No More:

1) References to dog urine as “love juice” or a dog phallus as a “weenis”
2) Unthoughtful or otherwise completely random gifts from “Mom’s Gift Closet”
3) Listening to someone tell me that they WANT their future kid to be emasculated, gay, and nerdy.
4) Being embarrassed at Grandma’s by unthoughtful behavior.
5) Psuedo-intellectual condescension from someone who failed high school algebra.
6) Being embarrassed at Pif’s, or Merrie’s, by past, present, or future behavior of said person.
7) Lame nights that end at 10:00pm.
8 ) Bean sprouts with oatmeal for breakfast.
9) Brother-less Christmases.
10) Ugly Shoes.
11) Picking on my wife for being old-fashioned.
12) Hairy armpit magazines.
13) Sour Pickle Face.
14) Invitations to dildo parties.
15) Unwarranted insults to my extended family.
16) Fashion Police from the “Diesel Dyke” brigade.
17) Cankle and Glow-in-the-Dark teeth.
18) Fashion hypocrisy– like bell bottoms, the skunk hairdo, and capri pants.
19) “friends” who don’t split checks.
20) brown everything.
21) relatives who don’t offer to do dishes after family events.
22) bullshit comparisons to make one sound superior - “Thanksgiving Dinner is MUCH harder than Christmas Dinner…”
23) Shoe Shopping
24) bragging about being health consciousness while consuming margaritas.
25) “Spider hands”
26) soy milk
27) dreading trips to Austin
28) Flippant, final, or hurtful remarks from someone who thinks that getting a back alley hand-job in a Northeast Asian country is perfectly acceptable for a married man.
29) turning off the fan
30) trying to explain that an 84-year-old woman who sends handmade kitchen scrubbies out to friends and family is not out to “domesticate” anyone.

Well, it’s been a little while since I’ve last posted. Mostly because I’ve gone to Mars and back. Seriously, I really did go to Mars.

Pennsylvania, that is. It’s just down the way from my grandparents. About 6 miles in fact.

It’s not a terribly exciting place, but they do have this:

http://www.roadsideamerica.com/tips/getAttraction.php3?tip_AttractionNo==8237

At the Dubai airport, be careful of the restroom stalls. Some of them do not have toilets in them, but rather, a strange, stainless steel setup where you can crouch. The people that actually use these are few in number, so they are always available. Because they were the only ones that were viewable, I was at first scared that all the stalls were like that. But then I saw that there was a queue for the “real loos” and that those were pretty normal.

Once on the Emirates flight out of Dubai, at certain intervals, the plane’s information screens would show the direction of Mecca in relation to the direction the plane was flying, so you could pray.

Also, it it is interesting to note that on the way into Dubai, the plane routed around Iraq by way of Saudi Arabia and Syria. On the way out, we flew over Iran.

The other thing I found interesting was that the UAE scanned my bags, once, twice, three times. But they weren’t terribly anal about it. Gatwick airport in London, on the other hand, was ridiculous. I got off the plane, walked over a kilometer just to be put on a bus and taken to a place where I have to go through security again, then I go through Continental’s line, then, 20 minutes after that, I finally gain access to the duty-free area where I can finally smoke a cigarette. When I am finally at the gate, to depart for the US, I am again searched, this time even padded down.

Now, to the UK’s credit, The guy that padded me down was a nice old man who regaled me in conversation about a show on BBC2 called Dubai Nights, where they show that Dubai has more money than common sense. I definitely didn’t feel violated by this man, but still — how many friggin’ times have they checked me for contraband?

Oh, and by the way… I got to keep my lighter and matches; no one anywhere else but the US seemed to care.

Here are some final pictures for your viewing.

The first image, of course, is the Middle East you expect to see. And you are right, it is there, in places.

Here is one of the many mosques visisble from the roadside. At night, the towers are lit up with green-colored neon. I’m serious.

Here is a view from the office in Abu Dhabi. In the distance, they are in the process of rebuilding the Souk, which is the gold-trading area of town.

And this is another view of Abu Dhabi, from one of my many taxi rides.

Meanwhile, in Dubai, the building craze continues unabated, with workers running things 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. When finished, it will look like this:

And this is how far along they are:

Also for your amusement, another picture from inside Ski Dubai:

The aforementioned arrow in my hotel room, pointing to Mecca:

Some pictures of the sandstorm in Jebel Ali on Friday.

This is what Ski Dubai looks like from the outside:

And last, but not least, a picture of the strangely squarish Middle Eastern style toilet. Note the incredibly low water level.

My last night here in Dubai was hosted by Shabbir, who is in charge of financial operations for the region.

After a final debriefing with local management over remaining IT issues, it was off with Shabbir to places you wouldn’t believe.

First off, I must mention the traffic. A nightmare. Mostly because everyone in the Middle East drives like they own the road. The truth is, only the Arabs own the road. The rest of them, all the ex-pats, well, they drive like they can’t be deported.

Shabbir drove me to “Mall of the Emirates.” You may have heard of “The Mall of America,” which is in Minnesota. Well, not to be outdone, the Mall of the Emirates actually has part of Minnesota inside of it. No kidding. It is called “Ski Dubai,” and it is a 3000 square meter all-enclosed facility for downhill skiing, snowball fights, bobsledding, and all sorts of other snowy activities.

This is just down the main mall corridor from the hypermarket, where you can actually buy a TV and lamb chops, then run down to the Versace store and get expensive clothes. Imagine a Super Walmart next to Foley’s. And, you can smoke all through the mall! Ahh, “What a country,” as Yakov Smirnoff would say.

