Sunday, December 30, 2007

Onwards and Eastwards

Things I am excited about:

1. The 10-day weather forecast for Goa
2. The beach resort we're staying at (for free) - check it out at 15°17'35.06"N, 73°54'34.69"E if you have Google Earth (which I just downloaded and am obsessed with)
3. The fabulous Engrish t-shirt from Japan that my sister snuck into my suitcase when I came back to Dubai, which has a picture of a crab on it and says: "THE CRAB PASSED THROUGH A HAND OF GOD. Break on through to the other side."

Things I am not excited about:

1. Spending another night on a plane (that'll be 2 out of the last 3 if you're counting)
2. Flying Air India ... what to do
3. My 3 AM layover in the Bombay airport (chaos + crankiness = dangerous J)

Things I am bemused about:

1. The fact that there were 7 people on my little 20-person commuter flight out of Nashville who were headed to the Gulf: a really sweet older woman whose daughter is an English teacher and undercover missionary in Qatar (haha, it's funny because she really is a missionary - cf. my last post), five crazy ex-military guys who are contractors for KBR in Iraq and were traveling via Dubai, and me. Who knew middle Tennessee had so many khaleeji connections?!

Happy New Year's, I'm back from Goa on the 6th!

Saturday, December 29, 2007

Another Day, Another Airport

And so here I am, about to embark upon my fourth 24-hour plane trip of the past month. Ew.

I was actually supposed to be transiting through O'Hare at this very moment, enjoying an interflight layover drink with the venerable LSoch, but blizzards in Chicago have dictated that Nashville-Chicago-Zurich-Dubai be changed to Nashville-DC-Frankfurt-Dubai and hence, I'm chilling at the Nashville "International" Airport waiting for my later flight all by my lonesome.

As a sidenote, the tragic outcome of my itinerary change is that rather than having my transatlantic leg be operated by Swiss (European carrier = free booze!), my transatlantic leg is now operated by United (American carrier = $5/cocktail). Oh, the humanity - I will have to resort to Ambien instead, but that is MUCH less fun than a couple of G&Ts at 35,000 feet.

At any rate. America, my family, and my dog are all fabulous and I had an awesome week-plus at home. It's funny, no matter how happy I am living wherever it is I'm living, it's still always so hard to leave when I come back home... what can I say, roots run deep.

Speaking of roots running deep - in the past 24 hours I got my blond highlights redone, indulged in 2 x 12-minute sessions in THE MATRIX tanning bed, and got gloriously long, perfectly French-manicured fake nails. How Tennessee am I - I might as well buy a Dooney & Burke purse and go tailgate at a Vols game. Ha.

One of the highlights, BTW, of my sejour in the homeland was getting asked where I live when I signed in at my parents' gym as a guest. When I replied "Dubai," the woman at the check-in desk was like "Oh, are you a missionary?!" and I had to sheepishly tell her that no - on a number of levels -I am not a missionary... nor can one really "proselytize" in the Gulf.

And with that, boarding is about to start so let the flying begin! America, I barely knew ye...

Monday, December 17, 2007

It's Time

Last night, while out for a run in the mostly Filipino neighborhood behind my building, I got harassed by a particularly obnoxious car full of Indian guys. Now usually when I'm running outside here, I turn my iPod up loud enough so that I can't hear anything - it's a tradeoff between increasing my risk of getting hit by traffic but decreasing my blood pressure to the extent that I can actually run (because I'm sure if I heard every comment that got hooted at me during your average 5-miler, my head would probably explode about 200 yards out the door).

Anyhow, all this is to say that the jeering and leering doesn't usually bother me because I refuse to let myself be aware of it; but for whatever reason, this car full of guys last night got my attention. So as they're hanging out the windows of their Nissan Sunny yelling things at me in Malayam/Tamil/[insert other incomprehensible South Indian language here], I had to first fight the urge to do what I would do in a part of the world where civil liberties exist, which would be to flip them the bird, obvi. But then - always one to think on my feet! - I quickly enacted the next best gesture I could think of which wouldn't land me in jail, which was an elaborate show of fake vomiting, complete with doubling over (as I ran), fingers down my mouth, and an array of retching/heaving noises.

Now of course as I was doing this, I realized how ridiculous I looked - but what was even more disconcerting was the realization that yes, I've actually been here long enough that I've started to instinctively adapt my obscene gestures such that I cannot be imprisoned for them lest I catch the eye of a roving undercover police officer.

So with that, loyal readers, let me say: it's time for me to get back to America (and for longer than 48 hours, to boot). For as much as I love Dubai, I've also never been quite so convinced that America is the best gosh-darn country in the world, and you know the circumstances must be pretty dire for me to start thinking that.

So after a day of partying (I mean... observing Eid) tomorrow and 3 quick flights (Zurich-DC-Nashville) on Tuesday night, I'll be back across the ponds until 29 December... and not a moment too soon.

Eid Mubarak, Merry Christmas, and see you soon!

Wednesday, December 12, 2007

Overheard at the Office

"What? No, but he's not Jewish! No, he's not! What? He was? When?! Oh dear... okay, alright. Thank you." [hangs up in defeat]

No no, not a conversation from 1939 Berlin... rather, this is what it sounds like when your admin manager finds out that a colleague has been denied a business visa to Saudi on the grounds of having some sort of vague affiliation with Judaism/Israel. I never did get the full story, but it was a krazy thing to overhear - sort of reminiscent of the time in Krakow when an aggressive tour guide approached Lar and I asking "You go to Auschwitz today?!" and we were weirdly reminded that there was a time when that was, ehrm, more than a tourism pitch.

In other quasi-religious news, if you ever want to experience overwhelming levels of cognitive dissonance, try coming to Dubai and driving to work through the desert, sand dunes all around you and 85 F sunshine blaring in through your windows, whilst listening to Ella Fitzgerald and Bing Crosby Christmas-caroling their way through your iPod holiday playlist. It's F'ed up, dude.

Sunday, December 9, 2007

Okay Seriously

I have done some crazy things in my life in terms of long trips/krazy travel/extreme sleeplessness, but I don't think I've ever done anything as hard as staying awake for 2 10-hour days of meetings while adjusting to a 12-hour time difference and recovering from a 24-hour trip. Holy crap. I don't even remember how much Diet Coke I drank, how many times I pinched myself, or how often I tried the old "holding your feet off the ground to stay awake" trick, but all I know is it was a struuuuuuuuggle.

