Episode II: Attack of the Comparisons

Hey everyone,

Hope all is well in Calgary (and Australia and Norway and Trinidad and Ft. Mac and Saskatoon and you get the picture). I hear the weather continues to improve as always. Over here in Abu Dhabi, the forecast for the weekend is in the high twenties, so hopefully we don't get too sunburned this weekend. Nothing more uncomfortable than a sunburn, I'll tell ya. Things keep on moving here. Work is reasonably busy with many things to accomplish in a month.

My apologies to the people that didn't get that last email - check http://valandcurt.blogspot.com/ for the re-run. This does not mean I have a blog and I am not that geeky. This is simply a way to read, write, or edit a shared on-line journal.

Anyways, as I was saying last time, this place is really interesting and certainly unique. My in-depth reference to the Middle East is Egypt (mostly Cairo) and Jordan, and I think it's entirely unfair to make a true comparison between Abu Dhabi and those places. There are a few superficial similarities: the multiple daily calls to prayer, signs everywhere alternating between English and Arabic, adds for cellphones, cars driving at incredible speeds with seemingly little organization, and an abundance of economically priced taxis. These are superficial at best, as the taxis are all new (not so in Cairo). In fact, I've hardly seen ANY cars here that are derelict. All are nice, shiny, and quite new. In addition, there are quite a few traffic lights and people actually obey them! Stiff fines for those that run a red light (including potential prison term according to my guidebook).

The main part of Abu Dhabi is an island in the Persian Gulf connected to the mainland by a couple of large bridges. The IMV apartment (located in Mohammed Bin Zayed City and named after the new Sheikh) is on the mainland and it takes about 20-30 minutes to get to work in the morning. For the last two mornings, there has been a thick fog that has engulfed the city in total mist. Very cool, but it managed to delay our (knowledgable)driver who couldn't find the apartment in the haze. Crazy!

Culturally speaking, Abu Dhabi is a very diverse part of the world. I've heard that the population is only 30% local and the rest are all expatriates (Expats). So between people from India, Pakistan, the other Arab countries, the Phillipines, and North America/Europe, there's a pretty large cross section of people. Fortunately for us, most people seem to have a decent handle of English, but I've been impressing a few people with the unimpressive few scraps of Arabic that I know.

Yeesh, these emails get long. If you folks want to check out some pictures, feel free to look on Picasa (http://picasaweb.google.com/valandcurt). More to come, to be sure. And I think we're gonna see a movie tonight at Marina Mall.

Talk to you guys later!

Curt

P.S. BIG Happy Birthday wishes to Stripey and Song!