All,

I had a great time in Shangai, beijing and Hong kong with my friends. For few picture check this link http://www.interpals.net/album.php?aid=395178&uid=1227014612

In the meantime, also check the true facts as told by a journalist about Dubai and its dark side...This article was sent to me by my blog friend Ruchi...Great read...

*Dubai was meant to be a Middle-Eastern Shangri-La, a glittering monument to
Arab enterprise and western capitalism. But as hard times arrive in the city
state that rose from the desert sands, an uglier story is emerging.**Johann
Hari reports for The Independent..*



The wide, smiling face of Sheikh Mohammed – the absolute ruler of Dubai –
beams down on his creation. His image is displayed on every other building,
sandwiched between the more familiar corporate rictuses of Ronald McDonald
and Colonel Sanders. This man has sold Dubai to the world as the city of One
Thousand and One Arabian Lights, a Shangri-La in the Middle East insulated
from the dust-storms blasting across the region. He dominates the
Manhattan-manqué skyline, beaming out from row after row of glass pyramids
and hotels smelted into the shape of piles of golden coins. And there he
stands on the tallest building in the world – a skinny spike, jabbing
farther into the sky than any other human construction in history.

But something has flickered in Sheikh Mohammed's smile. The ubiquitous
cranes have paused on the skyline, as if stuck in time. There are countless
buildings half-finished, seemingly abandoned. In the swankiest new
constructions – like the vast Atlantis hotel, a giant pink castle built in
1,000 days for $1.5bn on its own artificial island – where rainwater is
leaking from the ceilings and the tiles are falling off the roof. This
Neverland was built on the Never-Never – and now the cracks are beginning to
show. Suddenly it looks less like Manhattan in the sun than Iceland in the
desert.

Once the manic burst of building has stopped and the whirlwind has slowed,
the secrets of Dubai are slowly seeping out. This is a city built from
nothing in just a few wild decades on credit and ecocide, suppression and
slavery. Dubai is a living metal metaphor for the neo-liberal globalised
world that may be crashing – at last – into history.

*An Adult Disneyland*

Karen Andrews can't speak. Every time she starts to tell her story, she puts
her head down and crumples. She is slim and angular and has the faded
radiance of the once-rich, even though her clothes are as creased as her
forehead. I find her in the car park of one of Dubai's finest international
hotels, where she is living, in her Range Rover. She has been sleeping here
for months, thanks to the kindness of the Bangladeshi car park attendants
who don't have the heart to move her on. This is not where she thought her
Dubai dream would end.

Her story comes out in stutters, over four hours. At times, her old voice –
witty and warm – breaks through. Karen came here from Canada when her
husband was offered a job in the senior division of a famous multinational.
"When he said Dubai, I said – if you want me to wear black and quit booze,
baby, you've got the wrong girl. But he asked me to give it a chance. And I
loved him."

All her worries melted when she touched down in Dubai in 2005. "It was an
adult Disneyland, where Sheikh Mohammed is the mouse," she says. "Life was
fantastic. You had these amazing big apartments, you had a whole army of
your own staff, you pay no taxes at all. It seemed like everyone was a CEO.
We were partying the whole time."

Her husband, Daniel, bought two properties. "We were drunk on Dubai," she
says. But for the first time in his life, he was beginning to mismanage
their finances. "We're not talking huge sums, but he was getting confused.
It was so unlike Daniel, I was surprised. We got into a little bit of debt."
After a year, she found out why: Daniel was diagnosed with a brain tumour.

One doctor told him he had a year to live; another said it was benign and
he'd be okay. But the debts were growing. "Before I came here, I didn't know
anything about Dubai law. I assumed if all these big companies come here, it
must be pretty like Canada's or any other liberal democracy's," she says..
Nobody told her there is no concept of bankruptcy. If you get into debt and
you can't pay, you go to prison.

"When we realised that, I sat Daniel down and told him: listen, we need to
get out of here. He knew he was guaranteed a pay-off when he resigned, so we
said – right, let's take the pay-off, clear the debt, and go." So Daniel
resigned – but he was given a lower pay-off than his contract suggested. The
debt remained. As soon as you quit your job in Dubai, your employer has to
inform your bank. If you have any outstanding debts that aren't covered by
your savings, then all your accounts are frozen, and you are forbidden to
leave the country.

"Suddenly our cards stopped working. We had nothing. We were thrown out of
our apartment." Karen can't speak about what happened next for a long time;
she is shaking.

Daniel was arrested and taken away on the day of their eviction. It was six
days before she could talk to him. "He told me he was put in a cell with
another debtor, a Sri Lankan guy who was only 27, who said he couldn't face
the shame to his family. Daniel woke up and the boy had swallowed
razor-blades. He banged for help, but nobody came, and the boy died in front
of him."

Karen managed to beg from her friends for a few weeks, "but it was so
humiliating. I've never lived like this. I worked in the fashion industry. I
had my own shops. I've never..." She peters out.

Daniel was sentenced to six months' imprisonment at a trial he couldn't
understand. It was in Arabic, and there was no translation. "Now I'm here
illegally, too," Karen says I've got no money, nothing. I have to last nine
months until he's out, somehow." Looking away, almost paralysed with
embarrassment, she asks if I could buy her a meal.

She is not alone. All over the city, there are maxed-out expats sleeping
secretly in the sand-dunes or the airport or in their cars.

"The thing you have to understand about Dubai is – nothing is what it
seems," Karen says at last. "Nothing. This isn't a city, it's a con-job.
They lure you in telling you it's one thing – a modern kind of place – but
beneath the surface it's a medieval dictatorship."

*II. Tumbleweed*

Thirty years ago, almost all of contemporary Dubai was desert, inhabited
only by cactuses and tumbleweed and scorpions. But downtown there are traces
of the town that once was, buried amidst the metal and glass. In the dusty
fort of the Dubai Museum, a sanitised version of this story is told.

In the mid-18th century, a small village was built here, in the lower
Persian Gulf, where people would dive for pearls off the coast. It soon
began to accumulate a cosmopolitan population washing up from Persia, the
Indian subcontinent, and other Arab countries, all hoping to make their
fortune. They named it after a local locust, the daba, who consumed
everything before it. The town was soon seized by the gunships of the
British Empire, who held it by the throat as late as 1971. As they scuttled
away, Dubai decided to ally with the six surrounding states and make up the
United Arab Emirates (UAE).

The British quit, exhausted, just as oil was being discovered, and the
sheikhs who suddenly found themselves in charge faced a remarkable dilemma.
They were largely illiterate nomads who spent their lives driving camels
through the desert – yet now they had a vast pot of gold. What should they
do with it?

