Satwa

Here's a story that I'm relatively happy with. Vanessa says she found a typo, but she hasn't shown me where yet:

http://gulfnews.com/about-gulf-news/al-nisr-portfolio/freehold-monthly/articles/redevelopment-plans-for-lively-satwa-1.678814

My pal Silvia took this picture, which appears in the article. We'd been standing on the corner shooting passersby for a while, and the shop keepers were watching us intently from inside. Over time, a crowd began to gather, as curious onlookers waited to see what exactly we were photographing. Eventually Silvia waved the staff of the store over, and the group shot wound up being the best image of the day.

On another note, the baby hasn't arrived yet, the due date is the 28th so any time now. I'll see if I can get Vanessa to sign off on a recent shot of her, because her belly is looking pretty awesome.

Freedom Sucks

A coworker of Vanessa's told me recently that new developments in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) are built with separate parking lots for the ladies, even though they're not yet permitted to drive. According to this same person, KSA is very close to giving women, I mean womyn, the right to drive-- there's just one potentate who objects, so they're currently deadlocked on this issue.

I don't know how accurate that is, as I've never been there and I don't particularly want to go. While there are things that are objectionable about the UAE from a freedom loving, or even just freedom fry munching perspective, this country is much more tolerant than it typically receives credit for. Women drive, hold important positions in government, and are not forced to cover up, at least not by Johnny, nay, Abdul Law. Walk around Dubai or Abu Dhabi, and you will see women from all different cultures wearing all different styles of dress. There are prohibitions on certain types of revealing clothing, but in Dubai, for better or worse, those rules go largely unheeded. 

Recently women in KSA have threatened to nurse their hired drivers because, according to religious guidelines, this nullifies the taboo of the two genders mixing outside family bonds. When someone dines on your breast milk, they are rendered family. You've heard of common law marriage, well this is common law adoption only, there's no 18 year expiration date on the "baby."

I'm not sure if the ladies of KSA will go through with it, but I have to wonder, do the drivers have any say in the matter?

Skeleton City

I don't think these buildings have changed appreciatively in the year that I've been driving past them. While living in a perpetual construction site is one of the challenges of Dubai, it's also one of the things that keeps it interesting. The sculpted and over-landscaped vision of modernity that is creeping across this country still succumbs to dust at odd intervals, as new structures often adjoin job sites. The Marina in particular is full of underpopulated, yet completed residential towers that peer out into the skeletal frames of neighboring works-in-progress.

The city has the flavor of a lunar colony founded by a reformed pit boss. Neon lights trail off into temporary roadways ruptured by Dubai's uniquely convoluted progress. Each week the previous bypass is jackhammered into oblivion to make way for a new work around, a new concrete bandage.

The Metro is open, albeit with many lines still to follow, and the world's tallest building has already closed for repairs despite the fact that none of the floors are fitted out. While Dubai might be somewhat rushed, it's unfair to call it unaccomplished, as the city represents a remarkable achievement. What's difficult, is imagining a Dubai that could ever feel complete, and I guess no place ever really is.

Girl's Night In

Rents in Dubai have come down significantly since we first moved here, and we now live in a much nicer, larger space. Our room provides sanctuary from the city's madness, with its stunt driving, endless construction, and damp heat. Today is the first really hot day since last summer, with humidity at 42% and an apparent temperature of 107 °C.

With the impending summer blaze nearly upon us, I'm reminded how Dubai is a place of interior spaces built to replicate the outdoors. This is a place where people spend an alarming amount of time indoors and the architecture reflects that, not just at Ski Dubai. For instance, I recently wrote an article about an apartment tower with six large gardens for the tenants to enjoy-- all of which are indoors. You live here and you feel contained almost all the time which is why, even though our room is a container too, it's important that it be something more than that-- that it's our home. For now.

One side effect of our general disinterest in Dubai's night life, is that we've seen a lifetime worth of bad television here, including several episodes of MTV Cribs. This in part because we have free satellite TV included with our place, but with a pretty poor selection of channels, at least for English speakers. It's also because, for whatever reason, we find life a little bit more fatiguing here, so we rest a lot. In some ways, life in Dubai is like perpetually living in an episode of Cribs, in that you're constantly in awe of the garish shit that people buy. 

To add insult to injury, when we're not watching people say things like "you gotta see this, this is my other Hummer," much of what we select falls under MBC4's "Girl's Night In" programing line up. So not only do I feel guilty for watching a bunch of crap, there's a not so subtle suggestion that I'm not man enough for the testosterone fueled smorgasbord over at MBC Action.

