India, Oct. 24 -- It took me 10 years to learn to love Dubai. In the beginning, I simply did not warm to it, and all the descriptions that the city's haters had used seemed appropriate: Too much bling, vulgar, shallow, imitative and derivative, Singapore without the culture, etc.

But over the years, my attitude became much more positive. Either Dubai changed (which it has) or I have (more likely), or a combination of both.

My wife, whose views on Dubai used to be the same as mine, has also changed her mind. It is, she says, a question of perspective. Stop seeing it as another Singapore, she says. It's not. It's the most international (and safest) city on the planet, kept afloat by a global assembly of talents. Sometimes, she believes , ...