National Day

On Tuesday 2 Dec, the United Arab Emirates turned 38 years old. Celebrations are still going on.  Local custom: decorate cars like crazy, drive down to the Corniche and honk jubilantly.  Makes sense that cars would play such a big part in the celebration of a country that has made such huge progress because of oil.

Car decorations get pretty creative.  Below are some illustrative random samples.

Can you see the passenger? He's wearing a red-checkered ghutra (traditional head wear), as many of the local males normally do here.  Car says: "EMARATY" "UAE."  I have no idea where all these huge decals come from.  The UAE flag is red, white, green, and black. 

 

Hearts! Red, white, and green hearts.  A very common theme.  I'm not accustomed to seeing young Emirati men driving around with their cars plastered in hearts, but apparently love for the UAE runs very deep here.  I also saw flower shapes.

Lots of cars went all out.  I wish I had photos of them for you here.  Huge pictures of the Sheikh everywhere.  This one has the Sheikh, the UAE colored lik the flag, and some nice sand dunes.  Other common themes included giant teddy bears tied to car roofs, and people leaning out of car windows spraying silly string everywhere.

Of course, if everyone jumps in their car and drives to the same place, it creates a jovial traffic jam.  As Brian later remarked when we tried to find a cab home, "What is this?  National traffic day?"

In other news, Sherry and I grew a TON of basil.  Here's Sherry hiding in our basil patch before we harvested it to make pesto for Thanksgiving:

Concrete

I've been training with a group of people who do parkour in downtown Abu Dhabi.  I'm probably the worst jumper they've ever seen, but it's still the highlight of my week to show up and sweat through their grueling conditioning routines.

I'm astounded how great I feel during and after exercise.  It was a tough week.  My time log says that I spent an average of 12 hours working every day.  On Friday, I drag myself to parkour, and after a few sets of push ups, suddenly the whole world is beautiful.  I notice the sky.  For the first time I see the birds soaring around the skyscrapers.  All my insides are smiling.  Yay, endorphins.

After parkour, we walked to the skate park (I knew there was a skate park somewhere Abu Dhabi, I just didn't know that it was that close.)  There was a competition going on -- skate boarding, roller blades, and bmx bikes.  Two things happened that were very interesting.

1) There was only one girl in the competition.  She was on roller blades and she was AWESOME.  She would fly up these high ramps, flip through the air and land on the other side, or she would float, dive into a hand stand, pose, then continue skating.  As a girl who is frustrated by her lack of innate ability to jump, it was really inspiring.

2) The skate park was full of teenagers, and fights kept breaking out in the audience.  Whoa.  It was really out-of-place.  Never seen anything like it in Abu Dhabi.  They keep stopping the competition to break up the fights. They called in the police, who arrived right when I was leaving.  Somehow the fights made Abu Dhabi seem more real.  It's not just a giant bubble of sterile skyscrapers and malls.  It has angsty teenage kids who get into fights.  One of the many parts of Abu Dhabi I know nothing about.

Certified Abu Dhabi Ramble

After residing here for about 7 months, I present you with a compilation ofAbu Dhabi random facts.

Abu Dhabi literally translates to "Father of the Gazelle."  It is the name of both an Emirate and a City.  

United Arab Emirates (UAE) is a country.  An emirate is kind of like a state.  So, it's like the United States of America, just substitute "Emirates" for "States" and "Arab" for "America."

The Emirate of Abu Dhabi takes up something like 80% of the landmass of the UAE.  It's a big emirate.  Dubai is the next door emirate.  Dubai is the place with the tallest building in the world, the man-made islands in the shape of palm trees and countries, the indoor ski resort.  All the stuff you've probably heard of.  

Thus, Dubai is at the edge of everyone's tongue.  "How's Dubai?" They ask.  I say, "Abu Dhabi's great."  I don't think most people notice.  Dubai's the one that gets all the world press.  They have better PR.  

