Pomegranate Seeds and Preity Zinta

Hi from Damascus, where I am currently idling away in my king-size hotel bed, eating pomegranate seeds and watching Mad Men only floors away from the venerable JC, perhaps my most admired ex-president. He's in town to, um, meet with Hamas leadership, and I'm in town to, you know, work, so I figure we should be friends. I've been staking out the lobby to try and bump into him, but so far have only met a few young cute very obviously American Secret Service guys... not a bad consolation prize, especially in this neck of the woods.

When I flew here on Sunday morning at o'dark hundred, I was once again amazed by the wonders of the new Emirates Terminal 3, the dreamiest airport terminal ever, both because it is brand new and supermodern and sleek, and [cough] because so far it only houses flights to North America, Europe, and the Middle East. I'm just saying... people actually wait in line, and no one sleeps sprawled out on the airport floor as though they're in a refugee camp [which, in all fairness, they may be coming from/going to]. And there's Starbucks in the terminal, red cups and all - it's like my own personal "reacculturation to the West" travel space.

Sooooo, what's been going on since last we met... basically Syria Syria Syria, eat sleep play eat run, Syria Syria. Last weekend I went to the red-carpet opening night gala of the Dubai International Film Festival, or as we affectionately call it here, "DIFF." We got to the event late which meant we "had" to sit in VIP for the screening of "W" that preceded the gala, which was fairly insanely cool because I had Danny Glover in the row behind me and Oliver Stone in the row in front of me. I had to sit in Preity Zinta's seat (I don't know who she is either, but she's big in Bollywood), which made for a semi-awkward moment when she arrived even later than us and had to sit in Ben Affleck's seat, who luckily hadn't made it to the screening, thus ending the game of musical VIP chairs. The gala afterwards involved a private beach and firedancers/stilt-walkers and lots of free champagne and prominent local men courting, ehrm, Russian women, and run-ins with many people who I didn't particularly want to see... standard Dubai fare.

Anyhow, now I have one last day in Damascus (hopefully with some time to Christmas shop in the souks... expect a lot of Hizbullah-themed Christmas presents this year), then I fly back to Dubai tomorrow morning, and then I fly to Nashville (via Doha and New York) on Friday morning! I am actually not dreading the trip this time around, as I expect Qatar Airways will be 14 hours of movie-watching, seat-reclining, wine-sipping bliss... a nice change from my usual 5-hour layover in Frankfurt/Zurich followed by a god-awful transatlantic leg on United.

Sooooooooooooo... if by the grace of God you are already in America, keep it warm for me, and see you soon!

Commercialize This

During this holiday season, when we are wont to lament the commercialization and corruption and exploitation of our Western holidays, we can all take some consolation in the fact that, as a culture, we are not alone. The other day while driving around town listening to the radio, I heard a fabulously and unintentionally hilarious ad from one of the local mobile phone networks advertising free roaming service in Saudi Arabia during hajj season. The ad ended with the super-posh British-accented commercial voice saying "May God accept your hajj!" and maybe you had to hear it to appreciate it, but... wow. The incongruity of it all made me laugh so hard I cried.

This was meant to be a longer post but it is past midnight on Friday night and I have just been summoned to go meet Flatmate E and his visiting BF in Deira to go to our favorite prostitute bar (not to HIRE the prostitutes, obvi, but to conduct our every-few-months demographic and sociocultural study of their lives). So a longer post will come later this weekend.

XOXO

Aw...

Marathon #5

The tale of a city, a 26.2 mile race, and how I learned to stop worrying and love the Lebanese army...

Our story begins at the obscenely early hour of 5:45 AM on Sunday morning, when L and I straggled out of our hotel, into a taxi, and onto a shuttle bus to the starting line. Cold, tired, and nervous, we were of course thrilled to discover that the bus was full of Lebanese men, Russian men, Polish men, potentially Ukrainian men, indiscriminately Slavic men, and maybe even a Kazakh (man) or two. Yup - ambassadors of culture and gender, that's us!

When we finally arrived at the course, I had to rub my eyes in disbelief when I looked at the street signs and realized that we were starting the race from smack dab in the middle of Sabra and Shatila. For those of you that did not spend your senior year of university stalking Lebanon for an ill-fated thesis, and/or are too lazy to visit Wikipedia, I will tell you: Sabra and Shatila are the pair of crazy-ass Palestinian refugee camps where several hundred innocent civilians were murdered under the watch of Ariel Sharon during the 1982 war in Lebanon. It’s kind of like starting your marathon from… I don’t know, Columbine or Ground Zero or the Oberoi Hotel. Inauspicious, you might say. Don't get me wrong, I always feel like crying at the beginning of a marathon, but not usually because I’m in a globally renowned locus of unfettered evil and human suffering.

(Haha, although now that I think about it, I did feel extra weepy at the starting line for Dubai last year…)

At any rate. The sun rose, we stretched, we ate our bananas, and we saw some other Westerners, which greatly assuaged our worries about where the hell we were and what the hell we were doing. We even met a cool (if crazy) 50something American woman who was running her 40th (!!!) marathon and had spent the past two years making a documentary about the race in Beirut and how it’s a metaphor for the resilience of the human spirit. Hmmm.

Before we knew it it was 7 AM, and the starting gun went off at 7:10 AM (Arab Standard Time). What follows is a blow-by-blow of things I remember, as they unfolded (with the caveat that when the body depletes its glycogen stores, mental reasoning is one of the first skills to go… look for that around 25K).

1-3 K: Oh hai marathoning! We feel great! Yay! A charming Lebanese DJ plays “What A Feeling” from Flashdance by the side of the road and it seems – for the time being – to be a great, fun, motivational song. A few hundred meters in, I get passed by a white guy of indiscernable provenance who yells out “HEY! I know you! You were in the Ras Al Khaimah half marathon last year!” Um… okay, crazy. I mean, I was, but wow. We’re 1,300 miles away and that was 10 months ago and you just recognized me from my ass/calves/trademark hair bun. This is the first of three krazy-rando brushes with coincidence for the day.

3-6 K: Second krazy-rando brush with coincidence. We pack in with a tall, cute, all-American guy from California and start chatting him up, only to find out he lives in Kabul, at which point L and I both exclaim with glee “Ooh, we have to play Kabul Name Game with you!” (Ed. note: in what context, other than my life, would that be an actual game people play?!) Turns out he knows like five of my friends from Kabul and is even in a poker group with one of them. I don’t know what kind of shady circles I run in (literally and figuratively) that I would happen upon someone running a marathon in Lebanon who knows my friends in Afghanistan, but I kind of even sketch myself out. Anyhow, at this point we realize we’re running down some kind of “Avenue of the Martyrs” in south Beirut which features posters of different Hezbollah suicide bomber about every 100 meters… tempered by a Lebanese military guard brandishing an automatic weapon about every 50 meters, so the ratio worked out in our favor.

6-12 K: Settle into our stride, leave All-American Kabul Dude in our wake. Look for a bathroom around 10 K, to no avail. Around 11 K a nice race organizer pedals past us on his bike. We ask where the toilets are and he responds, “oh… they were back at the start." WTF?! This prompts a kilometer-long tirade from me, denouncing the Lebanese for not being “solutions-oriented” and failing to adhere to “best practice” of having a toilet every 3-5 K, at which point L asks me to please stop talking like a consultant during the race or else she will yak. Around 12 K, we find an abandoned underground parking garage in which we just barely manage to pop a squat before a soldier kicks us out. Mission accomplished.

15 K: We pack in with Serge, a very cute Lebanese 18 year-old in basketball shoes who is running his first marathon on a whim. He fills me with a little rage because he alternates between sprinting ahead of us and lagging behind, but still wants to chat with us the whole time (total breach of marathon etiquette). I try to convince L that we should leave him, but she makes the valid point that it might come in handy to have an Arabic speaker near us in the field, which it soon does when L needs another toilet break and Serge is able to convince some petrol station owners to let her use their loo. (Tell me, what did I pay a $50 entry fee for if not for toilets on the course? Was I subsidizing the Hezbollah posters?!)

18 K: Some Poles pass us. L speaks to them in Russian. They do not understand her, however Teenage Lebanese Serge does, because apparently his father was a diplomat and he was born in Moscow. He asks her why she speaks Russian and she gets to whip out the all-time best-ever marathon line, the nonchalant "eh, I used to work in nuclear security." We hear "What A Feeling" for the third or fourth time. WHO TOLD THE LEBANESE THIS WAS A RUNNING SONG?

20 K: We pass through Beirut's Armenian quarter, identifiable by the fact that every shop is called something along the lines of "Setrakian's Laundry" or "Dr. Garabedian's Happy Teeth Dental Clinic." That, and the group of festive Lebanese-Armenian police officers who do a little clapping dance for us as we run by.

21K: HALF!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! We sprint the end of the 21st kilometer to finish the first half right at 2:00 (which, had it not been for Toilet Tourism, would have easily been 1:55). Teenage Lebanese Serge falls off the pace. Very soon thereafter, we enter The Dark Place.

