Tuesday 30 January 2007

Déjà vu

Cars with their emegency lights on. Flags everywhere. Men in dishdashs waiving flags on top of cars speeding through the city. Constant honking. Cheerful crowds on the streets. Very forgiving policemen in the presence of clear traffic violiations. Where was it that I had seen that before? Right, the World Cup last year in Berlin.
Well: U.A.E. just won the Gulf Cup. For the first time ever. Football unites.

Monday 29 January 2007

bonjour, harte landung and upwards again.

my first week. arrived late at night after a horrible flight (call me a snob, but i'm just too tall, too stylish and too misanthrope to handle economy class on long-haul flights: too many people. of the wrong kind of people).
i had booked a hotel at an outrageous rate (abu dhabi is quite short of accommodations), what supposed to be a junior suite, non-smoking, with kitchenette. i opened the door to a small, worn, 80ies room. sans kitchenette. but avec ashtrays and that certain scent of room deodorant to prove that they weren't just for deco. i'll spare you the ugly details of the entailing debates, but crowne plaza (and any brand of the intercontinental group of hotels) will be painfully avoided in the future. bloody bastards.
next morning at 8 a.m. my first meeting. bear in mind that, given the time zone, this was really 5 a.m. for me, after getting to bed at 2 a.m. local time i was not quite up to par, but i tried my best (i passed enough mirrors that day not to fool myself about the zombie-look i was sporting.)

so, i pulled through the first two days, with my temper cooling off despite all the preparations i had initiated (only to be disappointed) and getting into the flow of things here. so my local partner hadn't finalized any details re the office. or my accommodation. or anything else. what ever. after all, if he were such a whiz in project management and finalizing deals, i probably wouldn’t have gotten the job in the first place.

so, i attended some functions and receptions (tonight the reception at the indian embassy, commemorating the 57th anniversary of the indian republic), giving away my business cards like warme semmeln (and receiving the equal amount).

communication with the hq in berlin has proven a bit difficult, because our dedicated spoc is often on some outside mission out of communication reach. and hq also is a betriebsrat-run entity, so even the management is simply off duty during weekends or the evening. VERY different, VERY, VERY different to what i have been used to. (and to share another difference to my former company, aka workaholic heaven, where lean spelled efficiency, not ausbeutung: lots of assistants. tons of them. you might not be too surprised to find assistants to assistants. "ich werde dir die unterlagen faxen lassen lassen" used to mock a friend of mine of that culture.) so my new employer is charming and good and absurd and nerve wrecking and drollig and so very, very perfect in his field and great all at the same time. all the ingredients to a great and long lasting love affair.

speaking of love affair, or simply sex for that matter: since virtually everybody brought up that subject when i told him or her where i was going: yes, it's forbidden. and we're talking sharia-verboten. but a) i don't have to start what i haven't hardly have been doing in berlin and b) about the worst that could happen to an expat if it ever were to happen and to be discovered would probably be to be expelled from the country. but it is definitely different to the near-normality i had become accustomed to in berlin. in a way, it feels like going back in time, when everything was dirty, sinful, shameful, secret.

speaking of secrets: the internet is controlled via a proxy, so you get a lot of these screens (and i wasn't looking for porn):



for the same reason, and this is a real bummer, you can't use VoIP. even IM doesn't work. So no skype, no ichat. nada. the proxy prohibits it, conveniently rendering one to use the phone instead, at a much higher cost (which is run by the same company monopoly).

at the brighter side of things: it is an absolutely fascinating and dynamic country, the people a quite hospitable (if they don't happen to work at Crowne Plaza), the weather is fantastic, driving is fun once you go with the 90-km/h-inner-city-flow and i already checked out the golf course to take some lessons. and there is a lesson to be learned every day, starting from reading the local newspapers (and getting their perspective re Middle East) to revising one's prejudices: at the meeting with the australian delegation of brisbane in the abu dhabi chamber of commerce the delegations sat across from each other at the table, about twenty at each side (it was a long table). and if you had to pick which side was all male, you'd probably pick the wrong one. far from being equal, there were three women on the arab side, including the head of the abu dhabi businesswomen council. australia: zero.

so, the week started a bit rough. but it got way better. and i'm quite delighted to be here. next time i'll tell you about the grotesque uglyness of a shopping mall i have seen, the great food here and, hopefully, about my first swing with my new golf clubs!

layla sa*îda