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. 

Happy Thanksgiving!

For Thanksgiving, the man & I scouted out this bar/pub place called Harry's in the Dubai Renaissance Hotel. We drove down there in the midst of a bunch of terrifying shite going down in Mumbai, which probably explains why they swept our car for explosives before allowing us to park in the parking garage beneath the building. Just a precaution, eh?

Once inside, we had a fantastic, inexpensive turkey dinner, listened to one of the best lounge singers I've ever heard sing covers for the night's entertainment, and caught the first quarter of the Titans/Lions T-day beatdown before catching a taxi home to watch the end of the game. It was -great-.

Last night we decided to fire up our grill for the first time since Emmo left. Mmmm, steaks! Cook 'em Dan, cook 'em!

Pug of the Week

http://api.ning.com/files/tlB4pKQX5mhQg842e--k1X9Lg5L8WZ5rCzWkQSXXy4w_/pug0507.jpg

Signs you've been watching too much ANTM

You know you've been watching too much America's Next Top Model when you read this headline:
Model Predicts Halt to Africa's AIDS Epidemic
and think to yourself, "who the hell would predict something as unlikely as that? Surely no one famous? Naomi Campbell perhaps? She's nuts. I bet it's just some dumb teenager who won Miss Arkansas or something and does promotional modelling on the side. I better click this link and find out."
and then you click on the link and see...
Oh, a scientific data model.

Welcome to Oz

Things are a little funny around campus at this point, as the students are all out of class and participating in some kind of huge giant all-encompassing active-learning event which involves the buying and selling of goods and services. One student is asking me if I want to purchase a tattoo from her tattoo shop. She shows me an example on her lower abdomen: "It's playboy!" She tells me.

Another student flags me down to peruse a collection of eggs filled with dirt and seeds which, once cracked open and watered, will sprout a plant with a message ("Thank you", "miss you", "condolences", "thinking of you") in three days' time.

There are billiard tables outside, loud American hip-hop music playing, all manner of strange and unusual snacks sweets and treats for sale, and no classes and the library is closed. A fine couple of days to be completely drained of energy - which I am, after staying up very very late at my friend's house last night watching season 6 of America's Next Top Model. We're down to five contestants, and that Jade needs to GO, for real.

I spent my day today catching up on acquisitions (to the fine beats of Timbaland) and discovered I have got to spend a LOT of money before January 20. Shoppy shop!

Libraries are the same all over

Yesterday I spent my afternoon ratcheting together Ikea furniture, with the aid of our acquisitions technician, to hold up our "Eid Read" display. I have this sneaking suspicion that, no matter what position I hold, no matter where I am in the world, as long as I'm in library work, I can still be called apon at any time to assemble low-cost improvised furnishings. This is also true for pretty much everyone else in the library word. Our acquisitions tech is getting her MLS currently. "Have they taught you the proper allen wrench technique?" I asked her.

It being Saturday today, and me being at work all day at a closed campus with nothing resembling lunch facilities, I am STARVING. And you know what starving means? Bad, bad choices. I've implored Mr. Man to pick me up and drive me straight to MacDo. Mmmm.

A Typical Day at Work

I've realized that my typical day at work is full of little cultural nuances that I, at this point, take wholly for granted. Here's a little exposition for those interested. I had a student today looking for "a typical day in the life of a Sudanese child" as a topic, and I thought, usually our typical days don't seem very eventful to ourselves, only to other people far away.

This morning I got to work at around 8am, filled my water bottle from one of the free water dispensers, and sat down at the reference desk for my two hour shift. During my shift, I was asked questions such as, "Miss, can you help me scan this pile of receipts?" And, "Miss, I need information about transactional leadership for a 30-minute oral presentation." That one was fun. We went through the electronic databases, did some article searching, found a few books on leadership, ordered a few more books from other colleges, and photocopied a few pages from some of the business encyclopedias and dictionaries in the reference collection.

During the morning lulls, I flipped through the recent editions of New York Times Book Review looking for new and exciting titles to buy. I found a few, including some fantastic-looking full-color photographic volumes on the sea creatures of the deep and Islamic gardens.

After that, I left the reference desk and read some e-mail before having a bi-weekly meeting with the boss. We talked about collection development, philosophy, information literacy initiatives, future actions, and my failure to properly clean up the magazine area last time I closed at night.

Then it was straight on to the bake sale. I was trying to get to the cafeteria for lunch, but I couldn't get through the mob of bake-sale tables and students gang-rushing me to buy their baked goods. In the end, I lunched on weenie wraps and fruit juice, all for the good cause of supporting student activities.

After lunch I did a bit of cruising the stacks for biographies that need to be in the biographies area and not in the general stacks, weeded some relevant collection areas, and started gathering materials together for our "Eid Read" promotion - a big display of beautiful books that people need to borrow to read during the Eid holiday (Dec 2-14.) Mmmm.... holiday.

The bulk of my afternoon was spent in an English class observing teaching to better improve my own teaching. A joyous way to spend time, it consists of chatting with the students and asking the English teacher useful things like, "How many new vocabulary words can a person reasonably absorb in a week?" She says 20 in a week is what the studies say. This is of utmost importance for my study of Arabic. Everytime I exceed 20 new words in a week, I can feel like a genius. The whole thing is very nice for teaching practice though, if you're a learn-by-example person like me.

The end of the day is following up on e-mail, consulting with colleagues on pressing issues like who will drive us to the conference next week and what kinds of books we must buy and when we will meet to develop a presentation to the management team, and working on my own piece for cross-system projects like our big reading promotion program next year. It's sort of in the strategic panning/development stage at this point, lots of gathering input and compiling documents and formulating goals, et cetera.

The walk home from work is more and more pleasant these days with the temperature nice and breezy. Our streets are all paved now in our neighborhood so I didn't even have to get dusty, and there's plenty of juice in the fridge for after-work libations to go with language study. I've got about 2 hours or more to myself after work before Dan-O gets home, so I'm spending that learning Arabic and Spanish and writing home and reading the news. My next exposition will be on the presence or absence of Christmas paraphernalia in malls.

Quantum of Solace

This weekend Miss Lecia and I walked over to our lovely nearby mall, Sahara Center, to enjoy the recently released, slightly edited-for-Muslim-audiences version of Quantum of Solace.

