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. :)
Wednesday, August 27, 2008
Saturday, August 23, 2008
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?!
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?!
Wednesday, August 6, 2008
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?!
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?!
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