Monday, December 28, 2009

Going into seclusion for awhile.

Lack of motivation.

Sunday, December 27, 2009

Food Food Food Pause Recovery Food

In what has turned out to be a somewhat surprising holiday, I have been doing nothing but eating and drinking and nursing early-morning headaches for three days straight. Also enjoying lots of good company and meeting new people.

Went to a Canadian couple's home for Christmas dinner and had a bona-fide de-licious home made turkey and gravy. Mmmm.... went to another friend's house for Christmas lunch and we had Indian food and watched some super tear-jerker 3-hour Hindi movie featuring hunka hunka Aamir Khan. It was a really good movie, but I still can't get into all the singing and dancing in Hindi movies. It's just so weird how they randomly break into large-cast musical ensembles in the middle of like a dialogue.

Went for Christmas-leftovers dinner last night where a whole new leg of lamb was roasted so I'm not sure how THAT was supposed to work.

Have two more social engagements this week (NYE is one) and then I'm starting arabic class twice a week in the evenings. Just finished enrolling... I'm pleased to have discovered on their placement test that I've self-studied my way to the 5th level of study (although I think there are about 10 levels above that.) Work is paying for most of it through professional development fund so that's also a huge perk. But now I'm going to have homework and stuff... eek...

Monday, December 21, 2009

A little cheer

There's sure nothing in the world more cheerful than making people smile. :) My mom & best friend decided to open their Christmas presents early and turned out to be quite pleased. Victory!

It's getting a little bit chilly in Dubai but not bad. Went shopping and tried on lots of dresses that are waaaaay above my budget, in anticipation of this wedding in January. Of course, they all looked fantastic. I was hoping they'd look frumpy and then I wouldn't want them anymore.

Saturday, December 19, 2009

Christmas in Dubai, Take 2

Second Christmas in Dubai is shaping up to be fairly uneventful. Christmas Eve I have been invited to dinner at my best friend's house (best Dubai friend that is; to my best friend in Portland; don't worry, you're still #1 on my speed dial...) ... so that should be fun. However, her new boyfriend has monopolized her Christmas day, insisting that they go to Christmas lunch together.... **alone** ooh la la. Not that I can blame him, I'd surely want to do the same thing.



So my Christmas Day so far involves sleeping as long as humanly possible and then making myself a bowl of spaghetti-O's. If it seems like I'm reveling in loneliness and depression, it could be because I'm taking a page out of Charlie Brown:




"This is my depressed stance. When you're depressed, it makes a lot of difference how you stand. The worst thing you can do is straighten up and hold your head high because then you'll start to feel better. If you're going to get any joy out of being depressed, you've got to stand like this. "

On the bright side, I've been invited to a wedding in January, so I can at least have a good excuse to buy myself a new dress. Because nothing cures the blues like shopping...

Tuesday, December 15, 2009

Salazmeyer flies solo awhile

Many of you know by now that half of us are in Nepal in pursuit of greater knowledge of the Universe.

The other half of us are in Dubai for the holidays, fairly broke, and more recently, sick like the dickens. It ain't pretty. This year, my good friends are either madly in love with someone new (ie; preoccupied), or are away, or are going to very expensive brunches for xmas. So I will probably spend Christmas just calling home and cleaning house. I volunteered to work xmas weekend to let the other people go spend time with their loved ones.

This past weekend it rained heavily - for like 12 hours straight - and caused a lot of crazy flooding and traffic nightmares. People were stuck for 4-5 hours on the freeways around town. Some nice pics here.

I am now on a mission of self-improvement; read more, study arabic more, exercise more, eat better, spend more time with my friends, call home more often. It is a mere 6 months until summer break again.

Thailand cont'd


Thailand was entirely awesome. In the interest of time, I won't go into excessive detail. My two excellent travelling companions and I did manage to fly to the island of Ko Tao (pictured above) after a bit of a hairy spot: one of us (I shant specify who) forgot to bring along the credit card used to purchase the plane tickets to the island in the midst of all that late-to-catch-a-plane rush, meaning we nearly couldn't board the plane. It being my birthday though, a little birthday luck must have kicked in, because our counter lady for Bangkok Air let us make a printout of the credit card statement and use that to check in instead. So we made it. I spent my birthday laying on a beach from paradise and drinking mai tais.

The next day we decided to venture to the other more remote side of the island, and after negotiating some pretty steep hills in a hired truck, made it to a picturesque private cove with a small beach and an awesome garden/bar/restaraunt. I went snorkelling for the first time ever and saw a reef shark.

After 2 days there, we went to Ko Phangan island by ferry, early in the day, to pick up some neon paint and fluorescent bead necklaces for the Dec 2, 2009 full moon party on Hat Rin beach. This, folks, is an event. An all-night crazy dance party on the beach stretching probably a kilometer and a half up and down the sand, absolutely chock full of spoled suburban co-eds delighting in the wild expenditure of their parents' money. There were also a few cool people.

Basically though, my partners in crime and I wandered up and down the beach all night drinking out of buckets (bucket vendors spring up in massive rows along the beach and throughout the town for this event, all the bucket vendors have named their business something vulgar and profane, and they all mix a bottle of alcohol with 2 mixers into a plastic bucket with ice which is distributed with several straws to carry around and share amongst friends.)

We danced, we tired at 3:00am, wandered back, got a cheeseburger on the way and called it a night. The next morning I got up at 8:00am to go open up my safety deposit box and could still hear the party going down on the beach.

All in all an excellent trip. I love Thailand - everything was so clean, and all the people were so friendly. Except for one tuk tuk driver, who Stanley got into a fairly fierce debate with over his knowledge of the location of the real Samboon Seafood.

Stanley: "You know where it is!!! You know!! You know!!!"
Driver: "I no know! I no know!"
Stanley: "You do!! You are a liar!! You know where it is!! You take us to the wrong place because you get commission!! I saw you, you know that man!!!"
Driver: "I see you later! I see you later! I no know that man! You crazy!"
Stanley: "WHATEVER"