Before the film, I was standing in line for concessions listening to an 9 year old British girl give orders to the cashier. There was something in her tone of voice that spoke of a life privilege and pampering, of riding lessons and servants waiting at attention to clean up spilled chocolate milk and comb tangled hair. I try not to be a class-warrior, especially given my embarrassingly high standard of living compared to the worldwide middle-class, but something about snotty rich children always bothers me.

I was in the process of paying for my nachos and Diet Pepsi when she returned, peaked over the counter, shoved her large popcorn forward, and interrupted the Pilipino man counting out my change. “This is NOT fresh.” The man could not think of an English phrase that would convey his feelings and allow him to keep his job and so simply stared blankly. I began laughing as he looked from the girl to me. The Young Princess turned her attention my direction, wondering what was so funny about the injustice of her popcorn problem.

“You are ridiculous!” I offered by way of explanation for my chuckling.
“I am not!” She replied, and looked back to the popcorn vendor to see if confirmation would come from his direction. No help would be forthcoming. The Popcorn Vendor just chuckled along with me until The Princess huffed off with her popcorn calling for “daddy”.

I don’t know if the intense, barely restrained class conflict exemplified by this exchange will ever come to a head, but I am starting to see a few “Che” bumper stickers around town, even though the cars on which they are plastered are more expensive than one would expect for revolutionaries, so you never know… Sadly, if the revolution does come to Dubai I’ll probably be among the first against the wall, along with the rest of the Western Fat Cats, but still, snotty rich kids always make me wish the Dubai Liberation Front would hurry it up a little.

Weekend Update

Miss Emmo is now gone away, and today I came home from work to an empty house, sesame wonton triangles still lingering on the kitchen counter, conjuring the sights and smells of happier times just a few days past, now looking sad and stale and oh-so lonely. It's as though you're still here, Em - not a thing has moved; not a dish washed, not an RTNU-turned-candy-thermometor removed from its vat of used cooking oil. Like a testament to your presence, an homage to what things have been, these objects sit untouched in sacred fashion. They amplify your absence and remind us what sad, sad people we are.

In other news, I went over to my friend's house last night for a girl's night. We had white wine and cooked up some frozen pizza and sprinkled a bunch of feta on top and watched "Margot at the Wedding", which is among the most bizarrely compelling films I've ever seen, and afterwards stared at each other in stunned silence for a few minutes. Was she completely batty, we asked ourselves? Furthermore, is Nicole Kidman's face actually paralzyed? How can her eyes be so expressive when her forehead is frozen in place?

Work is work - we are working hard on several extremely major initiatives to improve the quality of the print collection and to develop (from scratch) an information literacy program. I haven't been doing much teaching lately and am focused mainly on the hard intellectual work of professionally executing large team-based projects. After a long day of brain-concentration, I am in the mood for nothing more than a chirpy kid's film and some top ramen. That's next on the agenda.

The most exciting news of all is how the bank has lost $4400 of my dollars somewhere over (or under) the Atlantic Ocean en route from UAE to USA. This is a major bummer. But, I have resolved to remain steadfastly optimistic about its eventual recovery. I tell myself there is no way to lose in this situation: either the $4400 will be found and credited to my account, or I will take deep deep pleasure and satisfaction in the slow drawn out murder of the bank manager. I could almost flip a coin over which outcome I'd prefer.

Into the desert

So admittedly, my posts have been a little sparse lately, mostly because we've been having so gosh-darn much fun around here. Keeps a girl busy. To the updates - first and foremost, I implore you to examine the following photograph, taken from our balcony. Notice anything suspicious?

Take a look at the street sign which is half-covered in the lower-right-hand corner. If you look closely enough, you'll see a couple directional arrows pointing both straight and left. Now look up the road. Do you see anywhere to go straight or turn left? Mmmhmm. That's exactly what I said. Conclusion? Our neighborhood will soon be linked to that neighborhood over there by a brand new intersection. I'll put up another picture when it's done.

In other news, we did this on Friday:

Dune-bashing!! Hooray!! Talk about FUN. I think the only thing I've done that's more fun is skydive. To get better insight than a photo can give, visit Emmo and scroll down the page to the video and press play. Then come back here.

Next up, camel riding at sunset. Mmmm, camels.



After that, some henna in the desert safari camp.


Beautiful! While the henna dries, it's time to drink a bunch of fruit beers and dance our arses off with a scary-looking belly dancer. Wooo!

A Different World

Today I woke up early to fantastic news, briefly debated calling in sick to celebrate, decided to “do the right thing”, drank a few sips of champagne with Sis and Miss Leesha (who I trust continued to celebrate in my absence), and headed off to work.

When I arrived everyone was in a great mood.  Friends and strangers from all over the world were offering me their warm, heartfelt congratulations.  I headed over to the Starbucks (which serves as a sort of student union) to catch the acceptance speech on TV.   

Let me be honest with you…Can I be honest here?  I got a little choked up.  I mean, I think we can all agree there wasn’t anything particularly spectacular about speech President Elect Barack Hussein Obama gave to his worldwide audience.  For me, it was just something about the culmination of the campaign, all those happy people in Chicago and the experience of standing in a crowd of Arab, Asian, European and American students and faculty in the Starbucks cheering for a man on the far side of the world.   All of those students, who I expect might harbor some somewhat justifiable anger at the "arrogant imperialist West", were cheering for our new president.  I came to the stunning realization today, in the midst of sureal chants of "Yes We Can!" which were starting up from random groups of Arab students, that people all over the world look to America for hope.  Sometimes we make it difficult, but that never stops the world's citizens from wanting us to be that "city set upon a hill" that everyone talks about.  Today, for a change, I felt pretty good about that. 

I’m heading home now to celebrate.   

Survey says.... Obama-rama

This student just LOVES Americans and she LOVES talking to me because she is SO interested in Americans and she would just like oh my god DIE if she could go to America and she wants to study at Harvard because she LOVES Harvard and like if she went to America does she think people would accept her if she is wearing her hijab? And like oh my GOD she totally loses herself sometimes when she tries to talk too much like Americans and all the Americans are just soooooo nice and humble and down-to-earth and sweeeeet sweet sweet.... except that Sarah woman.

Taste...

Today at work we got a request for the full series of 'Gilmore Girls' on DVD. I'll just let that stand without further comment.

To see what we've been up to lately, I recommend you check out Emmo's blog since she's been much more active at logging our activities than I have.

