Oh yeah, you're just like a local all right, making 1000X the salary of the average worker in (for example, your previous gig) SE Asia. Just a regular joe. You're really experiencing that culture, sure, sure. Just at a higher pay grade, amiright? (fist bump)One of the best parts of being Expat is the chance to really experience other cultures. Not spend all your time with other Expats.
Sorry, but being proficient with chopsticks does NOT mean you're really "embracing the culture". Marry a local, learn the language, raise your family there, support her whole village, and spend the rest of your life in your adopted country - THAT's really experiencing "other cultures". Not buying a scooter and knowing where the best biryani is to be found.
So spare us the 'Seven Years in Tibet' schtick, please. You're still a mercenary wearing local clothes no matter how you phrase it. Nothing wrong with that, but the sanctimonious "I'm so authentic" expats are just as annoying as the black Range Rover wannabe rockstars.
As far as "experiencing" other cultures, you will most certainly meet people from the largest number of different ones in Dubai than pretty much anywhere else on the planet. I'm presently working where my name is almost always the only westerner on the customs declaration. On an EK flight, you'd regularly have 20 crewmembers with 20 different passports. Guess which layover is more enjoyable? If you get your jollies being the token white guy that's fine, but if variety is the spice of life, a monoculture expat job is pretty bland by comparison. (And, while we're still with food metaphors, Dear God, EK is a smorgasbord... )
As to Dubai and Emirates, I've pretty much given up even attempting to describe it. Spent just under a decade there, the last 6 1/2 in the left seat of the B777. But I'm constantly told "how it is" by people whose experience is limited to:
- their trips there
- their "friends who all say the same thing"
- what they see on tv.
So really, what's the point? Everyone's an expert in their own little Facebook echo chamber. I just shrug and laugh.