kitesurfing on Yas Island

We were on the northern coast of the eastern spit on Yas Island. My place is between the Abu Dhabi-Dubai highway and the sea, across the channel from the southern spit of Yas Island. 

I went for my first kitesurfing lesson today.  Well, not my first. I've had lots of lessons over the years, but never enough time x the right conditions to get good.  This time, I'm hoping it is going to be different.  Beautiful warm water, shallow, gentle wind - it never gets up to 30kts apparently, and flat water. Goodbye chilly gusty Wellington - hello gentle warm Abu Dhabi!  AND, there was hardly anyone there.  So no toddlers eating icecreams or grannies strolling on the beach to knock down with my out-of-control kite, or even 50 hot guys all looping centimetres away from me and threatening to get tangled in my lines, like there was at Hillhead, in the UK.  I've already agreed to fork out thousands of Dhs to buy a 13m kite!

I had a delightfully uneventful and pleasant lesson in the water with a couple of beautiful young French people.  BUT THEN, I tried to drive back to the highway, through a tortuous series of sand paths to the asphalt.  I was in my rental, a Mitsubishi Lancer.  And I got lost in the desert!  It looked easy but it wasn't.  I got stuck in some soft sand had had to start walking back to the kitesurfers and picnicking Arabian families.  The kitesurfing instructor Sameh was driving a 2 wheel drive too, so when I saw a massive big 4x4 heading towards me across the sand, I knew I was in luck.  An Arabian guy in traditional dress was driving. I flagged him down and asked him if he had a tow rope and explained my situation.  He said: No problem.  He said he was off to the cafe to smoke hubbly bubbly, but had time to help me out.  He drove all over the sand dunes to get to my car, which I thought was promising, since he obviously didn't need to stick to the hard stuff.  Then, when we got there, he told me to hop in and drive but 'not too much petrol'.  Then he drove up behind me and pushed!  It took quite a bit of pushing to get me through the soft stuff, and every time he made contact, I cringed at the thought of the back of my rental. But we finally got back to a hard surface.  And there's no actual dents, just the R missing off Lancer, and a few scratches on the bumper!

I obviously need a 4x4.   And desert driving lessons!  I've only had the car a month, and already I've been stuck in the sand.

Not much wind, but enough to fly a 13.5m kite. Warm water, friendly wind, and no waves. I am going to get to be a hot kiter here!

The beach.  

more views from my deck

The view south from my deck.  In the foreground is the courtyard between my block (Al Barza) and the other blocks in the Al Bandar complex.  Its got a lot of structures in it, which don't seem to have a purpose, but perhaps they are planning to grow some climbers up the gazebo-like roofing - that would be nice.  In the mid-ground behind the shade sails is Spinneys - the Waitrose-equivalent grocery store, and to the right is the gym (with the square wooden structure emerging from the first-storey roof).  Behind is the road bridge across the Abu Dhabi-Dubai highway and in the far distance are the villas of Al Raha Gardens and Khalifa City A.

Zooming in west-souwest.  The tallest buildings are Alba Towers, which were built by the Emirate Airline Etihad to house their staff.  There's actually a large stretch of desert between Alba Towers and the Al Raha Gardens villas in the mid-ground, but its hidden at this distance.  In the foreground is an example of all the construction sites everywhere around town.  I don't know what they are building here, but it looks like it might be some more roads.

A close-up of Khalifa City A and Al Raha Gardens, across the Abu Dhabi-Dubai highway.  In the very far distance is Khalifa City B.  

Looking west-norwest from my deck.  The marina - but where are all the lack of boats? - and looking across the islands to Abu Dhabi in the far distance.  The glass stepped blocks on the left are the other apartment blocks in the Al Bandar complex.

Zoom in on Abu Dhabi city in the distance - about 20km away.  The sand bars in the foreground are actually islands.

hongis every morning...

At work, the Arabian men all kiss and hongi every morning.  They are very affectionate with each other and regularly run about the building giggling and holding hands.  It's all very sweet.  The ladies are the same, but there are not so many ladies in my particular work area.  The only two ladies I work with closely have just been borrowed by the field department to oversee some Economic Survey field work in Al Ain, where they live, and won't be back in the Abu Dhabi office till after Christmas.

My favourite Mohammed (there are a lot of Mohammeds here) has also been sent off to oversee the field work, so he doesn't sit at the desk in front of me any more.  He is a very sociable chap and consequently, every morning for the first couple of months I was here, all the men in the villa would pass by his desk and do the double kiss (sometimes triple), hongi and handshake (shake with the right hand and place the left hand on the shoulder).