Yesterday we dug through Dan-O's box of heartbreaking love letters from Chinese girls who fell hard for his irresistible charms back at Camp China 2001, which was fun. But the real news around here is that we all have to get national ID cards by the New Year - a full documentation process including fingerprints and retinal scans that are tied to a single piece of plastic that will be used for everything from seeing a doctor to renewing your visa to leasing a car to getting admission to Wild Wadi. I'm pretty sure they won't let you buy milk or bread without producing your valid retinal scan. The main problem is that registering for an appointment online is impossible since telling several million people that they have to register online for an appointment within 2 months usually tends to.. well... crash the site. So, we may be in bureaucratic limbo for awhile, and might have to live on carpet fiber for a couple of months in the meantime. All in good fun, though.

The Annals Expand

Some of you may be aware that this month is "Breast Cancer Awareness Month". At work, we have a nice display to support the occasion filled with wonderful books about breast health.

The other day, this student grabs a book off the display and asks me, "Miss, have you read this book?" And I reply to her, no, I haven't read the book. And she says, "Miss, I need to ask you a question about this book." And as she's flipping through the pages with the full-color photographs of breasts, I'm thinking, ok, she's offended, this is inappropriate, I've got my spiel ready about how this is medical and you don't have to read it if you don't want to, et cetera. Then she lands on a page.

"Miss, look." She points.

"Yes?" I prompt.

"Miss, they're very.... eh... er.... low."

Feeling somewhat flabbergasted, and unsure of what the question actually is, I say, "...well yes, this is probably an older woman? That's normal....?" [insert raised eyebrows]

And after a pause, the student looks at me and asks, "Miss, is there any procedure to, uhh...." [cups a couple of air boobs with palms and lifts upward a couple of times].

Staying out all night and then going on a Walk-A-Thon

So, two days ago I went out to Verre with Stanley and Emmo, and to learn more about this foray I highly recommend that you hear it from Emmo, as I'm sure she'll be posting in the next couple of days. Also there's a good new picture of our living room on her blog, you can see our new chairs and coffee table. It's almost a finished room!

I digress - back to the subject. Two days ago, we were out and consuming a variety of wines until 2:00 in the morning, after which we caught a cab home and crawled into bed about 2:30. No later than 6:00am, I was up and pulling on my dungarees to head out to the Burjuman breast cancer walkathon - pictured here. I'm somewhere in the middle-right of that crowd. At 6:00am, as I was regaining consciousness and trying to remember why the hell I had signed up for this, I got a text message from the other girl in my building who I was supposed to drive - she had to cancel, and for a good reason. Should I still go?, I mused in text message to the other girl I was supposed to meet at the place. She said, unequivocally, YES.
So, I dragged my certifiable jammie-clad pinked-out self down to the Burjuman, downed a few free bottles of water from our sponsor, Aquafina, and marched 3.6 kilometers around Dubai under the big hot sun with 5,000 other crazed philanthropic lunatics, their kids, and their dogs. Yes, it was fun.

Dust Devil

Here's a picture of the dust devil we saw on the way back from Al Ain. It doesn't look excessively windy, but it WAS! In this picture it lost a lot of dust because it had just crossed the road, but then it started picking dust back up again. I tried to drive right through it but couldn't get there fast enough.

Back on the Wagon

It's been awhile since my last post, and that's because I've been extremely busy, and also there's someone living in the room with the computer that I am disinclined to disturb.

In the news; Emily arrived, and we've been doing an inordinate amount of grocery shopping as a result. I also went to Al Ain this week for a system meeting and decided that, while pretty, Al Ain would be a boring place to live. As a result of that foray, I've been crowned information literacy hoe-down queen and must now present to my three colleagues a summary of information-seeking behavior models so that we can pick one to use as a foundation for teaching activity. I was also crowned "chair" of the committee that's going to be putting together an Everybody Reads program around Jules Verne's classic Around the World in 80 Days next year. Asi se va, I am quite busy.

On the way back from Al Ain, a giant dust devil (I like to think of it as a tornado) crossed the road in front of us in the desert. Exciting! I tried hard to drive through it, but couldn't get there before it had fully crossed.

Enough librarian stuff.

Last night I went out with my galpal who I met at school. She is Emirati and has quite a sense of humor and a surprising violent and stubborn streak, which I find incredibly amusing in the stories she tells. Example 1: And for this example to really take effect, you have to know this girl - she's the type that would go out of her way for anybody and is petite and adorable and sweet as a button. So, when her ex-husband was being controlling and things really came to a boil, sweety-girl went outside in the middle of the night and smashed his car with a rock from the garden while half dressed and waving to him through the window. When she learned the police were coming, she calmly stepped inside, put on and arranged her abaya and sheila, and then went back outside to wait. Then when the police arrived, she insisted to them that she couldn't be trusted to not continue smashing the car after they left again. Therefore, they needed to take her to the police station to file a full report. So they did, and while riding in the back of the police car without the husband she filled them in on how he was a "crazy man". Success? I'm not sure, but it certainly is hilarious.

Let's see.... what else to report? Nothing right now.

Another Excerpt from the Annals of Student-Speak

"Miss, can I make an interview with you for my project?" a student asks me today while I'm sitting at the reference desk. Always happy to oblige, and not otherwise busy, I replied, "Certainly. Ask me."

The first question was deeper than I expected.

"Miss, please talk about what is your character."

I thought about it for a moment. "Well," I began, briefly flirting with the idea of responding with an in-depth examination of my character flaws, and then rejecting that idea, "I am fun, talkative, and sometimes silly."

My answer was met with a deeply furrowed brow.

"Nooooo, miss." My student said somberly, perhaps disappointed that I had told such an obvious lie. "Miss, you are not silly."

Well, look who's so informed. Am I not? I challenged her. "We have never met, my dear." I told her matter-of-factly. "You have no idea whether or not I am silly."

A pause ensued.

"Miss," the student began again, eyeballing me like I was about to get a serious education, and then speaking with the gravity of somebody who really knows something; "librarians are very serious."

Stanley and Emmo come hoooome!

Boy, being home alone is starting to get REALLY boring. After all the initial partying, I've really started to run out of ideas. In the last couple of days, I've been scraping the bottom of the barrel.

