The founding summit was in May, though later summits have been in November or December, when the temperatures are more tolerable. Already then, when the UAE was not quite 10 years old, Abu Dhabi was building everywhere, though many streets were just pavement in the desert, awaiting houses. The airport was an earlier one, not the current one. The Iran-Iraq war was less than a year old, and was the catalyst for the formation of the GCC. Of the six rulers who attended that summit, only Qaboos of Oman is still on the throne.
It was still the era of filing by telex. Old timers like me will remember having to punch those tapes. The UAE telecom people gave us a press room with open phones and telexes: call anywhere you like. I called friends in the States just to check in. Trying to locate the home number of a friend posted to Riyadh, I called his father in Pennsylvania. He lived in the Philadelphia area. To my puzzlement, he asked me to drop by, "since you're close by." I noted that I was in fact in the Gulf. It turned out he'd heard "Abu Dhabi" as "Upper Darby." For 30 years now I can never pass Upper Darby, PA, without thinking of Abu Dhabi.
No great point to this post; just reminiscing.
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