You would think I would have written this post three years ago. And parts of it I could have, and probably did. Other concepts dawn on a person slowly. Especially the absence of something.

Here is a short list with items, I have mentioned before, and at least one I have not.

1. Music.  We have the call to prayer here, five times a day, and that is music of a sort. But other than that … music in public is rare. If any of the malls do it, I have never noticed. Nothing in elevators. Not much in hotel lobbies. The LuLu grocery chain has background music — in its Mushrif store, at least — an endless loop of pan flute renderings of old pop hits. But that is so unusual you notice it right off.

I am not sure I have ever seen a piano, in the UAE, outside a hotel. I have never seen someone playing a guitar (or an oud) in public. I could go weeks with my windows wide open and not hear music wafting in from a neighbor. It is a profoundly non-musical place.

2. Dogs. I have mentioned this before. Dogs are considered unclean by most Muslims, so it’s not like any of the Arabs or Pakistanis are going to have them. (Aside from salukis, for racing, mostly by Emirati royals.) I have mentioned before how long I can go between sightings of a dog, and I’m another run of many weeks. I have not seen one dog since … October, maybe? When I was in France.

3. Coins on the street. I know I have mentioned this. But now I am up to three years and four months — and I still have never seen a coin of any sort on the ground here. Sometimes I think I see one, but when I get closer it’s generally a pull tab from a soda can.

A factor in that is that the only coin that circulates in any numbers is worth one dirham, or 27.2 cents, and that’s not the sort of thing that would last long on the ground, even in the U.S. (When was the last time you saw a quarter on the ground, in the States?) Also, for many of the expats here, one dirham is real money (dinner at a falafal place is Dh4), and they are not going to handle it cavalierly.

4. Pedestrians. Aside from downtown Abu Dhabi, where the population density is quite high, don’t count on seeing many people walking — especially past 15th street on the half of the island closer to the mainland. Some of this is the weather, of course; you don’t go for strolls when it’s 120 degrees Fahrenheit, and that’s half the year. Some of it, too, is distance — the very long blocks here. I walked from 29th Street to 25th Street, which is a distance of two blocks (even-number streets run perpendicularly to the odd), and it took me 20 minutes. The blocks are that long, and they are unusually large throughout the city.

5.  Bicycles. My home town in California, Long Beach, is making a push to become a center of bicycling, and taking lanes away from motor vehicles to do so, but only a few expats from the subcontinent ride bicycles here. We have a room full of western expats, and we live on a fairly compact island, and you would think many of them would ride a bicycle to work — especially considering lots of employees at the newspaper do not have cars.

But this doesn’t happen. For a couple of reasons: The weather, of course; even a five-minute ride in July would bring you to the office a hot and sweaty mess. The other major factor is safety. Abu Dhabi does not have a bicycle-friendly street system. No bike lanes. Lots of large vehicles driving fast, and driving aggressively. The idea of a bike in the left lanes of a multi-lane street here is ridiculous. And sidewalks here are unpredictable — appearing, disappearing, which makes sense in a place with few pedestrians.