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Another busy workweek… met with the nit-picky financial manager on the client side and spent nearly three hours reassuring him that we had exercised due diligence in our research and the development of our assumptions… spent two days at the Trauma Centre putting together submissions for awards of excellence in various aspects of clinical practice given out by Middle Eastern authorities… and officially cleared the 200 page mark of the big report. Still haven’t pressed print. My apologies for ‘skimming over’ my work-related life here in Dubai; however, I’m limited in what I can share because of client confidentiality issues. Just know that I’m keeping myself busy tip-tapping away on my computer, and am learning a lot.

Exterior view of the Jumeirah Mosque.

On Thursday evening, I met up with Nicole, a girlfriend from UWO who has been working all around the world for the last two years. We realized that we hadn’t seen each other for more than 10 minutes since before I left for Tanzania… needless to say, we had a lot to catch up on. We ended up celebrating the birthday of another UWO acquaintance who is living in Dubai… it really is a small world.

My colleague Betty took Margaret and I out on a Friday night excursion to Karama, a neighbourhood a short walk from our place. I have been bugging her to make time to take me before I leave, as Karama is THE destination for good ‘copies’ of designer accessories. Sure enough, we weren’t two steps into the market before being barraged by hawkers: “Ma’am, ma’am, Jimmy Choo, Hermes, Chloe, Louis Vuitton… bling bling watches, you like bling bling?”. Thankfully, Betty had a few ‘contacts’ in the area who quickly escorted us to the ‘offices’ located a few minutes walk away from the main shops. It was everything I imagine Canal St. in NYC would be… complete with secret wall panels that opened up to reveal massive caches of leathery goodness. I didn’t leave empty handed, but was quite indecisive after falling in love with the most expensive bag they had (a forest green Hermes Birken bag that was priced at $850 USD… still infinitely cheaper than the real deal, but not exactly in my price range with tuition due soon).

Our mosque tour group, all scarfed-up. Megan, Katie, Allison, Sharon, Anne-Marie and I.

I spent a very productive Saturday with the teachers. We woke up early and met at the Jumeirah Mosque, one of the city’s most photographed sites and the only mosque in Dubai which is open to non-Muslims. Tours occur three times a week, designed to heighten awareness of Islamic culture. The tour was run by two (Caucasian) British ladies who are Muslim and have been living in Dubai for over 20 years… they were great presenters and certainly gave an unique perspective on Islamic tradition.

Interior of the Jumeirah Mosque.

We followed the mosque with lunch and a trip to the beach (my first time since I arrived… shameful!), before heading back to the teachers’ accommodations to prepare for a proper American Thanksgiving celebration. With Eid coming up next weekend, the celebrations were a bit early but delicious nonetheless. After celebrating Canadian Thanksgiving with flat-crust pizza, a full turkey dinner was a welcome taste of home!

Beach view of the Burj Al Arab on a sunny Saturday afternoon.

Looking out the window from my desk today (Sunday afternoon), I casually commented that I hadn’t seen so many clouds since I arrived in September. The presence of a single cloud is actually quite a rare occurrence in this city. I ventured as far as to suggest that it might actually be raining out over the Gulf… suddenly, a local media alert appeared online:

No joke. This is the breaking news in the local paper as we wrapped up the workday on Sunday.

“Dubai: The season’s first light showers were experienced on the coastal parts of Dubai and Sharjah on Sunday and the Dubai Met office announced that “winter is here’ and warned of strong Westerly winds.

Light rain also fell in Jebel Ali, but the rest of the country was dry.

A marine warning will be issued starting on Monday for the offshore area as it will experience strong westerly winds of between 20 to 25 knots. “The seas will be rough,” said the duty forecaster, noting the warning will for the next 48 hours.“This is the first of the North Westerly cold draughts," he said. Temperature will drop to 27 degrees Celcius for the next three days. Nights will be cooler.”

That's right, my friends... winter has arrived in Dubai. Five minutes of light rain and a temperature drop down to a shivery 27 degrees Celsius. Get out your parkas! Looking forward to coming home to the 'real' winter in 3 weeks time... is it possible that sunny skies and the warm desert air have become too routine for this girl??

