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.