I also have no idea what time it is. That is not actually true. I know it's 9 AM in New York where I am now, 6 AM in LA where I was 8 hours ago, and 6 PM in Dubai where I'll be 14 hours from now - so more appropriately, I have no idea where my timezone allegiance should lie. Probably Dubai, since I'm drinking Veuve in the Emirates lounge at the moment and thus evening seems most appropriate.

There you go, Jessie's Travel Tips: drinking. Drinking and sweatpants, actually, since I have never loved anything more than the $35 sweatpants I bought at LAX after deciding that I could NOT survive another 24 hours with jeans pockets digging incessantly into my butt cheeks, fashion be damned. Oh yeah, and don't do anything that comes remotely close to using your brain. Stay away from that
Economist and those free international newspapers in the lounge and fork over $5 for a festive array of Star, US Weekly, and OK! - that's all the mental capacity you should be trying to retain.

At any rate, my meetings in LA were great, as was the huge 6-course team dinner at a fantastic Italian place near the beach in Santa Monica on Friday night, where I think I may have talked half the American company we're partnering with into relo'ing to Dubai. ("No, but the streets are paved with
gooooooold!") Also great was drinks with last night Hill at Chateau Marmont - where much to my great chagrin, we did NOT see Lindsay Lohan. (I did see Zach Braff at JFK on the way out to LA - disappointingly nerdy and unattractive in person.)

And with that, I think I'm going to go serve myself up some more Indian food and have a shower before boarding in an hour. Bye-bye America!

Friday, December 7, 2007

Live from Beverly Hills

Just a quick note from LA to say several things:

(a) 24 hours of flight time + 12-hour time difference + meetings starting at 7 AM tomorrow = ouch. Also, I have realized that long-haul flights are the great equalizer: no matter how much more senior some of my colleagues on this trip are within the company, we ALL looked equally cracked-out as we waited, bleary-eyed, in US customs after hopping the pond(s).

(b) There might be something on earth that's closer to heaven than flying business class on Emirates, but I would be hard-pressed to find it (maybe... flying first on Emirates?). During the 14-hour flight from DXB to JFK, I managed to eat 3 entire multiple-course gourmet meals (fresh fruit, pancakes with caramelized apple sauce, pastries... tikka prawn bake, spicy chili beef quesadilla, petits fours... canapes, roast duck, seasonal salad, chicken with zaatar crust, walnut and coffee tart), drink a variety of quality booze (Taittinger champagne, really good Sancerre), completely fry my brain with on-demand video ("License to Wed," "Blades of Glory," 5 episodes of "Heroes," probably a dozen episodes of "Friends"), and enjoy the "massage" function on my flat-bed seat almost continuously. Sigh...

(c) I love America. Let's be honest, I really do. I loved getting told "welcome home" in the US Citizens line at JFK immigration, I loved the Christmas music they were blaring when we got off the plane at LAX, I loved driving past a Target in the LA suburbs on the way to our hotel, I loved that the check-in staff were all honest-to-goodness proficient speakers of the English language. It's the small things, I suppose.

And with that I'm off to bed!

Tuesday, December 4, 2007

Internal Correspondence

from Crappette
to M, Al, Jojo
date Dec 4, 2007 4:47 PM
subject how I roll

Oh dear. Sorry to be MIA but I have been waiting for a chance to regale you with my 2-hour saga of international intrigue this morning, to be cited in the future if you guys ever think I'm NOT crazy. I have broken it down into bullet points for your convenience - and let me preface with the caveats that (a) NO, I was not drunk, and (b) YES, this really did happen.

Highlights of saga are as follows:

-Trying to take an illegal shortcut to avoid traffic

-Getting my car stuck in sand lot, blocked in by like 40 other cars, because of said shortcut

-Having a panic attack because I couldn't get out and was late for work; almost calling R and speaking to him in tones only dogs can hear in a plea for him to leave work and come help me (R should be thrilled the rest of the story unfolded as it did)

-Getting approached by an old Arab man passing by who offered to help me, got behind the wheel, and succeeded in extricating my car

-Being told by old Arab man that he was "American," rhinestone American flag lapel pin proffered as evidence

-Assuming he meant "American" in the ironic "Ich bin Berliner" kind of way, since he was soooooooooo FOB Arab

-Finding out (with conference program and picture to prove it) that he was not only a US citizen but also (doh!) the former US ambassador to Bahrain; in fact, he was the first-ever Arab-born US ambassador (Lebanese, obvi)

-Giving him a ride across town since he had been so nice helping me get my car unstuck (and, um, since he's a former ambassador)

-Getting really lost trying to get him to where he was going; pursuing a variety of other illegal shortcuts/traffic cuts, including one which actually caused him to grab my thigh (!) in disbelief at my driving

-Listening, during our ample time in my Hyundai, to the highlights of his ambassadorial career

-Discovering that through some kind of bizarre diplomatic connection, he has a close personal relationship with Lee Greenwood, singer of my FAVORITE ever country music song, "Proud to be an American," and that Lee Greenwood apparently performed this song at his house in Bahrain with Bob Hope backing him up on piano, leaving "not a dry eye in the room"

-Singing through the first verse of aforementioned song with him ("If tomorrow all the things were gone I'd worked for all my life / and I had to start again, with just my children and my wife / I'd thank my lucky stars to be livin' here today, 'cause the flag still stands for freedom, and they can't take that awaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay... / [chorus] And I'm proud to be an American! / where at least I know I'm free / and I won't forget the men who died, who gave that right to me / and I'd gladly STAND UP next to you and defend her still today / 'cause there ain't no doubt I love this land / God bless the USA!!!!!!!!!!!") [NB. I just typed those lyrics from memory. Respect.]

-Realizing, "Wow, this is my life. Driving through Dubai with the Lebanese-American former ambassador to Bahrain, singing a country song that I used to have to sing every morning of 4th grade in Tennessee, right after the Pledge of Allegiance. Huh."

-Dropping him off, going to work, Googling him, and learning that not only had he run for a Republican Senate seat in Colorado (ew), but that he had been charged with fraud for accepting $7 million from the Kuwaiti government to convince the US administration to enter the first Gulf War in 1990 ( double ew)

And that, my little Sh.I.T.s, is how I roll.

Monday, December 3, 2007

Oh Hai!

First of all, if you don't get the title reference, read this and then get on board. Kthanxbye.

Okay yes so it's been a while. Mostly, I've been insanely busy with work because I got pulled from my normal duties to work on a "hidden project" (oh, mistranslations) - basically sorting out and wrapping up this krazy deal that my company got itself roped into as a result of a well-intentioned but misguided effort to ensure that a certain huge new development goes to Dubai, not Abu Dhabi. (Because that would be haram like you cannot even believe. Srsly.)

