Shanghai, day 2

While Vanessa was busy learning about China's informal, yet largely effective recycling program, I made my way to the Shanghai Museum where my fellow explorers were at least as interesting as the exhibits. The Museum offers floor after floor of ceramics, traditional paintings, archaic currencies, seals, furniture and calligraphy, some of which are remarkable not just for their craftsmanship and aesthetic, but also for the distant century in which they were completed.

Directly outside the museum I was approached by the couple pictured below, who initiated a a friendly conversation with me, eventually inviting me to tea. He introduced himself as Tiger, and I can't quite remember what she said her name was, but we can call her Lilly. Tiger and Lilly are tea bandits, desparados who prey upon hapless tourists by luring them into tea houses and ordering delicious food. Actually, they were incredibly nice and helped me figure out how to get to the Youyuan Gardens and Bazaar in Old Town, where I had the most amazing steamed dumplings and paid around a dollar for my entire lunch. Perhaps that helps put the tea house scam into perspective, as they're reputedly quite expensive and the tea bandit's job is to basically get you there, order a lot of food, and then plead poverty when the check arrives. I presume the bandits get a kick back from the tea house, but it could be as simple as a free lunch. In any event, Tiger gave me his digits and offered to hook me up with some sweet tickets to see the Shanghai Acrobats, where his friend has the connect. (Sorry, I watch Weeds, The Wire, and Breaking Bad 18 hours a day, every day, in that order; so the lingo is starting to stick).

Youyan Gardens was only going to be open for an hour longer by the time I found it, as Tiger's directions turned out to be good, but not great. After filling up on dumplings I opted to wander around the market, enjoying the golden hues of the late afternoon.  Old Town was abuzz with street vendors, cyclists, carts, students and laconic cab drivers, one of whom I ultimately overpaid just so that he'd drive my exhausted carcass back to the hotel. Everywhere I looked there seemed to be something interesting going on and I spent much of the afternoon glued to my camera. This proved particularly handy when a knock off watch peddler refused to leave me alone. I turned the camera on him, and by the 9th or 10th shot he wandered off to bother someone else. You can see his picture directly below the shot of Snake Eyes asking a cop for directions.

That evening we tried to visit a particularly well regarded Shanghaiese restaurant, but found that they'd closed early for the approaching May Day holiday. Unfazed, we took a picture in front of its massive facade with our host and his food critic pal. I can't remember the name of the restaurant where we wound up, but it was very good as well, and we had our first taste of jelly fish (tastes exactly like blackberry jam). As with all good traveling experiences, almost every meal in Shanghai was a new and toothsome adventure. Some of my favorite restaurants are taquerias and little noodle shops, so for me China was teeming with great food in just the kind of nondescript locales that I enjoy. 

Shanghai, day 1

Arriving at Shanghai's tidy Pudong airport one is immediately rewarded with that illusive sense of finally being elsewhere, a feeling that is of great relief to those of us who reside in a place that is, maddeningly, both everywhere and nowhere. Within a minute of disembarking we had the camera out and Ness was snapping pictures of the recycling bins. Shanghai, a surprisingly colonial city in appearance, feels bureaucratically communistic and yet aggressively capitalistic, both ancient and modern, eastern and western, and yet wholly Chinese. Refreshingly, China has very little of Dubai's identity crisis, and seems to be a place that is much more comfortable with contradiction.

Jing'an Temple, pictured below, embodies China's history of contradiction, and has survived almost complete destruction twice in the last 200 years, most recently at the hands of Chairman Mao's Cultural Revolution. Currently in a state of incomplete renovation, this Buddhist temple's chubby Siddhartha remains exiled in a WWII era bunker that lies beneath the massive stone steps leading to the temple's largest chamber. I spent nearly half a day at the temple taking pictures, and then set out on foot, in thrall to the swarming bicycles, sidewalk marauding moped maneuverers, and overall metropolitan enormity of Shanghai. Excepting an airport hotel in Chicago, I hadn't been anywhere near a real city in around nine months. 