22-31 K: The Dark Place. You could say it was our own fault for failing to manage expectations, but based on a cursory glance at the course map, we had thought this part of the race would be along the Mediterranean... which it kind of was, if you interpret "along the Mediterranean" to mean "wedged between a busy highway full of lecherous Lebanese men honking at us from vintage 1970s-era Peugeots and a dank row of old crappy buildings which were only about 50 meters away from the Mediterranean, but obscured any possible pleasant view." Add this to NO spectators, extremely sporadic water stations, and the blazing Mediterranean sun, and you get... well, The Dark Place. I had forgotten how overwhelmingly sad I get during marathons, especially about 13-18 miles in, when you've come too far to quit but you're not close enough to see the light at the end of the tunnel. It's a terrible feeling - like being stuck smack dab in the middle of the grieving process, when you're past the denial phase but you can't yet imagine how you're ever going to get through it.

32 K: 20 miles! I had planned to do my Gu here, but of course there was no water station, so I swallow my tears instead and carry on.

33 K: Water. Gu. Walking, for a bit. We pass a Lebanese woman who I had mowed down with mental judgement at the starting line (okay, she was wearing makeup and fake blue contact lenses and long fake-blonde hair and she was Lebanese - I was right to be incredulous). We cheer her on and I have one of those Great Moments of Marathon Equanimity where I got all "how dare I judge people, it's great that she's breaking stereotypes, everyone should run marathons and then we would all impress each other all the time, LA LA LA" in my head. And then two seconds later I was like "thank God we passed her, I would be so embarassed to get beaten by a Lebanese chick." Glycogen depletion. Sigh.

34 K: Third krazy-rando brush with coincidence - L has an old Italian (?) guy charge her, yelling "S... A... I... S! S... A... I... S?!" at which point we are both like dude WTF is going on and then we realize he's pronouncing the individual letters of the acronym for her grad school, as opposed to just calling it "SAIS" like, oh you know, normal people do. Anyhow, we shuffle along talking to him for a bit and apparently he is the tennis partner of someone she knew in grad school in DC and he picked her out of the crowd. All I have to say is, "Team G-Unit: Attracting Stalkers to a Marathon Near You!"

35-37 K: At a certain point L stops to walk and I stop as well, prompting her to be like "NO GO ON WITHOUT ME!" So I had to be like "NO I'VE WANTED TO WALK FOR THE PAST 5 K" and we kind of have a little mini head-butt about who is slowing whom down, if indeed that is the case, and then we hug and make up and proceed to be like "mmmmmm... walking!" for the next two minutes. When we start running again, I immediately go to The Very Dark Place (not to be confused with The Dark Place) which is actually quite entertaining because it involves thinking pseudo-deep glycogen-deprived thoughts about life and love and struggle and triumph and how somehow every challenge you've ever faced (or are facing, or will face) in your life relates back to finishing this marathon. I imagine The Very Dark Place is kind of like being on psychotropic drugs in terms of the beautiful crystalline false-clarity of the revelations you have while under their influence.

38-40 K: Of course, the organizers pick this point in the race to shoot everyone out onto an open highway that has one lane blocked off (kind of) for runners. Just what you want when you're so exhausted you can barely move in a straight line: a 2-inch margin of error for getting hit by a speeding car!

41-42 K: HOME STRETCH!!!!! L is disturbingly quiet except for occasionally yelling out "Shit! I have nothing left!" to no one in particular, so I start giving breathless speeches about inertia and how by this point we cannot be stopped. Having never run a marathon "with" someone (the two marathons I ran with Lar involved him finishing 10-20 minutes ahead of me), I have to say that it was immensely comforting to have someone next to me in those lonely silent terrible last few kilometers - there is definitely something to the idea that you draw on each other's strength.

42.195 K: Before we knew it, it was over in 4:16:09 - 27 minutes slower than my best time, but 22 minutes faster than Dubai last year, the "reemergence" of my marathoning career.

Postlude: medals, blisters, Starbucks, pastries, showers, Christmas music, 2 bottles of champagne, TGI Friday's (yes, in downtown Beirut), 3-hour flight home.

Next stop: Dubai Marathon, 16 January 2009. A triumphant return to sub-4-hour marathoning, you heard it hear first!

Addendum

Most of all, I am thankful that my half-dozen good friends and colleagues who are in Mumbai for a friend's wedding this weekend are safe, sound, and not staying in any of the targeted hotels. Terrifying.

On Giving Thanks and Redeeming Douchebags

Since I will probably not have a chance to do any earnest giving of thanks at my Thanksgiving dinner tomorrow night (you know, amidst the manservants and the vieille reserve cognac and the swimming breaks off the shores of the Palm... not so much the situation for earnestness), I thought I would take this opportunity to be thankful for:

1. My indescribably wonderful family who I will see 22 days from today (minus the one with Yellow Fever who's forsaken us for Asia AGAIN... although I'm thankful for her, too).

2. Sam Sam the Weiner Man.

3. The Olde Tyme friends reading this from America, Singapore, the UK, Germany, and other locales who know (or should know) that their willingness to laugh/coach me through life from thousands of miles away (often via Gchat or SMS) makes my day on pretty much a daily basis.

4. The crazy, eclectic group of people who have become my framily (friends + family... any takers?) in Dubai. It has certainly not always been a smooth ride, but finding good people in this town is like finding a needle in the world's biggest, tallest, most expensive 7-star haystack, and I am truly blessed to have found (and hung onto) the ones I have.

5. The chance to live, play, travel, and frolic in a region of the world that I've always dreamed about, frustrating though it may be at times. It's especially worthy of gratitude in an era where the sky happens to be falling a little less here than it is in other places.

6. My great, stressful, intimidating new job, which is showing me - for the first time in my career - the challenges and rewards of working with really really insanely smart people. And earning me lots of frequent flier miles, to boot.

7. Change we can believe in.

8. The krazy (not to be confused with crazy) relationships and "relationships"I've had since moving here. Some have been good, many have been bad, but I've learned a lot from them and I feel like these lessons will coalesce in the not-too-distant future and lead me to a point where "krazy" becomes just "crazy."

9. The way that I will feel around 11 AM on Sunday morning when I look out over the Mediterranean having just run 26.2 miles. The chance to push myself. The memory of being on a cracked-out 3-hour training run a few weeks ago in 95F heat and adamantly deciding that "You Shook Me All Night Long" would be my new theme song because of the lines "she was a fast machine / she kept her motor clean" and more aptly "knockin' me out with those American thighs."The fact that I could knock someone out with my thighs these days.

10. Assorted shallow consumery things that I actually do give thanks for on a daily basis because my life would be bleak and pleasureless without them, including but not limited to: Gossip Girl, Starbucks skinny extra-shot lattes, Target, the Blackberry 8800, the Sonicare 7300 Elite, Diet Cherry Vanilla Dr. Pepper (even when it costs $1.25 a can because it's been air freighted over from the States), the Asics Gel Nimbus, Cotton Candy LipSmackers, iTunes Genius for realizing that if I like Hilary Duff I might also like Miley Cyrus, Hendrick's and tonic with a slice of cucumber, OPI nail polish, NPR podcasts, the nice folks at Hyundai who designed a $15 SUV that I can repeatedly crash into things without it driving any worse for the wear, and O Magazine which is not my bible but is pretty darn close.

So, to all of these things: I am thankful for you. :)

And to close, a funny story. I believe I've blogged about my across-the-hall neighbor before, he of "I'm a successful 30something barrister, and I play polo, and I drive a $200,000 car, and I'm devastatingly handsome and oh-so-perfectly posh and witty and flirtatious" fame - the catch being that he has a wife and kids who live in London but don't stop him from bringing home assorted blondes at 2 AM, a phenomenon which Flatmate E and I frequently bear witness too. Anyhow, long story short, ever since meeting his "wife and kids" whilst afternoon-drinking at the pool about a year ago, E and I have held him up as the Archetypal Dubai Asshole - so much potential, and yet such a douche - and warned more than a few people to stay away from him. Aaaaaaaanyhow, he's in with our new crew of equestrian-set friends, so as it turned out we ended up having him over for a couple bottles of wine last Saturday night, which of course got messy, which of course led to E and I spilling the beans and telling him in no uncertain terms that the jig was up and we knew he was married with children.

Which led to uproarious laughter on his part and the procurement, via iPhone, of family pictures proving pretty irrefutably that his "wife" is actually his sister and the "kids" are actually his nieces/nephews.

Whoops.

So tonight I get home from Syria and I find the following note slipped under my door:

Thank you for the loan of the wine glass and the sheer quality entertainment on Saturday night. I owe you some wine. I will remedy this week!!

A

P.S. The wife and the kids are doing just fine - they are just disappointed that 007 spent all his money on an Aston Martin!!

HA! Moral of the story: just because it walks like a douchebag and talks like a douchebag and seems to engage in infidelity like a douchebag, doesn't mean it's aaaaaaaaaaalways a douchebag. Just 99.9% of the time. ;)

Stay tuned for post-marathon updates from Beirut on Sunday, and HAPPY THANKSGIVING!

You Can't Go Home Again?

Wow, has it really been 2 weeks since I blogged? Freneticism, sorry.

