I'm terrible at taking pictures. I have deleted about nine thousand pictures that don't capture what I'm seeing, so at Jessie's advice, I'm just going to write out what I have seen and try to be as discriptive. Or maybe it will sound stupid. It's not the grackel story afterall (for those who remember Jill getting attacked by the grackel).
Sorry in advance to Andy A - as soon as I figure out how to type this backwards so that the most current date is first, I will do that.
Rumination - 27 June 2008
Alert: Boring Rumination! ... Coming from work I was walking along and saw a kid fly past me on a bike in a back alley. Then a man barefoot flew past me after the kid. I wondered what that was all about. Stolen bike or kid escaping a horrible man? What if the man had shouted "stop that kid!" What would you do? How do you know what the situation really is? Like those movies where the good guy is like "stop that man!" How do you know, maybe the guy being chased is the good guy. Eh.. I doubt it. Anyway, in this case it was way too hot to care.
Ill Communication - 3 July 2008
Sometimes it is very, very difficult to get your point across here. You just have to throw your hands in the air and move on. It's just as hard for the other party.
So my realtor that helped me find a place (pictures coming soon) also hooked me up with a rental car (piece of crap Ford Focus, but it was new, and it does the job) until we get our car loan (interest free!) from work and I have to get a car (ugh - I was so damned proud of myself for having sold my Mitsubishi in June! I even said I would never own a car ever again).
Anyway, I don't have a UAE driver's license, so my work is getting that for me. Meanwhile I'm just waiting for it, and driving, and I did an illegal u-turn on accident (a bajillion other cars were doing it) and got pulled over. I didn't have my US Driver's License, my passport, or the papers for my car! But you can use the communication-breakdown to your advantage. Add to that, the fact that the officer was pretty friendly. This is the conversation that progressed - assume a broken-English police officer, and a put-on, 'dumb-American' innocent voice for me:
Officer: Good afternoon. Can I see your driver's license please? Me: [rummage through glove compartement] I don't think they gave me one when I rented this. Officer: No, your driver's license, like this one [shows his] Me: That's for me? Officer: No. I need yours; where is yours? Me: Oooh. .. My work is getting that for me. [some conversing back and forth to clarify] Officer: Okay where is your passport? Me: [it's at home] Oh, my work has that. Because they're getting me the license? Officer: What? How did you rent this car? Where are the papers to this car? Me: Oh they're at home? Should I go get them.. or ..? Officer: You mean to tell me that you can get a car without a license or a passport? Where are you from? Me: I'm from America?? Yes, I just rented the car. Did you want the number of the place. Officer: No. You mean in America someone can just rent a car without a license or passport or anything? Me: Sure, if they get it at the airport, why? Officer: What if you got in a wreck? They would put youin jail. Me: I'm going to jail?!! Officer: No, no, no. Look .. just.. go on, and just be careful from now on. Me: Okay! Thank you.. er.. [horribly mispronounced] shu-ka-ron!
If you act like a dumb American anywhere in the world, I think you can get by.
Pictures - Friends
Dawn's Rosy Fingers - 16 July 2008
This morning I woke up early and for the first time not by the insistence of Grace, who has the habit of stalking up to my ear and meowing loudly for no reason that I can tell. This morning, very early, was amazing. Living in the quiet area of converted villas, a kilometer south of the busy main-streets, there were no honking, obnoxious cabs and cars or Too Fast Too Furious speed-racer Saudi teenagers flooring their muscle cars past, and eliciting my sarcastic, “wow. They are so cool. They are so loud and obnoxious, how cool; I sooo want to do them.” Nor was the stupid bird outside my window (the one that causes the clatter by tipping the metal cap with bird seed for an hour or two every morning) waking me up.
No, this morning I woke up in the pre-dawn darkness because Venus was brightly shining through my windows onto me. I’ve used many expletives to describe the sun in the mornings and the windows that I have yet to cover, for their damned habit of letting the full glory of God’s stupid creation interrupt my warm dark sleeping arrangements – I swear the sun is brighter when I’ve stayed up late the night before watching X-Files and drinking boxed wine, hey some nights are boring in Abu Dhabi. Correction: most nights are boring in Abu Dhabi.
Anyway, whatever I’ve yelled at my windows or my past self that failed to buy curtains, it was all rescinded in an audible intake of breath at the pre-morning sky that woke me. The sandy haze was cleared by the sea breeze and it was Venus that brought contrast to my two or three bedroom furniture pieces. My TV and luggage bag actually had shadows cast from the brilliant light of the night sky.
I had the chance to stand by my window and watch the grayness creep up on the night scene, as mini-busses on the distant, main rode began to caravan away from the island to get loads of the worker bees of this growing hive of a city; and while two men sat on the balcony of their villa down the street and drank tea in the dark. Somewhere in the distance.. a dog barked. Just kidding, I just always wanted to say that. Oh and while we’re digressing, I don’t know if it was Venus up there or Jupiter. I should know these things; it was probably a UFO anyway (well, by definition, I guess it was).
Dawn spread her Homeric rosy fingers across the sky, I drank some apple juice, brushed my teeth (Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, anyone?) and the sat back down in my bed that finally had proper sheets and pillow cases and had become the comfort it was designed to be. Grace had been playing with a toy mouse in the kitchen (when is she going to realize it’s not a real mouse?), and bounded up to me with a short sound of approval. I grabbed the pillow, and just before I fell asleep, the stupid bird thumped the metal birdseed pan, Grace started dancing on my head, some idiot screeched to a fifty-meter-long stop in the distance, and it was getting too freaking bright to sleep anyway because I can plan a billion dollar pedestrian bridge in a day, but I can’t plan to get any damned curtains.
Western Region - 16 July 2008
I really can't speak too much about the Western Region Plan, except that I am just very happy and fortunate to be working on it. It's the largest plan maybe in history, bringing in the top experts in the world on Urban Planning and Design, as well as desert and coastal ecology. It will be a world class plan, addressing enormous development pressure in an economically and environmentally sustainable way.
We found an artsy native that refused to have their villa look like all the other ones in the settlement (score!).
Dubai - 31 July 2008
I was fortunate enough to get a chance to visit Dubai and see some of the sites. The Discovery Channel was right about these massive projects. Major trophy projects. The negative? It's a lot of residential housing coming online all at once within the year. I mean A LOT. The positive? The rooftops of all the skyskrapers have beautiful signature design crowns that really separate them from, say, New York or Berlin where they are just flat tops. The summer is nice to avoid the crowds of tourists, but I look forward to sitting outdoors in the cafés or souks in the wintertime!
I was afraid it would be like 'Disney' or Las Vegas with fake immitations of the world, but the attention to detail is incredible, and there is enough local flair to keep it from being, like, 'Venice-land' or something you'd see in a six-flags theme park. It really is amazing, so here are some pictures:
Environmentalism - 13 August 2008
Anyway we're doing really cool environmental stuff here and we have a very progressive team that is on top of all that stuff. Another cool thing is a possible preservation for Hubara (a bird). I'm going to try to get one named after me for one reason. In Tunisia we were invited to a research station that had the first Hubara Bustard successfully born in captivity. The ag folks had their questions, but of course mine was the important one: Does she have a name? ... The first Hubara Bustard born in captivity in 2004 is named 'Mikey' now. .. WoW that was a digression; but an important one.
