from Middle East moving to Dallas, need help (Houston, Post: high school, live)

[fratermus]

Originally Posted by nc560

Hi every one,
I am a medical professional from the Middle East who lived in Ireland for long time and moving to Dallas soon. I am very nervous about this move. Especially in the world of after 9/11 for people like me how’s only fault their skin colour or having a different religion.

Being nervous would be an over-reaction, in my opinion. Texans are not known for their worldy/cosmopolitan tolerance but there does seem to be plenty of healthy/happy Middle Eastern and Indo-European folks in the North Dallas Area. There is a local radio station called Salaam-Namaste; perhaps you can webcast it and listen to the local Muslim folks talking about their experiences. Probably more Pakistani Muslim oriented, but you should be able to glean something from it. There are more and more mosques, and there is very little friction (as far as I can tell) between the Muslim faithful and their neighbors.

I do shop for bread, rice, and some other things at the local Middle Eastern store in Carrollton (there are two within a half-mile). A nice ME store in Richardson (Andre foods), and huge warehouse-like store behind TI (World Food Warehouse):

===from the .gpx file listed below===
INDOPK N32 58.933 W96 55.184 (14S 694386 3651237) alt:138 IndoPak Indian/Pakistani strip mall in carrollton

WFWARE N32 55.846 W96 44.781 (14S 710714 3645865)
13434 Floyd Cir World Food Warehouse Arabic/Indian foodstuffs.

ANDRE N32 56.393 W96 46.107 (14S 708626 3646833)
1478 Spring Valley Rd
My favorite Arabic food store when I lived in Richardson
=======

These and other waypoints are posted online in a gps-friendly .gpx format. Note to Anglo dallasites haven't been to the World Food Warehouse: load up the kids and head on over. It's very cool, and you get to meet an entire subculture you may not interact with on a daily basis. And the olives and feta are dirt cheap and exceptionally tastey. Well worth the drive. Go there. Go there. Go there. Did I mention you should go there?

The downside: I would expect to hear some muttered xenophobic name-calling from the mouthbreathing highschool dropout crowd. Sad but not dangerous. All in all I think you will find it safe and relatively welcoming, particularly among the white-collar folks you will be interacting with most often. The locals do consider anyone outside the Evangelical Christian faith to be a little suspect, but I have worn a pentagram openly for years and haven't been abused for it so far (other than some conversion attempts).

Welcome to Texas, brother. Glad to have you here.

[Spree]

>> These and other waypoints are posted online in a gps-friendly .gpx format. Note to Anglo dallasites haven't been to the World Food Warehouse: load up the kids and head on over. It's very cool, and you get to meet an entire subculture you may not interact with on a daily basis. And the olives and feta are dirt cheap and exceptionally tastey. Well worth the drive. Go there. Go there. Go there. Did I mention you should go there? <<

I would love to check it out - where is it?

[SepiaZelda]

Originally Posted by nc560

Hi every one,

I am a medical professional from the Middle East who lived in Ireland for long time and moving to Dallas soon. I am very nervous about this move. Especially in the world of after 9/11 for people like me how’s only fault their skin colour or having a different religion.
I would like to ask about the culture in Dallas and racism? ( I know that TX is conservative how bad for people like me could be?)
I will work in the downtown, so what are the best areas with good facilities to live in?
I heard that the crime rate is high in Dallas, is it true?( it’s very safe in Ireland)

Cheers

I had a student last semester who recounted some very bad experiences after 9/11, but none of them were here. He seemed to think that it was more of a live and let live attitude in Dallas. Let's hope he's right.

I am assuming you will be at Baylor so I would look at Lakewood. 75214, 75218, even 75228.

[SepiaZelda]

Originally Posted by ChristieP

Arlington also has a lot of middle-eastern people.

Baylor University Medical Center, just east of downtown Dallas, is about the best hospital in Dallas!

I agree! But then, I spend a lot of time there, so I'm biased.

[stargazer]

Please don't be worried at all about moving here. You will find Dallas to be an area that is not filled with racist and be very accepting to who you are.

[kaykay]

I would just echo the sentiments of others that I don't think you'll have any problem at all in Dallas due to being from the Middle East.

[nc560]

Thanks every one for your comments and helpful tips. It's very reassuring and I am glad to hear it.
I am going to work in Ut Southwestern Medical , I thought it 's consider to be In the Downtown, is it correct?