The Venice(s) of the Middle East

Why not go for a gondola ride through the mall? At the Villagio Mall in Doha, Qatar.

Between the day trip to Doha, a mid-week presentation of strategy and financials to the client, and a day of personnel/quality issues at the Trauma Centre, last week completely flew by. We were under the impression that the business case (now nearing 200 pages) was going to be wrapped up by the beginning of this week, but with additional stakeholders providing their input and recommendations, the final product is on hold again… fingers crossed that I can press “Print” before I board the plane to come home.

The Villagio Mall in Doha, Qatar... or in the streets of Italy, I'm not sure.

New Dubai, Old Dubai... view of the Burj Al Arab from a rooftop in the Madinat Jumeirah.

Kelly and I welcomed the weekend over dinner with friends at the Madinat Jumeirah on Thursday night. The Madinat Jumeirah is a hotel and entertainment complex designed to resemble an old Arabic village, and has been touted as “Dubai’s version of Venice”... complete with an expansive (and expensive) souk (market), man-made canals, and a bevy of hotels and restaurants. It’s an enchanting place! We enjoyed a canal-side meal and were pleasantly surprised to be introduced to the restaurant manager, who gifted us with invitations to a Monday-night reception with a celebrity chef. Admittedly, I had never heard of this chef before (a Brit named James Martin who apparently doesn’t get a lot of air time in Canada), but the idea of a quiet weeknight spent with good friends and good food sounded fine by me.

Glowing lights along the canal in the Madinat Jumeirah.

A very quiet weekend spent capitalizing on the weather – the oppressive desert heat has cooled down to a lovely/breezy warmth, so my weekend workload was completed poolside. My quiet retreat was interrupted by fighter jets pulling tricks in formation overhead in preparation for the Dubai Air Show, billed as the “most expensive show on earth”… surprise, surprise. The air show runs for four days and is centred around major aircraft sales. One Qatar Airways executive jet was profiled on the news last night… marketed as “the only way to travel for those who can’t afford their own jet”… outfitted luxuriously, all the way down to the 18K gold ashtrays. Maybe I should catch a ride on one of those en route back to Toronto…

Dinner with Kelly, Vicki, and Gavin at Shoo Fee Ma Fee in the Madinat Jumeirah.

Monday night arrived and I met the girls at the Mina A’Salam Hotel pool for our evening with the chef. After mistaking him for two or three other party attendants, we tracked him down and determined that he really looked nothing like his photo on the invitation. Never mind… we had the obligatory group photo taken, enjoyed a full-fledged fireworks display, and chit-chatted with Mr. James Martin for the better part of an hour. He regaled us with his adventurous trip to second place of the UK’s ‘Dancing with the Stars’ (who knew?), but couldn’t answer my question about the proper preparation of butternut squash… apparently he has people who take care of his veggies now that he’s graduated to celebrity status. Note to self: never get so far detached from the core of your work that you can’t answer questions about the basics.

Girls night out (Lara, Kelly, me, Vicki, Hillary, and Sharon)...

... with celebrity chef James Martin!

This time next week, I’ll be just about ready to depart for a long weekend in Jordan, visiting the Dead Sea, Petra, and having a proper ‘Bedouin experience’ at Wadi Rum… how exciting!

Fireworks display over the Gulf.

Thoughts on diversity in Dubai

I’ve been postponing this post for some time now as I attempted to get my head around the sociocultural eccentricities of this region, but a conversation with the Director of the Trauma Centre a few weeks ago helped me to complete some of my thoughts, to confirm a few of my suspicions, and to provide greater insight into the implications of these issues.

I was asked to share my initial impressions of Dubai with the Director. Side-stepping the obvious glitz, glamour, and generally over-the-top impression of the city that any tourist can get after a few hours on the ground here, I told him about the real issues that took me by surprise upon my arrival and have continued to shock me as the weeks go by.

An initial caveat: I’m new to this region of the world and acknowledge my naiveté … by no means am I trying to make sweeping accusations or generalizations about the ways of the world.

