Random Smatterings

1. Dan was pulled over the other day, by a police officer standing on the road. Yes, the traffic is that slow. You can be pulled over by a man, who is standing, on the road, waving his finger at you to come here.

Dan pulled over. He thought, hmmm... I wonder what this is about. The uniformed man took his license and registration, gave it a passing glance, and waved Dan on about his day. The cause of the stop? No one knows. I theorize it has to do with the age of the car. If the registration had read 1993, it probably would have been towed and smooshed into a compactor and mailed back to us in cube form.

2. The Dubai International Bowling Center, in our neighborhood, has 36 fully-automated lanes that give you no effing mercy on foot-faults. Those robots know if and when you stepped 1 millimeter over the line, and they do not care, and they will not give you a re-do, and they will not let you start the game over. You will play through. Mark it zero, Danny, mark it zero!!!

3. "...and then the boy and his father went camping in a tent. Ok pause. Ladies, do you ever go camping in a tent?"
"Yes, Miss."
"Do you ever see insects in your tent?"
(Maryam: "HAHAhAHAHAHAHAHHheeeeehehehehehehheheHOOOOHOHOHOHOHOHO")
"Maryam, you and your dirty mind."
(Ladies: HAHAhAHAhahHAHAHHeheheeeehehehehehehHOOOOOHOHOHOHHOHO")

4. The internet is broken, apparently because a shipped dragged an anchor across several hundred kilometers of the sea between here and Europe and severed the three main fibre-optic data cables one middle-eastern region would require to remain connected to the global inter-net. Apparently they're re-routing data traffic through Asia but it's iffy. The nation seems to be on-and-off at this point. =)

Haircuts

Despite having lived in Dubai for seven months, events unfolded, either by accident or design, in such a way that I had not yet (until recently) had my hair cut in this fair Emirate. Last week I finally bit the bullet and walked over to the venerable establishment known as "Al Kamal Hair Cutting Saloon" (Salons are called "Saloons" here. Weird.), located right across the street from our flat. The staff was solid, the place smelled surprisingly good, and I got a hell of a good haircut for only 20 Dirhams (about 5 bucks). The only question I was asked was "Haircut?" but that seemed to be enough to get the job done.

It's not that I hadn't been given a haircut in 7 months. I got here in April, freshly cut at the assembly-line over at Great Clips (at the NE Broadway location where I, to my eternal shame, waited patiently to insert my oh-so-cool-won't-you-please-validate-me travel plans into the awkward barber-banter). I followed that up two months later with a decent cut in India, followed 2 months later by a strange, slightly uncomfortable, and strangely styled cut in Thailand. Hence, by being the kind of guy who refuses to get his hair cut until it looks ridiculous, I managed to get my hair cut in 4 countries in 11 months. That's got to be closing in on a record, and if it's not...well...then I guess I'll never be closing in on a record.

Anyhoo...I thought I'd share my travel-haircut thoughts (throwing in China from way-back-when), in hopes that it may amuse or benefit someone someday. Ranked from best to worst based on total overall value.

1. India- Price $0.75; Includes shave, exfoliation, cucumber scented lotions, head, ear and back massage, and a pretty decent haircut. English Spoken: Some. I didn't walk out feeling like I looked like a million bucks, but the level of service was unparalleled.

2. China- Price $0.22; Includes shave and haircut. English Spoken: Not a word. In the end, I looked a little military but the shave was worth coming back for. My traveling companion had a horrifying (for him, for me amusing) experience at the same place leading me to offer this advice: If you're at all worried about it, do yourself the favor of taking as long as necessary to illustrate via hand motions how much of your beautiful hair you would like to fall to the floor with the first swipe of the clippers.

3. Dubai: Price $5.40, Includes haircut. English Spoken: One Word. Probably the best looking haircut of my non-U.S. haircuts, but the price leaves something to be desired. Next time I'll include a shave and see if that tips the scales.

