← The Balance Theory
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Since moving to Dubai three years ago, I get asked so many questions. Isn't it too hot? What's the visa process like? I'm expecting my first baby, so everyone's wondering what it's like to have a kid here. Is it family friendly? Do you like living there? Is it as fake as what they say? So today I want to compile all those questions I've had over the years and give you my very honest review of what it's been like living in Dubai as an Australian expat and as someone who has been here working both as an employee for a company and, and who has now set up her own business and diying it all myself. If we haven't met before, my name's Erica. I'm the host and founder of this podcast, the Balance Theory, and I also work as a consultant lawyer here in Dubai. So as I said, I moved over here and I was working for a law firm. I was an employee. That was one experience. And then in the last 12 months I have left sponsored myself and set up my own company. So I feel like I've kind of had like a very broad version of Dubai. And in and amongst that, obviously there are so many personal experiences and things that just come up that you learn along the way. So I'm going to compile that all for you guys today and answer all the questions that have been coming through into 13 honest facts about living in Dubai. And I'm not going to leave anything else. It's going to be the hard truth, all the great things and the worst things. And ultimately, whether I would recommend moving here or not. The first thing I want to say is that there are many different versions of Dubai. You have the version that I think a lot of people see on tv, which is this very blingy, materialistic side of the city, which I completely understand. I'm not going to deny the fact that this city is one of luxury compared to basically most of the world. It really touts that luxurious, materialistic flair that's undeniable. But I just want to acknowledge that is not the only side of Dubai. That's a side you see when you're in the really beautiful hotels and when you're in the city outside of that, there are golfing estates, there are beaches, natural beaches, there are fitness communities. And one thing that I've learned is that you can really experience whatever version of Dubai you want. So you can come here as a tourist and have that high flying, beautiful restaurant, luxurious hotel kind of experience. You can live here and, and Be someone who cares about your health and join health clubs. There are run clubs, there are beautiful cafes, there are amazing gyms. You can be the kind of person who's in the entrepreneurial tech space. And there's so many communities and events for that, and there's hubs and founder networks and bits and pieces like that. So there are so many different versions of Dubai. I think that you are going to get whatever you put into it, right? You're going to get whatever version you kind of plug into, and you can plug and play in many different versions. But I think just branding it as this materialistic, luxurious city really misses the heart of what it is, which is it's an Expat City. There's 95% expats. And that expat culture has just such a different energy to anything I've ever experienced before. Ultimately, you can find the community that you're looking for. Number two, this is my favorite one. People always say to me, how do you live there? Or why would I travel there? Because there's no history and there's no culture. Okay, I get it. It's 53 years old. How much history do you expect it to have? But let me ask you this. Think of your favorite city in the world. Mine is Rome. It's just this beautiful ancient civilization, marker of time. I just. It's a beautiful place, right? If I could have seen Rome in its first 50 years of existence, when everything was fresh, how amazing would that have been, right? Dubai is just the most recent variation of a city that we've got. And I think it's so cool that we get to witness such a modern city. Like there are no capital cities that are brand new, right? And I just think when you shift your perspective and you appreciate its newness, and then you also think, wow, if I could have visited Rome or Athens or something in its first 50 years, what a cool experience that would have been. It does shift your perspective. Now, of course, if you're the kind of person who likes doing ancient tombs and museums and all of that, Dubai is not going to have that for you. But that's a very touristy way of looking at the city. If you're talking about coming as an expat and living here, it's a very cool place to be. Number three, you may have heard that Dubai is incredibly safe and incredibly clean. And I'm here to confirm both. As a woman living here, I feel genuinely much safer than I do in Australia. You don't have to worry about crime or people breaking in or being attacked. There's a certain code of ethics and morals. You know, obviously it's a religious country, and so the norms and standards are based around Islamic culture, which I think is very respectful, and women are very respected and treated well here. And so as an expat living here, I have not felt any disadvantage being a woman. Not in a professional setting, not in a public setting. Of course, this is my personal experience. I'm not saying it doesn't exist, but on the whole it's very safe. I actually have a friend of mine, she was on the show, she went for a run at 2am and vlogged it just to prove how safe the city was. It's not even something you need to worry about. You know, walking with headphones in the dark, you wouldn't even think twice about it. So it's incredibly safe and it's super clean. Can verify both by the end of the day. Once I've ticked off tasks, replied to emails, kept it all together. Sometimes I need to remind myself that