Hejies around the world : Flo in Abu-Dhabi
This is a guest post from our friend Flo who has moved for Abu-Dabhi recently and shares with us some fun and interesting stories about the life over there. Find more on his blog : http://floinabudhabi.blogspot.com/.
Abu-Dhabi is a very recent city, that has been mushrooming since the discovery of oil in the late 50s. The first paved road dates back from 1961.
The outlay is pretty simple and follows the American style.
The main roads are numbered (odd numbers for the roads going from North to South, starting with the 10th t the 2nd and jumping straight to the 26th, don’t ask me why… and even numbers for the ones going from west to east, starting with the 1st). Each neighbourhood has its own road numbers which are following more or less the same rule.
Until then, it sounds easy.
It becomes far more complicated when you understand that nobody actually uses the road numbers and that some roads have 4 different names. For example, 8th Street is commonly known as Al Salaam street, but also eastern ring road, depending on which map you are looking at. The 4th is also known as Al-Muroor, or New Airport road or East Road (don’t mix it with Old Airport road, known as Airport road or Sheikh Rasheed Bin ASeed Al MAktoum Street which is the 2nd…). The example are countless…
Do not mix Sheikh Bin zayed the 1st street (also called Khalidya Street in its southern part and Electra st in its northern part, or 7th street) with Hazaa Bin zayed the 1st street (Defence road or the 11th…), you may get a local angry.
Still following me?
Ok, add to that the fact that there are no building numbers whatsoever. People refer to famous buildings in the area. i.e. behind Etisalat building or in front of Spinney’s supermarket. As if there was only 1 building in front of this supermarket…
To conclude, there are places and maps where everything is written in Arabic and a lot of people I have come across with are not able to locate the place their shop is… You can’t always trust the taxi drivers’ knowledge of the city… The result is massive headache, lots of U-turns and hours stuck in the traffic jams! This has driven me mad lots of time. That’s part of the culture I guess 
Add comment October 7, 2009
Hejorama’s not dead !
This is just a quick post to update the status on the project Hejorama.
Hejorama has always been a side project for us and we have dedicated a large amount of our time to it over the last 3 years. We have a lot of ideas but unfortunately only short ressources to implement them. The site as you can visit it right now is just a small percentage of what we want to do. And we will keep working on it because we consider that it’s the only website on the Internet that looks like us. We are not interested in sharing our travel story on TripAdvisor or this kind of website because they are just huge classical unpersonnal plateforms to make money… We like being fun, flashy and not typical. That’s why we will continue to work on the site to improve and do fun and interesting stuff. And I’m sure you will all like it !
Team Hejorama
Add comment September 27, 2009
Major update !
Hej,
I’m happy to announce that the website has been upgraded today. Almost a year has passed since the last upgrade of the website and this upgrade fixes a lot of bugs and enhance the ease of use of Hejorama. Our goal is to make it extremely easy to use and yet having interesting features.
A simpler profile
The main new feature is the “interview mode” that has been designed to make it easier to write chronicles. Instead of just having a clear textbox, we now offer the possibility of simply answering 14 questions to tell everything about your travels. We hope that will help hejies who were not always confortable with writing their own chronicle to share their amazing trips with the community.
We having been planning a lot of features and we are going to enter a new development cycle for the website. We have also a number of side project to the main site that includes a mobile version and Android/Iphone application. More details will be available soon.
Cheers
Add comment May 29, 2009
Happy new year 2009
The Hejorama team wishes you a happy new 2009 !!
We are currently working on several new project for the website : a new chronicle editor, bookmarking, simplified profile page and a lot of other improvements.
Stay tuned for more news !!
And again, best wishes for 2009 !
Add comment January 16, 2009
Merry Xmas
The Hejorama team would like to wish you a merry Christmas full of happiness and travels !
Add comment December 25, 2008
Back to work after the summer break…
Hello,
after a long summer break full of changes in the life of the members of the Hejorama team, it’s time to get back to work ! New projects, new ideas, new motivations have growed in our minds during the summer and we are ready to give Hejorama a new breath. A lot of things have been planned and they will arrive gradually on the website. Be patient !
Meanwhile, here’s an amazing link for all the travellers to remind us about all the great journeys that have been made through history by our predecessors and heroes : Colombus, Magellan, Lindbergh or Phileas Fogg. All that on an animated and interactive flash map. Enjoy !
source : http://awesome.goodmagazine.com/features/011/Wanderlust/
Interactive Map of the greatest journeys
Add comment September 17, 2008
500 place reviews !
Hi all,
good news today, we have reached 500 place reviews !
And more than a thousand pics and almost 200 chronicles. Not bad for a small project like Hejorama, we think. Thanks to all the hejies !!
Add comment June 19, 2008
Major update of the website
Hello,
last night we updated Hejorama with several bugfixes and some improvements. The major change is in your personal space (also called “profile”) where we try to simplify the process of adding content to the site.
Here is what the websites now looks like :
As you can see, you can now add directly an address review or a chronicle, without the step of adding a destination. If you click to add, you will have a small box to ask you where to add your review or chronicle :
We figured that with this new method, it will be quicker and easier to add content to Hejorama. We hope that you will like it !
More new functionalities are coming soon. Have fun on Hejorama !
Add comment June 12, 2008
CouchSurfing !
Hello,
from time to time, we like to share websites we like. After our previous post about Kiva, we want to tell you about the CouchSurfing project !
The concept is fairly simple : when you are at home, you let people enjoy your couch and when you are travelling you enjoy someone’s couch. That’s really a great way to meet new people, enjoy new experiences and save some money, all at once.
The website is really well done and will allow you to have a lot of information about possible couchsurfer or host. And several verification processes helps make it secure and you can feel really confident about welcoming stranger at your place or going to theirs.
We’ve tried it a couple of times and that was always a great experiences. Thanks to that we now have friends all over the world !
We are also currently thinking of way to link Hejorama to couchsurfing.com so hejies and couchsurfers can enjoy the best of both sites. I hope we can work out something interesting.
Add comment May 28, 2008