The title for this post was actually inspired by a talk I had last Saturday night with Blonde American Friend L's mom. Since parents - or any people of an equal wisdom/life experience/non-douchiness level - are rare in Dubai, I'm always super-excited to stalk visiting parental units whenever they happen to roll into town. (Pointed "ahem" in the direction of Tennessee...)

In that spirit, L & I brought her visiting mom to a friend's dinner party last weekend, where I had a great heart-to-heart with Mrs. G about expatriate life and cross-cultural adjustment. Momma G is an academic who has done research into exchange programs and lived abroad in Australia herself, so it was interesting to talk to her about how, based on typical expatriation studies, the time you're most homesick is about 90 days out, and how it's funny that I really never got super-homesick until I had been here for right around a year, and why that was, and all the different variations in people's international experiences, and how we each adjust to this crazy unwieldy experience of being an alien.

The most interesting takeaway I had from our conversation was what she said about going home. She was just coming from a week of meetings in Qatar with American colleagues who have lived abroad for a decade or more, and she said that across the board, they all say the same thing: you can't go home again. In other words, you can physically go back to the States, to visit or to live, but it won't be the place you left - the people won't be the same as you left them, and you won't relate to your surroundings the same way you did before you went away. After living abroad in the long term, she claims, you'll always be kind of "neither here nor there."

It's interesting, and it's something to thing about as my life here unfolds... there's definitely a part of her thinking that resonates with me, because I do sometimes feel stuck in between. People here can never reeeeeeeeally know me the way that people back home do, but at the same time, people back home can never reeeeeeeeally understand what my life here is like. Interesting.

At any rate, in the fortnight since last I blogged... was in Dubai two weeks ago, Syria last week, Dubai this weekend, and now off to Syria again from tomorrow morning until Wednesday night, when I fly back to Dubai, have Thanksgiving at a friend's house on the Palm (yeah yeah, I was going to cook, but he has hired help... and a 15,000 square-foot villa in which the manservants may roam freely as they cook for us), then fly to Beirut, do some touristy things, run a marathon on Sunday, fly back to Dubai, and finally end up back in Syria on Monday morning, I think via Bahrain because all the other flights are booked and/or don't get me there in time for my Monday meetings. Fun week!

Last week in Syria was good but crazy. 15-hour days are the norm on the road, and after one such day I caused more than a bit of trouble for myself by going on a late-night run that accidentally ended with me wandering onto the grounds of the presidential palace, getting chased by a Syrian army guard who charged towards me with his Kalashnikov drawn, trigger pulled, causing me to drop to my knees bawling, hands in the air, inventing Arabic explanations to get myself out of trouble ("shoo moushkila? ana asfa! ana bint! mafi moushkila!" - "what's the problem? I'm sorry! I'm a woman! There's no problem!" [... which, come to think of it, is kind of reminiscent of my famous admonition to the Italian gypsy children who tried to rob us on a bus in Rome back in 2001: "basta, basta! non va bene!" - "enough, enough! it is not going well!" ... clearly, my linguistic skills are at top form during times of crisis]).

Anyhow! Having survived my gun run-in (and the police escort that drove me back to my hotel when I was released but deemed suspicious enough to warrant supervision), I got back to Dubai just in time to watch the world's largest fireworks display on Thursday night in celebration of the grand opening of the Atlantis (which, ho hum, I've already been to like 5 times... meh, this is what happens when your soft opening and your hard opening are 2 months apart and you live in a town where there's nothing else to do besides scope 5-star hotels). Friday involved champagne brunch at the Ritz then a trip to the new Dubai Mall, where L and I watched some sharks, drop-kicked some ill-disciplined toddlers, and decided - much to our chagrin - that an hour was too long to wait in line for the first Taco Bell in the Middle East. Saturday featured a fast 8-miler (last hard run before the marathon!), some polo matches at Arabian Ranches (um... because we're in with the equestrian set now), and then dinner and drinks with Pakistani-Hollywood friend TK (he of the Seventh Heaven introductions) at the new Address hotel, where one of our dinner companions turned out to be the Today Show correspondent who had just covered the Atlantis opening. Ha. Only in Dubai.

All of which leads me to say... I should go to bed. Because whether or not I can go home again, I still have to go to Syria tomorrow. XOXO!

On the Road Again

Sooooooooooooo. Tomorrow morning I fly out to Damascus to FINALLY start working with the client for my new project. For those of you who are counting, that makes two and a half months and two false starts (Saudi, Vietnam) before things have finally gotten rolling - but hey, such is life in this part of the world. I am super, super excited to be in Syria a lot over the next two months, although it's not exactly the best time to be there as an American working for a US firm... meh, what to do. I'll be too busy hammering out Powerpoint decks in my hotel room to get involved in any political intrigue.

It is, however, weird that I will be in Syria for the election. Anyone know any Yanks living in Damascus who can invite me to their results parties?!

Update on the running front: holy crap, I ran 18 miles tonight. And it didn't even suck! This, combined with 17 last week (which did suck, A LOT, because I accidentally forgot to eat any carbs in the 48 hours leading up to the run... shocking for someone who lives on a diet of pasta, instant noodles, and tortilla chips, I know), 15 the week before, and 12 the week before, means... wow, I'm actually training for marathons again. Who'da thunk it?! Less than a month to go until Beirut on the 30th, so we're right on track.

Weekend Update

(1) I am watching an episode of "The Hills" and they keep talking about how they're all going to Cabo for Brody's birthday and it's going to be amazing and they're going to party so hard. And every time they mention it, I KEEP thinking they're saying "Kabul" instead of "Cabo" and I'm like "Wait, LC goes to Afghanistan for fun, too?! I always KNEW we would be friends!" Which I think means I live in the wrong part of the world to be watching trashy MTV "reality" shows.

(2) On that note, last night I got to sing Paris Hilton's "Stars Are Blind" on stage at our favorite Filipino club, backed up by the cover band. I think it was one of the best moments of my life. (Friend L was like, "I can't believe you know the words to that song!" and I was like, "Um hi, I know the words to that whole ALBUM... as well as the broader sociopolitical controversy of Paris working with producer JR at a time when he was thought to be dating Britney." Hey, it was during the Dark Year, I had a lot of time to devote to pop culture...) ANYHOW. I also realized last night that this place is our Dubai version of "Cheers" because we roll in (the only 10 white people in the club) and the band literally stops playing to be like "Mr. Eric! Mr. Eric is here! MR. ERIC!!!!" And I, um, get invited up on stage to sing songs. Because that's normal. (File under: Rude Awakenings To Be Had When I Return to A Place Where Blonde Women Make Up More Than 0.001% of the Population.)

(3) I am going to a schmancy group dinner at the new Nobu tonight, so I'm off to hit the gym and then scour my closet for an outfit that says "yes, I am a cute young thing and look how nice my legs are" while simultaneously saying "no, I am not cabin crew for Emirates, and if we could all purposefully ignore the fact that I'm 10 years younger and several million dollars poorer than everyone else at this table, that would be great." The sartorial holy grail!

In Which I Further Consolidate My Grasp On C-List Power

These will not go up on Facebook because That Would Be Gauche, but I nonetheless wanted to share these pictures with my new friend Bev so that those of you who grew up watching "Seventh Heaven" could have a chuckle.

















































She just got married in Ravello and stopped through Dubai to see my friend TK on the way back from from her honeymoon in the Maldives... so obvi, we all had to go out on TK's boat for a celebratory afternoon of dabauchery. (In the case of L & I, we had done a 15-mile training run that morning, which makes for a VERY messy afternoon of nautical drinking... let's just say I'm less sore from the mileage than from wiping out on the boat deck several times.)

Hilarious. At any rate, she's a very sweet girl AND she just released a country album, so we got to talk Nashville which is, of course, a rarity here.

In other news, I am headed to Damascus a week from today to finally work "from the field" on my new project. Yay!

On Identity & Adjustment

Do you ever have moments when you literally laugh at loud at yourself?

Friday morning at around 9:30 AM (remember Friday is the first day of the weekend here, so I'm usually still sleeping off my hangover at that hour, shawarma wrappers and stilettos strewn around my bed), I found myself driving down Sheikh Zayed Road.

Yes, that's right. Driving down the highway. In my SUV. Blaring Jessica Simpson's duet with Dolly Parton from her new country album. On my way to meet New American Friend M at the evangelical church he attends. And then to have lunch at the mall with fellow churchgoers.

And all of a sudden I started cracking up behind the wheel, as I realized - isn't this the life that, a year or two ago, I would have told you I left the US to avoid? More precisely, isn't it a scenario that I would have used, not to deride my roots, but to show how much more worldly I am than that? Cruising through suburban sprawl in my big fat car, listening to country music and hanging out with God-fearing people in churches and malls? [Insert over-educated, blue-state, latte-liberal value judgments here.]

And yet, I haven't been happier in Dubai in a LONG time than I was on Friday morning. (As I explained to E last night, "I mean, it's still Dubai, but at least if you meet people at church you know that they're trying not to be assholes.")

Which leads me to believe that... living abroad takes you back to your roots?