Shabbir and I went into Ski Dubai, and he quickly realized that a move to North Dakota was not in his future.

The best part was watching the Arabs in their traditional dress try to deal with snow.

After about 30 minutes, we left for dinner, which was at… a Mexican restaurant. Yes, your read it right, a Mexican place. This is the one kind of immigrant the UAE does not seem to have.

We were served by a Sri Lankan that had a name tag which read “Mario.” I am pretty sure that is not his real name. It was even more amusing because Mario is more Italian than Hispanic.

In typical UAE fashion, nothing is freestanding, but part of a larger building. And so the Mexican restaurant, Cactus Pete’s, was on the 8th floor of a Dubai high-rise hotel. This made the view nice, but– how was the food?

Well, the chips were stale, but the salsa wasn’t too bad. No green sauce, of course. And I had to explain the difference between a burrito and an enchilada to Shabbir. I ordered the fajitas, and they were pretty good, although the seasoning was mostly stuck to the bottom of the meat and not properly marinated throughout.

All in all, though, I’d have to say that the meal was better than you would probably find at a Mexican restaurant in Iowa or Pennsylvania. And the tea was fantasic! Clear, crisp, and refreshing; not at all what I was expecting.

It was only after the meal was over, and we were finished eating, that Shabbir admitted to me that he thought that Mexican food was very heavy, to which I had to agree.

The view from my hotel…

My final full day here in my hotel room here in Dubai. The experiences I have had here in UAE and at the hotel in particular are somewhat mystifying. For example, everytime I have ever gone into a hotel in the US or Canada, there has always been a Gideon Bible in the drawer. I’m not big on evangelization, but I will say that it is a very subtle but effective way to bring the Bible to people who might otherwise not have occasion to actually open the Good Book up. But a through search of every drawer in this place yields not a bible, nor even the Koran! In the Islamic world, there are many parallels to the Christian world. For example, They have the Red Cresent, whereas we have the Red Cross. (No idea if they have Blue Cresent/Blue Shield). They go to the Mosque, we go to church. They go to Mecca, we go to Graceland. But there are appears to be no correlation to the Gideons. Since my grandfather is a member, I know how the Gideon Society works. This is something that is not terribly hard to port over to Islam, unless they simply don’t want us to read to Koran. But I really can’t imagine that that is the case. Some of us are only infidels because we don’t know any better, right?

So no Koran in the hotel room. But they DO have a golden arrow on the ceiling, pointing to Mecca. That is very convenient. In fact, I am surprised I haven’t seen it in more places than just my hotel room.

And you know how in America they have started putting coffee makers with real coffee in all the hotel rooms, so you can make your own pot of coffee? This is even in the Motel 6’s and Super 8’s. Well, they have something similar here, but over here, it just heats up water. Once you have the water hot, you get to either put “Nescafe” or Tea in the hot water. No actual brewed coffee.

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.”

Here in the UAE, the weekends are Friday and Saturday. Which means today is a holiday. But that hasn’t stopped me from working… of course not.

Last night someone from Kingwood showed up at the staff house, so it was actually pretty fun.

Two views outside the window of the staff house, which is a 3 bedroom penthouse apartment on the 17th floor overlooking the Persian Gulf:

And yes, the mosque can wake you up in the morning, even that high up off the ground.

So here I am in the UAE. How is it? Not so bad, actually. But it is the little things that freak you out the most. For example:

1) “Objects in mirror are closer than they appear.” This is on a Skoda, which is a European car aligned with VW.

2) The maximum speed limit here is 120km/hr and if you go above that a bell goes off. I have been in four different vehicles so far and each one them the bell has gone off.

3) Nissan has cars over that you have never heard of in America. Like the “Sunny,” which is basically a Sentra.

4) Everything is in Arabic and English, even the stop signs.

5) White appears to be the normal car color over here, which makes sense to me.

6) Newspaper front pages are made of magazine stock - they are glossy.

7) Yes, I have actually seen camels. 4 so far.

8) On businesses, all doors open in. So if you are running from a burning building, remember to pull the door open!

9) Merge signs are ridiculously small.

10) Curve signs are colored red and white, not yellow and black, as here in the States.

11) the UAE is a curious mix of American and English standards, with Arabic on everything. Coke cans are in Arabic and English, people drive on the right side of the road, but use UK-style electricity (220V).

12) Gas is so cheap they don’t advertise the price on the signs.

13) The weirdest thing of all - pull tabs on soft drinks. I have not seen pull tabs on soft drinks since I rode a bike with training wheels. That’s all they use here.

That’s it for now, more later!

Well, I leave at 4:00 CST on my exciting trip to the UAE. Where is the UAE, you ask? Well, It looks really cool to do this in Google Earth, but for now, Google Maps will have to suffice.

You are here, (or there about)

http://www.google.com/maps?ll=31.344254,-97.448730&spn=6.718323,10.958862&hl=en

I have a stopover here:

http://www.google.com/maps?q=gatwick+London&ll=51.294559,-0.244446&spn=2.460492,7.180664&hl=en

Until ultimately, I will be 10 hours ahead of you, here:

http://www.google.com/maps?ll=26.254010,53.657227&spn=14.085498,21.917725&hl=en

I’ll be back on Wednesday, 23rd. I’ll try to post, but no promises. The country has a state-run Internet provider…