Here are some more or less random images of my new home town, Abu Dhabi.
It takes me longer than some to gain my bearings in unfamiliar territory. While I am no stranger to the Gulf, my previous experience of the United Arab Emirates was restricted to a couple of hours in transit, twice, at Dubai.
Abu Dhabi is not Dubai. Those who know both cities are better placed to judge, but most tell me Dubai is a lot livelier, Abu Dhabi more conservative and restrained. Both appear to possess ambition and initiative in abundance. Abu Dhabi wants an international film festival; it launches one. That bit of the coastline needs to be reclaimed; it happens.
The English language newspaper I am here to help create will identify the contrasts and similarities. But more of that at some future stage.
For now, I will allow myself a few preliminary thoughts. My hotel, the Intercontinental, is smart and functional with splendid pool and beach, but the Emirates Palace, where that film festival has just had its debut, is something else.
I overheard a Welshman telling someone back home of the shimmering grandeur of the first seven-star hotel he had ever visited. It drips state-of-the-art opulence, giving it a clear edge over the great palaces dotted along the Croisette in Cannes.
It is the sort of place in which you'd love to stay provided you could have the bill sent to a kindly employer or host.
After a quick tour of the Emirates Palace, it came as something of a prosaic anti-climax to learn from one of the army of Pakistani taxi drivers here that my office is in a part of town known as Water Tank. It is a common feature of Abu Dhabi's geography to refer not to street addresses but some landmark or function. So this is where lorries used to load up with H2O for distribution around the capital. And there's also a self-explanatory "Passport Road".
Incidentally, as we drove past the vast palaces of the Sheikhs on our way into town, the same driver explained in impeccable English why he opposed the return to his homeland of Benazir Bhutto. He had admired her father but considers her corrupt. This was the day before the grotesque terrorist attack on her procession, though it perhaps took no great foresight on his part to predict that Bhutto's defiant gesture would lead to bloodshed.
From the same driver came a useful mall-by-mall guide to local shopping. The Abu Dhabi Mall, pictured above, looks and feels vast but is evidently outstripped by the Marina Mall.
It was an interesting conversation, and I have subsequently been surprised to find how few of his countrymen driving taxis here have more than a few hesitant words of English.
I am kicking myself sharply for not having noted the man's phone number. Several non-Anglophone Pakistani cabbies later, I realise what a huge asset he would be to have on call in this city.
Thursday, November 6, 2008
Knocking 'em down with a feather
It is no great secret that my knowledge of rugby would render worthless any view from here on whether England's try should have been allowed.
The people in my pictures, taken at an expats' club in Abu Dhabi, had no complaints, of course. But their opinions are without value for the obvious but different reason.
Even without a sound grasp of the laws and manoeuvres of the game, however, I could see that for all their valiant efforts, England's status as underdogs fairly reflected reality. Leaving aside quarrels with the referee, or the assessors who denied that "try" on video evidence, the result from the Stade de France was one of life's broadly predictable disappointments.
But this was not even the second most important English sporting occasion of the weekend. The climax comes a few hours from now at Upton Park, of course. In second place, also ahead of the rugby World Cup final, was yesterday's long-awaited clash between England and Australia on the badminton court.
I feared the worst.
John, an academic of highly competitive disposition, was my challenger. He warned that he had been a useful, team-captaining player in his school days in Oz, though his principal motive for taking up the sport was to gain access to seniors from the girls' school next door.
I am somewhat older than him. And when he mentioned his regular gym workouts, I realised I was up against tough opposition, even if he hadn't played for years. But I bravely agreed to meet up for a game.
The match arranged, John borrowed a racket and bought four shuttlecocks (plain shuttles to those in the know). Another professional touch: he had acquired proper feathered ones, not the inferior plastic variety.
Naturally, I am far too modest to dream of recording here that the session produced the following scores: 21-3, 21-2, 21-5, 21-6, 21-8, 21-4. Let us just say that despite my unforgivable complacency in the third, fourth and fifth games, it was a comfortable points victory for England.
