Rolls Royce Blues

I was the most casually dressed person at a recent Rolls Royce press conference, although I did have the foresight to wear close toed shoes. The event heralded my first trip to Abu Dhabi, and like my one subsequent trip, it was spent entirely at a hotel, and related to cars. Rolls Royce not only had better food, but we were allowed to wander about and that made the day a lot more interesting. You can see the car above, it's their sportier model. The executives on hand from the manufacturer were all German, which made for a very global experience, i.e. British automotive heritage, German ownership, UAE bling. I had an enjoyable conversation with their Marketing guy (different fellow pictured in the car), we had both independently arrived at the conclusion that the Middle East should build huge solar farms all over the desert, and replace the oil pipelines with undersea electrical lines instead. I'll be sure to mention it at my next meeting with the Shaikh. You can't actually test drive one of these cars, they sell out so fast here that every car at the event was already sold, and further, was expected by the new owner with zero miles on the odometer. As such, they drive the cars around on trucks, allowing journalists to ogle them at staged venues. On the bus ride home, which featured a hulking charter bus with a mere three passengers, we flew past jobsite after jobsite where blue jump-suited laborers toiled in the blazing heat. Upon arriving in Dubai I cabbed back to our place, nodding and smiling empathetically as my driver, Pakistani like so many of the workers I'd seen from the bus's elevated vantage point, raged over the death of innocent Pakistanis killed by US forces in the war on terror, all this because he'd asked me where I was from. He was, on a positive note, pleased to hear that I'd be voting for Obama.