ESL Blogs

Story About My Painting - What The Unexpected Things To Expect In Dubai

I did this painting in August last year. The painting is about the Dubai Creek.

The place where my colleagues and I used to spend our weekend night. Perhaps this is the most authentic Arabian spot which still remain as it is.Suddenly I thought about why don’t  I write about what I know about this place. Certainly about those things I found out which I never thought before about this place.

People were always asked me how does this country like. Of course they want to know more than what they have been seen in TV. Their questions going to be like “Is it true that…” or “I heard that…” or something like that.

Well, previously when I heard about Dubai, I was just picturing a Middle Eastern city with a lot of skyscrapers and Arabian community wearing traditional khandura and abaya wandering around (as how they portrayed in movies). But the time I came here, I noticed there were other unexpected things I had never thought about and never been told to me.

Here are some of unexpected things I saw and experienced;

1. Speaking English never being as complicated as here. I tried to communicate in proper English, but it was ended with I have been ‘forced’ to speak broken English in order to make the others understand. (I wish to write a separate blog for this!)
2. Well, related to no.1, in some places I rather feel like I am in Karachi, Dhaka or in Manila than in an Arab city. Where all the Arabs have gone? Later I learned that these places have been dominated by foreign workers who live in certain particular area. Thus make them dominant in that place.
3. Related to no.2, only 20% of population in this country is locals! That means for every local, we are going to see 4 foreigners. This is caused by mass migration of foreigner to this country since 1992. The country needs to import lots of workers for their rapid development. I wonder how does this country going to be when everybody has gone back to their places.
4. Earlier I thought this is a desert. But I was quite surprised when the temperature goes down to 10 celsius degree in every January. Why I never been told about this? I thought a desert should be sunny! Need thicker clothes urgently.
5. They told me to forget about bringing umbrella. The rain shall only be twice a year. Yeah, by right. But it was suddenly a thunder stormed rain for a week in November 2008, where whole city got flooded, and so many people were stranded in the middle because we don’t have umbrella.
6. Address is rarely used, probably because everybody has their own P.O box. Some streets have no name at all. Which mean if we are using delivery service, we have to mention on the addressee by for example, “behind national school” or “the second street after mall turn left”. That could make a longer address in case of the premise is further from main road.
7. It is a common to see a mall full of gold shops. I mean a mall with about 100 to 200 gold shops, also known here as ‘Gold Souk’. They are about 35 ‘Gold Souks’ around this country. The remarkable thing is that there is not a single security guard can be found in any of this shop. Yet gold robbery never been heard here. Imagine a gold shop in other places (don’t have to mention where) they need CCTV system, alarm system, armed guard, steel grille, 5 layer security and so on and yet still get robbed!
8. Nobody ever heard about snatch-thieve, or robbery, or car hijacking in this country. Some of local does not know what is snatch-thieve! Literally policemen have not much work to do. Oh yeah! The policemen over here are driving BMW 5 series as their patrol car.  
9. Nobody seen anybody got to live under the bridge, or put up squatters along railway line, sleeping on footway or anything like that. But sometimes we spent a night sleeping on public bench just to enjoy the weather!
10. I had never seen a beggar. Probably the only country I ever being without seeing such people.
11. This is interesting. I was walking passing by a mosque. Then, came a local guy stop his car at the car park and leave it there unattended with the engine still on. Not in worries at all. He went off into the mosque for about 10 minutes, then happily came back to the car, entered and drove away. Nobody touched his car.
12. We used to pay government tax, entertainment tax, custom duty, 10 percent plus plus and all sorts of tax elsewhere. But over here, everything is just tax free. We just pay the end price is how it shown. 

Maybe there are more, but for now, these are what I can think about. Dear readers, are there anything I left out? Anyway, Dubai is an interesting place.