Taylor Forman is a first year MBA student at the Owen Graduate School of Management. He comes to Vanderbilt from California where he worked in international human resources for an engineering company after graduating from UNC-Chapel Hill.
When I arrived at the Abu Dhabi airport a little before midnight on a Monday, I collected my luggage and walked outside to find a taxi. I only know two Arabic words so when I handed the driver the address and he looked confused, I had little recourse other than to simply point at it again. And then, after he asked me a question in Arabic, I responded with “shukran” (which means “thank you”) and again resorted to the pointing tactic. We started driving toward the city and I thought how massive and well lit and familiar it seemed, and as we passed grandiose mosques in the distance, how foreign it was. When we arrived at my new home for the next eight months, a large apartment building rising skyward in the midst of multiple similar buildings, I paid the driver, grabbed all my belongings and he sped away.
Abu Dhabi cityscape
Walking into the building, I did not see a lobby or guest kiosk so I proceeded to room 713 as was listed on the email I had printed. My company was paying for the accommodations so I assumed they had everything set up. When I went to room 713, it was locked and I could hear a TV on inside. Not wanting to frighten the occupants by knocking on the door at such a late hour and not having many other options, I turned on my US cell phone. As expected, no service. I sat down in the hallway to contemplate my next move. I turned on my laptop but could not acquire a wireless signal. Suddenly, I realized just how stranded I was and started to feel a little uneasy. It was now after 1am on a Monday night and I was jetlagged, tired, sitting in the hallway of a random floor of the wrong apartment building in a Muslim country I knew little about and could not speak the language.
I decided to take all my things to the building entrance and waited for someone to come in who met the following criteria – appeared to be sane, might speak English. Nearly an hour passed with only a few locals in their traditional Arabic attire staring at me, an obviously lost foreigner, as they walked by. Then, someone wearing workout clothes jogged past the building. I ran outside after him, hypocritically breaking my first criteria of appearing sane, and shouted, “Do you speak English!?” Though he was a little startled, he responded affirmatively and I quickly revealed my situation to him. His name was Tariq; he was from Jordan, had just gotten off work, and offered to help me. Soon, I was outside his apartment frantically using his phone to try to wake up any of my local coworkers whose numbers I had written down before the trip. Finally, one answered the phone. We figured out that the taxi had dropped me off about a mile away from where I actually needed to go. My coworker picked up me and my luggage and when I safely arrived “home” a little after 3am, I grasped the gravity of my situation and how I may have been put in an even more precarious position if it were not for Tariq.
Tariq and I eventually developed a friendship and my whole work experience in the United Arab Emirates was richer because of that experience. I embraced the cultural characteristics of the country and the people surrounding me. In the world of business today, everything is becoming global and immediate. Technology is pointing us toward a future in which people of various languages, religions, cultures, and home countries will be working in close proximity. Here, at Owen, we have some international students who are abroad in the United States for their first or second time. It is important that we ensure that their experience at Vanderbilt is a great one because we never know when the situation may be reversed. Many major companies are experiencing a shift in revenues from primarily domestic sales toward a majority of international sales. Most of the careers that Owen students will pursue will take them abroad at some point, and it would be wise to have a classmate and friend there at any time of the day or night.
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