John ducked out of a couple more games, citing an unmissable appointment with the woman who cleans his flat. Damn. I'd been quietly set on winning at least one of them 21-0. But he nobly forked out for the post-match pint, while making it clear that I could expect a swift improvement and a run for my money in future encounters.
And then he disappeared to meet the cleaner and doubtless cheer South Africa to victory.
The people in my pictures, taken at an expats' club in Abu Dhabi, had no complaints, of course. But their opinions are without value for the obvious but different reason.
Even without a sound grasp of the laws and manoeuvres of the game, however, I could see that for all their valiant efforts, England's status as underdogs fairly reflected reality. Leaving aside quarrels with the referee, or the assessors who denied that "try" on video evidence, the result from the Stade de France was one of life's broadly predictable disappointments.
But this was not even the second most important English sporting occasion of the weekend. The climax comes a few hours from now at Upton Park, of course. In second place, also ahead of the rugby World Cup final, was yesterday's long-awaited clash between England and Australia on the badminton court.
I feared the worst.
John, an academic of highly competitive disposition, was my challenger. He warned that he had been a useful, team-captaining player in his school days in Oz, though his principal motive for taking up the sport was to gain access to seniors from the girls' school next door.
I am somewhat older than him. And when he mentioned his regular gym workouts, I realised I was up against tough opposition, even if he hadn't played for years. But I bravely agreed to meet up for a game.
The match arranged, John borrowed a racket and bought four shuttlecocks (plain shuttles to those in the know). Another professional touch: he had acquired proper feathered ones, not the inferior plastic variety.
Naturally, I am far too modest to dream of recording here that the session produced the following scores: 21-3, 21-2, 21-5, 21-6, 21-8, 21-4. Let us just say that despite my unforgivable complacency in the third, fourth and fifth games, it was a comfortable points victory for England.
John ducked out of a couple more games, citing an unmissable appointment with the woman who cleans his flat. Damn. I'd been quietly set on winning at least one of them 21-0. But he nobly forked out for the post-match pint, while making it clear that I could expect a swift improvement and a run for my money in future encounters.
And then he disappeared to meet the cleaner and doubtless cheer South Africa to victory.
Saints and sinners, Hammers and sheds
How often will I have to watch the televised football game between Luton Town and Northampton Town?
It may just be my bad luck, but every time I surf the TV stations or pop into a bar showing sports channels, I end up watching that game. I mean, there may have been five goals but PLEASE no more Hatters (Luton) and Cobblers (Northampton), whether the commentary comes in Arabic or English. I feel I now know every kick, and each card, by heart.
Needless to say, I have been ignoring England's latest sporting setback and exploring the options for catching Sunderland's game at West Ham live on Sunday. Sunday is a working day in Abu Dhabi but the three-hour time difference means I should be away in time to see it live.
But where to go? I have located an expats' hangout that used to be called the British Club, and is still known by that name to taxi drivers although, in the spirit of inclusiveness, it has dropped the "British".
Inclusiveness comes at a price; the waiting list for membership is a mile long, though I did manage to sign up for a one-month visitor's card when I turned up, as a Romanian member's guest, for a quiz night on my first full night here.
I also acquired an Australian badminton partner; he's a lot younger and recalls captaining his team at school or college. But he hasn't played for years and suffers from migraine so there's got to be hope.
Most of you probably think badminton is, in any case, a soft game for girls to play on the beach. So back to more important matters. What have I decided to do for West Ham v Sunderland?
There are options. The Third Avenue, a German bar where I actually found Guinness and fish & chips on the menu, promises there'll be no live music to drown out the footie as there was tonight (during, it has to be said, yet another re-run of Luton v Northampton, so the drowning out was welcome).
But another Sunderland supporter who already lives here, encountered somewhere in a partisan corner of cyberspace, has offered a couple of alternatives, a bar called Heroes and another where they also show live games. At the latter, says Abu Dhabi fellow fan, you should be "wary of the Chinese hookers".
