Happy New Year

When my sister was a little girl she used to sing along to the Disney theme each weekend at the start of Disney's family hour on ABC. Our Grandmother Ann, a working actress in Los Angeles, loathed Disney and their three quarter scale fascism, yet such things are lost on children. This was in an age when the world hadn't yet learned to despise CEOs, and Michael Eiesner's puffy visage was a regular feature at the show's opening, offering bland moralism straight from the offices of what might be the most litigious company on earth. Anyway, we used to watch the show from time to time and Kate would sing along to the theme (wait for the hook, maybe 6 seconds in), except she had the lyrics wrong and would sing "everything your heart desires will be set on fire." My Dad thought this was especially terrific and used to sing it with her until it eventually became a standard tune around the house.

This new year's eve Vanessa presented two Hindu prayer sticks as our main form of entertainment, as we'd opted to spend the evening on our own, as is our tradition. Actually, anyone seeking a mob of like minded party people was no doubt disappointed to hear that Sheikh Mohammad Bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice President and Prime Minister of the UAE, Ruler of Dubai, and official mouthful had cancelled all of Dubai's NYE celebrations in a show of solidarity with Palestine. With our own plans unaffected by that sad, interminable conflict, we set about writing our wishes for the new year on the prayer sticks, which are sort of like slightly ornate, oversized bookmarks. The basic concept is that you write out a wish and then set it ablaze, which I've come to see as a form of letting go. It's interesting that we chose the new year to make resolutions, when the passing of each year actually marks the slight narrowing of possibility. Perhaps that is the point though, the march of time means selecting your commitments more carefully, and since they might include things like actually going to the gym, or rejecting bacon as a food group, your resolve could have the effect of widening the spectrum of possibility ever so slightly.

And so, at around 23:55 Dubai time, we took our wishes out into the yard and set them ablaze. There was an eery fog hanging over us that seemed to steal the breath from the flame, but with time and patience we were able to reduce our aspirational popsicle sticks to a satisfying ash. While my wish was singular, and related to our extended family, Vanessa chose a scattershot approach, including what I suspect were references to the Kyoto Protocol, and a nod to good shoes among many other important subjects.

And so, with 2009 seizing us in it's infantile grip, we find ourselves wondering what the year will hold. Dubai has seen it's share of economic slow down, with layoffs throughout its mitochondrial property development industry. Like anywhere else, Dubai is populated by a range of optimists and  alarmists, with some developers and consultants proclaiming the end of green in Dubai, even though it's principles are currently being set into law. I hear this from the panic stricken mostly, one German architectural consultant that I met at a party was plotting layoffs and a potential move to Saudi Arabia based on one project cancellation, and generally preaching despair to anyone who would listen. These types always assume green will be the first casualty because the initial costs are higher. As our friend Ben (a self described "evil developer") pointed out a few months back, developers don't realize the benefits of sustainability because so few of them are owner operators, so any energy and subsequent cost savings will be realized by the buyers and therefore requires legislation, subsidy, or serious marketing clout in order to have real teeth. 

Dubai, because it's ruled by one person, has the ability to make these sort of radical reforms into law overnight, but it's certainly true that we are heading into a period of greater economic conservatism, at least in the apolitical sense. Naturally, we can't help but wonder what our own fortune may be in Dubai over the coming year. Thus far, the signs are fairly positive for us personally, but having weathered nearly four years of continual corporate layoffs myself, I know first hand that you can simply never know for sure. In fact, seeing your co-workers let go is difficult for those who are spared, there's a sort of survivors guilt that comes with empty desks and overabundant sticky notes.

Breadsauce and Christmas Pudding

Now that I've finally had Christmas pudding, I can see why the British despise Bill Cosby, whose saccharine Jello ads promote a product that is completely unrecognizable to our powdered wig sporting friends. Christmas pudding is like a cross between a good fruitcake (let's postulate for the moment that such a thing actually exists) and a really good bran muffin, served broken up in a bowl and still relatively moist from the oven. We also had something called breadsauce, which to my surprise was not a type of beer. Breadsauce looks a lot like oatmeal, but tastes like wheat bread in sauce form, making it's name rather practical. This is perhaps the opposite of welsh rarebit, which is cheese on toast according to one welshman present at our feast.

