Ramadan hours...

As it was the first official day of Ramadan, we were a bit curious as to what might be different for us. We went up to Abu Dhabi to run a few errands - bringing no water, food or cigarettes with us (as it is illegal to eat, drink or smoke in public for this month - and yes, your car is "public").

We didn't notice anything different - except for a radio announcement by the artist formerly known as Cat Stevens (who now lives in Dubai) describing what fasting was all about. Once in town, we could see that all the palm trees had been decorated with lights and hanging stars and signs saying "Ramadan Kareem" in Arabic. I can only imagine how beautiful it must be to see the whole town lit up at night. Might it be a bit like, dare I say, Christmas?

We headed to Ikea and had only been there for about 20 minutes when the loudspeakers announced that the store was now closed and would everyone please get to the checkout. The store clerk smiled at us and said, "Ramadan hours". Apparently, Ikea is closed from 3:00pm to 7:00pm.

Being from MZ, we are used to shops being closed in the afternoons (since all the stores here close from 2 to 5 all the time), but we were a bit surprised that, it seems, almost every shopping mall in Abu Dhabi has its own interpretation of "Ramadan hours". Some will close in the afternoon so that they can stay open later, while others close in the morning. I imagine we will have to discover which ones are open at which time by trial and error.

The ironic thing is that the bottle store is open at a more convenient time (for us, anyway), meaning that Ramadan hours make it easier for us to buy alcohol than at other times of the year. We'll have to venture out into the town a few evenings this week, and let you all know what, if anything, is happening in our rockin' little town in the desert.

Ramadan Kareem!

Well, we've been back for just over a week - still waiting for photos to be uploaded so that we can blog about our Canada trip. It isn't that we've been super busy since our return to MZ, but somehow we have no idea where the days have gone.

This weekend will mark the start of Ramadan, which is the month of fasting. It's going to be a rather interesting experience, I think.

As most people know, during Ramadan one cannot eat or drink during daylight hours. One also must "think and act piously". Not everyone does the fast - there are age limits and certain prescriptions for people who are traveling, or pregnant or whatever.

What we've been told to expect is a completely upsidedown life for a month - as, essentially, what might normally happen during the day (meetings, appointments, soccer tournaments) find themselves occurring sometime around midnight. The newspaper has even printed off (in between advertisements for Ramadan hotel deals) a list of suggestions for non-Muslims, including being more patient with people who are fasting and not eating, drinking or smoking in public ourselves. Colleagues who experienced this last year are actually looking forward to some of the evening Iftar parties that might be happening around town -- all you can eat and up all night...

I'll let you know how it goes!

Coming soon...

We're still getting over jetlag -- we'll upload photos and descriptions of our awesome trip to Canada.

Thanks to all who made our whole vacation so memorable and fun!

The Louvre Abu Dhabi, a lesson in tolerance

Yesterday, we went to Abu Dhabi to the ultra-swank Emirates Palace Hotel to see the Louvre collection. There were about 20 sculptures, artifacts and paintings, and the guide did a quick blurb at each one.

Strangely enough, a lot of the art had a sort of religious aspect to it:

"This is Buddha as he should appear before attaining nirvana"
"As you can see, the Christ child is holding a copy of the Torah"

"And so Esther visited the king, who hated Jews, in order to make an appeal for herself and her people. This is when she fainted from relief."

And so on...

There's something a bit amazing about standing next to a woman in a niqab (black cloth facemask with just the eyes showing) in a Muslim country, looking at a huge sculpture of Jesus!

But then, I shouldn't have been all that surprised. My Arabic teachers seem to know more about Biblical history than I do, and I've had a few interesting e-mails from a friend who has studied more aspects of Islam than I have (not difficult, since I haven't done much religious study). An excerpt from one of his e-mails:

I know the references in the Qu'ran...
Allahhomma
Yeshua (Jesus)
Budhon (Buddha)
Yahweh
Dus (Deus)
Yahanano-yamanan (I still don't know what this is)

Yes, it is in several practices an amazing beautiful religion. Muslims across the Middle East have quite developed relationships with Christianity and Judaism as Mohammed actually interacted with these societies, argued with representatives from them and, in the case of one church in particular, was sheltered by them while he fled locals who sought to kill him. Consequently Muslims revere and protect this one church somewhere southwest of modern day Israel, and elder Muslim scholars enjoy a regular audience with the Pope toward interfaith matters.

(I guess if anyone can shed light on Mr. Yahanano, that would be awesome!)

What you see in the news, and what we North Americans have been tainted by since 9/11, this sort of fear/intolerance of Arabs is something that I was actually surprised to have to "get over". Was it un-nerving to see veiled women everywhere (and where do you look when you're trying to talk to someone in a full-face veil)? Yes. Was there some conditioned fear response when a man with his face wrapped in a goutra walks past? Yes. But it hasn't been that difficult to overcome.

Whoever chose the exhibited pieces that we saw yesterday obviously had education and tolerance in mind, and I think it's important to continue to encourage this positivity, while discouraging some of the misconceptions that we have been inundated with, and still are inundated with, by the media.

A bit of a digression there. Sorry... Anyway, the Louvre Abu Dhabi, along with some other museums, is going to be built on Saadiyat Island, with a probable end result somewhere around 2018. Well, you heard it here first! The plans for the project are all on display as well, and it looks quite amazing, with every building looking a bit like something out of Star Trek.

And on that note: I'm not sure if I'll have time to blog from Canada, but I will try. We still haven't packed and we're at T-23.5 for takeoff... so I should get back to work!