With that said, one of the things that I’ve struggled with the most during my residency here is the pervasiveness and intensity of racism in the region. In a city of expatriates (let me remind you that a recent healthcare provision report stated that over 90% of the city’s population is made up of expats), where much of the progress is driven/implemented/built up by immigrants, there is a very clear racial hierarchy that defines the way business is done and the way people are treated. At the top of the chain sit the Nationals (Emiratis)... in a country that is still ruled by tribal politics, the establishment of personal relationships and ‘wasta’ (read: one’s power of influence based on personal connections) is absolutely essential for personal success.

Next in line, I suppose, are the Western ex-pats. As described to me by a private hospital director in the city: “In the West, employees learn from the companies they work for. An employee of GE, for example, will benefit from exposure to the firm’s best practices and past successes. In Dubai, however, companies learn from their employees. Expat ‘experts’ are brought in to share their knowledge as a commodity, which the company collects and uses for future development.” Regardless of whether it is deserved, this mentality affords Westerners a certain amount of local authority and independence.

As we continue down the hierarchy, we hit the East Asian ex-pats – predominantly Filipinos – and then arrive at the ‘bottom rung’, occupied by the Indian labourers. I don’t mean to sound crude or disrespectful in my description of this system. I wish I could say that it’s just a conceptual hierarchy, but I realized quite quickly that this hierarchy defines how (many) people treat each other, with interactions often becoming increasingly nasty and discourteous as you travel down the line. This hierarchy also defines the roles people can fill here (i.e. taxi drivers and construction workers vs. receptionists and nurses vs. managers and CEOs) as well as the salary that workers receive... many HR departments I have been exposed to (often through conversation with others) seem to have completely different salary packages established for the workers they bring in from each country. This applies to Westerners as well, with Americans receiving better salaries than Canadians, Europeans, South Africans, Australians... etc.

I’m not new to the implications of globalization (though the hierarchy existed, it was definitely ‘simpler’ in Tanzania), nor am I trying to get up on a soapbox and preach that I have the solution to resolve the inequity in the region. I am only making observations and sharing my discomfort with the race-related way of life here. Some examples:

- The Indian workers who build the skyscrapers (and frequently fall from them, due to poor workplace safety standards, ending up in the Trauma Centre with spectacular injuries) are bussed into the city every day from labour camps. These labour camps frequently sleep 10-15 people to a room. Labourers wear blue or orange jumpsuits, giving their buses an unfortunate likeness to prison transportation. These guys work hard, they work in the heat, they work through the night. I have a lot of respect for them.

- Many Filipinos are allocated accommodation through work, but will be put up 2 to 4 to a bedroom as well, in apartments that would be singly occupied by one of their Western colleagues.

- Friends of mine went out to “Ladies Night” at a restaurant near their home (there are lots of Ladies Nights in town… males make up about 75% of the population here). Two Filipinas approached the door ahead of them, and were turned away because they weren’t escorted by a male. My two (Western) girlfriends were there alone, but the bouncer informed them at the door that he had already let their ‘husbands’ inside (not true, they’re not married), so they were free to enter. Blatant racism.

- I heard a story of an Indian nurse working at a hospital in the city who was approaching 30 years of service at the facility. Her pay grade had not changed once during her 30 year tenure, and I suspect that wasn’t because she was unqualified or undeserving.

I don’t deny that it is a choice for expats to be here in Dubai, nor do I deny that they make more here than they would in their home countries (and tax free!); however, this doesn’t excuse the marked inequality, especially regarding the way that different groups interact with each other. I find it to be especially disheartening when it becomes clear that the racism affects productivity, teamwork, and the confidence of employees. In a work environment where patient safety is of central importance (i.e. a hospital), this is especially worrying. I do hope that the negative impact of these behaviours begins to be understood and that progressive changes are made over the next few years to improve the acceptance of the diversity which characterizes the city of Dubai.

I’d like to believe that it’s especially difficult to adjust to these realities because of the tolerance and acceptance of diversity that I have grown up with in Canada; however, I know that I would be glossing over many similar issues that pervade Canadian society. My great hope is that this and other international experiences that I’ve had will make me increasingly sensitive and dissatisfied with the ‘status quo’ as I move forward with my career.