What I can't figure out is whether this has happened in a reactionary way ("F this place, how can I make myself most at odds with my surroundings?! Yes, I will listen to country music and go to church!") or just in a natural way ("I probably would have ended up liking country music and wanting to go to church after another 10 years of pseudointellectual postmodern posturing in New York or DC anyhow, but the intensity of Dubai sped the process along.")

I feel like this is all tied in with the fact that I'm starting to negotiate actually "living" in Dubai. I have noticed a qualitative difference (which has probably been apparent on this blog) in my attitude and mentality over the past few months, as I've inched up the ticker from "I've lived here a year" to "I've lived here almost a year and a half." It may seem like a subtle distinction, but I feel like it's only in hitting the year-plus mark that I've been forced to confront some of the realities of my life abroad. That phenomenon is borne out by some of the cursory readings I've done on acclimation and cross-cultural adjustment - hell, it even ties in with the theory of a "sophomore slump" at university, which I knew and suffered through all too well.

In all my previous experiences "living" abroad - 6 weeks in France, 3 months in Italy, 6 months in Scotland, 11 months in England - I've never actually gotten to the stock-taking phase of my life there. I've never settled in enough for the noise to die down, for the bells and whistles to stop going off, for everything to stop being new! and exciting! and different! and just be... mundane, and sometimes very frustrating. And now that I'm at that point, it's very interesting to see where it takes me.

To the unlikeliest of places, it would seem. And yet... maybe not so unlikely after all. ;)

Holy Crap! Marathons

So I am flush with excitement about my newly minted 2008-2009 running plan with New Blonde American Friend L.

It all started with the Beirut Marathon, which we're registered for and running in, inshallah, on 30 November.

Then L got me all excited about the Two Oceans Ultramarathon in Cape Town, South Africa on 11 April, which I have drooled over ever since I opened my very first issue of Runner's World back in, I don't know, 1993, and which I now live in close proximity to (well, okay, an 8-hour flight... closer than from the States).

Then we realized if we're going to be running a 34.8 mile ultra in April, we should probably have a 26.2 miles regular marathon tune-up a bit closer to race day... enter the Dubai Marathon on 18 January.

So this leaves us with the following tagline: 2 Americans, 3 countries, 3.5 marathons, 5 months.

Now what I am about to say might be shocking given that if you are reading this blog you should Know How I Feel About Charity Runners (in 2 words: not good) (or in 2 other words: fat, slow). However, it occurs to me that as a highly limited demographic group in a highly fundraising-friendly environment setting out to do a highly impressive thing, we would be uniquely positioned to raise a boatload of cash for a cause of our choosing.

Which leads me to solicit your feedback! What are some charities we should consider? Ideally it would fit in with a relevant theme - something Middle Eastern or South African in honor of where we are running, something American in honor of our homeland, something for the womyns since we are womyn (ha)... etc.

I am new to this whole "doing an athletic endeavor for something other than my own personal satisfaction" business, so any suggestions are appreciated - email me!

Out of Africa

Back from Uganda and there are no spider babies in my bag. Whew.

I know I'm a broken record but hey, I rarely take a trip I don't love, so I'll go ahead and say it: amazing. We spent 2 days in the bush - Murchison Falls National Park, to be more precise - and 2 days in transit back and forth from Kampala (6+ hours on unpaved mud roads but tooooooootally worth it).

It was my first time in really "middle of nowhere" Africa and I LOVED it, especially in contrast to disturbian (does it count as a word if it was coined by a Rihanna song?!) Dubai. The two nights we spent at the Nile Safari Lodge were absolutely sublime - game drives all day and wine on the banks of the Nile all night, with fabulous fabulous company. (Sadly, New Guy Friend M - the erstwhile potential crush - was outed the first night. Another one bites the fairy dust.)

Pictures shall be on the Facebooks soon.

The only lowlight of the trip (and it is actually quite hilarious, in retrospect) was a brief and possibly psychosomatic Lariam-induced freakout where my heart started beating really fast and I kind of felt like I was going to throw up and have my head start spinning around my body - or in L's words, I "went all Heart of Darkness on everyone." Needless to say, I'll shell out the extra cash for the less side effect-inducing Malarone next time I'm in a malarial zone (although at $10 for Lariam vs. $125 for shmancy-pants Malarone, a little bout of kraziness seems to be a wise economic trade-off).

At any rate, I heart African adventures and I can't wait to get back. Next trip, potentially for Eid Al Adha in December: Rwanda or Eritrea. Game on.

There is No Hate in my Heart Today

The sun is shining and the roads are empty and the cranes are still and I'm working from home in sweatpants in honor of the holiday and the Pakistani delivery guy who brings me my coffee from the cafe downstairs just told me "Eid Mubarak!" when I answered the door (not in a "F you, this is an Islamic country, I'm going to rub it in your face" kind of way but in a sweet, genuinely excited kind of way).

And it kind of feels like Christmas morning, if only Christmas happened on the first perfect day of fall when you wake up and for the first time in 4 months it's not 95F outside, but a breezy 80 or so.

This place ain't all bad. ;)

So all I have to do today is finish this presentation, go to the Canadian Hospital to get my yellow fever shot (don't ask), and then I'm Uganda-bound tomorrow morning with L, sipping Bloody Marys on our Emirates flight to Addis Ababa where we will pick up the boys, who left a day early thanks to the last-minute holiday declaration and are enjoying a 24-hour layover in Ethiopia en route to Entebbe / Kampala.

Please, Ethiopia for Eid is SO last year... the Horn of Africa is all played out, it's time to go Sub-Saharan. [To be said in the officious tone of the 17 year-old JAP hostess who worked with me at Peacock and told me "David Yurman is all played out, I'm moving on to Bvlgari."]

And with that, back to work!

Eid Mubarak!

Only in the Muslim world...

The Saudi clerics have - in the 11th hour! - finally seen the moon and announced that Eid is tomorrow, thus meaning that today is/was the last day of Ramadan.

To use an ecumenical expression from my own culture, hallelujah! Holy month, we barely knew ye.

But honestly though. Can you imagine not knowing what day Christmas was going to be until 8 PM the night before?

"Should we put out milk and cookies for Santa? NO NO NO, Jerry Falwell hasn't seen the Star of Bethlehem yet! Advent continues!"

Operation Nuevo Thunderbolt

Long time no update! Back from Singapore, you know the drill, check out the pics on Facebook. It was a great trip, wonderful to see old friends, and definitely fraught with emotion: as much as J & P's marriage does restore my faith in loving, healthy, functional partnerships, it also makes me realize how faaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaar I am from that point in my life - I cannot even put enough "a"s in "far" to express that to you.

So yeah, back in Dubai, trying to end my fight with this city which should be a lot easier once (a) the weather cools down, and (b) Ramadan ends. I have faith (but not proof) that both things will happen soon. This weekend we went to the Aquaventure water park at the new Atlantis resort (yes, brought to you by the same people who created that famous high school spring break haven in the Bahamas) on the Palm. It was fun and it kind of reminded me of being in Florida, which was great given my weird cravings for Americana as of late.

Also notable from the weekend was our taxi ride to check out new hotspot Zuma, during which the following conversation occured:

E: Are you from Pakistan?
Taxi Driver: Yes.
E: From where in Pakistan?
Taxi Driver: Peshawar
E: Peshawar, there's lots of terrorists there, huh?
Taxi Driver: Yes.
E: Are you a terrorist?
Taxi Driver: No. But my two brothers are in the army and they were killed in a terrorist attack last week.
E: [stunned silence]
Taxi Driver: You know who is responsible for terrorism in Pakistan? The USA. If the USA wanted, in one month they could get rid of all the terrorists in my country.

Yeah... just your average start to a night out with friends. Honestly though - what a reality check, especially for my oft-documented (although sometimes merited) visciousness to taxi drivers here.

At any rate. I am going to Uganda for 4 days at the end of this week for Eid, which is extremely exciting. We will see either gorillas or waterfalls but probably not both as we don't have a ton of time and we also want to soak up the krazy-bustling-African-capitalness of Kampala. I'm traveling with E, New Blonde American Friend L, and another new American guy friend M, who we like A LOT because he's already assigned us all roles to play in his proposed reenactment of Operation Thunderbolt at the Entebbe airport (I get to be Idi Amin, SCORE!), but who sadly is age-ineligible for a crush because he is Princeton '05 which makes him, like, 12?!

So with that, off to buy malaria pills and and Lonely Planet East Africa during lunch!

Finally!

I would just like to announce that tomorrow night at 8 PM I fly out to Singapore, and thank God for that. Due largely to visa drama (aka, having my passport in the possession of the Saudi & UAE governments for the better part of the past month) I have not left Dubai for 6 weeks.

Yes that's right, 6 weeks. Let me tell you, no one should ever have to go 6 weeks without leaving this city, especially with the combination of (a) summer heat, (b) Ramadan, and (c) everything.

At any rate, less than 24 hours to go, whew. I can feel my passport pages twitching at the prospect of that exit stamp already. And why am I going to Singapore, you might ask?! Surely you know already, but if you have forgotten, THE ELEGANT SWALLOW IS GETTING MARRIED! And so I will travel across many oceans (well, 2) to go be the blondest, whitest bridesmaid in all of Southeast Asia.