Dubai only had a dribble of oil compared to neighbouring Abu Dhabi – so
Sheikh Maktoum decided to use the revenues to build something that would
last. Israel used to boast it made the desert bloom; Sheikh Maktoum resolved
to make the desert boom. He would build a city to be a centre of tourism and
financial services, sucking up cash and talent from across the globe. He
invited the world to come tax-free – and they came in their millions,
swamping the local population, who now make up just 5 per cent of Dubai. A
city seemed to fall from the sky in just three decades, whole and complete
and swelling. They fast-forwarded from the 18th century to the 21st in a
single generation.

If you take the Big Bus Tour of Dubai – the passport to a pre-processed
experience of every major city on earth – you are fed the propaganda-vision
of how this happened. "Dubai's motto is 'Open doors, open minds'," the tour
guide tells you in clipped tones, before depositing you at the souks to buy
camel tea-cosies. "Here you are free. To purchase fabrics," he adds. As you
pass each new monumental building, he tells you: "The World Trade Centre was
built by His Highness..."

But this is a lie. The sheikh did not build this city. It was built by
slaves. They are building it now.

*III. Hidden in plain view*

There are three different Dubais, all swirling around each other. There are
the expats, like Karen; there are the Emiratis, headed by Sheikh Mohammed;
and then there is the foreign underclass who built the city, and are trapped
here. They are hidden in plain view. You see them everywhere, in dirt-caked
blue uniforms, being shouted at by their superiors, like a chain gang – but
you are trained not to look. It is like a mantra: the Sheikh built the city.
The Sheikh built the city. Workers? What workers?

Every evening, the hundreds of thousands of young men who build Dubai are
bussed from their sites to a vast concrete wasteland an hour out of town,
where they are quarantined away. Until a few years ago they were shuttled
back and forth on cattle trucks, but the expats complained this was
unsightly, so now they are shunted on small metal buses that function like
greenhouses in the desert heat. They sweat like sponges being slowly wrung
out.

Sonapur is a rubble-strewn patchwork of miles and miles of identical
concrete buildings. Some 300,000 men live piled up here, in a place whose
name in Hindi means "City of Gold". In the first camp I stop at – riven with
the smell of sewage and sweat – the men huddle around, eager to tell
someone, anyone, what is happening to them.

Sahinal Monir, a slim 24-year-old from the deltas of Bangladesh. "To get you
here, they tell you Dubai is heaven. Then you get here and realise it is
hell," he says. Four years ago, an employment agent arrived in Sahinal's
village in Southern Bangladesh. He told the men of the village that there
was a place where they could earn 40,000 takka a month (£400) just for
working nine-to-five on construction projects. It was a place where they
would be given great accommodation, great food, and treated well. All they
had to do was pay an up-front fee of 220,000 takka (£2,300) for the work
visa – a fee they'd pay off in the first six months, easy. So Sahinal sold
his family land, and took out a loan from the local lender, to head to this
paradise.

As soon as he arrived at Dubai airport, his passport was taken from him by
his construction company. He has not seen it since. He was told brusquely
that from now on he would be working 14-hour days in the desert heat – where
western tourists are advised not to stay outside for even five minutes in
summer, when it hits 55 degrees – for 500 dirhams a month (£90), less than a
quarter of the wage he was promised. If you don't like it, the company told
him, go home. "But how can I go home? You have my passport, and I have no
money for the ticket," he said. "Well, then you'd better get to work," they
replied.

Sahinal was in a panic. His family back home – his son, daughter, wife and
parents – were waiting for money, excited that their boy had finally made
it. But he was going to have to work for more than two years just to pay for
the cost of getting here – and all to earn less than he did in Bangladesh.

He shows me his room. It is a tiny, poky, concrete cell with triple-decker
bunk-beds, where he lives with 11 other men. All his belongings are piled
onto his bunk: three shirts, a spare pair of trousers, and a cellphone. The
room stinks, because the lavatories in the corner of the camp – holes in the
ground – are backed up with excrement and clouds of black flies. There is no
air conditioning or fans, so the heat is "unbearable. You cannot sleep. All
you do is sweat and scratch all night." At the height of summer, people
sleep on the floor, on the roof, anywhere where they can pray for a moment
of breeze.

The water delivered to the camp in huge white containers isn't properly
desalinated: it tastes of salt. "It makes us sick, but we have nothing else
to drink," he says.

The work is "the worst in the world," he says. "You have to carry 50kg
bricks and blocks of cement in the worst heat imaginable ... This heat – it
is like nothing else. You sweat so much you can't pee, not for days or
weeks. It's like all the liquid comes out through your skin and you stink.
You become dizzy and sick but you aren't allowed to stop, except for an hour
in the afternoon. You know if you drop anything or slip, you could die.. If
you take time off sick, your wages are docked, and you are trapped here even
longer."

He is currently working on the 67th floor of a shiny new tower, where he
builds upwards, into the sky, into the heat. He doesn't know its name. In
his four years here, he has never seen the Dubai of tourist-fame, except as
he constructs it floor-by-floor.

Is he angry? He is quiet for a long time. "Here, nobody shows their anger.
You can't. You get put in jail for a long time, then deported." Last year,
some workers went on strike after they were not given their wages for four
months. The Dubai police surrounded their camps with razor-wire and
water-cannons and blasted them out and back to work.

The "ringleaders" were imprisoned. I try a different question: does Sohinal
regret coming? All the men look down, awkwardly. "How can we think about
that? We are trapped. If we start to think about regrets..." He lets the
sentence trail off. Eventually, another worker breaks the silence by adding:
"I miss my country, my family and my land. We can grow food in Bangladesh.
Here, nothing grows. Just oil and buildings."

Since the recession hit, they say, the electricity has been cut off in
dozens of the camps, and the men have not been paid for months. Their
companies have disappeared with their passports and their pay. "We have been
robbed of everything. Even if somehow we get back to Bangladesh, the loan
sharks will demand we repay our loans immediately, and when we can't, we'll
be sent to prison."

This is all supposed to be illegal. Employers are meant to pay on time,
never take your passport, give you breaks in the heat – but I met nobody who
said it happens. Not one. These men are conned into coming and trapped into
staying, with the complicity of the Dubai authorities.

Sahinal could well die out here. A British man who used to work on
construction projects told me: "There's a huge number of suicides in the
camps and on the construction sites, but they're not reported. They're
described as 'accidents'." Even then, their families aren't free: they
simply inherit the debts. A Human Rights Watch study found there is a
"cover-up of the true extent" of deaths from heat exhaustion, overwork and
suicide, but the Indian consulate registered 971 deaths of their nationals
in 2005 alone. After this figure was leaked, the consulates were told to
stop counting.

At night, in the dusk, I sit in the camp with Sohinal and his friends as
they scrape together what they have left to buy a cheap bottle of spirits.
They down it in one ferocious gulp. "It helps you to feel numb", Sohinal
says through a stinging throat. In the distance, the glistening Dubai
skyline he built stands, oblivious.