My City, My Life (Also, My Livingroom, My Cats)

Alrighty.... it's been too long since we've posted some good photos on here, and with plans for Canada next week, we decided to take a drive around town to show you where we live.

First off, though, the livingroom, and the COOLEST couch thing in the world. As you can see, we went with a bit of an orange/blue theme for everything. We had the majlis made - and it's our first piece of married-life furniture. Definitely a keeper.

The bookshelf is crammed full of random memorabilia from Cambodia, Korea, South Africa, Malaysia, India etc. The framed photos are going to end up on the wall to the right of the bookshelf eventually...

We still don't have a table, so we opted to not include any pics of the gaping space opposite the majlis area.

And then, we headed out into town...

Our first stop was the park across the street. We used to have picnics here once a week, but now it's just too hot. That doesn't stop them from watering it in the middle of the day!

And the dates are ready for harvesting!

Most towns have a sort of collection of rock sculptures, showing desert scenes, coffee pots, animals etc at their entrances as a way to welcome you there. I do love the falcon picking the bunny up by his bum while the other bunny flees in terror. Yeah, uh, Welcome!

Another item that's always found upon arriving at a new town is the "Big Picture of Sheikhs". Sheikh Zayed, who is floating up at the top there, is the man responsible for uniting the Emirates between warring clans, and then developing the economy, education, hospitals etc. He brought the country from an almost primitive way of life to one of the richest places in the world. The other Sheikhs are on a lot of the posters around here too, but their names escape me.

Into the residential area now, where we find a typical street of houses on one side, and a few camels on the other.

This is a random building in the middle of nowhere, just off the main drag, that makes us laugh. It's all small grocery stores, and a dentists, and that's about it....

And this is my school, walled in behind a big gate (so we couldn't get in to take closer shots).

Across from my school is a sort of farming area, with goats and a few shacks, all surrounded by traditional palm frond walls. Palm fronds are pretty useful building materials here, which is why this guy has a load of them (the driver was a hundred-year old Bedouin guy with a long white beard).

Downtown Madinat Zayed is pretty much just long aisles of small marts that sell a weird variety of objects. Ty's magical photo skills have made it look much more picturesque than it actually is.

About a kilometre from the bustling downtown core is a sort of camel shanty-town. Just a bunch of fenced-off, well, dirt, and tons of camels. I don't know if this is a market or holding pens before the big chop-chop (camel meat is, apparently, very good for you).

Awwww, aren't they cute?

Anything that isn't built on or irrigated into forced greenery is reclaimed by the desert. This patch is between the downtown and the camel place, next to an intersection.

Finally, our apartments, back in town. Our building is the one furthest away in this photo.

In other news, I'm determined to get my cats to be lolcats. I blame the cabin fever and too much wine last Scrabble night. Which photo do you think is best? And how would you caption it?

And on that note.... see you in a few days!

Caviar and Curry

It occurred to me this afternoon, as I was preparing a snack (caviar on crackers), that our local grocery store is weird.

Grocery stores are awesome places. In Korea, there were entire aisles of ramen noodles, tuna and seaweed. You could buy things like green tea noodles, and a million different kinds of tofu. The seafood section was immense, with live fish, and giant crabs in tanks (in Taiwan, we saw live frogs for sale next to the giant crabs). You could also find $100 bottles of whiskey, but no normal cheese or butter.

Obviously, eating habits are cultural... and grocery stores reflect this. I remember being reverse culture-shocked to see how big the "bakery" section was in grocery stores in Canada.

The local co-op here obviously doesn't sell pork or alcohol (but we can go to the Spinney's in Abu Dhabi to find those items -- the pork is accessed through a door at the back of the store marked "Pork for Non-Muslims Only", almost like the Adult section of a video store), but you can buy clothes, towels and toiletries. There are entire sections full of spices and basmati rice, olive oil from Palestine and chutneys and pickles from India. In amongst these items are baffling luxury imports like garlic mayonnaise and caviar, or cheese from Ireland. The fresh produce section is non-existent, except for a small counter where you need to pick through to find the non-wormy apples (there is a fruit market in town where you can find all manner of odd fruits, like lichees or spiny melons too).

Over the past 3 years, there are certain items which, for me, have become "imported luxuries", like coffee, brown bread, not-fluorescent-yellow mustard and certain veggies, like celery and iceberg lettuce -- all universally difficult to find/very expensive outside North America -- that I will pay top dollar for when I find them.

Only a few more days before we reach Canada! And brown bread! And celery! Mmmm, my mouth is watering already.

Vacation Update...

Last Thursday was the official start of vacation!

And we've been doing... well, not very much actually.

We'll be in Canada in a week (!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!), and have been enjoying this downtime: Getting our apartment more in order, heading up to Abu Dhabi for a mammoth shopping spree, and generally just relaxing. We're also cat-sitting for our friend, Paul. He took our terrible beasties in for 5 months (!) when we first got here, so we didn't even have to think twice about feeding his crew while he's in Australia.

The daytime temps are topping 50 these days, so we can't do much in the way of outdoor activities. Last night, we didn't turn on the aircon in the livingroom, and it hit 30+, which is what I expect we'll have in Ontario and Quebec in August. Of course, it was still 20 degrees cooler than the outside temp....

Other than that, we are getting ready to head to Canada, planning another quick trip to Abu Dhabi, and doing all the errands that we never seemed to have time for before.

Boring, I know, but sometimes the thrilling, exciting, jet-setting lifestyle has to include a bit of downtime. ;)