snippy, sticky

I called feline friends today, in accordance with the email I received Christmas Eve. I reached a rather snippy brit who informed me that Macavity is not a candidate for adoption because he's "well fed and taken care of" at the Meridien.

I was like dude, you can't be serious. He's getting beat up every day by this cat I've named lady marmalade. He doesn't have a shelter. He's always hungry. And he is pretty darn cute. Someone would definitely take him. She gave me some blah blah argument about resources, which is not a point of discussion since I said I would pay for his room and board until someone took him in. She said "I have other cats that actually NEED our services!" and then she hung up on me.

Ech. So now I'm trying to spread the word about him in the hopes someone here might take him. Annoying.

And at the end of the day today I was so bored I did something bad. My mom sent me, for reasons that aren't totally clear, a half eaten bag of gummi bears. I brought it into the office but no one can eat them because they're made with gelatin. So, I was trying to figure out what to do with them, when suddenly it seemed like a good idea to stick them on A's cactus.
Then Texas Kid encouraged me to do something else, so I licked one and stuck it on the map of Dubai, he looks like he's going to the emirates palace, and then I put one on our white board. I wonder if anyone is going to notice.

Texas Kid and I are the only consultants in the office, so we've been causing trouble. We are playing an elaborate joke on our manager Dr. T. We keep sending each other emails about a "top secret" project we are working on. TK named it "project SPOCK". Dr. T is a bit of a control freak who likes to know everything that's going on. He's on vacation now, though, and neither of us will tell him what the project is (there is a project, which is going to be so cool when it's finished).

TK and I keep sending each other cryptic emails about what we are doing. For example, today I sent TK an email, and cc:ed Dr. T, that said "after you finish the thing, do the other thing we talked about, and then tomorrow we'll bring the things together, so we can move on to phase 3". TK sent me an email that said "Shall I secure the project with 256 bit AES encryption? Also when I'm done with my half of the work perhaps we'll do a merge before I go on holiday next week? Be sure to select "mark as confidential" and "encrypt" any emails regarding this project to prevent anyone from downloading any data we work on."

I know the second Dr. T gets back from vacation he's going to come into the office and demand to know what project SPOCK is. I've created a bunch of meaningless design diagrams on a white board to keep him guessing. Hee.

dolphins

Last night I dreamed that I was in the antarctic studying great white sharks. I kept thinking that I wouldn't see any sharks because it was too cold. I was in a submarine under this huge shelf of ice and I saw some great whites. I was like "what are you guys doing here? what are you eating?" One of the great whites tossed a dead seal towards the submarine, and I started laughing, even though I felt bad for the poor seal. I was like "but don't you get cold?" and one of the great whites swam by the front of the submarine and made his extensible jaw teeth chatter. I started laughing. Great whites have the best sense of humor in my dreams.

Then I decided I needed to go home, and somehow as the submarine was surfacing I ended up in the swimming pool at the meridien, except that it had an island in the middle of it, and all these dolphins swimming around. I wanted to get into the water with the dolphins, but I was wearing normal clothes, and it was my only outfit, so I took this yellow inflatable kayak from the submarine to the edge of the pool. The dolphins were bouncing around the boat and they were like "come in the water and play with us!" and I was like "dudes, I have to change first, this is my only outfit and I can't get it dirty". Then I got to the edge of the pool and stepped out of the kayak, and the dolphins popped it and dragged it way down underwater. One of the dolphins was like "you have to come get your boat!"

So I went to this hallway that had bleachers in it to change into my diving suit. I was standing there in a 3mm dive suit when I looked down the hallway and realized Paul McCartney and his daughter were walking towards me. I was really embarrassed for some reason, I guess because I was standing there in my dive suit. Paul came up to me and shook my hand and said "I know you from somewhere. Did we meet when we invaded the moon?" which I guess was a reference to my diving suit. I realized his daughter was a kid I had always played with in the pool without knowing who she was. I asked if he wanted to bring his daughter to the pool so we could dive with dolphins but Paul said they had a plane to catch and walked away.