Anyhow, it's super interesting work and is basically like doing a business case study if only the case reflected the way that business is actually done here, as opposed to in the rest of the world... I'm learning a ton about contracts and feasibility studies and project management and inter-emirate politics and best of all, I'm off to LA on Thursday to renegotiate the terms of the deal (well, okay, me and like 9 more senior people from my company) so I have NO complaints.

Everything else has been insane as well, what with Thanksgiving festivities last weekend and then all-you-can-eat-and-drink brunch at Al Qasr, Rugby 7s finals, and National Day celebrations this weekend. Tonight I'm off to Abu Dhabi to go as M's date to some Swedish National Symphony concert she has to schmooze at for work, and then I need to start stalking the Indian consulate to give me my visa for Goa, and then on Thursday begins the 24 hours of travel/48 hours in LA/6 hours of travel/14 hours in NY/14 hours of travel odyssey that will be my next "weekend." Yay!

Wednesday, November 21, 2007

View From the Top

This morning I woke up, looked out the window, and felt for a second like I lived in San Francisco:
















It's been really foggy every morning this week, but today I couldn't see anything below the top of Emirates Towers... pretty cool, huh?




















The funniest part was that from my vantage point on the 39th floor, the sky was blue and the sun was shining - but then an elevator ride down and a step outside revealed that the "real world" below me was cloudy and sunless. I like the idea of inhabiting my own climate zone - like living in a rainforest canopy or something.

And while I'm at it, some other random pictures from lately...




















At R's friend Adel's engagement party.




















I wish that pictures could convey how incredibly sexy and cool everyone at this party was (including the lucky couple, above).















Someday, I will be Lebanese-Palestinian. And I will look that cool whilst being lifted up on people's shoulders at my engagement party, dancing with my husband-to-be to Nancy Ajram. And I will forget, just for a moment, how very white and Anglo-Saxon I am.




















Um... I'm dating a fitness model, what?!




















(At a certain point during the party, R and I slipped down to the lobby of Emirates Towers to check out his gym ad campaign... okay but no he's not an ACTUAL fitness model, he did it as a favor to a friend... and no, the earth isn't REALLY calling you...)















From our weekend in Abu Dhabi - the Sheikh Zayed Mosque, second-biggest mosque in the world (after Mecca) and home to the world's largest carpet. No, really.















View from our hotel pool deck - me feat. the SZ mosque.




















Inside the Emirates Palace Hotel in Abu Dhabi... if you recognize it, it's because it's featured in "The Kingdom" as a Saudi palace.

Monday, November 19, 2007

Kwality

I've been thinking about the words "quality of life" a lot lately - it's a phrase I hear used a lot when people (especially Western expats) are talking about why you should/shouldn't live in Dubai. I thought about it on Friday, when I spent the day lounging by my pool and getting a ridiculous tan at a time of year when everyone in the States and Europe is pulling out their wool coats and slogging through autumn rain on their way to the subway; I thought about it both mornings this weekend, when I went for balmy 75 F runs on a newly paved trail (paved running trails in Dubai - shoo?!) that stretches several miles along white sand beaches that border the sparkling blue Gulf.

But I also thought about it on Thursday night, when I drove to pick Al up from work at 5 PM to go to a 6 PM yoga class about 2 miles away from her office and at 6:20 PM we were still sitting in traffic, 400 meters away from where we had been 80 minutes ago; I thought about it this morning driving to work when I not only got run out of the fast lane by a brights-flashing, Emirati-driven Benz, but had to swerve sharply to the right as I moved lanes because the driver swung into my space to teach me a lesson about not getting over sooner. (Let it be noted that I was going well over 160 kmph when this happened, which I think is at least 90 mph.)

So that's the question: what do you highlight when you're talking about quality of life in a place, the things you love or the things that fill you with rage? I guess every city has its ups and downs on that subject, but in Dubai they're so extreme that when you're entrenched in the goods, they seem to completely outweigh the bads ("but I am lounging in my infinity-edge rooftop pool, and next week it is Thanksgiving!"), and when you're wrapped up in the bads, it seems like there could never possibly be any redeeming qualities to the place (75 F November sun aside).

So. I guess it depends which mood you catch me in - as with many things. ;-)

That's really all I have to update on, not much else is new - work is work, and things have been quiet lately with R in Canada and M & J both having parents in town to visit (ahem, Schmom and Dad). So I'm enjoying the simple pleasure of an evening that entailed working late, running, Bikram, and now an avocado milkshake and "Sleepless in Seattle" (on a Lebanese satellite channel, go figure) in my bed. Which, really, kind of makes me sound like I'm a functional adult and not the monkey I've been for the past 4 months... don't worry, I'm sure it won't last long.

Monday, November 12, 2007

Country Roads Take Me Home (And Then, Take Me To India)

I've fiiiiinally gotten around to making my plans for the holidays, and all I can say is three cheers for Christmas + Eid Al Adha + New Year's all rolled into one. I'll be traveling for 18 days and I only have to take 9 of them off work - not bad for a country where 25 December is a normal work day.

The agenda:

-19 to 28 December in Nashville (a 30-hour journey there and a 30-hour journey back - I'm paying for my ticket-purchase procrastination with a bit of globe-circumnavigation and some scintillating layovers in Zurich and Chicago)
-29 December back in Dubai for a friend's Lebanese-Jordanian wedding (which, if it's anything like the Lebanese-Palestinian engagement party I attended this weekend, will be a veritable festival of plastic surgery, Nancy Ajram music, and couture gowns reminiscent of 1980s-era American prom dresses... but also insanely good food and intensely hot dancing)
-30 December to 5 January in Goa (beachy southern Indian province famous for its Portuguese influences and krazy nightlife, for those who don't live right around the corner from the Subcontinent the way I do)

So unfortunately, there will not be as much Seeing of The American Friends as I had hoped when I was planning to pass through New York, but I encourage anyone who has some extra airline miles burning a hole through their account to think about coming to Goa, as we have 2 entire villas (free!) thanks to the generosity of a friend's friend who owns some property there. You know you want to "Go Goa!" (or maybe you don't, if you don't have to listen to that annoying Indian Tourism Board jingle on CNN International every morning).

Aaaaaaanyhoo, time to leave work for Flatmate Schnitzel, which is not as dirty as it sounds but rather, consists of Javs cooking Argentinean-style veal schnitzel and E & me pouring wine and eating it. Adios!

Friday, November 9, 2007

Happy Diwali!

