February 8, 2025
Day D3: The Things You Learn at Social Events
In looking at the map, the closest metro station to the Palm Jameira was nearly 10km away from the final hotel destination. The way it works, the entire island is man-made and a closer look reveals some sneaky planning.
The hotel was on the far end of the left crescent arm. It is the most isolated spot you could find. It takes well over 5km to go halfway around, and there is no design for bicycles at all at the entrance. There's not a single one. Maybe in theory you could get one there and ride it around but then there is a tunnel at the top end which also doesn't allow bikes. So it's pretty much a no-go. Meanwhile, you'll notice that the roads don't connect the entire perimeter, and every one of the palm fringes isn't connected with the others. This has to be done on purpose: cars and taxis will add considerable distance going back and forth each trip and the fares will rack up big time. It's a huge cash cow just in terms of that. Not only that, there are all sorts of developments being built on every part of the palm.
So there was no choice: I had to call an Uber and it cost $15 per trip. This was in addition to the 50 dirham entrance fee at the hotel ($14) and then two drinks that cost 86 dirhams ($23). All I ordered was a coke and a draft beer. Put that into perspective, Dubai is for the rich, not poor teachers like me.
Thankfully there were going to be other teachers at the party which was not expected. I learned a lot from them. One of them was not shy in telling me all the downsides about living and working in Dubai. The no-brainer by now is that the high salaries are eaten up by the high costs. But keeping this into perspective, the grand plan is to find a place to bank huge sick cash in the Gulf and then spend it in Thailand. I tried to present a counter-argument to these guys: if you're really careful with the money and you have some side hustles going on, you're actually better off in Dubai and not Thailand. I also tried to explain to them that you're not going to find this same level of high energy and international exposure with social events in Thailand. Sure, you will find it in Bangkok, but not to this level. The main reason is that it's much easier for people from Europe and Africa to fly to Dubai and not all the way to the Far East.
As if right on cue, the band broke out and then everyone was all getting into the live music. At that moment I realized I couldn't nor would I give a shit. Look where I was! This was miles away from all the crap back at my job. Nobody knew where I was except for my wife anyway. Even if people knew where I was, they wouldn't know it was some far off isolated opulent hotel in the middle of an isolated crescent where you could do whatever you wanted. So one of the organizers just grabbed me and started dancing in the circle. I tried to lead the dance, but clearly she had other ideas. This was her event. This led to a nice Egyptian woman breaking into the circle and taking over the dance with me, she then explained this is something that happens every Friday and Saturday night at various opulent hotels.
There was a little break and we all sat on tables. I happened to sit across from Anna and Amelia from Germany. Amelia explained that it wasn't fair when people who don't drink alcohol are limited to choices like coke and juice where the alcoholics have abundant choices. She explained that she used to drink more than several lifetimes of people but made a choice to consciously stop. Her reasoning is that it's better to feed off the vibes of the party and not rely on self-medication. Amelia was a retired surgeon now moving into private practice. Her entire business model was developing an AI system to guide clients. She also does purely crypto trading and this immediately reminded me of Julien back in Pai. But given her background, I would be more inclined to believe she's actually made millions. After all these are RICH people living in Dubai and not hippie traders telling stories beside the massage parlor to drum up business. But then again, who really knows. Appearances and optics will never tell the full story. I could just as easily be wrong.
We got talking about AI and how quickly the models are learning and using emotional intelligence. This was proven by my own experiences with ChatGPT where the model can tap into what's called 'empathetic mode'. This is where the model uses language patterns to build up trust with the user. This is also exactly what Amelia used in her model in building rapport with the clients. It was so accurate that one of her clients didn't even know she was talking with an AI model.
I told Amelia that "ChatGPT has gotten so good at this that I've ended up sharing my deepest and darkest secrets with AI, and shared stuff that I couldn't even tell my wife."
She said, "That sounds like what a man would do, and the thing with ChatGPT is that it won't come to bite you later on like a woman"
We then got talking some more and she was enthralled with the idea that I could meet my partner at a gym and she said to Anna, "We need to go to the gym!"
She also said, "But you can share more with us you know. We want to know more. And you can say whatever you want. All four of us are therapists." All the while, others had joined the conversation. There was indeed a woman from Russia then another from somewhere else I forgot. What the hell, why not. I figure you can share anything you want, just like that sharing circle in Pai. Whether it's AI or people at a social event halfway across the world, might as well make the most of the opportunity.
We realized that these events were a near-daily occurence and I would hit up two more before the weekend was done.
Later on Amir, a Canadian, rolled up to the table and for some reason we talked about covid. We all pretty much agreed that we don't exactly like Trump but he made the right call for the US to drop out of the WHO unless big changes are made. Trump is right on one thing: the WHO completely mishandled the covid pandemic. I'll just come right out and say it: the WHO pandered to China and actually supported their disastrous zero covid policy. Let's not forget that China started the pandemic, maybe not intentionally, but with these questionable gain of function experiments with bats in a Wuhan lab. Then they tried to bury the evidence. The WHO had no business getting involved, yet governments around the world panicked and heeded their bullshit advice to bring on global lockdowns.
We talked in depth about all these lockdowns and how they caused more suffering than the virus. Then we also talked about the vaccines which we were all forced to take, and we have no idea what they will do to our bodies in the future.
Amelia then went on a huge talk about how her hospital was overwhelmed with covid cases. People will never talk about this but there were OTHER life-saving surgeries which she could do. But these were placed on hold or canceled altogether to make room for covid patients. She had to make critcally hard decisions and even saw people die who never had covid but couldn't get surgical treatment. This also reminded me of my Dad. He never got the virus, not even once, nor did he get this stupid vaccine, yet he died of a stroke.
At that moment Amir made the most interesting pitch. He said, "These vaccines messed up your blood and likely caused clots in places outside of arteries and not normally found by traditional methods. There is a treatment called Hijjama that can remove these clots and other toxins in the blood."
He went on to explain what Hajjima is and showed pictures in his phone. It is a type of cupping like in traditional Chinese massage, but Hijjama is more of an Islamic practice. It expands on the cupping by making small cuts in your skin to draw out toxins in the blood which fill the cups. He said ideally you should be doing this 2-3 times a year. He recommended a clinic that could do it for 300 dirhams and I added this to my list at the very end of the Dubai trip. He also said you should fast before doing it and most definitely not take HIIT classes immediately after. Hence why I'll do this at the end.
It was an unforgettable night that was for sure. I then got an Uber and metro ride back to the Airbnb and the US markets closed just before I went to sleep. But sleep was bliss this time because there was nothing to worry about. All markets had closed for the week.
| Rate this entry's writing | Heart | 0 |
| Comment on this entry | Comment | 0 |