I need a minute to myself too, so. So once everything's done, I grab my Londonderry ice cream, sit on the couch, just me, a spoon and that mmm moment I've been waiting for. It's my little ritual, and honestly, it hits a spot every time. If you haven't carved out a moment just for you today, this is your sign to do it. You deserve it. Number four, a question I get asked a lot is, did you need to learn Arabic to speak in your work setting? The answer is no. English is actually the main spoken language. I. I do think you would be at an advantage, depending on your job, if you did know Arabic. For example, the court system here, it's all the laws, it's all in Arabic, right? So I'm at a disadvantage there, but it's definitely not a roadblocker to me having done work here or you don't need to learn Arabic to live here, Right? Everything is readily available in English and I haven't met a person that doesn't speak English. 5. What's it like to build community? I've actually found this one a bit tough, to be honest, and I think that's because probably before becoming an expat and moving overseas, I had never been in a situation where I had to proactively go out of my way to make friends or build a new community. I came from a suburban city in Australia, Sydney, where my friends were the people I'd grown up with. My social circles were those people that lived close to me or People I'd worked with. Right. It was very organic based on where I was. But when you pick yourself up and you put yourself in a totally new environment where you know no one, you can literally stay at home and stay that way, or you can be proactive and go out and meet people. So you do have to be proactive in meeting people and building community. But what I will say is that people are very friendly because we're all here with the same pain point, shall we say, which is we very unlikely moved with a whole bunch of friends or our family. That is a more rare experience. It's normally just like a couple or an individual person. So when you're meeting people out and about, people want to connect, they want to meet, meet you. It's a very big networking city. The other thing I'll say on this, though, is like, building very deep friendships. And I mean, I have incredible friends at home. My sister, my best friend. I have very deep relationships with that kind of depth. I found a little bit more difficult to build, and it's taken me a lot longer to find people who meet me there. Most people are, I found, a little bit more transitional because people are in and out, they're traveling all the time. You don't get that commitment, at least in my experience, from people like what I've experienced back at home. And of course, that could be a very simple, like the time that it's taken to build those former relationships. But I do find people being a little bit more transient here because they're just coming and going. They don't know how long they're going to be here for, et cetera. So I have found one or two girlfriends that I would put in that very close category, but that was just something that surprised me. So you've got to be very proactive, making friendships and community. People are very, very open. For me personally, building, like, really deep relationships, which is something that's important to me, has taken a lot longer, but I have gotten there after about two, two and a half years. Number six. The traffic is horrendous. Just be very mindful wherever you're going to work, make sure it makes sense for where you live. Because Dubai is kind of like a barbell, they call it. You have, like, downtown, which is where the big Burj Khalifa is. Then you have the marina, and the Palm is kind of near the marina. In between is. And then there's, like, suburbs off the sides. There's a train line that runs in between. So if you're working in one of the big cities, which is where people normally work, you have to either live on the train line or there because the traffic is a nightmare. So keep that in mind if you're thinking of moving here. Number seven, this is a tip for anyone wanting to move or is thinking about moving. One thing my husband and I did was we for the first three months, we Airbnb in three different locations for one month each. And that really helped us get a free feel for what it felt like to live there. So we tried the marina, we tried Business Bay, which is close to downtown, and we tried another area called CityWalk. We actually didn't end up in any of them, but it was a really good practice for us to try and work out what are the feel or the vibes in these different areas. So I'd recommend if you're moving, just do like a three month Airbnb in three different spots that make sense for you and see what you like. Number eight is a little bit about getting a Visa. Is it easy? Uh, so the first time we moved over we actually were both self sponsored. We did our own visas and I looked for work. When I got here it was okay. Like it wasn't any rocket science. But the one thing or one tip I'll give you, they tell you you can pay in cash or card, but you can only pay in a card if it's a local card and you can't get a local card without the Visa. So you can't pay in card. If you've never gotten a visa in Dubai before, it will be cash only. So just keep that in mind because that was a really annoying process when we, we couldn't quite understand what was wasn't very clear. So that's just my tip for anyone doing their own Visa. If your work is sponsoring you to come over, this is not something you probably have to worry about. Number nine, things are very efficient here. But the process of setting up like admin things like your bank account, your mobile phone bills, I found that process to be a little bit tedious. Like it feels a little bit old school how it's all done, but once it's set up, it's super easy and it's just like clockwork, easy every month. But the initial phase for some reason or the admin here is like a little bit of a nightmare. Just feels like a bit backwards. So anyway, just to set your expectation, that's kind of been my experience. 