Just when the Ramadan/little Eid festivities had died down, and just before the big Eid festivities get started, it's time for Diwali, the Hindu (but also Sikh and Jain) "Festival of Lights" celebrated by the 80% of Dubai's population that hails from South Asia.

To be filed under "another reason why I love my new project," we had massive Diwali celebrations at the office yesterday and this afternoon I went to my colleague A's house for chai, Indian sweets, and an awesome Indian dance performance by his wife. Too fun.

Some shots from the office fete...















Emirati colleage L and Indian colleague S light candles. Yay multiculturalism. (Note the desktop background on the receptionist's computer. The great thing is, neither of the receptionists are even Emirati. I'm telling you, living here just makes you Love Those Sheikhs.)




















Lightin' it up. (Note that I'm bathed in a blue glare. That's because someone several years ago said "Hey, wouldn't it be great if we build this office in the shape of a giant globe made of blue glass?!" and thus it was made so. Let me tell you, blue light + 9 hours staring at a computer screen = macular degeneration.)















Traditional candleholder and explanation my Indian-Canadian colleague A printed for our local colleagues, who are sometimes... dismissive of South Asian culture. (But then again, living here can do that to a person.)















The Ethiopian receptionist puts an Indian bindi on the Filipina pantry helper while my Emirati colleague walks by. Honestly, it's like we staged these photos. (We didn't.)




















Emirati colleague A and Pakistani boss-man (well, COO) J. One is dressed specially for Diwali, one is wearing exactly what he wears to the office every day... can you guess which is which?















Some of my team. You'll find that there is another white woman in the picture, if you look closely enough.

Okay, that's all for now - off to a bling engagement party at Emirates Towers for a Palestinian-Lebanese couple R knows from Canada. And yes, I'm wearing a fabulous second-hand Catherine Malandrino dress that I got from the Emirati "thrift store." I heart Dubai.

Monday, November 5, 2007

Master Cop-Out

I think everyone who reads this will appreciate learning that, in a recent fit of self-loathing over our debaucherous lifestyle and its disastrous impact on our mental/physical well-being (read: waistlines), Al and I decided yesterday that we were going to do the 10-day Master Cleanse fast.

I think you'll appreciate this because - after schlepping through traffic to the organic market to buy the laxative tea and the special maple syrup and dragging my tired ass out of bed early this morning to squeeze lemons and make 3 litres of the crappy drink - I lasted three hours before I caved and started shoving my face with croissants like I had just survived a famine. THREE HOURS! Basically, my drive to work + two hours of sitting at my computer stricken with panic about what I had gotten myself into. (Seriously... my heart was actually racing.)

Let this be a lesson to us all about trying to be something we're not.

Weekend in Abu Dhabi was fab - definitely a good, relatively (relatively!) serene getaway from the insanity of Dubai. Note to self, though: when a hotel in the UAE (where even the most "finished" things are unfinished and a brand-new "Old Town" is being constructed with no irony whatsoever) willingly admits that it is in its "soft opening" stage, think twice about staying there. It wasn't a bad experience so much as a frustrating one, but hopefully by the time the "hard opening" rolls around, they will have enrolled the staff in emergency English classes, halted the 24/7 jackhammering around the pool perimeter, and oh yes, mastered the art of cooking chicken so I don't bite into a raw breast in my sandwich. Ick.

Okay gotta run, off to a late dinner at Irish Village, which - you will all be shocked to learn - is neither Irish nor a village. Bless this place.

Wednesday, October 31, 2007

Slices of Life

A few random photos from the past month-ish...















Exploring the construction site of our project with my new team - intern KH (Emirati) and colleague A (Indian-Canadian). Don't you feel like this is some kind of staged propaganda shot about Dubai bringing people from different cultures together? Conspicuously missing is my new insane, Cambridge-educated, ex-magician, ex-standup comedian British boss, but he was taking the photo...















We regulate. Clearly.




















Who would have guessed that this "tree" was actually made of polystyrene covered with plaster and fiberglass?! It's like the most Dubai tree ever.




















Sometimes on a random Tuesday night, your male roommate decides to dress up like a local woman...




















... and you support him by contributing big sunglasses and a designer handbag so he can fully rock the local look. The attitude is all his, though.















Any given weekend night with M + A (Jojo conspicuously missing).















E's birthday haram-per, brimming with enough gift-wrapped pork and booze to sustain him throughout this, his 26th year of life.















Respect! Vehicular tribute to Sheikh Mo (right, current ruler of Dubai) and Sheikh Hamdan (left, inshallah the future ruler of Dubai).















KANYE!















With Ravs at Kanye (and yes, this is the famous Fendi bag I bought for $108 at a Dubai "couture consignment" shop).















Awwwwwww... rocking out in the desert. (Boy band, what?)

And speaking of "Awwwwwww"/kittens/vomiting in one's mouth, I'm off to Abu Dhabi for the weekend with Ravs - exciting since I have lived in Dubai for a combined total of 7 months now and never once visited the UAE's saner, more organized, less cracked-out capital, which is only a 2-hour drive away. Equally exciting is that we're staying here because they're in their "soft opening" phase and thus have insanely cheap deals. Mmmm, 5-star hotel tourism... ana aheb al khaleej (I heart the Gulf).

Forgive Me Culture, For I Have Sinned

So it's lunchtime at the office and I was just browsing through the NY Times online as I ate my soup. After perusing the main headlines, I came across a link to an article entitled "The Prado Makes Room to Show Off More Jewels." Not noticing what section it was in, and thinking they were talking about this Prado, I clicked eagerly on the link - what exciting features could they be adding to the de rigeur SUV that rules Dubai's roads? "Room"? "More jewels"?! What did it all meeeeeean... bigger engines? Better stereos? Swarovski crystal-encrusted dashboards? How could you make a Land Cruiser any more pimpin' than it already is?!

Then imagine my dismay when I followed the link and realized that the article was, in fact, talking about this Prado.

And picture my further dismay when I realized that yes, I had actually been more excited to read an article about an updated version of a luxury 4x4 than to read an article about a new wing at one of the world's most famous art museums.

Verily, I say unto you, this country will make a Philistine out of me yet.

Tuesday, October 30, 2007

Que Le Monde Est Petit

Okay this will be a whirlwind post but I don't like to go more than a week without updating lest any of you stalwart work-procrastinators lose interest and start (haram!) having to do something productive on the company dime rather than read my blog, sooooooooooo...

Life is good. As of last week, I officially switched projects within my company and am now staffed on a fantastic new endeavor which is much more realistic (and more tailored to my interests) than the development I came here to work on. No details in the interest of not pulling a T!ff@ny & Co (the debacle which prompted my super blog-secrecy) but if you want to know the story, email me.

