Amsterdam, the Honeymoon

My first half a year in Amsterdam.
In the DFAIT Intercultural Effectiveness course that I took before I went to Ghana, the instructor described the "Stages of Cultural Adaptation".  The pre-departure jitters --> the honeymoon phase --> culture shock --> adaptation --> re-entry shock.  The duration of each stage depends on the individual and the experience -- in my 6 month post in Ghana, the honeymoon lasted about 3 weeks, culture shock about 3 weeks, then adaptation for about 5 months interspersed with mild honeymoon/culture shock blips.

[borrowed from http://www.expatmumsblog.com]

When I moved from Abu Dhabi to Amsterdam my pre-departure jitters were virtually non-existent because it took me over a year to move here -- normally I give myself about 2 weeks notice before I move to a new country.  And remarkably, I seem to have remained in the honeymoon stage for the past five months here.  I have characterised this post-Abu Dhabi interstitial period as:
"Mini retirement"
"Sabbatical"
"Intermission"

And have used the following job titles:
"Kept woman"
"Home economist"
"Lady who lunches with ladies who lunch"
And my favourite, courtesy of Patricia:  "You're not unemployed, you're a 'freelancer'"

After leaving Abu Dhabi, I had given myself a month and a half in Canada to refuel so that I was ready for the job hunt as soon as I settled in Amsterdam.  But I quickly learnt that Amsterdam in May is not a place for professional ambitions, it is much better suited for leisurely self-indulgence.
"You know, when I first moved to Amsterdam, I was really expecting to land running, but it has surprised me how long it took me to get on my feet here."
"I know, everyone I've met here is an unemployed ex-pat partnered with a Dutch person, who was a professional-over-achiever until they landed in Amsterdam."
"Exactly, no one is expected to do anything their first six months."
"But even if I tried to do 'nothing', I just can't be idle.  My natural default is hectic productiveness, and I always have a lot of to show for my time.  I don't expect Amsterdam to be any different."

Five months after saying that, I do have a lot to show for my first six months post-Abu Dhabi, but not the sort of stuff I had initially meant.  Instead, Amsterdam taught me a lesson in leisure this summer:

Public Holidays.  With Queen's Day as the opener, May is the month of public holidays in the Netherlands.  Queen's Day was a lively inauguration into Dutch street festivities, followed by Remembrance Day, Liberty Day, Ascension Day...and the list continues.  By the time June had begun, most people had forgotten what it's like to work a five-day week!

Queen's Day, Amsterdam, borrowed from www.iamsterdam.com.

World Cup.  My biggest piece of advice to people thinking about leaving Abu Dhabi is to leave in April. This way you benefit from the best time of year in Abu Dhabi (October-March) -and- the best time of year in the temperate world (May-October).  But even with a year to plan my entry into the Netherlands, I can't take credit for landing in Amsterdam just in time for the Oranje to go all the way to the final (and for Ghana to make the quarter final!!  Go Black Stars!). "You wouldn't believe how crazy it is here.  I am woken at 9AM on game days to people cheering and howling, everyone is dressed head-to-toe in orange, and all the offices close for the day.  I can only imagine the atmosphere in South Africa?"
"No one here has gone to the office since the World Cup began."

120,000 people at Museumplein for the World Cup Final, borrowed from www.mobypicture.com.

Fitting in.  Once my belongings from Abu Dhabi actually arrived 3 months after they were packed, it was a full time job for a month just trying to make the place functional.
"What's your schedule this week?"
"I'm fitting my 1200 sf apartment in Abu Dhabi into our 400 sf apartment in Amsterdam.  All week."

Art.  Art is everywhere in Amsterdam, and it's not something reserved for an artistic elite -- it's children's playgrounds, people singing on their bikes, temporary train station installations, overhead lamps, and random street characters.  A week doesn't pass by where I haven't seen a group of people dressed in costume break out into song.

Visitors.  I finally live in a city that is both central and desirable to visit, and whether it was a quick beer during a layover, or a week of hosting houseguests, we had a summer filled with reunions and good company.  Literally every week since I moved here, we have either been out-of-town, or someone has been visiting, and it has been a fantastic way to transition into life here, surrounded by familiar faces.

