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Dopes on Tape in Knowledge Village

March 26th, 2011 · No Comments · The National, UAE

The city of Dubai likes to build themed construction zones. Dubai Motor City, Dubai Studio City, Dubai Media City, Dubai Internet City … you get the drift.

The idea is to centralize industries and create, I suppose, synergy.

Dubai also has a Knowledge Village, but the name is something of a misnomer if this video is any indication.

This is a riff on the Jay Leno “dope in the street” interviews.

The woman asking questions, and she’s not exactly the slickest interviewer ever to grace the industry, is hitting on some basic topics.

I suppose the subtext here is about how expatriates — non Emiratis — don’t know much of anything about the country in which they live and work.

For those of you not in the UAE, you are forgiven for not blurting out the answers right off. But if you’ve been here for a bit, you ought to know these.

1. The colors of the UAE flag. The video has a picture of the flag on the video, but in case you missed it the colors are red, black, white and green.

2. Government run by president or king? The confusion is, perhaps, explicable. The UAE is run by a president, technically, but he is a royal. He did not win an election. But he prefers to be known as a president. One guy is barking up the right tree when he says “a sheikh,” because that is local shorthand for all royals, the president or otherwise. Nearby countries are ruled by a king (Saudi Arabia), a sultan (Oman), an emir (Qatar) and another king (Bahrain).

3. Dubai, the biggest city in the UAE? True. About 2 million people to Abu Dhabi’s 1 million and change. That’s like not knowing which has more people, New York or Washington DC.

4.  How many emirates in the UAE? Perhaps tricky if you never get out of Dubai. There are seven, though only two have any significant name recognition in the West — Dubai and Abu Dhabi. The other five are Sharjah, Ajman, Umm al Qaiwain, Fujairah and Ras al Khaimah.

5. The capital of the UAE? Abu Dhabi. Interesting that the answers they show name neither Dubai nor Abu Dhabi, by far the most important emirates.

6. The UAE has a border with Yemen? No, it does not, and about now I’m sure that’s just fine with the UAE, given all the turmoil in Yemen.

7. Prime minister of the UAE? Again, not strange that people (even in Knowledge Village) struggle with this. Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid is best known as the royal running Dubai. But “prime minister” is also one of his titles. Just as the No. 1 sheikh in Abu Dhabi, Khalifa, is “president.”

8. President of the UAE … Khalifa, as mentioned above. They really ought to know that. “You know, the guy who just gave $20 billion to bail out Dubai and for whom Dubai named the world’s tallest building. The Burj Khalifa.”

9.  This one is just bizarre. Which is bigger, the UAE or Qatar? That they found this many people to say “Qatar” is interesting. Qatar is significantly smaller than the UAE. Perhaps it’s because people who live in Dubai think that’s all there is to the UAE?

10. But then they come back with the “which is bigger” with Oman … and Oman is significantly bigger than the UAE, yet lots of people say UAE. Hmm.

11. A trick question. “The world’s tallest building, Burj al Arab, is in Dubai.” One woman picks up on it and says “Burj Khalifa.” Which is correct. Some of the others are impatient and hear only ‘world’s/tallest/Burj/al” … and just say “true.”

12. The population of the UAE? A semi-tricky question because 1) it fluctuates as expats come and go and 2) not even we at the paper are entirely sure. Since I’ve been here The National has printed numbers as low as 4.5 million people and as high as 7 million. Probably somewhere in between, so the “6 million” guess is a good one.

13. An odd question, returning to the most populated city. She did that up above, and we determined it was Dubai. Abu Dhabi is second, Sharjah a distant third.

Anyway, no, not a flattering bit of video. But how much do any of us know? We still act like villagers from hundreds of years ago; we know only what impacts our lives daily. The difference is, we have all these resources around us and ought to know the answers to basics … but we don’t bother to find out.

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