Dubai Progress Pic v.14years crazy as fuck.
- Thread starter Arson
- Start date
I hope so...haha Seriously though , there were some fine ass russian girls when I went to the Astoria Hotel. I hooked up with 2 for $100 american for 2 hours. That was the beginning of 2005 and I've been tested since leaving the miltary and I'm clean so either they're clean or the condoms worked...lol
When you're out to sea for a month at a time , I don't think you care as long as you wrap your shit.
When you're out to sea for a month at a time , I don't think you care as long as you wrap your shit.
Funny this story showed up today
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060322/ap_on_bi_ge/emirates_skyscraper_riots
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates - Asian workers angered by low salaries and mistreatment smashed cars and offices in a riot that interrupted construction Wednesday of what is meant to be the world's tallest skyscraper — including a luxury hotel run by Giorgio Armani.
The violence, which caused an estimated $1 million damage, illustrated the growing unrest among foreign workers who are the linchpin of Dubai's breathtaking building boom.
Some 2,500 workers on the Burj Dubai tower and surrounding housing developments chased and beat security officers Tuesday night, then broke into offices where they smashed computers and files, witnesses said. They said about two dozen cars and construction machines were wrecked.
When the laborers, who work for the Dubai-based firm Al Naboodah Laing O'Rourke, returned to the vast construction site Wednesday, they demanded better pay and employment conditions and refused to return to work. In a sympathy strike, thousands of laborers building a terminal at Dubai International Airport also lay down their tools.
"Everyone is angry here. No one will work," said Khalid Farouk, 39, a laborer with Al Naboodah. Others said their leaders were asking for pay raises: skilled carpenters on the site earn $7.60 per day, with laborers getting $4 per day.
The riot was a rare outbreak of violence, but it was not the first sign of discontent among the foreigners who form the overwhelming majority of private sector workers in most oil-rich Gulf countries. There have been strikes in recent months in Qatar and Oman. In April, Bangladeshis stormed their own embassy in Kuwait, protesting working conditions that human rights activists have denounced as "slave-like."
Millions of foreign workers have flooded Gulf nations, outweighing the population of citizens in Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar. In Saudi Arabia, foreign workers make up about 21 percent of the population of more than 26 million, but labor unrest is rare in the tightly controlled country.
The foreigners are professionals like doctors, scientists, businessmen and oil workers; skilled laborers such as electricians; or do unskilled jobs in restaurants or homes. Human rights groups have often decried abuse of low-paid foreign workers by their employers — particularly of women in domestic labor.
In the Emirates, where some estimates say more than three-quarters of the population of around 5 million people are foreigners, migrants from India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, China and elsewhere have provided the low-wage muscle behind one of the world's great building booms.
Dubai, one of seven emirates making up the country, hosts some 300,000 South Asians working in the construction field alone, helping propel it from a primitive town of 20,000 five decades ago to a gridlocked metropolis of 1.5 million — only 12 percent of whom are citizens.
But workers complain their employers often withhold pay. They enjoy few legal protections and no minimum wage, work in the extreme heat, and many of them live in military-style desert camps.
Angry workers in the Emirates held more than two dozen strikes over unpaid salaries last year, mainly in Dubai. The Labor Ministry responded with a crackdown on companies, helping win back pay and other benefits for some workers.
Labor officials said companies that breach contracts embarrass the image-conscious Emirates by attracting condemnation from the United Nations, the United States and Human Rights Watch.
On Wednesday, crowds of blue-garbed workers milled in the shadow of the gray concrete Burj Dubai, now 36 stories tall, while leaders negotiated with officials from the company and the Ministry of Labor.
An Interior Ministry official who investigates labor issues, Lt. Col. Rashid Bakhit Al Jumairi, said the workers were petitioning Al Naboodah, one of the Emirates' biggest construction conglomerates, for overtime pay, better medical care and humane treatment by foremen.
"They are asking for small things," Al Jumairi said. "I promised them I would sit with them until everything is settled."
Later Wednesday, a spokesman for Al Naboodah Laing O'Rourke — a joint venture with the conglomerate — blamed the violence on "misinformation and misunderstanding with some of our work force."
The spokesman, Mark Way, said in a statement that the "issues have now been addressed and resolved" and the workers were resuming their jobs. He gave no details on how the workers' complaints were addressed, and workers' representatives could not be immediately reached for comment.