Cooking.  I've never been the primary chef in the household, nor do I ever plan on becoming one, but I've had fun learning how to cook and buy groceries this summer.  We have a farmer's market 50m from our doorstep every Saturday and a vintage market 100m away every Monday.  We invented a fantastic salad with goat's cheese, the crusty bits on top of fattoush, pasta, strawberries, and chicken; I learnt how to make stuffed butternut squash; Reinier learnt how to make cepelinai (Lithuanian mega-perogies); and I remembered how to make some of my old faves such as okonomikyaki, stir fry udon, and poor man's sushi.

Couples.  One of the biggest adjustments for me has been living in a coupled world.  Everyone in Amsterdam lives with their partner, usually expat female + Dutch male.  I don't think Dutch people marry Dutch people anymore.

Modes of Transportation.  Amsterdam has some very creative ways of getting around, including the beer bike, the penis bike taxi, the luge bicycle, and the disabled guy who pops a wheeley through crowded squares.

Beer Bike, with fully functional taps, borrowed from conortje.wordpress.com.

Festivals.  There are hundreds of festivals held in Amsterdam, and most of them occur between May and September.  "You want us to come to Liverpool for the Matthew Street Festival at the end of August?  I might actually tire of free outdoor music and beer by then."

Trips.  We found ourselves saying an enthusiastic "Yes!" to every travel opportunity that landed at our doorstep this summer.  And since we never know how long we'll be living in Europe, we felt it was the responsible thing to do.  Mountain biking, camping, family, building sand forts, sailing, yachting, reunions...a special thanks to my family in Lithuania for being such outstanding hosts, as always!

By September I was actually looking forward to the transition from summer bedlam into autumn order.  As the leaves begin to brown, this week I also started Dutch courses and working part-time setting up a Dutch Waterfront Centre and Network, and next week I start working a second part-time job.

It's been 5 years since I spent a winter in the temperate north, I can sense that the honeymoon is about to end at the same rate as the winter sets in.

Halas that sh#t.

Ex-pats and people who repeatedly travel to certain places often don't necessarily learn the local language to fluency, but instead slowly incorporate some of the local language into their own vernacular. Some words just don't quite have the same flavour in your mother tongue -- how can you accurately translate "Inshallah" (officially meaning "if God wills it", but often meaning "No."), and "chez" (translates as "at the house of", but is so much more widely applicable and faster than English terms).

Here are some words that I have encountered in the vernacular of ex-pat communities around the world:

Scotland -
"Id-nay" (literally means "isn't it so?")
"Neeps" ("turnips")
"Tatties" ("potatoes")

Japan
"Gambateh!" (three syllables that collectively mean: "work hard"; "nose to the grindstone"; "good luck")
"Dai-jo-bu" (meaning "no problem", but not as casual and much more fun to say)
"Five-man" (a combination of "five" in English, and "man" meaning ten thousand, used constantly when dealing with Japanese currency)

Montreal -
"What day are we?" (Anglo-Montrealers won't actually believe you when you tell them this is not real English)

Turkey -
"Ghetto tea boys" (meaning the young men with brown teeth who spend all day drinking tea and staring at passing women, not to be confused with "tea boys" in the UAE, who are the men who serve tea)
"Brown Cricket Problem" (meaning cockroaches)

Ghana -
"Sista" (literally means "sister", but can be applied to any female, including strangers)
"Cha-lee" (literally means "Charlie", but can be applied to any male who is a friend)
"Bra" (literally means "brother", but can be applied to any male, including strangers)
"You are not a serious man" (widely applicable, used whenever any man is incessantly bothering you)
"Obruni" (means "white person")
"Obibini" (means "black person")

UAE
"Maam-sir" (literally means "madam or sir, whichever you are", and is used by virtually all south and southeast Asian service staff to greet people)
"Same same" (literally means "they are the same", but usually implies "same same, but different", used by virtually all south and southeast Asian service staff)
"Halas that sh_t" (no exact translation possible, western ex-pat expression that combines "halas" [done, stop, enough, cease] with English slang)

Netherlands
"Beer-tche" (spelt "beertje" in Dutch, literally means diminutive beer, or small beer)
"Gezellig" (fantastic Dutch word meaning "good vibes", "friendly atmosphere", "positive ambiance")

The Benefits of Being Not Married.