* Finishing Cryptonomicon, sneaking ahead on House of Leaves, grabbing random chapters out of whatever else is on the shelf until I go blind
* Writing imaginary scenes into Sarah Palin's life ("Sarah orders off-menu at Sherry's; Sarah goes through airport security; Sarah writes a letter to the Alaska Statesman)
* Randomly cruising YouTube
* Working my way through the first 14 modules of "Learn to Read the Qur'an" online for the 4th time

On the weekends or holidays it's easy to go hang out with people, but on a work night, you're stuffed. I could tell I was feeling cranky this morning because every time my boss said "All's you have to do is.." or "All's it is is"... I felt my teeth cracking open.

Next on NPR: Gun Talk with Stanley

Like so many West-Coast Urban Liberals, I have long held to the highly dubious yet strangely plausible theory that every gun-loving, gay-hating southern redneck harbors a deep and powerful desire for same-sex love. In a similar way, I also believe that every NRA-bashing West-Coast Liberal similarly harbors a secret desire to fire a powerful handgun. This has been true of me for years, but I've been "out of the closet" for awhile now. Mrs. Man was on board and we checked out the possibility of going to a gun club in Portland, but it was going to cost around USD 250.00 to get started which seemed a little pricey so we decided to defer our dream and as per the usual with such things, it dried up like a raisin in the sun. But to my surprise and joy, just nine months later, came the magical day when my sister stumbled across an ad for Samui Shooting Sports. She quickly wished she hadn't mentioned it, and it was soon apparent that she had an aggressive lack of interest in participating in spite of (or perhaps because of) my prodding. As for the shooting itself: I shot a .45 and a 9mm with mixed success. It definitely reminded me of what I've only known academically before: Handguns are hard to shoot, and you sure as hell can't hit anything unless you line up and aim carefully. Other than that, the experience was not magical. I still favor restricting the rights of gun owners to the point that practically all the fun is taken out of accidentally shooting one's neighbor.

We're in Bangkok now, in a backpacker friendly neighborhood, next door to a bar that plays M.I.A. and The Roots and serves a good Mojito but occasionally charges you for ten when you only drank six. Today: Exploring. Tonight: Drinking.

Alicia applies for a small business loan, a la Sarah Palin

Mr. Waterhouse, James -- can I call ya Jim? -- Jim, the reason I'm here today is to show you that I have that readiness that you need me to have as a borrower at this banking institution.

I've won almost every game of Monopoly I've ever played and it's because I have the wisdom and the judgment also needed to forgo that high-priced Boardwalk and the greed and the corruption and to invest wisely in the future with these yellow and red squares near the Free Parking, and build 'em up too. And that's what I'll do as your borrower is to invest wisely with your money. Because I know also though how many folks aren't payin' ya back right now and what we need is a real Maverick there who'll come in there and, and, pay ya back. Listen, I - when my opponents play Monopoly with me they just use this strategy of cronyism and greed. But me, I had enough of that old Monopoly as usual. When I had enough money to put a hotel on Baltic Avenue, I said, you know what? Thanks but no thanks. I sold that hotel on Ebay and bought a school to put on Baltic Avenue instead. That's real reform that we need.

Now I know that some of these "elitist" loan officers say I don't have the experience running a business that will make me successful or that I need to have a written business plan also though. Jim I know you're not like that and I respect you for that. But let me say this - that I have years of experience consulting with my neighbor's kids on important issues surrounding their lemonade stand and with my executive experience too as a manager managing the entire voting and elimination process in our town's 2006 community-center sponosored game of "Survivor". And when I was responsible for facilitating every 4th staff meeting there at my high-school job in the Lake County DMV office there, I built up a strong record of bring all sides together to get the job done there at the DMV.

Now, you may say, $400,000 is a lot of money to give someone who has never run a llama-dairy business before. I could give that money to someone else with more experience who is more likely to repay the loan. But Jim, why do ya think there aren't any llama-dairies around here? It's because for these business insiders who have been in the dairy business for years and years, there's no thinking outside the box - it's just milk and cheese and usual, doggonnit. You know what I say to that attitude? I say thanks, but no thanks. This failure to bring fresh new insight to our industry is what's killing American children also. What we need is a Maverick dairy outsider like me to shake things up, to shake up the milk and the cheese and make a milkshake.

Besides Jim, what a lot of folks don't realize is that in the state where I'm from in Oregon there's a long narrow freeway, the I-5, bi-secting the state, and from that freeway, you can see a lot of flat grassy areas that are perfect habitat for raising llamas also though. So I'm well aware of the issues surrounding llama agriculture and I am prepared when those llamas rear their heads and try to come across the freeway into neighboring farm space, well, I'll make sure I purchase both red, black, and long-haired sheepdogs to keep an eye on the situation there.

Jim, the last thing I want to say here also is that my friend and lover Ronald Reagan told me on his death bed that if he had it all to do over again that he'd start a llama dairy. So it's his policies and his vision there that I'm committed to carrying out here and that I hope you'll support me on. I wanna thank you too though for giving me this opportunity to show my true self and you betcha that together we can go out there and change the dairy industry. School lunch reform. God bless.

My wireless keyboard seems to be running out of batteries

...but that won't stop me from listing my six quirks after being tagged by Midge. I know you all just had to read Dan-O's six quirks, but this is how these things work, it's like a chain letter, you're bound to get 10 or 20 in the same week. Speaking of which, when I was a small child, my mother absolutely forbade me from participating in the chain-letter scheme, and I can't for the life of me figure out why, because it only would have cost 12 stamps. 12 stamps is a small price to pay to let a child figure out that forwarding chain letters returns no benefit, a lesson that I didn't learn until I was 23. Thanks, Mom.

Quirk #1: Use of non-existent vocabulary to describe the surrounding world and effect communications. Examples: "Ahkamini" (ice cream) "Leekoo" (tickle) "scatchy" (scratchy) "Shoe-en and Socken" (shoes and socks) "Yaka" (jacket) "Sammy" (sandwich).

Quirk #2: Wholesale elimination of certain English words from use, in favor of Spanish ones. Examples of English words I haven't said in a least a year: "Towel" (toalla), "Let's go" (vamonos), "Ready" (listo), "Excellent" (excelente), "Map" (mapa) "Bush" (gringo malo).

Quirk #3: Crippling, deathly fear of spiders - a physical reaction to the sight of any spider which leaves me unable to speak clearly, think, or save myself.

Quirk #4: Addiction to news & political analysis.

