Popagandhi

Hi. You’ve made it. You now live in the promised land where milk and honey runneth over… supposedly. It’s full of opportunities and possibilities. The Middle East at your feet. The world not too far away. But here’s what will really happen, and there’s no avoiding it.

You’ll never stop talking about rent.
Funny. Shouldn’t the idea of rent be like all those other things you do monthly but never discuss, like trimming your fingernails or going for a wax? If you live in Dubai you’ll talk about it non-stop. Before you get here, you’ll be trying to find a decently-priced place to live. Good luck, because so are tens of thousands of us. At any one time. When you find that place to rent, there’s a eight out of ten chance that you’ll be doing this again because there will always be something fundamentally wrong about where you’re living in. (1) Sleazy landlords (2) heart-stopping new expenses you suddenly have to pay for (3) sleazy something or other. Every possible drama to do with living in Dubai has to do with rent. But once you get here, a little microchip gets implanted in your head. You’ll never be able to stop talking about it. How much is rent in this place? That place? How many rooms? How many people in it? The landlord is awful, too? It’s like going to a party and finding out they only play Shakira (which, by the way, happens in Dubai). Oh, and get used to the idea of spending 50% to 75% of your salary on rent.

All your ideas about urban planning and the lay of the land will slowly be replaced by the names of property developments and the malls around them.
Dubai is a badly laid out city. Most structures and neighbourhoods didn’t even exist two years ago. As a white-collar expat, you’re quite likely to be headed for the other side of Dubai — New Dubai. As the car/taxi takes you down Sheikh Zayed Road, which you will no doubt traverse daily from now on, note that the entire stretch of skyscrapers from here to the end of Dubai didn’t even exist five years ago. The neighbourhoods are mostly new. There is no history or sense of time and place. In the place of what we know as the landmarks of neighbourhoods and the families that live there, brace yourself for… property developers and the new and not-so-new (by Dubai standards anyway) neighbourhoods they conjure out of thin air. You only need to remember one thing: they all look the same, even if they come in different configurations. The Greens. The Springs. Discovery Gardens. Green Community. International City. Every single suburb will be vaguely hell-ish and there will be no litter on the floor. They will all have tree-lined boulevards that make you think you’re in the Truman Show, and there will be enough space for exactly one SUV. Two, if you’re slightly further up the ladder and have enough to rent your own pad by the year instead of ‘renting the room by the month with five other people’.

When it comes to directions, and you’ll be spending most of your time dealing in the reception and dispensation of directions and related activities (such as following them and getting lost), this peculiar quirk of urban planning will shine through. Unlike any other city in the world, you’ll be dealing with names that don’t make any sense at all. It’s likely to be between Interchange Three and Four, take a turn off Al Wasl into 9C, turn right again into 40A; or more likely, if you go past Wafi (a mall) and keep heading straight past Festival City (another mall), take a right into the area of Dubai Mall (the biggest mall at the moment) and then…. or past the Greens, Marina, Springs, Discovery Gardens, (insert any other soulless residential community).

If you look vaguely Russian or Eastern European, and you have boobs, you’ll start thinking of making Not For Sale placards. Or you’ll just give up on the idea of nightlife, in general.
Enough said.

Actually, if you have boobs at all…
You’ll catch on quite quickly that you’re generally an object to be looked at and pretty soon you won’t even notice anymore. Men outnumber women by something like three to one. The majority of this surplus men have zero chance at romance because they tend to have been shipped here by the planeloads and set to work in gruelling conditions and have little in terms of leisure time or personal space. Most will have zero contact with the fairer sex. They’re still human after all, and in a city that pretends it doesn’t have fleshly needs, they are found on the beach every weekend looking longingly at women. It’s a little creepy, but understandable. Elsewhere, if you’re female, prepare to be accosted by men in just about any imaginable situation, even professional ones. Taxi drivers will do and say bizarre things (like if you book a taxi, they get your phone number and they will use it inappropriately; I also receive countless marriage proposals, usually from that country north of India). I feel more inconspicuous in the streets of Ahmedabad than I do in certain parts of this city. And it’s not how you dress either, because I know Muslim women who are completely covered and still they complain, “what on earth are they looking at?” I’m still wondering.