- I hear that you are leaving us.
- Yes, I'm moving to the Netherlands.
- So you two are finally getting married?
- No, there's no need. I can immigrate as a "partner".
- But then where is it written that he must provide you with a comfortable home? And what allowances you'll have? And what he has to provide for you to go home to visit your family?
- Well western marriages are really wishy-washy about those sorts of things anyways. All we do in western marriages is vow to love, honour, and cherish each other.
- Really? But that doesn't mean anything. Where are your guarantees? Where is your contract?
- All a western marriage contract says is that you have exchanged your vows in front of witnesses and that you are now married.
- Where are the vows written? How can you verify that they have been met?
- Umm. They're not listed in the contract, it's only mentioned that there were vows exchanged. I think it's the act of saying them in front of your friends and family that makes you accountable to them.
- Speaking them in front of people? But what are the grounds for divorce if the contract is so ambiguous and undocumented? What is the guarantee that your partner can afford to be married?
- Well, for my immigration purposes my partner has to take responsibility for me financially and legally for 5 years as my guarantor, and has to prove his income and employment and status as a citizen. But as far as I know, in a marriage there are no such requirements.

In a country where business runs on word rather than contracts, where million dollar deals are made on handshakes alone, and multinational companies risk everything on their relationships with just a few key clients, the attitude in the Emirates towards marriage is quite different. I was generally met with complete shock by my Arab colleagues in Abu Dhbai when they learnt that I was relocating to the Netherlands without any marital "guarantees".

The attitude in the Netherlands seems quite different towards marriage. Everyone in the Netherlands seems to be partnered with someone from abroad -- there are no Dutch people married to Dutch people in Amsterdam. And even for the ex-pats, it's much easier to immigrate as a partner than as a wife/husband!

- It was such a nightmare doing the paperwork to immigrate here.
- Really? My whole immigration process took a total of 3 days, and then I received my papers less than two weeks later.
- We got married in Canada, and so we had to apply for a long form marriage certificate, and then that needed to be sent to the Canadian Department of Foreign Affairs to be stamped, and then they had to send it to the Dutch Embassy in Ottawa to be legalised, and only then was it an acceptable document to the Dutch Immigration Authorities. It took months!
- You should have gotten not married instead. It's much faster.
- How do you do that?
- On Monday you go to the Canadian Embassy in the Hague and get certificates saying that you are not married. On Tuesday you register at the City Hall as "co-habitators running a joint household", and then on Wednesday you go to the Dutch Immigration Office and sign a paper saying that you're "partners". It only takes 3 days, rather than 3 months.
- But don't you have to prove your relationship? Or be living together for more than 6 months?
- We had every boarding pass from trips together and visiting each other over the past 2 years, and plenty of other documentation. They never asked to see it. And on the form it only stated that we had been officially co-locating for 3 days.

The best part is that when we went to the Canadian Embassy to fetch certificates saying that we were not married, the women who presented them to us said "Congratulations!".

- Um. Thanks?
- Good luck to the two of you then.

Had she just congratulated us on being not married? She must have recently divorced, or be someone who is against marriage. Then it was explained to me that Canadians who get married in the Netherlands must apply for the same certificate of being "not married" first, so it's more likely that she was being presumptuous rather than supporting our not married status. In any case, we went out for drinks to celebrate the completion of my immigration process, and the benefits of being not married.

Brilliant Quotes of the Noughties [2000-2009].

Sometimes friends bantering can quickly spiral into pure genius. Here are just a few quotes I remembered recently, which may or may not be funny to anyone else:

“But our dwarves have magical powers.”
- Nunoo, on the difference between ‘real dwarves’ in Ghana, and the ‘mythical dwarves’ found in folkloric tales such as The Lord of the Rings. Ghana, 2006.

“Unless that hamburger has alpaca or guinea pig in it, I’m not interested!”
Sarah, responding to the waiter’s dinner suggestion after delaying her much anticipating first Incan meal of either alpaca or guinea pig by 3 days due to altitude sickness. Peru, 2006.

“It’s all in your outlook: sure you’re being cheated, but you’re being cheated in the sun!”
- [Translation] Hostel bartender, on why I should go to Morocco, and to this day the best travel advice I have ever received. France, 2002.

“It gets rid of the goatiness”
- Maura, on using lemon rind to mask the ‘goatie’ flavour of goat’s cheese, coining the term ‘goatiness’ forever. Canada, 2001.

“I was seriously disappointed by the lack of llamas”
Sarah, on her first impressions of Machu Picchu. Peru, 2006.

