Hanging in Dubai's airport

I'm on the way from Beirut back to Chennai. Again I'm not excited or even remotely happy about this, but so it is. Chennai has this problem of having international flights arriving at absurd hours. Of course everything in Chennai is closed by 11PM at the latest and I've never had a flight from a western place arrive before midnight. It's a terrible thing, but I bought the ticket, so I guess I can't complain TOO much.

As it is, because of my late flight from Dubai and my early flight from Beirut I'm stuck in DXB for about 5 hours. Luckily, they have free internet and a boatload of duty free stores. However, I had though that with 5 hours free time I might be able to pick up a transit visa and just go around to see the sites in Dubai for a couple hours. When I realized I'd have about an hour to do this before I'd have to return to the airport I decided against it. So now I'm hanging in the airport looking at the duty free shopping mall that it is.

I wonder what it is about the gulf that people want to build so much shit. I really mean that. Almost everything here is shitty. Of course, I say this as I'm looking out the window at the Burj Dubai, but seriously, there is no culture here, just shopping. I cna't confirm whether or not this is true of all the Emirates, but I'm told it is similar to this around here. People go to work and make a ridiculous amount of money and go shopping. Everything here is about Islam and capitalism. Peculiar mix I guess.

I don't know what I'd do for an hour is a giant desert shopping mall, but I can't say at this time I'm sad that I decided to sit around in the AC and surf the web.

I'm really perplexed by a lot of things in the middle east. It seems here as in Lebanon, the appearance of things really matters most and the quality of things is somehow less important. I guess the same can be said of the United States, but to my eyes the culture is changing. I know at least from Philadelphia and Chicago, people really care about the quality of things. You'll see locally produced crafts popping up everywhere, locally grown food, locally made clothing, etc. It seems to me that there is a growing number of people who just want to do things well and not have to travel too far to do it. Nor do they care about shipping their goods all across the globe. Walking around Lebanon and at least in Dubai's shopping mall of an airport all I can see are big brand names that have enough money to run multi-billion dollar ad campaigns. I somehow think fewer high quality things come from this, and merely pricier things. Or as they would say in India much costlier (although I still hate the sound of that). I think around these parts quality is judged solely on its price. It is a classical example of confusing worth and value. I for one am not a fan of it.

Quick example: There is a bag in the "high end" liquor store here. It was made by hand for the Glenrothes distillery (one of my favorites in Scotland actually) and the pompous british sounding guy behind the counter answered someone's question about it by saying very flatly, "It's $25,000 to buy it outright. There were only three of those bags ever made." Of course my interest was peaked, something worth $25,000 was right next to me. Even the 55 year old Macallan wasn't that much. So I went and looked at it. It looked like a leather briefcase with a cheap lock on it, and a hand pressed logo of Glenrothes on it. I couldn't hardly believe it. I could buy LL bean bags for half the kids in Lebanon for that much. What a crock. The other examples are in perfumes and cigarettes (totally duty free shopping!) where they only have the biggest brand names and are asking stupid amounts of money because Lancome has this or that actress on their posters. Argh.

Why must we confuse worth and value this way? Why does it seem that the gulf is full of more money than sense?