So in light of my total lack of recent updates, some bullet points!
The Home Front: Flatmate Javs is moving out on the 28th and taking his place will be New Flatmate D, a very cute, earnest, double Ivy League-educated mutual friend of E & I who worked in microfinance in Vietnam before selling out to do banking in Dubai, competes in triathlons, and - most dreamily! - is AMERICAN. He'll be a fun 3rd flatmate, and now that we're 100% Amrikan chez nous, you can rest assured that we'll host the best July 4th party east of London.
The World, and Our Place in It: With the influx of newcomers/guests in town lately, I have been privy to a host of really interesting brain-picking sessions as of late. This past weekend, for instance, we had three American friends staying with us - one who works for an NGO in Darfur, one who had just come from a pan-Arab political conference in Qatar, and one who is moving to Dubai after living in Saudi for a year as part of her consulting firm's "pilot project" of staffing female consultants in the Kingdom. Needless to say, this prompted some intense conversations over late-night cocktails and champagne brunch, and I learned a lot (or at least, heard a lot of informed opinions): what's happening in CAR and DRC is way worse than anything that's going on in Sudan right now; Save Darfur is funded primarily by a group of ultraconservative Jewish lobbyists who are playing up the crisis in an attempt to wrest control of most of Sudan (including, yeah, those really resource-rich parts) from the Arab/Muslim government of northern Sudan; Doha, Qatar is the most boring city in the GCC; Clinton's former WTO rep is a lousy speaker who needs to be talked through a .PPT for six hours before he can present it; Western women working in Saudi are required by law to wear abaya, but not the veil; and finally - if authorities at the public beheadings in Riyadh ever see a Westerner in the audience for an execution, they will bring them up to the absolute front row of the spectacle in full view of the person being executed, because the worst possible thing for a Muslim is to see a nonbeliever at the time of their death. I suppose that is the literal enactment of "adding insult to injury." Wow.
The Past: My daytrip to Kuwait with D two weekends ago was really surprisingly fun. As much as I had negative preconceptions of Kuwaitis - overprivileged 13 year-olds crashing their parents' Lamborghinis with impunity because the have money and oil to burn - every Kuwaiti I met during my time there was friendly, unassuming, and far more down-to-earth than your average Emirati. Who knows how much you can really judge based on 12 hours, but our afternoon out in the desert chilling with friendly, middle-class, non-English-speaking locals (pics on Facebook obvi) was really testament to the fact that Arab hospitality is not, you know, a cliche or a stereotype. It's a real value and a true priority and as a stranger you are treated like (better than?) family - and coming from a Western/American upbringing, that fact is so striking and so cool. I could definitely have stayed for more than just the day (there was lots of nerdy Gulf War history stuff that I wanted to see, but we ran out of time), so my recommendation? Add it to your list. (Oh and I got a pair of USD $500+ Diane von Furstenburg dresses on sale for less than one-fifth of their retail price. Respect.)
The Future: Tomorrow I fly to Damascus at 10 PM for an action-packed long weekend of fun, friends, and falafel. I'm expecting I'll like Syria as much or more than anywhere else I've been in the Middle East (the history! the architecture! the sweets!) so it has some big shoes to fill, but traveling with Mar & Jojo is sure to be full of adventures regardless of the destination.
Okay, so that's the update round-up! Be well and I'll be back from Syria on the 23rd!