“And that’s a historical fact.”
- Consultant_Tim, on all of the historical ‘facts’ we fabricated during our car ride across Jordan, collectively falsifying all of Jordanian [and Western Civilisation’s] history. Jordan, 2009.

“Is that funny, or am I just drunk?”
“I don’t know, I’m drunk.”
- Mikey and Me, on a particularly creative Abu Dhabi park job. UAE, 2009.

“I know – let’s make a Junction Triangle interpretive dance!”
- Dougie, on how to effectively present our revitalization plan for Toronto’s Junction Triangle. Canada, 2005.

“It’s irresponsible of you to have a heating bill of less than $600.”
- Toronto Landlord, on why he shouldn’t have to pay to insulate our house in order to reduce energy consumption and our heating bill costs. Canada, 2004.

“Alpacas have cuter faces.”
- Sarah, on her highly scientific method for distinguishing alpacas from llamas. Peru, 2006.

“You promised me Madeleine Albright, elephants, and Livingstone. I’m leaving!”
- Mikey, on his invented expectations of Ethiopia. Ethiopia, 2008.

“It’s f-ing brilliant. Just add water, instant community.”
- Me, on my first week of graduate school. Canada, 2004.

The Silent Chapter.

After nearly three years living in the United Arab Emirates, I have finally bitten the bullet and left my cushy government job in Abu Dhabi to search for new opportunities in Amsterdam.

People have often asked me why I rarely wrote about my experiences in the UAE, compared to my endless emails exploring the Japanese psyche, my elaborate photo documentation from multiple stays in Europe, and my unquenchable excitment about Ghanaian people.

There are several reasons / excuses:

1. Professional learning curve -- unlike my other world adventures, my life in Abu Dhabi revolved around my exciting, but intense job. Most of my mental and emotional energy was poured into absorbing as much as I could of such an unparalleled professional opportunity.

2. Busy travel schedule -- living in the Middle east, there are dozens and dozens of [inexpensive] countries within a 3 hour flight radius, and several low-cost airlines to get me there. I took every opportunity I could to travel, on average leaving the country once a month. I was very fortunate to go to Yemen, Ethiopia, Oman, India X 3, Lebanon X 2, Malaysia, Sri Lanka, Jordan, Nepal, Zimbabwe, Namibia, Botswana, South Africa, and many other places, sometimes just as long weekends from Abu Dhabi. [I also had 40 work days of paid vacation per year, plus about 3 weeks of public holidays.]

3. General Hecticness -- there's exciting-professional-hecticness, there's fun-travel-hecticness, and then there's painful incessant administrative hurdles that one has to jump through in the UAE which make life unmanageably hectic. I have never been able to express to people how unnecessarily traumatic small administrative tasks are to accomplish in the UAE. And for no good reason except human carelessness. Just as one example, to have internet connected at my house it took 11 applications, about 25 visits to the internet company's offices (each visit takes about 25 mins stuck in traffic, 15 mins trying to park, 1 hour waiting only to find that you were given a waiting token for the wrong division, and I will spare you the explanation of trying to communicate with the staff members when you're trying to determine *which division you are meant to speak to, etc., etc.), four visits to my house by the technicians to [not] install my internet, and then keeping the technician hostage until the internet company and/or the technician can give me a good reason why it's impossible to install internet. Imagine the headache of basic tasks such as opening bank accounts, paying phone bills, finding an apartment, buying a car, car repairs, minor car accident administration, minor car accident repairs, car servicing, communicating with a taxi driver, home repairs, cancelling visas, etc., etc.

4. No camera -- everyone is taking fabulous, highly professional-looking photos these days with state-of-the-art cameras, and then emailing them or facebooking them electronically to be instantly shared with the rest of the world. It was during my trip to Peru in 2006 that I realised I was starting to live through my camera, feeling constant pressure to capture a moment, capture a site from it's most interesting angle, and document my life experiences on film. These days I am rarely the one behind the camera, and seem to have gotten much more lethargic with documenting my experiences in general.