Now that the Mohammeds and Ahmeds have gone off to do field work, the office is much quieter, and we have all moved desks. My current podmate is Wa'el.  He is a very experienced economic survey statistician and analyst, the same age as me from Jordan, with a fabulous sense of humour.  We had been working together for some weeks before Matthew arrived from New  Zealand, who is our team leader.  At the time poor Matthew was still suffering from the shock of arrival in a completely different culture and country.  So I took it upon myself to tell him that he needed to shake hands every morning with all the men.  And then, just for fun, I suggested to Wa'el that he needed to introduce Matthew to the local customs.  I said I thought he should shake hands with him every morning, and give him a kiss.  And, he needed to initiate because Matthew was shy (which he isn't!) and didn't know what to do!  Wa'el said: step-by-step, Ruth.  He has only been here two days.  I give him a week, and then I shake hands.  I said: what about the kissing thing and the hongi? (I told Wa'el it was called a hongi in NZ.)  Wa'el said he didn't do the hongi because that was a Gulf Arabic thing.  And he refused to kiss Matthew (they all know that in the West it is not usual for men to kiss each other in public).  But eventually, he relented and said maybe after Eid, he would start greeting Matt with a kiss in the mornings.  One step at a time!  So now, Matthew and Wa'el are shaking hands every morning.  And I'm really looking forward to seeing if Wa'el gets up the nerve to do the double kiss with Matthew when we all go back to work after Eid!

We have discovered that Matt means 'died' in Arabic, so we are calling him Matthew!
And I am still learning to say Wa'el's name properly.  There is a guttural sound that we just don't have in English that is the '.  I spoke to an Irish woman surveyor who's first language was Gaelic, and she said she was OK with it because that sound exists in Gaelic.  Wa'el tells me I am saying his name right because he is polite, but I know I am not because someone else asked me who I meant when I mentioned him the other day!

Meanwhile, I have also discovered that my 'reputation' has been ruined because not only have I been smoking out the back of the villa with my some Mohammeds, and a couple of chatty Ahmeds (from Jordan and Sudan) as well as some of the other boys, but I was seen getting into Mohammed's car after a late meeting one day.  He was a total gentleman and offered me a ride to my hotel which was in town because it's hard to get a taxi from the work villas as they are in the middle of suburbia.  Apparently, he got a telling off from someone in another villa for compromising my reputation!

I fear I am trampling over all sorts of social and cultural boundaries and rules hour-by-hour, day-by-day, but its hopeless trying to avoid it.  I don't know what the rules are till I have trampled on them and been informed by someone. I am trying to encourage people to let me know if I look like I am about to do something really awful.  But generally everyone is far too polite to mention it.  (Ahmed from Sudan finally got up the courage to ask me to speak more slowly after about 6 weeks of chatting with him, because he was having difficulty understanding me!) They are all very forgiving of ignorant Western ways.  Abu Dhabi Emirate has 193 different nationalities living in it, and only 20% are Nationals (according to Dr Refai who prepared some tables for public release last week).  It is a very multi-cultural society.  As far as I can tell at the moment, most people who come here to work seem to be Muslim.  For instance,  a lot of the Indian people here seem to be Muslim rather than Hindu.  Engineer Sajad, who supervised the replacement of my kitchen sink after it fell out of the polished marble benchtop full of washing up water and cutlery into the cupboard below, told me:  "There is many problem with Muslim and Hindu people in India. Here is much better country." He told me that the number of construction jobs is reducing in Abu Dhabi, but he will not go home after he finishes the complex next door to mine (called Al Jeemi) but he will find another job because he likes it here so much.

At work we are desperately trying to get the Census together so we can find out accurately, exactly what religions and nationalities really are here.

Some of the people I've talked to really don't want to be here and just want to go home back to their villages.  So far its only been taxi drivers.  It's a horrible job.  They work really long shifts (sometimes 12 hours straight) on very dangerous roads - everyone drives at least 20kph faster than the speed limit because you don't get any camera fines till you reach that speed!  So many people are driving at 80kph through town, and 140-160kph on the highways out of town.  One taxi driver told me he particularly did not like driving Nationals because they were always in a hurry and telling him to drive faster and faster, but he had to pay the speeding fines out of his salary and commission so he didn't want to.  But the taxi company told them they must always put the customer first!  Poor thing - what a dilemma.  One driver told me that virtually all the young men in his village in Pakistan were here driving taxis, or working as drivers for Arab families.  He said he would much rather leave the money earning to his big brother who had been here 15 years, but his mother told him he had to come here and earn some money.  And last time he went home she said: Don't come back without any savings again! (He laughed when he said it, so I assume it was all in good humour!)  I can just imagine his village in Pakistan, bereft of young men, with all the wives and mothers and children waiting for their husbands, sons and fathers, to arrive home for a visit a couple of times a year bringing cash so they can eat in between times.

the perils of being (relatively) rich and other expat traumas....

