Sometimes Dubai is the place where logic goes to die. For instance, I went to the bank today to fill out a credit card application and the woman processing the forms got really freaked out because she decided my signature wasn't similar enough to the signature I have on file with the bank. (Ed. note: they looked exactly the same. I was just maybe in a different mood or using a different pen or something equally imperceptible.) After making me fill out about a dozen more copies of the form and systematically voiding them one by one because those signatures "didn't match" either, she tried to send me to the back of the queue with a pad and paper to "practice" (I AM NOT KIDDING) until I could get it right, at which point I had to channel E's "don't take no for an answer" Dubai ethos and tell her that we would be using the signature I had just done and that was that. (We did. "Don't take no for an answer" never fails here.)
So there you have it. In a country where umpteen millions of dirhams per year are laundered/funneled to dodgy causes/transfered between countries whose assets are supposed to be frozen by international banking sanctions, it's clearly logical to worry most about the signature validity of the blonde American who's applying for a credit card. As South African roommate Javs is fond of saying: "Genuinely?!"
In other news, I think I am getting too old for my lifestyle. (Thanks for the birthday wishes, by the way!) I am still reeeeally hurting from getting 2 hours of sleep on the night of my birthday, and from a bout of near-paralysis induced by falling asleep on our very sleek, super-modern, extremely uncomfortable couch the night of our house party, after which I woke up at 8 AM and had to crawl on my hands and knees across the cake-strewn floor to my bed in my favorite BCBG dress because I was that crippled that I couldn't walk. See? Too old.
But that's okay because I'm about to leave the office, work out, get my second massage of the week, and then go for shisha - all of which should ease my suffering and provide a nice transition into the end of the week and a weekend which, for the first time in recent memory, will include NO TRIPS TO IKEA (inshallah). Yes, there will be equally mind-jabbering visits to car dealerships, but I plan on reserving plenty of time to watch my brand-new, 99-channel package of dreeeeeeeeamy satellite TV, which to my great pleasure includes the fabulous Al Jazeera English ("Setting the news agenda") and the bemusing France 24 ("Pretending that France is important enough to need its own BBC/CNN equivalent"... just kidding, but that really should be its motto - it's basically a whole channel built around a massive cultural inferiority complex).
Speaking of news, if you have not already done so, please read today's New York Times article on how Hilary Duff's music is "much better than it needs to be" (um, obvi). Take that, those of you who mock my love of all things teenybopper. Next the Times will publish an op-ed on why Paris Hilton was too shiny to have deserved to go to jail, and I will expect you all to stand corrected on that as well.
