If you are moving to Dubai for vacation or business purpose, and happen to stay there for a long period, you will discover the cultural different of Dubai with your country. I am born and being raised in a western country all the time. This is the first time I travel to Dubai for business trip and for a longer stay due to the working contract as I need to serve in Dubai for 2 years. To my surprise after staying in there for some time and meeting with a lot of Westerners in Dubai, I found many of them don’t like Arabs and they are rather reluctant to make friends with them especially Emiratis. Most of them even claimed that they would never want to be friend with Emiratis!

Meeting Pleasant Emiratis

However, speaking for myself, for all the Emiratis that I happened to meet on my daily life in Dubai, I found most of them are of pleasant people with just one exception where I ever met an Emiratis who has tried to hit me off the road. The other occasion is I ever stop by a traffic police while I was driving who accused me for traffic wrongdoing and demanded money from me.

Frankly speaking, for myself, I do not dislike any local people, and I am quite comfortable for leaving the local people to themselves. Personally I will feel rather uneasy for making friends with people who doesn’t having the same language, culture and like-minded people to mix around with as an equal.

Emiratis Might Get Spoil by Local Legal System

Through my observation, I notice in which the trouble for most expatriates in Dubai is because of the local legal system. I found almost all local Emiratis could easily get away with all sorts of bad behavior but not for foreigners. Even though most of the local people are behave quite friendly and polite, but definitely you will meet some who can be rude to you. This is the common phenomenon for almost all countries around the world.

When you happen to making friends with some Emiratis, it is possible for you to notice that some of them are just dislike to any Westerners, doesn’t matter which Western country you are from.

What I can say is there tend to be a difference in superior feeling for people in their own country and there are people who would intentionally get other people in to trouble. Since many foreigners have been expressed their worry and the fairness of the legal system in Dubai, but overall it just not really fair by any extend of the imagination. Most of the people are using ‘wasta’ to get off where this isn’t commonly taking place very often at somewhere else. Sadly to say, I can sense this is the key reason why a lot of foreigners tend not to mix with local Emiratis, due to the fact that many of them could pretend to be nice in front of you, but once they turn behind your bad, they can have a 180 degree different attitude.

After all, we need to understand there are good and bad people and culture in every country. What we should take into consideration is we should not judge someone before we have any clue about that person.

Recently the Dubai government has released a new regulation stipulate that starting from 4th March, 2012, all the buildings are required to install solar water heaters, or else they will not get approval for construction. All developers are required to get the solar heating system that certified by Dubai Central Laboratory prior for them to do the installation. And all the application submission for the design and planning are carried by a local engineering consulting firm.

Announcement by Dubai Government Toward Solar Water Heaters

According to the director of the government from Dubai development, Khalid Al Mulla, said that solar water heaters must provide at least 75% of the total hot water supply in a building; while for buildings that are having swimming pools, the supply shall not be less than 50%. All the solar installation and maintenance companies in Dubai need to be filed and approved by Dubai government, and those qualified companies are subject to regular maintenance.

The bore steps taken by Dubai government are with the purpose to save energy. Base on a reliable news report, Dubai Municipal committees have rolled out some conditions for all the new buildings that intend to build on Dubai land.

“The conditions for installation of water heaters that run by solar energy should comply with standards and technical specifications set by the municipality,” the report said quoting Khalid Al Mulla, director, Buildings Department at Dubai Municipality.

Dubai Determination on Solar Water Heaters Utilization

Dubai government is emphasizing that the solar heating system that going to install in the buildings need to equipped with a backup system.

In accordance with an announcement released by Dubai Global Energy Forum 2011, the UAE stands out as the top energy exporter per capita compare to other nearby regions. Hence, the government is determine to cut down the usage in order to make Dubai to turn out to be the lowest-carbon economy region by establishing a sustainable as well as environmental-friendly policy for energy consumption.

Dubai is an exciting and adventurous place. Alive with tourist bars in hotels, the tallest building in the world, and a booming oil economy, having a vacation in Dubai can be a great idea, but you need to prepare for it first.

Get a credit report

Travel expenses and vacation expenses can be pretty expensive, so it is best to get a credit report online before you go. You may need to bring credit cards to help cover all of your purchases there since carrying around cash in a foreign land is not always a good idea. And you will want a credit card with low interest rates, and knowing your credit score can help you negotiate a lower interest rate with banks.

Get ready to convert cash into gold

We wrote an article a while back on buying gold in Dubai. Before you buy gold in Dubai, you need to get ready to make your money suitable for buying gold. The United Arab Emirates, of which Dubai is a part, uses the UAE dirham (AED) as their currency. However, the United States dollar and the European euro are also widely accepted, so make sure you have your money in one of these forms. Even currencies pegged to the dollar such as the Macanese pecata might be hard to trade with since traders are unfamiliar with them.

