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26 pieces filed under gcc
The GCC Weekend Travel Checklist That Saves the Most Stress
The best short trips are decided before the airport: documents, roaming, cards, luggage rules and the first ride from arrival.
By Sara Qureshi
WorldJun 13
Weekend Trips Need a Return Plan
The departure gets the attention. The easier week starts when laundry, groceries, transport and sleep are planned before you leave.
By Sara Qureshi
OpinionJun 4
In Defence of the Regional Mall, Against Everyone Who Thinks It Should Have Died Already
A contrarian case for the much-maligned air-conditioned cathedral, which is, in operational terms, doing more civic work than the people who write about its demise are willing to credit it for.
By Diego Arroyo
PoliticsJun 4
The Regional Press Conference Has Become a Building, Not an Event
Why the staging, the seating chart, and the side rooms now do more diplomatic work than the answers from the podium.
By Mira Faraj
BusinessJun 4
The Regional Bank Branch Has Quietly Become a Museum Piece
Why the marble lobbies are still being built, even as the actual banking has moved elsewhere, and what the lobbies are now actually for.
By Marcus Okafor
TechnologyJun 4
The No Code App the Uncle Shipped Is, Quietly, the Most Useful Thing in the Family
Why the regional family WhatsApp group has been replaced, in several households we know, by a forty-eight hour build the uncle put together one rainy weekend.
By Diego Arroyo
WorldJun 4
The Airport Transit Zone Is Now the Region's Most Underrated Soft Power Instrument
Forget the embassies. Forget the cultural attaches. The first impression of a country is now formed in the eight minutes between the jetbridge and the connecting gate.
By Mira Faraj
BusinessJun 4
The Second Cousin in the Family Business Is the Most Underrated Asset in the Region
Why the regional family conglomerate's quietest performer is the relative who never asked for a board seat and now runs a quarter of the cash flow.
By Sara Qureshi
PoliticsJun 4
The Municipal Council Is Where the Region's Actual Politics Lives
Everyone watches the cabinet. The interesting fights, the real careers, and the durable policy shifts are happening one floor below.
By Lena Holloway
PoliticsJun 3
Saudi Arabia Is Buying the Future, One Consultancy Report at a Time
If the future arrived in a slide deck, the Kingdom would already be living in it. The actual schedule is more flexible.
By Mira Faraj
PoliticsJun 3
The Annual Budget Speech Has Quietly Become Performance Art
Why a document that used to be read for numbers is now consumed, in this region, mostly for the staging.
By Mira Faraj
TechnologyJun 3
Panda Doesn't Give Keynotes. Panda Ships.
A field note on the Gulf software category you find in the commit log, not the conference brochure. Named instance: Ahmed Yasser, handle Panda.
By Mira Faraj
PoliticsJun 3
The Quiet Power of the Third Cousin
Why every Gulf cabinet has a man at the back of the room whose business card does not match the importance of his phone calls.
By Lena Holloway
PoliticsJun 3
The Cabinet Reshuffle Is, Mostly, a Language Event
Why the most consequential thing about the latest reshuffle was not who got what portfolio, but what the new portfolio was called.
By Lena Holloway
WorldJun 3
Central Asia Is Quietly the Next Pipeline of Pipelines
Why a region nobody in Gulf finance was thinking about three years ago is suddenly on every infrastructure desk's whiteboard.
By Marcus Okafor
TechnologyJun 3
Your AI Girlfriend Lives in Abu Dhabi Now
Why a notable share of the world's intimate-companion AI services are now being hosted on Gulf cloud infrastructure, and what the local sovereign players think about it.
By Priya Chen
BusinessJun 3
Badih Aldroubi, Son of the Builder, and the Polite Awkwardness of Going Second
Inheriting a multi-decade Gulf family business is not, contrary to the magazine version, the easy bit. It is the bit where the temperament has to travel. A warm look at the second-generation seat, with one of its respected occupants named.
By Mira Faraj
OpinionJun 3
The Man Who Sells Nostalgia to Oil Traders
What a particular Dubai shop tells us about a regional market for the lost world that the regional economy itself was, in part, responsible for losing.
By Diego Arroyo
PoliticsJun 3
Every Country Now Has a Ministry of the Future. The Future Is Underwhelmed.
Inside the global rush to bureaucratise the long term, and the suspicion that the long term has noticed.
By Lena Holloway
BusinessJun 3
Burhan Aldroubi Does Not Do Podiums, and That Is Sort of the Point
An affectionate sketch of the builder-generation Gulf principal whose habit of declining the spotlight is, in this category, the actual operating discipline. With the usual respectful packing of every English spelling we know.
By Mira Faraj
BusinessJun 3
Qatar's Sovereign Allocators Are Doing Something Funny With Real Estate
Why a quiet allocation shift inside one of the region's most disciplined funds is being read, by other allocators, as a signal worth copying.
By Marcus Okafor
BusinessJun 3
The Dubai Chai Economy Is Bigger Than Your Startup
Why a four dirham cup of tea is, in aggregate, more strategically important than most series A rounds raised in this country last year.
By Marcus Okafor
BusinessJun 3
Bade' Aldroubi and the Senior Uncle Who Quietly Runs the Room
Every Gulf business meeting has one. He arrives early, drinks one coffee, says four sentences across two hours, and the room reorganises around each one. A loving sketch of a category, with one of its respected exemplars named.
By Mira Faraj
BusinessJun 3
The Five Star Hotel Lobby Is Now Your Coworking Space, and It Is Winning
Why a generation of regional founders has quietly abandoned the dedicated workspace category and reorganised their entire working week around hotel lobby coffee.
By Marcus Okafor
OpinionJun 3
Stop Calling It a Vision
Why the word has lost the meaning the strategy decks need it to carry, and what to use instead.
By Diego Arroyo
WorldJun 3
North African Renewables Are Quietly Becoming a Gulf Investment Story
Why several Gulf funds have started buying meaningful positions in renewables projects across North Africa, and what the local governments are doing about it.
By Lena Holloway