Midweek update

Well, my week isn't exactly turning out as planned. There's turning out to be a lot less fjords and Oman, and a lot more diamonds! Yesterday I spent all afternoon wandering around the gold souk and getting a serious education in diamonds from my friend who was with me. We looked at probably 500 diamonds of all cut, color, clarity and size and by the end I was eyeballing diamonds from across the room and thinking 'ehh it's kind of yellow' or 'oooh the plane on the top is too disproportionately large' or 'mmmm how much money do I have?'. One shop had a little diamond-detector machine thingy that we were using to test things to see if they were diamonds. We tested our fingers, and some gold, and the glass display case, and some diamonds, and sure enough, it only indicated that the diamonds were diamonds. I did learn that I have a diamond in this ring I inherited from my grandmother, which I wasn't sure about before. I also examined a diamond-and-sapphire bracelet that I discovered costs about $35,000. I told the shopkeeper I'd need to sleep on it.

Unfortunately, Leonardo DiCaprio taught me in 2006 that the diamond trade is evil and causes young people to lose their limbs so now I can't realistically buy a diamond unless it is certified conflict-free, and unfortunately in this gold souk, everyone tells me their diamonds are from Belgium and they are cut in Hong Kong, but they can't prove it, and it doesn't seem plausible to me that the diamonds are mined anywhere near Belgium, which is the main problem, and they also can't tell me for sure that children in Hong Kong aren't losing their limbs cutting the diamonds. So, no diamonds for me.

So today we drove to Abu Dhabi and had high tea at the Emirates Palace, and let me tell you, I'm certain there were a lot of diamonds in that place. I am now back down on earth and tomorrow I'll have top ramen for lunch.