Get a passport

Going to your local passport office is a necessary step for almost all international travel. They usually take a few months to print so get one ahead of time.

Note: You should not walk around with cash in your pocket for buying gold but instead convert it at a good rate (airport conversion kiosks offer bad rates) before you land in Dubai.

About the author: Murray Newlands is the CEO and Founder of Influence People, a company that helps you learn how to win friends and influence people online.

Dubai Group is part of Dubai Holding which is the conglomerate of Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid. Sheikh Mohammed is the Ruler of Dubai and Vice President of the United Arab Emirates. The Dubai Group has failed to repay the $10 billion of interest on debts which has been dragged for over one year.

Sources from Reuters about Dubai Group

According to Reuters stating sources working in the restructuring of the company, the default is now intimidating the profits of banks among Middle Eastern. Dubai Group is making an effort in direction of a mutual agreement with financial institutions and plans to come out with further solutions for months to come.

A source from a spokeswoman revealing that interest had been retracted with the principal. She added that facilities have also being de facto rolled over in the course of restructuring negotiations on terms to ensure that a mutual agreement is achieved to protect the stakeholders’ benefit.

Sources close to Dubai Group claimed that the Dubai Group is at the moment trying hard to restructure $6 billion of their debt together with $4 billion supposed to be paid to other debtors. The total amount is actually $4 billion more compare to what been told previously.

A 20 % increase in the stock market a month ago has boost the air traveler traffic and increasing the rate of hotel occupancy. All these been treated as further signs associated with the improvement in the overall health of the economy in United Arab Emirates. The other good news is the international trade in Dubai also reach a record high in January 2011 which can be a good indicator for the economy recovery in the region.

However, the increased amount of debts for Dubai Group is a big threaten to emirates as it keep prompting that financial obligations accumulated by Dubai Group during the thrive years continue to be a dilemma.

The situation is undoubtedly complex due to the company possesses too many strands and its properties and assets are targeted in financial products and services. Dubai Group is actually generating not much cash flow, which cause the company stand at rather difficult situation to raise funds in rapid pace at this moment.

Total Assets of Dubai Group

According to reliable first source, the total assets of Dubai Group are estimated to be worth just between $2.5 – 3 billion base on current market prices. Thus, any option would be almost certainly going to entail a lengthy debt extension to make it possible for asset appraisals to recuperate.

It is expected that Dubai Group is very likely to choose the similar restructuring agreement like Dubai World where a 5 to 8 years loans are going to carry out with tenants extending to as long as 10 years, according to the source.

In the event that provisioning is necessary, the 20 % impairment adopted by Dubai Holding debt during the last quarter would be approximately AED 820 million for the Dubai Bank alone, prior for Dubai’s largest bank Emirates NBD takes account of the debt of Dubai Group.

At the moment the Dubai government is pumping in for more than $6 billion to assist in the development and growing infrastructures at Dubai international airport. Typically the estimation predicted that there are going to be about 3 million of tourist from around the world to visit Dubai for 2015. This would symbolize being an upshot of remarkable financial commitment into the holiday and travel industry and the best example among all would be the Dubai Ferrari World.

Dubai Ferrari World

Dubai tourists are able to enjoy themselves with some of the fastest as well as most mechanically leading-edge rides in the most significant indoor amusement park in the world. And this amusement park happen to be the one that endorsed by Ferrari. People will be able to experience the adventure and pleasure of driving a Ferrari Car in Dubai.

Ferrari Owners Club of UAE

Due to there are many Ferrari’s fans in Dubai, and that’s the reason why the Ferrari Owner’s Club is setting up in the region. Membership of the club is available to all the people in the United Arab Emirates who either possesses or has owned a Ferrari sports car. The membership year for Ferrari Owner’s Club carries on from 1st November to 31st October. As long as you are part way through the membership year, you are going to be given all back-issues of the periodicals, magazines and publications released by the club in that year. Besides, members of the club also can sign up their spouses to share their membership rights.

For people who simply live in their motto, they may feel cheesy but it just holds true to their personality. Many rich people who live in Dubai are take in pleasure and enjoy themselves with all sort of luxurious things in there. They can follow all the trends in Dubai and even drive in a brand new Ferrari in Dubai highway.

More and more tourists are fascinated by the racing sports and when the Dubai Autodrome racing circuit was make it debut in 2004, Dubai motor sports has triggered a lot of interests to people especially those will excessive cash to spend. The Automobile and Touring Club of the UAE states that the volume of auto racing licenses has leaped amazingly to 800 being released compare to 200 in the past 5 years and Gulf Arabs are progressively more warming up their muscle at the track.

Thus, you should hold on your ears in you are at Ferrari ground in Dubai as the racing cars are providing pedal-to-the-metal excitement to the amusement parks in an offer to give you access to a desire for speed and extravagance cars for those in this oil-rich emirate.

Dubai Ferrari Store