English Chistmas seems to be fairly similar to our own, except there's a good deal more drinking and you have to wear a waistcoat. While many American's seem to retain some microbial amount of puritan shame, Brits are happy to drink to excess alongside their parents, grandparents, and religious officials-- in fact it seems to be encouraged and makes Christmas more exciting. In this state of ecstatic truthfulness, not one of the poms expressed even a hint of animosity toward us colonials for going are own way, isn't that nice? Even better, David Beckham's name never came up at all, although I did find out that Bay Watch is an infinitely more potent cultural export than I had imagined, fairly trouncing any other book, movie or television show as an instantly recognizable charades topic. Phil merely puffed out his chest and jogged a few slow motion steps to elicit an almost instant chorus of correct answers. This was, sadly, quite the opposite of "On The Road," which was identified phonetically although no one seemed to know the book. I'm sure ol' Jack was too drunk to care, wherever he is.

Other festivity highlights include Vanessa's conception of, sole entry into, and victory in the ugly christmas sweater contest. Secretly, her sweater is actually a Christmas tree stand cozy, but she wore it as a sort of serape and scored a box of chocolates as her prize. We also had a Christmas quiz, courtesy of our hosts Mark and Caroline, and played an impromptu version of pictionary, that was really just charades on paper, and a lot of fun. We also exchanged gifts in secret santa fashion, with everyone taking a wobbly turn on our gregarious Seeth Ifrican Santa's lap. I somehow managed to draw my own gift, The Godfather, at random, which was fine with me since they were mostly gag gifts anyway. Vanessa did OK as well, drawing a bottle of champagne and managing to avoid the Mrs. Claus costume and steering wheel cozy that others were saddled with. Since we couldn't be at home, this was a very good place to spend the holiday and we lavished a fair amount of attention on our little pal Harvey, as we were missing our new niece Sonia. We did get to coo at her later that night via Skype, which was great. Some people are embarrassed by the way that babies reduce grown men and women to gurgling imbeciles, but for me it's just status quo.

Lay down on the mat and count to three

Well it's been an interesting few days, if only for the fact that I've been busier than ever and not especially pleased about it. Now, before you beat me over the head with your trusty work ethic, puritan or otherwise, know that this problem isn't ultimately one of quantity but rather one of quality.

First of all, those who know me will recognize that I'm an unlikely candidate for producing matter of fact coverage on celebrity hair styles. I thought I had clearance to write up a slightly bemused examination of why one might be a committed barber shop or salon patron, but no dice. This angle was enjoyable because I got to make reference to The Godfather and an early Howard Hawk's gangster flick, as a matter of setting the scene. Eventually I was disabused of this approach by the editorial powers that be, and forced to write about David Beckham's faux hawk. It was, dear friends, a soul destroying defeat, and I've been scrubbing the single digit I use for typing obsessively ever since, futilely trying to get the dirty off.

I had hoped to ease into the holiday this week, but have had my deadline pushed forward fairly abruptly at Freehold Weekly (the UAE's premier wrestling journal) and now find myself straining to form the requisite number of sentences by close of business. You may be wondering why I'm posting here then, but in doing so you would be betraying your own managerial tendencies, which, really shouldn't be spoken of in public, or private. I subscribe to sufficiency instead, if I can meet my deadline then I've passed the test, everything other than actual typing (with my single aching finger) constitutes a lunch break. Soon, I'm hoping to take a week long lunch break-- I wonder what I'll eat?

These small setbacks aren't so small when you're living 8000 miles from home, although this is a good time to mention that our many ex-pat and local friends here in Dubai are a great comfort, and have made much effort to include us in their holiday plans. Still, I'm afraid I'm mostly lacking any holiday spirit and currently find Dubai a place to be endured more than enjoyed. I miss Oakland, and find it difficult to trust a city that favors cinderblock dormitories and slave wages over free range homeless people with their festive hats and carts full of liberated recyclables. 