The greatest thing about my new job - besides the new job itself and my crazy wonderful British boss, who dropped the F-bomb about 60 times in the first minute I ever spoke with him ("no but it's going to be F'ing FABULOUS! and you're going to be bloody PERFECT for the job! it's all so F'ing BRILLIANT!") - is my amazing Emirati intern KH, who already in 3 days has managed to answer virtually all of the pressing questions I've wanted to ask locals for the past 4 months but been hesitant to share. She's the most fascinating person I've encountered in Dubai because she's a hard-core local (22, born and raised here, wears abaya and veil, lives with her big extended family, has friends who are sheikhas) but she's totally, totally open-minded and outgoing and willing to talk about absolutely everything. (So much so that I showed her photos of my birthday cake featuring Sheikh Hamdan and she thought they were hilarious.)

It's interesting how someone can be so worldly but still very traditional. In the course of a couple hours we went from talking about the upcoming Justin Timberlake concert in Abu Dhabi and how she doesn't cover when she travels in Europe, to talking about how - at a very liberal university professor's urging - she Googled "images of the Prophet Mohammed" and then got goose bumps when she saw the results. (It's hard to understand coming from a Judeo-Christian background, but I think that for Muslims - whose faith prohibits depiction of the human form and ABOVE ALL of the prophet - that's a really mind-blowing thing to do.)

On a different (but related) note, I had drinks last night with two American girls, both of whom moved to Dubai about a month ago and both of whom happen to be friends-of-friends from back home. My biggest takeaway from the encounter was that wow, I'm really lucky to have made the friends here that I have. It wasn't that the girls weren' t cool - they were perfectly nice (although there was a LOT of Blackberrying going on at the bar and come on, nobody who's 26 is that important at 11 PM on a Monday night). It was more that I didn't "click" with them, and I was surprised by the contrast because I connected with my core group of friends here so easily that I had assumed it was merely a function of being in Dubai. Since we're all out of our element, I thought, we naturally connect with people who come from similar backgrounds. But the more interlopers I meet, the more I realize that I lucked out; I think I'd have a whole different take on life here if I hadn't happened to meet the 3 or 4 specific people who are most important in my life here right off the bat. Funny how coincidence shapes the expat experience.

Speaking of coincidence, I was getting groceries after work yesterday evening and who did I turn a corner and run smack dab into with my shopping cart but an old friend from DC - a 40something Peacock regular who I waited on for years and who actually helped set me up with my first "job job" after college. Anyhow, after the initial shock and me screaming "SHUT UP! SHUT UP!" several times in the Indian foods aisle, he was like "What are you doing here?!" and I was like "I live here, what are you doing here?!" and he was like "I live here too!"

Dude. The world is too small. And Dubai is clearly its locus. I am expecting to run into, like, my gymnastics coach from when I was 13 in Tennessee next.

Monday, October 22, 2007

Through the Looking Glass, Darkly

So I was just walking down the hall at my office and a tall, blond, attractive, well-dressed British girl about my age came out of the elevator, engrossed in conversation with several of my male dishdash-clad Emirati colleagues. And it was so funny because my initial reaction - before my brain even had time to process the situation - was "Oh my gosh that girl must be such a joke, I bet they don't take her seriously at all."

It wasn't that she looked like a bimbo; quite the contrary, in fact. But something about how Western she looked - stylish suit, high heels, long blond hair - juxtaposed against how "Eastern" my local colleagues looked was very jarring. So after my initial reaction of "They must not take her seriously," my next thought was, "Oh wow, that must be how I come off to people when I'm with my colleagues!" The crazy part is that I really like most of my male Emirati colleagues and have never felt disrespected by them for being a Western female - so it's crazy how stereotypes and gut reactions persist even when you've lived through experiences counter to them.

In other news, I think I may have just had a rage blackout sitting at my computer trying to pay bills online. Let me just preface this by saying that I have been here for almost 4 months and have yet to receive a single bill for any of the myriad things that I am allegedly supposed to be paying for on a monthly basis (landline, cable, internet, water/electricity, credit card, car loan, road tolls, etc). Why have I never received a bill? Because they are sent through the mail. Why is this a problem? Because there is no mail system. I mean, there's something called Emirates Post, but as far as I can tell it's run by a cadre of orangutans who receive my MasterCard statement, chew on it for a while, drag it through some poo, and then bury it under a pile of banana peels.

(NOTE TO SCHMOM AND DAD: I know it makes you nervous that I will get fired/deported when I talk bad about anything here. But Sheikh Mo likes people who speak truth to power and I honestly think he would agree with me on this. If Dubai is really going to be #1 in the world at everything - and it is, because Big Mo hath deemed it so - then I really think having postal services is as good a place as any to start.)

Anyhow, in light of my inability to receive anything through the mail and in light of the complete dearth of carrier pigeons in the UAE, I've been trying to pay online - which is amusing, insofar as it's an exercise in funny translations (telling me to "please choose a friendly name" - nickname?! - for the bank account I'm registering; admonishing me that "much time has passed since your last response!" when I've been logged out due to inactivity). Conveniently though, the error messages I get anytime I try to actually pay for anything are spot-on... and thus, I am apparently going to have to become a fugitive from the law and/or have some interesting run-ins with Emirati debt collection officers.

What else is new. Last weekend involved a lot of World Cup rugby, a lot of going out (since the clubs have now all reopened, post-Ramadan), and a lot of 5 AM Zaatar W Zeit. Respect. Ooh and Wednesday night I drank free Dom Perignon and saw Hugh Grant at Trilogy.

This weekend should be equally crazy since the Desert Rhythm Festival is bringing - wait for it - none other than KANYE WEST to Dubai. A friend's egregious roommate (mentioned previously for his ownership of a G-Wagon and an Aston Martin... now featuring an Escalade en plus) has connections with the promoter who's bringing him here, which means game ooooooooooooon afterparty with Kanye. I ain't sayin' she a golddigger, but...

(Wow, remember that time like 3 years ago when I was all domestic and living with le français and my life consisted of baking muffins [that's for you, MAF] and playing house and listening to Miles Davis over candlelight and confit de canard? And do you kind of feel like now I've regressed back to being an overcaffeinated 22 year-old who's like "Wait, what, shiny things?! SHINY SHINY!" I blame/thank Dubai.)

Wednesday, October 17, 2007

"Fear and Money in Dubai"

When you have some free time on your hands and/or have tired of watching my Ethiopia videos, this article from the New Left Review is a fantastic and extremely intelligent (though longish) analysis of the "new Mecca of conspicuous consumption and economic crime" - aka, where I live.

