This entry is written somewhat retrospectively since I didn't get round to starting this blog until sometime after I arrived in Jakarta.

My initial training took place in Abu Dhabi, i was there for exactly 7 days and had 7 days of training so I didn't really see that much of the country.

My overwhelming impression was of unthinkable amounts of money being squirted in some very sensible and some very stupid directions, and of the worst taxi drivers I've ever met.

My instructions before I arrived were as follows: 1) Do not use yellow taxis, do not use white taxis, only ever use silver taxis. 2) Meet you driver (I wasn't given his name) at gate 6 (which turned out to be shut) and go to a place (which no one in the airport had heard of) called MLC. It turns out almost all taxis are silver, so I was able to tick 1) off with ease. 2) on the other hand presented rather more trouble, I eventually met some other recruits who had been given rather more information, and we managed to find our drivers, who were at neither gate 6 nor the gate we had all arrived at. However I got to wondering how long I had to hang around at the airport for before I had to get back on a flight to London  and inform the company that, contrary to popular belief, neither MLC nor my driver existed.
MLC stands the Middle Learning Centre, it reminded me of the Early Learning Centre (an irritatingly self righteous toy shop for under fives), and I felt like I was about to commence stage two of my life’s training, with everything between the Early Learning Centre and the Middle Learning Centre just a distraction.

Perhaps the oddest thing was the water, even the cold tap produced water at about 40oC. If you thing about it, it is obvious. All the water pipes are very shall, the water is desalinated sea water and the average temperature including nights is over 40, so obviously the cold can't actually be cold. Still, it adds to the sense only the air conditioning is keeping you alive.

If you want to get to where you're trying to go in a taxi in Abu Dhabi, you need to be ruder than the rudest cunt you've ever met in fluent hindi (all taxi drivers are Indian it seems), know exactly where you're going, and have a big enough cash reserve to pay when they still take you the wrong way. I guess the taxi drivers are rightfully annoyed at being exploited by the society they have left their home to server, but right now I can’t help thinking they’re generating enough dislike to keep themselves being exploited even if the good people of Abu Dhabi intended to pull them out of poverty and let them share in the state’s enormous wealth.