*IV. Mauled by the mall*

I find myself stumbling in a daze from the camps into the sprawling marble
malls that seem to stand on every street in Dubai. It is so hot there is no
point building pavements; people gather in these cathedrals of consumerism
to bask in the air conditioning. So within a ten minute taxi-ride, I have
left Sohinal and I am standing in the middle of Harvey Nichols, being shown
a £20,000 taffeta dress by a bored salesgirl. "As you can see, it is cut on
the bias..." she says, and I stop writing.

Time doesn't seem to pass in the malls. Days blur with the same electric
light, the same shined floors, the same brands I know from home. Here, Dubai
is reduced to its component sounds: do-buy. In the most expensive malls I am
almost alone, the shops empty and echoing. On the record, everybody tells me
business is going fine. Off the record, they look panicky. There is a hat
exhibition ahead of the Dubai races, selling elaborate headgear for £1,000 a
pop. "Last year, we were packed. Now look," a hat designer tells me. She
swoops her arm over a vacant space.

I approach a blonde 17-year-old Dutch girl wandering around in hotpants,
oblivious to the swarms of men gaping at her. "I love it here!" she says.
"The heat, the malls, the beach!" Does it ever bother you that it's a slave
society? She puts her head down, just as Sohinal did. "I try not to see,"
she says. Even at 17, she has learned not to look, and not to ask; that, she
senses, is a transgression too far.

Between the malls, there is nothing but the connecting tissue of asphalt.
Every road has at least four lanes; Dubai feels like a motorway punctuated
by shopping centres. You only walk anywhere if you are suicidal. The
residents of Dubai flit from mall to mall by car or taxis.

How does it feel if this is your country, filled with foreigners? Unlike the
expats and the slave class, I can't just approach the native Emiratis to ask
questions when I see them wandering around – the men in cool white robes,
the women in sweltering black. If you try, the women blank you, and the men
look affronted, and tell you brusquely that Dubai is "fine". So I browse
through the Emirati blog-scene and found some typical-sounding young
Emiratis. We meet – where else? – in the mall.

Ahmed al-Atar is a handsome 23-year-old with a neat, trimmed beard, tailored
white robes, and rectangular wire-glasses. He speaks perfect
American-English, and quickly shows that he knows London, Los Angeles and
Paris better than most westerners. Sitting back in his chair in an identikit
Starbucks, he announces: "This is the best place in the world to be young!
The government pays for your education up to PhD level. You get given a free
house when you get married. You get free healthcare, and if it's not good
enough here, they pay for you to go abroad. You don't even have to pay for
your phone calls. Almost everyone has a maid, a nanny, and a driver. And we
never pay any taxes. Don't you wish you were Emirati?"

I try to raise potential objections to this Panglossian summary, but he
leans forward and says: "Look – my grandfather woke up every day and he
would have to fight to get to the well first to get water. When the wells
ran dry, they had to have water delivered by camel. They were always hungry
and thirsty and desperate for jobs. He limped all his life, because he there
was no medical treatment available when he broke his leg. Now look at us!"

For Emiratis, this is a Santa Claus state, handing out goodies while it
makes its money elsewhere: through renting out land to foreigners, soft
taxes on them like business and airport charges, and the remaining dribble
of oil.. Most Emiratis, like Ahmed, work for the government, so they're
cushioned from the credit crunch. "I haven't felt any effect at all, and nor
have my friends," he says. "Your employment is secure. You will only be
fired if you do something incredibly bad." The laws are currently being
tightened, to make it even more impossible to sack an Emirati.

Sure, the flooding-in of expats can sometimes be "an eyesore", Ahmed says.
"But we see the expats as the price we had to pay for this development. How
else could we do it? Nobody wants to go back to the days of the desert, the
days before everyone came. We went from being like an African country to
having an average income per head of $120,000 a year. And we're supposed to
complain?"

He says the lack of political freedom is fine by him. "You'll find it very
hard to find an Emirati who doesn't support Sheikh Mohammed." Because
they're scared? "No, because we really all support him. He's a great leader.
Just look!" He smiles and says: "I'm sure my life is very much like yours.
We hang out, have a coffee, go to the movies. You'll be in a Pizza Hut or
Nando's in London, and at the same time I'll be in one in Dubai," he says,
ordering another latte.

But do all young Emiratis see it this way? Can it really be so sunny in the
political sands? In the sleek Emirates Tower Hotel, I meet Sultan
al-Qassemi. He's a 31-year-old Emirati columnist for the Dubai press and
private art collector, with a reputation for being a contrarian liberal,
advocating gradual reform. He is wearing Western clothes – blue jeans and a
Ralph Lauren shirt – and speaks incredibly fast, turning himself into a
manic whirr of arguments.

"People here are turning into lazy, overweight babies!" he exclaims. "The
nanny state has gone too far. We don't do anything for ourselves! Why don't
any of us work for the private sector? Why can't a mother and father look
after their own child?" And yet, when I try to bring up the system of
slavery that built Dubai, he looks angry. "People should give us credit," he
insists. "We are the most tolerant people in the world. Dubai is the only
truly international city in the world. Everyone who comes here is treated
with respect."

I pause, and think of the vast camps in Sonapur, just a few miles away. Does
he even know they exist? He looks irritated. "You know, if there are 30 or
40 cases [of worker abuse] a year, that sounds like a lot but when you think
about how many people are here..." Thirty or 40? This abuse is endemic to
the system, I say. We're talking about hundreds of thousands.

Sultan is furious. He splutters: "You don't think Mexicans are treated badly
in New York City? And how long did it take Britain to treat people well? I
could come to London and write about the homeless people on Oxford Street
and make your city sound like a terrible place, too! The workers here can
leave any time they want! Any Indian can leave, any Asian can leave!"

But they can't, I point out. Their passports are taken away, and their wages
are withheld. "Well, I feel bad if that happens, and anybody who does that
should be punished. But their embassies should help them." They try. But why
do you forbid the workers – with force – from going on strike against lousy
employers? "Thank God we don't allow that!" he exclaims. "Strikes are
in-convenient! They go on the street – we're not having that. We won't be
like France. Imagine a country where they the workers can just stop whenever
they want!" So what should the workers do when they are cheated and lied to?
"Quit. Leave the country."

I sigh. Sultan is seething now. "People in the West are always complaining
about us," he says. Suddenly, he adopts a mock-whiny voice and says, in
imitation of these disgusting critics: "Why don't you treat animals better?
Why don't you have better shampoo advertising? Why don't you treat labourers
better?" It's a revealing order: animals, shampoo, then workers. He becomes
more heated, shifting in his seat, jabbing his finger at me. "I gave workers
who worked for me safety goggles and special boots, and they didn't want to
wear them! It slows them down!"

