More photos on Dubai

 
Part 2 of the photos from my trip to Dubai, mostly about the scenery of the city.
Part 3 of the photos from my trip to Dubai, about a visit to the desert and the dancers at the desert camp.

By the way, personally I don’t like skyscrapers no matter in which cities / countries they are located because I think these buildings are not energy-efficient.  The amount of steel, concrete and glass needed to construct a skyscraper is vast, and these materials represent a great deal of embodied energy.  Also, a skyscraper consumes a lot of electricity because potable and non-potable water must be pumped to the highest occupied floors.  Read more about the sustainability from the Wiki link, scroll all the way down to the subtitle on sustainability.

Himalayan salt, the salt they serve in the roof top restaurant in Burj Al Arab, was discovered by Alexander the Great's horse? according to the entry in this Wiki link, interesting!

It is said that when Alexander visited South Asia, coming across the Jhelum and Mianwali region, Khewra Salt Mines were discovered. The discovery of the mines, however, was not made by Alexander nor his "allies", but by his horse. It is stated that when Alexander's army stopped here for rest, the horses started licking the stones. One of his soldiers took notice of it and when he tasted the rock stone, it was salty thus leading to the discovery of the mines.

More reading related to my photos:

The Arabian Desert
Palm Jumeirah

Rainbow over Dubai's sky

Last Sunday night there was a thunderstorm in Dubai, I didn’t catch any pictures when the thunders hit, but many readers of the Gulf News did, and here are the link to these 9 images.

But, the next morning I woke up to a surprise - beautiful rainbow covered the sky - but only for a very short time, it was around 7:15 am and the rainbow lasted no more than somewhere between 5 to 10 minutes, that’s when I caught the above picture.

The water of the Dubai creek is very calm in the early morning, before any boat sails out, the surface is just like a mirror; and there are a group of hundreds (if not thousands) of black birds travelling together, they land on the creek for about 5 minutes, I don’t know if they are eating something or just resting on the water.

After watching the Doha Debate on TV playing a past debate, about the development of Dubai (dated Dec. 14, 2009), in which I learned that some construction workers earn only 2 Euros a day.  I feel deeply disturbed by the growing gap between the poor and the rich of the world, and in general the issue of world inequality I blogged about in the past.

I have some deep thoughts about our living environment and our society (the poor vs. the rich).

While human beings admire the continuation of breaking new records in architectural / structural engineering one after another, I believe that only God controls the universe, including the thunderstorm which caught many tourists by surprise and the beautiful rainbow the morning after.

However, I will have to write down my thoughts some other time, and devote this post entirely to a slide show of 50 picture images as Part 1 of a series.

When the Burj Dubai (aka Burj Khalifa) celebrated its grand opening on January 4, 2009, the linked pictures, sent by the Gulf News readers, were selected the best 10 images.

The construction of the Burj Al Arab: Pictures from the past is a nice series to see the changes in Dubai.

And the latest news has Dubai invites the UN to move its headquarter there.

Reference:

The United Arab Emirates

Palm Islands, I wonder if global warming and rising sea water will affect the development of these artificial islands.

The Atlantis Hotel Aquarium (found some YouTube video)