Sorry for the delay.

The best way to describe Dubai in the late 80s and throughout the 90s was rapid fire change and building like there's no tomorrow. When I was a kid back then most of the neighborhood where I grew up was still mostly sand lots with no building. It was actually a fairly nice place to live even then, but if you actually had interests in things as a kid you were kinda out of luck. There wasn't that much to do back then or things to learn to do or clubs you could be a member of. Or maybe there were, but my parents weren't aware of them.

However if you were a gamer, you were kinda in luck. I grew up with a Commodore 64 and later IBM 386 machine at home and we had no problems getting games for them (and most were pirated since software piracy was so incredibly rampant that people thought the originals were like a rare find). Console games were also sold in many places and Dubai in the 90s was LOUSY with Arcades. Like the principale place I would go to were arcades. Most were hinky-dink holes in the wall full of seedy assholes (not of the drug using variety... because possession of even small quantities of drugs can land you a very long sentence, even life), but if you got them to fuck off it was nice to immerse yourself in those machines.

However Dubai never felt like home. Not for me and not for many other people even if they were born there. This is in no small part owing to the fact that there is no birthright citizenship (with very limited exceptions of course), and also the fact that everyone you will know there is a foreigner who just came in to do a job and leave afterward. This even includes people like my dad who was in the country for nearly 30 years working as a computer engineer for various companies (he was paid very well for his services). The racism that exists there is also quite palatable. Nowadays they have hate crime and hate speech legislation that may or may not curb some people's racist expressions, but back then, you basically had people who had no problem saying they would want nothing to do with 'dirty people' that was very thinly veiled racism. I was on the receiving end of a world of bullying and mistreatment from Indians, Filipinos, and Emaratis who all didn't seem to compute it in their minds that I was fully human. The Indians were, to a large extent, the worse of the bunch in that regard. I had people stab my eyes and had been absent mindly cut by sharp objects from (they were being VERY negligent with their shit) and they reacted to me saying 'you cut me! I'm bleeding!' like someone would react to radio static. They simply did not understand why them phyiscally harming me would lead me to having an outburst against them.

In short, it was generally shit all around and I am glad I am not there anymore.