Home, sweet home

Well, it looks like we're nearly there, as the utilities at Tornado Villa should be connected today (for you fans of etymology, the English word "today" has its origins in the semitic root twodaysorsofromnowifyou'relucky).

You're probably wondering why in the world we would want to spend this much time and effort leasing a villa that is presently a mess and may not be ready by the time we move when we could walk into a shiny new one in Al Raha Gardens or Golf Gardens.  I can answer that in three words:

Location.  Location.  Location.

In other words, smack in the middle of Abu Dhabi island.

Now that we're a bit more confident about actually having a place to live in Abu Dhabi, I can give you the address:

A big white villa in Al Karama, somewhere sort of near an embassy, across the street from a villa with extremely ugly walls, next to a couple of other big villas, and not too far from the shopping mall.

I hope you all have your Outlook settings tweaked to allow for 12-line address fields.

For the geographically challenged

Ok, sometimes that includes me.

Today we're going to look at some maps.  Maps are our friends, unless you are a taxi driver in Abu Dhabi, in which case looking at a two-dimensional rendering of any geographical area is slightly more daunting than looking at a Rubik's Cube for the first time.  (Free advice:  Don't give your driver a map, as it will only make things worse.  Take my word for it.  Multiple experiments have demonstrated that there is not a single professional driver in Abu Dhabi who is familiar with the concept of a map.)

I mentioned a couple of days ago that Abu Dhabi is not Dubai.  That still holds true.  Here's a partial UAE map showing that they are, in fact, two different places:

Since we're concerned here with Abu Dhabi, not Dubai, let's zoom in on just the Abu Dhabi portion (the city and its surroundings, not the entire Emirate of Abu Dhabi):

Although it's difficult to see, the city of Abu Dhabi is an island, the crucial dividing point between "mainland" and "Abu Dhabi island" being that bit of water in the middle of the map running twixt Bain Al Jessrain and Officers City.  While significant development is occurring in off-island areas around Khalifa City A (shown as Madinat Khalifa A on the map), the heart of the city, including government offices, businesses, shopping, restaurants, etc.  are still on Abu Dhabi island.  Eventually, lots of this stuff will move over to Khalifa City A.  Eventually.

Finally, we'll take a quick look at Abu Dhabi Island and its neighbourhoods:

The key area on this map is the Corniche -- the stretch of seafront running between the Tourist Club Area and Al Khubeirah on the northwest side of the island.  The closer you are to the Corniche, the closer you are (generally) to the central business district, shops, eateries, etc.  Neighbourhoods like Al Bateen, Al Karama, Al Mushrif, and Al Nahyan tend to be more residential, and farther away from the action (and noise) of the city.

The National Newspaper has published some excellent articles in its "Why Live In..." series.  Here are a few samples for your reading pleasure:

Al Karama

Behind Hamdan Street

Al Khalidiya 1

Al Khalidiya 2

Al Mushrif

Al Wahda

Muroor

That should be enough to make you (and me) slightly less geographically challenged.  Providing you can read a map.

How did this happen?

The short answer is:  It's all my fault.  Here we were, happily cruising along with a part-time London to Abu Dhabi commute and I had to screw it up by applying for a job.  Which I got.  So blame me.

Now, after rounds of negotiations, renegotiations, waiting, questions, phone calls, fear, debate, and shock, we are, in fact, actually committed to moving to the UAE.  Abu Dhabi, specifically (n.b.  Abu Dhabi is not Dubai, even though the letters in Dubai constitute a subset of those in Abu Dhabi).  Here's a map for the geographically challenged:

And we're leaving in five weeks.

Fortunately, I am a natural researcher, so the past five months have been spent reading everything I can find on the web or in print, travelling back and forth to explore in person, and assembling Excel workbooks for just about every aspect of the move one can imagine.

I figure that's the least I can do, since after all, it is all my fault.