Thursday, November 27, 2008
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!
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!
Monday, November 24, 2008
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!
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!
Sunday, November 2, 2008
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.
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.
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