I suppose I'm making the point that both places have their share of problems, yet somehow one's own domestic troubles (in the municipal sense) seem much less menacing than those of a strange land that is overtaken every four hours or so by the eery atonal yodeling of call to prayer. I cannot, at this point, really ever imagine feeling completely at home here, and that's probably OK. Please don't think less of me, I have always been a Cancerian creature of comfort. Yet, whenever I travel I have the sense that life remains essentially unchanged almost everywhere you go, which isn't to say that different corners of the world don't experience an undue share of suffering, but that the fundamental rituals of being alive each day remain surprisingly similar. I suppose it's those relatively small differences that make us who we are, meaning that if you talk fancy and like your baked beans savory you then must be from the UK, while someone like me prefers sweetened baked beans and knows that soccer is visually inferior to basketball. So from my personal viewpoint, Beckham and his crap TV show, faux hawk, and pug nosed bride, can all go pound sand. 

What I'm working on this week

1. In search of a Men's hair care philosophy; Barber Shop versus Salon. 1000 words. I found a couple of really charming Pakistani barbers, but of the three chairs only one has a tenuous grasp on english. I asked him what advice he had for balding men and he said, "no problem, if less hair I charge less."

2. How t0 make a marinade, featuring Ricardo's Mom's Chicken Adobo by way of Nate Dalton. 250 tiny words. Nate has some advice of his own for balding men, which he offers in protest to the trendy Kojak look: "Be a man, just be bald." 

Here's the first draft:

Ingredients:

Whole Chicken, cut into pieces
1 10 oz. Can Coconut Milk
1 Bay Leaf
1 clove Garlic, smashed not cut
1 cup 7-Up
2 cups Soy Sauce

Dutch Oven
Measuring Cup

Cut up one whole chicken making sure that the resulting pieces will all fit in a standard casserole dish without peeking over the lip of the container. Use a plastic cutting board, and make sure to wipe down any surfaces that the raw chicken comes into contact with.

Fill the casserole dish with 500 ml of soy sauce. Peel one large garlic bulb, and add the smashed (not cut) cloves to the dish. Also drop in one whole bay leaf. If you prefer a sweeter taste add 250 ml of 7-up.

Cover the dish and place it in the refrigerator over night.

Remove the chicken from the marinade and pat dry, preferably using a non-linting type of towel, you don't want to be picking lint out of your dinner. Fry the chicken on medium high heat in a Dutch Oven until browned. If you don't have a traditional ceramic dutch oven, any pot that has a cover and is suitable for baking will suffice.

Strain the solids from the remaining marinade and pour it into the dutch oven and place the whole thing in the non- dutch oven at 350 for 15 minutes or fully until cooked. Once the chicken is through, set it aside and add one can of coconut milk to the marinade, reducing until proper viscosity is achieved. Serve the chicken over rice, ladling on the final marinade as desired.

3. Must have gadget's. This one's pretty self explanatory, I will definitely be promoting the Nikon D-40 which is an amazing value. By the way, if you click on the pictures a high resolution version will open in a new window, then you can see what I mean. 650 words.

4. Sustainable Developments in the Gulf Region. In which the solar powered oil derrick final gets some good press. I think all PR people might be part of the same huge inbred gene pool, because they so often seem incapable of dredging up the very basic resources that their clients have tasked them with providing. Individual realtors are always better at getting back to me than developers, whose PR toadies are too busy setting up facebook pages. Maybe it's my common-man circa 1998 hotmail address that gives me that faint whiff of blow-off-ery. 1500 words.

Also, I somehow missed the towering Christmas Tree at MOE when I was there for my home stereo assignment. The tree is surrounded by a pink clad polar bear santa and his ice skating penguin chums, who whiz by excitingly on an electric rail. 

I don't find any of this the least bit perplexing, in fact I've decided that the commercialism of the holiday is actually less worrisome in a Muslim country. The decorations surely arrived with the malls, and now they're here to stay. This is afterall, a country that has it's own shopping mascot, a distant Pac-man cousin by the name of Modesh.

