 |
| 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.
Also Read: 2021 में अपने ब्लॉग के साथ पैसा कैसे कमाएं | How to Make Money with Your Blog in 2021
 |
| 18 Ways to Earn Money Online from Home Without Investment |
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.
0 Comments