5. Ex-pats -- I had never had so many white anglo friends in my life. Emirati culture is very private, and Abu Dhabi's population is 20% UAE Nationals, and 80% ex-pats. I worked for the government and was very fortunate to have a great deal of exposure to Emirati culture, and to have Emirati friends. But there are social rules that must be followed which limited the amount of time and conditions under which I could enjoy the company of my Emirati friends. The mix of ex-pats is highly stratified based on the combination between your job and your nationality: labourers live on labour camps and speak no English with no right to travel or see their families for the duration of their stay; service workers live in crowded apartments, sometimes with rotating sleeping shifts, speak English and are very sociable, but their role is to serve and they have no right to travel or bring their families; and, skilled workers and entrepreneurs, who have exponentially higher wages than service workers, have the right to bring over their families, have the vacation days, money, and right to travel, but are still divided in salary by the position they hold as well as the country they are from, with Western skilled workers having the highest wages within each pay band. Therefore you can save everyone a lot of embarassment by just simply spending time with the people who have relatively the same social boundaries, pay, and rights that you have, although it gives you much less material to write home about.

6. Good friends -- having been employee number 12 at an organization that now has over 180 employees, many of whom are young, energetic, explorative, art-and-culture-loving, food-loving, extroverts, and despite Abu Dhabi being considered a "boring" place, we made the most of it and managed to have endless fun. Abu Dhabi was also the longest I'd ever spent in one place except "home", and I certainly have a new appreciatation for longer stays.

7. Long distance -- whatever energy that was leftover was spent maintaining a long distance relationship, which is now a no-distance relationship in Amsterdam. I tended not to write because the first question was often "When are you two finally going to live together?"

So I have no excuses in Amsterdam!

The Call to Beer.

People have often asked me if living in a Muslim country has changed my religious practices.

Ramadan and Fridays are the only times I actually felt like I lived in a different culture. In the UAE, people work a Sunday through Thursday work week where Friday is the Holy Day, Thursday night is our Friday night, Friday is our Sunday, and Saturday nights are spent relaxing, preparing for the busy work week ahead, rather than gearing up for a night on the town.

Despite these alterations to the work week, my life in Abu Dhabi looked more like my life in suburban Vancouver above anywhere else I had ever been. I drove to work, I drove straight from work to the hypermarket to fetch groceries, free time was spent driving to the shopping mall or to friends' houses, and life revolved around the availability of parking, and the path of least traffic resistence.

Friday was a very different scene. A typical Friday morning involved sleeping in, lazing about, and eventually making breakfast plans that never managed to come to fruition until lunchtime. We would leave the house walking or driving along empty roads, famished from having taken so long to organise ourselves, recounting the adventures of the week. Walking through the streets of Abu Dhabi, there is a rare quietness as we dash through the alleyways, enjoying the hidden gems of the Capital tucked behind the boulevards. Abu Dhabi has an oppressive super-block configuration where most people's urban experience occurs stuck in traffic on 8-lane boulevards lined with 22-storey buildings, or squeezing through parked vehicles on the smaller roads on the insides of the blocks which have become veritable parking lots punctuated by sheesha cafes and mosques. But at midday on Fridays the streets are empty of cars, and the usual bustle and honking of the inner superblocks is replaced by a quiet sea of white robes walking peacefully to the Friday mosque for prayers. We pass a group gathered under a tree drinking tea and realise for the first time that many of these interstitial urban spaces are actually rather nice places to spend time.

Our church is in sight. A single voice begins to ring from the surrounding mosques -- the Call to Prayer -- ushering its followers into their houses of faith. The pace speeds up as our Muslim brothers stream into the Friday mosques, eager not to be late for their weekly Jumu'ah prayer. With this same sense of urgency, we too make haste, pouring into our adopted house of worship: Brauhaus. And a hmmm / mmmm falls on the whole city as we observe our respective creeds. If anything, my life in Abu Dhabi has strengthened my religious practice of beer.

[Not] Spoiled.

We had a busy summer of exciting travels.

July was spent in Canada, with trips to enjoy friends and family in Calgary, Vancouver, and Portland, a drive along the stunning Oregon Coast to the Olympic Penninsula in Washington State, and a stay at a former Burlesque house in the 19th-Century-preserved-wild-west town of Port Townsend.

August began with a long weekend of good food and great music in Amsterdam. Just a few weeks later we were back in the Netherlands for some birthday fun -- indoor skydiving, more fantastic food, and a weekend stay at Engelenburg Castle, including a six course meal with six paired wines.

September began in the Netherlands at the castle, five days later we were in Beirut for my birthday weekend of surprises. My first surprise was a trip to Byblos, the famous Phoenician port town founded in 5000 BC, for walks around the old town and the best squid I've ever had in my life. The next surprise was a tour of Chateau Musar Winery, and a visit to the absolutely stagerring Jeita Grotto. Between surprises, we spent our time walking the neighbourhoods of Beirut, soaking in its raw beauty and animation.

