NP:

[kelber at mindspring.com]

I had an 8-hour stopover in Dubai on a trip to Nairobi a few years ago.  Just had time to take a taxi to the below-mentioned hotel.  Simulated submarine ride to an overpriced seafood meal, followed by an elevator trip to the bar at the top of the hotel, which was populated by international businessmen and Asian prostitutes.

Dubai is a soul-less place. Every, and I mean EVERY, corporation in the world has a skyscraper (tax-free) HQ there.  Construction cranes dotted the landscape as far as the eye could see.  A local English-language newspaper had several pages devoted to a blacklist:  "guest" workers (mostly from Nepal and the Phillipines) who had escaped their indenture and were wanted for deportation and/or punishment.

With all the tall narrow structures dotting the desert landscape, the place had more tn a little in common with Jeshimon.

Laura

-----Original Message-----
>From: Cometman <cometman_98 at yahoo.com>
>Sent: Oct 17, 2007 12:51 AM
>To: pynchon-l at waste.org
>Subject: Re: NP: "Dubai-est"
>
>They (we, even) could build like, 40 times as cool a place,
>with the money that is currently being inefficiently transferred 
>from Chinese savings to multinational military contractors via Iraq...
>
>...the profit margins for everybody would be higher, too...
>
>Isn't Halliburton moving there?  Maybe they will get a clue.
>
>
>
>--- robinlandseadel at comcast.net wrote:
>
>>           The Gulf Emirate of Dubai is over the top - "Dubai-est" is
>> the phrase. 
>>           It contains the world's fastest growing city (strategically
>> located 
>>           between the old Western countries and the new Asian
>> tigers), the 
>>           world's tallest building (soon to be 151 stories), the
>> world's biggest 
>>           indoor ski mountain (with chair lift and Indian ski porters
>> dressed as 
>>           downhill racers), and the world's best hotel (not five but
>> seven 
>>           indoor ski mountain (with chair lift and Indian ski porters
>> dressed as 
>>           stars, featuring an underwater restaurant which is accessed
>> by 
>>           submarine.)
>> 
>>
>http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ned-lamont/traveling-the-polar-extre_b_68631.html
>> 
>
>
>"So listen to my song of life -
>you don't need a gun or a knife:
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>
>"It is not difficult to define the place that Linux should occupy in a well- ordered social life. It should be its spiritual core"-Simone Weil, from 'The Need for Boots'
>
>
>       
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