The unrest marred what otherwise appears to be smooth construction of the Burj Dubai, which is to be a spire-shaped, stainless-steel-skinned tower expected to soar far beyond 100 stories. A section of the tower is to host a 172-room luxury hotel operated by Armani, the Italian fashion designer. The $900 million Burj is due to be completed by 2008.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060322/ap_on_bi_ge/emirates_skyscraper_riots
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates - Asian workers angered by low salaries and mistreatment smashed cars and offices in a riot that interrupted construction Wednesday of what is meant to be the world's tallest skyscraper — including a luxury hotel run by Giorgio Armani.
The violence, which caused an estimated $1 million damage, illustrated the growing unrest among foreign workers who are the linchpin of Dubai's breathtaking building boom.
Some 2,500 workers on the Burj Dubai tower and surrounding housing developments chased and beat security officers Tuesday night, then broke into offices where they smashed computers and files, witnesses said. They said about two dozen cars and construction machines were wrecked.
When the laborers, who work for the Dubai-based firm Al Naboodah Laing O'Rourke, returned to the vast construction site Wednesday, they demanded better pay and employment conditions and refused to return to work. In a sympathy strike, thousands of laborers building a terminal at Dubai International Airport also lay down their tools.
"Everyone is angry here. No one will work," said Khalid Farouk, 39, a laborer with Al Naboodah. Others said their leaders were asking for pay raises: skilled carpenters on the site earn $7.60 per day, with laborers getting $4 per day.
The riot was a rare outbreak of violence, but it was not the first sign of discontent among the foreigners who form the overwhelming majority of private sector workers in most oil-rich Gulf countries. There have been strikes in recent months in Qatar and Oman. In April, Bangladeshis stormed their own embassy in Kuwait, protesting working conditions that human rights activists have denounced as "slave-like."
Millions of foreign workers have flooded Gulf nations, outweighing the population of citizens in Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar. In Saudi Arabia, foreign workers make up about 21 percent of the population of more than 26 million, but labor unrest is rare in the tightly controlled country.
The foreigners are professionals like doctors, scientists, businessmen and oil workers; skilled laborers such as electricians; or do unskilled jobs in restaurants or homes. Human rights groups have often decried abuse of low-paid foreign workers by their employers — particularly of women in domestic labor.
In the Emirates, where some estimates say more than three-quarters of the population of around 5 million people are foreigners, migrants from India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, China and elsewhere have provided the low-wage muscle behind one of the world's great building booms.
Dubai, one of seven emirates making up the country, hosts some 300,000 South Asians working in the construction field alone, helping propel it from a primitive town of 20,000 five decades ago to a gridlocked metropolis of 1.5 million — only 12 percent of whom are citizens.
But workers complain their employers often withhold pay. They enjoy few legal protections and no minimum wage, work in the extreme heat, and many of them live in military-style desert camps.
Angry workers in the Emirates held more than two dozen strikes over unpaid salaries last year, mainly in Dubai. The Labor Ministry responded with a crackdown on companies, helping win back pay and other benefits for some workers.
Labor officials said companies that breach contracts embarrass the image-conscious Emirates by attracting condemnation from the United Nations, the United States and Human Rights Watch.
On Wednesday, crowds of blue-garbed workers milled in the shadow of the gray concrete Burj Dubai, now 36 stories tall, while leaders negotiated with officials from the company and the Ministry of Labor.
An Interior Ministry official who investigates labor issues, Lt. Col. Rashid Bakhit Al Jumairi, said the workers were petitioning Al Naboodah, one of the Emirates' biggest construction conglomerates, for overtime pay, better medical care and humane treatment by foremen.
"They are asking for small things," Al Jumairi said. "I promised them I would sit with them until everything is settled."
Later Wednesday, a spokesman for Al Naboodah Laing O'Rourke — a joint venture with the conglomerate — blamed the violence on "misinformation and misunderstanding with some of our work force."
The spokesman, Mark Way, said in a statement that the "issues have now been addressed and resolved" and the workers were resuming their jobs. He gave no details on how the workers' complaints were addressed, and workers' representatives could not be immediately reached for comment.
The unrest marred what otherwise appears to be smooth construction of the Burj Dubai, which is to be a spire-shaped, stainless-steel-skinned tower expected to soar far beyond 100 stories. A section of the tower is to host a 172-room luxury hotel operated by Armani, the Italian fashion designer. The $900 million Burj is due to be completed by 2008.
i was watching "Mega Structures" on Discovery and they were showing ONE of 4(coudl be wrong) man made islands....shit was mind blowing. Dubai is gonna be a tourist's dream. one of the island is called "Palm" because it's the shape of a palm tree and they're gonna build hotels, amusment parks, housing, parks and of course roadways on the island. BUT that's just one of 4 or 5 man-made island. The biggest island is called "The World" and it's gonna be 5 times bigger than the "Palms" island....
i don't got a link to the website but if you google it you'll find out more...
also check out world's tallest bridge in France....it's crazy...
i don't got a link to the website but if you google it you'll find out more...
also check out world's tallest bridge in France....it's crazy...
