When I arrived last year I made a number of taxi rides before I got a car. Here is a journal entry I made about taxi driving:

28/8/04
A Barbarian in the Emirates

I have noticed more new taxis than 10 years ago when I was here last. All of them are Nissan Corollas, the sub-compact size. They are painted white and gold and the taxi sign on top is green, in the shape of the brace symbol pointed to the sky. Most of the drivers are Pakistanis and Afghanis. Today a driver cautioned me with 'shahwaya, shahwaya' (slowly, slowly) about closing his door, which was rather old and squeaky, without the usual cushioned airtightness of a new car. A paltry flow of cold air came from the vents and the driver pushed the button on the meter to engage his taxi at the initial charge of 2 dirhams, which is about $.50.

The American who gave the lecture for the cultural orientation to the Emirates used a Dutch scholar as a reference and explained why taxi drivers go at breakneck speeds. I had attributed their addiction to speed to their lack of education in the basics of physics, the laws of centripetal and centrifugal force, the latter which they seem to defy when they are driving around a roundabout. According to this Dutch scholar, they are actually in breach of the sociological law of "reduction of ambiguity", which would predict that moderation be applied to their habit of speeding in order to avoid a rear end collision. However, I have observed that they do not apply the foreshadowing thought processes involved in the application of the basic laws of physics to the concept of "assured clear distance". On the contrary, they rely on the unpredictable laws of divine will which they manifest in the expression 'Enshallah', God willing, Deo volente. It is not used as an expression of some event having been direfully fated, nor in relief that something that could have happened did not in fact, but simply as a reflection on the Heisenbergian world we live in, a manifestation of the uncertainty principle. One time a driver even remarked 'Enshallah' when I told him to make a right turn after a hump in the road at the entrance to my residential area at a very low rate of speed. I was amazed at the brio in which he uttered it. As if he implied that even a simple right turn involves the divine will of God!

I think J.P. Sartre put it the best when in l'Age de Raison he states that evil is only in equilibrium at full speed, like a bicycle. I remember as a boy first learning how to ride a bike, not on a little one with training wheels for wimps, but on a 26 incher whose pedals I could just barely reach. I went at a speed I could only go at, fast.