I suspect it will be Third Avenue for the rugby - more for the sense of occasion than for a sport I barely understand, despite having that brother who played and now referees it - and the Club formerly known as British for the weekend's really important fixture.
And among my new colleagues in Abu Dhabi, I have already found a charming Canadian newlywed who is either anxious to learn or willing to humour those with whom she works.
Perhaps it has something to do with being temporarily separated from her husband so early in married life, but Laura has quickly got the hang of chanting Ha'way the Lads, to the impressive extent of appreciating the distinction between Ha'way and Ho'way (a North Eastern tribal difference - people Sunderland and most of County Durham say Ha'way, meaning "come on, my good chaps" whereas Newcastle folk opt for Ho'way when uttering the same rallying cry).
And tonight, I think, Laura mastered My Garden Shed.
This is a song belted out to the tune of When the Saints Go Marching In, and it gently mocks supporters of teams that play at small, inferior grounds (Sunderland's home is the majestic Stadium of Light).
My Garden Shed is bigger than this My Garden Shed is bigger than this It's got a door and a window My Garden Shed is bigger than this
Harmless nonsense of the kind that often, the Hammers-supporting Roads of Stone will be pleased to note, inspires the opposition to score. Since West Ham's modest home is Upton Park, armchair football spectators - including those exiled in far off parts of the world - can expect the song to get an airing or two on Sunday.
It may just be my bad luck, but every time I surf the TV stations or pop into a bar showing sports channels, I end up watching that game. I mean, there may have been five goals but PLEASE no more Hatters (Luton) and Cobblers (Northampton), whether the commentary comes in Arabic or English. I feel I now know every kick, and each card, by heart.
Needless to say, I have been ignoring England's latest sporting setback and exploring the options for catching Sunderland's game at West Ham live on Sunday. Sunday is a working day in Abu Dhabi but the three-hour time difference means I should be away in time to see it live.
But where to go? I have located an expats' hangout that used to be called the British Club, and is still known by that name to taxi drivers although, in the spirit of inclusiveness, it has dropped the "British".
Inclusiveness comes at a price; the waiting list for membership is a mile long, though I did manage to sign up for a one-month visitor's card when I turned up, as a Romanian member's guest, for a quiz night on my first full night here.
I also acquired an Australian badminton partner; he's a lot younger and recalls captaining his team at school or college. But he hasn't played for years and suffers from migraine so there's got to be hope.
Most of you probably think badminton is, in any case, a soft game for girls to play on the beach. So back to more important matters. What have I decided to do for West Ham v Sunderland?
There are options. The Third Avenue, a German bar where I actually found Guinness and fish & chips on the menu, promises there'll be no live music to drown out the footie as there was tonight (during, it has to be said, yet another re-run of Luton v Northampton, so the drowning out was welcome).
But another Sunderland supporter who already lives here, encountered somewhere in a partisan corner of cyberspace, has offered a couple of alternatives, a bar called Heroes and another where they also show live games. At the latter, says Abu Dhabi fellow fan, you should be "wary of the Chinese hookers".
I suspect it will be Third Avenue for the rugby - more for the sense of occasion than for a sport I barely understand, despite having that brother who played and now referees it - and the Club formerly known as British for the weekend's really important fixture.
And among my new colleagues in Abu Dhabi, I have already found a charming Canadian newlywed who is either anxious to learn or willing to humour those with whom she works.
Perhaps it has something to do with being temporarily separated from her husband so early in married life, but Laura has quickly got the hang of chanting Ha'way the Lads, to the impressive extent of appreciating the distinction between Ha'way and Ho'way (a North Eastern tribal difference - people Sunderland and most of County Durham say Ha'way, meaning "come on, my good chaps" whereas Newcastle folk opt for Ho'way when uttering the same rallying cry).
And tonight, I think, Laura mastered My Garden Shed.
This is a song belted out to the tune of When the Saints Go Marching In, and it gently mocks supporters of teams that play at small, inferior grounds (Sunderland's home is the majestic Stadium of Light).
