Bizarro-World

Last night after work we had a couple of drinks by the pool at a friends fancy hotel. The most expensive beer served in the least expensive plastic mugs. An odd analogy for life here.

When we were removed from the poolside, the night was still young. We took to the highway and ended up at a development they call the Pearl. Welcome to Bizarro-World.

The Pearl is one of the middle east's reclaimed land projects. Creating real estate where there was no real estate before. It's also the biggest gated community I have ever known.

Now to me gated communities are by their very design, flawed and retarded. Not aiding the greater community as they claim to, but isolating people with similarly narrow views of the world. A playground for the affluent, a breeding ground for the ignorant and paranoid.

The Pearl almost fails as a gated community due to its sheer size and the most telling aspect of that is its own private police force, known as "The Shield". You pass through their security perimeter as you enter the Pearl via the long bridge which separates it from reality.

It's an incredible feat of construction and still well under way. As the land takes shape so too do the buildings  which rise up out of it. As if planting a garden and watching it grow.

It's a strange place. Utterly opulent in every way. A far cry from the lives of the poor bastards brought here to build it.

When I talked to the people who lived there, they agreed it was strange, but claimed it was as close to normal as they could get. Though how normal it is to be fined for hanging your washing the wrong way is anyone's guess.

I read through a long list of rules and regulations for those who choose to live here. Four pages of fineable offences including leaving your garage door up, having a bbq, walking on the wrong sand or leaving a pet unattended where a neighbour can see it.

Normal is evidently in the eye of the beholder.

I wonder how long it will last, this artificial place. How long the sand can stand against the sea, how long the money will roll in to maintain this place and most of all how long a community can exist inside a bubble. I think the bigger it gets, the more likely this bubble is to burst.