[Abu Dhabi/Dubai confusions don't bother me.  Just don't conflate them if you're arranging airplane transit...]

Besides having all the land, Abu Dhabi also has the large majority of the oil money. About 95% of the oil in all the UAE, which is about 9% of the world's oil reserves.  Crazy.

Abu Dhabi's economy is built on oil.  Dubai's economy is built on tourism, finance, and real estate.  Thus, Dubai screams louder for world attention, because the success of its economy depends on the world noticing it. Meanwhile, Abu Dhabi relaxes in its pool of oil and money.  

To be fair, Abu Dhabi realizes that its pool of oil and money will not always be there.  They are working towards muscling up their tourist attractions and  also building a "knowledge economy" instead, like Boston (biotech central) or Silicon Valley.  Masdar (where I am) is a large part of this master plan.  

Abu Dhabi has the highest per capita energy use in the world.  And the highest per capita carbon footprint.  (Yes, they even beat the good ol' USA.) Not to mention the highest per capita water consumption.  (It's all linked, really.  All the water here needs to be desalinated, which requires lots of energy.)

I wonder if I get points for being a fuel locavore here--all the petro-fuel in the buses I ride around in was produced only a few miles away.  Local consumption, right?  Hahahaha...I'm just kidding...

You'll also be happy to know that the city of Abu Dhabi has over 2,000 mosques.  I swear there's one every block, which makes sense because the majority of the population prays 5 times a day.  (I really like hearing the call to prayer ring through the streets...)

Less than 20% of the population are local.  More than 80% are expatriates.  From the Filipino cashier to the Pakistani taxi driver, and the Ugandan security guard, it's quite apparent this is a major destination for people who want to make money to send back to their families.   

But perhaps the most fascinating facet of Abu Dhabi is that it didn't exist 40 years ago.  Rather, there was a village of grass huts and about 1,500 residents.  It became a ghost town during the oppressive summer heat - residents would ride for days by camel to Al Ain, a nearby town with cooler temperature and more shade.  (It takes an hour to drive to Al Ain today.)  

Today, Abu Dhabi is a gleaming city of skyscrapers thick with six-lane rivers of traffic.  

The fascinating part is that so much of the oil wealth was distributed throughout the local population During the early oil wealth years under Sheikh Zayed, bundles of money (literally) were given to locals to help infuse the local economy with the wealth rolling in.  Apparently, "it was not uncommon to see local people walking out of the banks carrying cardboard boxes full of cash on their heads," according to Mohammed Al-Fahim, who wrote an autobiography about growing up in pre-oil Abu Dhabi and the changes that came afterward.


 Actually, the giving away bundles of money thing happened more than once.

Al-Fahim notes that each time it led to a "frenzied buying spree fueled by the oil wealth."  Some people invested wisely - built a nice house -- others blew it all on few flashy cars that became worthless in a few years.  Some people were really smart and opened car dealerships.  In fact, Al-Fahim's dad was in the car business.  

To give you an idea of the kind of explosive growth Abu Dhabi has experienced, imagine this: in 1966 his father sold about 200 tires.  The next year he sold 10,000 tires.  A 5000% increase.  Al-Fahim himself took on the family business and described what it was like to import cars and have them snatched off his hands when they rolled off of barges onto the still undeveloped sandy coastline.  If a buyer wanted a vehicle, "they would stuff bundles of cash into my hands, slip into the driver's sear and drive away in their new car."

Between describing the hardships of living in the desert and how the locals worked hard to scratch out a living, Al-Fahim off-handedly mentions, "Naturally, there was no domestic help as there is today."

In what other country has the local population gone from walking miles for brackish water to hired help as the norm?  I would bet that in the overwhelming majority of countries that discover oil, the wealth only reaches the wealthiest, most powerful top sliver of the population.  In this case, it reached everyone, who then turned into the wealthiest, most powerful sliver as the population boomed when more people arrived.


