Warmer, dustier, and less affluent

The weather is warming up here, and is still very pleasant, although rising temperatures have helped lower visibility significantly, giving the town a closed in, almost claustrophobic feeling. This winter the sky had returned with its wide blue canopy, only to contract slowly in lockstep with the Dubai economy. Air conditioners are whirring and cooling again with greater regularity, raising Dubai's always impressive noise floor by several decibels. While news agencies have reported a great exodus of expatriate workers, many of whom have reportedly abandoned there sizable UAE debts,  I can't say that is has effected my own routine as the major thoroughfares, grocery stores, and movie theaters that I frequent seem equally over impacted. Vanessa's commute has been improved by diminished traffic, so the lack of change I can observe on foot, as I make my  daily circuit of wealthy Jumeriah 3, is obviously limited. I do get the sense that the already impatient, aggressive style of driving that characterizes Dubai's highways has worsened, as if the general population's tolerance for one another has been inflamed by the harsh economic climate.

I have been thinking a lot about economic bubbles lately, and my own experience with them. Until recently, I had never thought about things in these terms, but I am now confident that I am a harbinger of economic doom. The first bubble that popped in my presence was known as the dot com boom (DCB). The DCB's feverish, speculation driven gains eroded quickly when I arrived in then start-up crazed Seattle in late 1999. Just after the new year I began working on high profile IPOs as a lowly proofreader. At the time, my small contribution to the dreary futures of companies like homegrocer.com, drugstore.com, and dateafelon.com seemed insignificant, as each company successively went public just as NASDAQ began to implode. Further evidence leads me to believe that this was no mere coincidence.

I stayed in that business for a while before moving on to commercial printing, an arcane practice that involved adhering ink to a material called paper. Paper, a typically white, fabric like sheet with relatively poor tensile strength, was once manufactured all over the US, and was made out of finely sliced trees and noxious chemicals. Shortly after my arrival at that company, which was called Odd Graphics, people stopped reading books and magazines and the word paper fell out of popular usage as printing was quickly eclipsed by a new technology called youtube.

When I moved to Dubai, I discovered that paper still existed in the third world, and that they in fact had a thriving print media market that was willing to employ just about anyone who, like myself, could hum a few bars of a Strunk and White tune. Shortly after my arrival, the world economy promptly cratered, causing a chain reaction that would ultimately detonate Dubai's economic  bubble, splattering its ectoplasmic remains across the desert. The harbinger of economic doom had finally come to town. Now, one single question remains on the hooded brow of the one they sometimes call Slim Reaper-- where to next?