Note the efficient seating arrangement: No emergency exit route goes to waste.
Well, Marta, our Hungarian-Australian chanteuse friend is gone, having been dropped by me at the airport this morning, and it's back to temporary bachelor life again.
As it happened, owing to my personal introduction to the fact that there actually are traffic laws in Abu Dhabi that actually are enforced occasionally, we nearly missed her flight. I got the car from the parking garage and was sort of scooting along to get back to the apartment to pick her up. My progress out of the courtyard area onto Khalidya Street was impeded by traffic, so instead of following the herd onto the regular little merge lane, I sort of swooped around them. Mind you there are no signs saying this is not OK. In fact there is no driver's handbook to advise one of the rules provided here - if you want to know what the rules are, you have to go to the Traffic Authority and ask. But, OK, I sort of knew it was a bit of a maverick move, didn't I. And there was a guy standing there who wagged his finger at me in a warning sort of manner - a manner that got more imperative as it became clear that I was going to ignore him. It wasn't until I actually made it around the sluggards ahead of me and pulled onto the street that I saw the cause of the unusually thickened traffic: There were several police cars there, and a long line of hapless vehicles and their more hapless owners standing around waitng for the police, who were conducting a kind of bulk "sting" operation.
All of a sudden it became clear that the waggly-fingered guy had been trying to help - not scolding at all. Thinking back on the expression on his face, it now struck me that his increasingly anxious look was not driven by some sort of Pollyanna control issue - he was genuinely upset that I, one of his own kind, was about to be eaten by the sharks (this is the metaphor that usually occurs to me as regards the prowling, predatory nature of law officers trolling for prey).
And of course, this being the birthplace of haggling, it took a while to get my citation written. The idiot in front of me was doing his damnedest to persuade the officer that he should be exempted from the process, and the officer was (as they mostly do) firmly and calmly rejecting his appeals. When at last it came my turn, I stifled any impulse I might have had to engage in debate, and smiled and handed over my Abu Dhabi Drivers license and registration card. It is going to cost me 200 AEDirhams, which I have to take in cash to the Traffic Authority within the next thirty days. But, OK - part of the education process. I will not be using that maneuver again. (Unless I'm 100 percent certain that no authorities are within seeing range.)
Then on the way to the airport, I noticed after a time, during which Marta and I were engaged in some deeper level of discussion, that the airplane icons had stopped showing up on the roadway signs, and we seemed to have gone farther from town than I remembered the airport being... In spite of the help from some locals (who, unusually, spoke NO english at all, but gestured very fluently), and with the somewhat more useful help of my iPhone 3G with GoogleMapping Autolocate on (gadgets ROCK!), we managed to find our back to Abu Dhabi International, with minutes to spare.
It was really nice having her here - the presence of a woman in the house (particularly a pretty and friendly one) increases the depth of existence by at least one dimension. Makes things seem somehow more real. Socks and underwear drying on the back of a chair. Mysterious creams and unguents dotting horizontal surfaces in the bath. You know - depth. Humanity.
She's off to her next gig in another mid-eastern seashore nation, where she has a four-month contract as a DJ; something she's never done (shh! don't tell them), but will learn on the job. I love that about Marta! If she owned an airline it would have to be named "Seat-o'-the-Pants Air".
It was sweet having her here, and I'll miss her - even though her departure means I can move off the couch and back into my bed again.
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Here's the generic, travelogue section of a note I wrote today to our long-time friend Grace (Manon), in Hawaii:
"Hi honey!
"Life here is pretty darn good! It's sooo different in many ways, yet familiar enough to be comfortable. AD is an incredible melting pot - SO many cultures and nationalities represented; in a place which is nominally Arab Muslim, there is more tolerance for differences here than anywhere I've been, except maybe Amsterdam, and San Francisco.
"My work is a blast! It's a huge challenge, but I have good support and the freedom to manage things the way I see fit. Actually there's no real choice about that, since my job didn't really exist here until I arrived and people have only the vaguest notion about what a "Regional Document Control Manager" is supposed to do."
"I'm doing a lot of traveling around too, so I'm not stuck in an office all the time, and I bought a car this week (the newest vehicle I've ever owned: a 2006 Toyota Fortuner V6 4WD). I'm finding friends and music and great places to eat and hang out... Right now the weather's still good - it's getting up around a hundred on a daily basis - although this week it's been cloudy/stormy/windy - I counted a total of at least 7 or 8 raindrops, and the beach hotel clubs have closed their outdoor venues due to wind several nights. In Dubai, which for some reason seems to get the weather extremes, there was a major hailstorm on Thursday that thoroughly thrashed lots of unprepared structures. Things are not built very water proof here, it seems - whenever there's rain or hail, which melts, of course, people are scurrying about like ants trying to save things in buildings from the wet.
"I'm slowly getting more and more settled into living life here. There's a lot of nightlife - like many European cities, things don't get started til after 9PM, and there's LOTS of people on the streets until 1AM every night. Thursday is the new Friday for expats here, because of the Muslim Friday Sabbath...."
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Saturday, March 28:
Tonight I will go pick up my two new suits!
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This morning I booked tickets to Kathmandu, where I will vist my dear and darling and deeply missed Princess Margit von Pirsch, and our new niece, Gita and her fiance, Larry, from April 5-8. This is one of the extremely cool things about Abu Dhabi: In a few hours you can be in any of dozens of vastly different nations, cultures, landscapes.
You can find my beloved spouse's blog here: http://journals.worldnomads.com/margitpirsch/
Margit is hopefully recovering from the gut bug she adopted in India, and will still be visible when I arrive. I wish this for her as well as for me - but I would really like to be able to SEE her. She has warned me that she lost some weight, and the way she said it gave the the idea she was playing it down a bit. I have strongly admonished her to get herself to a doctor if she doesn't start to improve soon - she did crack open the bottle of AZITHROMYCIN she was given by Kaiser for such eventualities, so hopefully it will turn the tide, so to speak.
I am excited about Kathmandu, I find! The name kind of says it, no? It smacks of old and interesting stuff.
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1 comment:
Yes. I could see it in the morning as well. I realized it was out there after posting my first comment.
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