At first I thought Girl's Night In was on Thursday nights, the last day of the working week here in the UAE. But then I realized that the MBC family of channels is actually based in Saudi Arabia, which is an altogether different place than Dubai. I think the best way I can put this is to say that every night in Saudi Arabia is girl's night in-- or else.  Even if we set aside prohibitions on traveling outside the home without a male family member or other escort (such as a hired driver,) there's still the fact that women can't drive there. And so, what I wrongly assumed was a sort of Friday night line up, is really an every night line up, sponsored by Clean and Clear.

Girl's Night Out, sponsored by Paris Hilton's Champagne-in-a-can, can be viewed on the public stoning channel. 

Safe driving in the Lebanese Alps

The morning after I arrived back in Dubai from our last visit to California, I had to leave on a trip to drive Volvos in Beirut. In reality, we would spend little time in the city, which has a reputation as the nightlife capital of the Middle East (whoop-dee-doo), traveling instead to a ski resort about an hour and a half outside of town. You can find my thoughts on the C-30 here if you're curious.

Two summers ago I stood in a small San Francisco rug shop talking with my friend Jason about the prospects of moving to Dubai. Jason is American but holds an Iranian passport courtesy of his Dad, and at that time was the only person I knew who'd ever really spent time in this region. I bring this up because I remember that Jason, who fully expected to visit during our tenure here (and in fact now lives in Tehran and comes through regularly) mentioned the possibility of a field trip to Beirut. My reaction at that time was to calmly reply, whatareyoufuckingnuts?

Living in Dubai changes your perspective in a lot of ways. For instance, I've been forced to get over my mall allergy because, for many of life's necessities (free wi-fi and the simple act of leaving the house) there's no where better to go, especially in the summer months. But what really happens here is that you're forced to confront your own xenophobia towards the Arab world, a place that, for all it's peculiarities, is just another assembled mass of status obsessed, distracted, over-caffeinated people who want to eat cheese burgers and watch Oprah. 

So yes, Beirut is a place that people go to on a regular basis because, as Jason told me that evening a few years ago, "it's not like they don't know when things are going to start blowing up." When I was in LA on the Cadillac trip last year, I befriended a younger Lebanese journalist who said something similar: "I think there will be war again before too long, it's inevitable. But then, we're used to it. Last time people kept going out to the clubs and living their lives, we just stayed away from certain areas."

Nothing was exploding while I was in Beirut, and it seemed like a a city that would merit further investigation. On the surface Beirut felt a lot more modern than Fes, perhaps a little like Tangier but without the Medina, but then I really only saw it from the cab so who knows.

This I can say for certain, Lebanon has some very nice mountain terrain and ski resorts. After we drove each of the four Volvos, which is too many for one day if you ask me, we then had lunch and a short break before mounting quad bikes and tearing off into the cold and sunny afternoon. And so we noisily and somewhat stinkingly traversed what would have been a very good hike. Which isn't to say that it wasn't fun, it was. 

After a while we stopped for a snack that had been trucked in on an old Land Rover Defender, which belonged to the hotel. This was some what unusual, as often on these types of trips you'll find that every vehicle is from the host company's family of products. But this was a smaller scale trip and we kept finding ourselves dining or departing under giant banners depicting GM products. If anything, it was refreshing to be in an environment that was a little less obsessed with branding. Also, the food was good and that always wins me over.

Swimming Bird

The day after the Hud-hud's visit, Rajan found this green fellow (or lady) waterlogged and exhausted in the pool. Rajan nursed the bird back to health, noting that "this bird very like banana." Rajan was elated to care for the bird, and I'm sure the bird was pleased to have been rescued. We suspect he or she is some sort of Parakeet, but I should send a picture to Jane for identification as the Green Parakeets I've found by searching online seem to have a different colored bill. Raj called it a Myna Bird, but my internet research does not support his findings.

Hud-hud

This Hud-hud, or Hoopoe, so identified by our ecologist pal Jane, came to visit the other day, just outside a bank of second story windows. As is common in most of of Dubai's buildings, our villa has highly reflective glass windows, and this Hud-hud seemed to be attempting to commune with his (or her?) reflection. He (there's something very male about all that plumage) also seemed to have no idea I was there at first, and then became very excited by the sound of my camera's shutter, hopping up and down and pecking at his reflection. According to the link referenced above, the Hud-hud is mentioned in the Quran as the messenger of prophets and, even before I read that, I felt lucky to have gotten so close to him. He was, for nearly an hour, our honored guest.