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   Adrianna Tan (skinnylatte@hachyderm.io)'s status on Sunday, 12-Jul-2026 18:03:07 JST Adrianna Tan

   Right out of college, I moved to Dubai for my first job. I worked as a photographer and writer at a publishing company that published hotel and restaurant magazines in the region. By that time I had already worked on several books about Asia travel and had consistently sold stories about South and Southeast Asia food and culture and history to international magazines. It felt like a natural fit.

   I had a year here where I learned quickly that ‘expat life in the Gulf’ is not for me; but also I was thankful to have seen this part of the world pre-2009. I made some lifelong friendships. It never felt like home, but it always feels like a little more than a stopover.

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     Adrianna Tan (skinnylatte@hachyderm.io)'s status on Sunday, 12-Jul-2026 18:06:43 JST Adrianna Tan

     in reply to

     I experienced the 2008 financial crisis here. I remember seeing blocks of abandoned luxury cars (it was / is illegal to default on debt here), left behind by people who lost their jobs and just.. left. It felt like a ghost time.

     I personally didn’t really feel the effects on it until a year or so later when it became apparently that the publishing industry I had briefly joined was going to be no more.

     Before, even as a stringer and rando in college, I could make hundreds, sometimes thousands of dollars on individual assignments. Quite soon there were no such assignments anymore.

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     Adrianna Tan (skinnylatte@hachyderm.io)'s status on Sunday, 12-Jul-2026 18:08:35 JST Adrianna Tan

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     I think the expats vs immigrants dichotomy is strongest here in the Gulf.

     Sometimes well meaning liberals say there’s no difference between both terms, but that also means you’ve not witnessed the colorism and classism and national hierarchies of all foreign nationals ranked in the Gulf.

     Depending on what job you have and what passport you have, you’ll most likely never be an immigrant (almost no one gets to stay on full time here or put down roots except in exceptional circumstances).

     Expats just happen to have jobs that won’t necessarily kill them outdoors.

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     Adrianna Tan (skinnylatte@hachyderm.io)'s status on Sunday, 12-Jul-2026 18:16:24 JST Adrianna Tan

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     I spent six hours outside the airport today with an old friend from here. She used to run a Zanzibari restaurant in Belgrade.

     I used to be part of a local meetup group where a few of us would go ‘what’s the least Dubai experience’ and then go do it together. Most of those places don’t exist anymore, like the fisherman shack on the beach where we would go for fish and rice, on top of which a $5000 a night hotel now stands.

     Some of it remains, like the Iranian and Egyptian restaurants I would go to regularly. Karama, Satwa, Deira and any of the more ‘lived in’ parts of the city are the parts that i like the most.

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     Adrianna Tan (skinnylatte@hachyderm.io)'s status on Sunday, 12-Jul-2026 18:25:54 JST Adrianna Tan

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     I think I share a lot in common with people from Dubai: the experience of growing up in an authoritarian city where the social compact is ‘shut up and you’ll have work and money and things’; of knowing that your comforts are paid for by the labor of other people.

     The weirdness that is living in a place that develops so rapidly there are entire new towns, buildings; train stations, infrastructure, sometimes when you just return from a trip, definitely when you spend a few years away.

     I think both cities (Dubai and Singapore) attract a very specific type of person, that I would describe as ‘people who will happily feed children into Omelas’, but at the same time

     The comforts of a modern city cleaned by other people, built by other people, almost mind-numbing comfort and having basic things more or less ‘taken care of for you’, are so seductive that many people do, in fact, want this.

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     coldclimate (coldclimate@hachyderm.io)'s status on Sunday, 12-Jul-2026 18:31:04 JST coldclimate

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     @skinnylatte I know a chap here in the UK who bought (maybe still buys) abandoned cars during that period and had them shipped to the UK in containers for a small percentage of their possible value. All arrived filthy and without keys etc. a few gems, a lot broken for parts, a huge amount of paperwork. I think it was worth it financially but so much more work than he originally thought. There was a Porsche 911 that looked like it was carved out of dirt when it arrived I lushed after.

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     Adrianna Tan (skinnylatte@hachyderm.io)'s status on Sunday, 12-Jul-2026 18:33:33 JST Adrianna Tan

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     I was telling her about my fellow Singaporeans who are today so proud and so confident and arrogant about their achievements, they think the rest of the world (not just our neighboring SE Asian countries but also former ‘first world’ countries) are a step down.

     I laugh at how I hate their arrogance but also at the same time:

     Some of this seems based in the reality of a rapidly degrading ‘western’ world. It used to be, you could make a pretty compelling (even if often disingenuous) argument for ‘democracy’ because ‘look at the goods / quality of life / freedom of speech’.

     So now that there’s none of that really, my sense is that many people who live in well off authoritarian states like these two places are basically going, okay, so what do I get exactly? Collapsing trains? No public transit? No free school? Crumbling homes? Also, severe repression of speech as well? What’s so great about that? I get a free / almost free home / healthcare here and no shootings etc!

     (Not saying I agree but I see a lot of this kind of thinking)

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     Adrianna Tan (skinnylatte@hachyderm.io)'s status on Sunday, 12-Jul-2026 18:39:42 JST Adrianna Tan

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     In a lot of Chinese disinfo that targets the Chinese diaspora to try to turn them onto the CCP worldview, they use the word 乱 a lot. Like messy. Like dirty.

     They’re talking about American cities but they’re also talking about political systems. They’re equating the literal filth on the streets to the failure of ‘democracy’.

     Places like Dubai and Singapore are not 乱; they are heavily manicured.

     To my Syrian friends who live here, it’s amazing to have an Arabic-speaking place that’s business-friendly and largely safe, where they can get visas. To a Burmese refugee who decided to make Singapore their home after civil war, I’m sure they’ll fight me on some of my political beliefs about what I want for my own country, which probably seems messy.

     People and places are hard. At the same time, I also vigorously detest the ‘western neoliberal gaze’ upon the rest of the world. You know, the one that judges other societies. On their failings. All while ignoring their own.

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     Adrianna Tan (skinnylatte@hachyderm.io)'s status on Monday, 13-Jul-2026 04:16:29 JST Adrianna Tan

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     • Simon

     @spoltier yeah it’s just implied but there are cultural implications that messy = democracy vs authoritian = strong = things get done

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     Simon (spoltier@qoto.org)'s status on Monday, 13-Jul-2026 04:16:30 JST Simon

     in reply to

     @skinnylatte very interesting! I'm by far not as well traveled as you are, but my impression is that the correlation between demo/autocracy and "messiness" is very weak.