So here I am in the desert in Arabia and I have finally managed to get myself an apartment.  It took me six weeks to negotiate my way through the rules and regulations of an unseen government department to get my residence visa, so I could open a bank account, so I could get paid, so I could write a cheque to secure an apartment. And another few weeks to negotiate my way through the unspoken rules and regulations of the HR department to receive official approval for my chosen residence.  (I had a few setbacks with previously chosen residences, but this one is apparently 'safe' for me to live in.) I spent a few weeks actually living here - worrying - before my landlord got around to signing the contract, and now I am waiting for HR to decide which other personal details they would like from him before they will pay him my housing allowance cheque.   But the accountant at work tells me that no one can evict me now that the contract has been signed, and consequently I am telling myself to stop worrying.

My apartment is brand new, on the 6th floor of a brick block that looks like it was transported from South London, with stunning views over the islands and gulf to Abu Dhabi city about 20km away.  It's in a fancy new complex with three swimming pools, tennis courts, a half-built gym and a quarter-built restaurant.  Spinneys - the local supermarket chain that caters to particularly British expats (and sells Waitrose-brand products at the same price as in Sussex) just opened last week, so now I only have to walk across the courtyard to pick up the milk and paper.  Its Eid - a public holiday - and this morning I was able to have bacon and eggs, hi-fibre toast and Tetley's tea for breakfast while reading The Times Middle East and Asian Edition.  Spinneys stores its enormous range of bacon and pork products in a secret back room, that is quite difficult to find. I thought it was illegal to sell pork here, but perhaps it's just culturally unsound and therefore best not to advertise it.  Or perhaps they have a special licence because they didn't give me a brown paper bag for my bacon.

I am typing this sitting on my brand new sofa.  It is a luscious donkey-brown leather Italian model and deliciously comfortable.  I've never owned a leather sofa before.  In fact, all but one of my previous sofas have been hand-me-downs and bargain mart buys.  The one I bought new about 20 years ago was a wooden frame model with a futon mattress for guests to stay over on - and over the years it became a dog bed, and most of my guests refused to sit on it, let alone sleep on it.  I have been agonising for weeks about whether to buy this couch. I fell in love with it when I happened across it in a shop in Al Wahdah Mall, but I felt so utterly guilty about spending the money when there are so many people starving in the world and my mortgage needs paying off and I could just have well bought a second-hand one or even a cheap(er) Ikea one.  But in the end I celebrated actually getting paid after two months of work, by handing over my bankcard.

Yesterday, it arrived.  The removal men were early, and I was still slopping around in my pyjamas, so I threw on some clothes and dashed downstairs to let them into the building. (I still haven't worked out how to use the phone thing to open the building door for people who ring.)  There were three of them.  They came in and looked at the lift, and shook their heads and talked excitedly in their language - probably Malayalam because there are so many people here from Kerala, or maybe Hindi, or possibly a Pakistan language - then they went out again and got a tape measure, and came back in and measured up, and shook their heads and conferred some more, and eventually, the head man said the lift was too small.  We called the concierge and asked if we could take the ceiling out of the lift, and I had a long conversation with him about it, which ended up with him suggesting I pop to security to see if they would take the ceiling out.  But then the removal Headman said that wouldn't work either because of the metal frame holding the ceiling up.

I made a phone call to Aldar Customer Service to see if they could think of some other way of getting the sofa up to the apartment. (Aldar administers the apartments on behalf of all the various landlords)  The customer services man on the phone got all flustered and said I should have got an email which stated the size of furniture that would go up in the lift.  I said thank you very much.  Then the removal men started looking at the stairwell and talking and shaking their heads and looking concerned.  They explained that the stairwell was too narrow, and it would be very difficult to manouevre the sofa up the stairs and around all of the bends (and, they didn't mention this, but there were 12 tight bends between every flight up to the 6th floor!)

