Sheikh Mo's Big Show

We were there for Sheikh Mo's Big Show last night, the grand opening of the world's tallest building, the Burj Dubai. The opening had been postponed twice but was now a go for 8 p.m. on January 4, 2010, coinciding with the fourth anniversary of Sheikh Mohammed's becoming the Ruler of Dubai. The celebration had a last-minute, disorganized feel to it as it was obvious preparations were furiously continuing up to the last minute. Crowds began thronging the area in the afternoon and evening, especially in the Dubai Mall. Roads that were supposed to be closed never seemed to close as cars lined up to get in various parking lots. There were plenty of good viewing areas all around the circumference of the building. The best might have been further from the traffic and crowds along the beach road, as even those of us close enough to see the ceremony on a large screen TV would not be able to hear or understand the speeches, which were in Arabic.

My husband, son and I wandered around the area starting at 4:30 p.m., walking through the Mall and then stopping for a light dinner of sushi in the Japanese restaurant at Souk Al Bahar to kill some time. We then posted ourselves near the bridge to the Burj Dubai "Island" where the ceremony was taking place. My son questioned whether it was properly an island since it was based in concrete surrounded by a shallow pool of water, and we all agreed the water would not be the place to seek shelter from the debris field of the building, mapping ourselves an escape route through the Souk Al Bahar to our rear. We enjoyed watching workmen carry red sofas over the bridge, presumably for the comfort of the attending dignitaries. My husband bet us that the ceremony would start late in the Arabic fashion, but a musical salute with fountain show began early at ten minutes before the hour, followed by the scary sight of parachutists descending perilously close to the building to a bullseye landing on the island. Then there was a longish pause for speeches (inaudible) before the rest of the show began.

We were expecting fireworks, of course, and more of the big fountain show, as the lake fountain watershow set to music has already been running for months as one of the must-see sights outside the building. No surprises there, except perhaps for the unusual height achieved by the jets of water, which sound like fireworks exploding when they collapse back onto the surface of the lake. The fireworks then started, with a nice set coming out of the top of the nearby Address Hotel at the Dubai Mall. What we were not prepared for, and what came as a total surprise, were the lights and fireworks that then started coming out of the Burj Dubai itself. Searchlights shot out from everywhere, scanning the area around the building, all white at first. Smaller twinkling lights began flashing randomly all over the building. The building was backlit for a while to show a stunning profile against the black night sky. And then fireworks started shooting out of the building from top to bottom, bottom to top and winding all around, up and down. It was like a huge lit up exploding Christmas tree, or, perhaps more appropriate, like an enormous torch being lit up and exploded over and over. After all the white fireworks were exploded leaving plumes of smoke, the searchlights turned all different colors, not just the green, red and white colors of the UAE flag, but also blue and purple. At the end the building was left lit up with the small white twinkling lights, in perfect harmony with the clear night sky.

It was a spectacular show, even better than I could have imagined. We made our way out of the area as quickly as we could, hoping to avoid the crowds and traffic by walking back to where our car was parked near my husband's workplace. As is usual in Dubai, there was no easy way to do this, as pedestrian walkways are a rarity. In this crowd the typically numerous and cheap taxis were impossible to find. We had no choice but to fight our way against human traffic back through the thickest part of the crush in the mall and surrounding parking lots, where we found an exit leading to the road we needed to follow. Once we were on the right road, it was not too hard to make our way back, with the accompaniment of honking horns and the twinkling Burj to our back. It was a good ending to an historic evening, shared among a very peaceful crowd of all ages, a grand mix of Arabic and other nationalities.

Driving home we learned on the radio that Sheikh Mo had renamed the building on the spot the Burj Khalifa, in honor of Sheikh Khalifa, the Ruler of the UAE. My husband joked that the naming rights must have cost $10 billion, which was the amount that Abu Dhabi just paid to bail out Dubai. Probably something to that, as the news services also seem to see a connection there. This morning's radio revealed that some clever chap in Mirdif somehow managed to buy the internet naming rights to the domain name www.burjkhalifa.com, with all kinds of speculation as to how this could happen and what might happen to this chump for doing so.

By the way, it was a closely guarded secret, but now it is public, that the height of the building is 828 meters, over 160 floors, far eclipsing the next tallest building in Taipei. Visitors will be able to take the trip to an observation deck on the 124th floor starting later today.