Dubai aquarium crack creates 'online' flutter

BY PMA RASHEED

The Gulf Today, 27 Feb 2010

The aquarium crack created waves in the social networking world. Tweeters and facebook bugs bombarded "eyewitness" accounts and expressed anxieties over possible damages to the world's largest fish tank.

A tweeter from the mall commented like this, "Former top UN arms inspector Dr Hans Blix escaped from the Dubai Mall Aquarium this afternoon." Incidentally, Dr Blix is the head of the UAE's nuclear advisory body. The Ministry of Presidential Affairs has announced the establishment of an International Advisory Board (IAB) for the development of nuclear energy with former UN chief inspector Dr Hans Blix as its chairman.

As for tweeter Andrew Wheeler, the crack in the giant aquarium containing over 400 sharks and rays, seems to have the trappings for a great B movie plot.

Laura Mccabe did not waste much time. She created an independent page on Facebook within hours of the disaster. The page titled 'Dubai mall aquarium who done it?" explained itself, "Dubai mall aquarium has cracked up, news sources have suggested mass break out." The community discussion panel also raised questions like who broke the aquarium? What's your theory? Do you have any proof?

For Irfan Manga, the Dubai mall aquarium leak is not so big after all. But Ad Executive Jeremy Hawking says that that was why he always got anxious while at the underground level.

Amit, senior art designer of Femina, has sent a Twitter message to Indian actor and UN's goodwill ambassador Lara Dutta (who is supposed to be on a visit to Dubai), "Hey, have you come back from Dubai, have you heard the Aquarium in Dubai Mall leaked....yeah."

Tweeters like Kathy Cheung Kaki were wonderstruck to see pictures of the water tank crack posted on Twitter by an amateur photographer.

Enterprise application architect Abdul Aleem was an eye-witness to the Dubai water leaking slowly and flooding the mall, according to his tweets.

The anxiety of Sarah A S, as she expressed on Twitter, was about all those cute giant sharks in the cracked aquarium.

Director and author Abulhoul rushed to Dubai Mall after the incident with his friends. "Would people stop making a fuss out of the leak?" he tweeted.

Meanwhile, some geeks were seen online asking fellow geeks, "Guys... is all of Dubai Mall closed? Or just the aquarium part?"