Are you leaving Dubai this winter?

‘New Year, New You,’ if we all had a dirham for every time we heard that saying, or the similar ‘New Year, New Start’, we’d all be living in the Burj Al Arab, dripping in Hermes and keeping our spare cash in a gold-plated Aston Martin.

There’s the usual: Kickstarting your fitness regime (anyone after a personal trainer? Look up the amazing fitsquaddxb.com), looking for a new job, giving up an old vice (maybe enjoying El Chiringuito’s La Familia brunch every single Saturday was a bit indulgent) and then there’s the big one: Moving. Be that finally leaving behind JLT for a villa in The Springs, as I’ve done this month, or making that big, big decision: Leaving Dubai.

With almost 90 per cent of UAE residents being expats, people come and go, but it seems that December is very much ‘go’ season. Since late October my social media timelines have slowly filled with people announcing their December leaving parties, selling their furniture or wishing their best mates adieu in super emotional and often rather lengthy (especially for picture-led Instagram) posts. But what difference does is make if it’s December or June?

To be honest, the furniture-selling posts are the ones that I find most emotional (and not just because I’m on a Hunger Games intensity-level hunt for a leather lounge chair). The dubizzle and Facebook adverts that declare that ‘EVERYTHING MUST GO THIS WEEK’ really bring home that someone is leaving everything behind for that new start. Every corner of the apartments and houses these Dubai folk may have spent years turning into the perfect living spaces now need to be emptied and sold within weeks. There’s so many of these adverts that you can easily be de-sensitised to them; back home in England, that sort of Facebook post would spark an emergency intervention from a string of friends. Here in Dubai, it’s become the norm to lose a loved one to another country.

My first experience of being bereft of a Dubai friend came in December 2015, when Cressida, my partner-in-crime in both work and play, decided to move back to London for her new start. I was gutted… I’d only just found her a year earlier but she’d done her Dubai stint and she was out. But why December? Well, her old room in London had become available from the new year (I guess the person moving out was making a new start too) so it made sense.

The gap Cress left was then filled by my younger sister Suki (I thought I’d shaken her off when I left her behind in London, but alas she followed). However, on December 19, she’s also leaving Dubai to move back to the UK and start anew. She’s currently living with us (in the villa that doesn’t have a leather lounge chair) so the gap will feel even bigger. So, this damn ‘New Year, New Start’ has taken another victim.

So, why December? Who better to ask than Suki herself… she’s the one moving and she just so happens to be a wellness coach with answers. ‘The New Year is a good time to change things up because nearly everyone around you is trying to change something too,’ she explained to me wisely. ‘It’s easier to do something as part of a pack than going alone… trying to move back in, say, March, when everyone else is more settled would have been pretty lonely. Not to mention the end of the year is ‘family time’ – knowing you’ve got Crimbo dinner waiting makes thinking about life decisions a lot easier.’

And of course she’s right, the world’s wisest younger sister, and I wish her well. And good luck to everyone else in their 2018 New Year endeavours. Oh, and if anyone wants to help me with mine… I’m still on the hunt for that leather lounge chair.

Devinder Bains is a journalist, personal trainer and co-founder of fitsquaddxb.com. Find her on Instagram and Twitter: @devinderbains