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Well said, BB. After recently searching for flats, I found perspective LL's would tell me that the building is "95% white people" or they pre-screened on the phone asking nationality, etc. I thought it weird at first asking how many people would be occupying the home ".....ummmm, two?"

That being said, our compound in Mirdif, we were the only infidels. It was a western enclave years ago, but now many GCC as well as other Arab-state-passport holders moved in. We all got along great. Even noisy infidel parties were never once commented on, nor were their midnight kiddie parties in the pool.

Like DK, sometimes being a fish-out-of-water can be fun. Your hood is more funky though. We had pigeons, not ducks. That's Mirdif for ya!

We went through the "identify your nationality" qualification in the states and here in Dubai. In both cases I was the one who had to show up to view the apartment and when asked about hubby, I told them he was American and all was good - albeit Egyptian-American, but I didn't feel the need to mention that.

The last building we lived in which was on SZR (same road as the Crowne Plaza), which was a family building, was pretty mixed and I can tell you this: you could point a few fingers at any one of the different nationalities for the way they lived - like pigs, putting it out of mind that public areas were used by all, but some thought that the public area was for their own personal use which included NOT putting garbage down the shut, leaving open bags of garbage in the stairwell, leaving garbage outside their door for maintenance to collect. When the kids needed to play, what better place that in the hallway? Going to the pool was no picnic when you saw the kids in it with their street clothes on and the baby with a nappy that was weighted down by pool water. Oh, right, the pool is treated daily which would kill any germs, but in the meantime, have a good time. After seeing that I never used the pool.

All the flats had balconies and I had a neighbor who would not allow his company to smoke in the apartment, and apparently not on the balcony, so they would smoke in the hallway and you would choke of the smell either entering or exiting the apartment. Solution: I would put a burner with bakhour or oud outside my door.

It's funny but there are so many instances where we had to use the "white" card or the "brown" card. His card certainly works for us in this part of the world, especially when we go shopping and need to haggle. When in Egypt there were two prices - one for him and one for me and he would always get them to come around to charging the same for me as they did for him. Find it all very amusing.

I remember once I was in a fabric store (here in Dubai) and I knew that the price quoted was too high. Humorously, I asked the guy if I was Indian or local would the price come down and he told me that if I was local the price would have been higher!!!

C'est la vie .