Welcome to Dubai, Balot!

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IT HAS BEEN a month now since I came to Dubai, flying in from Cebu with my niece Irish. Everything was overwhelming at first (it still is sometimes), but I'm learning to adjust slowly everyday. Dubai is indeed a city of extremes and superlatives. For someone coming from a third-world country in Southeast Asia, it was difficult to keep my jaw from dropping and my eyes from popping out every time I stumble upon something new and amazing.

I am literally a "promdi" (Pinoy slang for "from the province") here, breaking my neck looking up at the towering skyscrapers and massaging my calves after strolling around the world's largest mall. But what the heck! The world is ours for the taking, right? We shouldn't apologize for being so "green." I am going to enjoy this whole new world that I have the fortune of being immersed in now. I am going to embrace it and bask in it with such childlike wonder, it will hurt and make me go insane.
Speaking of insanity, my niece and I got our first taste of Emirati hospitality immediately at the passport control (Immigration) section of the Dubai International Airport (DXB).

Emirati to us: Hello, ate! Kumusta?

I did a double-take. Didn't I just travel for 11+ hours on a plane from Philippines to Dubai? If the man in front of us hadn't been wearing a kandura, his fair complexion and his prominent nose standing out from that tickled little expression on his good-looking face, I would have pinched myself hard just to make sure the plane hadn't landed in Manila instead. Still, it was quite an amusing greeting from a non-Pinoy at the airport of a foreign country. I tried hard not to reply, "Okay ra man. Ikaw?"

Welcome to Dubai, Balot!


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