Coming to Dubai Part the Second

Part the second
Being terribly senior I had lots of help at work for people sorting stuff out for me. Little actual work you understand but lots of help for personal stuff. My first sign of this – and of the country’s approach to labour generally – was the discovery of our Office Boy. Nawaz was a highly intelligent reasonably well educated Pakistani who was making a better living here in Dubai serving me coffee, tea and running errands than he ever could have made back home. What a waste. In an American Corporation he would have been promoted a long time ago since he was obviously smarter and better than many of the senior management of the company. But it doesn’t work like that here and he remains an Office Boy. His is a micro-example of one of the problems as a whole with this country that we are trying to fix but is very deeply ingrained.
Anyway people took care of the paperwork for me and Yvonne. Blood tests taken, visas applied for and given, bank account set up and credit cards arranged, phone & internet, satellite TV, cleaners for the apartment, driver’s licence application – someone arranged it all and I just went where I was led. The only one I did mostly alone and away from my desk was the driver’s licence. Though I had a driver in case I got lost. You can’t trust an executive out alone.
Otherwise people came to me, presented me with papers and stuff eventually happened.
My personal favourite was the curtains and upholstery for the apartment. Most of the hotel’s furniture and thus also the attached apartments’ is made on site by local carpenters. So we got to choose curtain material and upholstery from a huge catalogue and then someone went away and made it. At this time my wife was visiting her family for a couple of days and tidying up loose ends of affairs in the UK. The upholstery people would NOT let me choose the materials deeming it to be my wife’s job. So they made up a full set of temporary stuff in plain beige for me to use till she got back. Then when she chose what she wanted they ripped the old stuff out (we are talking 3 weeks here!) and replaced it.