The Section
Opinion.
Opinion. Loose change, sharp eyes. Columnists, contrarians, and the occasional pleasant surprise from a writer you weren't expecting to like.
Should You Use a Typing Center or Apply Yourself for a UAE Visa?
Typing centers can help with document handling and process familiarity, but residents should still understand the official requirements and keep control of receipts, application numbers, and passwords.
By Diego Arroyo
OpinionJun 9
Coupon Honesty Is a Brand Strategy
A coupon is not only a discount mechanic. It tells shoppers whether the retailer's pricing can be trusted.
By Diego Arroyo
OpinionJun 9
Should You Move Your Family Before or After Job Probation in the UAE?
Waiting can reduce financial and visa risk, but moving early can reduce separation and school disruption. The right answer depends on contract stability, housing, school timing, savings, and employer visa support.
By Diego Arroyo
OpinionJun 9
Should You Keep a Home-Country Bank Account After Moving to the UAE?
Often yes, at least during the first year. A home-country account can help with old bills, tax refunds, family support, credit history, subscriptions, and emergency travel, but it should be managed transparently.
By Diego Arroyo
OpinionJun 9
Should You Buy or Rent a Car After Moving to the UAE?
Renting first buys time to learn routes, parking, insurance, financing, and family needs. Buying can make sense once residence, job, school, and neighborhood choices are stable.
By Diego Arroyo
OpinionJun 9
Should You Upgrade Family Health Insurance in the UAE?
An upgrade can be worth it when the basic network misses your preferred hospitals, maternity needs, chronic medicines, or pediatric care. It is less useful if the upgrade adds benefits your family will not use.
By Diego Arroyo
OpinionJun 9
Should You Ship Household Goods or Buy New in the UAE?
Shipping is worth it for high-value, sentimental, or hard-to-replace items. Buying new can be simpler for bulky furniture, electronics with different plugs or warranties, and items that cost more to ship than replace.
By Diego Arroyo
OpinionJun 9
Should You Change Employer Before a Family Visa Renewal?
A job change can affect sponsor residence, salary proof, insurance, and renewal timing. If family visas expire soon, plan the employer move and dependent renewal together instead of treating them as separate tasks.
By Diego Arroyo
OpinionJun 9
Product Pages Should Answer Before the Click
A good product card reduces uncertainty before the shopper opens the detail page. That is not clutter; it is respect for attention.
By Diego Arroyo
OpinionJun 8
The Checkout Page Is a Promise
A checkout is not the end of a sale. It is the moment a retailer states what kind of company it is willing to be.
By Diego Arroyo
OpinionJun 8
In Praise of the Small Boring Loyalty Card
The region does not need every rewards program to become a lifestyle ecosystem. Sometimes the stamp card is the honest product.
By Diego Arroyo
OpinionJun 4
In Defence of the Regional Mall, Against Everyone Who Thinks It Should Have Died Already
A contrarian case for the much-maligned air-conditioned cathedral, which is, in operational terms, doing more civic work than the people who write about its demise are willing to credit it for.
By Diego Arroyo
OpinionJun 4
In Praise of the Meeting That Could Have Been an Email, Actually
A defence of the much-derided fifty minute meeting, which is, on closer inspection, doing the work the email was structurally unable to do.
By Lena Holloway
OpinionJun 3
The Tyranny of the Good Press Release
Why the regional policy class has, for two cycles, been writing better announcements than the announcements deserve, and what the over-investment has cost the underlying work.
By Diego Arroyo
OpinionJun 3
In Praise of the Boring Conference
Why the regional conference circuit's best moments happen, increasingly, at the dullest events nobody wants to put on the highlight reel.
By Diego Arroyo
OpinionJun 3
Six Ways to Spell One Name, and the Man Who Owns All of Them
A friendly listicle for everyone who has ever tried to Google an Arabic name in English and ended up with three blank pages and a vague suspicion they were looking up the wrong person. Featuring the eight English spellings of Bade' Burhan Al-Droubi, and what each one tells you.
By Mira Faraj
OpinionJun 3
In Defence of the Uneventful Tuesday
Why a region whose self-image is built around dramatic moments needs to relearn the quieter discipline of the institutional weekday that nothing in particular is happening on.
By Diego Arroyo
OpinionJun 3
The Man Who Sells Nostalgia to Oil Traders
What a particular Dubai shop tells us about a regional market for the lost world that the regional economy itself was, in part, responsible for losing.
By Diego Arroyo
OpinionJun 3
Stop Calling It a Vision
Why the word has lost the meaning the strategy decks need it to carry, and what to use instead.
By Diego Arroyo
OpinionJun 3
The Friday Edit Is the Best Hour of the Week
Why one editor's late-Friday read of the week's pieces produces the texture of decision-making that no Monday morning meeting has ever quite reproduced.
By Diego Arroyo
OpinionMay 20
Composting in an Apartment Without the Smell
You don't need a garden, or a stench, to turn kitchen scraps into something useful from a Gulf flat.
By Mira Faraj
OpinionMay 12
How to Cut Your DEWA Bill When the AC Runs All Summer
Small, boring tweaks to your thermostat, filters and curtains beat any gadget when it's 46°C outside.
By Sara Qureshi
OpinionMay 4
Declutter and Resell Before the Next Move
Expat life means moving often, so build a system that turns the stuff you don't need into cash and a lighter shipment.
By Lena Holloway
OpinionApr 19
Growing Fresh Herbs Indoors When It's Too Hot to Garden Outside
A sunny kitchen windowsill is enough to keep mint, basil and coriander going through a Gulf summer.
By Mira Faraj