I lived in Dubai for a while. Whenever anyone asks me how it was, I have two main conclusions that line up very well with what Doherty has to say here: 1. It's

I lived in Dubai for a while. Whenever anyone asks me how it was, I have two main conclusions that line up very well with what Doherty has to say here: 1. It's all so clean and shiny. Coming home through New York City was a wild experience because I had never noticed how utterly filthy NYC is. It only became obvious to me after spending so long immersed in the very clean streets of Dubai. The luxury-as-default was something I had heard about but I wasn't prepared for how true it was. 2. You're waited on all the time, everywhere. You shouldn't take your tray to the garbage bin at the mall food court because someone needs that job, for example. My job provided me with a driver and housing and a crew to clean my house. They were as close to slaves as it gets. Her observation that "Being served makes us cruel infants" really hits me hard. The exploitation was not just unavoidable, it was virtually mandatory. I would never go back, not to visit, and certainly not to live there again. Her statement "...in Dubai there is nothing to do, and I mean nothing, other than to feel rich and be waited upon." is incredibly true.