The government of Abu Dhabi certainly looks after its locals.  Sheikh Zayed was known for his generosity and compassion, and I think he's left an admirable legacy.  If you're local, and you get married, the government gives you a house.  If you want to study abroad, the government will pay for your tuition. (And it's common to hear people say, "There's no such thing as a poor Emirati.")

When I first arrived here, I resented a lot of the laws that favor the local Emiratis - double/triple salaries for locals over foreigners doing the same job, only locals can own land here, if you want to open a business, you need a local partner.  Not that I want to buy land or start a business here, -it just seemed like an uber elite high society making rules to maintain its own eliteness.

But now I'm impressed by how Sheikh Zayed set up regulations like these to ensure that the wealth benefited the locals, that the money from oil circulated in the local economy and didn't go straight to the pockets of foreign businessmen.  

It was really smart at the beginning, but these days, if Abu Dhabi really wants to become a "knowledge economy" they'd be wise to be more supportive of immigrants.  In my personal opinion, immigration is a huge plus for innovation.  The US is arguably the most innovative country in the world (the oil industry, electricity, the internet all have their roots in the US) and I think that a significant reason is because the US is a nation of immigrants.  

When different cultures mix, it becomes a more fertile ground for innovative ideas to break forth. (For more details, read The Medici Effect. Also, here's a Harvard paper that explores the links between immigrants to how innovative cities are--hat tip BoPreneur. "Immigrants are very important for US invention, representing 24% and 47% of the US scientist and engineer workforce," while the rest of the US workforce is only 12% immigrants...)

Finally, this ramble post wouldn't be complete if I didn't mention that robots are an important part of camel races in the UAE.  Once, camel jockeys were lightweight, starved children, but the UAE outlawed this practice and the children have been since replaced with robots that are essentially a remote-controlled hand drills attached to a riding crop. Technology to the rescue. 

Tick tick tick

Huh.  There go my empty zen days.  Guess I'm a student again, grinding out problem sets.  I feel like a lower life form. 

I have no time for thesis research.  GROWL.

Alternative Energy Myths

Tim recently sent me an awesome article from Foreign Policy: Seven Myths About Alternative Energy

Several points stood out for me...

Nuclear is super expensive and take a long time to implement. Amory Lovins estimates that nuclear costs 3 times what wind power does.

There's a lot of people running after developing sexy new technologies (sigh...biofuel...), while focusing on unglamorous efficiency has the potential to cut 20% to 30% of the world's energy consumption by using technology that's already widely available.

Efficiency also does not ask people to change their lifestyles -- it finds ways to do the same activities with less energy, as opposed to conservation, which asks people to cut back on activities to preserve energy.

For example, power companies make more money when consumers use more electricity and they need to build more power plants. However, California has implemented measures to decouple consumer electricity use from the energy company profits. Thus, companies have been enabled to work with consumers to reduce energy consumption.

As a result, electricity use per capita in California has remained flat over the past 3 decades, while in the rest of the US, it has jumped 50%.

Here at Masdar, there's lots of plans afoot to experiment with different techniques of enabling people in the city to use less energy. I think an important part is giving a clear signal to individuals about how much energy they are using. For example, imagine a small number display next to each appliance that displays the energy use/cost.

I think that most people want to use less energy, but there's a wide range of how far out of their way people are willing to go to use less energy. If the default option is "use less energy", if it's the easiest path, then the majority of people will take it.

The sustainability movement needs more persuasive technology, or rather, persuasive applications of the technology we already have.

Imli!