Another four day work week in the UAE, and it was Eid holidays in Jordan for a wide range of historical, relaxation, spiritual, and adventure travel experiences. The well-preserved Roman city of Jerash rivalled Ephesus, floating in the Dead Sea was surprisingly entertaining, and there was lots of good food to be had. Seven hours walking around Petra was not enough to absorb the vastness and intricacies of the 5.5 km long ancient capital of the Nabataeens, a truly ethereal place of natural beauty, dramatic landscapes, and monumental yet elegant architecture, that requires a high degree of fitness! Our trip wrapped up with an adventurous climb up the gorge-ous (pun pun) Wadi Mujib where I was twice rescued by Reinier from the rapids, and finally a walk through Amman's Byzantine ruins.

While enjoying another delicious three hour meal in Amman, Reinier looked at me holding a glass of Jordanian red wine and asked: "Are we spoiled?"

"Well, that depends on how you measure it. I live on the other side of the world from all of my family, and I live three timezones from my partner. I live in a city I don't feel connected to, where I cannot do many of the activities I most enjoy. I see injustice every day, and I don't have the luxury of knowing that there is a social safety net that is taking care of the under-priviledged, which I am not only helping to pay for via taxes, but I am also able to influence via a democratic system. My job is very challenging but exhausting, and getting anything done in the UAE is full of obstacles and frustration. We pay for this -- we can afford all of these trips financially, because we pay for it with lifestyle, distance, and stress."

Spoiled is relative. Anyone who enjoys security in food, shelter, and personal safety is spoiled. Within my current context of living in the UAE, spoiled to me is living in the same city as your partner, paying taxes towards the wellbeing of others, understanding your rights, living within a few hours of your family, and enjoying an active and engaging lifestyle with your urban and natural environment.

However, within my next context of being poor but happy living in Europe, we shall see how quickly I miss the luxuries I do have here: lots of vacation time, sufficient finances to spend on all the travels I want, daily swims in my pool, an exciting job, and having a tight social international community I can always count on. We shall see how long it will take me to realise that I am [not] spoiled here.

Kevin Mitchell on Making Sense of the Gulf.

"When confronted with such rapid transformation, it is difficult to make sense of what is happening in the Gulf and constant change precludes broad generalizations. One tends to either run in fear while ranting about the excesses made possible by the most extreme manifestations of neoliberalism or to stand frozen while expressing a perverse fascination with what is deemed to be inevitable."
- Kevin Mitchell on the Gulf countries in "Constructing Fact, Fantasy, and Fiction", Al Manakh 2006

The scale of authenticity.

Abu Dhabi's an excellent place to have young children, but for an imaginative 20-something, there's little to do except work. And I've been working 10-12 hour days for almost 2 months straight now. Though I really enjoy work right now.

A typical email from me these days reads "No, you have not been removed from 'the list' -- I've been working too much to write lengthy email updates these days." I think the reason my blog was so active while I was in Africa was because I had little else to do at work! But also, I had far more material to work with in Africa than I have here.

Abu Dhabi is a peaceful, island city where activities and places are controlled in order to maintain the peaceful status quo. There are no real spontaneous, organic, cool places to discover, no quirky cafes opening, or room for interpreting public space.

I went to Nepal for an extended long weekend in March, and we spent most of our time hanging out with the owners from our hotel -- an ultra-cool couple from Seattle -- and their ultra-cool friends. The couple met in Seattle and returned to the husband's homeland a few years ago to re-build his childhood home into a guesthouse, and they enjoy hosting their guests as if they are old friends at home, and they have all sorts of funky ex-pat friends who own restaurants and bars around Kathmandu. One evening, we were sitting around a fire at an open roof Korean resto-bar, having drinks with the American Embassy crew, talking about how much we appreciated having all these stylish and interesting places to go to in Kathmandu:

- Yah, but this is not the Kathmandu experience.
- I disagree. This is a Kathmandu experience, and something I have no guilt enjoying, because it's still something I cannot get in Abu Dhabi.
- Yah, but this is not the real Kathmandu.     Look around you -- we're all ex-pats.
- I totally get what you're saying, and if I hadn't just spent half the weekend staying with the family of our tea boy in his village, then I would probably walk away from this long weekend feeling rather empty about my experience in Nepal. But, on the scale of authenticity, sitting on this rooftop in Kathmandu, drinking Black Russians with a bunch of Americans, Koreans, and one Napalese person still ranks many notches higher than anything I've managed to find in inauthentic Abu Dhabi.

