Dubai:The unfinished city

When I arrived in Dubai, two years ago,what I have on my mind is a BIG,growing metropolis city with a lot of fascinating skyscrapers welcoming me. Buildings and amazing hotels which cannot make my mouth close to say "WOW" all the time, combine with the its unique,dessert, Arabian culture (which I know most from my background religion:Islam) will fascinate me all the time. So,when I finally landed in this "desert" city, you can imagine,how excited I was to begin my journey there. At the airport, I started to see these local UAE people;started with the immigration guys whom wear a long white "gamish" clothes and women whom wear a long black veil,head to toe,which I know later it called as "abaya". I felt my heart was singing,as the amazing journey,will begin but....Ooops! as I drove further into Dubai,the city and leaving the sophisticated international airport,I found less and less local UAE people surrounded me. In fact, I found people,from different parts of the world,mingled together.I saw Indians,Pakistanis,Russians,British and the people from my neighbor country:Phillippines. A bunch of them,I saw in the malls, nice cafe and restaurants,even walking across the street.Wow,unbelievable! I was preparing to have an exotic dessert Arabian adventures, and here I am,in the international city; small version of the world. Here and there, I heard people talking Hindis;here and there, I heard people talking Tagalog.Nope, I am not a racist person, nor a person whom will judge a person based only on the first impression or his nationality, but honestly, I cannot hide my dissappointment to see more "local UAE" culture there.O Oo......I guess Dubai is moving too fast, to be well-known as an "international city",and later on forgot on how important is to cultivate its roots, the dessert-local Arabic culture.Well, later I found out that in the reality, only 20% of the residence of this country are local UAE, while the other 80% are people flew from lots of places in different part of the worlds.And yet, I tried to lower my expectation there, anyway, when I joined the trip for a Dessert Safari (we talked about camel,.dessert,shisha,and belly dance here), I felt a little bit relieve. Although, I didn't experience any "extravaganza" experience, but I experience "international diversity trip". Lebanese cuisine, upscale European restaurants, big shopping malls ala American,were mixing together with the Hindis song and a Tagalog TV talkshow. Well, I guess this is what the meaning of living in THE GLOBAL WORLD about, whether the city leave a bit of its heritage or not,but still, it will fascinate us, with its unfinished business to the world: to be more globally than locally.