I went back to the pool and jumped in. All these dolphins came up to me and said "we just bit the shit out of your boat and it's totally sunk, do you want to dive to the bottom of the pool with us to go get it?" I looked into the water and it was very murky. I realized it was night and only the top part of the pool was lit up and it was so deep I couldn't see the bottom. I was like "I'm not sure that would be safe" and the dolphins said "don't worry, we'll stay with you". They surrounded me in this dolphin pod and we started swimming towards the bottom of the pool.

Then I woke up.

local talk

Yesterday I had my first conversation with a local emirati woman.

I was at this lebanese pizza place getting pizza for dinner. I'd never been there on the weekend, and usually go there pretty late in the evening (I rarely start thinking about dinner until around 8 pm). The place was packed with locals.

I placed my order and then tried to find somewhere out of the way to stand while I waited. There are two benches in the front of the restaurant but they were both full. Then an emirati couple vacated one of the benches and went to look at the buffet (they serve a buffet of Lebanese food in addition to making pizza). After a few minutes of them looking at the buffet food I assumed that they were going to sit at a table so I took a seat on their bench.

I started reading my book, and an egyptian woman came over and sat practically in my lap (she wasn't small) and pulled her daughter up on the bench too. She said excuse me in French because I guess she assumed I was french. They figured out their order and got up. Then the emirati woman came over and sat back down on the bench. Her husband was making a fuss about something, I assumed because I was sitting in his seat. He was not being quiet about whatever it was he was bitching about, even though the emirati woman kept telling him to calm down.

I put my book mark in my book, and indicated to her that I would go stand somewhere so her husband could have his seat back. She put her hand on my forearm, which was shocking because no one ever touches you here, and then said "No, he can stand. You stay here and read your book." Most of the locals I run into are not polite in the western sense, partially because of the culture, and partially because they resent westerners doing stupid stuff in their country. I was touched in a way that is hard to explain that she did that.

Then, even more surprising, she said "What is this book you are reading?" I showed her the cover, which is dark except for a lighted arch with a robed monk standing in the middle of the arch. "It's called Ananthem" I said. "Oh, it's a very nice book" she responded, even though I'm thinking Neal Stephenson doesn't sell many books here.

"It's about math" I said, lest she think I was reading some kind of weird subversive religious literature. "Events that happen in the book are used to illustrate mathematical principles and the solving of equations". I showed here the calcas, as the math problems are called in the book. The first one is about how to cut a square into 8 pieces that are of equal size given that the square is measured by a spatula that you have to use to make the cuts. The first iteration, you can cut the square into four even pieces (the square is two pieces long by two pieces wide). The second iteration, you can cut the square into 16 even pieces (each of the four pieces in the previous example is cut again into four pieces, squaring the square, with 4 squared equalling 16). So that's why the 8 piece problem is hard. The solution is to cut the square into triangles, if you were wondering.

Anyway, it was hard to tell what she made of my book, though she did seem to be listening to my explanation about the squares. I could only see her eyes, but not even much of those because she would look down every time I made eye contact with her. Then her order was ready and she wished me a good evening and left.

I wonder what she was thinking on the car ride home. Probably "note to self: never talk to westerners reading books".

a christmas cleaning calamity

This morning I woke up early, with the thought that I would do my laundry in Ireland's apartment, eat some eggs that M gave to Ireland before she went back to France, and then, after I hung my laundry up, go to the beach. Seemed like a nice way to spend Christmas.

Except.

I got to Ireland's apartment after getting a bit lost (last time I walked there it was dark and I could see the bank sign on her building from a mile away because it was lit up) and put my laundry in the washing machine. I was confronted with an array of buttons that weren't labeled. I couldn't remember which one I was supposed to press to turn the machine on. So, I kept pressing different buttons until the thing started making noise.