Anyhow, I need an escape - Dubai is sucking the life out of me lately. New Job is great but other than that, blech. I'm hoping to become one of those people who just take their whole identity and happiness and fulfillment from work, because ain't nothin' else goin' on and frankly I would like to ignore my recent realization that, in Schmom's words, I do kind of live in "the heinous asshole capital of the world." But more and more, nights of drinking with the flatmates and going to bars full of Uzbek prostitutes and coming home to pass out in my saj wrap are just not doing it for me.

All this (and the constant election coverage) has led me to be inexplicably homesick for the USA as of late. In fact, I have taken to playing Brooks and Dunn "Only in America" on my drive to work and sometimes, when a particularly rage-inducing Indian in a 1988 Toyota Corolla cuts me off after I've already sat in 35 minutes of traffic to get to my office which is not even 1 mile from my house (but unwalkable thanks to continued 120F heat and something about it not being professional to walk into work having just lost 1/3 of my body weight in sweat), I get teary-eyed at the lyrics/spectacle of it all... "oh, but we do dream in red white and blue! and these people dream in asshole!"

Whatevs, this city - like anywhere - is all about ups and downs and ebbs and flows and I feel level-headed enough to know that this is just an annoying phase (and if I'm level-headed about something... well, wow). But particularly during the Month o' Hypocrisy (Exhibit A: VIP Ramadan tents all over the city - so much for solidarity with the poor during this holy time of alms and fasting!), it is easy easy to get annoyed.

Which is why tomorrow I will board an 8-hour flight to go to a slightly less psychotic boomtown and see amazing people who have known me for 9 years and cry tears of happiness for Jules and young love and old friends and eat a lot of really really really good Malay / Tamil / Chinese food from hawker stalls with nary a hummus in sight.

Nary a hummus in sight! And did I mention it's only 90F in Singapore this weekend?!

Baby's First Night Out

It's 3 AM... do you know where your consultants are?!

Tonight was my first "office drinks/dinner" for the new job, and I have to say: (a) I had high expectations and (b) those expectations were met. After dating le français (who worked for a different but similar consulting firm) for so long, I had a lot of experience attending consultant team-building nights as a "significant other"... but it's a lot more fun when you're there in your own right. I have to say, 9 hours of drinks/food/dancing/schmoozing with partners - all on the company dime - is kind of fun, not to mention that it is soooooo extremely refreshing to work and socialize with people who aren't idiots. What a revelation.

For a preview of my new world, check out hilarious "Consultants vs. Bankers " video on YouTube, if you haven't already seen it. The sad thing is that I have used both "the 5 forces" and "the 3 Cs" in the past 36 hours... but my favorite line is definitely "hold up, I'm 'bout to put you in a 2-by-2 matrix ... you're in the lower right quadrant but you still ain't my dawg."

In other news, despite the five-year multiple entry visa in my passport and the two new abayas in my closet, it looks like I'm not going to Saudi right away. Basically the client hadn't signed, and hadn't signed, and hadn't signed, and so finally we're giving up and reallocating people to different projects. But all is not lost, because the new case I'm getting staffed on as of Sunday will allegedly require me to split my time between Dubai, [redacted Southeast Asian country], and [redacted Caribbean country]. Um... okay. Twist my arm. Just get me out of Dubai. ;)

Night night!

Earthquake!

Never a dull day in Dubai... we just got evacuated from my office thanks to a 6.1 magnitude earthquake across the Gulf in Iran. First time I've ever felt a quake, and it was a bit unnerving - I felt like someone was standing behind me shaking my chair, and I looked up thinking I was crazy, and then I noticed a couple other colleagues looking up, looking like they were thinking they were crazy, and then the next thing we knew everyone was streaming out of the building. Ha.

At any rate, everything here in Dubai seems to be fine, but I still feel a little queasy from the shaking... remind me never to move to California! (Not that that was ever going to happen, anyhow...)

The Saudi Solution

Good morning! Let's start off the week with some updates on KSA, as I am getting really excited to ship off (yeah, I need a change - more on that later) in the coming weeks, once our client finally signs and we get moving on the project.

***

Some highlights from the US State Department's International Travel Information on Saudi Arabia:

Saudi Arabia is a monarchy ruled by a king chosen from and by members of the Al Saud family. The king rules through royal decrees issued in conjunction with the Council of Ministers ... Islamic law is the basis of the authority of the monarchy and provides the foundation of the country’s conservative customs and social practices.

Women visitors and residents are required to be met by their sponsor upon arrival. Women traveling alone, who are not met by sponsors, have experienced delays before being allowed to enter the country.

Women considering relocating to Saudi Arabia should be keenly aware that women and children residing in Saudi Arabia as members of a Saudi household ... are considered household property and require the permission of the Saudi male head of their household to leave the country.

[Ed. Note: I will not - whew! - be a member of a Saudi household.]

The Department of State urges U.S. citizens to consider carefully the risks of traveling to Saudi Arabia. There is an on-going security threat due to the continued presence of terrorist groups, some affiliated with al Qaida, who may target Western interests, housing compounds, and other facilities where Westerners congregate. These terrorist groups may also target Saudi Government facilities and economic/commercial targets within the Kingdom.

Although terrorists have not conducted a successful attack against Westerners since February 2007, the United States Mission in Saudi Arabia remains an unaccompanied post as a result of continued security concerns.

American citizens who choose to visit Saudi Arabia are strongly urged to avoid staying in hotels or housing compounds that do not apply stringent security measures and are also advised to maintain good situational awareness when visiting commercial establishments frequented by Westerners. American citizens also are advised to keep a low profile; vary times and routes of travel; exercise caution while driving, entering or exiting vehicles; and ensure that travel documents and visas are current and valid.

Street crime is generally not a problem for travelers in Saudi Arabia. However, private Saudi citizens who perceive that a foreigner is not observing conservative standards of conduct may harass, pursue, or assault that person.

Saudi customs authorities enforce strict regulations concerning importation into Saudi Arabia of such banned items as alcohol products, weapons and any item that is held to be contrary to the tenets of Islam, such as pork products and pornography. Imported and domestic audiovisual media and reading matter are censored. Saudi customs and postal officials broadly define what is contrary to Islam, and therefore prohibited. Christmas decorations, fashion magazines, and "suggestive" videos may be confiscated and the owner subject to penalties and fines.

Islam is the official religion of the country and pervades all aspects of life in Saudi Arabia. Public display of non-Islamic religious articles such as crosses and Bibles is not permitted. Travel to Makkah (Mecca) and Medina, the cities where the two holiest mosques of Islam are located, is forbidden to non-Muslims.

The norms for public behavior in Saudi Arabia are extremely conservative, and religious police, known as Mutawwa, are charged with enforcing these standards. Mutawwa are required to carry special identification and usually are accompanied by uniformed police; however, in some cases they have detained persons even without police presence. To ensure that conservative standards of conduct are observed, the Saudi religious police have accosted or arrested foreigners, including U.S. citizens, for improper dress or other alleged infractions, such as consumption of alcohol or association by a female with a male to whom she is not related. While most incidents have resulted only in inconvenience or embarrassment, the potential exists for an individual to be physically harmed or deported.

The Saudi Embassy in Washington advises women traveling to Saudi Arabia to dress in a conservative fashion, wearing ankle-length dresses with long sleeves, and not to wear trousers in public. In many areas of Saudi Arabia, particularly Riyadh and the central part of the Kingdom, Mutawwa pressure women to wear a full-length black covering known as an Abaya, and to cover their heads. Most women in these areas therefore wear an Abaya and carry a headscarf to avoid being accosted. Women who appear to be of Arab or Asian origin, especially those presumed to be Muslims, face a greater risk of being confronted.

[Ed. Note: Ain't no one gonna be presuming I'm Muslim. Dodged a bullet with that one. But Riyadh = Abayaland, nonetheless.]

Some Mutawwa try to enforce the rule that men and women who are beyond childhood years may not mingle in public unless they are family or close relatives. Mutawwa may ask to see proof that a couple is married or related. Women who are arrested for socializing with a man who is not a relative may be charged with prostitution. Some restaurants, particularly fast-food outlets, have refused to serve women who are not accompanied by a close male relative. In addition, many restaurants no longer have a "family section" in which women are permitted to eat. These restrictions are not always posted, and in some cases women violating this policy have been arrested. This is more common in Riyadh and the more conservative central Nejd region.

[Ed. Note: Should be interesting given that my entire team from work is male. And we'll be based in Riyadh. So much for jaunts to Starbucks with the colleagues.]

In public, dancing, playing music and showing movies are forbidden.

Saudi authorities do not permit criticism of Islam or the royal family. The government prohibits the public practice of religions other than Islam. Non-Muslims suspected of violating these restrictions have been jailed. Homosexual activity is considered to be a criminal offense and those convicted may be sentenced to lashing, prison, or death.

***

Yay, yay, KSA!