Anyway, two trips to the mall in one week proved to be too much for me, and I was forced to hide out in MOE's movie theater, leaving Ness to shop for boots on her own, although I did assist in the final decision once I'd seen all the lovable Zoo escapees settled in Africa. Madgascar 2, which was the only film with an appropriate start time, is either a work of great cinematic charm, or I was just extremely relieved to escape the mall. I didn't even really mind the catered event taking place in the seat next to me, although short ribs seem like a strange choice for movie food, even if it is TGIThursday's signature dish.

Winter on the inside

Apparently it takes an Islamic country to bring Christmas decorations to a less blaring volume, and while there are plenty of tree decorations and stockings in sight, we are at least spared some of the traditional grotesquery. Just yesterday I spent several hours tooling around Mall of the Emirates researching a 700 word primer on buying a stereo. The first editorial stricture was that all the products I wrote about had to be available at this particular mall, and the second was that the article should avoid sucking. Happily MOE offers a wide range of equipment, spanning a variety of incomparably nasal computer speakers to the stern looking but highly musical and esoteric McIntosh amplifier, a version of which once helped Jerry Garcia to kick out his loping electric jams.

MOE is also home to climate scoffing Ski Dubai, a nearly 10,000 square foot indoor ski park, now featuring a permanent Picabo Street exhibit, wherein the former Olympian and Mountain Dew shill entertains onlookers by trading ski tips for clean clothes and/or hot meals at MOE's  St. Moritz cafe. I haven't yet had a chance to set ski-boot inside what is essentially the world's largest walk-in freezer, but each time I visit the mall I'm drawn to it's glowing facade. Ski Dubai is like some huge and frigid human terrarium, it's inhabitants forced into unwitting visual harmony by their rental togs. Because the best views are reserved for the many dining establishments that skirt the park, and I'm currently adhering to the kind of fiscal diet that encourages eating at home, my pictures offer only the most cursory views of Ski Dubai. Someday, when the economy thaws out I'll take some shots from the inside.

Upon exiting the mall I encountered a puzzling art-show/corporate ad campaign that refers to itself as The Art of Can. All submissions contained some vestige of, or reference to, a Red Bull can, a guideline that made the paintings excruciatingly bad in particular. While anyone seeking thoughtful consideration of contemporary art would be better served visiting Rob's excellent blog, I can tell you that my reaction to the show varied from amusement over it's brazenly compromised premise, to genuine admiration of the craftsmanship evident in certain submissions. While the included submission is perhaps genuinely inspired by Rodin, I choose to think of it as a pun on the word "can", one that might be titled "The Art of going to the Can" or, maybe just "Rodin on the Can."

Indoor S'more

This winter has brought the return of dessert into our household, as I suppose most winter's tend to do. The main problem I have with keeping sweets in the house, is that if they're not around I have no problem shutting them out of my mind, unless they've been on the menu recently, in which case their absence becomes problematic. We've been treating ourselves to tea and dark chocolate in the evenings, but wound up short on supplies during a recent scrabble battle. Actually, we really hadn't had chocolate regularly, or in such large amounts, until after the Empty Quarter trip. Ness had bought fallout shelter like quantities of S'more ingredients in anticipation of colonizing our non-American friends with this sticky treat. Had we somehow found ourselves separated from the group, we might have of survived for weeks on end eating nothing but chocolate, marshmallows, and graham crackers.

So, when we returned from the desert with a surplus of S'more fixings, the chocolate, once recovered from the sun by a stint in the freezer, was the first to go. As I said, I have excellent self control when it comes to things that require effort to procure. But, load the refrigerator with pumpkin pie, and I'll help you unload it in short order. This tendency left a disconcerting horde of marshmallows and graham crackers on hand, and my initial inclination to polish off the grahams with my lunchtime bowl of soup has been vetoed by the powers that be. Yet when it came to light that we were in dire need of dessert, we improvised a somewhat satisfying brand of chocolate-less S'mores over candlelight. 

While wooden popsicle sticks do make excellent skewers for this purpose, it's worth noting that they are a good deal more flammable than their more densely compacted cousin, the wooden bbq skewer. Also, attaining the subtly roasted shades of marshmallow that I remember from my family's many excellent cabin trips, has proven impossible over both coals and candle, and may in fact require a proper open flame. Still, there's something pretty satisfying about roasting a dessert food on your kitchen counter, and you don't have to own a chef's torch or a gas range to make it happen. If you can manage it, I'd recommend that you save some chocolate for this purpose, as the marshmallow and graham cracker version feels a little desperate going down.

