So, back at it today.

Back out to the tiny place in Al Muroor, which I tried to write about yesterday, lost the file and directed you to Leah’s site …

But before we get to that, some general impressions on finding housing in Abu Dhabi, city of.

It is not expensive to live in Abu Dhabi. Not by U.S. standards. Groceries cost about the same as they would in California, and often less. If you aren’t buying imports, your tab at the checkout counter will be surprisingly low. Movies, entertainment, phones, internet hookups … pretty much the same. Cabs and rental cars … quite cheap.

The one exception to all expense rules is housing. It is expensive here. Always has been. And unlike Dubai, a 90-minute drive up the sandy coast, the housing market in Abu Dhabi softened only a bit during the global recession. It all but collapsed in Dubai, where lots of nice deals on housing now can be found (in high-rises with lots of amenities, including gyms and pools). But not in Abu Dhabi, where after years of steep rises created by housing shortages, the recession has meant only a halt in price hikes, and not a batch of great deals, nor a significant amount of new, amenity-laden housing.

So, once we established how much we would spend (no more than a house payment in East Highlands Ranch, basically), and that we were probably too old for roommates (if any would have us), it would seem that our options really are rather limited.

Almost all of them are in what the locals call “villas.”

They look rather villa-like, from the outside. Big, square buildings, in the California sense. Imposing. A rich-guy’s home.

Here, however, villas nearly always (and certainly in the city) are divided immediately into five or six or 12 individual apartments. And the dividing often is quite willy-nilly, making for oddly shaped apartments.

Construction also often is shoddy (think Mexico), and then a few years of tenants leaves the units rather a mess. With cables running everywhere, visible to the naked eye, holes in the walls where this and that was hung before it was snatched up on the way to the airport. And the landlords rarely make any effort, at all, to clean up the places before they put them on the market. Old shoes left behind, closets not cleaned out, appliances dirty and smelly. In short, we went into a half-dozen villas that were disasters. Dirty, ragged and expensive. Places where you wince and say, “Well, maybe if we did X, Y and Z … it could be almost acceptable …”

Also, one-bedroom housing is rare, especially in the towers, because most people who can afford that sort of thing have come with kids. And they almost always want two bedrooms.

So, we were surprised and pleased when our Syrian-born real estate agent (more on him in a minute) took us to a small place in the Al Muroor District, just south and a bit west of the paper.

It was different in several ways. Startlingly different.

For one, it had a specific-to-us entrance. At villas, everyone comes in through the same front door. Then it’s up the steps to wherever you live.

This, however, was a ground-level place, somewhat bare on the outside, but not tacky and crumbling. The maintenance man came over and unblocked the door (the key was not-so-ingeniously hidden under a rock about a yard from the door, but in a country with little crime, it didn’t matter) … and we found a bit of patio in front of us. Specific to that unit. Which is nice, in apartment living. A space about 7 feet by 7 feet. Big enough to put out some potted plants. Or even a couple of chairs if we ever felt like sitting outside, in the evening.

We went in the front door. The place is furnished, but not garishly, like we normally had seen. It didn’t have the feel of “broken-down stuff the previous tenant just abandoned.” It wasn’t awful, that is. Also, it was stunningly tidy, by Abu Dhabi standards. Things had been cleaned since the previous tenant. Quite tidy. I wanted to compliment … someone.

But it is also quite small. Not much bigger than the place we spent most of our four months in while in Hong Kong … but laid out in a very clever way. It made sense, that is. Someone had thought this through, as opposed to the villas, which often seem completely random in their setup.

To the left of the front door is a living room with a kitchen at one end (with washer and fridge already in, which is important) … a click-clack sofa (turns into a bed), two chairs of the same type and color as the sofa … and a TV in the corner. (It might even work.) No actual dining area, though there is a bit of an extension to the kitchen counter that could stand a stool on each side.

Then down the hall, past the door, a tall and fairly wide wardrobe is pushed up against the wall. It can handle most of our stuff, but not all of it. (We haven’t yet seen a closet).  Another few feet, a cozy but functional bathroom with actual glass walls on the shower. (Another rarity.) And, to the right, a decent-sized bedroom. Cozy, but about twice the size of the one in HK. The bed in there has drawers beneath the mattress, which is key, given the lack of storage area in the place. There is room enough for a dressing table/vanity, which is already up in one corner (and matches the bed, as well as the dresser out in the hall) … and maybe just enough room to install a treadmill, which I have to have — because it’s almost always too hot to exercise outside, and there’s no gym (or hotel) anywhere in the neighborhood.

The place has plenty of parking, which is key — if we ever get a car. Parking spots are dear in this town. It’s quite residential, and is close to Khalifa University, which means it’s quiet.

We saw this yesterday and went back today to make sure we could fit in there … and not go mad. We studied everything. Closely. Not just the walkthrough you normally do. Would our bags fit? Is there enough food-storage? Could we hang our clothes? Do the two big wall-mounted ACs work?

The answers generally are yes. And we probably will go there … though we haven’t committed to it yet. It’s about as cheap as we can hope for in this town, and we probably will be willing to trade the extra square footage of space in a villa for the neatness and grooming of this particular place.

Now, for our agent. We got him by random. Through the net. He had advertised this particular place, which is on the north end of a building with about 12 units in it … and he had described it as a “exquisitely furnished one-bedroom”. That got our attention.

We found out, today and yesterday, that he is from Syria and is in the UAE for five years to, basically, escape Syria’s compulsory military service. “In the army, who knows what happens? You could end up in Lebanon.” Which is where there is some shooting going on between the Syrians and various Lebanese. So, in Syria, you aparently can avoid the draft by paying a fine and staying out of the country for five years, and that is what our guy is doing. His family must have some money. And he must be at the upper end of draft age. He’s about 27, 28 and prefers sunglasses, pointed hard shoes and jeans.

He said he is a Christian, and there are very few of those in Syria. I asked him if it were hard to be a Christian, in Syria (technically a secular state). And he said, “It is very hard to be a Christian in Syria, but very easy to be a Muslim.” He said, however, he comes from a region with so many Christian that it is called “Christianity Valley.”

He loves cars. He would love to have a Cadillac Escalade SUV. “So nice!” On our way to the apartment, we got caught in traffic behind a bright yellow Corvette with the top off, and he didn’t seem to mind the wait as he gazed longingly at the Corvette. He said he likes “classic cars” … “so heavy and strong!” He said he would really love to own a classic Camaro, and asked us how to pronounce the name. He and a friend had been arguing over that.

He also has a relative in Las Vegas. After we told him we would like to see Syria (“we have some wonderful castles near where my family lives”) but didn’t think we would be, because it’s hard to get a visa … he said he would like to visit “Rome and Nevada.” Turns out he would like to go anywhere in Italy, but especially Rome or Venice … and he would like to see Las Vegas because the relative has told him about it. He also likes the idea of it being in the desert, since Syria is pretty much a desert and the UAE most certainly is. “Just like here, yes?” And I tried to tell him Vegas is hot but not humid, as it is here, but I think his English did not extend to the word “humidity.”

I don’t know were he learned his English (he’s been here for only one year and 15 days, not that he is counting), but it’s pretty good. He has a couple of cell phones going all the time, in Arabic and English, and he likes to smoke but is clever enough not to do it while clients are in the car.

His grasp of idioms is tenuous; those are hard in any language. But his vocab is good. And it made me laugh when he described the tiny apartment as “really cute.” Something about “really cute” with a Syrian Arabic accent …

So, there we are. Our hunt may be over. We may be about to give a Syrian Christian a nice chunk of change for hooking us up with a tiny but tidy place.