No, but really yay, I'm not saying that ironically. Despite the above (and perhaps because of it, knowing me), I am super-excited to start spending the majority of my weeks out of Dubai for the next couple months - and my weekends somewhere else altogether, thanks to that wonderful perk of consulting known as the weekly fly-back budget. (Why fly "back" when you can fly... to Yemen or Eritrea or Kenya or the Maldives?!)

I don't know how or when exactly it happened, but I've been feeling slightly nonplussed with the DXB as of late. Maybe it's the 14-month itch, maybe it's fallings-out I've had recently with a couple of friends, maybe it's turning 27 and realizing that I only have 3 years left to become an adult, maybe it's just that I'm in a rut and I need to get away for a bit longer than my usual 48-hour weekend excursions. At any rate, don't worry, I don't think the sheen has worn off, I just think it needs to be... polished a bit. By spending time in... Saudi Arabia. Because that's... normal.

WHATEVER, GO WITH IT.

In the meantime, tonight I am going to dinner at my Older Wiser American Friend M's house. She has a husband. And dogs. And furniture that's not from Ikea. And plans to have a baby soon. And all of that seems SO VERY CIVILIZED and wonderful. Granted, the husband's away on a business trip and the dogs are at the kennel and we plan on cracking open several bottles of wine from their cellar, but still. It will be nice to hang out with someone in this city who is not from Demographic Group: Crazy.

For once.

Ramadan, Marathon, and Party Time

First of all, Ramadan is upon us, so Ramadan Kareem to all my readers. May you experience all the blessings of this holy month - or may you have enough granola bars hidden in your purse to make it through 30 days of no public eating.

Or may you just be in a country that allows everyone to do their own thing. Whatevs.

Second of all, I'd like to get some respect for the fact that I fiiiiiiiiiiinally started my training for the Beirut Marathon (30 November, baby) tonight by doing a steamy early-evening 8-miler in Za'abeel Park. I'm telling you: rarely, if ever, has 8 miles been so hard. Hard to the point that about 5 miles in, I started running through the park's tepid sprinklers - even though I know for a fact that the water they use for watering grass here is FULL OF FECES (cf. we live in the desert, make due with what you have) - because I was so freaking hot. When I got home around 9:30 PM, I checked weather.com and was like "Ohhhhhhh... current temperature 94F, feels like 104F, humidity 56%... THAT'S why it sucked so much!" Ew.

Third of all, what a weekend. By now you've probably seen the pictures of our post-birthday/pre-Ramadan party on Facebook, but let me just say, it was one for the ages. According to the sign-in data from our building's reception desk, we had 112 discrete visitors during the course of the evening, and that's not counting guests-of-guests who didn't sign in. (Look how quantitative I am now that I'm a consultant. Would you like me to make you a ThinkCell graph?!) I think everyone I know in Dubai was there, and I feel like I got a taste of what my wedding will be like: I wanted to talk to everyone but didn't have time, everyone kept telling me how pretty my dress was, and I kept telling everyone how cheap my dress was. Ha. Although in ex-BF R's words, "hopefully your wedding night won't end with you thowing up in Flatmate E's toilet."

Knowing me, though, never say never...

If By "Sab’a wa ’Ishrun" You Mean "Twenty-Seven"

Okay, how weird is it that this is the THIRD STRAIGHT BIRTHDAY that I have celebrated in Dubai?! (As of 10 minutes ago, when the clock struck midnight.)

Do I, like, really live here or something?!

It's funny the way things have evolved for me in this city. Despite it being "the heinous asshole capital of the world" (as per Schmom's description), I have to say that - weirdly, in a way - there's no other place where I'd feel so at home celebrating my birthday. I could be in Tennessee with my family, or I could be in New York or DC or London or Singapore with a smattering of friends in each place, but somehow Dubai feels... right. Because my closest friends here do feel like family, in the same way my college roommates do, and I'm lucky to have a circle here beyond those people that really matters to me, too.

It's kind of shocking that the girls (Jojo, Mar, Al) + Flatmate E were all there last year - in fact, two of them were even around way back in 2006. For being in such a transient place, I do feel like I have roots here. And yes, assholes abound, but when I was absolutely and totally distraught four days ago after the CofI meltdown, I had plenty of people to run to in tears, and more than enough sage advice to try and process in the coming days.

I'm turning older than I'd like to be, but if there's anything I've learned over the past few months, it's that I'm still pretty damn young. So I feel like that's a good balance - although I did get a little sad today when I entered "26" as my age on the treadmill for the last time. (Will I burn more or less calories tomorrow when I turn 27?! Stay tuned...)

So with that, I will finish up some edits for my deck on tourism opportunities in Saudi Arabia (oh yeah, I have a job where I work now!) and I will down the last few sips of the too-strong midnight G&T E made me, and I will go to bed. And tomorrow I will work and stress and run and go to dinner at a new French bistro with 10 of the friends who have made my life here what it is.

And then I'll go all monastic for 48 hours in preparation for our Friday-night post-birthday pre-Ramadan absolute blowout house party. This is Dubai, after all. :)

Yachts and Abayas

Oh HAI!!!! Yes I blog. Just not recently. Sigh.

So where to begin. How about with this weekend. Thursday night I went out on the Gulf aboard some random Pakistani-American guys' yacht with new friends L (all-American blond... it's about time) and M (crazy Moldovan-Israeli Canadian). Then we went to their villa on The Palm for drinks, where we found out that they all have wives and kids in LA. And yet, they live in Dubai and were hardcore hitting on us. File under "I hate men." This is a theme we will revisit later in the post. The night ended with Hardee's at 4 AM. I woke up with a grease hangover from my Chicken Stars. Ew.

Friday I brunched with the girls and then hopped in Jojo's Peugeot to trek out to Ajman, a neighboring emirate that we had visited the weekend before to order custom-made abayas (for my upcoming trips to Saudi, and for Jojo's proclivity to be culturally sensitive and wear them during Ramadan). Sadly, the Bengali tailor who had been more concerned with feeling us up than taking our measurements (file under "I hate men") F'ed things up, leaving me with an abaya that wouldn't button over my boobs. Normally this would be an encouraging, but given that the flipside here is getting caned by the mutawa for impropriety, I was not amused. Sigh.

All was not lost, however, as Jojo (being culturally sensitive and all) took me to visit a family she knows in Ajman, who turned out to be some of the sheikhs/sheikhas of Ajman, which turned out to be a WONDERFULLY redemptive experience because they (or at least the women - we didn't get to see the men, obvi) were some of the most gracious, engaging, hospitable, endearing, down-to-earth people (not to mention locals) I have met in my year-plus in the UAE. Plus the fact that it was SO GREAT to hang out with a family and be outside the bubble of 20-30something professionals that I interact with on a day-to-day basis. Three generations in one room and I can't even tell you how fun it was to sit, chat, drink tea, drink coffee, drink more tea, eat, have them apologize for not having enough food, have them have the servants bring out more food, drink tea, eat, repeat ad infinitum for about 5 hours.

The cool thing is that even though they were very much hardcore locals (had never lived abroad or gone to school abroad or anything) and very conservative (they all put on hijab when we went outside in the yard to see their menagerie of gazelles/peacocks/etc [don't ask, it's an Emirati thing]), they were totally open, totally friendly, totally excited to talk to us as equals and peers. And they were all very encouraging about me going to Saudi, too, so that's good.

Then we left and they loaded us up with several kilos of fresh dates from their farm, a variety of flower arrangements, a dozen bottles of water, and boxes of homemade (well, servant-made) pastries for our hour-long drive back to Dubai. Oh, and parting gifts - a $100 bottle of Givenchy perfume for me and a $1,000 Etienne Aigner watch for Jojo.

(And yes, at some point in my adult life I hope to stop being so gauche that I look up the value of gifts on Amazon.com as soon as I get home. But that point will only come when the cash outflows of people around me stop blowing my mind so much. Which will not happen anytime soon, barring a move to, say, Yemen or West Virginia or somewhere else where they have poor people.)

At any rate, I've said it once and I'll say it again: Arab hospitality - not a joke.

And that's the weekend wrap-up. New job is good but is a bit of a "soft start" (oh, consulting jargon) since the kick-off for my case has been pushed back to 7 September... at any rate, love my new colleagues, love walking to my new office, and can't wait to get down and dirty with the Saudi economy in a couple weeks.

And finally - not with a bang, but with whispers of moon sightings in Mecca on 1 September - Ramadan is almost upon us again... has it really been a year already?!

Flux

So yes, a much-needed and long-overdue update, the theme of which will be "flux."

Why flux, you ask? Well... many things. For starters, I just got back from my krazy - and constantly in flux (eg, slept in 8 different cities during 8 nights on the road) - trip to Jordan/Palestine/Isr@el/Egypt with Lar. It was great, and you can check Facebook for pictures because it is too stressful to try and tell all the stories here. Though in many ways the trip (and the 16 total days Lar was here) were a bastion against flux, because it is really good and reassuring to have someone who knows you better than almost anyone else in the world come and insert themselves into your crazy new life for 2+ weeks. Judgment ensues.

