Chapter 18: Settling into Dubai

Oh hi, good to see you again! It’s been a few months since we ran into each other at that Super Target. How are things? Have you been working out? You look great. Hope that ointment worked.

As for us, Rachel and Lily and I moved to Dubai in October. My intention was to blog each week, but it looks like I’m about *checks watch* 17 weeks behind. Let’s catch up – I’ll try to make it quick.

My company had requested we move to Dubai, as plans to open a new office in London were on hold. Upon arrival, I dutifully re-learned how to put on adult clothes with buttons every day and walk to an office and sit in a chair for nine hours. Sometimes the other people there would make noises at me with their mouths, and I had to process their meaning and make noises back at them, in a primitive form of communication. (It was exhausting at first but I eventually got the hang of it.)

When I returned home each night, Rachel, having sat in a 400 square foot hotel room by herself all day, would often also want to participate in this “talking”. She confided that during fits of afternoon boredom she would occasionally attempt it with our dog, with little or no intelligible response.

My boss had been kind enough to pay for our first month’s hotel rental in Dubai. The 6-month long World Expo began in October, drying up any remaining short-term rentals in an already-overheated market, and we actually struggled to find anything downtown which allowed pets at all.

This would be a recurring theme throughout our time in the UAE. Many Muslims believe that dogs are haram – ritually impure – and are not allowed to touch them. We quickly got used to people jumping back out of the elevator after looking down and seeing us standing in the corner with Lily. Our hotel was advertised as pet-friendly, but after a week the manager told me I couldn’t take Lily through the lobby or common areas, or on the regular elevators anymore, as we were terrifying some of the guests. We were relegated to the service elevator, and the back alley that it led to.

Nice balcony view though.

We settled into a routine during the week, and on the weekends we’d try to do at least one “tourist thing”. We went to the souks, markets for gold and spices…

…then paid 30 cents to take the abra, a small motorized water taxi, across the Dubai Canal to the old town (which isn’t that old – Dubai was established as a fishing village just a few hundred years ago).

And of course everything for miles around was done in the figurative shadow of the tallest building in the world, the Burj Khalifa. On December 2, UAE Day, it was lit up with colors of the UAE flag.

The “Wings of Mexico” sculpture in front of the Burj was a great spot to take pictures.

To phrase another way, it was a great spot to watch heavily made-up 20-year-old girls squeeze into ballroom gowns and argue with their frustrated camera-toting boyfriends about which precise pose would create the best angle for her new Instagram post. Rachel and I never tired of walking by the dozens of people who were waiting in line for this photo opportunity while trying not to become vocally frustrated at whatever amateur photography quibble was currently taking place on the steps of the sculpture.

We took a 30-minute cab ride to the Expo, saw a few of the 200-plus country pavilions, bought some overpriced water, and left thinking it was impressive on the level of, say, seeing a really cool driftwood tree on the beach, but not so much the “greatest showcase of human brilliance and achievement”, as claimed.

We went to the Dubai Marina…

…where Rachel had to restrain me from swimming across the canal to party on the world’s coolest-looking boat.

As the only American in my office, I took personal days for Thanksgiving and the following day. Rachel and I searched unsuccessfully for a turkey in the local grocery stores, and settled for a Turkish restaurant. (We thought this incredibly clever at the time.)

I’m sure a thought that has always rattled around in your brain is, “Someone should make a gigantic empty picture frame that’s hundreds of feet tall, and let me walk around in it.”

If so, Dubai has you covered, and honestly it was one of our more memorable experiences. The bottom of the top edge is made of special tempered glass that you can walk on.

Assuming, of course, that vertigo isn’t an issue.

Camel racing is a big industry in the Middle East: prize purses can top $2 million for big races, and stud camels have been sold for close to $10 million. Rachel and I went to a small local race at the Dubai Camel Race Track, where there was plenty of entertainment, but (presumably) no ten million dollar camels.

For thousands of years, “the Sport of Sheiks” used four-year-old boys to ride and direct the camels, often starving the boys to be as light as possible. About 20 years ago the “robot jockey” was developed to address these obvious human rights issues, and Qatar and the UAE have since banned human jockeys in favor of a small mechanical whip attached to the camel’s back and controlled by operators driving SUVs on a paved track alongside the camels as they run.

After the gate was lifted, usually one or two camels each race would become confused as to why they were out there, necessitating somewhat comical maneuvers to clear the track and recover them from sprinting in discombobulated circles.

The handlers were also kind enough to let us get up close and personal with the animals. We were some of the few non-Arabs there, and I think they were happy to share this important part of their culture with us.

After our initial month-long paid rental ran out, we were on our own to find housing. Unfortunately, and unbeknownst to us, Dubai is a hugely popular travel destination for basically all of Europe during the winter. This applies no more so than over New Year’s Eve, when the glitterati compete to pay $2,000 per head for a restaurant table within viewing distance of the famous Burj Khalifa fireworks. Hotel rates were jacked up accordingly, and our price ceiling rose higher and higher as AirBnbs and vacation rentals were snatched away before we could nod in agreement and click the “Reserve Now” button.

We were hesitant to sign a full one-year lease, as we were getting an increasingly strong feeling that Dubai wasn’t where we wanted to live full-time. The Instagram, party, gym-tan-laundry, stay-up-until-4-a.m., Louis Vuitton, Lamborghini lifestyle was fun to watch for a bit but definitely didn’t match our personality.

(Seriously, there are dedicated Lamborghini spaces in front of the Dubai Mall and the major hotels. These come complete with uniformed men waving microfiber brushes, bustling back and forth to wipe dust off the shiny paint. If you have a nice Ferrari, they’ll usually let you park there as well, but the really interesting part for this southern boy is that pickup trucks are so rare that driving a jacked-up F-150 will often get you an entry pass.)

I – once– stayed up partying until 4 a.m. with my much younger coworkers, and taxied home by myself as they headed to another club to watch the sun rise. I then slept for approximately 135 hours, and woke to the unbelievably exquisite sight of a 64-ounce orange Gatorade and a bottle of Advil left on the nightstand by my thoughtful wife.

Anyway, back to the point, we didn’t think Dubai was for us long-term, particularly with 120-degree summer days sitting not far over the horizon. So we closed our eyes and swallowed hard and signed a 3-month lease for a 1BR/1.5BA apartment in downtown Dubai at a price – $8,000 a month – which made me squeak audibly and inadvertently whenever my brain tried to process it. My effective solution, ultimately, was to quit trying.