Daily life in Dubai involves cafes & restaurants and malls – as well as the attractions of the beach and the sun. Our weekend is generally Friday & Saturday though some of the more old fashioned local companies stick to Thursday afternoon and Friday. Friday is like a European Sunday, mostly. Family & friends, eating, drinking and visiting. Saturdays are for shopping and chores.
A huge amount of social life for those of my age group is around bars and restaurants. Good food is incredibly cheap and the choices are endless. Because in practice only hotels have drinks licences the hotels have many more bars and restaurants than a European one would have. Even the Metropolitan where I lived for a long time (4-5 star and a bit run down these days) had a pub, Tex-Mex, Chinese, Indian, Thai-fish market, Italian, Japanese, nightclub and outdoor bar plus snacks at the pool. And a 24/7 coffee shop type restaurant/cafe. Imagine the choices in one of the very big modern places.
Plus streets and malls full of eateries from local fast food (shawarma) to Japanese, dim sum, Lebanese, Georgian, Persian, Russian, German, Macdonalds, Pizza Hut or any other chain you can think of like Dunkin Donuts or Burger King etc, coffee shops from local tea shops with two tables on the pavement to Starbucks and with apparently a preponderance of Canadian ones (Caribou & Second Cup come to mind), shisha bars, French Patisseries and deli sandwiches. The list goes on. But it can be a wonderful experience. And even the tiny backstreet place that we Europeans get so nervous of are scrupulously clean and incredibly friendly.
Most expats miss out on these little places sticking to the hotels and malls. But you really can’t beat a little café with a cup of Turkish coffee and a bunch of elderly Indians who speak better English than I do, endless gossip and a view on a hustling cityscape. It makes all the aggravation of work just disappear.
18 April 2010
Driving: legalised murther & mayhem
Driving in the UAE is an incredible experience. There is NO road rage. Even making rude gestures can get you locked up and deported.
So the amazingly selfish arrogant and stupid driving goes publicly largely uncommented on. We kill a lot of people on the roads. The papers put it down to speed but they are wrong. Speed plays a big part but only because people are so utterly selfish about how they drive.
The Mantra is “I must go first, I must go where I want and when I want and before you”. Consequently even a short line at a traffic light becomes a battleground as people push to the front, ignore lanes, constantly change lanes and tailgate.
And the horn…well if you are at traffic lights the first horn goes off at the lights are changing. Makes a New York minute seem like a lifetime.
It’s hard to convey the selfishness in words – or the self-destructiveness. At the most trivial level, people pushing in to the front of queues or making 4 lanes where only 2 exist slows everyone down – including those pushing in! If they but waited carefully even those who push in to the front would get through more quickly.
At the other end is tailgating at 150kph, lights flashing and overtaking on the inside or on the hard shoulder if you’re a bit slow moving over. Or weaving from lane to lane at full speed to get one car further forward. Or driving the wrong way down a one way street because you don’t want to go round the block. Or never looking in your mirrors. Or not stopping at a junction but pulling straight out into fast moving traffic. Or squeezing between two 70 tonne trucks moving at 100kph so you can exit at the last second rather than pulling in behind. Or ALWAYS pulling in front never behind in case it betrays weakness. And it goes on.
I wonder if this is the only country in the world where people won’t let an Ambulance through!
And lastly … you get extra points for exiting the motorway at the last possible second and making a right angled turn across 7 lanes of fast moving traffic. It’s a macho thing.
I’ve not checked the numbers recently but in 2006 we killed people at about 6 times the rate in the UK. And serious injury much much higher rates.
Many of us make jokes about it. But the truth is the driving culture is murderous. Literally. And the country should be deeply ashamed.
So the amazingly selfish arrogant and stupid driving goes publicly largely uncommented on. We kill a lot of people on the roads. The papers put it down to speed but they are wrong. Speed plays a big part but only because people are so utterly selfish about how they drive.
The Mantra is “I must go first, I must go where I want and when I want and before you”. Consequently even a short line at a traffic light becomes a battleground as people push to the front, ignore lanes, constantly change lanes and tailgate.
And the horn…well if you are at traffic lights the first horn goes off at the lights are changing. Makes a New York minute seem like a lifetime.
