower Formerly Known as Burj Dubai is now officially open:

In a glitzy firework-lit ceremony, the city-state's ruler Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum unveiled a plaque commemorating the event and also announced that the $1.5 billion structure has a new name: the Burj Khalifa.

Named after Khalifa Bin Zayed, the president of the United Arab Emirates -- and ruler of Abu Dhabi, which recently bailed out debt-ridden Dubai to the tune of $10 billion -- the tower was officially recorded as 828 meters tall, adding 10 meters on to previous height claims.

Six years in the making, and now 319 meters higher than previous skyscraping record-holder Taipei 101, Dubai's newest edifice commands dizzying views of the ambitious building program that has transformed the emirate.

While Seabee combats some misconceptions about the sudden name change - for example, Abu Dhabi does not "own" the tower - I still think that the fact that Dubai's signature piece of architecture now bears the name of the ruler of the adjacent emirate speaks volumes about the current political and financial relationship between Dubai and Abu Dhabi.

Anyway, at 2,717 feet, or over one-half mile, in height, it is the tallest structure ever built by humankind. Pretty impressive. And I got to witness its construction!

Breaking the silence

Yes, I am still here, and this blog is still active, although I realize that "active" is a relative term. I haven't generated a lot of new material lately.

As I have noted in previous posts, my current focus is on some ongoing, unresolved changes in my personal life. I've also had some pressing issues in my professional life (unfortunately, a RFP that I spent many long hours working on did not result in my company's landing the project). I've furthermore been busy with some travel (to Florida in mid-November and to North Carolina in early December; I'll have pictures and recaps of both up shortly) as well as the standard holiday rush (although I am pleased to announce that I am done Christmas shopping). Lori and I are also currently dealing with an unfortunate and distressing situation regarding Kirby's education that will probably require us to find yet another school for him in the near future. All this means that posting on this blog has been sparse over the past few months and will likely continue to be so well into 2010.

Unfortunately, I haven't had time to write about the last few games of the UH Cougar football season (the Coogs ended the regular season with a 10-2 record and the Conference USA West division championship but unfortunately lost the conference's title game to East Carolina). However, I will provide a full season recap after the Cougars complete their bowl game, a rematch of last year's Armed Forces Bowl showdown against Air Force.

I also haven't had time to add my thoughts about the latest trouble in Dubai. Last month's announcement that the Emirate was attempting to restructure the mountain of debt under which it was struggling sent a brief wave of panic through world financial markets and, predictably, generated another flurry of Dubai-bashing articles from the Western press. A Times of London report on the latest crisis featured a cartoon of Dubai ruler Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum drowning in a sea of debt; this apparently offended Emiriati authorities such that the paper was banned from distribution in the UAE. British journalist Johann Hari, whose hatred of the Emirate seems to know no limits, meanwhile took the opportunity to describe Dubai as "morally bankrupt" and a "sinister mirage in the desert."

Bashing aside, I think that British academic Christopher Davidson and Harvard economist Edward Glaeser have the best takes on what is going on over there right now. In sum: Dubai is currently facing some serious problems, and there are likely going to be changes in the way business is done there, but rumors of the city-state's impending death are grossly exaggerated. On a personal note I think it is going to be a long time, if ever, before I make any more business trips there.

Anyway, I have a backlog of posts that I want to clear over the next few weeks. Shortly after the new year begins, however, this blog will probably go silent again for awhile, at least until things in my personal life are resolved. Afterwards all will be revealed and I'll hopefully get back to the business of writing on a regular, or at least semi-regular, basis.

In the meantime, I've tweaked some of the links in my blogroll, adding new sites I enjoy reading and removing a bunch of old sites which are either dead or which I no longer bother to read. I've also added word verification for comments. This is a step I really didn't want to take, but the increasing amount of comment spam I have been receiving (most of it Japanese porn spam; go figure) has forced me to turn on this option. I apologize for any inconvenience.

The Dubai Metro

It's been abut a week and a half since the Dubai Metro opened for regular service. During its first week of operation, the new rail system was besieged by curious residents and suffered some technical malfunctions. This is to be expected. However, as the technical glitches are worked out and the novelty fades, the question remains: will people in a city as automobile-dependent as Dubai actually use the system?

Yes, they will. At least some of them. Eventually. Depending on various factors. In this regard, Dubai is no different than any city in the United States.

Obviously, there is a certain segment of the population that will be using the Dubai Metro on a pretty frequent basis, simply because they will have no choice. These are the laborers who do not own automobiles and who currently depend on the RTA's bus network to get around town, and these are the people who are going to be required to ride the Metro for at least part of their journey as the RTA restructures the bus network to feed into the rail lines.

And just as obviously, there is a certain segment of the population that will not use public transportation, even in the form of a sleek, fully-automated train system, under any circumstances.

For everyone else, the answer will depend on how convenient the Dubai Metro is for the trips they need to make. Right now, the system's utility is probably limited to a rather small percentage of Dubai's population of "choice" riders; that is, people who have their own automobiles. The Red Line is the only alignment that is currently in operation, and only 10 of the 29 total planned stations are open. Unless you both live and work near one of these stations, you're probably not going to choose to use the train.

However, once the remaining Red Line stations are opened, and once the Green Line is complete and operational sometime next year, then the system will be more useful to more people simply because its service footprint will be larger. Once again, however, this footprint will be limited to a relatively small area around the stations. "Choice" riders will generally not want to use feeder buses to get to the stations, nor will they want to walk to stations in Dubai's 110-degree summertime heat. The Dubai Metro does feature park and ride facilities that people can drive to, but these are located at the ends of the Emirate. Residents who live towards the center of Dubai are probably not going to drive to one end or the other simply in order to ride the train. Taxi queues will be provided at all Metro stations, however, and that along with Dubai's relatively cheap taxi fares might make that a viable manner of accessing the trains.

One weapon the RTA does have in its arsenal to encourage Metro ridership is the SALIK toll system. The RTA could put more toll checkpoints along major throughfares like Sheikh Zayed Road in order to discourage private automobile use. And, although the severe slump Dubai is experiencing because of the economic crisis has lessened traffic on the roads somewhat, if and when Dubai's economy recovers, the horrendous traffic congestion will inevitably return, thereby creating another natural disencentive to driving.

And finally, don't forget the business travelers and the tourists. Dubai has a lot of them and, for getting around it's either the taxi or the Dubai Metro. Dpending on how close their hotels are to stations and how comfortable they are with rail transit in their native countries, a significant number of them could choose to ride the train, which would generate a real boost to ridership.

The bottom line: it's going to be interesting to see just how well the Dubai Metro actually does. I'm cautiously optimistic.

On a completely personal note, it's great to see a project that I helped design, even if only in a very minor role, come to fruition.