Once you come to terms with the precarious nature of your financial wellbeing, you find fresh perspective. Yes, it's not ideal to be broke in a city like Dubai, but it's almost adventurous to penny-pinch one's way through the city. You begin to experience it differently, especially when you consciously expose yourself to worlds that seem to contrast headlong with that of the industry in which I am embedded—the art world. I've spent the last few days at Art Dubai, and though I've been here before, it always surprises me how wealthy its biggest players are and how almost disconnected most collectors are from the realities within which the works they buy are entrenched.

When I left Madinat Jumeirah last evening, for instance, to join the rest of the press trip team for dinner, most visitors were waiting for their luxury chauffeur-driven cars to pull up. I had skipped lunch because I couldn't afford the prices at the fair venue. We had been given a stipend but my penny-pinching proclivity prevented me from dipping into it. I was hungry and thought it best to join the team at the dinner site. Except, it was in Burjaman, another end of the city. I waited for the shuttle that would take me to Zabeel House, where I was being put up. The driver waited in case there was another passenger. When enough time had passed, he decided to start the bus. I was the only other person on board besides him. Naturally we ended up talking. He was from Pakistan. I told him I was from India. He'd been living in Dubai since 1998. He shared a common distaste for each of our government's policies towards the other. We ranted. We connected. We bit each other goodbye when it was time for me to get off.