Cost of living report (update):

The currency here is Dirhams (AED)
Currently the exchange rate is 1AED = $0.277277CDN according to this website.
The rate of inflation is expected to rise from 10% in 2007 to 12% in 2008. It is noticable

Restaurant meal:
low 15Dhs / $4.16CDN
Ave 28Dhs / $8.31CDN

Two beers, happy hour: 25Dhs / $6.93CDN

Latte at Starbucks: 14Dhs / $3.88CDN

Rent: collected up front, all 12 months of it plus deposit! So most rents are quoted as annual. Sometimes you can pay it 6 months at a time. Rental agents take a fee of 5% (or more) of the annual rent, do basically nilch to earn that fee and are currently lower than taxi drivers in my books.

1 BR apartment, 800sf:
low 55000Dhs / $15,243CDN per year (so about $1270 per month) plus utilities
average 90000Dhs / $24,940 (about $2,078 per month)

Taxi:
Bur Dubai to Emirates Towers (hotel to work and vice versa)averages 15Dhs / $4.15CDN
Emirates Towers to International City (where I will probably live): 55Dhs / $15.23CDN

Car rental for a month:
Small car 1200Dhs / $415CDN
Medium car 2000Dhs / $554CDN

Gasoline: 6.7 Dirhams per gallon. This is a metric country so not sure why gas is in gallons and not litres, the gas jockeys didn't have an answer for that but told me 1 gallon is 4 litres. 6.7 Dirhams = $1.85CDN per gallon, works out to about 46 cents per litre.

Groceries: I have not bought a lot of those yet since I also don't have a home. However, when I wandered the produce section at Spinney's (the local grocery store), most of the vegetables are imported from the US. How interesting that our fruits and vegtables in North America are imported from elsewhere yet exported to the Middle East? From what I could tell, it was very expensive but I'm told that the markets where the locals and other immigrants buy their produce are much much cheaper.