I took this photo at my favourite Chinese restaurant in Abu Dhabi, Red Castle, the other night. It’s in Abu Dhabi’s Chinatown, which is admittedly very little, in the middle of the block between the Madinat Zayed Centre on Muroor and HSBC on Airport. (I recommend the salt-and-pepper shrimp.)

I have two things to say about this photo. The first is that I love that almost every restaurant outside a five-star hotel in the UAE dispenses with napkins and simply places a tissue box on the table.  The other is that it is hilarious how this tissue company is so lethargic about their brand they could not be bothered to think up a proper name for it. Let’s hear it for Rolerblades and iPhons.

Tom Cruise does his own mental stunts. Photo/courtesy of DIFF.

I wrote an observing life column in The National recently about one of the biggest differences between my life here and back in Canada. Here, much of the time, I stick out like a sore thumb. And most of the time I don’t mind:

Life in the UAE: getting beyond recognition

One of the most jarring changes in moving to the UAE from the West,
for me, was the instant loss of anonymity. It’s not the staring and
honking I’m talking about, although that has always made me feel a
little like a celebrity.

It’s the way I can cross someone’s path just once and they will
remember me forever. No nameless, faceless “life in the big city” here.

It started at the laundry. No need for a receipt I would immediately
lose. I simply relayed my apartment number, which was immediately
written into all my clothes. This usually happened on the inner label,
but sometimes on the outside too, with black being no obstacle, as the
laundry owned a handy white crayon, but that’s another story.

When I returned days later the laundry’s staff immediately began gathering up my now permanently marked items.

A few months later I wandered in to the local shawarma shop, where
they offered to drop my food off rather than have me wait for it because
although I’d never been there before, they of course knew exactly where
I lived.

Then at a car rental on the edge of the neighbourhood a few months
later, as we were sorting out the details, the manager said: “So, what
do you do at Abu Dhabi Media? You work there, I know.”

Usually I like the recognition – the previous example excepted. In a
far away, strange land, it’s a comfort to walk into a Starbucks you
haven’t been to in six weeks to a chorus of “Ma’am – welcome back! You
have not been here in so long! Grande skinny latte?”

As a result I have let couriered packages and tailored dresses
languish for months at their various shops, confident that it would only
take showing my face for the proprietors to locate my items. I have
also formed such fast friendships – Madeline at the coffee shop, Tariq
at Aramex – that I have even introduced parents to them.

Of course, the recognition goes awry. Just this week my roommate
popped in to our local Lebanese shop for some takeaway. The staff seemed
befuddled at her trim physique, which to them was apparently a dramatic
transformation on the scale of The Biggest Loser. All they could say
was “diet”, “Ramadan” and “big”, making gorilla-like motions with their
arms. As she hadn’t so much as lost a kilogram, nor fasted, it was clear
they thought she was someone – a much larger someone – else.

As time wears on, these relationships, as so many do, have started to
lose their lustre. Familiarity, as they say, breeds contempt, and that
could be the reason for my latest exchange. I was browsing in a little
shop in Abu Dhabi, looking at the lotions and potions, wondering if I
should buy.

The staffer took one look at the giant Steve Madden bag slung over my shoulder and said:

“Hi ma’am. You shopping? [Pause]. Again?”

Abu Dhabi Police started doing this a few months ago, sending out these amazing illustrations to accompany their press releases. The first one I saw accompanied a release about a group of kids involved in some sort of war games activity who were busted by actual cops. I thought that could not be topped, but then came this beauty to accompany Ola Salem’s Sheep jumps from five-story building after failed slaughter attempt in The National:

 

 

 

 

 

In addition to taking some license with the visual depiction of the incident, police also seem to infer quite a bit by the sheep’s actions, concluding the animal preferred to die by falling than at the hands of an inexperienced butcher. Or, you know, maybe it just wanted to live. Whatever. But the carnage did not stop there:

 

 

Every time I think it’s going to be lovely, and it usually is – for the first hour and 15 minutes. Of course the taxi driver, delighted that I have decided to treat myself to a taxi instead of the bus, always needs to stop for petrol. Either he was just driving around town on fumes for thrills, and must double back into the closest Adnoc, which involves assorted back streets, U-turns and, of course, waiting in queues, or he realises it halfway there and worries openly about his dwindling supply with an ongoing “tsk tsk” sound. Then, blessedly, he spots an Adnoc.

Apparently, though, there is some sort of gas shortage. Why else would there be a line of cars 12 long just to get to a pump? He edges the car forward, hard on the break, hard on the gas, trying to sneak in, rolling down his window, pleading with car owners as they studiously ignore him and I try to hide in the back seat.

The real fretting begins when the tall buildings start appearing. And I don’t know how to assuage it. I don’t like driving in Dubai, either – hence the taxi. But since Abu Dhabi taxi drivers seem to have been issued a management directive against taking any sort of advance directions – really, since when have you been able to say ‘after this right, next left’ and have it mean anything? – it is next to impossible to direct them in any sort of meaningful way. (Ditto with giving a direction too soon – “turn right” has to be said at just the right time or the abrupt slamming of the brake will happen twice, once for nought)

I was once in a taxi hurtling around an off ramp to the Dubai Marina (having successfully manouevered that part) and when I tried to tell him what he had to do next. He slammed on the brakes. In the middle of the ramp.

That is when a speeding car hit us. Well, they clipped us, but it rocked the car. And kept going.

It’s like they don’t believe your directions.  Heading to Dubai Mall this week, I said “up here, go right, Dubai Mall. See brown sign? Dubai Mall”.

“Right?” he said.

“Yes, right.” I responded.

“Right?” he asked.

“Yes right,” I responded, slightly more tersely as the median was approaching and he was decidedly not going right.

“Ri-” he started to say, breaking but not actually going in the right direction, and that’s when it happened. All of a sudden, soclose to getting through one of these trips without losing my cool, we are hurtling down Sheikh Zayed Road and he’s decided I don’t know where to turn.

And that’s when, like a lunatic, I start to yell: “RIGHT! RIGHT! RIGHT!”

The car jerks – where else? – to the right. But by now we are both freaked out of course. And he’s the one with the foot on the brake and the gas, so the car is half-jerking as it makes its way to the entrance. And that’s when I say: “Just stop. I can walk from here. Thank you.”

And leave a massive tip to massage the guilt I feel over being a terrible person who yells as taxi drivers.