There is a good deal of discussion about Ramadan, Islam's fast-approaching holy month. As regular Mullsters know, I used to run the marketing operation in the Middle East for Electronic Data Systems.
In fact, I was the first person from EDS to return to the Middle East since Ross Perot had mounted a private army effort - a successful effort, by the way - to spring some company officials from an Iranian jail after the Shah was deposed in 1979. This not only resulted in freedom for the EDS employees, but also movies, miniseries, and a book by Ken Follett.
We hear about fasting for the MONTH of Ramadan. Obviously, no one can fast for 30 straight days.
The rules of the month are that nothing should pass the lips of a devout Muslim during the daylight hours: Not food, not drink, not cigarette smoke, nothing.
The way many Muslims deal with this is to stay up until the early hours of the morning, then sleep in until 10 or eleven.
If you think this is easy, try it for a couple of days and see if you don't start giving longing looks to the water cooler and the candy machine at about two in the afternoon knowing you've got about four more hours to go and it will be the same tomorrow and the next day and the next.
Everything in the Middle East adjusts for Ramadan. Retail hours are changed such that many stores open at about ten in the morning, close at about three in the afternoon, and reopen at about nine at night staying open until two or three AM.
Office workers, will typically arrive in the late morning then leave in the late afternoon to be able to eat and drink something when the sun goes down.
Popular restaurants will often have separate lines for those who are fasting and those - typically Westerners - who are not. The devout get seated first for the obvious reasons.
The Western Hotels in all the Gulf States but Kuwait and Saudi Arabia have bars which serve liquor; and beer and wine is typically available in the hotel restaurants. During Ramadan restaurants are open, but are hidden behind curtains during the day and alcohol is not available at all until after dark.
Ramadan lasts for about 29 days. For the first week, or so, there was a fairly high level of crankiness while people's body's adjusted to the new routine. The middle ten days were pretty good as they coasted along. But during the middle of the third week the irritability returned as the end of Ramadan was in sight, but still pretty far off.
Our rule-of-thumb was: We could, and did, function during Ramadan, but we would not start any new projects during the month because there were too many barriers to efficiency both from the client side and on the engineering side.
Another piece of cultural info regarding the Middle East is this: You know that the Western work week is Monday through Friday. The Israeli work week is Sunday through Thursday - Friday and Saturday are the weekend days.
In the Muslim countries, the typical work week is Saturday through Wednesday. Thursday is the equivalent of our Saturday and Friday is the equivalent of our Sunday.
Learn how the dates of Ramadan AND Easter are determined; about the Ken Follett book; and a B-52 Catchy Caption of the Day on the Secret
Decoder Ring.
And the B-52's will function.
So, if you find yourself running some businesses from Dallas, Texas in Israel and the Middle East using assets in Europe and the Far East you might well be dealing with people living on four continents, speaking six languages, operating across 13 time zones, during three different work weeks, celebrating holidays you've never heard of.
Nevertheless we DID function before, during, and after Ramadan. Our clients functioned. The Western engineers functioned. The Middle Eastern and Far Eastern engineers functioned.
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