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.

Overheard in the elevator

As I've noted before, even though English is commonly spoken in Dubai, a good many conversations conducted in English are complete train wrecks. The names below are purely imagined, but protect the bereaved nonetheless:

"Hi Sally."

"Oh, Pearl-- you're back. Have you been on leave?"

"Yes, my Father passed away and I was home for the funeral."

"Oh great! Where did you go?"

"Sorry? No, my father had a heart attack quite suddenly and he didn't make it."

"Oh yeah? Is he ok?"

"No, like I said, he died."

"I'm sorry. Was he old?"

"No, not really."

[silence]

Morocco - Fes

I'm trying to remember if anyone in Fes was actually wearing a fez--- I don't think so. The sage scholars at wikipedia are apparently unsure if there's an etymological connection between the two and, since I stayed at a budget hotel, even the door man lacked a fez. Apparently higher end tourist hotels make their door men wear one.

The many artisans that populate the city's crumbling medina seem to make almost everything other than those iconic hats. We did visit a ceramics factory, where I was interested to see how the ornate tile mosaics for which Morocco is known are fabricated (I still don't really understand it). At the end of the tour we came to the gift shop, where I bought a cereal bowl. Shopping, or my total lack of interest in it, would be a common theme as I toured the medina. I would be led to some shop or workshop, where I would see someone making something in a particularly low tech and interesting fashion, and then they'd want me to buy something. Mostly I resisted, returning home with, albeit cliché, but highly succesful husband-to-wife gifts like a scarf and cereal bowl. Why just this morning Vanessa was wearing her new scarf while enjoying a heap of muesli from her moroccan crock.

Fes is famous for its tannery, with its colorful dye vats and sulphuric stink. To reach the view pictured above, I was led through one in a long series of inconsequential looking doors, up a ladder-like stairway, to a leather goods shop with open air views of the tanners at work below. It's almost as if the lack of signage in the Medina is designed to support the tour guide industry.

This is the conversation I had at the leather goods shop---leather shop doesn't seem right in this context, as there were no chaps in evidence. Also, I find the term "ass-less chaps" to be redundant:

"Sir, how about a nice leather jacket?"

"Oh, I don't think so."

"Maybe this one here." He holds up a sort of all leather, primary colored (all of them) letterman jacket. Something not unlike this.

"No, that's too hot for where I live."

"Where do you live?"

"Dubai."

"Oh no, sir. Not too hot for Dubai." Knits brow.

"Yeah, it's going to be like 42 degree centigrade there soon." That's 107.6 degrees Fahrenheit.

"No problem, jacket not too hot for 42 degrees."

So, needless to say, Vanessa wasn't sporting a new pair of Moroccan slippers, or letterman jacket, while she ate her muesli. She already has a The Abyss cast and crew letterman jacket, but it's not here with us in Dubai. Similarly, I didn't buy a rug, or one of the ornate pressed metal plates that I viewed at subsequent shops. The latter sales pitches weren't quite as reality-adverse as what I experienced at the leather goods shop, but the truth is that we have exactly the same stuff for sale in Dubai, and I'm not particularly tempted to acquire more belongings at this stage of our residency here. I suppose I could have made an exception for the puppy, but he wasn't for sale.

At the madrassa in the medina

While in Fes I took a tour of the medina, or old city. With its narrow, circuitous lanes, it's nearly impossible to navigate the medina on your own, as many of its most interesting sites reside beyond closed doors.

In the medina I saw a lot of interesting things, but among them I thought this madrassa deserved a post of its own. Not so much because I have a lot to say about it but, well, look at it.

The windows above the courtyard are actually the dormitory of the school, representing the most striking architectural view of any dormitory I've ever seen. Morocco has moved on to more secular modes of education, so most old madrassas are no longer used for religous instruction. In fact this one is just a tourist attraction at this point. We did see a group of students lining up at another madrassa, but I was told it is mainly used to house foreign students.

Morocco - Tangier

Spain's slow drizzle evolved into a downpour as I boarded the boat for Morocco. I was pleased to find myself once again aboard a ferry, having commuted to San Francisco that way one summer several years ago. For some reason, I thought the weather would improve once I got to Morocco and, while the sun was shining on my arrival, it was a brief dry moment in what would be a particularly wet trip.

I hadn't made any arrangements for a hotel, so once I was safely aground in Tangier, I caved in and hired one of the several guides shilling at the ferry terminal, selecting mine more for his festive hat and cowboy boots than anything else. I'd corresponded with our Moroccan friend Omar via email prior to the trip, and he'd warned me that there would be touts everywhere, and that they could be both aggressive and annoying. Omar also explained that official tour guides would be able to produce a badge identifying their official status, and that it might be worth asking for, even if it could be fake.

After seeing his badge, I hired Rashid to be my guide and, after I withdrew local currency from an ATM, he led me to an overpriced taxi and we zipped off to an internet cafe. If you find yourself under-scheduled and accosted by dubious helpers in a foreign land, the internet cafe is a great refuge. For one thing, I was able to begin work on my Audi article, as the deadline would fall during the trip. I had mostly written off my time in Tangier as a travel day anyway, and wanted to free up time for Fez. Additionally, I was able to read several less than enthusiastic reviews of the hotel that Rashid was pushing, and book a place of my own selection. Working on my article was also part of my strategy for dumping Rashid, I would simply wait him out. Eventually it worked, I explained to him that I'd made a hotel reservation, and that I planned to work for a few more hours, and he went away quietly enough after naming his price. Rashid was the first of many Moroccans to reject my Euros in coin form, for some reason they're not accepted in Morocco, which I found annoying since the bills are welcomed.

