Somewhere

A friend recently had an interview there.

And last week my hairdresser (from Singapore) suggested I look for my next job there.

"There" being Abu Dubai.

So, I check out the CIA's world fact book not least to find out exactly where it is. Although I'm an old Middle-East hand when I was there it was still part of the British Empire and I wasn't in to looking at maps (still not really).

I really hoped the CIA would have the low-down on the terrorist threat in that region but I guess it's not their strongpoint.

Moving on I then looked at Transparency International's corruption list. The UAE is the 37th least corrupt county. To put this in perpective, Finland is the least, the UK is the 11th, Germany the 16th, USA 18th ... hey, you can read the rest yourselves.

One thing I did gather from the CIA was that the UAE doesn't do democracy.

Felt like I could do with a bit more information so I visited the UK's foreign office for advice about the place.

Great. Not only is there a "high risk" of terrorism but drinking alcohol is illegal, well at least in public.

It's important for me to get some perspective on this terrorism-threat thing.

After all I currently live in London which is at threat, not only from Al-Queda type terrorists but also Irish ones.

A link from the FCO's site takes me to the Australian equivalent. Their advice is similar.

I also look at the US Department of State's travel advice. Maybe they know a bit more about terrorism than their CIA chums.

All these sites mention that there is a high risk of terrorism there but none advise against, or ban travel. The US's DoS site goes into more detail than the others. Advice which makes it less appealing.

Another thing I learnt: Abu Dubai is part of the Gulf States, not the Middle East (although Aussies don't seem to make the distinction.