Quirk #5: Can't, physiologically, actually get drunk. I'll drink myself into a coma before I"ll forget where we parked the car or lose the ability to properly calculate an 18% tip.

Quirk #6: Uncanny ablity to decipher Radiohead lyrics.

A Brief Excursion to Thailand: Day 3

Day 3 in Thailand on the islands of Ko Samui and Ko Phangan. What can I say? The water is blue, the weather is hot, the pace (at least here on the islands) is slow and easy and I've now ridden an elephant. After a 4 hour delay in The Kingdom of Bahrain, during which I thought I was going board the plane three different times and also during which I burned through 3 different phone cards while on hold with Expedia changing my BKK to USM flight, I landed, called Emily (who told me of a new ferry that left late enough to get to Ko Phangan the same day) and found the pier in time to drink a beer with an young Israeli who was also just arriving and heading to Ko Phangan. The boat took off from the pier while the sun was setting and...well shit...again...what can I say? I am a person who gets to go on vacation in Thailand. Feels a little absurd, really.

After haggling over a taxi to the Coco Garden Bungalows I found my sister waiting on the porch, promptly ate a decent meal by the ocean, drank too much duty-free rum while laying in a hammock and bullshitting with sis, woke up with a hangover, almost got sick riding in the back of the pickup on the way to the elephant safari, but managed to pull it together and enjoy fantastic weather and the wacky experience of sitting in a chair strapped to the back of a big freaking elephant (side note on elephants: they have weird skin that's sparsely hairy and when you put your hand on them they fel impossibly tough and solid, almost like a machine or something. You can't feel the heat of their blood or the muscles moving, just this amazing unstoppable force or immovable object or something like that).

Anyway, that was awhile ago. We're now on Ko Samui and have a sweet bungalow and a rented motor scooter on which we've been cautiously flying around the island. We had the best meal I've had so far on the trip today: curries, muscles, shrimp puffs, seafood soup. Unbelievably tasty. Tonight we're going to a restaurant which has been hyped as the best restaurant in all of Southeast Asia by some folks who claim to know. We're not convinced, but are very much looking forward to judging for ourselves. Bangkok is next on the agenda, and while not without it's charms I'm sure, it will likely not be as idyllic as this.

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.

The consumer's guide to global hospitals

Today I went to the hospital for the first time to remedy an acute illness. It was quite nice to see how the hospital works here, I went to the emergency dept and got it all worked out, 75 AED copay and the prescriptions were included for free. Very nice. I like the standard line of questioning, "Are you married? Yes? Would you like to take a pregnancy test today?" Um, no thanks.

The hospital wasn't quite up to the standards of Kaiser Permanente, like for example the emergency room is just a bunch of beds separated by curtains (no actual "rooms" for patients), privacy is much lower, they make you carry your pee-test bottle through the lobby from the bathroom, and you have to explain your difficulties to the admitting nurse at the reception counter not 16 inches away from the large family waiting on the bench. On the flip side, customer service was much better- maybe this is how it works when you have an insurance card that you can take to any number of competing private hospitals. They apologized to me for having to wait a long time (I waited way less time than I ever have in the Kaiser urgent care clinic) and were very very concerned about pain management. They offered me an injection for pain, which I declined citing the minor-ness of my pain, but in retrospect I wonder what exactly this injection was, and whether it was something really boom-bang like morphine, in which case perhaps I made the wrong decision.

All this got me to thinking about my experiences in hospitals, and I can definitely make some completely scientific rankings of the hospital-quality of various countries based on single visits to individual emergency rooms I've had, by extrapolating that those experiences are 100% representative of health care in the given nation as a whole. Here are my conclusions, with 1 being best and 6 being worst:

Quality of care received:
1. America: We can say for sure that we beat the middle east and latin american nations
2. UAE
3. Cuba
4. Belize
5. Guatemala
6. Honduras: You're miscarrying? We're on break! Go somewhere else if you don't like it.

Bedside manner:
1. Cuba: Our nurses are required to calm 150 fussy babies into dreamless sleep before graduating
2. Guatamala
3. UAE
4. America: If you want to talk about your feelings, we'll write you a referral.
5. Honduras
6. Belize: Stop being such a f*cking wimp, it'll only hurt excruciatingly for the rest of the day

Wait time:
1. Belize: There's never a wait, mon, can't imagine why.... you f*cking wimp.
2. Cuba: Our motto - Fast if you're Foreign.
3. UAE
4. Guatemala
5. Honduras
6. America: Come in with a hang-nail, leave with gangrene. What are you going to do, get a new employee-sponsored health plan? Ha.

Use of modern technology:
1. America: The fish in our lobby tanks are genetically modified to never die and to never look depressed
2. UAE
3. Guatemala
4. Honduras: Now fully exploiting the wheel
TIE!
6. Belize: Let us grab our wrench, we can knock that right out
6. Cuba: We used to send a guy over to raid the Sputnik medical kits, but now we use FedEx

Movin' up in the world

Feels nice when your maid says you only need 3 hours of weekly cleaning instead of 4 because "your house is not much dirty."

Today's adventures

My pals picked me up this morning for a jaunt around the Northern Emirates, and we started in arty Sharjah, at the heritage district, replete with museums, an old souk, a fort and a lot of authentic-looking people milling about.

At the souk I bought myself a pashmina, an old gold candle-lantern and a red & silver perfume bottle, all for around $28. Then we went to this cool old gulf-architecture 2-story desert house, with lots of old rooms and furnishings and things, and we were the only ones there.

The strangest thing happened there; there was a room with a sign on it that said 'Ahmed bin Obaid' in arabic, and I asked this emirati guy who Ahmed was. So he told me...this guy then a few minutes later scoped me out in the room with all the information about traditional gulf architecture and struck up a conversation by asking, how do you know how to read Arabic? And I said well, I've been practicing. And he said, over the course of about 20 minutes, well, my brother is married to an American and she quite likes it here and how do you like it here? And I'm so sorry it is Ramadan otherwise we could offer you some tea and dates. And please step in to my office, I will give you a book about this house, and please take my phone number and name because we would love to have you back after Ramadan. And after I accidentally walked off with his pen and then tried to return it, he said no no you keep it so that you will remember. Well, I'm sure he was just being polite, but I was certainly flattered.

