unhappyhere

I agree. I am actually surprised that no one has done an expose on this place. The americans for awhile had some coverage but it died out. But don't worry when I get home I am going to peddle a book to some publishers as well as start a blog where people can send me photos and stories about the criminal acts, the stupid acts, prominent muslim men with prostitutes, etc. They can send me their horror stories about dealing with the so called law and all that responsibility stuff the delusional expats are claiming. Maybe then some of them will see reality about what morals are and arent.

typical

You could start here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/search?q=Dubai&section=world

Briton in bikini arrested in Dubai
The dark side of Dubai's success
Dubai: The trouble shooter
Expatriates speak of a 'changed' Dubai
Inside Dubai's labour camps
Dubai jails British pair for kissing
British woman arrested in Dubai after reporting rape
Britons who have fallen foul of the law in Dubai
Riot by migrant workers halts construction of Dubai skyscraper
Eight killed as Dubai airport wall collapses
Briton dies in Dubai police custody after 'severe beatings'
Why Dubai's Islamic austerity is a sham – sex is for sale in every bar
Dubai's property bonanza just wasn't built to last
Furious investors warn troubled Dubai it will 'never raise a penny again'

Bored now...

shiftdelete

a good read, your posts- I'm interested in how you reached this stage of disillusionment- how long have you been unhappyhere? how long before that were you happyhere?
With all these financially challenged westerners looking for work, this part of the world, from a traditional expat point of view, is @#cked- then there's the impending physical threat you allude to (or did I misinterpret that).
Can't though help think that you're one of those guys that has done very nicely for themselves while the going was good, which if true makes you a bit of a hypocrite too.
But your warnings are invaluable for any newcomers reading this thread.

unhappyhere

I agree with you. I have done well, financially. Morally I feel as though my soul has been ripped from me. I walk around with defeat in the bottom of my stomach and it has been like this for the past year. I was miserable for the first six months, very happy during the next three months. Went on a three week vacation to the states, came back here and since have been miserable. I found the things I was doing, buying, etc were all pretty pointless. They didn't matter to me at all. It drives me out of my mind when I see people from my country and countries that share my beliefs treating people less than how they would treat themselves. The news stories of rape and deaths started to get to me. Watching professors get arrested was a boiling point for me a month or so ago asking simply to participate in their society and then when that dumb a** at work started his racist rant, it put me over the edge. It really had nothing to do with the fact I do very little at work and make alot of money. I have done well, yes, and quite frankly have done better since the global collapse. You should know, it isn't someone like me who gets laid off and the company doesn't care about, it is the yellow, brown, and blacks, and low wage whites. Who needs them right? They were good for awhile. Their contract said they would be here for three years. But guess what when we laid them off, we only paid them for a month and told them they had a month to leave the country. The ones who tried law, failed. How about that responsibility? Fulfilling a contract, is that a responsibility? Unfortunately our situation changed, so we laid people off. Then we decided that we call up those same people who took loans with us and basically said they would go to jail if they did not pay. Our employees, the ones we made an obligation to, broke that obligation, and then threatened them for breaking theirs. Don't make sense out of this, unless you own a bank. This stupid condemnation of people caught in the cross winds with no other choice but #1 go home, or #2 be a man and go to jail. FU to anyone who thinks that there is something wrong with leaving, you have been here to long. I say everyone should borrow a bunch of money and head back home to the west, invest in a business or buy a home, or even freaking donate it to some cause. Or just leave it at the gas pump so people who don't have money can fill up there tanks or get heat in the winter.

What I have developed is a case of moral rage.

I had two points about the impending violence, one was when the natives get sick of this crap and two when Mohamed knocks on someones door to collect money and gets beat up and pork stuffed in his mouth. Either or, the corrupt crowd will see and feel the violence, what comes around goes around. Then they will all say but I didn't do anything to anyone, directly.

My point about all this is that responsibility is not just paying your loans back. There is more to responsibility than just paying back a loan. Yes if you don't pay the loan back, it is irresponsible, but not morally so, especially if there were reasons behind it, whatever that individual deems the reason to be. Jail for not paying a loan is not okay. Two people enter into a contract, using bounded rationality. The only thing that exists is the current situation. The current situation in every case in the UAE on a loan is that we do not have any information on the credit history of the person. We go on the basis of letter from the employer, and in some case don't even do that, showing the amount people make. We figure they will continue paying, as do they. Then something goes wrong, and we become shocked and get militarized, but we don't do it to the local population, we don't even dare (secret: we have been burned by more expats than locals, however the dollar amount is almost 40 times more than the expat total, no jail time, no collection) It is all based on bounded rationality, which primitive species call their word. A contract, based on word? I mean how do you take this serious in the first place? A person gets laid off, wants to switch a job, gets sick, just wants to go home, but then they can't make a payment from abroad? Or they can come to some other settlement with a bank? On top of it they have to hear from someone woman who got a business degree from egypt and thinks she is smart because she treats philipinos like animals and makes 15000DHS a month? She is the animal, the bank is her master "good girl, want a doggie treat". Unfortunately, I feel just as bad for her, as she to, odds are, will be laid off at some point and her loan will be called in.

I am surprised more people just don't fly here, work for a week or two, take a loan, and then head back. The fact most people don't do that is a good sign. So I would argue the majority of people here are not gaming the system. Something has happened, they need to make a decision on whether or not to go to jail. Again, bounded rationality, it is the current situation that matters. Go to jail or go home? simple.