4. Thailand: Price $3.00, Includes strange haircut, styling gel and bloody shave. English Spoken: A little. I had high hopes for the Thai shave and a haircut, but it ended up disappointing. The shave was a bit painful and left my face raw and bleeding. The haircut...well it looked like it would fit if I were a Bangkok hipster. It combed out OK though and it got the job done.

Dan's Birthday

Happy Birthday Dan!! For Dan's birthday, we got together a couple of friends and drove to Oman:

Then, we arrived at the harbor...


...got on a boat...


...and cruised around the fjord-y coast of Oman.

As one can probably ascertain here, it was b-e-a-u-t-i-f-u-l.

Pug of the week

Dubai Mall

This weekend we visited the Dubai Mall, which opened on Oct 30 with claims of being the world's biggest mall. At this point, probably at least half of the stores still aren't open yet, but we found three very important things at Dubai Mall:

1. This aquarium. Holding some obscene number of fish and a variety of cool sharks, and sporting an underwater tunnel and an interpretive center, this aquarium fulfills all Alicia's aquariumish desires.

2. A KMS store. I use KMS shampoo and conditioner, and until now, havebeen importing it from America via other people's luggage. Unable to get KMS products shipped from Amazon, and unable to find them in-country, and running low on supply, I thought recently that this would be the one thing that forever tied me to America - the one thing which mandates that I not become a fugitive who would be arrested at the airport, needing always to come back at least once every few years to refresh my supply. Well, no longer - the KMS store at Dubai Mall, the blessed, blessed store filled with absolutely nothing but KMS products and glowing the large neon letters "KMS" over the door, eliminates my dependency on coming to America for products. 

3. Book World by Kinokuniya. Magrudy's can officially suck one - we now have Book World. After doing a little Christmas shopping at Magrudy's recently, I had resigned myself to the fact that if I ever wanted to buy a book again, it was going to have to be on Amazon and I was going to have to pay $15 to ship it.  Why? Magrudy's looks like a bookstore, but once you get inside, you realize it doesn't really have anything except some crappy pieces of paper glued together and slapped with a price tag that nobody in their right mind would ever want to read. I wandered all over Magrudy's with a 25% off coupon and couldn't find one flipping thing I wanted to buy.  Not so with Book World! Although not quite on the scale of Powell's, Book World offers us the gamut of weird eccentric literature along with old favorites and world classics. I will now be doing all of my book shopping exclusively at Book World.

It's been cold and rainy all week - very refreshing. We got our Christmas tree and put it up, a nice 7-foot faux pine that was practically free at Lulu's, and dug out all the decor and the stockings and whatnot. Plus, I got a free bottle of scotch (buy 1 get one) from MMI for my birthday, so we went with the Dewar's 12-year and now we've got a nice supply of Christmas scotch.

Global Village!

Yesterday, not being at work and all, I went out with my friends to Dubai Global Village where we went around to all the different "country" pavilions and shopped for stuff from that country and ate that country's food. At the South Africa pavilion, this was on the wall:

It was either at Jordan or Syria where this very nice woman tried to sell me som

e remote-conrol drop-off underwear, which was unexpected. And it was at the Indian food court (near Vietnam) where we ordered one or two things from every shop and had a giant smorgasbord.

In Morocco we found all manner of tagines, and thought it unfortunate that Emmo wasn't around. In Pakistan we found all manner of leather jackets, and nearly bought one for Mr. Dan, but restrained ourselves. In Yemen we tasted honey labelled, "For Married Persons Only." In Rwanda we found some really cool artwork, which I again restrained myself from buying, and in China we found nothing but knockoff crap. In Thailand we had some of these delicious little rice-flour snacky sweet things and some Thai massage parlours offering 1/2hr foot massage for 60 AED. Not bad, but we didn't have time to waste in this glorious wonderland.

The most exciting part came at the end of the night, when we left Global Village to drive home and... the sky opened up. We had a huge rainstorm which immediately flooded a lot of the streets and made it difficult to get home. It reminded me of Portland! The cause? From The National Newspaper:

"This week’s unsettled weather was caused by a layer of cold area that has moved over the country from Iran. " 

Damn that Iran.