I think I spend very little time really "in" Abu Dhabi. It's not a bad place here, in fact, I think it would be heaven to raise small children here. And I hate it when people complain that there's nothing to do, because we have everything we need here, and people leave you in peace on the streets, and we're given space. But the truth is that Abu Dhabi is just too chill, with a focus on families. And 5 months of the year it's too hot to go outside.

Largely because of this simple climatic fact, much of life in Abu Dhabi feels very manufactured. Most urban activities were designed to avoid the reality of the outside world -- air conditioning runs all year round, and they even tore down the old central souk in order to build a 'modern' indoor one (ah, when you build a souk indoors, it's called a 'mall', and there are already plenty in Abu Dhabi!)

Mostly I lead a very domestic life. Topics of conversation revolve around work (almost my entire social circle are people I work with), buying furniture (I'm in the midst of my second move already, and there are always new people coming who inevitably talk about furniture), and cars (I just bought a pimped SUV – the most fuel-efficient SUV available in UAE, by the way). I lead more of a Burnaby life now than I ever lead in Burnaby!

The real world only bullies its way into one's life here when something goes wrong -- such as finding accomodation. My move has been filled with drama -- I was kicked out of my flat by building management because they want new tenants so that they can ask for more bribe money, then the roommate turned on me and displayed her un-humanly selfish and victimized attitude in its full glory, it took 2 months to find a new place to live (which we're paying $50,000 per year in rent for by the way -- Abu Dhabi is ridiculous for housing!!!), and now I'm homeless until the new pad is ready for moving in.

Even in family-oriented Abu Dhabi I seem to find some authentic drama to keep me entertained.

Car-Culture Shock.

I have been busy moving into my new apartment, traveling virtually every weekend, and working much harder than I'm legally allowed to during the holy month of Ramadan. As such, I haven't had much time to write. So I thought, in the mean time, I'd at least share some of my email responses to questions people have been posing me...

How is it going over there? You arrived in Abu Dhabi the same time as Christopher arrived from Sierre Leone to Toronto, so I'm going to time your culture shock together! Has it began yet?
I think our experiences of culture shock may vary slightly...I work and socialise almost exclusively with Montrealers and Vancouverites. Even my two non-Canadian friends both lived in Canada for awhile. Plus the fact that I've been on the road for so long, I'm kind of instantly adaptable these days. The biggest cultural difference is that I'm adjusting to car culture.

What's it like?
Well, I've had it really easy here. I got hooked up with an apartment with a really cool Aussie girl my workmate met on the street, in the building 3 of my work colleagues live in. So I have a fab place, fully stocked with furniture and dishes and the like, and my workmates seem happy enough to drive me everywhere. I basically haven't lifted a finger. I'm so stocked up that when it was time to have a potluck amongst the crew, I hosted it because I have the most dinning space and dishes. I even have a guest room with a double bed all set-up.

Abu Dhabi is a place that's very difficult to characterise, and my experience here revolves around my job, my weekend travels, and my workmates who live in my building. I feel like I could make more definitive statements about Oman than I could about Abu Dhabi, because I don't feel like I've remotely scratched the surface of AD yet. I feel like I'm combing the surface with a car, but I'm not even the one behind the wheel.

What's work like?
Work has been fine, but new staff is always arriving, and change is the only constant, so things might not always be as good as they've been for me at work. I anticipate that any cool projects I've been given to manage will be re-allocated to new staff members just when they start to get cool.
How do you get exercise with the not going outside part? Are you swimming there?
We have a pool and a gym on the roof of our building, so I go to the gym about twice a week and I swim a couple times a week too. But not so much as exercise -- it's still too hot in the pool and outside to swim for exercise. One night I went swimming in the Persian Gulf at 4am, and even then the water was still a couple degrees hotter than the air -- maybe 35 degrees at 4am.

But this week it has finally cooled down, and being outdoors is actually beginning to be enjoyable. As autumn ensues, I'll be able to comfortably explore my environment from outside of the car and actually penetrate my environment enough to have some actual culture shock.

Thank God It’s – Thursday?