10 question I get asked is, is there a tipping culture? I wouldn't say it's like expected in places I know, like maybe America, it's expected, but it is good practice, especially for service workers. So people that do like home deliveries and stuff like that, it's important to tip them. It's very good practice to tip when you can, but I wouldn't say it's expected, at least from what I've experienced anyway. Number 11, this was something that actually really shocked me. I don't really know how to word this if it's like a class issue or a race issue, but to put it quite blankly, I know for a fact that you get paid a salary based on your passport. So if two people are going for the same job, but one has, let's say, an American passport and the other one has a passport from a lesser developed country, the salary will actually be set different, which was a huge shock to me and I think that is obviously very unfair. But just to set people's expectations, that was something that I found when I moved here and when I entered the corporate world, that was a little bit of a shock. Number 12, this is kind of with going into work and of course this is my experience only in corporate, generally speaking. And I've spoken to a lot of lawyers that work here. You get thrown in the deep end. There's no training rules here. Like in Australia. Like my first day of my job, I had a client meeting at 8:00am and halfway through my boss said, I've got to go to another meeting. You can handle the rest of this. And I'd never done a client meeting before that. So be prepared to be thrown in the deep end. There's no spoon feeding. It kind of is warranted because the salaries are a lot higher here. You know, back in the day when they needed to attract, attract talent, that's why the salaries were a lot higher compared to maybe Australia, UK et cetera. But you work for it, so just set your expectation. And the last one, classic. Isn't it too hot? First of all, there's seasons here as well. So summer, winter, summer is obviously extreme. We live in a desert, it's a city in the middle of the desert. So yes, summer is very, very hot. The rest of the year though, I'd say from like October through to May, the weather is sensational. It is honestly like a perfect spring day every single day. It hardly rains. It's like beach weather all the time. At most in the winter, which is like January, February, December through to February, you're wearing like a jumper in the evening, but that's about it. Right. So is it too hot? Yes. In the summer it's too hot. But here's my kind of having been here for a few years, this is what the way we think about it. That month period between May and September, it's kind of like our winter, right? What do you do in winter? You stay inside. You're not really spending much time outside because it's too cold. It's the same thing here. It's just a couple months in the middle of the year where it is too hot, you're staying inside. Best part is we still have blue skies and sunshine to look at. So it's really not that depressing. And the city is, is built knowing what those times of year are like. There are so many indoor activities. The malls are made for entertainment. There's like a lot of things you can do, right, because obviously they know it's too hot in summer. And to be honest, most people leave in the summer. So the traffic's really good around then. People go to Europe, they go back home. That's quite common. They work remotely for a few months. So there are ways of doing it, you know, that's not, that is not a reason I wouldn't move here. So overall, would I recommend moving to Dubai? 100% yes. I have had a great time being in the city. It's taken me a lot of time to get comfortable here. I kind of thought it would be a two year plan, but then two years in, I'm like, we're kind of just getting started. Me and my husband have like a unique experience, I guess because we both work from home and for ourselves. And so for us, we have to proactively be plugged into community and events and the town here because we could literally just stay at home and do nothing. That's probably all I have time for in today's video. But as I mentioned before, I have my first baby on the way. So if you guys have any questions about becoming a mum or pregnancy or delivery or the kind of hospital system here, any other questions about being an expat, about the city, things you've heard that worry you, anything like that, please let me know. I'd be happy to answer it to the best of my ability. Overall, I think it is a great city where you can make whatever life you want for yourself. There's a lot of opportunity here and there are people here that have moved to create something bigger for themselves. So you're constantly surrounded by not only a city that's growing and evolving and pushing the limit on what's possible. If this back to school season. Talking to your teenager sounds like this. With Boost Mobile, make it sound like this. Come to your Boost store, get a line and take home a tablet for only $99.99. Perfect for staying connected and studying anywhere they're happy and you safe. Visit your nearest boost store. Requires ID verification, new $20 per month tablet plan and $35 device setup fee. Taxes extra, but people who have that mindset. So if you're someone who's been thinking about changing your environment and your circumstances to be somewhere that is going to be fertile for that, I wouldn't even think twice about moving over. So let me know if you have any questions. That's all I have time for today, but I'll see you guys in the next video. Until then, stay balanced.