It’s hard to convey the selfishness in words – or the self-destructiveness. At the most trivial level, people pushing in to the front of queues or making 4 lanes where only 2 exist slows everyone down – including those pushing in! If they but waited carefully even those who push in to the front would get through more quickly.
At the other end is tailgating at 150kph, lights flashing and overtaking on the inside or on the hard shoulder if you’re a bit slow moving over. Or weaving from lane to lane at full speed to get one car further forward. Or driving the wrong way down a one way street because you don’t want to go round the block. Or never looking in your mirrors. Or not stopping at a junction but pulling straight out into fast moving traffic. Or squeezing between two 70 tonne trucks moving at 100kph so you can exit at the last second rather than pulling in behind. Or ALWAYS pulling in front never behind in case it betrays weakness. And it goes on.
I wonder if this is the only country in the world where people won’t let an Ambulance through!
And lastly … you get extra points for exiting the motorway at the last possible second and making a right angled turn across 7 lanes of fast moving traffic. It’s a macho thing.
I’ve not checked the numbers recently but in 2006 we killed people at about 6 times the rate in the UK. And serious injury much much higher rates.
Many of us make jokes about it. But the truth is the driving culture is murderous. Literally. And the country should be deeply ashamed.
Impressions...One
Impressions…one
Life in the UAE is good. The people are friendly, the environment is safe and you are within easy travelling of some great history and geography. With the exception of housing, life is cheap. Indeed even housing is passably cheap if you don’t insist on living in the expat ghettos.
We have a rather odd multi-racial society. Less than 20% of the population is local. The rest are expats of one hue or another. In fact in Dubai only around 10% of the workforce is local and most of them even now work in Government or Government related business. Not many in the Real World.
About 60% of the population is from the Sub-continent making Indian the dominant culture here – not Emirati. Mostly this is a good thing though it falls apart when it comes to driving (think Mumbai but with bigger and faster cars). Racism is rife but visible tension is non-existent. I think this is because everyone is here voluntarily and however unfair the treatment they are better off than at home.
But as a liberal European it galls to see the treatment that is dished out by race. There is a hierarchy with Emiratis at the top, Europeans (well white skinned as it includes Aussies and South Africans for example) next, other Arabs, Filipinos and then Indians. People doing the same job can have a five or six fold difference in salary depending on race. And as for women…well recently I saw a job advert for “Attractive young European female stewardess to accompany Arab Executive around the world on business trips in his executive jet. Must be unmarried.”
Yet as I said you have no tension on the streets – little fighting and insignificant amounts of protest. And every year till the crash more and more people flocking here. The corporate racism seems not to extend much into daily life though this may well be that different ethnic groups tend to stick together. As true for Brits & Germans as it is for Keralans or Nepalis.
You do occasionally get problems caused by cultural differences. Most Indian cultures are quite passive and hate any kind of conflict or confrontation. Arab culture seems to thrive on a kind of friendly confrontation. Put them together sometimes and it can get out of hand. But rarely seriously so - some yelling and hand waving.
Life in the UAE is good. The people are friendly, the environment is safe and you are within easy travelling of some great history and geography. With the exception of housing, life is cheap. Indeed even housing is passably cheap if you don’t insist on living in the expat ghettos.
We have a rather odd multi-racial society. Less than 20% of the population is local. The rest are expats of one hue or another. In fact in Dubai only around 10% of the workforce is local and most of them even now work in Government or Government related business. Not many in the Real World.
About 60% of the population is from the Sub-continent making Indian the dominant culture here – not Emirati. Mostly this is a good thing though it falls apart when it comes to driving (think Mumbai but with bigger and faster cars). Racism is rife but visible tension is non-existent. I think this is because everyone is here voluntarily and however unfair the treatment they are better off than at home.
But as a liberal European it galls to see the treatment that is dished out by race. There is a hierarchy with Emiratis at the top, Europeans (well white skinned as it includes Aussies and South Africans for example) next, other Arabs, Filipinos and then Indians. People doing the same job can have a five or six fold difference in salary depending on race. And as for women…well recently I saw a job advert for “Attractive young European female stewardess to accompany Arab Executive around the world on business trips in his executive jet. Must be unmarried.”
Yet as I said you have no tension on the streets – little fighting and insignificant amounts of protest. And every year till the crash more and more people flocking here. The corporate racism seems not to extend much into daily life though this may well be that different ethnic groups tend to stick together. As true for Brits & Germans as it is for Keralans or Nepalis.