And then he smiles, coming up with what he sees as his killer argument.
"When I see Western journalists criticise us – don't you realise you're
shooting yourself in the foot? The Middle East will be far more dangerous if
Dubai fails. Our export isn't oil, it's hope. Poor Egyptians or Libyans or
Iranians grow up saying – I want to go to Dubai. We're very important to the
region. We are showing how to be a modern Muslim country. We don't have any
fundamentalists here. Europeans shouldn't gloat at our demise. You should be
very worried.... Do you know what will happen if this model fails? Dubai
will go down the Iranian path, the Islamist path."

Sultan sits back. My arguments have clearly disturbed him; he says in a
softer, conciliatory tone, almost pleading: "Listen. My mother used to go to
the well and get a bucket of water every morning. On her wedding day, she
was given an orange as a gift because she had never eaten one. Two of my
brothers died when they were babies because the healthcare system hadn't
developed yet. Don't judge us." He says it again, his eyes filled with
intensity: "Don't judge us."

*V. The Dunkin' Donuts Dissidents*

But there is another face to the Emirati minority – a small huddle of
dissidents, trying to shake the Sheikhs out of abusive laws. Next to a
Virgin Megastore and a Dunkin' Donuts, with James Blunt's "You're Beautiful"
blaring behind me, I meet the Dubai dictatorship's Public Enemy Number One..
By way of introduction, Mohammed al-Mansoori says from within his white
robes and sinewy face: "Westerners come her and see the malls and the tall
buildings and they think that means we are free. But these businesses, these
buildings – who are they for? This is a dictatorship. The royal family think
they own the country, and the people are their servants. There is no freedom
here."

We snuffle out the only Arabic restaurant in this mall, and he says
everything you are banned – under threat of prison – from saying in Dubai.
Mohammed tells me he was born in Dubai to a fisherman father who taught him
one enduring lesson: Never follow the herd. Think for yourself. In the
sudden surge of development, Mohammed trained as a lawyer. By the Noughties,
he had climbed to the head of the Jurists' Association, an organisation set
up to press for Dubai's laws to be consistent with international human
rights legislation.

And then – suddenly – Mohammed thwacked into the limits of Sheikh Mohammed's
tolerance. Horrified by the "system of slavery" his country was being built
on, he spoke out to Human Rights Watch and the BBC. "So I was hauled in by
the secret police and told: shut up, or you will lose you job, and your
children will be unemployable," he says. "But how could I be silent?"

He was stripped of his lawyer's licence and his passport – becoming yet
another person imprisoned in this country. "I have been blacklisted and so
have my children. The newspapers are not allowed to write about me."

Why is the state so keen to defend this system of slavery? He offers a
prosaic explanation. "Most companies are owned by the government, so they
oppose human rights laws because it will reduce their profit margins. It's
in their interests that the workers are slaves."

Last time there was a depression, there was a starbust of democracy in
Dubai, seized by force from the sheikhs. In the 1930s, the city's merchants
banded together against Sheikh Said bin Maktum al-Maktum – the absolute
ruler of his day – and insisted they be given control over the state
finances. It lasted only a few years, before the Sheikh – with the
enthusiastic support of the British – snuffed them out.

And today? Sheikh Mohammed turned Dubai into Creditopolis, a city built
entirely on debt. Dubai owes 107 percent of its entire GDP. It would be bust
already, if the neighbouring oil-soaked state of Abu Dhabi hadn't pulled out
its chequebook. Mohammed says this will constrict freedom even further. "Now
Abu Dhabi calls the tunes – and they are much more conservative and
restrictive than even Dubai. Freedom here will diminish every day." Already,
new media laws have been drafted forbidding the press to report on anything
that could "damage" Dubai or "its economy". Is this why the newspapers are
giving away glossy supplements talking about "encouraging economic
indicators"?

Everybody here waves Islamism as the threat somewhere over the horizon, sure
to swell if their advice is not followed. Today, every imam is appointed by
the government, and every sermon is tightly controlled to keep it moderate.
But Mohammed says anxiously: "We don't have Islamism here now, but I think
that if you control people and give them no way to express anger, it could
rise. People who are told to shut up all the time can just explode."

Later that day, against another identikit-corporate backdrop, I meet another
dissident – Abdulkhaleq Abdullah, Professor of Political Science at Emirates
University. His anger focuses not on political reform, but the erosion of
Emirati identity. He is famous among the locals, a rare outspoken conductor
for their anger. He says somberly: "There has been a rupture here. This is a
totally different city to the one I was born in 50 years ago."

He looks around at the shiny floors and Western tourists and says: "What we
see now didn't occur in our wildest dreams. We never thought we could be
such a success, a trendsetter, a model for other Arab countries. The people
of Dubai are mighty proud of their city, and rightly so. And yet..." He
shakes his head. "In our hearts, we fear we have built a modern city but we
are losing it to all these expats."

Adbulkhaleq says every Emirati of his generation lives with a "psychological
trauma." Their hearts are divided – "between pride on one side, and fear on
the other." Just after he says this, a smiling waitress approaches, and asks
us what we would like to drink. He orders a Coke.

*VI. Dubai Pride*

There is one group in Dubai for whom the rhetoric of sudden freedom and
liberation rings true – but it is the very group the government wanted to
liberate least: gays.

Beneath a famous international hotel, I clamber down into possibly the only
gay club on the Saudi Arabian peninsula. I find a United Nations of
tank-tops and bulging biceps, dancing to Kylie, dropping ecstasy, and
partying like it's Soho. "Dubai is the best place in the Muslim world for
gays!" a 25-year old Emirati with spiked hair says, his arms wrapped around
his 31-year old "husband". "We are alive. We can meet. That is more than
most Arab gays."

It is illegal to be gay in Dubai, and punishable by 10 years in prison. But
the locations of the latest unofficial gay clubs circulate online, and men
flock there, seemingly unafraid of the police. "They might bust the club,
but they will just disperse us," one of them says. "The police have other
things to do."

In every large city, gay people find a way to find each other – but Dubai
has become the clearing-house for the region's homosexuals, a place where
they can live in relative safety. Saleh, a lean private in the Saudi Arabian
army, has come here for the Coldplay concert, and tells me Dubai is "great"
for gays: "In Saudi, it's hard to be straight when you're young. The women
are shut away so everyone has gay sex. But they only want to have sex with
boys – 15- to 21-year-olds. I'm 27, so I'm too old now. I need to find real
gays, so this is the best place. All Arab gays want to live in Dubai."

With that, Saleh dances off across the dancefloor, towards a Dutch guy with
big biceps and a big smile.

*VII. The Lifestyle*

All the guidebooks call Dubai a "melting pot", but as I trawl across the
city, I find that every group here huddles together in its own little ethnic
enclave – and becomes a caricature of itself. One night – in the heart of
this homesick city, tired of the malls and the camps – I go to Double
Decker, a hang-out for British expats. At the entrance there is a red
telephone box, and London bus-stop signs. Its wooden interior looks like a
cross between a colonial clubhouse in the Raj and an Eighties school disco,
with blinking coloured lights and cheese blaring out. As I enter, a girl in
a short skirt collapses out of the door onto her back. A guy wearing a
pirate hat helps her to her feet, dropping his beer bottle with a paralytic
laugh.

