That behaviour stands in sharp contrast to my own life since I became a smartphone owner nearly twenty years ago. Desert-dwellers do not hear a beep, read a message, follow a link and fall into a rabbit hole, only to wake up on YouTube hours later—unable to recall why.

I do, but I try to improve.

I am no longer one of those people who put off things until the last minute. These days, without pause, delay or hesitation, I instead procrastinate.

Now, THAT is what I call progress.

It ended on Thursday—which was good. But then it started on Sunday—which was less so.

Until then, I cannot in good conscience say that I knew what a Sunday morning looked like, nor indeed if such a thing as a Sunday morning even existed. If I had ever experienced one, it must have been that I hadn’t gotten to bed yet.

So, Friday became the new Sunday. But that turned out to be impossible to explain to colleagues and clients back in Norway; for them, Friday was the day for meetings. Particularly in the latter part of the day.

Time-wise, Europe is two or three hours behind the Emirates, depending on the accursed impact of daylight saving time. Around midday, my phone would start behaving in a most un-Sunday-like manner; something that would persist until about seven in the evening.

But Arabia had more tricks up its sleeve to mess up my work week. After a few years, I became involved in a project in the neighbouring country of Oman. Here the working week at that time started on Saturday and ran through Wednesday.

And, just like that, weekend as I knew it was abolished. I’d work in the Emirates from Sunday to Thursday, have meetings with Europe on Fridays and then fly to Oman to work Saturdays.

But there was still Thursday nights. Due to the time difference, I could sleep in for a couple of hours on Friday mornings.

And how better to spend Thursday night than to gather up some camping gear, go to the desert, light a bonfire and watch the sunset. A new scene every time in an ever-shifting landscape of sand.

I knew because I had seen one in a Donald Duck comic when I was little. And, back then, I didn’t yet suspect the Disney corporation of wilfully distorting children’s minds.

An oasis was a small pond of pure, immaculate water in the desert, surrounded by a small number of palm trees. In short, it should be like Huacachina in Peru.

I was told by Emiratis and with pride, that Al-Ain was an oasis – and that Liwa was another.

Upon my first visit to these places, I found the Disney-oasis conspicuous by its absence. But, there was something about the Arabic version of the oasis that was attractive nonetheless.

In a worldview that transgresses the perimeter established by Disney, an oasis is an area where the groundwater table is high enough for plant roots to reach it—a place where cultivation is possible.

The chief production of the oasis is the date. When I grew up in Norway, a date was a dark-brown lump of sticky matter that appeared in the house around Christmas. Nobody ate it, nor knew what precisely to do about it. It was the only sweetmeat to survive into January—and some times until next Christmas.

To traditional life around the Arabian Gulf, the date was the very life-blood. Hence, the same way Norwegians grow more than 40 types of potatoes, the Arabs cultivate more than 200 varieties of dates.

In the central oasis of Al-Ain, it is possible to see how dates grow. The palm is held in high regard here, and great care is taken to allow the trees to grow unhindered.

The water here is distributed from a few small springs via a network of tiny channels called ‘aflaj’. Using the ‘aflaj’ water can be directed to any of a multitude of small, intensively farmed agricultural parcels.

Al-Ain is also the only place where I have seen that tourists and farmers are given preferential treatment over others.

At the oasis’s main entrance gate, a sign reads: ‘No entry except for farm owners and tourists’.

One.

That ‘one’, is Jebel Hafeet—the ’empty’ mountain—located on the border between Oman and the United Arab Emirates near Al Ain.

Jebel Hafeet, with its 1 249 m.a.s.l, towers majestically above the surrounding desert plain. It is unmistakably, undeniably and unanimously ‘a mountain’.

In former days, an important hunting ground, the mountain has long had a vital role in the Emiratis’ hearts and minds. Today, Jebel Hafeet is more well-known for its recreational rather than its nutritional significance.

And in this respect, Jebel Hafeet has issues; at least seen through Norwegian eyes.

In Norway, the word ‘recreation’ has nothing to do with rest and restoration. Instead, it means an exorbitant outlay of physical effort with no other objective than reaching a viewpoint.

