Abu Dhabi is more than a little like Hong Kong, where I was a year ago today.

It’s 1) all about business and the business of making money and 2) shopping seems to be a major social activity.

Hong Kong shopping is fairly pervasive and spread out. Abu Dhabi seems to focus its shopping on a handful of malls. Such as the Abu Dhabi Mall, where we spent a big chunk of Saturday night. Us and several thousand of our best expat friends.

As with everything I write over the next month, at the minimum, I reserve the right to revisit any cultural/social topics and say “Boy, was my first impression wrong.”

But for now …

The Abu Dhabi Mall is enormous, of course. Everything in the UAE seems to be done on a grand scale, or not done at all. Gigantism is Good.

The Abu Dhabi Mall is over on the east side of the island, near Le Meridien Hotel, and is vast. Four stories. At least one of every type of shop. More middle class than upscale, though.

And lots and lots of people, just hanging out. A little shopping. Some eating. But mostly just cruising. It’s nice and cool in there — even at night, here, it’s still in the 80s, Fahrenheit — and it gets you out of the heat. And back into the consumer culture which, clearly, Americans are not the only global citizens to embrace.

An aside. A feature of this city, and something you really notice at the mall, is the extraordinary cultural diversity of the place. You could pick a spot in front of a store inside the mall, and of the next 10 people who walked past, no three of them would appear to hail from the same country. Arabs from all over the Gulf, Westerners, Indians, Pakistanis, Africans, Bangladeshis, Filipinos, Indonesians … and wearing all manner of clothes. From Arab national dress to variations on that theme (women veiled, sorta veiled, not veiled), to guys in short pants, foreign and domestic, women in jeans, teens wearing head coverings … It’s astounding, the spread of peoples. And everyone massively civil. You go to the food court, where ethnic fast food (ah, there’s progress) from a half-dozen countries can be had … and at that table are a pair of Indians, perhaps? … and then a family of Arabs from Jordan? Palestine? From here? And then a big European guy …

What might seem like the setting for a riot in some parts of the world … appears to be the norm here. And the whole crew speaking English, more or less.

A couple of thoughts on the expats here — and they make up 80-plus percent of the 7 million or so people in the entire UAE.

1. It seems extraordinarily progressive/brave/logical for the Emiraties to surround themselves with so many foreigners. Certainly they know of historical situations where a ruling class brought in outsiders to man their army or clean their streets and raise their children, etc., and those foreigners eventually one day woke up and said, “Hey, we’re in positions of power here,” and just took over the government. Like, say, the Mamelukes in Egypt. The German tribes the Romans allowed inside their borders.

2. Maybe the Emiratis are counting on one truism of modern global living: If there is enough money to be made, enough cash to lubricate the system … people are not going to mess with the current situation. And everyone is here to make money. To keep. To spend. To send home. To prepare for when they can go back. If the money is good, and it has been very good in the UAE, then perhaps you never need to worry about being usurped by some revolution among the foreign masses.

Hey, those are heavy topics. Let’s just go back to the mall. We got sim cards for our cell phones, and that took about 15 minutes. We gawked at the shops. We listened to the languages. We watched teens of whatever origin seeing and being seen. We found the food court and had Indian fast food. Chicken tikka with naan for Leah, chicken biryani for me.

And then found our way back out of the mall, into the steamy Gulf night, to the taxi stand where our (Pakistani?) cab driver got us back to the hotel without incident … and we crashed out not long after. Jet lag, and all. We ended the evening going over The National’s style book, again. Be nice to think much of it stuck, considering we start work in a few hours.