More Dubai, dunes, and Doha

The Emirates Towers, across from my office building on Sheikh Zayed Road in downtown Dubai.

Last week brought another fine example of globalization as a colleague and I took a break from our desks to represent the company at the Korean Investment road show, held at the Address Hotel. We heard pitches from a variety of government ministers about Korea’s resilience to the effects of the recession, and discussed opportunities for them to enter the Dubai market.

I returned to the Trauma Centre at the end of the week to sit in on a contract liaison meeting, where the hospital operator meets with the client to discuss progress and to ensure that any obstacles that may prevent the operator from fulfilling the terms of the management contract are resolved quickly. Hospital accreditation is a major focus of management here (as it is elsewhere in the world), and with a major re-accreditation scheduled for 2010, there are lots of internal-audit-like tasks to complete. The committee gladly accepted by offer to try and complete a project or two on some facet on hospital quality (related to accreditation goals) before I leave. I’m excited to get started on these projects, as they will give me good perspective on the unique challenges of the internal clinical environment.

Signing a contract to take home my leftovers from the Belgian Beer Cafe.

I met a girlfriend for dinner mid-week and had my weekly dose of cultural embarrassment as I had the apparent audacity to ask for our leftovers to be packed up... not a frequent request in a rich city like Dubai, apparently. In my defense, we were in a casual pub, more than half of our meals remained, and my cupboards were nearly bare. Excuses aside, it took the staff a good 15 minutes to find something suitable to pack up our food in... and they settled on a massive cake box that could have transported a multiple-tiered masterpiece. No chance on slinking out of the restaurant inconspicuously with my leftovers. I thought that was the end of the scene I was making, but no... 10 minutes later, the waiter approached with a full contract for me to complete in order to allow me to leave the premises with the food. Good god. Unfortunately, this practice apparently stemmed from the tragic food poisoning death of two children last year... lesson learned, next time I’ll finish my meal on site and leave it at that.

Outdoor artwork in front of The Address Hotel.

This weekend, I benefitted from the very good luck of my Canadian nurse friend Kelly, who is a self-professed ‘contest winner’. She has won an average of $6,000 annually in cash and prizes over the last few years, and seeks out every opportunity to put her name in new draws... the odds really seem to be stacked in her favour! While I was camping in the mountains of Fujairah, she was celebrating Halloween at a party in Dubai, where she won the prize for the best female costume. The prize package included (among other equally great items) a free desert safari for two... lucky for me, she took me as her ‘plus one’, and we found ourselves ‘dune bashing’ over a seemingly endless sea of red sand on Saturday.

Sliding sideways down a dune on our desert safari.

Total tourist kitsch, I admit, complete with a sandy photo shoot directed by our big burly driver, a beautiful sunset, camel rides (the poor camels... not the nicest life for them), dressing up in traditional garb (I felt decidedly anti-feminist as I heard myself asking the attendants to ensure that my face was properly covered for photos), and a barbeque dinner accompanied by a belly dancing show under the stars. Our burly driver evidently plays multiple roles in the safari organization, as we saw him moonlighting as a very necessary bouncer, protecting the lone belly dancer from throngs of Indian men who literally swarmed her after the performance... quite off-putting... not one drop of chivalry among them.

Spectacular... sunset in the desert, perched dune-top.

Already two days into a new workweek and I’ve managed to add another new stamp to my passport, as I was sent on an ‘errand’/visa renewal run to Doha, Qatar on Sunday. More or less a glorified FedEx run to drop off a package, but it gave me an opportunity to (briefly) see a new city in the Gulf Region and to meet a handful of former company employees who are working on the development of a massive teaching hospital/research facility under the guidance of the government.

I was really encouraged to hear that there is a different attitude to equality and continuing education in this facility than I have experienced in Dubai... they are making a big effort to build in policies for equal salaries for equal work – regardless of the nationality of the worker – and actively promote the ongoing education of their workers. While these concepts are the basic building blocks of HR at home, they sometimes seem to be a little lost in translation in the Gulf.

Holding on for dear life as our tall camel rights himself.