My Garden Shed is bigger than this My Garden Shed is bigger than this It's got a door and a window My Garden Shed is bigger than this
Harmless nonsense of the kind that often, the Hammers-supporting Roads of Stone will be pleased to note, inspires the opposition to score. Since West Ham's modest home is Upton Park, armchair football spectators - including those exiled in far off parts of the world - can expect the song to get an airing or two on Sunday.
First steps
Abu Dhabi is as warm as I'd expected.
By that, I mean that it feels, at 36 degrees C or more, very hot indeed when you've just arrived - not, in my case, from the blue skies of the French Riviera that were mine until recently but from a grey and often wet London. The more seasoned of my new acquaintances were doubtless thinking of wrapping up against the chill.
The photographs allow you to share the view from my 11th floor hotel window - a window that doesn't open, as the quality of the image may indicate - along with one classic juxtaposition of Europe and Arabia and another picture showing how the place looks from the first of the prospective apartments I inspected.
But initial impressions of Abu Dhabi, if you leave aside the new-kid-in-school pangs that affect many people, whatever their age, when landing in unfamiliar territory, are positive. There was a jolly quiz night to help ward off jet lag, and early progress in the search for a game of badminton.
My future colleagues are a talented and friendly bunch and I have already made one small discovery that sets the place apart from the UK (though not France).
One of my last acts before leaving Heathrow was to pop into a shop that calls itself Welcome to Glorious Britain to buy a reminder of "home" for someone who has been providing invaluable help and advice.
The so British tins of tea looked ideal. But while they came in threes, each was sold as an individual item. Could they, I asked, be placed together and gift wrapped? I have clearly spent too long in France, since the shop assistant seemed surprised by my ambition. Eventually he produced some thin tissue and tried inexpertly to enclose the tins within it.
By the time I reached Abu Dhabi, it was a sorry mess. He'd also left the price tags on the tins. The gift was handed over unwrapped, in a small plastic bag as if the tea was the product of a trip to the corner shop.
Lizzie, the recipient, was understanding, and assured me that every shop worth visiting here will cheerfully offer the Emirates equivalent of le paquet cadeau.
When you have become used to such small gestures as natural, however modest the purchase, it tends to matter when they are just as routinely unavailable. But what amazes me is the failure of Welcome to Glorious Britain to seize the obvious marketing and sales tools of using appropriately designed gift wrapping in the first place.
There are a lot of formalities to overcome before I can regard myself as properly settled, but I will offer more thoughts as opportunities arise.
Salut and Salam
Until I was 22, my foreign travel was limited to a couple of holidays in the Irish Republic, though I had been to Colwyn Bay and Clacton as well as to several towns dotted around the country visited by Sunderland AFC.
Despite a few trips to France to be presented to and get to know la belle famille - a.k.a the sceptical prospective in-laws - this essentially sheltered life continued for a while.
Slowly, work and holidays began to take me further afield. My world has not shrunk to the extent that I can claim to have seen all or even a great part of it, but I suppose the list has become reasonably varied: most of Europe, South Africa, Sierra Leone, Kenya, Nigeria, Ghana, Libya, Algeria, Morocco, US, Canada, Peru, much of the Caribbean, Vietnam, Thailand, Pakistan, Singapore, Oman, Bahrain and other bits I've doubtless overlooked.
And in the past three years and a bit, I have come to consider myself a resident of France.
On Sunday, I fly to my fresh life in Abu Dhabi, and the challenge of helping to launch a new daily newspaper is an exciting one.
I will not feel remotely sad about leaving Britain behind again. I have family, friends and football team here and all are important to me. But there is nothing else that makes me want to stay here a moment longer than necessary.
It has nothing, or at least not that much, to do with my struggles with BT and other UK bodies with an aversion to providing a decent public service.
My experiences with that company have, incidentally, reminded me that escalators go downwards as well as up. Maybe I should not really be quite so cross that despite BT pledges to "escalate" my order, in fact no service will be installed before I leave, whereas it was originally promised for October 3.
Memo to self: do not confuse escalate with expedite.
