Back!

Okay, okay, sorry for the repeated hiatuses. I'm so far behind that it seems like there's too much to catch up on, but having been called out last weekend by my most loyal blog reader (she who actually strong-armed her work IT department into unblocking this site, despite an office firewall which prohibits Blogger), I will do my best to catch up.

We'll start with the recent. The first 3 nights of this week, I adhered strictly to the following routine: came home from work at 6 PM, made myself a vat of pasta (whole wheat, at least) and proceeded to download/watch The Hills and read this fellow G-town alum's somewhat trashy, shamelessly self-promoting, but oh-so-addictive blog for the entire evening. I have clearly been socializing far too much as of late, thus necessitating my retreat into this cocoon of pop culture and carbs – and what a dreamy cocoon it was.

Socializing came to a head last weekend with the Dubai World Cup, the world's richest horse race and basically a sweatier, nouveau-riche version of Ascot. Leave it to Dubai to be able to colossally F up the logistics of what should have been an extremely fun event (we waited 2 hours to get in and – much more painfully – an hour for a taxi home at the end of the night). Aside from queuing for the better part of the afternoon – curls wilting and hat-feathers drooping – it was a great evening, and it was fun to bump into literally everyone I know in Dubai, 90% of whom were drunk off their @$$es (yes, I'd love some more champagne from your bottle, thankyouverymuch).

Last weekend I also went to church for the first time in (yikes!) almost 9 months of living in Dubai. To do so, I had to drive about 30 minutes out of town to the village of Jebel Ali, which is home to a "church freezone" (not to be confused with a "church-free zone," aka the rest of the UAE). On the way there, I couldn't stop thinking about how funny it would be if, à la Dubai's naming trends, they had decided to call it, like, "International Christ Zone" or "Christianity Village"?! Oh, I'm cracking myself up… but the obvious answer is that it would be a little too high-profile for something that Sheikh Mo prefers to keep on the down-low, since it is still kind of a big deal in the Gulf that he allows non-Muslim religious institutions to operate on an official level.

At any rate, it's definitely a one-stop God shop – a few square blocks of land crammed with Orthodox, Coptic, Evangelical, Maronite, Chaldean, Catholic and who-knows-what-else churches, catering to the varied demographics of Dubai's expat community (at least the Christian part… no word yet on Synagogue 'n' Temple City). I opted for the good ol' RCC, and quickly realized that aside from one Swiss priest, I was the only white face in the entire packed sanctuary. If I had to estimate I'd say the congregation was about 60% Indian and 40% Filipino – which was interesting and, if I can say this, kind of humbling.

Okay, what else… oh yeah, Syria! The pictures on Facebook tell most of the story (I will not bother posting the link here since Schmom – the last holdout – has now figured out how to check my Facebook profile on her own) but suffice it to say, it was a great trip. It was so refreshing to be in a place that was real and has history and culture and stories beyond the past 20 years, and I cannot recommend it highly enough as a destination – chuck everything you’ve heard about Syrians as being anti-American out the window, too.

Anyhow, that brings us up to the present, kind of. This weekend I am either going to a camel beauty pageant in Abu Dhabi or to Bangladesh. I think it’s safe to say that I am the first person ever in the history of the world to have written that sentence. For the former, I have received a heads-up from M.Har all the way back in Amrika, so I just have to figure out where/when it is; for the latter, E hatched a plan last night (over several glasses of wine) that we should cash in a few thousand airline miles and take a free trip to Dhaka or Chittagong for the weekend… don’t put it past us.

And that’s all she wrote, for now – but now that I’m semi-caught up, I promise to blog more frequently. It’s kind of like when I go a really long time without running and start thinking “well cleeeeeeeearly I have to run 15 miles today to make up for how lazy I’ve been or else it’s not even worth running at all” – but then I get back into a routine and I’m like, “oh, okay, 4 miles a day is cool.” Does that make any sense at all? Probably not. Ciao!