This is so ingrained in our culture that we even have a ‘mountain code’ consisting of nine rules that states what would be blatantly obvious to anyone but Norwegians.

The first seven rules focus on how to prepare for mountain walks.

The eight’ rule states you shouldn’t be ‘… ashamed to turn around’, which you inherently ought to, having just failed to observe the first seven.

The ninth’ and last rule advise you to ‘… conserve your energy and seek shelter’. That rule is widely regarded as encouragement to find a place to hide your shame while concocting means by which to blame your failure on a third party.

Unwritten, and absolutely essential to Norwegians, is that a mountain must only be accessible at the cost of hard physical labour with no short-cuts or ‘illegal’ aids.

It is in this last capacity that Jebel Hafeet fails to meet the requirements.

There is a two-lane road, built to highway standards, leading all the way to the top. The upper slopes have a palace and a tourist hotel—and the summit is a vast parking lot with a snack bar.

Still, smoking sheesha here at night, looking out over the lights of the oasis town of Al Ain is a decidedly good thing in life.

The Emiratis are proud of their cities and with good reason. The impressive cityscape in this photo simply wasn’t there fifty years before. Abu Dhabi was nought but a sandbank with a few one-storey buildings well into the 1970s.

During my time in the Emirates, it was not uncommon to hear ex-pats self-righteously complain that ‘things were slow’ in the Emirates. However, I’d like to see a city anywhere in the world built with the determination and speed matching those lining the Arabian Gulf.

During the same fifty years, European cities like London, Paris or Rome indeed sprawled. The odd tower popped up here and there—but in no way, shape or form can the change be said to be the equal of the transformation taking place in the Emirates.

It is also necessary to consider that whereas the old-world cities had hundreds of years of accumulated urban development experience, the Emirates began with no such advantage.

On the contrary, they had suffered a hard existence, lived from hand-to-mouth, were part nomadic, and must endure life in extreme heat and humidity. Conditions were so severe that the moisturiser wielding and air-conditioned white-collar worker of today would perish without ceremony or delay were he to endeavour the half of it.

No, the Emiratis of the mid-20th century were singularly tough and capable people.

Cities like Abu Dhabi do not just ‘happen’. Of course, something must be attributed to good fortune:

First, they discovered oil, and with oil, wealth.

Second, they had installed an unusually adept leader, the late Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan, a man of vision, capability and political genius.

But leaders and wealth alone are not enough to generate sustainable value. Thus, a significant portion of the credit for ‘the Emirates’ we see today must go to the Emiratis themselves.

During many years and countless cups of coffee enjoyed in the company of this country’s men and women, I have had a prize-winning number of preconceptions shattered—to my significant advantage.

The Emiratis were also happy about their dunes, but for a different reason; one that had little to do with tranquillity.

Most Emiratis are what one might call regular, highly likeable people leading ordinary lives, far removed from the Oil Sheikh stereotype. But ‘most’ is not ‘all’, and the reputation of the Gulf Arab has not been conjured out of thin air.

The density of young males, ostensibly unburdened by fiscal woes, is high. The poorer among these will by default have a Rolex Submariner shining from their wrist—the more well-to-do something more respectable, such as an Audemars Piguet or a Patek Philippe.

Additionally, wealth is expressed through cars. The well-to-do Emirati likes their sports cars, and as with the timepieces, those of middling resources typically settle for some flavour of Porsche. Proper wealth, however, is more appropriately expressed through a Bugatti, a Maybach or a Koenigsegg of an unapologetic colour.

But the Emirati has a utilitarian streak to him and likes to keep an offroad vehicle, too. Unlike the European SUV-owner, who drives his car as if it was made of fine crystal, the Emirati has no need for paved surfaces.

‘Dune bashing’ is to Emiratis what skiing is to Norwegians; to those unfamiliar with the expression ‘dune bashing’, it is descriptive of a wide range of irresponsible driving malpractices in the desert.

At first, this was unusual to me. Still, after a time, I concluded that it would be wrong to dismiss this form of recreation purely based on its verifiable insanity.

Instead, I joined the Emiratis in their regard for sand driving and their disregard for their insurance companies.