Continuing with flux: I got my new passport this week. My old one expires in 2009, and I didn't want to get my visa for the new job only to have my passport expire 6 months later... plus, my recently acquired Isr@eli stamps make travel elsewhere in the Middle East a little dicey. (Oh, and I was never going to get let back into America with my current eclectic collection of visas... yeah.) ANYHOW, the whole process of getting a new passport was very traumatic for me, which sounds crazy, but if travel is as important to you as it is to me and you do it as much as I do, you will understand that parting with the physical evidence of the past 9 years of my life was... weird. It necessitated a lot of pontificating along the lines of "OMG, I got this passport in July 1999 when I had never even left the US, just in case I needed to cross over the Canadian border during my college orientation canoing trip to Minnesota, and who could have ever imagined 9 years ago that I'd be where I am now, and where on earth will I be 10 years from now when this passport expires, and no matter where I am won't it kind of suck regardless because I'll be 36, and and and and and..." [cue hyperventilation]. Anyhoos, to make matters worse, as I'm flipping through the old passport for like the millionth time, I suddenly find a note penciled on one of the pages that must have been written at least two years ago, but which I had never noticed until now: "I love you! JMVDV" Which is NOT the kind of note you need to find when you are already having a mini-psychic crisis about The Changing Stages of Life. Argh.

More flux: my last day at work is 13 August, and my new job starts 20 August. Furthermore, I found out this week that my first project is in... wait for it... S@udi Ar@bia! Which means I'll be living/working in the Kingdom from Sunday-Wednesday most weeks for the better part of the next three months. Which is great, and crazy, and exciting, and an incredible opportunity, but is obvi a huge change from my current lifestyle in Dubai. And... wow. I'm also totally intimidated by the level at which they expect me to work and feel that I might have concocted an enormous sham in convincing them I was qualified to be hired for the level at which they took me. So I fear that when they realize this in S@udi, I'll be on the first boat back to ex-consultant land... I don't know where that is, but I imagine it's even worse than Riy@dh.

Sooooooooooooooooooo... that's enough flux for now. To deal with all of this change (and to celebrate one of my last weekends of freedom before I sell out to the Man) I am going to Baku, Azerbaijan with Flatmates E & D for the weekend. It will be my first time on the Caspian Sea, my second former Soviet republic, and my third 48-hour weekend trip of the summer... AND we plan to watch the Olympic opening ceremonies in a dodgy communist-era bar on Friday night while drinking lots of Azeri beer. What could be better?!

Off!

It's been a whirlwind 3 days of having Larry here and I have to say, it's been GREAT to have my two worlds collide (Lar and Eric are out picking up Applebee's takeaway together while I "pack," in fact) and have such important people in my life meet each other.

Tomorrow morning Lar and I are off to Jordan, and from there on out it's anyone's guess. Tentative itinerary/chronology is: Amman, Petra, Jericho, Ramallah, Jerusalem, Bethlehem, Tel Aviv, Haifa, Nazareth, Galilee, Jaffa, Eilat, Mount Sinai, Sharm Al Sheikh - although that is, of course, entirely subject to change at the discretion of border patrols/security situations/personal whim.

I am sure it's going to be a wonderful, epic, amazing trip, and I will try to blog a bit from the road - although Lar gets fussy when I spend more than 10 minutes in an internet cafe, so we'll see. Barring that, we're back in Dubai on 2 August provided neither of us comes down with Jerusalem syndrome, which - let's be honest - is not entirely improbable.

Peace/shalom/salaam!

Another Day, Another Bullish NYT Article on Dubai

Check it out. (Thanks, Dad.)

The cool thing is that the building they're talking about, the Dubai International Financial Centre, houses my new office. ;) So now you can picture me trotting my way through The Gate and into consulting stardom. Oh, and my best friend Mar lives in the elaborate blue building on the far right side of the photo, and I live directly across the street (not pictured). I love it when my neighborhood digs are plastered all over a newspaper 7,000 miles away - makes the world feel weirdly small.

LARRY COMES TONIGHT!

21 Countries, 6 Years, 2 Monkeys, 1 Goal

(The goal, obviously, is to elicit the question "Who does that?" - I would have used a colon or perhaps a hyphen for the sake of clarity, but I was not in charge of t-shirt design for this trip. Ahem.)

Larry touches down at 10:45 PM tomorrow and I am peeing my pants with excitement to see his cute little all-American face pop out amongst the Pakistanis at the DXB arrivals hall. We're here for 3 days, during which time my mission is to make him not hate Dubai (a sizable task, given he is more predisposed to rail against the city's fakeness/plasticity/egregiousness than anyone besides maybe my mom). Then on Friday morning we fly out to Amman for 9 days in Jordan, the West Bank, Israel, and Egypt (with a long enough layover in Kuwait on the way back that we can leave the airport and count it as a country visited together, as per the t-shirt specifications).

I cannot even begin to imagine how great the trip is going to be, and I feel like some history-heavy, spirituality-pondering time in the Holy Land with the wholesome goodness of L.Soch is exactly what I need given recent partying/drama-mongering/man-obsessing. (Although I'm sure there will be some crazy nights out in Tel Aviv and Sharm Al Sheikh.)

In other news, I am really intrigued by the French government's decision to deny citizenship to this woman because she wears niqab. I am actually totally unable to decide how I feel about it. On one hand, it completely goes against freedom of expression/religion, and it seems to be an arbitrary line - what's next, denying citizenship to Muslims who don't drink wine based on the same argument (that they haven't "sufficiently assimilated" to French culture)? On the other hand - especially living in the region where the niqab originated, and where 20-30% of local women still wear it - I am so viscerally opposed to the practice of wearing niqab that I almost want to go ahead and agree with the decision simply because it feels right.

Sigh. Is it time to leave work yet??!

A Long Time Coming

A momentous, momentous day has arrived. Yesterday I submitted my resignation from my current job, and today I formally accepted the offer with the consulting firm I've been considering. I have to say, it feels GREAT... I'll start on 20 August, just in time to get staffed and settled in on a case before Ramadan starts at the beginning of September. (Hopefully not a case in Saudi given that Ramadan there - to put it nicely - would BLOW.)

My last day at the old job is 14 August, so I'm already scheming about what I can do with 6 days of free time... I'm flirting with the idea of America but it's a long schlep to make if I want to start fresh at the new job, and if E is free I think the lure of this trip to Eritrea we've been talking about for ages might prove too tempting to deny. Anyone else have suggestions and/or want to travel with me???

Beirut last weekend was also a long time coming, and also GREAT. Much like Carrie looking at the perfect apartment mysteriously vacated by divorcees in the SATC movie, I found myself wondering: if you live here - in a city this beautiful, this vibrant, this blessed by nature and history - what is there to fight about?! (And then, like Carrie discovering the small closet, I remembered: Israel.) It definitely lived up to the hype and I can't wait to go back and see more of Lebanon. It was also great to see Bubba in the latest installment of the "Travels Around the Middle East with My Freshman-Year Floormates (And Other Things That Would Have Seemed Unlikely in 1999)" world tour.

What is not GREAT is my hangover right now. The crew from Kabul flew into town last night for a couple days of R&R in Dubai, so we hosted an epic dinner party for them which produced several interesting developments, including -

(1) Me & E finding out that our friend Farhad is a member of Afghanistan's former royal family
(2) Me & E learning that - unbeknownst to us! - Farhad had hired armed guards to follow us around the entire time we were in Kabul (in Farhad's words, "I can't believe you're shocked! Did you think it was just COINCIDENCE that you didn't get kidnapped?!")

Off to get my highlights done - let the last month of "work" begin!

A Year [Sappiness Alert!] in the Life

One year ago today, I arrived in Dubai.

With four orange suitcases in tow, I walked out of the airport, through the heavy, palpable 11 PM July heat and into the black Escalade that was waiting to take me to my swank 5-star hotel - the hollow trappings of an arrival that left me laying awake in bed all night, heart racing, teary-eyed looking at pictures of my dog, petrified about what I had gotten myself into and why I thought it was a good idea to move here and feeling more alone than I have ever felt in my life. The only thing that got me through that night - sleepless though it was - was to keep reminding myself that no matter what, I could always burn my bridges, hop a taxi back to the airport the next day (or any day thereafter), buy a one-way ticket back home, and let the dust settle from there.

But sure enough, the sun rose on July 11th, the pervasive disorientation of my jet lag began to ease, I dragged myself into the office for my first day at work and before I knew it, well, I was at that elusive point from which you never end up looking back.

So, in the spirit of Lucy's old blog (and my own self-referential tendencies), over the past year...

* * *

I've watched the tallest building in the world sprout its way into the sky, I've watched reclaimed sand in the Gulf take shape as the islands of The World, and I've watched the only historic, character-filled neighborhood in Dubai be systematically razed by the bulldozers of a large government-owned property developer - all from the comfort of my living room window, usually with a glass of wine in hand.

I've come to understand many of this region's peoples and cultures way better than before. I've also started to comprehend the power of racism, segregation, and class hierarchy ways that I never wanted to imagine - often by fighting those forces at play within myself.