I think the author overstates the importance of oil as a driver in Dubai's economic growth (it's only 5% of the GDP, though you wouldn't know it from the way he talks), nor would I call Dubai "on the rim of the warzone" (being over 1,000 miles from Baghdad, Beirut, or Kabul, I'm not really sure which "warzone" he means - I guess this is a reflection of Americans thinking the Middle East fits into 10 city blocks).

Those two caveats aside, however, the rest is dead-on and makes for a great read... and way more insight into life in the Gulf than The Kingdom, which - regrettably - I just sat through. (The highlight of seeing it here was realizing that certain parts - like when the Americans talk trash about Muslims getting virgins in heaven - weren't translated into the Arabic subtitles. Nice try...)

Tuesday, October 16, 2007

My Big Fat Ethiopian Wedding

My oh my. Ethiopia has come and gone, and what a fabulous trip it was.

The pictures tell the story - check them out on Facebook (not here, because uploading images to Blogger is more frustrating than trying to get charged a fair price by an Addis taxi driver). And as always, be sure to click through the individual photos for my witty captions. (Ha - because I apparently do not believe that a picture is worth a thousand words.)

Then after viewing the photos - and only after, so that you may understand the full context and background - you may watch the videos below (with sound, please). And then you may tell me that yes, truly this was the coolest travel experience I have ever had, and you now understand why I went to Ethiopia. (And you haven't even seen all the jewelry I bought.)

[Technical note for people like Schmom who might - no offense - be monkeys: if the videos are skipping, hit "pause" as they're downloading and wait until the grey bar gets all the way to the right before you hit "play" again. Also, this here device you're using is called the interwebs. It's a series of tubes.]










Thursday, October 11, 2007

Eid Mubarak!

The sun is shining, the mercury in Dubai is dropping, and in an hour R will be arriving to give me + Al + M a lift to the airport, where inshallah we'll be wheels up at 6 and sipping tej (honey wine) in Addis by 10, enjoying the balmy 60-F reprieve from desert heat and plotting our whirlwind trek through northern Ethiopia.

Life really does go on. Let this be a note of encouragement to us all.

Since I won't be online in Ethiopia, let me take this chance to say Eid Mubarak to all 2 of my Muslim readers... but I hope the blessings of Ramadan have touched you all nonetheless. See you when I get back from Africa!

(And keep your fingers crossed that we don't get fleas in Lalibela because apparently... we will.)

Monday, October 8, 2007

"Obscene, Outside Missions"

Things I'm quite chuffed about:

1. Ethiopia in 2 days, YAHOO!
2. Possible business trip to London, 17-20 October. Brits/British residents, prepare ye the way.
3. November long weekend in Madrid for K's 30th birthday?
4. Goa for New Year's. Free villas and we're chartering a plane from Dubai. Hook it UP, and more importantly, let me know if you want to come with.
5. Rapprochement and Let's Be Friends with housemate Javs. Now we can all sleep easier at night (literally and figuratively).
6. 2 consecutive weekends of boating/wakeboarding/drinking by the pool that have left me tan enough to play "indiscriminately ethnic" myself. (Hey, if Angelina Jolie can play "black"...)
7. The impending end of Ramadan. Yes I'm loving the hours and the holiness, but I can't wait to be able to wear skirts and drink coffee on my way to work again.
8. The email I just got from my company's (Emirati-staffed) compliance department: "Effective from 9th October 2007, the following article(s) of this internal circular should be implemented. Article No. 1: All employees should inform their line managers or/and CEO’s Personal Assistant incase of obscene, outside missions such as meetings and site visits." Lost in translation, what? BLESS!

Things I'm less than ecstatic (eg, not chuffed) about:

1. The fact that I will be eating rice/beans until mid-2008 in order to finance upcoming travels.
2. 3 parking tickets and 1 speeding fine in the past 7 days. Yes, that leaves me AED 550 poorer (and no, I won't do the conversion into USD - it's too painful).
3. My (now seemingly official) 5 kg weight gain over the course of 3 months in Dubai. Again, I won't convert into Amrikan units because it's too painful, but you can do the math.
4. I got into my car this morning at 7 AM - cracked out and running on 4 hours of sleep and yearning for coffee - and turned on the radio. For reasons unknown to me, some deep, vestigial, ancestrally buried part of me expected to hear the piano music from the beginning of "Morning Edition" - so when instead of NPR, it was a stupid Radio One ad about registering to win a free Lexus for Eid, I almost burst into tears. And that was probably my first real moment of homesickness since being in Dubai.
5. Speaking of living in a place where materialism is substituted for intellectualism, I was at a friend's flat last night and we were browsing through his roommate's AppleTV looking for movies to watch. So we stumbled across the roomie's iTunes playlists and to my shock and horror, they look something like this: "Arabic, Aston 1, Aston 2, Aston 3, Aston 4, Aston 5, G-Wagon 1, G-Wagon 2, G-Wagon 3, House Party..." etc. Now I'm not trying to be a hater, but in my opinion it's already egregious to own USD $200,000+ worth of cars when you're 28 (Mercedes G-Class and Aston Martin are two of the biggest status cars here, for the uninitiated - and by means unknown to me, the roommate owns both). So I hope you'll agree that it's even more egregious to have specific playlists devoted to each of your ostentatious pieces of auto bling. I think I just threw up a little bit in my mouth.
6. My intense desire to have a grande skim Starbuck's latte at my desk right now, and my intense inability to do so.
7. This article makes me want to cry. Or laugh. Both, I guess.

... and I will leave it there instead of thinking up gripes 8, 9, and 10 because clearly, I have more to be chuffed than un-chuffed about.

UPDATE: Whilst writing this post, I received the following email correction - I apologize there was a mistake in the internal circular No. 4 which sent previously. Please find attached the revised Internal Circular No. 4 – 2007, regarding the attendance control and ignore the version sent previously. - it seems that "obscene" was meant to be "absence." Brilliant.

Tuesday, October 2, 2007

Living the Dream

The other day, a girl I work with announced her engagement and all my coworkers started ululating in celebration.

I think I have always dreamed of having a job where ululation would be part of my workplace environment.

Speaking of living the dream, if you don't quite have your fill of Gubblogging, check out Japancakes2 - the Lil' Gubbs big trip back to Japan. Were you that cool when you were 18?!

(Neither was I.)

