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?!