You do occasionally get problems caused by cultural differences. Most Indian cultures are quite passive and hate any kind of conflict or confrontation. Arab culture seems to thrive on a kind of friendly confrontation. Put them together sometimes and it can get out of hand. But rarely seriously so - some yelling and hand waving.
Coming to Dubai Part the Third
Part the Third
I arrived full of enthusiasm for teaching the best of Anglo-American business practice and combining it with the best of Arabic business practice and helping the country build something special. Four years on I know full well it’s not going to happen any time soon.
The way I got my job over here should explain a lot about how business works – the power the patriarch holds and the lack of planning in business.
I bid via an agency for work as an interim manager on a possible IPO. But I didn’t get it because I was deemed too expensive. But a couple of months later one of the Chairman’s flunkies phoned me and said he’d like to offer me a permanent job working for him directly. Pretty flattering when a gazillionaire phones and asks you to come work for him.
So I did. No proper job description or any real idea of what to do. A salary I would have seen as derisory 15 years earlier. But a Vision of what I wanted to try.
Fine by me as I like exciting. But I hadn’t appreciated (I can be very slow sometimes) that is how the whole company is run – on the Chairman’s whim. When I showed up the other members of the Executive team had no idea of who I was or what I was supposed to be doing and although visibly friendly it is not surprising it took me a while to get close to them!
For the first 2 years here we lived an executive expat lifestyle. I occasionally got to ‘substitute’ for the Chairman at events so was treated like royalty at the Dubai World Cup or the Carreras Concert held by DIFC for example.
But I didn’t do much work of substance. Projects would be cut off unfinished or ideas floated and abandoned or you would be sidetracked for some trivial perceived offence or comeback into favour and work 24/7 for two weeks and then drop the whole thing.
The European Expats used to say it was just Trophy Management and that every local bigwig has a cadre of high level Euro-Managers to parade out in public but Heaven forfend if they try to do anything. Hence the huge number of Europeans here of mediocre ability who have been here for ages and have grand titles but do nothing except drink, shop and play golf. It’s a nice lifestyle if your pride can stand it.
Mine couldn’t.
I arrived full of enthusiasm for teaching the best of Anglo-American business practice and combining it with the best of Arabic business practice and helping the country build something special. Four years on I know full well it’s not going to happen any time soon.
The way I got my job over here should explain a lot about how business works – the power the patriarch holds and the lack of planning in business.
I bid via an agency for work as an interim manager on a possible IPO. But I didn’t get it because I was deemed too expensive. But a couple of months later one of the Chairman’s flunkies phoned me and said he’d like to offer me a permanent job working for him directly. Pretty flattering when a gazillionaire phones and asks you to come work for him.
So I did. No proper job description or any real idea of what to do. A salary I would have seen as derisory 15 years earlier. But a Vision of what I wanted to try.
Fine by me as I like exciting. But I hadn’t appreciated (I can be very slow sometimes) that is how the whole company is run – on the Chairman’s whim. When I showed up the other members of the Executive team had no idea of who I was or what I was supposed to be doing and although visibly friendly it is not surprising it took me a while to get close to them!
For the first 2 years here we lived an executive expat lifestyle. I occasionally got to ‘substitute’ for the Chairman at events so was treated like royalty at the Dubai World Cup or the Carreras Concert held by DIFC for example.
But I didn’t do much work of substance. Projects would be cut off unfinished or ideas floated and abandoned or you would be sidetracked for some trivial perceived offence or comeback into favour and work 24/7 for two weeks and then drop the whole thing.
The European Expats used to say it was just Trophy Management and that every local bigwig has a cadre of high level Euro-Managers to parade out in public but Heaven forfend if they try to do anything. Hence the huge number of Europeans here of mediocre ability who have been here for ages and have grand titles but do nothing except drink, shop and play golf. It’s a nice lifestyle if your pride can stand it.
Mine couldn’t.
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.
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.
Coming to Dubai Part the First
Part the First:
I moved to UAE 4 years ago in early 2006. I’m 57, married to Yvonne and no kids and I came to Dubai to work for the Chairman and owner of the A Local Family Group and one of the richest men in the country – the world actually.
