Sandier Pastures

This will be a short post.

They have confirmed it. I’m having 4 days off as the whole UAE celebrates the Eid holidays (holidays after month of fasting Ramadan) !

I’ll be back working on Saturday, this time for the whole day. During Ramadan we only have to work for 5-6 hours and I was home by 4 (to the delight of the babe). At work, the fasting people are lethargic making the work place less tense and with no pressure. After 30 days of days like this, we get a long weekend to enjoy. I even read that it will be perfect weather for us this week.

Ah, sometimes I wish every month is Ramadan!

It’s Sunday, the start of work and school here in Dubai (and in other Gulf countries, I presume) and it only means one single thing in the morning: traffic. Rough, heavy, crazy traffic.

My work starts at 9:00 while Pristine’s school starts at 8:30 during Ramadan period. Her school is 10 minutes away from where we live. Well, that’s realistically speaking.

We went out at 7:30 because I had been anticipating traffic on the main road as combined effects of road works, Ramadan and the start of the school year. As soon as came out of the basement parking, despair immediately crept in. Right outside the exit of our parking, several cars are lined up bumper to bumper.

What!? I thought I was living in the quieter side of town? Where do these cars come from? Surely, they were not there when we left Dubai a month ago!

It took me a good 20 minutes just to move a few meters to the main road where I was met by honking drivers refusing to give way. Ah! Ramadan, the month of fasting. I should have known better, driving while hungry is not a good idea!!

It was 8:10 when I parked in front of Pristine’s school. Imagine 40 minutes instead of 10! We got out and ran to her classroom. I was only able to give her a quick kiss and hug then ran back to the car on my way to work. I finally sat on my work chair at 9:00 sharp, exactly 90 minutes after I started the car. I can’t believe I’ve just spent more than an hour shifting my foot from the almost endless series of brake-accelerator-brake-accelerator.

Actually, it’s not just today that the traffic is at its worst. It has been like this since the start of Ramadan (Sept. 1st). Since hubby is still in Japan, I had been driving for almost two weeks now.

And I am honestly fed up.

One more day of driving into the gridlock and I’ll go out in the street naked to drive all the motorists away mad. Thankfully, hubby is arriving tonight so I won’t have to drive tomorrow.

Surprisingly, I didn’t have the “first day back to work” blues today. I spent half the day downloading hundreds of emails, writing forms, submitting my passport back (employers keep our passports here) and giving all the gifts I bought to people who had been good while I was away.

It’s the holy month of Ramadan until the end of the month here in the UAE and in the whole Muslim world. Ramadan for them means fasting (no eating from sunrise until sunset), but to non-Muslim expats like me, it means shortened work time. Yay! Work starts at 9 am and finishes at 3 pm.

It also means hide-and-seek-eating-game. We can take a break for lunch - it only takes a little bit more time to find a place to hide. We don’t want to intimidate the fasting (hungry) people, you know. Tomorrow, I’ll bring a sandwich. That way, it will be easier to eat from where I am sitting. No spoons, forks or chopsticks to take out. I’ll just tear off the sandwich bits from inside my drawer and shove then in my mouth when no one’s looking.

I am glad they don’t execute people who succumb to worldly pleasures during Ramadan.