Dubai man-made island nears completion
By JIM KRANE, AP Business Writer Sun Aug 6, 3:26 PM ET
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates - With 14,000 laborers toiling day and night, the first of Dubai's three palm-shaped islands is finally about to get its first residents.
if The Palm Jumeirah, a 12-square-mile island group, is part of what's billed as the largest land-reclamation project in the world, the product of five years of brute hauling of millions of tons of Persian Gulf sand and quarried rock.
On Nov. 30, the palm will open to some 4,000 residents, said Issam Kazim, a spokesman for Dubai's state-owned developer Nakheel.
When fully complete by 2010, the Palm Jumeirah will be an offshore city, with some 60,000 residents and at least 50,000 workers in 32 hotels and dozens of shops and attractions, Nakheel said.
Observers say they are surprised that the fledgling developer has been able to build such a complex project more or less as planned, albeit with several snags that delayed the opening from last year.
"The project has captured people's imagination," said Colin Foreman of the Middle East Economic Digest. "Nothing like it has been done anywhere else in the world."
Nakheel's four island projects, the world's largest land reclamation effort, are reshaping Dubai's stretch of the Gulf coast.
The $14 billion project is a key part of this booming city's ambitions to rival Singapore and Hong Kong as a business hub, and surpass Las Vegas as a leisure capital.
The frenetic pace of development has utterly transformed Dubai from a sleepy trading and pearl-diving village in the 1950s to a flashy metropolis of 1.5 million.
The island's construction has not all been smooth, and most buyers were supposed to get keys to their island homes a year ago.
Some of the new land sank and Nakheel needed an extra year to add more and pack it with vibrating land compactors, Kazim said.
Reports from those who have wandered through the island's giant homes describe them as cheaply finished and set uncomfortably close to one another. Nakheel rejected an Associated Press request to visit the island.
Overburdened roads in Dubai's Jumeirah Beach neighborhood are expected to clog further as people begin moving onto the island, accessible, for now, by a single bridge. Mainlanders have already put up with years of road works and innumerable trucks hauling boulders to the island.
Those moving onto the Palm Jumeirah this year will have to live with construction for another three years, and then an influx of tourists. Most of the owners are foreigners, with Britons making up the largest group, Kazim said.
Many observers believe Dubai's frenetic homebuilding will soon outstrip demand.
"We've still got a shortage of properties in Dubai, but that's likely to become an excess in next six or 12 months," said Steve Brice, an economist with Standard Chartered Bank in Dubai.
Brice said year-old estimates that 50,000 housing units would hit the market in 2006 will be more than doubled. Nakheel, one of three big developers here, has said it will release 60,000 units in the 2nd half of 2006 alone.
Nakheel's two copycat Palms, the Palm Jebel Ali and Palm Deira, have also been delayed by design changes and other factors, Kazim said. A nearly finished fourth Nakheel archipelago, shaped like a map of the world, has attracted few buyers and remains mostly unsold.
Kazim said The World's sales trouble stems from simple economics: Nakheel is selling empty islands for tens of millions of dollars only to builders promising low-density luxury.
Dubai's government expects the Palm Jumeirah to become a signature
tourist attraction, bringing in as many as 20,000 daily visitors, Kazim said.
Meanwhile, laborers living in a cruise ship moored offshore are scrambling to finish enormous concrete houses that are crammed together on the palm island's 17 "fronds." The fronds are narrow peninsulas as long as a mile, attached to the island's main trunk. Nakheel will hand keys to owners of 1,350 homes by Nov. 30, Kazim said.
Also nearing completion are 2,650 apartments in 20 high-rises that have sprung up on the island's trunk. The hulking complexes are visible from shore, where the sprawling island, with its dredges, highway overpasses and construction cranes has become a major eyesore for resort hotels on Dubai's once idyllic natural beaches.
Even after the handover in November, less than half of the island's construction will be finished. Kazim said the project won't be done until nearly 2010, if things go according to Nakheel's current schedule.
The 1,500 room Atlantis Hotel is already under construction by South Africa and Dubai-owned Kerzner International, and is expected to be finished in 2009. The hotel will be similar to its Atlantis hotel in The Bahamas.