I've realized that no matter how much Haifa Wehbe and Nancy Ajram I listen to on the treadmill, I'm never going to be able to move my hips like a Lebanese woman on the dance floor. But I've also realized that the average Lebanese woman is never going to be able to dig her quads into a 5:40 mile. From each according to her ability, that's the great lesson of Dubai.

I've visited new countries (Ethiopia, India, Kuwait, Syria, Afghanistan and - tonight! - Lebanon), old countries (Oman, Germany, and of course the good ol' US of A), and developed a lofty list of must-visits for the next year (Palestine/Israel, Egypt, Qatar, Kurdistan/Iraq, Yemen, Djibouti, Eritrea, Sudan, Kazakhstan, Pakistan, and Iran).

I've paid US income taxes for - hopefully! - the last time in a long, long time.

I've purchased a car for the first time in my life and been irreparably influenced by the ease, convenience, and bliss of at-will automotive transport - and yes, government-subsidized petrol doesn't hurt. I have had one (reportable) accident, blame for which I couldn't flirt my way out of even when the police officer suggested I call someone ("your husband? your brother? your father?") to pick me up at the station and I mustered my best crocodile-tearful response, "I can't, I'm all alone here!" (Didn't work - the accident still went on file as my fault.)

I have adopted more Britishisms - petrol, queue, flat, mobile, lift, chuffed, keen - than I ever did in a year of living in London, and I quite fancy the change in my vocabulary.

I have had my mind blown by the incredible, incomprehensible amounts of wealth here (as I write this, I sit next to a 23 year-old Saudi-Iranian colleague who - depending on her mood for the day - drives her Mercedes G-Wagon, Bentley coupe, or Audi A8L with 6.0L engine to the office ... yes, that's close to a million dollars' worth of cars, not including the posh license plates that add at least another couple hundred thousand dollars to the mix).

I have also had my mind blown by the incredible poverty and exploitation that lives alongside this wealth (Pakistani construction workers coming home from 12-hour shifts working in 100F+ heat to labor camps where the ceiling fans have been removed so they can't use them to hang themselves; beaten, battered Filipina housemaids whose $125/month salary is sent directly to their 3 young children back home, living in windowless maids' rooms which lock only from the outside, not from within).

I've made a great, amazing, surprisingly close group of friends who are truly my family on this side of the world and my roots in a place of constant flux. And I've realized - much to my delight - that in a world of blogging, Facebook, Gchat, international SMS, global interconnectivity, and the occasional late-night $80 phone call (whoops), old friendships persevere and grow even at a distance of 7,000 miles and 8-9 time zones.

I've kept the goal I had when I arrived: use my current job as a vehicle to get to Dubai, make some connections, and then get a better job. But I'm still looking for my calling. (Unless 16-hour workdays and really elaborate .ppt slides are my calling, which... they might be, we'll see.)

I have wanted - several times - to dig a hole in the desert and bury myself in it, having been engrossed in driving/vamping along to my iPod's Miley Cyrus/Hilary Duff teenybopper playlist only to look up and find the eyes of a bus full of laborers (or worse, a Land Cruiser full of Emirati guys) staring down at me, transfixed in wonder and confusion. I now understand how it feels to be a curiosity and a fish out of water.

I've done a marathon, and a half-marathon, and a teeny tiny baby triathlon. But I've also gained 10 pounds thanks to too many lazy Saturdays spent at the pool, indulging in water-bottle gin & tonics and Lebanese takeaway.

I have cursed the traffic, cursed the construction, cursed the locals, cursed the laborers, cursed the heat, cursed the queues, cursed the bureaucracy, cursed the drivers, cursed the malls, cursed the censorship, and cursed myself - at times - for moving here. But I have also come to really love and passionately defend this crazy, chaotic, cosmopolitan city that I now call home, and I've seen my answer to "How long do you plan to stay in Dubai?" evolve from "a year, maybe two" to "for the foreseeable future."

I've learned to appreciate things about my country, about my family and friends, and about the way I grew up that I never would have realized and been grateful for had I not left them behind for, well, the foreseeable future.

* * *

So there you have it, folks - my first year in Dubai. Thanks for reading and - inshallah, y'all! - there will be more adventures to come!

Her Abaya is Like Soooooo Slutty Today

This is a very interesting and cogent article about how the Kabul embassy attack could affect the region. Read it if you share my newfound (enhanced?) concern for what's currently happening in Afghanistan.

In other news, we just got an email from our corporate HR department about office dress code. Please take a moment to enjoy the first line...

Ladies

Ø UAE National attire (avoid wearing tight Abayas).

Ø Formal business attire.

Ø Avoid wearing see-through clothes, low necklines shirts, skinny pants and tight and micro-mini skirts.

Ø T-shirts or shirts should cover at least the upper arm.

Ø Clothing that reveals too much cleavage is not appropriate for a place of business.

Avoid wearing tight abayas... LOVE IT!

And in other other news, I just had a long Thai lunch with my crazy Romanian colleague who I like to think of as "the Kaouthar of Dubai" (haha) where, over tom yum and glass noodles, she lectured me about how I'm not 20 anymore and I need to start assessing whether I could marry any man I date right from the beginning of the relationship, and how she knows I'm very emotional but I have to start being rational about men because "trust me, I used to be guided by emotions with guys, and look where it got me? 34 and not married!"

Chilling. Eastern Europeans are so scary, dude.

And fiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiinally, in 2 minutes I'm off to the LAST interview of my interminable 6ish-month re-job hunt. It's final rounds with some partners from yet another consultancy, and let me just say, if I NEVER have to talk about why I want to go into strategy/management consulting or how I ended up living in Dubai or what 17% of 86 is again, it's too soon. I'm pretty happy with the offer I've gotten from Nameless Schmancy Consultancy so continuing the process is a marginally moot point, but hey, I like neatly tied-up endings, so I can turn on the charm one last time. ;)

BEIRUT TOMORROW!

Kabul, Dubai, Beirut

Hello there.

Much to my great chagrin and sadness, this morning's suicide bombing in Kabul (current death toll stands at 40) probably won't do much to help me convince people to visit Afghanistan. It's very, very hard to reconcile that event with the experience I had in Kabul - but then again, I guess that's the point. You don't feel that kind of violence coming until it's upon you - if it was predictable, it wouldn't incite so much fear.

The eerie thing is that we drove down that exact street just over a week ago when we were there. I remember Farhad pointing out the Indian Embassy and the Ministry of the Interior, and telling us that expats call it "Baghdad Street" because the presence of so many high-value targets has made it vulnerable to repeated attacks.

I don't know what else to say other than the fact that I'm still very glad I went and very thankful my time there was safe. I always say the reason I travel is because it makes places real and that's definitely the case here - what would have been a headline meriting a 15-second skim on NYtimes.com is now so much more of a real, tangible, tragic event. Maybe if we could all see each other as coming from "real" places, we would be less willing to harm each other. Empathy, man... it's a bitch.

[End philosophical musings.]

In other news, I'm firming up the details of an offer from Nameless Schmancy Consultancy, for those of you with whom I have not shared the good news. I am so incredibly happy to have made it through the crazy, intense, totally intimidating recruitment process - honestly, I didn't believe that it would end with me getting an offer, so thank you all for your butt-clenching and prayers. Pending a bit of negotiation, I have every intention to accept, so professional fulfillment - a long time in coming - should hopefully be in my immediate future.

And in the most exciting news of all, I'm going to Beirut this weekend. I cannot even begin to overemphasize my excitement about this trip, because ever since I got interested in the Middle East, Beirut has been the iconic city of the region for me. From countless hours reading about the Phalangists and the Druze and the Israeli invasion of '82 for my ill-fated senior thesis at G-town, to late nights spent eating labneh w zaatar and dancing to Nancy Ajram at Neyla in DC, to all the crazy couture-whoring money-dropping Lebanese I party with nowadays in Dubai, Lebanon has always been the epitome of what intrigues me about the Middle East. When I used to daydream about what it would be like to live in the Arab world - back before I had ever even set foot in the region - the image I always had in my head wasn't the pyramids at Giza or the Ka'aba in Mecca or the treasury at Petra... don't ask me why, but it was always Rue Monot in Beirut.

So now, finally (following the ill-fated tickets I booked in July 2006 and then had to cancel when the Israelis started bombing the runways at Hariri International a day later), I'M GOING! It's going to be a crazy trip - arrive 2 AM on Thursday night/Friday morning, meet Bubba (who's flying in from Frankfurt for the occasion), cab it straight to the club where my Lebanese friends have a table booked, sleep for a few hours, sightsee and be touristy all day Friday, more clubs on Friday night, and then (according to my friend Walid) -

saturday we have a booking at oceana beach, the temple of superficial fun. MTV-like open-air beach resort club with people dancing and getting drunk in the middle of banana fields in southern beirut. then saturday night is free for bar-humping and goodbyes :(

LOL. Bar-humping. Love it. I fly back out to Dubai at 3 AM on Sunday morning, arriving at 7 AM - just enough time to collect my car and my sobriety from the airport and drive straight to work. And yes, I am aware that there are probably only a few years left in my life where I can keep living like this without collapsing.

But in the meantime, it will be a weekend for the ages. :)