Dance Fever Brunch

In the frenzy to build Dubai up from its sandy origins, the ex-patriot community here maintained a six day work week for many long years. Mercifully, things have normalized somewhat, although the current five day work week does seem to include quite a few twelve hour (or more) days and, adding to my confusion, runs Sunday through Thursday. Work to live I say, not the reverse.

Dubai's penchant for workaholicism, has propped up another popular "holicism" with the advent of the fancy brunch. Born of the intense need to counteract the cubicle blues, Dubai's toiling Poms, Kiwis, Aussies, and Seeth Ifricans of yore began a tradition of bacchanalian friday feasts. Let us pause to examine this ratio; six long days of transacting business in the Islamic world, and one day of riotous western excess within the enabling confines, and devil may care pricing, of a large hotel. 

Hotels play a central part in ex-pat night life because they are cultural embassies of a sort. They represent mostly neutral ground with regards to Islamic Law, and have the market cornered on public drinking establishments. Hotels are the only places serving lunch during Ramadan, and are the unofficially sanctioned locus of prostitution. Let me add here that freelance writing is going just fine thank you, and that I'm not referring to my own career prospects here.

You can drink in your own home in Dubai, provided that you're not Muslim, and that you complete an application for a liquor license, which includes a letter of consent from your employer and a cap on booze spending based on a percentage of your income.  This also seems like a good time to mention that grocery stores feature a walk of shame section where pork products are sold and where, inevitably, a sign announces that "this section is not for Muslims." According to my pal Tom, the liquor stores will reward reaching your sauce quota with a couple bonus bottles of whisky, ostensibly to get you through the impending rough patch. Alcohol is bought at what Pennsylvanians might call a "state store," and like PA, whoever's connected enough to get one of these state sanctioned liquor contracts is making a killing. Although plenty of folks drive to Sharjah to get their supplies from a place called Barracuda, thus circumventing the license laws, much like Philadelphians buying in Jersey.

This past Friday, we attended our good pal Jane's hippie themed 30th birthday party at Yalumba, a supposedly Australian restaurant, that serves Indian, Japanese, and Arabic food alongside grilled surf and turf and the requisite chocolate fountain. Either by coincidence or design, Yalumba was 'asses to elbows' with birthday revelers, hosting at minimum, six independent celebratory groups. We arrived a tad late, unsurprisingly, but the last brunch we'd been to hadn't really started until an hour and a half after the appointed time, so I guess we thought that was normal. Dubai is not a punctual place in general, as the crippling traffic and habitual detours have rendered the pace fairly languid. Who really knows when anyone will arrive?

As is my habit, I elected myself designated driver, a choice informed by Dubai's zero tolerance DUI laws, and my own genetically enhanced tendency to smell like I've just bathed in Maker's Mark after downing a single beer. I don't know why this is, perhaps I'm some sort of human distillery with untapped potential. So I left the champagne to the others, and loaded my plate in diplomatic style, representing several corners of the globe in an ad hoc food U.N. Turns out proper Ice Cream recipes appeared around the same time in both 18th century England and America, but early American ice cream was easier on the teeth, as anecdotal evidence no doubt supports. 

After brunch the tables and chairs were cleared away to reveal the dance floor, and a hidden DJ began cranking out every cliched wedding dance floor hit in Wizard of Oz fashion. At first I suspected that it was actually just an iPod spewing funk pheromones from it's tiny plastic hide, but when a middle aged lady (possibly my hilarious pal Ricardo's long lost aunt) began hiking up her skirt suggestively to Tom Jone's "You Can Leave Your Hat On" the mystery DJ revealed his or her professionalism, immediately toning things down thereafter with Sinatra. Who, by the way, strikes me as more of a fighter than a lover.

After six or so hours at Yalumba, which I should emphasize was really fun, even if the British clearly don't "get" my dancing, there was no way I could hang in there for the after party at Fibber McGee's.

