We officially live in Abu Dhabi now. I didn’t really consider our two months of staying in an apart-hotel as “living here.” It was more like extended visiting. It had a transitory feel to it.

We were here,  but we weren’t really. Not as long as we had someone bringing us towels every day, changing the sheets every third day. Not as long as we had a restaurant, a cyber cafe and a gym downstairs.  And not as long as we were seven floors above the street.

We have moved into a tiny, ground-floor apartment in what passes for the ‘burbs, here in the United Arab Emirates. No longer downtown. No longer near many (any?) major retail outlets. Just a batch of sprawling buildings, none of them taller than 3-4 stories, subdivided into five or 10 or 15 apartments.

I think I like it. I’m not entirely sure.

At this moment, as we approach midnight in Abu Dhabi, we have the windows open. This is the great time of year here, for weather. It’s about 68 degrees Fahrenheit. Which is Just Fine.

Anyway, the “windows open” thing …

1. We never did that at the Sahara 9 apartment-hotel because we lived above the intersection of Electra and Najda, which is one of the city’s busiest crossings and a fountainhead of horn-blowing by angry (and often stalled) commuters. It was a concerto of blatting horns turned up to “11”. I was wakened, repeatedly, from a dead sleep, by idiots blowing their horns in the middle of the night. And this was with the double-paned windows closed and with the AC running and producing a fair share of white noise.

Right now? Not a single horn. I hear a street-in-the-distance sort of generic noise. (Like you can hear when you’ve left the interstate and are filling your gas tank at the end of the offramp.) But no honking. Because the closest street to us (Old Airport Road, I think it is) moves along smartly, so no one is fighting for a car-length.

2. I am in a residential neighborhood.  No blinking lights. No neon. Just lots of people sleeping. No voices. No arguments. No lights. No music. No random guys sitting outside my door whiling away their evenings. So, sure, throw the windows open. Let the AC rest.

That’s what the suburbs are about, back in SoCal, and that’s what they are about here. Homes, not businesses. Peace and quiet, not noise and activity.

Actually, we sorta live in a college neighborhood. Something called Khalifa University is about 100 yards from where I’m sitting. It clearly is a commuter campus, and not a big one, because it doesn’t really have any parking and doesn’t seem to need any. But living near a well-kempt higher-education government building? I like that. And who knows? If I check into this, maybe they do the occasional lecture in English there.

OK, maybe two weeks from now … or two days from now, when I try to buy a loaf of bread … I may decide we’ve gone a bit too far from downtown. Or I may miss the madding crowds down on the street. I’m guessing I won’t.

Anyway, tiny apartment. Smaller than the one-bedroom hotel room we just left. (And not much bigger than the one-bedroom we lived in for two months in Hong Kong last winter.) We have a decent-sized bedroom, a decent-sized den, a bathroom with the basics, and a hall between the bathroom and den. With a studio-like kitchen nook carved out of the den.

What we like about it is (and I like it more than Leah does) …

1. It’s furnished. Well, kinda. Two bright red couch-like chairs … matched across the den by a bright red foldout couch/bed. (Leah says it’s called a “click-clack” in France, presumably because of the metallic noise it makes when you shift it from couch to bed. So, yes, we can take one visitor at a time. Please wait your turn, though.) There is a large bed in the bedroom, a small vanity and a nightstand. The den has one battered table between the couch and couch-like chairs.

2. It has the key appliances. A tall fridge. A washing machine. A stove. That’s big. We didn’t have to buy them or have them moved or install them. They already are here. They work. We use them. And we can walk away from them. Oh, we also have a TV. We haven’t paid for cable, but we could.

3. We are closer to the office. I walked it, the other day, and it took me 25 minutes. This time of year, I could walk to work, no problem. Absolutely, I could walk home. In all but the hottest months I could walk home, at 10-11 p.m. Would be good for me.

4. It’s cheap.  You may have heard some vague reports about Dubai being in financial trouble, just up the road here in the UAE. And it is, and the real estate market there has all but crashed. But we live in Abu Dhabi, where housing is still short and expensive. Here, for our tiny rented place, we are paying about what we pay for a 1,000-square-foot loft in Long Beach. Which, yes, is a fair amount of money in the States but is seriously cheap in Abu Dhabi.

Now, if we don’t go mad in this tiny space … if we can figure out a way to create a bit more storage … if the neighborhood is as peaceful and quiet as it seems … this may work out just fine. I am hopeful.

Anyway, we’re living here now. We have a one-year lease. We’re home.