After that we drove to Ajman where the heritage museum was...closed. Then we travelled on to Umm al Quwain but took a wrong turn and ended up at Hamriya port, a very boring-looking blip on the map. Well, guess what we found at Hamriya port? Approximately the most awesome beach ever (pictured here) with no people, no hotels, no restaurants, and nothing around as far as the eye could see except for a bench or two and a whole lot of seashells. This was a very fortunate wrong turn, since I will definitely be back at this Hamriya beach in the future. After getting back to the freeway, it was on to original destination UAQ, where we stopped for lunch at the beach hotel (delicious) and drove up to the UAQ heritage area where everything was...closed. As long as we were that far north, we decided to hit the license-free liquor store before heading back to Dubai, to at least make it worth our while. Needless to say, the liquor store was...closed. :)

Pink!

lost in translation

I went online to the Dubai police website today to check if I had any traffic fines. Look closely in the blue circle. I wonder what they've got in that section?

Quirks?

So, I was "tagged" as they say, by Emily, my sister, of emilysculinaryadventures so now I am tasked with describing 6 of my "quirks".

1. I always wait to get more petrol (for some reason) until my heartrate rises and the possibility of being stranded on Sheikh Z road becomes a 50/50 proposition. 

2. I have been known to refuse to go to the dentist until I am in excruciating pain and in need of a root canal.  

3. I believe almost everything can be improved by adding Tobasco sauce.  Including the Seattle Seahawks.  

4. I refuse to pay more than 25.00USD for dress shoes (and only when the previous pair has fully depreciated), but will happily spend hundreds on dining and drinking.   

5.  I carefully examine each days political headlines from a wide range of publications, then read the individual articles, fretting or rejoicing endlessly over the way the contents are being consumed by the public in relation to what I believe is the "correct" and "impartial" way to view the days events. 

6. I memorize odd things.  Like almost all the national capitals.  Or quotes from Shakespeare.  Or from the Simpsons.  But I can never remember to take the clothes out of the washing machine.   

Eid Mubarak

We've made it to Eid holiday: 9 days of pure, uninterrupted... well, not exactly relaxation. To do;

Day 1: Shopping. Need a de-humidifier, an Oman/UAE travel book, a can of Comet, and a resupply of vacuum bags. Travel to cargo village to retrieve box of survival equipment Emily shipped us.

Day 2:
a) Hair appointment - the first in over 6 months. I'll post pictures. I'm going to try a place called Fadi Chedid, which looks way too fashionable for me, but the price is right. Plus, this guy Fadi looks like someone I wouldn't mind gazing at in a mirror for a couple of hours. Pics at http://www.fadichedid.com .
b) Lunch at Glasshouse with the birthday girl - Ms. Priya. We'll be expanding her culinary world with an introduction to some food which is not Indian.

Day 3: Shopping at the outlet mall with one galpal, or driving up to the Northern beach with another? My datebook is strained. The results, no one knows.

Day 4: Snorkeling near Fjords in Oman. Oh yes, Fjords in Oman - "Norway of the Middle East."

Day 5: Drop Dan at the Gulf Air terminal for a flight to beautiful Thailand. Tell myself over and over again that the Fjords compete.

Days 6-8: Pile a few friends into the car and head for the desert, destination flexible.

Day 9: Laundry

We'll see how it all shakes out.

An eventful weekend

This weekend was exciting in many ways. Thursday night I attended the Iftar dinner at school with Dan-O and we hung out with our pals there, and I got some henna done on my finger (right). 

On Friday we got up late and picked up a new galpal librarian at her place to go out for breakfast at More with another library-lady and her beau and another faculty member. We got the brunch and stuffed ourselves stupid; I was already pleased about the whole thing, however, because I didn't think More could be open during Ramadan. Turns out they can, somehow. I had some lamb that tasted for sure like it must have been cooked in wine, but it surely must have been grape juice.

After brekkie we rolled back to galpal's place to shoot the breeze and ended up staying all afternoon, until wandering at about 6pm down to Spinney's at Al-Ghurair Center and finding... at long last.... lime leaves!! I snatched up a packet and committed it to memory for future reference. For lime leaves, go to Al-Ghurair.

We scurried on home and had a couple G&Ts before hitting the pool after hours. It was awesome - all dark, up on the roof, under the night-time sky, with nothing but the stars and the top of a crane next-door to look out at.  Just us chickens, swimming around like we owned the place.

Well, this sounds like a weekend made in heaven, aside from what happened next, which is that I came back downstairs and hopped into bed directly via Dan's skull. It REALLY hurt. I made sure to cry a lot so that I wouldn't have to get my own icepack. The end result is a very attractive black eye with just enough puffiness to make me look strung-out with one eye half shut. It's not that black, and the blackness is all on the top not the bottom, so it could be worse. Still, I'll probably get some looks at work tomorrow.

A full fun-ness recovery was in order, sin embargo (as they say in Spain); today we went to Lulu and got all the supplementary ingredients necessary to make a couple of awesome curries (with the lime leaves), a red peanut curry with beef and  a green vegetable curry. The resulting dinner was the best we've ever made. Hoorah!

Right right right... I live in a desert

I'm starting to believe I live with Al Gore. "Shut the fridge for Al Gore", "Turn down the A/C for Al Gore", "Wait wait, I have to switch off the lights for Al Gore". If I ever meet Al Gore, I'm going to ask him to give me my pre-Inconvenient Truth life back.

Today on my walk home from work I swallowed a lot of sand, and it actually didn't taste that bad - kind of salty. But the point is, the weather the last couple of days has been rather horrendous. It's not very hot, but it's incredibly windy and damp. I put my clothes out to dry all night, and in the morning they are still wet and need to be re-washed. Then I walk home from work and get my minerally-dense dinner right from the air. Reason number 489 to carry a scarf: mouth and nose mask.

Tomorrow is the Iftar dinner at school - I'll be breaking fast at 6:24pm with a few hundred of my closest college cohorts, friends & family, and maybe get some henna done. I can't promise I'll try to take pictures, but I can at least promise I'll try to try.

Onam

Went to the girlfriend's pad for Onam this weekend, and it was GREAT. We had rice with some tamarind stuff, some pineapple stuff, some curried vegetable stuff, some coconut stuff, some bean stuff, some pappadams, some banana chips, and some kind of sugary-cinnamon-y dessert stuff, all eaten off a crisp banana leaf (very convenient for cleanup).