Some Q&A about my first week in the United Arab Emirates.

TGIF has a whole new meaning in the UAE – people are literally thanking God on Fridays as they go to the mosque for mid-day prayer after a long Sunday to Thursday workweek. Though I doubt the TGI Friday restaurant chain had that much forethought when they opened up shop in Dubai.

Isn’t Abu Dhabi where Garfield would send Nermal?
Yes, Abu Dhabi is where Garfield would send Nermal – and sometimes Odie – by airmail. It is also the capital of the United Arab Emirates, a country composed of 7 Emirates including Abu Dhabi’s famous cousin, Dubai. His Highness Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan is President of the UAE and Ruler of Abu Dhabi, and Abu Dhabi is governed by His Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi.

Where is the UAE?
The UAE is located on the northeast corner of the Arabian Peninsula and is bordered by Saudi Arabia, Oman, and the Persian Gulf. Other neighbouring countries on the Arabian Peninsula include Yemen, along the Persian Gulf are Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait, and Iraq, and just across the Gulf is Iran.

How far is Dubai?
I went to Dubai this weekend, and it took about an hour to drive there. Though the UAE is one country, each Emirate enjoys a great deal of autonomy. While Dubai has invested heavily in tourism and has deregulated real estate such that foreigners can own property in the Emirate, Abu Dhabi is more government and industry focused, where only Emiratis can own land. Dubai is a collision of new meets old, east meets west, where the “locals” are filthy rich and are the last people you find on the streets. Scattered “downtowns” of new developments compete along the highway with few pedestrian and road connections between them where social life is concentrated in the towers, while the fantastic older city is centred along the creek, with a great number of ferry and pedestrian connections between the various souks and other centres of migrant worker street-life. We arrived at mid-day on a Friday – prime prayer time – and it was thrilling to see the streets of Dubai at their most social hour.

Do you have to wear a headscarf?
The UAE is a very liberal country, and I have felt even less threatened here than I did in Turkey and Morocco – also very liberal Islamic countries. The UAE is composed of 80% foreign nationals, and women’s style of dress reflects this – women dress in anything from a head-to-toe black Burqa, to very tight clothing with a headscarf, to knee-length skirts and a tank top, and Indian women where saris. Emirati men all seem to wear their traditional white Arabian draped clothing with a white head piece.

Where do you live?
I’m staying at a hotel until I sufficiently furnish and move in to an apartment that I’ll be sharing with an American woman in a downtown district. The other three planners all live in the same building about 20 minutes away from my future home. The hood I’m moving into is very Pakistani, and everyone is super friendly. As Aaron says, in the absence of a communal language, the currency here is sweetness.

What’s work like?
The working week is Sunday through Thursday, with Friday and Saturday being our weekends. Our office is a new branch of the government that is still being defined, named, and housed. There are three bosses in our office [two Emirati, and one Australian], four planners [2 Canadians, an American, and an Aussie], and about a dozen managerial, administrative and support staff members, including local, Lebanese, and Bangladeshi nationals, with about as many women as men. We also have a team of consultants from Boston working in our office for the next year, three of whom are permanently based in our office in AD and are staying at the same hotel is me. Lunch is the major meal of the day in the UAE, and we eat lunch communally in the afternoons together, usually Lebanese food. If my name wasn’t difficult enough, I share an office with an Australian planner of Greek origin.

What’s daily life like for you?
Everything feels familiar and normal for me here, but in reality, it’s far too soon for me to accurately describe daily life here. I have described the city as a paved Morocco, while others have described it as Texas meets Tehran. There is no alcohol in the UAE, except at hotels [that said, we still managed to find a 2-for-1 margarita happy hour this weekend at a Tex Mex restaurant on the ground floor of a hotel in Dubai]. It’s very very hot, generally 40-50 degrees Celsius with 40-80% humidity. Before our epic walking tour around Dubai yesterday, I hadn’t spent more than 15 minutes outside in the heat at a time, and my colleagues with whom I was travelling with seemed to concur. I estimate that yesterday was the most consecutive hours I’d ever spent in sweltering heat in my lifetime – in Japan, I’d duck into a convenience store for 10 minutes just before reaching the threshold of being desperately overheated. Yesterday, I surpassed that threshold pretty quickly, and spent most of the day almost numb, wondering how there could be any more liquids inside me left to sweat. But it was absolutely worth it – a Friday to thank God for.