TALE OF TWO CITIES: CALION, ARKANSAS and DUBAI, UNITED ARAB EMERATES Calion, Arkansas not large by any description and not far from most folks and Dubai, UAE on the other side of the world for most people and growing by the thousands each week. Our daughter Sarah Thompson lives in Calion with her engineer husband, Mike Thompson and the grandsons James and Andrew. We love them all and Pam has been with them for the summer to escape Dubai’s summer heat which can be brutal as I discovered while trying to jog this morning at 11:00-12:00. My thought was since it was less than 100 degrees I could handle it with ease. Not a chance, I lost 4.5 pounds in that hour of heat; with the heat index showing 115. When I was in Iraq in 2005-06 I could do quite well in walking in the heat. Guess we did not have the humidity Dubai has. During my two weeks in Calion I saw a lot to compare and contrast between Calion and Dubai. Calion has mosquitoes by the millions and Dubai has people from all over the world by the millions. All of those mosquitoes knew I was there for sure and I was fresh blood. Here in Dubai I don’t remember swatting a mosquito in my first two years here. We both get in a hurry here in Dubai and in Calion but in Calion you can get there in a hurry, in Dubai it doesn’t matter, getting there will take time. Early on I learned that stop signs in Dubai, UAE and the entire Middle East mean nothing. Just blow through them, everyone does. If you stop, you cause problems. Languages from all over the world are spoken here in Dubai. In Calion it depends how far off the road as to what degree of Southern slang you use. The greatest population group in Dubai is Indian, next Pakistani, third would be Filipino. The local card carrying Emirates make up less than 5% of the population. When oil was discovered in the region and the seven emirates joined forces for the UAE the king decided the economy needed to expand beyond oil so he build out an amazing transportation center, vacation destination and financial center. In Calion, Arkansas life revolves around being an old saw mill town and not much more. Calion is not far from El Dorado so you go there for WalMart and the doctor. The Murphy gas stations you see in front of Walmart all originate from El Dorado. Finding a gas station in Dubai is difficult. Not many of them and you almost always have to wait in line. Fuel is cheaper than water but still you have to wait in line or as they say here, wait in the queue. In Calion everyone knows my business because we have a neighbor who is like the Superman of neighborhood watch captains. He misses nothing. Here in Dubai we are watched constantly by security cameras everywhere and RF tags on your car. Every car or truck is monitored constantly. Quickly I received four speeding tickets electronically. Not like in Arkansas were you can be kind to the cop and usually get by with a warning. In Dubai, you pay by bank debit card which is already registered. It is almost impossible to exist without a cell phone here. That is used as a monitoring device as to your whereabouts, who you talk to and what you are texting. Very serious business for sure and one word of caution, never ever criticize the royal family. Not for any reason.
Posted on: Mon, 28 Jul 2014 10:43:17 +0000
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