After that we picked up some movies from Sahara Center: The Golden Compass and The Lookout, featuring that kid from 3rd rock to the sun. The Golden Compass was way more awesome than I expected it to be - in fact, I'm jonesing for the sequel. If they don't make movies out of the rest of the trilogy, I'll probably have to get the books. The Lookout was good too, although a bit heavy-handed at times, kind of reminded me of a wannabe Memento jr. or something, but succeeded in being heartbreaking at moments and compelling throughout. Plus, that 3rd rock kid is just so darn cute, you can't not find out if his character succeeds.

Work is work, but today I got to recommend Hemingway's "Old Man and the Sea" to a male student. I don't get a lot of action in the novels over there, so it was a nice change of pace.

A Woman and Her Bus

Today I was held up after work for about a half-hour, causing me to encounter a woman on my walk home who I wouldn't have if I had left on time. This woman flagged me down from some distance to ask where the bus stop was. It was, as a matter of fact, about 2 blocks up the road in the direction I was headed. I pointed it out to her and she said thanks, and then I continued on my way.

Apon reaching my house, and the bus stop, I turned around to examine the progress of this woman. When I saw that she was waiting a block away in the incorrect spot, I thought, Ugh, Gawd it's hot out, because I knew I had to truck back down there and get her to the right place. After doing so, she told me how she had been wandering the streets for so long trying to find the bus stop and everyone she asked ignored her or said 'sorry no English', which reminded me that, had I left it to someone else to walk by and point her towards the bus stop, she probably would have been there for hours, and this made me feel better about walking the extra 2 block-lengths in the blazing sun.

This woman, apparently, hails from the great nation of Nigeria, and when she asked where I was from, I said America. Her response was some kind of strange combination of shriek and laugh with the words "Oh my God! You are American? You are American, and no one else would help me. Thank God for Americans." So I said "you're welcome" and went about my business, but I can't help but feel strange about the whole exchange. For one, because, I don't think being American has anything to do with the fact that I chose to help her find the bus. For two, because I don't like becoming conscious of the fact that other people are judging me based on where I'm from. For three, these negative feelings conflict with a positive one about having, perhaps, broken some kind of preconceived notion this woman had about Americans. Anyway, I'm now feeling some philosophical anxiety that I think I'll alleviate with a fun distraction, like watching the Daily Show.

Tomorrow I'm going to Onam at Priya's house with Dan (Onam is a holiday where a big meal is served as part of the "Harvest Festival", sounds a suspiciously-awful lot like Thanksgiving to me) so that's something delicious to look forward to.

New Job Update

Well, they've fired up the atom-smasher, and we're not dead. So, I guess that means I have to go to work tomorrow...

If work tomorrow is as fun as work today was, I won't even lament having to wake up early. Today I spent an afternoon with a class of students teaching them some library stuff. I asked them, "does anybody know what 'fiction' means?" They asked, "is it like infection?"

And I thought... in a way.... fiction can be infectious... but then I didn't want to confuse them.

Once I explained it in English, they told me the word in Arabic. Something like, Hay-yal. I said Hay-yal, and they all cracked up. No no no miss, it's Hay-yal. So I say "Hay-yal" again. They all crack up. What's so funny, I implore them. "Miss, it's another word you're saying." Not 'fiction', apparently. I instruct them not to tell me the word - I don't want to know.

Did you know that movies can be fiction, too? I ask. This question gets the puzzler going. "Troy?" One girl says. "Maid in Manhattan?" Another offers. "Mission Impossible?" Someone else says. Fiction, fiction, fiction. I'm hoping this is a concept not soon forgotten.

This is my immediate future - teaching. Teach teach teach, teach teach. If you had asked me a year ago if I wanted to teach anybody anything, I would have said of course NOT. Who knew it could be so much fun?

The Unbearable Lightness of Stanley

“Contentment is a kind of moral laziness; if there weren’t anything but contentment in his world, man wouldn't be any more of a success than an angleworm.” -Josh Billings.

At work these days we’ve been told to keep food and drink out of sight of the Muslim students and employees as it makes their fast more difficult. Today a nice young student wearing an abaya with pink trim brought everyone in our office chocolates. She’s fasting for Ramadan, but it’s her 21^st birthday so she wanted to share the celebration with all of the faculty and staff. Isn’t that about the sweetest thing you ever heard of? Ok, it’s just sort of sweet, but I’m easily amused by women in abayas. The other day a student came in (wearing an abaya) and my Philipina colleague, in her slightly broken English, stumbled over a question pertaining to insurance and asked the young woman if she was Arab. The student replied, with perfect deadpan sarcasm, “No, I’m Christian. I just dress like this for fun.” I just about died laughing.

As Ramadan continues throughout Arabia, Salazmeyer proceeds with its steady mysterious expat existence, but with no headbanging with Metal bands or cab rides to the bar or late nights of drinking on weekdays visible on the horizon until I head to Thailand. Life is slow and pleasant and work is a mellow grind. The rush of Fall registration is over and the finance office is only visited by an occasional student needing to pay for their visa. When my shift ends my commute home has been cut in half as Dubai's Muslim population shifts its schedule and leaves work early to break-fast. When I get home the liquor shelf is stocked, the new furniture is comfortable, and football is streaming in from Yahoo Gamepass at my convenience. Contentment, in its creepy subtle way, is settling in. A lack of self-discipline (or perhaps a low threshold for contentment) has always been my greatest personal failing, and while I should have been working out and learning Arabic I’ve been drinking martinis and watching movies. I’ve gotta get this slow train back on track before it gets to its inevitable end. Right after MNF tonight…

Unimportant Stuff

I just read this interesting article from the Washington Post about how people tend to blog/journal about things they think are important, and they might be overlooking things that are enlightening or interesting because they think those things aren't important. So I decided, as an intellectual exercise, to try to list a few things that happened today that I think aren't important at all, and see if I still feel the same way in a few days.

1. Lost Dan's cellphone somewhere in the house, tried to use my cellphone to call and locate it, realized my cellphone was also missing. Found my cellphone on the computer, called Dan's cellphone, found it in the closet.

2. Had a long conversation at work today w/ colleague about the merits of Hindi movies and the bizarre popularity of Sharu Khan- grr, oops ... that's somewhat important... think think think.... ok, got it, left my laptop in Priya's file cabinet because I was too lazy to walk back upstairs to my desk.