You become your job.
This is the most work-oriented society I’ve ever known. For someone from East Asia to say that is a pretty big deal. For this reason though, many people stick around because it is true — you do get professional opportunities at a level you wouldn’t elsewhere, in many fields. But it also comes at a cost. It’s for this reason that I’m not getting in the swing of the city either, because… God knows I can’t do ‘jobs’. I’ll never complain about Singapore’s mechanical drones ever again.

You’ll quickly wisen up to the idea that money doesn’t talk, it shouts.
And it’s not a nice sound. Wow. How do I even begin to convey the true extent of this? Capitalism on steroids is one way. Unreserved passion for money is another. Money really is everything here, is all I can say. Even if you like the sound and smell of money, you should really come live here for a while and see if it doesn’t sicken you just a little bit.

You’ll feel like you’re in school all over again.
Not as much for the educational value of living here (which is plenty, there’s plenty to learn and un-learn and re-learn, daily). It’s more like you’re likely to run into so many issues about your personal life you’ll wonder why it’s anybody’s business at all. No matter what. If you’re single but attached, your landlord will decide that your boyfriend cannot come visit you because… it’s immoral. If you’re married, and your friend of the opposite sex comes to visit, your wife will have to come downstairs to get her with you just so that the security guys don’t think you’re cheating. True stories, all.) Your landlady will say, that boy who was here? Did he stay over? He’s not allowed to! The other girls will complain! (But nobody really cares, only she does.) You’ll spend a lot of time just sneaking around, answering unwanted questions even your mother won’t think to ask you. Just because.

And one day they will decide that it’s immoral for you, as a single expat, to live in a villa with other unmarried expats (even if they’re all in different rooms). And all of a sudden, the only affordable accommodation option will disappear when they come around to kick you out.

You’ll keep going to the same places.
The same brunch, the same people, the same Barasti, the same bars, the same… everything is the same. Even if they have a different name, even if they’re new. They’ll be the same old high price and similar quality (i.e. low). It’s just like their buildings: expensive, but ultimately tasteless and pointless. Same with the majority of its restaurants and bars.

Everyone leaves.
If Dubai is wondering why nobody stays at all, it comes down to this. Dubai ultimately treats its foreign talent (that’s almost 85% of the people in the city) as temporary guests. It doesn’t matter if you’ve been here for a month, ten, or fifty years. You’re welcome to leave at any time; you’re always a number, you’re always replaceable. Cities are not one way streets, and you can’t buy love with money. The Dubai deal isn’t even as lucrative as it used to be anymore. Rent is grossly expensive (you’d think London was cheap in comparison), and salaries simply aren’t scaling. There’s a blatant disregard for people’s needs. I know of companies within my area whose honchos have cut jobs, and reduced salaries dramatically, then appeared in brand new Maseratis. Laws and general behaviour on labour and employment are stuck in the Middle Ages. And the current economic situation — the one we’re told we’re doing a marvellous job in (because the media makes Singapore media look like a free press) — is making this harder than it already is. At an interview a few days ago, the HR manager of a large shipping company told me off the record that when he sent his employee to get his residence visa cancelled, he went at five in the morning and he was #300 in line. Something’s definitely changed. Everyone is suddenly talking about leaving, even the ones who were planning to stay for a couple of years. Not even for presumed opportunities elsewhere — just needing to leave.

I know I am. I have seventy days to go here, and yet those seventy days still seem like they’ll be the longest seventy days of 2009.

Let’s just come out and say it: I fucking hate Dubai. I never thought I’d say this about any place in the world, but I won’t care very much if I never came back to this hellhole ever again in my life. I came here with zero expectations, and yet I’ve been miserable ever since I got here. Despite trying for months to try to find one thing that might make me change my mind, I haven’t found it. All the things that it has going for it are quite easily replaceable. I’m displeased with available dining options and have taken to not eating: at the high end you pay over and beyond Michelin star prices for completely mediocre fare, at the middle end you get average factory-quality food, and at the low end are all Indian restaurants from Chennai anyway. There are a few okay restaurants, but if you take your food as seriously as I do, you’re going to be miserable. In short, I find Dubai completely unlivable. The only thing I have left going for me here is a trip I intend to take to Yemen, if that’s the last thing I do here, because I don’t think I’ll be back in this part of the world for a long time. I feel like I’m losing my mind here. I want to punch something every single day I’m here, and when I head back here after brief spells abroad… I literally cry. I’m sorry, but I don’t see the allure. Am I missing something?