Yes, Sundays are the equivalent of Mondays back home i.e. the start of my working week, which after having been here for a number of months, still feels slightly odd. (J says that the only way to keep track which day is which is by having an egg on a weekend morning, which is what we used to do in Adelaide.)
My working day is a very early start - up by 5.45-6.00am, shower, shave, breakfast and check e-mails before I leave home. At this time of the morning it is still early afternoon back in Oz due to the time difference of 5.5 hours (or 6.5 during summer) and so a good time to catch up on messages and replies if required.
Generally I'm on the road by 7-.00am-7.15am for the anywhere between 40-90 minute (and sometimes longer) drive to Sharjah. The office is 41 Kms from where we live. Big variation in time to get there I hear you ask? At certain times of the year there is much less traffic on the road due to holidays, etc and at other times when the schools re-commence and as the the number of ex-pats return from their annual holidays, the roads get busier again and the drive to work gets longer.
A drive to work of 90 minutes is, on average, the longest time it takes due to traffic congestion or an accident or bad weather, although I have had a number of experiencces of just over 2 hours.
When it is very hot, I try not to wear a suit, but unfortunately there is an unwritten requirement (which I cannot ignore) that suits are compulsory at any sort of business meeting irrespective of the weather and/or humidity. By hot, I mean mid to high 40's (celcius) and humidity in the 80-90% range. It is ludicrous to have to wear a suit in such conditions so I try to minimise it by attempting to arrange all my business meetings on one or two days per week. The rest of the week it is still long sleeve shirts and ties, but at least no jacket.
Business is very different to anything I have experienced in Oz...much more backward - I am not sure if that is the right word. For example, on the same day a few months ago, I spent 1 hour waiting for a bank to amend a document before I could sign it (a 1 minute job on a word processor) and further 50 minutes at another branch of the same bank listening to the manager talk about the hot weather at that time of year over 2 cups of very strong coffee and despite my most determined efforts to get him to discuss with me what I was really there for.
There are other business idiosyncracies which I have not experienced before, like the "Office Boy", someone who looks after all the senior and middle management's requirements in the office from getting stationery and cups of tea/coffee to opening doors and carrying your briefcase or laptop out to the car for you. In my case, the Office Boy even washes my car for me (I have never asked, he just does it every couple of days). It seems sort of pointless, as within half an hour of it being cleaned there is a fine layer of dust/dirt over the car due to the dirt roads around the office. But it gets done and I give him 10 dirhams (local currency) each time which he is very happy to receive and I feel guilty about because it is only about AUD $3 - $4 (depending upon the exchange rate of the day).
Generally, my working day finishes anywhere between 6 and 7.30pm. On occasion this will stretch out to 9.00pm depending on what I have on. However, on average, if I can leave the Sharjah office by 7pm, then I am home by around 8pm. All up, it makes for a very long day and even longer time not being wih J.
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