The Billions, The Millions… and now the Zeros ..

The Billions, The Millions… and now the Zeros ..

Ali saw it coming months before he died. I wish more of us had sense as well. We are (were) spending billions on real estate projects, hardly learning from our earlier mistakes that an undiversified economy would suffer badly in the event of a world recession. First it was oil now real estate. Having too much of one thing is too risky and it doesn’t need a scientist to figure this out. Its just basic economics.

We were spending billions building these projects, boosting the economy with employment at all levels , but everyone was ignoring the talk about that mythical bubble that would burst the property industry. Luckily world economics has pushed the UAE into a perfect place to sit back and reflect on where it is heading. We are not in recession and insha3llah we wont ever reach that place... but we are not sitting nice either. At this point, the banks for sure will now have to stop lending to everyone for everything, coz as a people, both expats and locals…we suck at economics (I guess like the rest of the world)

Right now I would classify the UAE population into four group:

1) The Super Poor: Zero – 2k per month.
2) The Poor: 2k – 5k per month.
3) Middle Class but really still you are Poor: 5k – 20k per month.
4) The just about making ends meet comfortably: 20k to 30k per month.
5) Rich (You can actually afford that Maserati you drive around Jumeriah in ) 40k+


Poor people (Category 1 and 2) will of course suffer the most coz they cant afford anything now. But restricting loans to these folks stopping them from buying everything from laptops and cars to apartments and even freaking villas, will sure help the economy.

Middle Class people (category 3) Will have to think twice before buying things beyond their budget, so this means they will have to stop pretending to be in category 4 and 5. That means no more loans for villas or even Dubai apartments for them.

Category 4 people (like me), even though we can and should still be able to buy and take loans for assistance with the essentials, we should also learn and see how the world is going deeper into recession and how many people around us in the UAE are beginning to feel the bite. Even those earning in this bracket were facing problems before the crisis began. How many of us earning 25k + still has no money at the end of the month? By no money I mean like under 1000 dirhams in the account.

Too many. We spend on the essentials like, food, rent or mortgage, cars, fuel and education for our kids etc etc which really adds up to a lot… but then we also take out loans to spend more on extra cars, luxury goods, holidays etc… and even that extra villa, just to fake that we are in category 5. The Rich. Seriously. Where's the sense.

This is a good time to reflect. A warning ya3ny, that we need to take account of what we are spending on. While we do this forced self correction, the markets will correct themselves.

BTW…There is an extra category, Category 6…which is exclusively for people who work in the real estate business (that used to include me and includes ,any from category 1 to 5 ). I have nothing to say but ya'll suckers. Don’t cry coz you cant take out loans. If I had my way you'd all be severely castrated just for your stupidity and greed. The bubbles shrinking a lot…and who knows how small it'll go before the night is through. You fueled this mess we are in.

Here's a joke.

Q: What’s the difference between Dubai Real Estate brokers and Pigeons?
A: Pigeons are still capable of making deposits on new BMW’s.

Requiem

For the first time in a long time, I felt compelled to call my mother. We are not on the best of terms; we have not been for a long time. Differences in our outlook to life forced me not to long ago to tell her to think twice about calling me again....

He had been sick for a long time, for as long as I had known him. But he turned his illness into a source for creativity and with his writings he inspired me. With our long chats online he humored me and with his regular text messages and calls he reminded me. This morning I found out he had died. His death hurt me more than it would have due to the long length of time since his passing.

Today I kept on whispering his name saying ‘sorry’. Recently I have been so caught up in my own world of work, the pursuit of more money, sport cars and the good life of this city’s eternal sunsets that I was not listening to him when he asked for my basic attention. Once he even said to me half jokingly that if I do not hear from him in a long time that means he has passed on. I dismissed his comment as just a part of his trade mark pessimism. He was still yet to come to my neck of the woods again... were we were going to chill, party and trun this city upside down, as if we were both immortal. I wished I had listened closer and not kept myself so distant from him.

Someone once said ‘Death defines who we are. It is the truth of our existence.’ I think it was a line in a kid’s film or something. Regardless, today I gained a new appreciation for life and although I will not end my pursuit for the temporal toys of this world - because this is what makes us human, today I decided to take stock of what is more important in this life , so I called my mother this afternoon, and I was happy to hear her voice once again….

religious dilemma

We've all no doubt seen and heard about the second wave of blasphemous characters that were published in European newspapers of the Prophet Mohammed (Peace Be Upon Him) and how the Danish government is attempting to suppress the effect that this could have on its Middle Eastern partners such as the GCC countries, for one and how from another end they are trying to distance themselves from it by claiming that another political party is the one whose playing this card, may I add to the point of publishing a small video on their website that depicts Islam and how it could be related to the 9/11 atrocities and other happenings around the world ending it off with someone at the end calling for 911 emergency services in the USA frantically and not without panic.

Have we learned our lesson yet from the first wave?

