Some work, some don't

I wanted to put up some pictures on flickr.com as well. But the site is considered inappropriate here. Having said that, I don't want to forget to mention the developments over the past years.

Since the late 1980s, early 1990s, the United Arab Emirates are significantly relaxing their policies that some from Europe, coming from a different culture, may consider to be restrictive at times.

For instance, there is a wide spectrum of media today covering basically anything they want. Before, journalists often had to ask officials for permission if they wanted to write about something a bit more critical. So the newspapers would be full of handshake photos from His Highness the Sheikh (of course this is still of interest to a high degree today) and related positive news. The famous Arabic news TV station Al Jazeera played an important role in the recent developments, as well as a new, CNN-like reporting style in the Gulf War and many international media; but also, if I understood that correctly, encouragement by the rulers themselves.

The tendency of relaxing some rules can be seen in other areas of life as well. While you generally need a local sponsor if you want to do business in Dubai as a foreigner, one part of Dubai's Success formula has been to establish free trade zones within the city such as Internet city or media city where other nationalities can own companies for 100% and revenues may also be fully transferred to other countries, all of this without having to pay any taxes. Something similar applies to buying real estate. In areas such as Media City, foreigners may today own flats or houses, while in others friends of mine here are not allowed to buy the house they live in if they wanted to do that because they're not Emirates. They would, striclty speaking, also not be allowed to share a house with other people if those are not family or live with their partner as long as they're not married.

Please be aware: these are just some superficial observations, I'm not judging.

Also, such things are important to be seen in perspective: there are other countries on the Arabic peninsula where attempts by a company I'm in touch with that tried to establish local business dependencies outside of the UAE failed because one key employee is a woman and she doesn't get a visa from the country in question unless she's accompanied by her husband. While it would still be inappropriate here to walk around in shorts even as a man and especially women should also be sensible with how they clothe themselves in public, Dubai is quite international in such things - maybe one of the main new global melting pot of cultures, with a high degree of tolerance.