I start to talk to two sun-dried women in their sixties who have been
getting gently sozzled since midday. "You stay here for The Lifestyle," they
say, telling me to take a seat and order some more drinks. All the expats
talk about The Lifestyle, but when you ask what it is, they become vague.
Ann Wark tries to summarise it: "Here, you go out every night. You'd never
do that back home. You see people all the time. It's great. You have lots of
free time. You have maids and staff so you don't have to do all that stuff.
You party!"

They have been in Dubai for 20 years, and they are happy to explain how the
city works. "You've got a hierarchy, haven't you?" Ann says. "It's the
Emiratis at the top, then I'd say the British and other Westerners. Then I
suppose it's the Filipinos, because they've got a bit more brains than the
Indians. Then at the bottom you've got the Indians and all them lot."

They admit, however, they have "never" spoken to an Emirati. Never? "No.
They keep themselves to themselves." Yet Dubai has disappointed them. Jules
Taylor tells me: "If you have an accident here it's a nightmare. There was a
British woman we knew who ran over an Indian guy, and she was locked up for
four days! If you have a tiny bit of alcohol on your breath they're all over
you. These Indians throw themselves in front of cars, because then their
family has to be given blood money – you know, compensation. But the police
just blame us. That poor woman."

A 24-year-old British woman called Hannah Gamble takes a break from the
dancefloor to talk to me. "I love the sun and the beach! It's great out
here!" she says. Is there anything bad? "Oh yes!" she says. Ah: one of them
has noticed, I think with relief. "The banks! When you want to make a
transfer you have to fax them. You can't do it online." Anything else? She
thinks hard. "The traffic's not very good."

When I ask the British expats how they feel to not be in a democracy, their
reaction is always the same. First, they look bemused. Then they look
affronted. "It's the Arab way!" an Essex boy shouts at me in response, as he
tries to put a pair of comedy antlers on his head while pouring some beer
into the mouth of his friend, who is lying on his back on the floor,
gurning.

Later, in a hotel bar, I start chatting to a dyspeptic expat American who
works in the cosmetics industry and is desperate to get away from these
people. She says: "All the people who couldn't succeed in their own
countries end up here, and suddenly they're rich and promoted way above
their abilities and bragging about how great they are. I've never met so
many incompetent people in such senior positions anywhere in the world." She
adds: "It's absolutely racist. I had Filipino girls working for me doing the
same job as a European girl, and she's paid a quarter of the wages. The
people who do the real work are paid next to nothing, while these
incompetent managers pay themselves £40,000 a month."

With the exception of her, one theme unites every expat I speak to: their
joy at having staff to do the work that would clog their lives up Back Home.
Everyone, it seems, has a maid. The maids used to be predominantly Filipino,
but with the recession, Filipinos have been judged to be too expensive, so a
nice Ethiopian servant girl is the latest fashionable accessory.

It is an open secret that once you hire a maid, you have absolute power over
her. You take her passport – everyone does; you decide when to pay her, and
when – if ever – she can take a break; and you decide who she talks to. She
speaks no Arabic. She cannot escape.

In a Burger King, a Filipino girl tells me it is "terrifying" for her to
wander the malls in Dubai because Filipino maids or nannies always sneak
away from the family they are with and beg her for help. "They say –
'Please, I am being held prisoner, they don't let me call home, they make me
work every waking hour seven days a week.' At first I would say – my God, I
will tell the consulate, where are you staying? But they never know their
address, and the consulate isn't interested. I avoid them now. I keep
thinking about a woman who told me she hadn't eaten any fruit in four years.
They think I have power because I can walk around on my own, but I'm
powerless."

The only hostel for women in Dubai – a filthy private villa on the brink of
being repossessed – is filled with escaped maids. Mela Matari, a 25-year-old
Ethiopian woman with a drooping smile, tells me what happened to her – and
thousands like her. She was promised a paradise in the sands by an agency,
so she left her four year-old daughter at home and headed here to earn money
for a better future. "But they paid me half what they promised. I was put
with an Australian family – four children – and Madam made me work from 6am
to 1am every day, with no day off. I was exhausted and pleaded for a break,
but they just shouted: 'You came here to work, not sleep!' Then one day I
just couldn't go on, and Madam beat me. She beat me with her fists and
kicked me. My ear still hurts. They wouldn't give me my wages: they said
they'd pay me at the end of the two years. What could I do? I didn't know
anybody here. I was terrified."

One day, after yet another beating, Mela ran out onto the streets, and asked
– in broken English – how to find the Ethiopian consulate.. After walking
for two days, she found it, but they told her she had to get her passport
back from Madam. "Well, how could I?" she asks. She has been in this hostel
for six months. She has spoken to her daughter twice. "I lost my country, I
lost my daughter, I lost everything," she says.

As she says this, I remember a stray sentence I heard back at Double
Decker.. I asked a British woman called Hermione Frayling what the best
thing about Dubai was. "Oh, the servant class!" she trilled. "You do
nothing. They'll do anything!"

*VIII. The End of The World*

The World is empty. It has been abandoned, its continents unfinished.
Through binoculars, I think I can glimpse Britain; this sceptred isle barren
in the salt-breeze.

Here, off the coast of Dubai, developers have been rebuilding the world.
They have constructed artificial islands in the shape of all planet Earth's
land masses, and they plan to sell each continent off to be built on. There
were rumours that the Beckhams would bid for Britain. But the people who
work at the nearby coast say they haven't seen anybody there for months now.
"The World is over," a South African suggests.

All over Dubai, crazy projects that were Under Construction are now Under
Collapse. They were building an air-conditioned beach here, with cooling
pipes running below the sand, so the super-rich didn't singe their toes on
their way from towel to sea.

The projects completed just before the global economy crashed look empty and
tattered. The Atlantis Hotel was launched last winter in a $20m
fin-de-siecle party attended by Robert De Niro, Lindsay Lohan and Lily
Allen. Sitting on its own fake island – shaped, of course, like a palm tree
– it looks like an immense upturned tooth in a faintly decaying mouth. It is
pink and turreted – the architecture of the pharaohs, as reimagined by
Zsa-Zsa Gabor. Its Grand Lobby is a monumental dome covered in glitterballs,
held up by eight monumental concrete palm trees. Standing in the middle,
there is a giant shining glass structure that looks like the intestines of
every guest who has ever stayed at the Atlantis. It is unexpectedly raining;
water is leaking from the roof, and tiles are falling off.

A South African PR girl shows me around its most coveted rooms, explaining
that this is "the greatest luxury offered in the world". We stroll past
shops selling £24m diamond rings around a hotel themed on the lost and
sunken continent of, yes, Atlantis. There are huge water tanks filled with
sharks, which poke around mock-abandoned castles and dumped submarines.
There are more than 1,500 rooms here, each with a sea view. The Neptune
suite has three floors, and – I gasp as I see it – it looks out directly on
to the vast shark tank. You lie on the bed, and the sharks stare in at you. In
Dubai, you can sleep with the fishes, and survive.