I found the temple accidentally on my first day time foray outside the hotel, when my dual purpose of caffeinating and orienting myself led me to a Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf on the edge of Shanghai's French Concession. Chain restaurants help make cities and suburban areas into exactly the kind of soulless nowhere and everywhere places that exhaust my inexhaustible patience. I have the patience to stay in bed until it's really time to get up, the patience to watch entire baseball games (really only at the park), and the patience to post photographs first and text later; in other words an unyielding patience that drives more productive people to drink. I do not have the patience to eat at TGIFridays on three continents, or to join those who routinely seek the comfort of the familiar over the tangy, unexpected sweetness of something new. As in all my pursuits, I'm both imperfect and hypocritical, having eaten at more than one Cracker Barrel during my time on the east coast.

And yet for coffee, I make an exception-- such are the compromises of an addict. Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf Shanghai, looks a lot like CB&TL Dubai, which looks a lot like the frat boy/investment banker filled CB&TL on Fillmore in San Francisco which, unsurprisingly, looks a lot like the CB&TL in Los Feliz. And yet the Shanghai branch had one redeeming quality, which is that it afforded a view of the densely packed bicycles and scooters lining the street, which made it impossible to forget that I was in two wheeler loving China, the Costco of human populations.

That night we ate at a Sushi restaurant near the hotel, and wandered into a night club that throbbed with the sound of a competent(ish) funk cover band. The unmistakably cavernous sound of a poorly attended concert stoked both my empathy and resolve to keep it to one drink. With it's koi pond, grasping indoor flora, prayer flags, and chandeliers, the venue itself was infinitely more interesting than the recycled tunes. With The Commodores bouncing around in our heads, we shambled off to the cozy confines of the Baolong Home Hotel.

The Crack in the Sky

I've finally figured out what Dubai's ultimate aspirational landmark signifies-- it's the giant crack in the sky that marks the end times. The sky isn't falling though, not yet anyway. It just has a lighning bolt shaped rift in its fabric, a rift not unlike the one that has threatened to swallow your local economy. Seen from the edge of town, the Burj Dubai appears almost complete through the gauzy haze of Dubai's soiled air, however it's very much still under construction. 

We managed to recover our camera in time for a recent over night in Al Ain, however this picture of the skyline at dusk is about all that we came home with. We did very much enjoy some time away from our increasingly cramped  apartment, which now includes one of those pink yoga ball things as a sort of ottoman. I like to sit on the coach with my legs stretched out, balanced precariously on the yoga ball, which happens to be across the room in the kitchen. As a result, I've gotten really good at fixing snacks with my feet, which is one of the perks of being six two-ish. The downside is bumping your head a lot. In fact, I was born with a normal size head, but it has since become so calloused through abuse that, as you can see in most pictures, it is now roughly twice the width of a yoga ball. I'm seriously thinking of becoming an anchorman, or possibly making a run for congress.

My giant cranium did fit nicely in the shiny Audi Q5 that my new best german friends (BGFs) saw fit to lend me for review. While I admit a sense of relief upon reclaiming possession of our noticeably smaller Subaru, the Audi was exceedingly comfortable, offered more features than I had time or patience to enjoy, and would have been more than sporty enough to get several speeding tickets, had I not religiously used the cruise control to rein in its turbo charged 4 cylinder engine. 

Rumors have been circulating that revenue strapped Dubai has been issuing an unusual number of dodgy tickets lately, and Ness did in fact get a parking ticket in the exact spot where she's been parking since she started her job last summer. Anyway, it was nice to have use of the Audi for our trip, and if you absolutely have to own an flashy luxury SUV, this one at least isn't hideously ugly like the American offerings. But really, the car that Dubai makes me want to own is a VW micro bus. An old, weather beaten one, with a "Too slow? Too bad." bumper sticker-- we could use the affordable housing.