Fibber's, as it's often referred too, is like a Disney World version of an english pub, that somehow miraculously happens to be full of English people due to some strange coincidence of tourism. Perhaps it's Manchester United Supporters' day in Orlando, and Virgin Atlantic is offering a two for one from Old Blighty to New Shiny. 

Whenever I think of Orlando I think of Shaq, who apparently plays for Miami now and is planning to enter law enforcement upon retirement. Who knew? Still, being virtually a Disney character himself, I imagine the big guy spends a lot of time in the magic kingdom, maybe he'll even seek assignment there when he becomes a cop-- how'd you like to get tasered by that guy? Fun stuff.

So Fibber's is always full of UK ex-pats, who, from the relative clarity of my designated driver's position, seem to be having a depressingly good time. These people are, quite possibly, even better drinkers than lapsed Mormons-- it's that impressive. The reason I find Fibber's challenging, is certainly not because I resent the fun they're having, you should see our pal Phil (the fellow dancing with Ness above) at these events, singing along as the cover band belts out the Proclaimer's solitary hit. His glee is infectious. The thing is that Fibber's just reminds me that I'm living in a vacuum, a place that's neither Western or especially Eastern, but in fact many places all on top of another, and that the only authentic American counterfeits in Dubai are horrible places like Chili's and T.G.I. Friday's. Which, by the way, should really be called T.G.I. Thursday's here given the work week. I'm morbidly curious to poke my head into one of these places and see if it might be full of rowdy bolo tie wearing Texans, except, the only thing I can ever think to say when I happen across a fellow countryman, is "hey, you talk funny."

And finally, a post script: Despite appearances, Jane is not attacking Vanessa on the dance floor, I think she was just grooving REALLY hard. [EDIT: image removed at Jane's request]

Also, we ran across these similarly dressed Kuwaiti nationals (in the last picture) at a gas station, and were trying to find out if they're in a boy band. "Are you a dancer?" Vanessa asked, "Sometimes." The guy with the Nelly band-aid replied.

I love a parade (at 100 kph)

We recently had time off in honor of UAE National Day, which marked the 37th year of the Union. Long before we saw evidence of the celebration, we could hear its frenzy from nearby Jumeirah Beach Road. While there was apparently a pedestrian parade moving slowly through Jumeirah One, our own Jumeirah Three played host to a full throttle display in which red, white, green, and black festooned SUVs gunned their engines up and down the block, horns ablaze. Many of the drivers had decked out their rides with images of the Sheikhs in various stages of statesmanship and leisure, and one ambitiously decorated Range Rover even sported a matching overstuffed teddy bear. In my experience, parades drip by at a humble pace, but here the participants, who seemed only loosely affiliated, tore down the beach road at somewhere around 100 kph. Apparently this show of power means more than a good look at the carefully crafted decorations ever could.

The weather has cooled since the rain, which revisited us overnight, and as such we've kept our windows open lately to enjoy the cool breeze and spare the air-conditioning. UAE National day, already a petro-celebration in it's own right, has temporarily corked our once airy home. The sound of the automotive revelry continued late into the night and might have interrupted our scrabble game if we hadn't closed up the house. As such, it remained a low and constant murmur as we groped around our vocabularies for that perfect seven letter word.

I'm not deterred by the sounds of aggressive motoring, it's just not what I want to hear when I lay my head on my pillow. In fact, I'm actually related to the Ventura Raceway legend known as Brian "Dirty Bernie" Nelson. Bernie is, blood relations aside, an absolute dynamo behind the wheel. My Dad spends a lot of time at the races too, I think he's on the decorating committee or something. 

Just kidding Pops.