But even the luxury – reminiscent of a Bond villain's lair – is also being
abandoned. I check myself in for a few nights to the classiest hotel in
town, the Park Hyatt. It is the fashionistas' favourite hotel, where Elle
Macpherson and Tommy Hilfiger stay, a gorgeous, understated palace. It feels
empty. Whenever I eat, I am one of the only people in the restaurant. A
staff member tells me in a whisper: "It used to be full here. Now there's
hardly anyone." Rattling around, I feel like Jack Nicholson in The Shining,
the last man in an abandoned, haunted home.

The most famous hotel in Dubai – the proud icon of the city – is the Burj al
Arab hotel, sitting on the shore, shaped like a giant glass sailing boat. In
the lobby, I start chatting to a couple from London who work in the City.
They have been coming to Dubai for 10 years now, and they say they love it.
"You never know what you'll find here," he says. "On our last trip, at the
beginning of the holiday, our window looked out on the sea. By the end,
they'd built an entire island there."

My patience frayed by all this excess, I find myself snapping: doesn't the
omnipresent slave class bother you? I hope they misunderstood me, because
the woman replied: "That's what we come for! It's great, you can't do
anything for yourself!" Her husband chimes in: "When you go to the toilet,
they open the door, they turn on the tap – the only thing they don't do is
take it out for you when you have a piss!" And they both fall about
laughing.

*IX. Taking on the Desert*

Dubai is not just a city living beyond its financial means; it is living
beyond its ecological means. You stand on a manicured Dubai lawn and watch
the sprinklers spray water all around you. You see tourists flocking to swim
with dolphins. You wander into a mountain-sized freezer where they have
built a ski slope with real snow. And a voice at the back of your head
squeaks: this is the desert. This is the most water-stressed place on the
planet. How can this be happening? How is it possible?

The very earth is trying to repel Dubai, to dry it up and blow it away. The
new Tiger Woods Gold Course needs four million gallons of water to be pumped
on to its grounds every day, or it would simply shrivel and disappear on the
winds. The city is regularly washed over with dust-storms that fog up the
skies and turn the skyline into a blur. When the dust parts, heat burns
through. It cooks anything that is not kept constantly, artificially wet.

Dr Mohammed Raouf, the environmental director of the Gulf Research Centre,
sounds sombre as he sits in his Dubai office and warns: "This is a desert
area, and we are trying to defy its environment. It is very unwise. If you
take on the desert, you will lose."

Sheikh Maktoum built his showcase city in a place with no useable water.
None. There is no surface water, very little acquifer, and among the lowest
rainfall in the world. So Dubai drinks the sea. The Emirates' water is
stripped of salt in vast desalination plants around the Gulf – making it the
most expensive water on earth. It costs more than petrol to produce, and
belches vast amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere as it goes. It's
the main reason why a resident of Dubai has the biggest average carbon
footprint of any human being – more than double that of an American..

If a recession turns into depression, Dr Raouf believes Dubai could run out
of water. "At the moment, we have financial reserves that cover bringing so
much water to the middle of the desert. But if we had lower revenues – if,
say, the world shifts to a source of energy other than oil..." he shakes his
head. "We will have a very big problem. Water is the main source of life. It
would be a catastrophe. Dubai only has enough water to last us a week.
There's almost no storage. We don't know what will happen if our supplies
falter. It would be hard to survive."

Global warming, he adds, makes the problem even worse. "We are building all
these artificial islands, but if the sea level rises, they will be gone, and
we will lose a lot. Developers keep saying it's all fine, they've taken it
into consideration, but I'm not so sure."

Is the Dubai government concerned about any of this? "There isn't much
interest in these problems," he says sadly. But just to stand still, the
average resident of Dubai needs three times more water than the average
human. In the looming century of water stresses and a transition away from
fossil fuels, Dubai is uniquely vulnerable.

I wanted to understand how the government of Dubai will react, so I decided
to look at how it has dealt with an environmental problem that already
exists – the pollution of its beaches. One woman – an American, working at
one of the big hotels – had written in a lot of online forums arguing that
it was bad and getting worse, so I called her to arrange a meeting. "I can't
talk to you," she said sternly. Not even if it's off the record? "I can't
talk to you." But I don't have to disclose your name.... "You're not
listening. This phone is bugged. I can't talk to you," she snapped, and hung
up.

The next day I turned up at her office. "If you reveal my identity, I'll be
sent on the first plane out of this city," she said, before beginning to
nervously pace the shore with me. "It started like this. We began to get
complaints from people using the beach. The water looked and smelled odd,
and they were starting to get sick after going into it. So I wrote to the
ministers of health and tourism and expected to hear back immediately – but
there was nothing. Silence. I hand-delivered the letters. Still nothing.."

The water quality got worse and worse. The guests started to spot raw
sewage, condoms, and used sanitary towels floating in the sea. So the hotel
ordered its own water analyses from a professional company. "They told us it
was full of fecal matter and bacteria 'too numerous to count'. I had to
start telling guests not to go in the water, and since they'd come on a
beach holiday, as you can imagine, they were pretty pissed off." She began
to make angry posts on the expat discussion forums – and people began to
figure out what was happening. Dubai had expanded so fast its sewage
treatment facilities couldn't keep up. The sewage disposal trucks had to
queue for three or four days at the treatment plants – so instead, they were
simply drilling open the manholes and dumping the untreated sewage down
them, so it flowed straight to the sea.

Suddenly, it was an open secret – and the municipal authorities finally
acknowledged the problem. They said they would fine the truckers. But the
water quality didn't improve: it became black and stank. "It's got chemicals
in it. I don't know what they are. But this stuff is toxic."

She continued to complain – and started to receive anonymous phone calls.
"Stop embarassing Dubai, or your visa will be cancelled and you're out,"
they said. She says: "The expats are terrified to talk about anything. One
critical comment in the newspapers and they deport you. So what am I
supposed to do? Now the water is worse than ever. People are getting really
sick. Eye infections, ear infections, stomach infections, rashes. Look at
it!" There is faeces floating on the beach, in the shadow of one of Dubai's
most famous hotels.

"What I learnt about Dubai is that the authorities don't give a toss about
the environment," she says, standing in the stench. "They're pumping toxins
into the sea, their main tourist attraction, for God's sake. If there are
environmental problems in the future, I can tell you now how they will deal
with them – deny it's happening, cover it up, and carry on until it's a
total disaster." As she speaks, a dust-storm blows around us, as the desert
tries, slowly, insistently, to take back its land.