I was the Group Director of Strategy and Planning, though in this country titles mean little descriptively and lots socially. So I was one of the most senior directors in one of the biggest local companies with a direct line to the Chairman. This gave me huge amounts of kudos and access but precious little actual power to DO anything – perfectly normal in this country.
I pitched up here with my wife having arrived at 0430 in the morning, met by a car and whisked off to the company’s first hotel, which would be my home for a month or so till my apartment would be ready. This would be in a company residence attached to the hotel and right next door to head office. I would be able to walk to work – the whole commute taking 6 minutes including locking the door and waiting for the lift. We were very centrally located on Sheikh Zayed Road – the main drag through the city – at the Metropolitan Hotel, about equidistant from the new Dubai of the Marina area and the old Dubai of the Creek and Bur Dubai. You could walk (in Winter) to the site of the then new Burj Dubai, soon to be the world’s tallest building and now renamed Burj Khalifah. Emirates Mall (big, posh) was about a 5 min drive or 20 Dirham cab ride (less than GBP3) and outside the rush hour 20 minutes would take you to anywhere in the city. The traffic got worse despite the wonderful roads but it remains a small city even allowing for its phenomenal growth. The traffic is different now the recession has burst the economic bubble.
I must say the apartment was something of a disappointment – as were many aspects of what was promised vs what was delivered. It was a decent one-bed apartment. But it was supposed to be a 2 bed so we could have visitors. It started out as fully serviced with full access to all the hotel’s services but after a few months this all fell away. But the worst thing was it looked over the air-con equipment for the hotel and the noise was highly debilitating. Moreover we were right by the English Pub and the Tex-Mex bar which was one of the two best-known haunts of prostitutes in the country – and the most profitable establishment the company owned. The hypocrisy is stunning. This is a Muslim country after all.
And the roaches…building work nearby and poor pest control meant our ‘Executive Apartments’ were infested with roaches that no amount of spraying seemed to be able to eliminate. We knew the roach guy better than the housemaid!
But this was all fixable over time in various ways and we got on with our life in a new country. Which was great fun.
I moved to UAE 4 years ago in early 2006. I’m 57, married to Yvonne and no kids and I came to Dubai to work for the Chairman and owner of the A Local Family Group and one of the richest men in the country – the world actually.
I was the Group Director of Strategy and Planning, though in this country titles mean little descriptively and lots socially. So I was one of the most senior directors in one of the biggest local companies with a direct line to the Chairman. This gave me huge amounts of kudos and access but precious little actual power to DO anything – perfectly normal in this country.
I pitched up here with my wife having arrived at 0430 in the morning, met by a car and whisked off to the company’s first hotel, which would be my home for a month or so till my apartment would be ready. This would be in a company residence attached to the hotel and right next door to head office. I would be able to walk to work – the whole commute taking 6 minutes including locking the door and waiting for the lift. We were very centrally located on Sheikh Zayed Road – the main drag through the city – at the Metropolitan Hotel, about equidistant from the new Dubai of the Marina area and the old Dubai of the Creek and Bur Dubai. You could walk (in Winter) to the site of the then new Burj Dubai, soon to be the world’s tallest building and now renamed Burj Khalifah. Emirates Mall (big, posh) was about a 5 min drive or 20 Dirham cab ride (less than GBP3) and outside the rush hour 20 minutes would take you to anywhere in the city. The traffic got worse despite the wonderful roads but it remains a small city even allowing for its phenomenal growth. The traffic is different now the recession has burst the economic bubble.
I must say the apartment was something of a disappointment – as were many aspects of what was promised vs what was delivered. It was a decent one-bed apartment. But it was supposed to be a 2 bed so we could have visitors. It started out as fully serviced with full access to all the hotel’s services but after a few months this all fell away. But the worst thing was it looked over the air-con equipment for the hotel and the noise was highly debilitating. Moreover we were right by the English Pub and the Tex-Mex bar which was one of the two best-known haunts of prostitutes in the country – and the most profitable establishment the company owned. The hypocrisy is stunning. This is a Muslim country after all.
And the roaches…building work nearby and poor pest control meant our ‘Executive Apartments’ were infested with roaches that no amount of spraying seemed to be able to eliminate. We knew the roach guy better than the housemaid!
But this was all fixable over time in various ways and we got on with our life in a new country. Which was great fun.
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