Sunday, September 30, 2007

Digs

Now that I'm Officially Settled In, I figured it was time to post pictures of my digs in all their glory. Schmom and Day-o, now you can picture me when we talk! The rest of you, now you can judge my interior decorating skills (or lack thereof) and see the couches on which you shall sleep when you come visit.




















And so we start: the entry hall.




















Kitchen!




















Dining area (+ sick view).















Dining area and living room. (Having a water cooler really makes me feel like an adult. Don't ask why. But it's very fancy, no?)















"Transitional area" into the living room.















Living room (check out how looooooong the couches are on which you will sleep - 4-seaters, baby).















Everything. Check out the bar (sweet!) and the tree we bought in Sharjah and transported home in E's Corolla. Adventures.















My room! Brought to you by the colors red & orange.




















My sole window - that's why I pay 30% less than my two sucker flatmates. ;-)















Check out my hott "Made for Canada" Chinese flat screen TV.















How many items from IKEA can you count in this picture?




















My bathroom.

Saturday, September 29, 2007

Public Apology

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

from
K
to Me
date Sep. 28, 2007 10:25 PM
subject Are you CHALLENGING me?!

This, Piff, I feel is bordering on insult the likes of which our relationship has not seen since the [imagined] doubt of your knowledge of the Kashmir region:

"I'm superexcited not only because I've been stalking Ethiopian culture/trivia for the better part of the past decade..."

While this statement is not a direct challenge, I would ask you to remember your place in the hierarchy of Ethiopia Lovers. And it goes like this:

1. Me
2. Everyone else (incl. you)

And nothing, Piff--not going there, not MOVING there, not MARRYING Zera Yacob Amha Selassie, Crown Prince of Ethiopia--will change that.

Word.

K

PS. Am reading Homi Bhabha's "Of Mimicry and Man: The Ambivalence of Colonial Discourse", which starts with the fabulous sentence "The discourse of post-Enlightenment English colonialism often speaks in a tongue that is forked, not false. "

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

K, I stand corrected and I will dutifully accept my place below you on the hierarchy of Ethiopia Lovers. In return, I would like to ask that you never, ever doubt my knowledge of the Kashmir region again.

LOL. Only my friends... ("Piff," for the uninitiated, stands for "p!g fu*ker." We keep it real.)

Thursday, September 27, 2007

SHUT UP!









No really, shut up.
Guess who just booked tickets to go to Ethiopia for Eid?! That would be me, M, and New American Friend Al. Game ON!

We got a sweet deal on Ethiopian Airlines and it was actually much cheaper to fly to Africa than to closer destinations in the Middle East, since Eid's a peak travel weekend here. It's surprisingly feasible as a long weekend trip - under 4 hours direct flight from Dubai - and we'll have 4 full days and 3 nights which should be time to see Addis, Lalibela, and maybe even the Rift Valley Lakes if we're lucky (and if we manage to do anything besides stuff our faces with injera and doro wat).

I'm superexcited not only because I've been stalking Ethiopian culture/trivia for the better part of the past decade, but also because I think M & Al will be fabulous travel partners - the former having spent every summer of her life in Cairo plus 2 years doing Peace Corps in Bulgaria, and the latter being a foreign service brat who didn't even live in Amrika until college. So clearly, we will take the Horn (of Africa) by storm!

And on that note, I'm off to start my weekend - which will include 3 house parties tonight, wakeboarding on a friend's boat tomorrow, and going to the t-shirt printers at some point to pick up the "Sheikha In Training (SH.I.T.)" shirts that J & M and I are getting made for ourselves. Let me know if you'd like to pre-order one for when you come visit. ;-)

Wednesday, September 26, 2007

If there was no Dubai?

Whatever part of me thought that life here would calm down once I got settled in was clearly mistaken. It seems like now that I have all the basic essentials of life here sorted out - flat, furniture, car, bureaucracy, etc - things have only gotten busier/crazier. I didn't manage to get to bed before 5 AM either night last weekend, and this weekend isn't on schedule to be any less overloaded. And the week in between - where did it go?!

Part of the craziness I attribute to Ramadan, which is like Christmas party season in the US (only with less booze and more conservative clothing). Every night this week I've had someone's company's iftar or sohour (the second post-fast meal) to go to, which then devolves into a trip to a Ramadan tent for shisha, which in turn devolves into tea and board games... and before you know it it's 3 AM and you're stuck in the rush of people going home to eat again before the first morning prayer at 4:30.

All this Ramadan socializing has led to several more unsettling conversations about the, er, darker side of this place that is apparently not all sunshine and Range Rovers and diamond-encrusted camels. At a friend's dinner party the other night, it was brought to my attention that according to UAE law it is illegal for unmarried women to give birth in Dubai. Not illegal like "we'll turn our back and not enforce it if you're Western," but illegal like "you can have free prenatal care and great doctors and then we'll have to imprison you after you deliver." Not surprisingly, abortion is illegal as well.

I'm not really going to comment because hey, that's the law and I've chosen to live here. But it is shocking to realize that if a single woman gets pregnant, whether of her own volition or not, her options are: (a) leave Dubai in order to have the baby, (b) marry the father, (c) travel abroad for a legal abortion, (d) have an illegal abortion in Dubai. Luckily if anything ever happened to me, I'd have all the options on the table, however unpalatable they may be - but most of the women here? Let's just say that your average Filippina secretary probably can't afford to take 6 months off to go back to Manila and have her baby, and your typical Russian waitress sure can't get a visa to fly to London for a "procedure." So that leaves (b) or (d) and, well... who knows.

In the same conversation though, an interesting point came up amongst several Jordanian/Lebanese/Syrian acquaintances about how, yes, it's easy to gripe about Dubai - but where would they be if there was no "Dubai"? It's pretty much de rigeur for the city's 20-30something Arab professionals to be jaded about Dubai: the contradictions, the segregation, the restrictions, the soullessness, all of which - for them - isn't offset by the excitement of being in a new region and a different culture, as it is for Western expats. (Plus, to be honest, non-Emirati Arabs get paid way less than Westerners - that's just a sad fact of life.)

[Can I take a moment to point out that I am using "Western" here not to make Edward Said roll over in his grave, but because it is far easier than saying "British, European, American, Canadian, Aussie, or Kiwi" every time I want to reference the concept.]

So anyhow, I understand their rationale - after all, hailing from the Levant they come from places with vastly richer history, culture, and traditions (but vastly smaller economies and fewer jobs) than this random piece of desert which has only recently sprung up as an overnight metropolis. So the point they made was that as much as they all gripe about Dubai (and believe me, they do - I don't think I've met a Lebanese here who hasn't elaborated for me at great length about how much they'd rather be in Beirut if they could be), it's also a unique opportunity for them.

