You have entered the "Logic-Free Zone"!

Dee dee dee dee, dee dee dee dee,................ no it's not the Twilight Zone but when it happens you sense things are not quite right.  It is the "zone" in the U.A.E. where guidelines or rules exist absent of all logic.  In our house here in Abu Dhabi we having lovingly named it the "Logic-Free Zone", and you can do nothing but laugh at it!  I invite you to chuckle along with me.......

I have several friends whose husbands all work for a similar company, not the company my husband works for.  They recently won a bid to build seven nuclear power plants here in Abu Dhabi.  The Sheikh over this project is eager to get it going full steam ahead.  Yet, they still have not established a Nuclear Regulatory Commission.  Why?  You have just entered the "Logic-Free Zone"!

There is a law here common to the many of the States in the U.S.  It is illegal to speak on a cell phone while you are driving.  You can be ticketed for it, if pulled over by a Police Officer.  Yet, it is NOT illegal to drive around the city with a baby in your arms, or a toddler bouncing around the back seat!  They even drive, while holding their infants in their laps.  You have entered the "Logic-Free Zone"!

The Malls here are AMAZING, they make the nicest malls I know in the States (like The Westchester and Southpark) look shabby.  There are four of them inside the city limits of Abu Dhabi alone.  They are four to eight stories high when you include the underground parking levels.  Many of them are the size of two and three city blocks full of hundreds of stores.  They have huge sections of escalators all through out them.  Some are wider, on a slant, and no stairs; these are for carts since every mall has a huge store on the bottom level like a Super Wal-Mart on steroids!  Some go all the way from the bottom of the lowest parking up three or four stories, one level at a time.  Now you would think that if they could build all of this they could line up the escalators so when you get off one you turn and go to the next.  All the ups together and all the downs together.  Oh no, not here, they are all mixed up.  As you step off one escalator you have to dodge crowds trying to get on the one you have to pass in front of to walk around to the another side to continue to go up or down!  It's real fun when you are pushing a cart of groceries!  You have entered the "Logic-Free Zone"!

I'm driving down the road in the left center of five lanes on a major road.  I see a car barrelling down behind me, there is a car to my right and my left.  So he goes to the extreme right of five lanes and gets a car or two ahead then moves lane left and gets another car ahead.  And again and again until he is now in the far left lane.  All of this is happening about thirty to forty miles per hour.  A block down the road and we are all stopped at a red light and he's a whole five cars ahead of me on the left!  It wouldn't be that crazy if it wasn't for the fact that there is at least a half dozen of them all pulling the same stunts at the same time.  Driving in the U.A. E......."The Logic-Free Zone"!

You never know when you might wander into the "Logic-Free Zone", I'm sure there will be more examples in the months and years to come!