Dragon Boating

On a recent hazy Friday morning we had our first taste of dragon boat racing, rowing on behalf of a mostly rookie team organized by our friend Francis. Dragon boating is a fairly enjoyable form of rowing that, perhaps like other team rowing events, requires that team members row precisely in time with each other. If you lose the rhythm each person's effort will start to counteract that of their cohorts, making for the sort of team building metaphor that might give a motivational speaker the strength to get out of bed in the morning, but probably not. I can't say that our timing was excellent, but the crew of good ol' number three never quite came in dead last and that's good enough for me. 

In the topmost picture you can see the hull of an immense wooden boat being constructed on the opposite shore. Sadly, I don't have any pictures of these beauties, but from the water they were quite impressive. And really, that was the best part of the race for me; being out on the water at an hour when I'm typically contemplating the inside of my eyelids.

Dubai has become a favorite target in the UK press of late, causing enough of a stir that the Sheikh held a Q&A with local journalists over the weekend, something he reportedly hasn't done since 2001. I haven't read the Q&A yet, but one perhaps telling criticism is that international journalists were apparently not invited to participate. Among the headlines in yesterday's news cycle, were the Sheikh's pronouncement that the worst of the credit crunch is over, and a report by Colliers International that residential real estate prices in Dubai have dropped by 40%. While it's very difficult to know what will happen in the next few months, one definite possibility is that you may be seeing us a bit sooner than expected.

One of the main reasons we came to Dubai was for the travel opportunities, and later this month we will be traveling to China for Nessa's job. Dubai is an excellent hub for visiting much of the world, and quite often does an excellent job of making you wish you were somewhere else. We hope to take advantage of being here by taking a few more trips before our time in the middle east comes to a close. Here's hoping China is just one of a few interesting destinations on our horizon.

One more reason to become a shut-in

Our camera is on loan to some friends with a new baby, so here's a picture I took one day at the mall near our house. Judging by the wreaths, this must have been sometime around December, when the siren song of Christmas was wailing out of the shops here. Normally, wailing is left to the Muezzin, who's call to prayer excites the ether several times a day. Dubai is, if anything, a place of many contradictions. For instance, aside from certain designated free zones, which are typically several km outside the city itself, all businesses here are established in partnership with an Emarati local. If, for instance, I were to open my dream business; The Haiku Hut, purveyor of mercifully brief poetry, I would have to find a local business partner. Fine right? No reason that local businesses shouldn't benefit local people. Actually, local business is a bit of a stretch when you're talking about Ikea, or The Dubai Hilton, as all companies, large and small must play by this rule. It gets interesting in the case of hotels, as they have long been the locus of exception, which is to say, the places where people go to drink.

Recently, I met a coworker of Vanessa's for the first time, on one of her office's weekly after hours offsite meetings which, subject to UK rules, involve more than a few pints. Alcohol is currently a distant third to coffee and claritin, in my party regimen, and I had one unpronounceable beer before the two of us felt the call of the pillow. This coworker, who's name wouldn't mean anything to you anyway, thoroughly enjoyed himself until grabbing a cab home in the wee hours. He then spent the next fourteen or so hours sleeping off the night's excess, and then cabbed back to his car at the hotel where we'd been encamped. Somewhere between the hotel and his apartment he got into a minor scrape with a stationary object and, wanting to avoid the incredible hassle of an undocumented ding in his car, he called the police right then and there to settle the matter. This turned out to be a huge mistake, as the first thing the police did was give him a breathalyzer, which he failed. Now, failing a breathalyzer test is bad anywhere, but it's especially bad here and, conversely, much easier to do as the legal blood alcohol level in Dubai is zero. Additionally, he was charged with drinking without a license, as all Dubai residents are required to obtain a license to purchase alcohol. 

As I recall from my last visit to online traffic school, the legal limit in the US is .08 BAC. So, as the DMV hand book goes, you need to wait at least an hour per drink (and one Pint is two cups and therefore two drinks by this reckoning) before you get behind the wheel, although this varies considerably by body weight etc. Now, that rule of thumb is designed to keep your BAC below .08. After hearing about this person's arrest, I started to wonder how long it would take for the average person to metabolize, excrete, and evaporate one beer completely out of their system, to the point where they'd be in compliance with the zero tolerance laws. Morning after DUIs are apparently quite common all over the world, and it would seem to be a pretty serious peril in the UAE, where it's illegal to drive with any alcohol in your system.

