Abu Dhabi: and my Money on my Mind

I find the money here really easy to negotiate. A dirham is about a third of a dollar. That's easy enough! And the bills have Arabic numbers on them, so I don't have to memorize their colors. Easy peasy! The coins are a bit harder, though I got my first 50-cent piece today, and it has a 50 on it. 

For some reason I find this money far, far easier to deal with than pesos.

This is about $28 american. I got $500 dirham out when i got here, and have about 200 left, so about $300 AED expenses per week ($100 American), mostly just taxi, lunch, taxi, dinner, and minor expenses. 

Abu Dhabi: What to Wear...

I've been asked what I would/wear here. The firm's guidance is to generally be covered, particularly you should have your shoulders or your knees covered, never both exposed at the same time. Mostly I've been just fine wearing a long-sleeve black T-shirt and a long dark skirt or pants with a scarf (black, white, or pink). Soooo...exactly what I've been wearing for the past 18 years. I fit in in Abu Dhabi better than i did in Hawaii. ;)

The biggest divergence for me in packing was not bringing 6 pounds of jewelry...like I usually do. In addition to my watch (incidentally, an anniversary gift from my husband), I have a pair of stud pearl earrings I found in the pocket of a thrift store suit jacket a million years ago, and the ring my husband had made for me a couple of years ago featuring a rock from the Nehalem River flanked by two sapphires. That's it! I'm in jewelry withdrawal! I should go shopping... ;)

I've seen everything here on women from full head-to-toe abaya and veil, to head covered but with jeans and a neon T-shirt, to traditional Indian garb, to obvious ex-pats in revealing things I wouldn't wear to a nightclub.(I've seen and don't understand: a woman in a full abaya and headscarf [no face veil] and sky-high stiletto hooker heels that I couldn't even stand up in! This I don't understand AT ALL.) But I find I've seen nothing more striking than the flight attendant uniforms for the airline of the UAE -- Etidah Airlines. I like the classic lines and the tip of the hat to tradition in the scarf. Perhaps they remind me of the scarves I requested of my sweet bridesmaids. :) 

I know there's a Woolite equivalent in the states, but it never occurred to me to buy it. But I saw this in the store...and the black abayas I've seen here are RIDICULOUSLY BLACK! I am covetous. I'm gonna try this sort of product upon my return. 

Abu Dhabi: My Taxi Ride

Mostly I have been working about 12 hour days, which doesn't leave much time for photojournalism. ;) But here are shots from my morning taxi ride to the office. This is the Yoplait yoghurt lady. Apparently the yoghurt makes her hair thicker and fuller. I might try that. 

Random shots of small businesses.

 The population of the Abu Dhabi region is about 1.5 million, and about 20 percent are actually Emiratis. 

Stacey -- you asked about grocery shopping -- here's a small grocery. I'll post pix of one of the larger stores.  

The business school...for the WORLD.

There seems to be construction everywhere. 

I originally thought I didn't see many women on the street for cultural or religious reasons, but In doing research on the population I learned that the current population is about 70 percent male because of the influx of emigrant workers. Which makes sense because there seems to be construction everywhere. Says the girl from Boise, here working for an international engineering firm. 

 A Mitsubishi dealership. 

Traffic is crazytown. :)

Abu Dhabi: The Mall

Today (Saturday) was mostly shot after early morning blogging, my 5k, ;), leisurely reading the Gulf News over breakfast, and negotiating with a coworker as to whether we were going to go to Dubai or not. We decided it would be too much. 

 So after a bit, I finally wandered next door to check out the Al Wahda Mall. These are apartment buildings across from the mall. 

I'm not a huge shopper or mall person back home, so I don't plan on hanging here too much, but its jam-packed with Western stores and restaurants -- pretty much everything you might find in a mall at home, including a couple higher-end stores like Armani Exchange and Bobbi Brown. There are a million coffee shops, and a bakery called "Oh My Buns!" Hahaha!

Wrangler...Claire's...Body Shop...Gap...Nike...Sephora... Naturalizer...you get the idea.

Red Lobster, two McDonalds, Popeye's, Starbucks, and of course, "America's Number 1 Italian Restaurant"...Olive Garden. Meh. They do feature in the basement of the mall the largest "hypermarket" in Abu Dhabi. "Hypermarket" is a term to describe a store that sells everything, like a Walmart or a Target. I consider Fred G. Meyer the king of the hypermarket, and I'm totally adopting this term -- let's all use it! 

After getting myself absolutely and hopelessly lost in the six? Seven? Eight story mall? (On purpose), I wandered over to a hilarious "British pub" for some British pub fare. Mostly I was the only woman in the place, and the atmosphere was weird, but they had a lot of cool photography, including this Stevie Ray that I'd never seen before. So young! 

Abu Dhabi: My Room

It's a pretty standard business hotel room.

 With pretty swanky facilities.

Including a lit magnifying mirror, and the button below it that adjusts the volume of the TV speaker in the bathroom, but check the makeup smudge on the wall.

 But mostly its pretty high-techy.

Including this nightstand tablet that lets me adjust all the lights and the temperature in the room, set the Do Not Disturb digitally, or request laundry service, which i'm going to have to do one of these days. 

Thankfully I can still get my One Direction fix on Vh-1. Plus Travel Channel, History Channel, BBC, CNN, Bloomsberg, and a bunch of movie channels. 

 The Gulf News is delivered each morning, and features middle east news with a smidge of western enterainment. Thank heavens Beyonce, Jay-Z, and Solange made up. 

 Pretty standard hotel toiletries.

 A little minibar that's appropriately overrpriced. 

Oh, and yay! Everyone smokes everywhere! Yay! So gross.

