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.

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.

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!

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.

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.