Magnificence munificence and extravagance

Have you ever seen a title of a blog to be so non-correlated? It only seems that the title is chosen purely to enforce a sense of rhyming. Well, to be honest its true to a large extent! However, its also a thought which sparked in me after my day-long tour to Dubai.

This was a full day trip organized by a tour company on an open top bus with defined stops and routes. The best part was you could hop-off and on the bus at any and every stop because every 20 minutes the next bus comes to pick you up. The bus also provided running commentary on various landmarks and areas of Dubai as the bus passed through the broad streets. The amazing part was the commentary was exactly synchronized with the landmark on your right or left.

The day ended with an hour long cruise on the Dubai creek again with a commentary and drinks on board as well.

After a full day in Dubai and covering almost all the major spots in the city (the city has too too many of them) I ended up revising and re-visiting them. (if you have any doubts please read my zodiac sign in my profile!). The conclusion was apart from a single fort and museum and the Gold Souk all I saw was expansive hotels, huge malls with all the biggest brands of the world and hotels and malls again.

The world islands under construction will actually resemble the world map from an aerial view when completed. The Palm Atlantis is a huge resort constructed on man made islands which on an aerial view will resemble a palm with a crescent. This is connected by an undersea tunnel from the mainland. The Burj Dubai is probably the tallest building in the world. The Burj Al Arab is the largest hotel in the world with a helipad on top. Federer and Agassi famously played a tennis match on the top of this hotel! The list goes on and on! Each of these monuments ( I don' t see any other word for them) were the tallest or largest building in the Gulf or in the world when they were built.

The question which naturally comes is how much of this is serving the purpose? Is it being driven by demand from the wealthy all over the world or is it an artificially created pomp and hype intending to attract everyone in the world?

However, the questions remaining aside, for tourists like us it provides simply a magnificent sight to behold. The munificence of the land and the people together with the extravagance in spending as well as thinking (even if you have money to spend how many countries in the world have even thought of creating such structures leave alone actually creating them?) emerges in a magnificent splendor and is a sight to behold specially during a river cruise ride after sunset.

Hence the title magnificence munificence and extravagance!!!