Are We Changed?

The weather was extremely hot in Dubai. I thought the hot weather in Dubai might affect my personality.

When I went shopping at the market, I bought some souvenirs. They didn’t put prices on each item so I asked for the price one by one. I bought three items, which were priced at 10, 15 and 20 dirham. After wrapping these three items, the clerk asked me to pay 55 dirham in total. I noticed he was cheating me. However, outside was over 43℃ and I didn’t have the motivation to quarrel about 10 dirham (300yen). I knew if I didn’t complain about the price, they might keep cheating Japanese customers. For the future Japanese customers, I might have to correct them. However I couldn’t speak up about it. I paid 55 dirham and even said “thank you” to them and left the shop.

The other day, I went to a tourist’s place to get a typical souvenir. A calligrapher wrote tourists’ names on paper in Arabic. I had an idea that I would ask for my name and my husband’s name on to be written one paper. The price showed 30 dirham for one sheet. However the calligrapher told me, “If these were two persons’ names, it would cost 60 dirham.” At that time, I felt “not again.” I said “if it cost 60 dirham, I wouldn’t ask you to write it.” Then he said, “30 dirham is OK.”

I could imagine my personality would be changed if I lived in Dubai for a year. When I spoke about this to my friend, she said, “Well done!” We spoke about her life in Dubai and my life in Manchester for a while. And she asked me, “Do you think my personality has changed?” I thought about it for a while and answered, “No, I don’t think so.” I actually didn’t feel that we hadn’t met for a year. I also asked, “By the way, do you think I’ve changed after living in Manchester for a year?” She said “No, not at all.” immediately. We might use different aspects of our personality in foreign countries however the very basic personality wouldn’t be changed easily.