After roughing in my Audi review, I walked to a cafe for a decent but unremarkable dinner, and then caught a taxi to my hotel. Fares are double at night in morocco, at least in the usually more affordable petite taxis, and I was a little taken aback when the driver pointed at the meter and asked for twice as much. Still, the prices weren't as high as Rashid's Mercedes driving cohort had commanded, and I was too tired to care. The driver didn't know quite where the hotel was, and at one point we drove down a narrow street in the medina, only to back out in lurching, clutch smoldering fashion, when it became clear that we were headed the wrong way.

The hotel had a crumbling charm that was inversely proportionate to its lack of insulation. The common areas were both shabby and ornate, making the even shabbier, but not at all ornate guest rooms a bit underwhelming. Still, I was safe and dry, and drifted off to sleep with german coverage of the winter olympics murmuring in the background. In the absence of travel partners, the winter olympics would become my constant companion throughout the trip, biathlon its chief personality defect.

Costa Del Sol, Spain: Audi A8 Drive event

Hotel Finca de Cortesin is probably the nicest hotel I've ever stayed in, and I've stayed at some swanky (and not so swanky) pads since becoming an automotive journalist. My pal Reg, a seasoned reporter and interviewer, claims that in the old days, organizations like GM would tote journalists about in their private jets, and that events could last a week, rather than the current standard of one, maybe two nights. The good folks at Audi Middle East have, at least at the events I've attended with them, added a second night at their own expense, which helps cushion the blow of traveling so far, for such a short amount of time. And so we spent a second night at a nice, if less memorable and quite empty, resort hotel. I missed dinner that night because Reg kept buying pints and telling tales of war zone bartenders and Rolls Royce sporting johns on the prowl in the GCC.

Think of me at the first joint, a lovely sprawling golf resort, plotting to depart from Spain's Costa Del Sol, where it was raining, for the crumbling, under-insulated but not charmless hotels of Morocco. I enjoyed driving the A8, which is a powerful and fine tuned machine, and was pleased to navigate the winding mountain roads above the coast with the car completely to myself. Not that I would have minded driving with a partner, as often happens, but more often than not these press trips afford you very little time alone, something I'm used to having plenty of.

I enjoyed the luxury hotel and my time in Spain, a country whose language I can speak passably. From there I went to a place where I didn't speak the language, where nearly everyone I met was hustling me for a few Dirham, and where hot showers could be undertaken only during prescribed hours. I was prepared for this contrast, but admit that, after four cold nights in Fes and Tangier on the cheap, I was ready for warm, clean, and thoroughly plastic Dubai. Still, I enjoyed Morocco quite a bit, and look forward to writing more about it.

Munich, 2011 Touareg Launch

My brief time in Munich started off quietly as a group of us, led by our very kind and well organized hosts from VW, wandered the hushed, snow covered streets in search of a tourist bus that would show us the city from a relatively warm and dry vantage point. When we did eventually find the bus, they wouldn't take us aboard for some reason, so we had carrot cake and walked around instead.

That evening, as I dusted off my 'job interview' duds ('journalist on the go' was wrinkled and sodden at home) I found that, not only does Germany get most of the Saudi Arabia based movie channels that regularly bring us classic films like Short Circuit 2, and Christmas Caper (starring Shannon Doherty, and gracing the small screen this March) here in Dubai, they also have some very odd televised costume parties that we don't have access to in the desert.

The event itself was surprising due to its particularly American choice of themes, which included a Late Night style interview format, hosted by the "David Letterman of Germany" and featuring a Late Night style band led by Germany-renowned percusionist and moustache farmer, Leslie Mandoki. Several of the interviews were conducted before a monument valley inspired backdrop, in front of which I insisted on being photographed, making for an awkward pause in the proceedings. My ego duly sated, they brought out performance artist Kseniya Simonova, whose deft hands craft evolving sand pictorials that are quite impressive in their scope and speed.

Throughout the evening, blue-jean and gingham clad servers in kiddie cowboy hats navigated the crowd, handing out a variety of tasty, if unexpected and ultimately forgettable (I just remember that they were odd, but good) appetizers. Our obliging hosts, in that unabashedly blunt German fashion, asked several of the attending VIPs who they were, culminating in my favorite reply: "Oh yes, now I remember. She's a very famous boxer." The evening closed with the music of Justin Timbalike who, sporting his trade marked fedora, shredded the violin alongside the Mandoki Players. We were gifted with Justin's CD on our way out, and most of us wrongly assumed it was the press kit and therefore didn't bother to hunt down the actual press kit. A press kit, or more specifically the Press Release, is what a journalist typically combines with a thesaurus to produce a magazine article. It was awesome. If you ever have the chance to attend a corporate launch party in Munich, the answer is "ja!"