Yesterday we had news that our acquaintance was out of jail. He'd been in a holding cell, one that is currently operating at about five times capacity, for nine days. The holding cell, unlike your typical drunk tank, was one huge general population cell filled with hundreds of criminals of all ilk, including the really bad kind of ilk: murderous ilk. He's now facing deportation, which I suppose could mean the loss of his job, and a hefty fine. His employer had retained an attorney the first day that he was incarcerated, and for whatever reason, it took around nine days for him to be released.

Dubai has long maintained a tension between conservative islamic values and a growing expatriate culture that makes very little concession to local tradition. This tacitly accepting coexistence has been challenged lately, not just by dwindling economic prospects, ostentatious wealth is the one thing 90% of Dubai residents agree on-- they really like it, but also by a tightening of rules governing public behavior. Because new laws in Dubai are announced via press release, and this particular release was only sent to one paper, it appears that no one really knows what the hell is going on. We heard recently that undercover cops, sometimes referred to colloquially as  pigs in a blanket, have been questioning and arresting pub crawlers on foot for lacking the proper alcohol license. The bars here will card you if you look under age, but they never check you alcohol license, as it's really only needed at the actual liquor store. Liquor stores are so low profile, and obliquely named here, that it took me months to notice that there's one on either side of our grocery store. I think one of them is called Marine Mercantile, or something like that, and all the windows are painted out-- no Cap'n Cork in Dubai.

It bothers me that local business interests profit significantly from the sale of alcohol, while at the same time local laws create a jackpot (in the Cormac McCarthy sense) in which consuming alcohol can very easily draw a sober driver or a drunk pedestrian into serious legal and financial trouble. I understand that in each case, theoretical or otherwise, the person in question broke the law, what galls me though, is that they did so in an effort to behave responsibly, and fell victim to laws that are not enforced equally, or consistently with international measures of sobriety. I take exception to a great many driving behaviors that place other people's lives in jeopardy, of which driving drunk is the undeniable apex. I would add that, if you sell liquor out of one side of your mouth, and then throw your customers in jail, with the assumption of guilt rather than innocence, for what is at least sometimes responsible behavior, leaving them in confinement for seemingly random lengths of time; well, then you may resemble Vonnegut's famous asterisk. 

Warmer, dustier, and less affluent

The weather is warming up here, and is still very pleasant, although rising temperatures have helped lower visibility significantly, giving the town a closed in, almost claustrophobic feeling. This winter the sky had returned with its wide blue canopy, only to contract slowly in lockstep with the Dubai economy. Air conditioners are whirring and cooling again with greater regularity, raising Dubai's always impressive noise floor by several decibels. While news agencies have reported a great exodus of expatriate workers, many of whom have reportedly abandoned there sizable UAE debts,  I can't say that is has effected my own routine as the major thoroughfares, grocery stores, and movie theaters that I frequent seem equally over impacted. Vanessa's commute has been improved by diminished traffic, so the lack of change I can observe on foot, as I make my  daily circuit of wealthy Jumeriah 3, is obviously limited. I do get the sense that the already impatient, aggressive style of driving that characterizes Dubai's highways has worsened, as if the general population's tolerance for one another has been inflamed by the harsh economic climate.

I have been thinking a lot about economic bubbles lately, and my own experience with them. Until recently, I had never thought about things in these terms, but I am now confident that I am a harbinger of economic doom. The first bubble that popped in my presence was known as the dot com boom (DCB). The DCB's feverish, speculation driven gains eroded quickly when I arrived in then start-up crazed Seattle in late 1999. Just after the new year I began working on high profile IPOs as a lowly proofreader. At the time, my small contribution to the dreary futures of companies like homegrocer.com, drugstore.com, and dateafelon.com seemed insignificant, as each company successively went public just as NASDAQ began to implode. Further evidence leads me to believe that this was no mere coincidence.