A redesigned Trump Hotel and Tower on the island is also expected to open sometime in 2009, Kazim said.
___
On the Net: http://www.thepalm.ae
By JIM KRANE, AP Business Writer Sun Aug 6, 3:26 PM ET
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates - With 14,000 laborers toiling day and night, the first of Dubai's three palm-shaped islands is finally about to get its first residents.
if The Palm Jumeirah, a 12-square-mile island group, is part of what's billed as the largest land-reclamation project in the world, the product of five years of brute hauling of millions of tons of Persian Gulf sand and quarried rock.
On Nov. 30, the palm will open to some 4,000 residents, said Issam Kazim, a spokesman for Dubai's state-owned developer Nakheel.
When fully complete by 2010, the Palm Jumeirah will be an offshore city, with some 60,000 residents and at least 50,000 workers in 32 hotels and dozens of shops and attractions, Nakheel said.
Observers say they are surprised that the fledgling developer has been able to build such a complex project more or less as planned, albeit with several snags that delayed the opening from last year.
"The project has captured people's imagination," said Colin Foreman of the Middle East Economic Digest. "Nothing like it has been done anywhere else in the world."
Nakheel's four island projects, the world's largest land reclamation effort, are reshaping Dubai's stretch of the Gulf coast.
The $14 billion project is a key part of this booming city's ambitions to rival Singapore and Hong Kong as a business hub, and surpass Las Vegas as a leisure capital.
The frenetic pace of development has utterly transformed Dubai from a sleepy trading and pearl-diving village in the 1950s to a flashy metropolis of 1.5 million.
The island's construction has not all been smooth, and most buyers were supposed to get keys to their island homes a year ago.
Some of the new land sank and Nakheel needed an extra year to add more and pack it with vibrating land compactors, Kazim said.
Reports from those who have wandered through the island's giant homes describe them as cheaply finished and set uncomfortably close to one another. Nakheel rejected an Associated Press request to visit the island.
Overburdened roads in Dubai's Jumeirah Beach neighborhood are expected to clog further as people begin moving onto the island, accessible, for now, by a single bridge. Mainlanders have already put up with years of road works and innumerable trucks hauling boulders to the island.
Those moving onto the Palm Jumeirah this year will have to live with construction for another three years, and then an influx of tourists. Most of the owners are foreigners, with Britons making up the largest group, Kazim said.
Many observers believe Dubai's frenetic homebuilding will soon outstrip demand.
"We've still got a shortage of properties in Dubai, but that's likely to become an excess in next six or 12 months," said Steve Brice, an economist with Standard Chartered Bank in Dubai.
Brice said year-old estimates that 50,000 housing units would hit the market in 2006 will be more than doubled. Nakheel, one of three big developers here, has said it will release 60,000 units in the 2nd half of 2006 alone.
Nakheel's two copycat Palms, the Palm Jebel Ali and Palm Deira, have also been delayed by design changes and other factors, Kazim said. A nearly finished fourth Nakheel archipelago, shaped like a map of the world, has attracted few buyers and remains mostly unsold.
Kazim said The World's sales trouble stems from simple economics: Nakheel is selling empty islands for tens of millions of dollars only to builders promising low-density luxury.
Dubai's government expects the Palm Jumeirah to become a signature
tourist attraction, bringing in as many as 20,000 daily visitors, Kazim said.
Meanwhile, laborers living in a cruise ship moored offshore are scrambling to finish enormous concrete houses that are crammed together on the palm island's 17 "fronds." The fronds are narrow peninsulas as long as a mile, attached to the island's main trunk. Nakheel will hand keys to owners of 1,350 homes by Nov. 30, Kazim said.
Also nearing completion are 2,650 apartments in 20 high-rises that have sprung up on the island's trunk. The hulking complexes are visible from shore, where the sprawling island, with its dredges, highway overpasses and construction cranes has become a major eyesore for resort hotels on Dubai's once idyllic natural beaches.
Even after the handover in November, less than half of the island's construction will be finished. Kazim said the project won't be done until nearly 2010, if things go according to Nakheel's current schedule.
The 1,500 room Atlantis Hotel is already under construction by South Africa and Dubai-owned Kerzner International, and is expected to be finished in 2009. The hotel will be similar to its Atlantis hotel in The Bahamas.
A redesigned Trump Hotel and Tower on the island is also expected to open sometime in 2009, Kazim said.
___
On the Net: http://www.thepalm.ae