The gym is really nice, tho this is technically the "mixed gym." The ladies-only gym has one of each piece of equipment and men are not allowed. But interestingly, I had to have a special watchband badge to get into the mixed gym, while any random joe can access the ladies' gym, no problem! 

Between the oppressive heat (90s this week, 100s next week), absence of women on the street, and the lack of infrastructure, the miles on my FitBit have been REALLY low this week, so this morning I participated in the Grand Millennium Invitational 5k and I won! Hahah! The treadmills keep track in kilometers, and 3 miles seems pretty run-of-the-mill, but 5k? Dang, that's impressive!!! 

Abu Dhabi: My Hotel

So I'm staying here, at the Grand Millennium al Wahda. Kudos the person who did the Photoshop work in this bad boy. 

These are the views from my room/floor. Mostly they are terrible and make it look like a war zone, because the windows are quite dirty. But having just returned from Hawaii, where my nephew asked, "why is everything sticky?" I know that a bit of sea air and a little pollution goes a long way. 

The hotel is fine, its nice enough, but the housekeeping is rather spotty. If the garbage is emptied, my washcloths aren't replaced. My room service dishes get removed but no replacement bathrobe was provided. Minor complaints, but something's always a little off. 

There are four restaurants in the hotel, a diner place, a faux British pub, a Japanese sushi place, and a swanky Italian joint. I've only tried the first two. All are fine, but nothing beats the amazing, over the top breakfast buffet that offers a salad bar, a hot breakfast bar, wads of fresh fruit, cereal, stir-fried noodles, and lots of other weird things like buttered peas and something that's supposed to be "ful medames," an Egyptian bean dish, but the name tag says "Foul Madames," which makes me giggle. 

Between work and sleep and minor sightseeing, i have yet to make it to the rooftop pool and bar...so unlike me!

In the elevators, the bottom floor is "G," and the next one up is "1," then "2," etc. So that's not confusing.

I take a 10-minute taxi ride to and from the office, which costs about 10 dirham, or about 3 bucks American. The taxis are municipally regulated -- they are all the same kind of car, the drivers are uniformed, and they don't expect tips, but do take them when offered. And its backwards from the U.S. -- the light on the top means they have a fare, no light means they are available. 

Abu Dhabi: In Transit

Lufthansa from Denver to Frankfurt, and Frankfurt to Abu Dhabi. Oh you! Plying me with champagne and heart shaped crackers. So civilized.

I had made it to the Boise airport with no problems, but when I said "Abu Dhabi" to the grandfatherly ticket agent, he raised one eyebrow and asked, "Uh..does your Dad know you're going there?" Uhh. Yeah...so does my HUSBAND. 

The Boise to Denver flight was delayed because of...well...snow that made our incoming plane late. Snow, in Denver, in May. Huh. So there was a risk I might miss my connection to Frankfurt in Denver. The gate attendants in Boise moved me up from row 29 to row 15 in the hopes that it would give me a little more time to get to Denver Concourse A. There were 10 of us trying to get to that Frankfurt plane, so they waited for us. But I can cross "get paged in an airport" off my bucket list. 

So we left around 5 p.m. and made it to Frankfurt, at what i thought was going to be around 10 p.m. including the time change. I was QUITE shocked when someone opened a window and it was daylight! OH! 10 a.m.! Damned 24 hour clocks. Who can keep them straight. With the time change, a 10 hour flight. Yeesh.

I pride myself on blending in when I travel, and think I succeed, as I often get asked for directions. Which is hilarious, since i can barely find my way to the Boise mall, 7 years in. As I approached customs the agent took one look at me and said "Canadian?" 

Well, actually, my maternal grandfather was a Canadian citizen prior to the war...! Oh. Uh. No. American. 

So long Frankfurt! I was there for all of an hour, maybe. Another 8 hour flight in, and we were in Abu Dhabi. And my driver was a little late, but I can also cross "have a dude with a white board with my name on it waiting for me in an airport" off my bucket list. 

Abu Dhabi: Shut Up, Google

Please prove YOU'RE not a robot. There's nothing wrong with being debillitatingly linear.

Abu Dhabi: A Month in Abu Dhabi

So. Yeah. A week in Hawaii. A long weekend in Vegas. And a month in Abu Dhabi. No risk of culture shock there.

An email was sent to my team asking if anyone wanted to go to Abu Dhabi for 3 weeks. Usually when temporary duty (TDY) assignments pop up I have plans (as with just before the Hawaii trip) or they aren't my cup of tea (3 MONTHS in Abu Dhabi) (6 weeks in London -- 16 hour days, 7 days a week). No thanks. But this was a reasonable timeframe, and I'd only miss a couple of social events we had planned. I sent off a cell phone pic of the front page of my passport and received back an airline itinerary and a hotel reservation!

So I'm in Abu Dhabi, working on graphic maps for the 2030 maritime plan for the waterfront.

The office is lovely, and feels exactly like every other office I've visited (11 years in -- Boise, Portland, Seattle, Salt Lake City, Tampa, and of course, the Taj MaHill -- Denver). I was told it would be more a more formal workplace dress code, so have been wearing skirts and jackets, but on our "Friday," was the most overdressed person in the place. 

The people in the office are ridiculously nice and  seem happy to have me. On Thursday I went to two birthday parties, where there was cake, a card, birthday hugs, and general camaraderie. I couldn't put my finger on what was so lovely about it all...OH! People actually come to the office here. Team members are actually onsite to review and discuss project work. Versus an entire team of people who telework or work remotely. Don't get me wrong, I like to telework occasionally too, but being in an onsite office is like working in 2004. It's so fun! 

Anyway, it was funny to travel halfway around the planet to arrive and see internal safety posters that I designed with my Portland coworker Marie (Hi Marie!) posted on workstations. Welcome to the Abu Dhabi office!