DOUBLE BACKFLIP AWESOME TRIP. We managed to check off quite a number of typical India experiences:

• Filled out lots of paperwork. India sure likes paperwork for every occasion. And tea. Chai and paperwork at every turn.
• Traveled by rickshaw, taxi, train, car, foot...dodged cows, goats, dogs, and monkeys
• Leafed through dusty books at the IIT Delhi campus library
• Visited Humayon's tomb (wow...), Qutb Minar [jaw hits floor] and the iron pillar (modern day mystery, it's been standing 1600 years and hasn't rusted...supposedly scientists have been unsuccessful in duplicating the alloy)

Humayun's Tomb - didn't have camera, image stolen from here

Qutb Minar, I took 7,000 photos, it's absolutely stunning. And apparently attracts more visitors than the Taj Mahal

• Talked shop with some incredible social entrepreneurs
• Met a Bollywood Star (Shilpa Shukla from Chak De! India)
• Ate lots of home-cooked Indian food
• Ate lots of Indian food in roadside stalls (Chantar Mantar Dosa Wala in Delhi is fantastic)
• Ate in an American Diner
• Visited urban tuberculosis treatment micro centers in Muradabad
• Journeyed north to visit villages in the Kumaon region - foothills of the Himalayas
• Yoga (of course)
• Saw grassroots silk worm farming in action
• Received surprise aura healing by an Indian gentleman who earlier took two seconds to go from talking about uber-accounting to the importance of opening one's self like a flower to other people
• Followed our Sikh rickshaw driver on a tour through a Sikh temple
• Quested out to buy some tabla
• Dropped in on a surprise birthday party
• Swung through a night Bengali festival
• Decided that airports are always the worst part of the trip

Our trip originally had three main purposes:

1) Meet up with Avani. Avani does great work. For my Master's thesis, I'm working to help them with their plans to use pine needles to create electricity and high quality cooking fuel to mountain villages.

2) Meet up with Envergent. Honeywell is developing a flash pyrolysis process to convert biomass to electricity. They're interested in rural applications.

3) Meet up with Operation Asha. My advisor, Scott, volunteers with a foundation that works on fighting tuberculosis and they recently partnered with Operation Asha, a fiesty, innovative new tuberculosis organization.

wow. wow. wow.

Avani is incredible. They do so many things right. Imagine a Barefoot College Campus in the foothills of the Himalayas, 100% powered by renewable energy. Water is collected from rain and stored in multi-thousand gallon tanks. Local women dye silk and wool with natural colors and weave them into breathtaking patterns that are marketed and sold to wealthy consumers. Avani workers "leave their caste at the gate" and live, work, eat together. Extraordinarily delicious local ingredient food for every meal. It has all my favorite elements:

1) AWESOME people

2) Cash flow from outside into a rural community (usually money only trickles out as the poor by products, it's hard to find good examples of good cash flow coming in)

3) Renewable energy, eco-conscious (goes straight to my eco-puritan heart)

4) Heart-stopping scenery

5) Great food

I'm way too excited about the pine needle gasification project to stop and type about it now. It has so much potential I think about it non-stop these days.

I feel so blissfully lucky -- I met Rajnish (co-founder) and Chanchal (lead technician) at IDDS this summer. Then everything fell into place, almost of its own accord. It felt like one day I was bubbling to Scott about how great it would be to work with Avani on their gasification project, I blinked and we were riding up the twisty roads into the mountains of Uttarankhand.

Beautiful lady - all the women I saw in the mountains were stunning, especially the old ladies

Rice paddies on steep slopes

Avani silk worm farmer. All the leaves inside are crawling with silk worms.

Operation Asha is also beyond words. We met Sandeep and Shelly, the founders, and friends of SK. Incredible, wonderful, determined people. Thought it was about time to take a common sense approach to tuberculosis (TB) and they're producing impressive results after only a few years. They build up a network of treatment micro-centers that are accessible and open for long hours so that it's easier for TB patients to come by and take their medicine every day. It could be in a shop, or someone's home. It makes it much easier to reach patients in a cost effective way -- other tuberculosis programs typically spend $300/patient while Asha does a better job for $15/patient. I'll describe the Operation Asha strategy more in depth in a future blog entry, it's quite fantastic. (Their website is a bit clunky at the moment, but trust me, they're phenomenal.)

Yes, I liked India a lot.