You know you’ve lived in the UAE a long time when…

  1. You’re watching an imported TV series box set and you find yourself shocked at the profanity and nudity and declare it ‘inappropriate and gratuitous’
  2. Driving anywhere and not having to beep your horn at someone feels like an achievement
  3. You describe any temperature lower than 25 degrees celsius as ‘Baltic’
  4. You go home for a visit and you find the standards of dress of the general public shocking
  5. When travelling outside of the UAE you convert everything back to Dirhams
  6. You find it outrageous when you come across a shop that isn’t open until at least 10pm every day, even on holidays
  7. You start to feel like a highway of ‘only’ five lanes wide is too small
  8. It’s completely normal to see people reversing down one way roads to reach the turn off they missed
  9. Being called Ma’am-Sir is no longer an insult or an indication that someone can’t figure out what sex you are and you accept it’s just an everyday friendly greeting
  10. When taking a taxi to the Yacht Club, you no longer ask pronouncing it ‘Yot Club’, but pronounce it phonetically the way it’s spelt – ‘Yachd Club’ or say ‘Yatch Club’ knowing you will avoid any confusion and be immediately understood
  11. When giving an apartment number or phone number containing the number two, you are not surprised when the number two is read back to you as ‘three’. You have learnt that a simple, “no – two: one, two, three” quickly clears this up
  12. It’s completely normal to drive up to the corner shop / lebanese bakery, beep your horn and wait for someone to come and serve you at your car window
  13. You see numerous flash sports cars / supercars on the roads and that’s just an average day
  14. You don’t freak out when the petrol pump attendant tells you there’s no need to turn your engine off
  15. You turn your hot water cylinder off and turn your tap to cold to get hot water and to hot to get cold water in summer

What do you think? Anyone have any others to add to the list?!