I stayed in that business for a while before moving on to commercial printing, an arcane practice that involved adhering ink to a material called paper. Paper, a typically white, fabric like sheet with relatively poor tensile strength, was once manufactured all over the US, and was made out of finely sliced trees and noxious chemicals. Shortly after my arrival at that company, which was called Odd Graphics, people stopped reading books and magazines and the word paper fell out of popular usage as printing was quickly eclipsed by a new technology called youtube.

When I moved to Dubai, I discovered that paper still existed in the third world, and that they in fact had a thriving print media market that was willing to employ just about anyone who, like myself, could hum a few bars of a Strunk and White tune. Shortly after my arrival, the world economy promptly cratered, causing a chain reaction that would ultimately detonate Dubai's economic  bubble, splattering its ectoplasmic remains across the desert. The harbinger of economic doom had finally come to town. Now, one single question remains on the hooded brow of the one they sometimes call Slim Reaper-- where to next?

Tulum

We've been back from Mexico for over a week now, but neither of us is back on Dubai time yet. I blame this on our unconscious will not to have returned at all-- we'd rather still be in Mexico, and as a result our bodies are refusing to cooperate. We've been counteracting this problem with a box, yes a box, of red wine that was left over from a baby shower. I don't quite understand drinking at a baby shower, as the guest of honor is well under 21, but maybe that's why I've never been invited to one, I'm a stick in the mud. Our hefty box of "Rain Dance Red," which really isn't bad at all, helps a tad when combined with generic tylenol PM, although this has proven to be a perilous combination. There's been quite a bit of trial and error as we've tried to re-set our internal clocks, and this weekend we initially found ourselves rather wired by these over the counter pills (may cause sleep disturbances) until we ultimately crashed out until almost 3pm the next day.

I don't think I can describe how excellent our trip was, because at the moment, rather than sustaining us, it just makes us more home sick. Still, getting away from Dubai has improved my conception of just what a grand adventure this has been, and continues to be. As reported in the news, these are financially uncertain times in the Gulf, although saying so in print might be illegal in certain countries. One thing that I know first hand, is that enduring lay-offs is hard on the remaining staff, as they're often short handed and saddled with a form of survivor's guilt as the unnatural selection practiced by managers can be terribly confusing. Typically, social outcasts and non-performing office pariahs will flesh out the first wave-- but from there it gets murky. Sometimes, they prey on the old, whose 3% annual salary increases have added up quite handsomely over their 90 odd years of faithful service. So yes, let's get rid of these people, if they had any salt they'd have climbed the ladder long ago, probably by landing a better gig at a competing outfit. Then there's the contrarian, while his or her voice of dissent may have been sharp and atonal at times, he or she likely made a few good points as well, which made someone look bad. Gone. And so on and so forth. If it were up to me, I'd get rid of the gas bags who inevitably drag meetings that should have lasted 15 minutes into the one hour plus territory. These are the people who will debate the merits of inane details, like whether to use a zero or a one as a placeholder in a database, until actual pressing matters, lunch for instance, ultimately close the meeting with  the ridiculous debate still looming. These narcissistic vocalists are seldom laid off, because unlike the contrarian, they're always coming up with solutions. The problem, in my opinion, is that the solutions are usually inane and create more unnecessary work for support staff, serving mainly as a platform for their braying and bickering. These are the people who make you want to get laid off.

I should be quick to add, these are my experiences, not my wife's. She happens to work with a pretty incredible group of people at the moment, and as I understand it, their meetings are quite brief. And yet, given the slowdown, this is a stressful time and I'm sure it's been difficult to watch people cleaning out their desks. For me, I can't say that my freelance assignments have slowed yet, but I have noticed that ad pages are way down, and that's hardly a good sign. I'm not in a position to be let go per se, but the work certainly could dry up. I imagine, that as hiring is frozen at nearly every UAE publisher, the need for freelancers will remain relatively static as long as the titles remain active. I guess we'll see what happens.