First impressions....

Well, I just found out where I'm going to be stationed when I move to the UAE this August. It's an industrial town built around an oil-refinery in the 1970s, with a population of about 20,000 people.

From wikipedia:

Ruwais is a town located some 240 kilometers west of Abu Dhabi city. The Ruwais-industrial and Housing Complex has been developed by ADNOC as a major contributor to the national economy and represents a series of multi-million-dollar investments by the company. The Ruwais story began in the 1970s, when plans were laid to transform a remote desert site into a self-contained industrial town, geared to fulfilling the downstream requirements of Abu Dhabi's booming oil and gas industry... Once a small fishing headland from which a handful of people scratched a seasonal living, Ruwais today is one of the most modern industrial complexes in the Middle East.

So it sounds interesting... It's a little bit scary as I expected to be nearer the big cities, I'm about two hours from Abu Dhabi, three from Dubai and one hour from Doha, Qatar. Nonetheless, I'm excited! It's going to be a different experience from what I expected, but I guess it was never going to be what I expected anyway.