By this stage I was cursing myself for buying the damned couch.  If I'd bought an Ikea one, they could have taken it apart and put it back together in my apartment.

They did some more measuring and talking and then the Headman made a phone call, and eventually passed the phone to me.  The man on the other end explained the situation to me - ie that the sofa was too big for the lift (!) so the men would take it up the stairs and I needed to pay them for it.  I said OK, how much should I pay them?  He said he couldn't possibly say.  It was up to me.  I said: But I have absolutely no idea how much to pay them.  He said: It's up to you madam.

After that the men took the couch out of the van and started wrapping it up more securely, and while they did that I went into a panic about how much I should pay them.  I checked my wallet and I only had 50Dhs cash.  So I popped to Spinneys and got some milk I didn't need, but the girl behind the counter said they did not give cash change.  So then I went back to the removal team, who were almost ready to start taking the wrapped and padded couch into the building, and said I had to go out to the cash machine to get some money for them (the Headman looked mightily offended when I said this - obviously mentioning it was a complete no-no!) but I would be back in 10 minutes and the door to the apartment was open.

Off I went, screaming down the road to Alba Towers, which is a block of apartments and shops slap-bang in the middle of the desert, about 2 km from my block.  Etihad Airlines built it for their staff.  I found a cash machine, remembered my pin number, and got some cash.  Then I needed to get change for the 500 Dhs note.  On the road, I had decided that maybe 200 Dhs each would be enough.  I popped into a cafe and asked for some change, and, when the till-lady didn't have any, a nice British man offered me some.  Since he was obviously friendly, I asked him how much he thought I should tip the removal men.  He said: How many of them are there?  I said: three, I think, or maybe four (by this time I was so stressed that I couldn't remember!)  He said: Maybe 20 or 30 Dhs.  I said: Oh, I was going to give them 200 each.  He looked shocked and said: No no no. These guys get paid so little - virtually nothing - they will be greatful for 20 or 30 Dhs between them.  If you want to get carried away, give them 20 Dhs each.  But make sure you give it to them after they have delivered the furniture.  I thanked him profusely,   thinking: Crikey, I would have really wasted some money there if I hadn't met him!

I got back to the apartment just as the removal men reached the top of the 6th floor stairwell.  They emerged from the stairwell door panting with sweat running off them into pools on the floor.  One shook his head and did a wet-dog-emerging-from-the-sea-impression (Not of course meaning to, but he had his arms full of couch and couldn't see for the sweat  running into his eyes) and spattered the corridor walls with sweat droplets.

They brought the couch in. I gave them glasses of water.   (I don't have any bottled water because I don't believe in it, so I may have offended them by offering them tap water, but they drank it.)  And they unwrapped the couch, picked up the mess, and gave me a very damp sweaty form to sign. I gave them 100 Dhs each.  They looked pleased and then they disappeared down the lift well.

I was left to admire my new couch, and realise that it is far too big for my apartment! It takes up half the lounge.  In hindsight, buying it was an error of judgement brought on by the excitement of getting two months worth of pay all at once, and I will definitely buy all my other furniture from Ikea.  But, OMG, it is so, so, sooooooo comfortable.  I have already napped on it twice, and I love it.

It rained, twice!

November 10, 2011:

It rained in Abu Dhabi last night.  Its big news this morning.  Front page of the newspapers!  My podmate Wa'el went to the mall at 10pm and came out at 11pm and it was raining, He had to walk 300m to his car and he got WET! 

I was home in bed in my apartment, and heard the wind starting up. It sounded like rain, so I jumped out of bed and out to my veranda and stood there for a while watching the wind whip the palm trees about and wondered why I was getting dust in my eyes.  There was no rain but there was a sandstorm raging through the apartment complex. (My apartment is about 20km from the main city where Wa'el was shopping.) At one stage I couldn't see the apartment block across the yard about 20 metres away for flying sand.  I decided to go in and shut the door before I got blown off the balcony!  This morning there is dust throughout the house.  My neighbour, who didn't open her doors at all, said she has sand all over her floor too.  I think I will have to get a maid to sweep my floors if this weather keeps up!

Saturday November 13, 2011:

It rained again!  It rained on me!  I had just put my washing out on the deck and I heard this unfamiliar noise. Looked up and it was hosing down - massive big droplets were actually falling from the sky!  I rushed out and got my washing.  It stopped again after half an hour, but there was still a puddle on my deck a couple of hours later.  Astonishing how quickly I've come to see rain as a unnatural phenomena!