*X. Fake Plastic Trees*

On my final night in the Dubai Disneyland, I stop off on my way to the
airport, at a Pizza Hut that sits at the side of one of the city's endless,
wide, gaping roads. It is identical to the one near my apartment in London
in every respect, even the vomit-coloured decor. My mind is whirring and
distracted. Perhaps Dubai disturbed me so much, I am thinking, because here,
the entire global supply chain is condensed. Many of my goods are made by
semi-enslaved populations desperate for a chance 2,000 miles away; is the
only difference that here, they are merely two miles away, and you sometimes
get to glimpse their faces? Dubai is Market Fundamentalist Globalisation in
One City.

I ask the Filipino girl behind the counter if she likes it here. "It's OK,"
she says cautiously. Really? I say. I can't stand it. She sighs with relief
and says: "This is the most terrible place! I hate it! I was here for months
before I realised – everything in Dubai is fake. Everything you see. The
trees are fake, the workers' contracts are fake, the islands are fake, the
smiles are fake – even the water is fake!" But she is trapped, she says. She
got into debt to come here, and she is stuck for three years: an old story
now. "I think Dubai is like an oasis. It is an illusion, not real. You think
you have seen water in the distance, but you get close and you only get a
mouthful of sand."

As she says this, another customer enters. She forces her face into the
broad, empty Dubai smile and says: "And how may I help you tonight, sir?"

*Some names in this article have been changed*

A article worth the read...

Article writer :SAVITHA G.R. writes from Bangalore:

"Growing up in the Eighties"

Where have they gone, I wonder, that batch from "F" section, who will identify with all this.
"What man, eh?" "Come man, eh." "Tell man, eh," still rings in the air some times. "You only", "then only", "giveaa", "yessaaa" were often corrected at home by mom, grandparents, aunts and uncles, but we didn't let go. That was how we spoke.

That was school.

That was typical Bangalore English way back then.

Back in the '80s, there was little pressure to be smart. And so, in our naïve ways, we believed what our classmates told us. We couldn't come home and GoogleT, you see. And so it was that the navilugari story gained credence.

It was a wave, like that Mexican wave in cricket matches.

One girl brought it to class after summer holidays and proudly showed it off to the rest of us. She even told us that the "gari would put mari" (meaning, it would multiply). Now, I can't remember who that girl was, but I certainly wanted to keep one feather in my textbook too.
And then, we waited.

No mari, nothing!

And soon, it was forgotten. We had moved on to other stuff, like collecting pencil shavings to make something out of it, I don't remember what. Was it to make "scent rubber" (the perfumed eraser)? Our notebooks were full of those shavings, our bags were full of that. But we never would make it, eventually.

Showing off collectibles was our greatest source of entertainment those days.

So, classmates would flaunt a new pencil box, mostly of that magnet variety, which only some would have, a new sketch-pen. We would take out the refill once the ink was about to get over, and press the refill hard to get any ink left on to the paper!

I had this great desire to show off, of all things, a weaver bird's nest (from my village) to my classmates.

My thatha had promised he would get me one nest from the village. So, each summer holidays would begin with hope, and end in disappointment. My grandfather never gave me that nest!

Soon, such trifles were glossed over. We were growing up. Maybe, when we were in the fifth or sixth standard, the next new wave had begun. Collecting stamps. So, there was this boy named Shankar Nag (yeah really!) in class, who promised to give me a stamp. And so, I walked up to him. And he did stamp my foot really hard!!

But, collecting stamps was an all-consuming madness. The times when Rajeshwari would lend me stamps, or I would lend her some. The deal was: two less important stamps for one rare stamp. So, some of us would go for the numbers, while the others for the rarity.

"Nanage rare stamp siktu!" we would exclaim. This deal would constantly happen, at lunch break, between classes, during class. Much politics, many complaints, much anger, several fights would follow.

We had so many British stamps and we would constantly palm them off to unsuspecting victims, in exchange for the highly rated Magyar Posta (Hungary) stamps or CCCP (erstwhile USSR) stamps.

CCCP brings back memories of the days of Russian books. Growing up in the eighties, that was another passion for me, collecting those Russian publications (they were so inexpensive then). And hence, the innumerable trips to Navakarnataka in Majestic.

I still remember that colourful Russian alphabet (after the English version) and pictures. And that page about sending in your feedback to some obscure Moscow address. The Ukranian Folk Tales was a big fat book that we would re-read so often!

So, if that was about collecting stuff, other memories abound. Of the games we played: Kalla-police, kallu mannu (in-out), topi beka topi (in school), maneyaata, panna, lagori, chur chand..

Panna was a strange game, where we would have to take a bet with someone, and every time we'd meet that person, we would hit that person hard and shout 'panna'. Whoever said 'panna' first would be the winner for that particular time we met. Now, why or how it was called panna, I don't know!

Does anyone remember, "Ajji mane kaayangilla, Bajji madkondu tinnangilla!" a slogan that meant no dilly-dallying during kalla-police, or "ice-spice" (I spy)! And 'oofi' meant foul! The loser would be jeered back home with shouts of "sotpurka soutekayi"!

Nicknames were another source of fun. Kencha, dhadiya, nalakk kannu (for the spectacled ones), and the big guy opposite my house would call my two plaits kottambari soppu!

If T-20 is the flavour of the season now, our favourite was a very innovative form of cricket. Played without a bat, ball, wickets. All we needed was a big fat book. Book cricket. Any page number that would end with eight would fetch one run. We'd form our teams and play the game by slamming the book on and off!

A page that would end with zero was a wicket!

The game would go on even during a class, and was a nuisance to our teachers!

Summer holidays meant sleepy afternoons. Being lulled into sleep, even as ajji would be arguing with a steel patre saman fellow (gatti jarinappa, yenu agilla!), or making kodubale, chakkli or haal bayi. ("Nidde madi edda mele ondhu tamashe kodthini!)

Nothing would be more satisfying than gulping down the bakery stuff that amma would bring on the way back from office from one of the ubiquitous Iyengar Bakeries. Benne biscuit, khara biscuit, puff, dil-pasand, dil-kush, and that perennial favourite palya bun!

Summers also meant eating "Pepsi" (those multi-coloured long tubes with flavoured ice) or son-papdi, from the vendor with the ghante.

Then, there would be errands. "Kaka angadi hogi kadle hittu togondu baa," meant there would be bonda in the evening. Or "Shivanna angadi hogi hurigadale togondu baa." Or getting milk in the evenings from the milk booth. Or accompanying friends to the "mishan" (flour mill) for getting "godhi hittu" or "ragi hittu" done. A long rubber pipe would be shaken vigourously before the godhi would be fed, and there was the invariable "ghatu."

Going to the post-office was another important errand. We had to get postage stamps worth some rupees for grandfather every now and then. Standing in front of that counter and reaching out to the woman there was quite scary. Then, there was the constant fear of whether we had put the covers in the right dabba, one marked local and the other metro, I think.

Then, there were other demands. Finishing holiday home-work, buying KG cardboard from Madeshwara angadi, for the posters, buying ice-cream kaddi for craft.