Cheers

[aceplace]

Southwestern Medical is several miles from the center of the city. It is not considered to be in downtown Dallas. It has good bus connections to downtown Dallas, however, and beginning in December 2010, it will have two rail stations connecting to the rest of the city.

As for crime rates, they do not mean very much. The FBI, the government agency that publishes the statistics, says that you cannot reasonably compare one city's crime rate with another, since each city measures crime in a different way. The crime rate will not tell you how dangerous or safe a city is. Also, the criminal danger in most cities is not uniformly the same everywhere in the city. The vast majority of crimes occur only in a few dangerous neighborhoods, and the rest of the city is reasonably safe.

I suspect that the Dallas police have exaggerated crime in the city in order to gain more money for the police department. There is a new police chief now who has corrected some of the bogus reporting practices, and the "crime rate" has dropped 35%.

[metroplex2003]

Baylor University Medical Center is great, so is UTSW/Parkland.

A few words a/b Dallas: Dallas is in my opinion pretty cosmopolitan and also sports a fair amount of diversity. It's actually more diverse than most other major metropolitan areas. It's no LA, SF, NYC, but compared to the rest of the cities, it's relatively more diverse. We have a Chinatown, Korean Town, Vietnamese Neighborhood, Several hispanic neighborhoods as well.
We also have other large populations from eastern europe, middle east, etc.

So, I would not worry a/b being from the middle east and moving to Dallas. DFW has an area population of 6.03 million people, making it the 4th largest MSA in the nation.

So now to talk a/b our two premiere medical centers: Baylor University Med Center is excellent, it has an excellent Ortho dept, Internal Med subspecialties are strong: particularly GI, Cards, and Blood malginancies. It has a very heavy leukemia/lymphoma heavy service. The chief of medicine is the founder of the clinical use of the anion gap, and the creators of Go-lytely.

UTSW is also great as well. Endocrine is strong under the leadership of Dr. Raskin, who came up with the Raskin Protocol for treating DKA, also lipid research is strong here as well and has garnered world wide recognition.
UTSW has some NIH funding and has a considerable bench research presence as well.

Other notable hospitals include Dallas Presby and Methodist, which also have teaching programs as well, but not as prominent as BUMC and UTSW.

Both UTSW and BUMC will have DART light rail service within 2 years. UTSW already has rail access through the TRE, which can connect you to downtown Dallas and Ft. Worth and also a connection to DFW Int'l via a stopover in Irving.

[SepiaZelda]

Originally Posted by metroplex2003

Baylor University Medical Center is great, so is UTSW/Parkland.

A few words a/b Dallas: Dallas is in my opinion pretty cosmopolitan and also sports a fair amount of diversity. It's actually more diverse than most other major metropolitan areas. It's no LA, SF, NYC, but compared to the rest of the cities, it's relatively more diverse. We have a Chinatown, Korean Town, Vietnamese Neighborhood, Several hispanic neighborhoods as well.
We also have other large populations from eastern europe, middle east, etc.

So, I would not worry a/b being from the middle east and moving to Dallas. DFW has an area population of 6.03 million people, making it the 4th largest MSA in the nation.

So now to talk a/b our two premiere medical centers: Baylor University Med Center is excellent, it has an excellent Ortho dept, Internal Med subspecialties are strong: particularly GI, Cards, and Blood malginancies. It has a very heavy leukemia/lymphoma heavy service. The chief of medicine is the founder of the clinical use of the anion gap, and the creators of Go-lytely.

UTSW is also great as well. Endocrine is strong under the leadership of Dr. Raskin, who came up with the Raskin Protocol for treating DKA, also lipid research is strong here as well and has garnered world wide recognition.
UTSW has some NIH funding and has a considerable bench research presence as well.

Other notable hospitals include Dallas Presby and Methodist, which also have teaching programs as well, but not as prominent as BUMC and UTSW.

Both UTSW and BUMC will have DART light rail service within 2 years. UTSW already has rail access through the TRE, which can connect you to downtown Dallas and Ft. Worth and also a connection to DFW Int'l via a stopover in Irving.

Quick question: when you say lipid research, what does that mean? Does that include antibodies like the ones found in antiphospholipid syndrome?