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| What does nobody tell you about Dubai, UAE?, Photo Credit: Mo Ismail |
New Delhi (Lisbon Times):- You’re not necessarily going to get rich by moving to Dubai.
If you’ve heard about
the high salaries in UAE then you’ve heard right, but I bet you haven’t heard
about how excruciatingly high expenses are in UAE, especially in Dubai.
The majority of ex-pats
in Dubai are nowhere near rich. Not because they’re unskilled, undereducated,
or low-wage earners, but because no matter how high the salaries get, they’ll
never beat the growing expenses.
You’ll never get to
experience all that glamour you see in the media unless you’re filthy rich.
It’ll cost you an arm
and a leg to do most of the extravagant adventures you see in the media. Don’t
get too excited about coming for a holiday unless you’re rich. It’s
a great place but it’s an expensive holiday destination.
It’s an Arab city with
an Arab minority.
About 84% of Dubai’s
population is foreign-born. The city is so mixed that everyone in here is part
of a minority. There simply aren’t any prominent majorities.
That’s actually one of
the good things about Dubai. Everyone can fit in here because there is no
prevalent culture in which you have to adapt to, or fear being rejected.
There’s something
worse than the heat, and it’s the deadly humidity.
Combine the high
temperatures in the summer with the humidity of the sea and you’ll
get STEAM!
You know that steam
that comes out after a hot shower? This is how the outdoors feel all
summer long.
It’s a city full of
people, yet you often end up alone.
I still don’t know why
this happens. Maybe because of the pressure of work, the long distances between
places, or the traffic, but most people are usually too busy or too tired to
socialize. They end up spending their evenings alone after work unless they
live with their families.
Everyone here except for the locals is a passer-by.
As per estimates, most
ex-pats in the UAE stay for an average of 5 years and then they move on.
The friends that you
make, the colleagues that you see every day are all going to leave at some
point. Building long-lasting friendships are extremely rare.
You’ll become friends
with many whom you can’t even spell their names right.
Dubai is full of
people who literally come from every corner of the world. It’s a place where
many cultures meet.
There was a Greek
colleague of mine who we always called Vicky. None of us knew how to pronounce
her real name. Looking at her business card alone was confusing.
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All the beautiful
scenery and fun experiences get old very quickly once you settle there.
I used to really enjoy
being in Dubai when I was only a tourist. I loved the Dubai fountain, the big
malls, and all the new places that kept opening, but once I settled
there I no longer enjoyed any of that. Everything suddenly seemed so
pretentious and repetitive. Life became so boring, and I got stuck in a never-ending soul-sucking routine after living there for a few years.
It’s a shockingly safe
place for tourists and residents alike.
It’s a little behind
Abu Dhabi was ranked by some statistics the safest city in the world.
This is one of the best things about living in the UAE. It’s almost impossible
to get robbed or harassed even when it’s late at night. I’ve rarely heard of
such incidents. Even when you lose stuff you almost always find them soon after.
They might even be delivered back to you. I’ve lost my phone so many times and
I got it back every time. I even lost my wallet once for a couple of hours in a
public place and it had about 1000 $ inside. I later found out that it was
handed to the security guards who counted my money and gave it back to me with
everything still intact.
There is a huge gap
between the poor and the rich in Dubai. AN EXTREMELY HUGE ONE.
Although this is very
common in many parts of the world, I believe in Dubai and in the UAE
in general the gap is very big between the rich and the poor that you cannot notice it after spending some time there. A 30 minutes drive can separate
some of the richest neighborhoods from the poorest.
Dubai is a place where
you’ll never feel at home unless you are an Emirati who’s born and bred there.
Some ex-pats love the
place, and whenever they’re confronted with a choice they always choose to live in Dubai, but even then they’ll always be foreigners no matter how much they
feel at home.
Everyone, apart from
the locals, is expected to leave the moment they stop working. You could spend
your whole life living and work in UAE but you can never retire and
permanently settle there.
There are exceptions
of course and some people can pertain visas through other methods, but
that’s not a common situation.
The city, if you let
it, will change you in ways you never imagined
The most common trait
people in Dubai share is the pursuit of wealth. Almost everyone’s here for that
mere purpose. Making money and getting rich seems to be the ultimate goal for
most.
If you’re not into
that you won’t adapt easily in Dubai, and that’s what happened to me. I was
forced to move to Dubai by my family in late 2012 because the situation was
extremely bad back home, and I struggled a lot at first. I’ve gotten used to it
eventually. I made friends and found a community to belong to, but that wasn’t
easy. It took me years to find that.
The dark side is that
the experience changed me in ways I’m not proud of.
I was a nicer, calmer,
and generally a more positive person before moving there, but I had come across
so many opportunists, gold diggers, greedy individuals, and selfish coworkers
that I lost a little more faith in humanity, and I became doubtful of any
stranger, I meet as opposed to how friendly and trusting I was before. That
indeed was a necessity to survive I believe, but I hate that I had to change in
this way.
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