It was interesting to hear them speculate about where they'd be if there wasn't a place in the region that filled Dubai's role. Their responses basically fell into two categories: either they'd be back home in Amman or Beirut or Damascus, overeducated and underemployed, living near their parents and prodded into semi-arranged marriages with lots o' kids; or they'd be in Saudi or Kuwait, working the same kinds of jobs they have in Dubai but stuck with a shitty quality of life, tons of social restrictions, and a good deal of scorn/segregation from the locals. And that's basically it; maybe if you have some kind of hyphenation going on (Lebanese-Canadian, Jordanian-British, etc) you can find a job in North America or Europe, but barring that it's next to impossible to find jobs in those places on Arab passports these days - come on, the entire year's quota of H1-B visas for the States was allotted in a day. So khellas (that's it, it's finished, game over ... incidentally Jenn, how pleased are you that I have learned the expression for "game over" in Arabic?).

Anyhow. It's interesting to think about what Dubai is to me (sunshine, Range Rovers, diamond-encrusted camels) versus what Dubai is to them (the rare place where they can have a great job, live an open lifestyle, and still be connected to their proverbial roots). I guess at the end of the day, we're all here for very different reasons - but that's what makes this place so interesting. Maybe there's a PhD dissertation on human geography in there somewhere... haha, just kidding. (I hope.)

In closing, I would just like to say that I was in a meeting this morning where one of our project consultants made reference to a JV they had done in Saudi with Bin Laden. I mean, I'm assuming they mean the Saudi BinLaden Group and not OBL himself, but still. I love that I'm in a place where that just gets thrown around as a casual reference. Where do I live?

Wednesday, September 19, 2007

What's in a name?

Ramadan kareem indeed. We're a week into the Holy Month and I have to say, Ramadan's a great time. The Ramadan tents are all beautiful and opulent and fantastic, I've had a lot of interesting conversations with people about what fasting means to them, and I've bonded with heretofore unknown non-Muslim colleagues as we make beelines to the kitchen, pockets heavy with contraband snacks. The hours are also dreeeeeeeamy... 9-3 officially means that I'm usually out of the office by 4:30, which means that I have a WHOLE OTHER DAY after work... every afternoon this week I've run errands, gone to the gym, gone to yoga, gone out for dinner or shisha, and then come home and been like "Really? It's only 11 PM?!" Fabulous. There's also an awesome "witching hour" around sundown when everyone's at iftar and the roads are empty (reminiscent of Saturday afternoons in Knoxville when the Vols are playing) - you can whiz across Dubai like it didn't have the worst traffic in the world.

In other news, stemming with a conversation I had with some friends last night, I'd like to present to you a list of the neighborhoods, landmarks, and points of reference that I use on a daily basis to navigate Dubai - mostly because it highlights the bizarre (but accepted) practice here of calling every new thing you build a "city" or a "village." The conclusion we reached is that when you have a country with no fixed urban history, no established settlements, and no real past as anything besides a vast unmarked desert, you have to start from scratch - and this leads to a map peppered with places like:

-Industrial City
-Internet City
-Media City
-Studio City (where all the movie-films will be made, if Hollywood moves to Dubai as planned/hoped)
-Knowledge Village
-Academic City
-Culture Village (under construction; "culture" component TBD)
-Lifestyle City
-Global Village
-Textile Village
-Heritage Village
-Festival City (home to IKEA and our favorite mall... it truly IS festive)
-Outlet City
-Motor City (nope, no irony there)
-Sports City
-Golf City
-International Endurance City (endurance horse-racing needed a city)
-Falcon City of Wonders (the best, right? home to replicas of the Eiffel Tower, the pyramids, etc)
-Old Town (still under construction, making it the youngest Old Town in the world)
-International City ("Chinese immigrants! We have built you affordable housing made from Tinker Toys and pipe cleaners! And we will call it 'international!'")
-Healthcare City
-Humanitarian City
-Aid City
-Lost City (where? why? how was it lost?)
-City of Arabia (future home to Mall of Arabia, one of the 3 competing "biggest malls in the world" that are currently being built in Dubai)
-Silicon Oasis

Further to this, the main expat neighborhoods (which we like to disdain, since we live in a much cooler/less plasticine area) have equally perplexing names:

-The Springs (features no springs)
-The Greens (features no greens)
-The Meadows (features no meadows)
-The Lakes (features man-made lakes!)
-Emirates Hills (features no hills, unless you count the sand dunes they had to bulldoze to make the neighborhood)
-Green Community (not to be confused with The Greens; "green" here was originally conceived to mean environmentally sustainable, but that proved difficult ["what? SHINY!"] so they decided "green" just meant there would be a lot of plants there - which seems green=sustainable as well until you remember the whole desert bit).

And with that, it's bedtime!

Sunday, September 16, 2007

(Paint) Ballin'















These are the kids who are my life in Dubai: J (reluctant Brit; UAE government civil servant and speaker of 12 [!] languages), M (Egyptian-American Jersey Girl; economist extraordinaire for an investment bank), and E (would-be boyfriend [if I dated Americans and he dated women]; real-estate finance mogul and should-be professional chef). Know them and love them because they will rock your world when you come visit (they certainly rock mine).















Hardcore paintball strategizing in Sharjah - why did NO ONE in my life ever think to tell me how much I would looooooove this game? I totally pretended to be Jack Bauer the whole time.















This is what happens when you play paintball outside in 115 F and 95% humidity. Whatever, we felt no pain.




















M's birthday. We share a mutual fascination/horror/obsession with the Arabs' ability to bedazzle anything they can get their hands on (cf: Swarovski crystal-covered mobile phones; sequin-laden abayas; the entire interior of the Burj Al Arab). So when her birthday rolled around, I knew I had to...




















... bedazzle her a cake!















Tonight we drove to the desert and went for iftar at Bab Al Shams. I love how even when you're not fasting, Ramadan is an excuse to go out for really nice, elaborate dinners every night. The iftar package included camel rides, which we were only too happy to indulge in... please note (a) the expression on my face (it is SCARY when that camel rockets itself six feet into the air to stand up) and (b) the fact that I am riding a camel in 3-inch stilettos.















Iftar also included belly dancing. Since it's Ramadan, however, we were treated to a male belly dancer, since having a female dancer during the Holy Month would be unseemly. There are no words - NO WORDS! - to describe the experience, but that's okay because I think this picture says it all.

I'm now going to try and forget the above image (forever etched in my mind) and get some sleep.