Do these same people who talk of responsibility take responsibility for the 11 men stuffed into a tiny apartment away from their families with not even a breeze? Wake up the next day and work 18 hours. What is worse? Please I want to know? The fact you can accept money from people who kill your family or friends and they don't see a jail cell? Think about that, what would stop one of these sheikhs from murdering a whole bunch of us? all he has to do is spend a % of fortune and all is good in the UAE. Does the woman who is violently raped get those thoughts removed from her head? No she f'n lives with it for the rest of her life and this is never, never, never, never okay. She becomes a different person for the rest of her life. She has been violated and has to go to jail? You can't tell me that living here while that is going on is okay? Again if you think that is okay, give back your passport.

There is no rationalizing any of this. I tried to convince myself at one point, but it has been a two year struggle. Rape is a million times worse than not paying a loan, the same with murder and human rights abuses. The system here treats it equal, and in many cases the loan is worse. People will continue to skip out until they change the laws. Most people we dealt with didn't want to go back and feel awful about it. But I can tell you we never once called any sheikhs kids and threatened them, even some case connected individuals to these sheikhs got away scot free.

And to answer your question about you cant help but believe that when the going is good, people are good, when bad, people get negative. Well I got news for you, when things are good the smiles are their, the friendship, the support from management, the banks are happy to give you money even showing up to your office to hand it over. It is our policy to do that. Then when it gets bad, the place becomes what is truly is, a f'n desert. No one there to help you. This is our other policy, it involves isolation and threats of imprisonment. The purpose is not to fix the current situation it is to scare the heck out of someone to make them do irrational things, like sell their bodies or steal. That is the mentality in the UAE. That is why hell is coming, the bad policies will cause what appears here among certain groups to be irrational, in the rest of the world, the reaction will be perfectly explainable and it will seem quite rational.

unhappyhere

And to further my point you do not have to pay it back once you leave. I know this for a fact, it means nothing to the bank. We take an assessment, explore options, apply pressure for a year or more, and then sell it off to these absolute morons who think people who aren't dealing with us anymore are going to deal with them. So you see, we rip them off to. They have like a 20% success rate. And guess what they eventually take off from here as well.

Also we can't enforce UAE laws in other countries. It can't work. If we ask for help, most of the time we got laughed at, so we stopped doing so. In one case we kept calling an american citizen and he notified the law enforcement officers in his home country and they basically gave us warning to stop calling him or they would report it to the appropriate authorities.

Can you imagine a western government enforcing a UAE law? Think about it. Woman gets raped. Flees the country. UAE calls to have her extradited back to serve her sentence.

Anyone who says anything to the contrary about collections is lying and is probably in the industry to help the bottom line. But I can tell you are success rate in recovery is extremely low.

unhappyhere

14 articles, impressive.

typical

Nah, as I said, I got bored - after a few pages of results. There are 98 pages of results with articles mentioning Dubai, and probably about 20% of those are actually critical of the place from the pages I looked at (rather than mentioning it in passing or reporting on some international incident such as the Hamas killing).

Of course if you search the Travel section rather than the World News section, the headlines take on a very different tone

shiftdelete

this is an astounding post, but in truth reveals very little those with a perceptive mind wouldn't have already known. The financial industry are scumbags, yourself included, which you to your credit admit to.
You refer to browns, yellows and blacks and grant poor whites some recognition- these racist overtones don't fit really, since the perpetrators are not white or western- they are the global financial institutions and their disgusting disciples- they are not christian or muslim- they are an evil from somewhere else.
But at least you have seen the light.
Astounding too is the fact that I too can count myself amongst the losers, AUD200,000 cash and counting since last May. The usual suspects mate:
- immoral locals,
- banks,
- and an idiot expat for a boss who lied and ran, and now sitting pretty in australia back at work!! showing off his disgusting pride and arrogance.
Fortunately for me I had the reserves to absorb the hit.
God help the poor- you are dead right. God help them.

as for the rest of your post- I mean who can argue with it- its all true. It takes a man to write it all down, even if it is anonymously, so well done for that. Lets hope BE safeguards these accounts

unhappyhere

Wow, sorry to jump to conclusions so quickly. Thank for the information. Seriously my apologies, sometimes typing doesn't always convey a message.

Paracletus

To think such behavior is isolated to glitzy Dubai is about the most ignorant notion I have ever come across. Having lived all over, I found it a prevalent feature of ye old whitey in most places, all in with the local elite. And at home..? No ****ing different really. No matter what industry you are in, Surprise? Well..it ain't rape if you say so. (according to insanity wolf)

slapphead_otool

It seems to me there has been a fundamental change in Dubai expats since I worked there in the 1970s.

In those days the expats were there to build a nation.

My mentors were rough tough professional expats who lived out of suitcases, looked after themselves (and each other) and worked hard. Some were even former Trucial Scouts. These days I guess many of you will have to google Trucial Scouts to even know what they were.

These days the expats seem to be there to get rich quick, often by ripping each other off. These guys aren’t professional expats, just carpetbaggers chasing money.

They don’t seem to understand (or care) that they are in a different country. Then when it goes wrong they complain…..

Sandboy

that rent argument doesn't ring true. If he was staying in the same place any rent increase was capped. If the landlord was being a twat and kicking him out he could have downgraded to something affordable. 350k got a lot of house even at the very peak but the most my company ever paid was 200k for a 4 bed in Mirdif.

your second point just reinforces Co Durham Boys point, if it ain't right then why bother coming ? The name Dubai suckered many many people in many different ways - probably still does

irich

You don't get something for nothing.

Of course the locals will rip you off.

Don't expect freedom, equality or justice anywhere in the region.

Don't believe the hype.

Any expat is a third class citizen.

Any ex pat woman is a fourth class citizen.

Millhouse

Spot on - and people are on to them. No wonder it goes wrong for so many.

Meow

I don't have the time nor inclination to read 1,000 word ranting posts, but from the small part I did read, would like to say that two wrongs don't make a right. Not by any moral code.