Apparently not, because you still have people who give these individuals who hold high the slogan of 'Freedom of Press' well high above anything else; simply because it is part of the European constitution given to every person who has such a nationality.

But where does one draw the line between freedom of press and building hate between cultures & religions as if we don't have problems of our own all over the world not to mention in the region?

It is a choice of rationale.

There's just simply no getting over it. The world was never created perfectly. It has its flaws and imperfections. The same would apply towards the human race. There are those who would oppose such ideas and think nothing of it and others who think they have every right to question even the matter of if there is a God (i.e.: Atheists). It is a balance of life that must always be otherwise the world would topple over.

That does not excuse the individuals that push people to the verge of insanity to the point of suicide bombing because of insulting a religion or a representative thereof.

So what do we do?

Stay quite and let what be, be? Or engage in a holy Jihad against the infidels that started the whole thing and anyone who is in link with them?

Think of it this way: If a child is beaten up by another child, then the child cries the first time. Second time around, the child has learned to stay away from such individuals to the point that the other child leaves them alone eventually.

Are we better off this way? Perhaps. But if we pursue the silly threats and killings against such stupidities then we are just giving them an even bigger reason to come back and do it again.

Right?

'Block Secret Dubai'...

…is one of the more interesting Facebook groups I have seen. A certain local blogger who I gather has been sparing with SD for the past couple of years, very recently launched a new group on Facebook calling for Secret Dubai to be blocked. Already the group has over 400 members with most people leaving comments being local Emiratis.

I don’t blog as much as I used to, simply because I no longer have the time or the interest in it anymore. Furthermore Facebook has become this year's online craze surpassing blogging as a more agreeable pastime… as posting self indulgent pictures of yourself, fighting sexy vampires and catching up with old school and workmates has become a lot more enjoyable than reading constant negative and unconstructive comments on my favorite blogs.
However regardless of whether its Facebook or Blogger that you prefer to turn to, the best thing about life online is that we can all express ourselves in a manner we would perhaps be too shy to do in the real world. Ironically, despite the virtual and 'unreal' nature of life online…it is here where people are free to express themselves freely across cultures.

It is here where those of us who do not interact with Expats on a regular basis and those who do not interact with Locals in a likewise manner can actually see what we think of each other. Face it, expats and Locals very rarely interact with each other and after 30 odd years of growth and development, the UAE is becoming ever more segregated. While the UAE's PR machine encourages foreigners to come here to spend their tourism dollars or buy property while stating a very true fact that this country is more progressive and advanced than most western countries, it also glosses over the fact that our cultures remain worlds apart.

Online we can see the true realty of the situation: expats bitching about how bad the Emirates is and Emiratis bitching about how bad the expats are, and this is good, because unless we start developing the balls to speak openly and diplomatically in public about the things that divides us and concerns us, then we will continue to need the virtual world to portray the truth of our social reality.

Our legal systems need a reboot.

Is it me, or has the amount of reported rapes has suddenly spiked in the past 6 months? Opening Gulf News today, there are at least three separate stories relating to the subject.

The issue of the actual act of rape is in itself disturbing, but even worse is our judicial systems handling of it. We need to adopt a no-tolerance approach to the crime, ensuring that those who commit it receive the highest punishment for it – which under Shari'a law is death - while most importantly the victims of that crime are given the fullest help needed – whether they be in the right or the wrong.

The current case in KSA is an embarrassment for us all, including the Saudi royal family and government. How it that a woman can be gang raped, and then punished again by the legal system for being alone with a man who is not a relative. Even though the precise nature of the relationship between the couple has been so far ambiguous – the fact that he was also raped by the same group of men, tells me that the Saudi system needs its brutal attention on the perpetrators and not the victims.

Back here in the UAE, I was happy to read that a Local and Iraqi duo were given seven years for raping an Emiratia and I hope these tougher sentences for sexual crimes are applied across the board regardless of the nationality or sex of the victim. Tougher rulings should be applied as a solid deterrent to men who are sexually inclined this way and as a support for the victim.

Even it doesn’t take a television CSI character to figure out that the term 'rape' is on occasion used by the person on the 'receiving end' as a way of masking a consensual sexual relationship (especially when it is between two men), when it is fully conclusive that the act was non-consensual…then perhaps we should go beyond the seven years in prison type rulings and indeed take it back to the days of the Prophet (sws).

In one hadith, Wa'il ibn Hujr reports of an incident when a woman was raped. When the rapist was identified, Mohamed (sws) said to the woman, "Go away, for Allâh has forgiven you," but of the man who had raped her, he said, "Stone him to death." (Tirmidhi and Abu Dawud)… or in my humble opinion, castration which will be equally effective.

The news just from the past week alone, makes me want to loose faith in humanity....

Iraqi and Emirati rape Emirati Girl

Couple gang raped in KSA

Prisoner raped while drugged

8 and 9 year old boy charged with rape (US)

Police 'scare' woman into sex

French boy who claims he was 'raped', mother kicked out of court.

