So last night I moved to the Palm Hotel, which has so much marble everywhere that I can’t get any traction with my shoes on. No, the faucets are not gold, but the accommodations are nice, if strangely Spartan in certain areas. The bedroom has two twin beds, for example. I don’t think I have actually ever been in a hotel with twin beds… And for a very luxurious hotel, there is no Internet, and definitely not wireless. Actually, I lie, there are kiosks downstairs that you can access the Internet from, but that doesn’t really count, does it?

Since I have been here in the UAE, I have accompanied by David and Maddie. Not in real life of course, but on DVD. My brother came down right before I left and brought me a copy of the first and second season DVDs of Moonlighting, and I have been watching them, in order, as I have had the time. I am finally on disc five, which has the first Christmas episode on it. Do you know how strange it is to be in Arabia, watching Hollywood celebrate Christmas with fake snow? Well, now I do, and it is a strange thing to wake up to.

I ordered breakfast room service this morning, and tried to watch UAE TV. Not very exciting, really. There were a couple of movie channels, one of which was showing Kuffs with Christian Slater. I have discovered every movie is more interesting with Arabic subtitles, especially when there is a line of Arabic in parenthesises… what could it be that they were saying? I didn’t hear anything in parenthesises… They tell me that Arabic is read left to right. Which allows me to look at it and understand it not one bit more. To me, it is still squiggles and dots, with the occasional line. I think I understand the numbers, since our numbers are derived from them. But everything else, I am lost. It is a good thing that everything is in both English and Arabic here.

A word of explanation for those of you who do not quite understand the UAE. As you can see from my previous post, yes, indeed, it is in the Middle East, on the Arabian Peninsula. And yes, it borders Oman and Saudi Arabia. But the UAE is neither of these countries, and Dubai is posed to be the Singapore of the Middle East. It is booming– out my hotel window, I counted over 20 cranes. They are building left and right. The demand for housing is great, and the UAE is the process of allowing people to actually own homes. Or it could be a 99 year lease, I’m still not sure about that. Over 70% of the people that live here are not from here. Most are from “the subcontinent” as they like to call India, although there are quite a few people from the UK. Quite a few white South Africans have moved here too, fleeing the political unrest that has gone on since the fall of the white government there. In fact, and I may have mentioned this before, I have yet to actually talk to anyone who is a native (with the possible exception of the man who stamped my passport).

I have learned some other interesting things, too– for example, Muslims take off their sandals or shoes (most wear sandals) before entering the mosque. And so, from the staff house last Friday, there was a giant pile of shoes visible from 19 stories up. Other interesting facts… An Emirate is a city-state ruled by an Emir. Abu Dhabi is one Emirate, and Dubai is another. There are of course others, for a total of 7, but most of these are much more “rural,” if rural is the word you use in a place where it is mostly sand and date palms. Jebel Ali, in case you haven’t heard me mention this name before, is a “free zone,” that is, a place for multinational companies to set up shop that is exempt from taxes, tariffs, and the like. It is in Dubai, though on the Abu Dhabi-side of Dubai.

In any case, this morning, I took my shower, and after taking 20 minutes to figure out where the shower switch was, I got dressed, and came down stairs to wait for my ride to the office. After smoking a cigarette, I came back into the lobby to wait, since traffic in Dubai is terrible, I think Jobe will be late. 25 minutes, so far, and counting. Anyway, as I opened up my laptop, the Muzak here in the lobby started playing “As Time Goes By.” I looked outside briefly to see if there were any Nazis around ready to storm the bar looking for Lazlow, and, of course, seeing none, I settled down to type this up.

“Louis, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.”