You Know That You’ve Been Living in Dubai Too Long When…

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Dubai – fast becoming one of the biggest transit centres on the globe. Millions of people now pass through this Middle Eastern centre each year on the way to somewhere else.

It has undertaken a massive transformation from sandy seaside fishing town to an enormous metropolis where everything is big or where something is being built to become the biggest! As part of this huge economic change, many expats have relocated to Dubai to take advantage of the construction boom because a new building seems to pop into the skyline every week!

To service all of this activity, you need a pretty good airport that can handle a gazillion passengers. Dubai airport is now the second busiest airport in the world, and is expected to overtake Heathrow Airport near London around 2015 to become the busiest flight hub on earth. Whilst most people never leave the Dubai airport, it’s worth getting out and about for a couple of days for a break to check out the things that only Dubai has to offer.

And because of the crazy construction projects going on, hence, there are a number of quirky things about Living in Dubai that are probably unique to this place when compared to the rest of the world!

We’ve all seen some of the impressive engineering feats that have been built/are being built in the United Arab Emirates, and it’s like someone has gone up to an engineer with a blank cheque book and said ‘build anything you want, as long as it’s the biggest and most unique in the world’. I can imagine these techno and construction type geeks would explode with excitement based on the number and magnitude of the engineering projects going on there.

I’m sure there have been many instances where engineers have thought ‘that’s impossible’, only to find the impossible has now been built!

Anyway, for those who have spent a bit of time living in Dubai this one is for you! Here it is!

You Know That You’ve Been Living in Dubai Too Long When…

An 800 metre high building feels pretty small

You complain that fuel prices are more than 20 cents per litre whenever you travel abroad

You become bored of the insane variety of shopping available

All of your chocolate is sourced from camel milk

Likewise, your burgers are now always containing camel meat and nothing else comes even close

Dune bashing in your four wheel drive is a weekend past time – every weekend!

Likewise, you struggle to find your white Landcruiser four wheel drive in amongst the carpark with the other million white Landcruiser four wheel drives

If you don’t have a vehicle that isn’t a V8 or turbo charged, it’s not powerful enough

You find it easier to ski at a shopping mall than to fly to Europe during their winter

Eating dinner in 5 star hotel restaurants is ‘slumming it’

You expect your tea to be swirled in an elaborate pre drinking ceremony

You don’t mind paying ‘the sin tax’ for consuming alcohol

You don’t turn your head anymore when you see the world’s most expensive car parked out the front of a hotel

Driving your Ferrari starts feeling like a base model Fiat

Likewise, you forget what a un-roadworthy car looks like

You think that a billion dollar construction project is ‘small fry’

You’re no longer surprised that your ears pop when travelling up a skyscraper elevator

Paying $5000 a night for an entry level hotel room seems reasonable

The world’s biggest shopping mall feels like a corner store where you just need to pop in and buy some milk and bread

You’ve stopped shopping around the world’s biggest shopping mall as a form of exercise because it takes you three hours to walk around the place without actually buying anything

If you want to lose someone, you just take them to a shopping mall and see if they can find their way out on their own

You go online shopping just to see if there is actually something not available for purchase in Dubai

If on the off chance you do buy something online, you know that it will reach you fairly quickly because you’ve chartered a private jet to deliver it for you

All other airports in the world start to feel like dusty landing strips or goat tracks

The Airbus A380 just seems like ‘another boring plane’

You demand that all airline lounges feel like a hotel

You just assume that there is a direct flight from Dubai to anywhere in the world

You prefer all of your races with camels, and always with robot jockeys

You measure jewellery in kilograms, not carats

You become sick of haggling over the price of gold and diamonds at the gold souk and just pay the first price quoted

You expect every building you ever walk into to be air conditioned, including bus stops

You know that Dubai has the same weather all year round – because you’re inside buildings with ice cold air conditioning all of the time!

Related to above – you need to carry a sweater everywhere because you’ll probably catch hypothermia from the air conditioning

You become bored of the air conditioning, you become curious  to see how long you can last outside in 40+ degree heat during summer.

Once you actually try this, you try and find the first available flight to somewhere a bit milder in Europe

You keep moving apartment buildings because you want one in the tallest building in the world – which seems to change every year.

The daily spectacular fireworks show held around the Burj Khalifa becomes boring and ‘old school’

Sand starts to look green

You know that a 0.00 blood alcohol limit for driving actually does mean 0.00 and there is no tolerance if you blow 0.000000000000000000000000001, and finally,

You become pissed off that when you finally leave Dubai, you have to pay tax again.

How about you? What are some things that you’ve come across when you’ve been living in Dubai too long? Share the love with the world and leave a comment below!