Iftar Rush

I spent today in Abu Dhabi. It was only meant to be a short meeting, but in the end it lasted all day. The Welsh guy I was visiting has only been in Abu Dhabi for 2 weeks, after spending the last five years in the south of France. As such, he is not yet ‘culturally attuned’ and must have wondered why I was so eager to leave and get back to Dubai before Iftar, the fast breaking meal.

What he didn’t realise was that many muslims stay up most of the night during Ramadan and don’t eat, drink or smoke before Iftar. As a result, they are tired, hungry, thirsty, craving nicotine and desperate to be home for Iftar. The road between Abu Dhabi and Dubai turns into a version of Wacky Races, only at much higher speeds (the speed cameras don't go off until over 100 mph). Four accidents held me up, thankfully none too serious, but police have urged people to stay off the roads due to a surge in road deaths.

Ramadan is a quiet period and there hasn't been too much to blog about. We had a little bit of excitement last week as we felt the tremors from a decent sized earthquake in Iran. All of the high rise offices where I work on Sheikh Zayed Road shook alarmingly and everybody spontaneously evacuated. All, that is, apart from my friend Scott. He was obviously engrossed in whatever he was doing in the bathroom, didn't feel the earth move, and, on his return, was completely at a loss to explain why the entire office building had turned into the Marie Celeste!

I've joined a local running club, Dubai Road Runners, in another attempt to get fit and lose weight. They have an event every Saturday evening when you run around Safa Park and predict how long it will take you. The results are published on their website, where you can see how pathetically slow I am at the moment. In my defence though it has been quite warm. The temperature for the last run was at least 35 degrees with 80% humidity. I'm quite pleased with myself that I can run in this at all.

A few weeks ago I was involved in a meeting in Jebel Ali with quite a few attendees from Qatar. The boss, an amiable Egyptian, came up to me, shook hands, smiled and said 'saba al khair'. I looked back at him blankly. 'You've been here two years', he said, 'and you can't even say good morning'. I felt slightly embarrassed and decided to start arabic lessons. Janet has joined me to, and we've been going to the University of Wollongong three times a week to learn arabic from a lovely Jordanian girl called Feda Shtia (I kid you not).

The language is not easy. Twenty eight letters, each of which can be pronounced in 4 different ways depending on whether it has a short vowel or not. To confuse things further, the short vowels aren't needed by fluent arabic speakers and so they generally aren't written down. However, I think we are starting to get the hang of it. There is a certain beauty in the arabic script and I have been enjoying starting to be able to read the previously illegible squiggles. There is no letter p in arabic and it is generally replaced by the letter b. I was particularly pleased to be able to read this evening that my local supermarket is called 'bark n shop'!