When making a move, it’s prudent to study the outside of the new place as well as the inside. What shops are nearby? Where will the sun strike the windows? Is it easy to find a cab? How far is it to the nearest major grocery store?

Two aspects of the new place, here in Abu Dhabi, that we did not anticipate and have become minor problems, at the least:

Inside? The shower drains slowly. And outside?

The Starbucks directly below our eighth-floor balcony.

I have nothing against Starbucks products or business practices. The company seems wildly successful.

I don’t know much about what they do because I do not drink coffee. (Tea, yes; especially since arriving in the UAE.) And if I did drink coffee, well, I would be ultra-jittery — and I would not pay a lot of money for it. My impression is that Starbucks charges some high tariffs.

The problem with the Starbucks on street level (and the two coffee shops next door) is … the customers.

Starbucks patrons here, perhaps like in the States, skew to the upper end of the economic spectrum, which in the UAE means Emiratis — the country’s citizens, who generally have very healthy incomes.

One aspect of a country in which most everyone else you see is, in one form or another, hired help … is a fairly cavalier approach to service.

Thus, it is quite common for Emiratis to pull up outside a popular restaurant — or even a Starbucks — and rather than to try to park and get out of their SUVs, they honk the horn as a call for service.

That gets waiters/baristas hustling out to the monster vehicles favored by citizens, to take orders, and to hustle back in.

The honking of horns, then, can become an irritant to someone living nearby. Particularly someone who generally sleeps past the 8 a.m. rush hour at a coffee store.

It is the time of year here where it is cool enough to leave windows open, but having the triple-paned sliders ajar is to be serenaded by honking horns of Starbucks-jonesing customers.

So, the windows have to be closed by 7 or 8, or the honking of horns will wake us.

You try to anticipate, but none of us ever thinks of everything. Particularly when it is an unusual practice, back where we come from.