I started looking for an apartment in the vicinity of my work place, Dubai Internet City.
Besides Dubai Marina, there are places like Barsha, Greens, Meadows, and TECOM, that are close to DIC. I looked for apartments at all these places. But with time I realized that the rents in these areas are sky-high and even if I do push my budget and manage to get an apartment there, it would be hard for me to survive. I had to make a decision based on what I have today, not what I might have tomorrow, or 6 months from now (that’s a topic for another post).
So with a broken heart I came at terms with the fact that I won’t be able to afford an apartment close to my work.
Next step was to identify the second most suitable place.
One thing was decided though: I had to live in Dubai, not Sharjah.
Sharjah is the city (state) next to Dubai. A common practice is that people live in Sharjah and work in Dubai. That’s because rents in Sharjah are much cheaper. But a side effect of this is that in the rush hour all Dubai-Sharjah highways are jam packed with bumper-to-bumper traffic. It takes two hours to cover a distance of what normally would take only half an hour.
Sharjah is on the east of Dubai and Internet City where I work is on the west of Dubai so one has to cross entire Dubai to go to Internet City from Sharjah. Total travel time: 2 hours! Total time spent in traffic every day: at least 5 hours. That’s not what I came to Dubai for.
So I started looking alternate locations in Dubai.
A lot of names came forward: Satwa, Bur Dubai, Deira Dubai, Al Mankhool, Karama, Qusais, and so on.
To be continued…
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