Five Star Living? Not quite..

It wouldn't be fair to write about life in the UAE if I didn't also let you in on some of the frustrations, confusions and make-me-almost-cry scenarios that are part of every day living in a developing country.

Though Dubai is well-known (read last post) for cutting-edge construction, building islands from scratch, and 7 star hotels, the country as a whole has only been rich for 40 years and didn't start formally educating people outside the mosques until th e1960's. That said, you can begin to understand that even though you get world class service when you pay five star prices, every day living is far from a five star experience.

Take the roads as an example. Eight lane toll-ways exist, with dirt and sand roads feeding into them, and truly maniacal drivers urge you out of their lane by flashing their lights, tailing you within inches and then passing at deadly high speeds. I honestly feel as if I've been harassed on the road sometimes, by people I've never met.


And we've been trying to buy a car for a month, but to do this, we need to provide paper checks to the dealer, written and post-dated for the duration of our car loan. Sounds crazy? But our check books got lost in the mail, a major religious holiday closed the bank for several days, and in the mean time, the car we want has been sold.


Then, making my life ever so much simpler, my mobile phone stopped working suddenly, because unbeknownst to me, I purchased a 'tourist plan', and my 'tourist phone number' expired without warning. The funny part is that it took three calls to tech support, and three visits to the phone store to confirm that I would need to change my phone number. So now I've got to alert the kids school, utilities, and my scant new friends of my new details.

On top of all this, the UAE started a new ID program, under which all of us, including the kids, must get a biometric id card, with eye and fingerprints embedded in fancy chips. The government issued a Dec 31 deadline, then closed their offices for religious holidays. So after the holidays, Billy got in line at 5:30 in the morning to get appointments for us all, and they gave appointments out to 80 guys. Billy was 90th in line. We've come to find out that most of the time when the government scares people with deadlines and required inititiatives, they back off, without exception, when they realize that their own offices have insufficient manpower to handle the request.

So as Billy is becoming more 'ZEN' by the day, I continue to dig in to my steering wheel and scratch my head over the absurdities of 2 star Emirati living.