I'm learning that the automobile is a central fixture of life in Dubai. People are enormously proud of their cars, and prefer them to be in showroom condition. Many car owners here opt to wrap their seats up like Laura Palmer in order to keep them pristine. It's a strange sight to see a wealthy family in a Porsche Cayenne, trolling down the beach road with their plastic wrapped car interior-- it's an entirely different expression of enjoyment than you'd expect at home. In fact, plastic wrapped furniture is something I associate with a sort of uneasy ascent out of poverty, an impulse someone might have upon owning their first nice couch, dreading that first stain, perhaps heightened by the feeling that one's ability to purchase such things could be fleeting. What I find puzzling, is that for me, the plastic itself is far more objectionable than a stain or tear. My own tendency is towards a miserly love of craigslist bargains, which happily, my wife is adept at finding. I'd rather own something with a modest number of inherited flaws, than deal with the eventuality of marring something myself. This is because I know I'm going to eventually choke on some graham cracker dust and shoot searing hot Earl Gray out my nostrils and onto whatever item of furniture is currently propping me up, I am reconciled to living this way as it's just part of who I am.

On the beach 2

I make it a habbit to drive by Sunset Beach on occasion to see if anyone's surfing, but have only seen activity there three times now. This past weekend was the best I've encountered, but I didn't have the camera with me and when I came back after an hour and half it had gone completely flat. I'm finding the conditions here much more mercurial than I'm used to, almost as if you'd need to sit at the beach all day waiting for that short window when it's good, but only on those rare days when its ridable. 

So, rather than head home immediately, I thought I'd take a few pictures of the sand excavation project at the end of the beach, on the opposite side from the famed Burj Al Arab. While this self proclaimed seven star hotel is architecturally interesting on the outside, and we were recently excited to see a helicopter landing on the tennis court/helipad/giant hors d'oeuvre tray, the interior is extremely gawdy. It makes Donald trump's affinity for gilt-everything seem understated.

I'm not sure what the impressively large pile of sand is meant for, Vanessa thinks they're excavating in order to build another hotel, I like to think it has something to do with the city's artificially enhanced coastline.

At the moment, Vanessa is waiting outside the house for round two with the police. This time we were smart and had her call. The one privilege afforded to women in Dubai is that they are often given more expedient access to services, especially governmental services, via the ladies queue. Shorter lines, longer hems, better scents (sense.) We've been waiting for about four and a half hours now, but they just called to confirm our address. So, that's pretty good by West Oakland standards, where one is encouraged to "see a gun" in order to illicit a quick response. Still, I miss my scrappy neighborhood. I'd been parking for weeks in what I assumed was a public lot, when a particularly abrasive man in a Misubishi micro-SUV rolled up demanding, "WHY YOU PARK MY HOUSE?!"

OK, so again, I'm the one with the limited language skills, I realize that. If Dubai had it's own verision of Geno's, they wouldn't serve me. And yet, there's no need to yell little man. I don't need one of your eight, usually empty, parking spots. I just didn't know it was private since it's located where the sidewalk would be, and features perpendicular parking, something I associate with municipal parking lots across the globe.

So I don't park there anymore, and I'm resisting the urge to menace my new mustachioed nemesis in a scene for scene recreation of Cape Fear or, alternatively, What about Bob?

Vanessa just walked triumphantly back into the house, holding a green accident report in her hand which will, we think, exonerate us from financial responsibility for the mystery scrape. She charmed it out of the police, telling them that their prowler was nicer than what a cop in the U.S. would have, which it is. The police cars here range from large Toyota SUV's to 3 series Bummers. Sadly, the motorcycle police in Dubai look like they should be directing runway traffic with a light baton, not at all tough, like the officer who impounded my pickup in San Francisco-- that guy was all leather (including his face) and cigar, which he lit up as he sat back to await the tow truck. I didn't do anything heinous by the way, I was too slow in registering my car when I moved back to California, and ironically, too quick in changing my insurance, which gave me away. 

I'm convinced that there's some nefarious scheme, or at least a policy change in effect because three other rental cars in our circle of friends have been rejected for undocumented blemishes, and none of the drivers are aware of hitting anything. At least we're free of the bureaucracy for a while. We'll have to get national ID cards eventually, for which the wait time has been reported at around seven hours, and that's if you make an appointment. But they've reportedly moved the deadline back, although it's unclear what limits might be placed on non-card holders in the interim. Why I need a national ID in addition to a Dubai Driver's License, a US passport, and a residency visa with my photo on it, remains to be seen. I suppose it's to keep us safe, very very safe.