My love-hate relationship with Dubai

  DUBAI, United Arab Emirates
Monday, July 2, 2007

Well everybody...it's over for real this time.  The semester's over, and now I'm going back to Cincinnati for the rest of my life.  I'm kind of sad about this.  And kind of not.

Things I will miss about Dubai:

1.  Always being warm enough

2.  Shiny skyscrapers!

3.  Being able to cut to the front of the line on buses...and also that sense of moral outrage when a man sits in the Ladies' section (will I really miss this?)

4.  Watching construction (which actually gets done!) of the Burj, and virtually everything else

5.  Actually liking and respecting the leaders of the country

6.  Sheikh Zayed Road, and being able to say things like, "I was walking/sitting on Sheikh Zayed", or "We have to take Sheikh Zayed", or "Sheikh Zayed is on your left!"

7.  Being able to walk through construction zones and not get in trouble, and walk through virtually anything else.

8.  Swarming rich people who give you free stuff ("My driver will take you")

9.  Knowing the exact layout of the city

10. Being no more than four hours away from India, Europe, Turkey, Africa, the rest of the Middle East...and virtually everywhere else (except the USA)

11. Safely being able to take rides from strangers

12. Conversation starter: "Where are you from?"  The world is smaller than you think

13. Being able to walk to the beach--curse inland Cincinnati and its filthy river!

14. Haggling and student discounts, and automatically being a favored student for attending AUD...

15. ...and the fact that the picture of the Sheikh and I on my phone actually means something to the people here.  Nobody's going to know who he is when I return home.  And I'm sorry for that.

16. High standard and low cost of living...and NO TAXES.

17. A non-stagnant economy--Creativity, potential, opportunity, and growth.

18.  Global news

19. My friends: Ahmad the restaurant guy, Julia, Tayebeh, Muhammad the Omani, Thayr, Pegah, Jamal, Sattar, Komail, the Saudis, Anwer, Marshia, Zia, Sharan, Nad, Nakisa, Khalifa, the guys who helped me out when I got locked out of my room, and Sheikh Mohammed, who isn't actually my friend per se.

Thayr

Komail is weird

Me

Zia

This might be copyrighted.

Pegah

Things I will NOT miss about Dubai:

1.  Getting stood up!

2.  Waiting for hours in the scorching heat for a bus

3.  And being poor enough to have to take a bus in general

4.  Being paralyzed Friday mornings

5.  Getting outraged over the crime reports in 7 DAYS (although I will miss reading 7 DAYS)

6.  Having to run the border and pay to do it.

7.  Racism, classism, nativism, and other forms of arrogance and degradation

8.  Officious security guards!

9.  Flying into a rage at people who don't understand the Middle East, and call the Emirates a "third world country"...no wait.  That's not going away.

10.  "Are you from Russia?"

11. Superficiality and showing off!  Phoniness and self-aggrandizement!  People with really shiny cars who withdraw thousands and thousands of dollars from the ATM and make me wait in line!

12. The huge discrepencies in wealth between the ultra-rich, and the ultra-poor, and very little room in the middle.

13. And discrepencies between what the law states and what people actually get away with.  Hedonism and hypocrisy, and me being forced to use the slanderous word "immoral"


There.  I think that takes care of it. 

Anyway, I'd like to stay here really, because I've actually started to build something of a "life" here...but I'm also ready to come home.  I really am.  I want to talk to my family and tell stories to people who actually care.  I'm tired of my travelpod. 

I'd like to smell the rain again and see green trees for a while...it's been a long time. 

I'd like to be able to walk outside without that feeling of dread like how we feel in the winter in Cincinnati. 

Although it makes me sad to leave, and I feel like there's still more I could have and ought to have done, I guess hindsight is 20-20 and there's no stopping that feeling.  I've got great pictures I want to share, and all sorts of insights into life in other parts of the world (we're all more alike than we are different), and now I know I can come back any time and be able to meet people I know all over the region.  Although I don't want to come back to our stagnant little economy in Southern Ohio, inside a city that is rotting away at the core, and I don't want to have to start working a crap job for a living, paying rent, going to school for yet another year, and living alone, I am ready to do it nonetheless.  I'm grateful for my time here, and I think it's my time to go.

I'm READY!!