Gulf Air. Give up. Please.

Come on guys its time to call it a day, give up the ghost, throw in the towel. Emirates, Qatar and even Al Etihad have stolen the crown from you and today it seems that Bahrain and Oman's number one carrier can not even hold a light to the UAE's and Qatar's national airlines.


The rumors of how far your service has declined over the years have been consistently confirmed time and time again with each new passenger. Un-friendly check-in staff worldwide and an un-professional cabin crew who have all the charm of a lifeless blow-up doll, can all benefit from a finishing school that emphasizes that service with a smile can go a long way, when all else is failing.


Antiquated aircraft, with an antiquated in-flight entertainment system that delivers a value of entertainment only matched by the bland food menu of either chicken or fish; is just one shade away from being the equivalent of a no-thrills airline.


Give me Sharjah's Air Arabia anyday over Gulf Air.


And if it was not for being stranded on Heathrow Airport's tarmac for nearly eight hours two Fridays ago, waiting for your engineers to figure out what was wrong with the plane, when you could of simply transferred us all to other flights (albeit that of your competition) instead of lying to your passengers saying on the hour, every hour (for seven hours), that a problem would soon be diagnosed and then resolved within an hour... I still would not of accepted your offer for a free ticket, if you even had the courtesy to offer one like most other airlines, given the same situation.


However the thought of enduring another flight on Gulf Air, and having to wait another four hours in a cold Bahraini airport eating free cold scrambled egg and soggy toast as compensation for your airline's incompetence in helping me to miss my connecting flight to Dubai, is just way too much to even endure.

the billions.. the millions.. and then the zeros

Time has become the matter of everything that drives us around to where we should go, where we should be, and what we should be doing. And unfortunately, the drive to that point is not being punctuative about our tedious timings, but rather because our very lives depend on them - monetarally speaking.

It's all about the money these days, or so Madonna would have described it, 'material world'.

Unfortunately, nothing is sacred anymore because of this drive since it has been dug down deep into our very roots and fabrics that we live by - religion; culture; nationalism; and even our very souls we sell to the devil just to hang by that extra moment of luxury that has become so precious in current day and time.

But what about the future? What about the times that we will need each other most? When money won't matter anymore? What will we do then? Beg? Grovel? Sympathize?

Most of us may be shaking our heads now but believe you and I, that that is the future we must all look forward to because of our current trend. Building skyscrapers and futuristic modules of building that scour the high clouds of our imagination with technologies never thought possible. Or materialistic impulses that would push us to get the latest trend, fashion, or even food in the growing industry that knows no bounds to reaching our deep-end pockets.

But what will we do when we get to the point of where all this does not matter?

consequences of a rising real-estate industry

The trend of rising prices in the real estate industry hasn't quite cooled down just yet in the GCC region due to the vast potential of clientèles, modern building material technologies and the obvious wealth factor that is spreading at locust speed in a time of change for the GCC nationals and their foreign counterparts.

However, such progress is coming at a very steep price.

The overwhelming development in the industry is facing rough challenges on how to cope with the demand that is pushing it further beyond the limits of natural resource capabilities in the region. One such example is the hog on the water resource canal that is being spent in a non-elusive manner and without proper consideration where such real estate project not only require the hydro-powered source to build such projects but it is also necessary to maintain it in the long-run if it is ever going succeed in the long run.

The fact is that as developing nations, we have a need - nay, an obligation - to monitor ourselves in such a capacity and not run ourselves dry of such scarce resources especially with mounting climatic changes all over the world disrupting normal weather tac-tics all year round because of the escalating global warming levels.

So what is there to do, then?

Nothing much, really. Since the development cycle has been turned around much too fast, all we can ever do is sit and wait while we battle it out in our own close regions and hope to the Almighty that we get through this safely and in one piece.

Eid Mubarak to one and all

My sincere apologies to everyone out there who was expecting a set of new posts by the time I had gotten to post about Ramadhan and missing out on it. I was merely responsible for the change of layout you look at now - and still don't know if you like it not, but would love to know.

Both Jassim & Yahya were very busy during Ramadhan while I was sent in and out of hospital for the past 6 weeks of anemia trauma that I am still living under the fear that one day it would be my time. But that's what I am here to point out.

From hereon in, you can expect at least a weekly post from me at the very least if things get redicilously tight on my end. I can't imagine a better hobby to keep my mind off things than writing itself.

And finally; may I just conclude this small brief post on congratulating every single one of you on the auspicious ocassion of Eid Al Fitr. May it bestow upon every one of you a great many deal of blessings on your all your families and loved ones. May all your hard work get earned in this time of year, inshallah.

So, on behalf of me; Jassim & Yahya here at the Secret Arabian Journal; have a wonderful Eid Mubarak!

Ramadhan Kareem - everyone

Here's hoping a wonderful Ramadhan to everyone who reads and comments on Secret Arabian Journal and hoping for many festive times to come by, inshallah!