No Direction

North, South, East, and West. Left and right. Throw in a couple of prepositions here and there and you can direct people to where they need to go. People say that women have a terrible sense of direction. I am definitely the exception to this rule. I have always had a good sense of direction, not only in how to get from one place to another but in life too. If living in Abu Dhabi has taught me anything, and it has taught me a lot, it's that direction, both in navigation and in life, is actually a very fickle thing.

No one uses addresses in the UAE. Ordering food or booking a cab is truly a mammoth task. Anywhere else in the world you would simply give someone the number of your house, your street name, and your suburb. Pretty straight forward. However, this simple practice cannot be used in Abu Dhabi. You have to use landmarks and the names of major streets only. Abu Dhabi is supposed to be an easy city to navigate because it has the traditional iron grid system. All roads running East to West are odd numbers and all roads running North to South are even numbers. All streets are numbered regardless of their name. You need to know both the name and the number of streets in order to direct someone to where you live in case they know the one and not the other.

Once you have mastered this numbering system and have identified your land marks it should be fairly easy to tell someone where you live. This is not the case though. The problem is two fold; one, if you have no real land marks, because you live in the 'burbs, you're screwed and two, the people you are speaking to on the phone do not understand simple prepositions, "Turn right into the last road before fifteenth street." is impossible for someone to understand because all they understood was "fifteenth street" and  "right". 

In essence, everything that is thought to be logical and common sense turns out to be not that logical nor universally understood. The same can be said about life in Abu Dhabi. Cultural differences aside, things just don't make sense because all logic is thrown out the window. Even crossing the road has become a difficult task because the island separating the road has a fence down the middle between major intersections. Therefore, you are forced to walk, completely out of your way, to a busy intersection to cross the road to walk back to where you where only on the other side of the road. This is supposedly done to force people to cross at pedestrian crossings. Seems logical at first glance but the nearest intersection has a death-trap traffic circle, round-about - depending on where in the world you are from. This death-trap consists of a three lane traffic circle where you have to yield to cars that are in the circle and trying to exist. Cars are coming from all sides and deciphering which way they are going to impossible. Indicator? No such luck. So it's a case of waiting for a big enough gap, saying a little prayer, and running like your life is in danger because, well, it is! Not only do you need to be in fear of a car hitting you but you have the added worry of one car taking out another car and the collision taking you out because a car is somersaulting towards you. Not very safe or logical now is it?

Thankfully I am back home, unscathed, where directions make sense once again. The only problem being, I now lack it in my own life. I am at a crossroads where I don't know which way is North or South, up or down, right or wrong. I now have no direction.