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. 

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].