When people hear "moved to Dubai," they usually picture a beach, sun, a vacation pace of life. Mine was different.
I came to build a business. And the first thing that struck me was how the city is built exactly for that — not for rest, but for speed: company registration that takes months elsewhere can take days here. Infrastructure designed specifically for entrepreneurs coming from very different jurisdictions.
Most of my "offices" in the first year — a café table and a hotel lobby between meetings.
My first "office" was a laptop on the kitchen table and a SIM card I'd bought that same morning. My first client meeting happened less than a week after I landed — in a hotel lobby, because neither of us had an office yet, and nobody seemed to think that was strange. That's when I understood the city's actual rhythm: people build the business first and work out the furniture later.
What still gets me, a few years in, is the skyline itself — how fast it keeps changing, almost as a reminder that nothing here is meant to stay still for long.
There is a beach, of course.
But what keeps me here is the feeling of a city that doesn't get in the way of the work — it helps it move.
A few seconds of Dubai at night, somewhere between a meeting and the drive home.
A note from Dubai, written slowly and shared honestly.