Gulf Experience - Life in UAE

By: krishol

Life is full of surprises, one I’m facing now is living in a place, which I’ve not even given a thought about. But now I’m enjoying the suprises and started dreaming of my life in this place. It’s been a year; I am going through ups n downs, facing different situations, experiencing bad and good surprises, those I never dreamt and gave a second thought, on my 26 yeas of life timeline.

I am in Dubai, a well developed city- with huge planned infrastructures. My early days in Dubai were horrifying. Every time, I used to think to head back to my motherland. But, as days passed away, I got used to- on all those unexpected surprises-the first timers, and started adapting to whatever came my way. On my one year stay here, I met people, experienced different situations- all those, the good ones and the bad ones. And those bad people and bad situations gave me the lessons to adjust on my own and by myself which were against the way they wanted me to be. They are still making me stronger day by day. And, now it’s my daily routine to face surprises but along with it I’m dreaming to have a good life in this place. The only reasons, it’s planned developments and it’s civilization.

Yes, within this unexpected surprises by my side, I still have a ray of hope on having a life here. There is nothing on me to have such hope except the life trend here and how people are moving through. Indeed, Dubai is a very nice place in terms of developments and civilization, it can be compared with any developed country all over the world. But all my frustration comes from the ATTITUDE OF THE PEOPLE here. These is one of my bad experience. UAE is an Arabic country, but majority of the people are the cheap manpower from all over the world, especially South Asian. Usually, we South Asian people always care about others more then required and we use others mistake as the ladder for the career growth, this is making us cheap all over the world and this is the biggest disappointment, which can be seen here. I am not saying all the South Asian people are like this but the majority of the people are same. Because of our cheap attitude, we don’t get better paid which we deserve and we are discriminated on our job. For the same job, usually South Asian people gets one third pay, that of what other nationality gets here in UAE. This happens not only in UAE but all over the Middle East.

To have a smart life in UAE, especially, for South Asian people; I came through two factors which each individual must have or learn. The first one is “GULF EXPERIENCE”, I am still not finding the exact answer – what it means. In most of the cases, your “GULF EXPERIENCE” counts more then your expertise in your professionalism. No matter how expert one is- in their professionalism, if they don’t have the “GULF EXPERIENCE”, they are like flower without fragnance. If “GULF EXPERIENCE” is fragnance for the flower of the professional life in UAE, then I am adding fragrance on my flower.

And the second factor to live smartly in UAE is, the secret South Asian formula passed to me by one Indian guy. And the formula goes like this “You don’t have to work smart, just Cover Your Ass, you’ll be smart enough”, and which I realized is the ultimate formula to live smartly in UAE.

Life is full of suprises, and living with surprises in developed country has certainly made me start to think about having a good life by myself here.