Call centres and sluggish or stationary automated phone queuing systems are indeed a curse of modern life, and I have found this to be several times worse in Britain than in the supposedly stifling and ultra-bureaucratic atmosphere of France. Others may well have different stories to tell, but dealing with such people - or, more often, machines - has been a peculiarly stressful part of my 17 or 18 days back "home".
Ripoff1Nor will I miss being charged £5.20 for a hot dog - one moist sausage in a dry bun, drink (not Cristal champagne) thrown in but no trace of an onion - at the Arsenal football stadium, which bears the name of the country in which I am to make my home.
But it runs deeper. I have simply become more and more attached to France, and especially to the sunny, outdoor, not-far-from-the-sea life of my most recent few months there (I do not especially miss Paris). There will be no shortage of sunshine where I am going, but I know I will think often of the Var.
So farewell to London, leafy and grandLeafy_2 in parts but infuriating as a whole.
Salut!, as I have already promised, will continue. The exact form is still a matter for reflection, but I have more or less decided for the time being to keep the title of the site unchanged.
My next posting will come from the Emirates - and I don't mean the one near Highbury -and will fall into the new category of Salut! Salam, but I do not feel it is necessary to go further and mess around with the banner (beyond tweaking the description of my site).
I hope you all feel inclined to follow me. When I say "all", I am not sure what I mean. The hit rate for Salut! is a constant source of mystery to me.
It is not hard to understand why the number of visits to my more specific sites, Salut! Live and Salut! Sunderland, should soar from time to time. It is invariably the result of a reference to one or other of them appearing elsewhere, prompting new people to take a peek.
Salut!'s figures move in less fathomable ways. I do little active promotion of the site, yet the numbers will sometimes stretch to several hundred "hits" in one day for no more apparent reason than when they dip to 100-150.
But I am profoundly grateful to everyone who did follow me here from that Other Place, where massive resources have not translated into unfailingly impressive results for individual bloggers.
It was rather gratifying to learn the other day that interest in my "archived" Telegraph blog - that is shunted to one side and not at all easy to locate - was somewhat greater than that shown in the "live" blog of the man who fired me (his was quickly "archived", too, after he found it impossible even to honour a commitment to post some new thoughts once a week).
So Salut! and Salam, and another au revoir. Enjoy this sporting weekend - momentous for those who adore rugby and international football, less so for those of us who don't - and come back this way in the coming days and weeks.
Despite a few trips to France to be presented to and get to know la belle famille - a.k.a the sceptical prospective in-laws - this essentially sheltered life continued for a while.
Slowly, work and holidays began to take me further afield. My world has not shrunk to the extent that I can claim to have seen all or even a great part of it, but I suppose the list has become reasonably varied: most of Europe, South Africa, Sierra Leone, Kenya, Nigeria, Ghana, Libya, Algeria, Morocco, US, Canada, Peru, much of the Caribbean, Vietnam, Thailand, Pakistan, Singapore, Oman, Bahrain and other bits I've doubtless overlooked.
And in the past three years and a bit, I have come to consider myself a resident of France.
On Sunday, I fly to my fresh life in Abu Dhabi, and the challenge of helping to launch a new daily newspaper is an exciting one.
I will not feel remotely sad about leaving Britain behind again. I have family, friends and football team here and all are important to me. But there is nothing else that makes me want to stay here a moment longer than necessary.
It has nothing, or at least not that much, to do with my struggles with BT and other UK bodies with an aversion to providing a decent public service.
My experiences with that company have, incidentally, reminded me that escalators go downwards as well as up. Maybe I should not really be quite so cross that despite BT pledges to "escalate" my order, in fact no service will be installed before I leave, whereas it was originally promised for October 3.
Memo to self: do not confuse escalate with expedite.
Call centres and sluggish or stationary automated phone queuing systems are indeed a curse of modern life, and I have found this to be several times worse in Britain than in the supposedly stifling and ultra-bureaucratic atmosphere of France. Others may well have different stories to tell, but dealing with such people - or, more often, machines - has been a peculiarly stressful part of my 17 or 18 days back "home".