If it was the cricket season, then there would be radio in the background. Growing up with "mamas" for whom cricket was also about Ranji cricket was fun. Tagging along with them to the stadium and watching those Hyderabad vs Karnataka, or Tamil Nadu vs Karnataka Ranji matches at the Chinnaswamy.

I vaguely remember a match where Vivek Jaisimha made his debut, made a duck and walked back to the pavilion. Another international match where Mohinder Amarnath walked in, red kerchief peeping out of his pocket, and walked back, first ball out!

Yet another India vs Pakistan test match, with the iconic Imran Khan! Another one where we were told by an aunt that we'd get a piece of the home-made sweet, if Ravi Shastri hit a six, which he never did! (think it was India vs New Zealand at the Chinnaswamy).

Soon, high school was just round the corner. And from there, it was the beginning of the end of the simple, carefree life. Rajiv Gandhi was shot dead killed, the USSR disintegrated, Sunil Gavaskar and Viv Richards had retired, the markets opened, and life changed forever. Heartbreakingly, achingly so.
No more "sihi kahi, sihi kahi sihi kahi", no more cries of "rare stamp siktu", no more Shrimathi miss, no more Prema miss, no more KLG, BLM, RLN, TRS, CSV, (any VVS alumni?), no more Raje (where is she now?). My thatha is no more too (you never gave us that weaver bird nest!)
The world had changed and the children of the Eighties had grown up. Where are the little Madhus and the Vidyas?

Can someone bring it all back for me, please?

The glory days of Vijayanagar of the eighties?

And the New Public English School of the eighties?

LOL.. do I look like a sucker... hahahaha. man yesterday I received a mail from an unknown person from the mail ID joyphilp32@yahoo.com. please read the below you will understand...

1st Mail from Joy Philp ( Looks related to some royal family...lol hahahaha)

Hi,

My name isJoy,am a young girl of 23years old,single and never married before,am 5.7ft tall,Slim stature,open minded,honest,trusted,and caring and just to mention but a little.I hope honesty and trust they say build a strong relationship.That is why I have the confident to write you this brief mail.

Though we have not meet each other before but I have the believe that it takes nothing for one to know one..I will like to hear from you so that we can get to know better and would send you my pictures soos as I receive your reply.you can reach me through my email address:

I am not of the beauty type but I think I have the beauty of the mind.Feel free and contact me if you are of good and decent origin. I do not care were my kind of friend comes from provided he/she is a decent person.
Please I'm waiting eagerly to see your mail soon.

Remain healthy

Yours Sincerely,


Joy


For which I responded polietly...


Thanks Joy for your mail. May I know where you got my email ID? You should be someone I know or someone who knows one of my friend. Who are you? Where are you from? What do you do? and who gave you this mail ID?

S


Again I got the below mail today...what a joke...

My Dearest Darling,


Thanks for your reply to my mail. How are you today and how about your health? Hope you are fine and good, if so thanks be to God.


I'm Miss Joy Kennedy, the only daughter of the formal Adviser to the formal President, Charles Taylor of Liberian. Doctor Philip Kennedy, On Nov 24th 2006 my Father was involved in a ghastly auto accident in Michigan United States of America which led to his death.

During tenure my Father collected $6.700, 000.00 (six million Seven hundred thousand US dollars) for crude oil allocation given to him by the Liberian government then before his death, this money my father deposited it in his foreign domiciliary bank account and for security reasons,my father used my name as the beneficiary/next of kin to this deposit.


Before my father gave up the ghost he advised me not to move the money back to Liberia because of the present government intervention, so I have decided to move it to a foreign country where I'll invest, establish myself and complete my education.

Consider my situation as an Orphan and come to my rescue, I want you to help me, I will offer you 10% of the money as reward for assisting me while 5% has been mapped out for any expenses incurred during the course of this transaction as the remaining part of the money will be used for good investments in your country under your care when the bank transferred the money into your bank account.


I am constrained to contact you because of the maltreatment which am receiving from my step mother. She planned to take away all my late father's treasury and properties from me
since the unexpected death of my beloved Father.

Meanwhile I wanted to escape to the Europe but she hides away my international passport and other valuable traveling documents. Luckily for me she did not discover where I kept my fathers File which contains important documents. So I decided to run to the refugee camp where I am presently seeking asylum under the United Nations High Commission for the Refugee here in Dakar, Republic of Senegal.this is the reason why I contacted you personally for a long term business relationship and investment assistance in your Country.


Please all communications should be through this email address only for confidential purposes. As soon as I receive your positive response showing your interest I will put things into action immediately. In the light of the above, I shall appreciate an urgent message from you indicating your ability and willingness to handle this transaction sincerely. I am staying at the female hostel here in the refugee camp. Awaiting your urgent and positive response.


Please do keep this only to yourself, please I beg you not to disclose it to anyone till I come over to your country once the bank transfered the money into your bank account,just because I don't want anything to happen to me here in this refugee camp.

Let your heart and goodness be guarded towards me.

Yours Sincerely,

Joy


Now, can anyone tell me am I a sucker?...hahaha... man this is the heights... who the F#$% is going to even get into this S$%^? Not me really... these are people from somewhere who think the world is full of suckers and someone will fall for this trap.

All you people out there be careful and cautious of these kind of mails, these are fake and they tend to miserably take our hard earned money. Be aware... :) hahahaha I still cant believe I might have been looked as a sucker... heheheh... god bless this lady... for I am going to respond to her second mail, which is not pleasant and I dont want to post it here...

Here are few shots of the Traveller himself from the trip... :)

First I thought I cant go to Times square due to the bluster night and the freezing cold. Then when I saw on the TV that hundreds of thousands of NY city revelers gathering around TS, I was like what the F%^&. Let me go, by the way my purpose of NY trip was to celebrate NY eve at TS. Actually about 7 blocks in and around Times square were blocked by 2pm and by 5pm on 31st Dec and no was allowed inside without a pass (pass was provided to the residents in and around times square by the cops). So, I didnt know how to go through to times square, finally one of my sister friend had an apartment just a stones throw away from TS. We called him up and got an enter into the TS lanes. All our friends met at his apartment first and when I say friends, we had few friends who were studying in Virginia and DC from bangalore who also dropped by. At about 11:30pm we walked down from his apartment and went into the cheering crowd, there was live music and a lot of singing and celebration in the air. Finally former President Bill Clinton and Sen. Hillary Clinton with Mayor Michael lowered the famous waterford crystal ball when it was about 60 sec countdown to midnight, a massive amount of confetti rained down as we hugged, screamed and kissed people around. Thought the place was covered with plastic bottles and junk all around, due to the fact that people were waiting for the ball drop for a long time and the whole place was a mess.

The ball drop was an amazing experience Few pictures from the last day of 2008...By the way Happy New year to you all. Hope you have a wonderful year ahead.