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.