Ripoff1Nor will I miss being charged £5.20 for a hot dog - one moist sausage in a dry bun, drink (not Cristal champagne) thrown in but no trace of an onion - at the Arsenal football stadium, which bears the name of the country in which I am to make my home.
But it runs deeper. I have simply become more and more attached to France, and especially to the sunny, outdoor, not-far-from-the-sea life of my most recent few months there (I do not especially miss Paris). There will be no shortage of sunshine where I am going, but I know I will think often of the Var.
So farewell to London, leafy and grandLeafy_2 in parts but infuriating as a whole.
Salut!, as I have already promised, will continue. The exact form is still a matter for reflection, but I have more or less decided for the time being to keep the title of the site unchanged.
My next posting will come from the Emirates - and I don't mean the one near Highbury -and will fall into the new category of Salut! Salam, but I do not feel it is necessary to go further and mess around with the banner (beyond tweaking the description of my site).
I hope you all feel inclined to follow me. When I say "all", I am not sure what I mean. The hit rate for Salut! is a constant source of mystery to me.
It is not hard to understand why the number of visits to my more specific sites, Salut! Live and Salut! Sunderland, should soar from time to time. It is invariably the result of a reference to one or other of them appearing elsewhere, prompting new people to take a peek.
Salut!'s figures move in less fathomable ways. I do little active promotion of the site, yet the numbers will sometimes stretch to several hundred "hits" in one day for no more apparent reason than when they dip to 100-150.
But I am profoundly grateful to everyone who did follow me here from that Other Place, where massive resources have not translated into unfailingly impressive results for individual bloggers.
It was rather gratifying to learn the other day that interest in my "archived" Telegraph blog - that is shunted to one side and not at all easy to locate - was somewhat greater than that shown in the "live" blog of the man who fired me (his was quickly "archived", too, after he found it impossible even to honour a commitment to post some new thoughts once a week).
So Salut! and Salam, and another au revoir. Enjoy this sporting weekend - momentous for those who adore rugby and international football, less so for those of us who don't - and come back this way in the coming days and weeks.
Merde.....he's not taking me to Derby!
Well no, he isn't.
But that was how it sounded on the one end of the telephone conversation Mme Salut could hear when the first call came inviting me to take a new job in Abu Dhabi.
My only memories of Derby are football related.
A cold, wet day for the last Sunderland game I attended there. Other away days long forgotten. And several hours stranded a few miles out of town on a soft, damp verge into which an incompetent driver had sunk the wheels of our coach during the journey back to London from an FA Cup semi-final at Old Trafford.
No, then, not Derby.
But I am off to Abu Dhabi to work on a new daily paper being launched with Martin Newland, who as editor of the Daily Telegraph sent me to be its correspondent in Paris, in the hot seat.
What it all means for Salut!, just a week or two short of its first birthday, is not yet clear. Salut! Shukran comes to mind. At any rate, it would be a shame to call it a day without thinking of ways of keeping it going - if, that is, anyone thinks my ramblings perform any useful service.
All I can say for now is: "On verra....
But that was how it sounded on the one end of the telephone conversation Mme Salut could hear when the first call came inviting me to take a new job in Abu Dhabi.
My only memories of Derby are football related.
A cold, wet day for the last Sunderland game I attended there. Other away days long forgotten. And several hours stranded a few miles out of town on a soft, damp verge into which an incompetent driver had sunk the wheels of our coach during the journey back to London from an FA Cup semi-final at Old Trafford.
No, then, not Derby.
But I am off to Abu Dhabi to work on a new daily paper being launched with Martin Newland, who as editor of the Daily Telegraph sent me to be its correspondent in Paris, in the hot seat.
What it all means for Salut!, just a week or two short of its first birthday, is not yet clear. Salut! Shukran comes to mind. At any rate, it would be a shame to call it a day without thinking of ways of keeping it going - if, that is, anyone thinks my ramblings perform any useful service.
All I can say for now is: "On verra....
Sunday, October 12, 2008
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