3. This is harder than it seems.

4. Collected money on a shared taxi-ride that I fronted for someone a couple weeks ago.

5. Took a detour on the walk home from work because the street was dug up for construction.

6. Used rudimentary knowledge of arabic alphabet to figure out where to shelve a magazine.

7. Read a couple chapters of Cryptonomicon.

We'll see how this all shakes out.

First time at the Dentist, all over again

Today I went to the dentist for a routine teeth-cleaning. It was like going to the dentist for the first time, all over again. What will happen? Will it hurt? How does it all work?

I decided to try the dentist at NMC Specialty Hospital, a 1-minute walk out my back door (pictured right). The picture to the right is an idealized version; to get a truer visual, imagine sand outside instead of green grass. I had Dr. Mohammed and it went quite well, although slightly different from what I'm used to.

I've never visited a dental clinic housed within a hospital, so that was unique. I wandered past the pharmacy, gift shop, and general surgery unit to get to the dental clinic on the first floor. Then I filled out my paperwork at reception and waited to see the Doc. The visit started and ended with a formal sit-down at the Doc's desk, where he actually spoke to me about my dental concerns (mostly concerning cost) and took a few notes. Then it was on to the cleaning.

Step one in the cleaning was to spray my whole mouth with topical numbing solution which worked extremely effectively, as evidenced by my subsequent lack of ability to pronounce English. Is this really required, just for a cleaning? I think it is not, and I have come to conclusion that dental patients around here must be real softies.

After that, it was your normal stuff; scrape, rinse, polish, rinse, air polish, rinse, done. I've never had an air polish - that was interesting. I walked out of there feeling good as new, teeth as clean as ever, for 500 dirhams. I was hoping it wouldn't cost that much, but I was pleased to be able to afford it at all, because in the States if my dental care wasn't covered by insurance, I just wouldn't go. Too expensive. Here, I feel that $136 every six months is a reasonable price to pay to ensure good dental health and toothy longevity.

I'd definitely go back for a filling, and probably even dental surgery. All in all, a success.

What makes you get up early?

Yesterday morning Stanley & I set the alarm for 3am, and it wasn't even Christmas, nor did we have a pre-dawn flight. We cut off blissful slumber on a Friday morning for something far better than sleep - football.

Dragging our blankets and pillows into the TV room, we settled in to a live stream of the season-opening Redskins/Giants game, and someone among us even mixed himself a cocktail to boot. All the old favorites came streaming back, so familiar after this whole off-season. Ed Hoculee, still working out; Eli Manning, showing moments of brilliance and little-boy fright back-to-back. Some things, apparently, have changed - for example, all facemask penalties are now for 15-yards? They've done away with the 'incidental' variety, I guess, which I don't think makes the game any better or safer.

The "Sunday morning" games are at 9pm Sunday, including Seattle and one of my personal favorite matchups, Titans/Jags, so we'll be staying up late and ordering Gyros for that, for sure.

A view from our balcony this evening

Some nerd stuff

Our blog here is quite international. Take a peek at the snapshot below of recent visitors by location.


It seems pretty cool, until you realize how they're all getting here:


Wow... look at that bottom one. Somebody searched Google for "Corruption is government intrusion into market efficiencies in the form of regulation" and landed here? Who was that?


Hmmm... University of Michigan Law School. Telling.

Ramadan Resolutions

Kind of like "New Year's Resolutions", I thought it would be a good time to start the Republican strategy for my life:

1. Fiscal conservatism
2. Self-discipline
3. Jif creamy (As opposed to the Democratic strategy, Adam's Organic)

Look for many more absurd categorizations like this as we progress through elections season.

What I mean with regard to my resolutions is, you would think Ramadan would make it really easy to stay on the get-fit programme. Well, it's exactly the opposite. By the time you get home from work starved stupid, you're liable to run to the grocery store and cram any kind of rapid-preparation food you can find into your face. For example, top ramen, and/or butter crackers with butter. Not exactly the apex of a nutritive diet. This is where self-discipline comes in : exercise some restraint for 10 minutes and make yourself a salad, or some rice.

Then there's the fiscal conservativism. It's downright tempting to order Gyros every night of the week - but that would be highly imprudent. It is much more cost-effective (and time consuming) to go buy salad ingredients, and cook rice.

Then there's Jif - this is a combination of self-discipline and fiscal restraint. Adam's costs 3 times as much, and Jif is highly portable, making an excellent sneaky-bathroom-snack at work and supporting the continuation of healthy eating habits later into the evening. Yeah yeah there's some transhydrogenated fats in Jif, but I've been skydiving before. It's not like I think I'm never gonna die.

Ramadan Day 2

The second day of Ramadan went better than the first, since I now have groceries and packed myself a lunch.

I've been following a bit of the news about turmoil in Thailand - last week some protesters forcibly shut some airports and this week the PM declared a state of emergency in response to some kind of sustained unrest. The dissolution of parliament in the near future also, apparently, seems likely. South Korea and Singapore are urging people not to travel to Thailand, but Norway still seems to think it's fine, which is encouraging. I'm mainly interested because Stanley and Emmo will be traveling to Thailand soon. The positives? The exchange rate on the Baht should become more favorable between now and then, and after checking Expedia, I see that the roundtrip ticket I recently paid $800 for has only dropped to $640, not $0.75 like I feared.

I'm Hungry

Today was the first day of Ramadan, and it passed without incident, except that I got home from work starving. I forgot to buy anything to pack a lunch with so I grabbed a nutri-grain bar on the way out of the house, thinking that would tide me over. Well, Dan-O accidentally spent his last 30 dirhams on gas, and for some reason is keeping his ATM card in storage at the central branch of HSBC, so I gave him my bar on the way to work, thinking that at least I get to go home after 6 or 7 hours instead of 9 like him.

With no breakfast, no water, and no lunch on the horizon, I was having psychosomatic starvation pangs at about 11:30am. Luckily, I found an old half-eaten box of tic-tacs in my desk drawer which I gobbled down after locking myself in the upstairs staff bathroom for privacy. Then later I got home and found a kitchen full of exactly 1/2 the ingredients needed to cook almost anything. I've got pasta, but no sauce. I've got peanut butter, but no bread. I've got frozen peas, but no chicken, a-la, or king. This is a case of Bad Planning. Peanut-pasta-peas? No. In the end, I settled for some instant coffee and butter crackers with butter. I think I must order in a lot more often than I thought I did.