Figuring I had an hour to kill, I wandered into the kitchen and took out the eggs. I got a pan out, and tried to figure out how to turn on the gas stove. I could smell the gas coming out as I twisted the different knobs, but I couldn't get a burner to light. Giving up on that, I made the incredibly stupid decision, since I had already broken two eggs open, to cook them in the microwave. Explosion. Chaos. Bad smells. No breakfast.

I settled in on the sofa, hungry, figuring I would read my book Ananthem until my clothes were done. An hour later I was still reading. Two hours later, the washing machine seemed to have stopped. I went to pull out my clothes so I could go to the beach, but the door wouldn't open. I tried pressing buttons. Nothing. I unplugged the thing. Still nothing. I sent a text message to the Texas Kid that said "Say, do you know anything about washing machines?" I smoked a few cigarettes, checking the machine every few minutes. It was definitely stopped, and the door was definitely not opening.

F this, I thought to myself, copying down the model number. I decided to go back to the hotel, a 45 minute walk, run some errands, look up directions for the washer on line, and then walk back to Ireland's.

When I got back to the hotel, Texas Kid had called. He ridiculed me for my ineptness and said that it explained why I'm still single. He tried to find a manual for the washer online, but couldn't. He made fun of me to his wife, who was sitting next to him, and I could hear her laughing. I was like dude, are you telling the whole world my clothes are stuck in Ireland's washer? Ech.

A few hours later, errands complete, I headed back to Ireland's. I was sure some christmas miracle would have occurred, and that my clothes would be free. It was an unfortunate choice I had made to put all my normal, non-work clothes in the washer. If I couldn't get them out, I'd have nothing to wear until Ireland got home. I imagined my running clothes as a moldy mess since she won't be back for at least 7 days.

When I arrived back at the apartment, I sang a little song in the elevator about the washing machine opening. It didn't. I got pissed. I poked buttons. I spun the dial. I cursed and yanked on the door with all my strength.

Suddenly the door opened. I couldn't remember what combination of buttons I had pressed, though. I started taking my clothes out, but they were soaking wet. Water was getting all over the marble tiled floor, causing me to slide and almost fall over the washing machine plug. My white shirts had turned grey. There were weird spots on everything.

Against my better judgment, I closed the door again after I had removed half my clothes, to see if I could get the water to drain. I spun the dial, pressed some buttons, and the machine started again. I hung all my sopping wet stuff I had taken out already on the drying rack.

M called me from France. I told her what had happened. She laughed and said I should have taken up her offer to come home with her for the holidays (south of France, million dollar chateau, yeah, why DIDN'T I do that???). She said I needed someone to take care of me, and that she would be back to Abu Dhabi soon and make me something nice to eat that wasn't an egg in the microwave.

By the time we rang off, the washing machine had stopped again. I was able to open the door, and the clothes were in a state of more dryness than the previous batch. I hung them up too, and decided the best course of action would be not to watch a movie on Ireland's dvd (at that point, I was afraid to try to do anything else in that apartment), as previously planned, but to return to the hotel and not think about my laundry until Sunday morning when I would hopefully return to Ireland's apartment to find my laundry dry.

And not dirty from sand blowing on it since I had to leave it out on the balcony because it was so wet I was afraid it would never dry otherwise.

On a positive note, the hotel gave me a huge chocolate christmas tree to eat. It has weird blobs at the base of it, which may be children opening presents, or may be panda bears trying to eat the tree.

I need a glass of wine. And, maybe room service...I don't think I should leave my hotel room again for the rest of the night, and not just because I have nothing to wear.

macavity

Since Lancelot seems to have disappeared, I've adopted a new cat, Macavity. He's super friendly and much more tame than Lance. I am pretty sure he was abandoned after being some one's pet (happens here a lot - nice job ex pats!).

Cav has bad fighting skills, doesn't like food that isn't cat food, and he can't really take care of himself. His little ear is all beat up from this other cat that is twice his size. I don't like that other cat at all.

I missed feeding Cav the other night because I had dinner with Ireland and M (both left for holidays so it was a going away thing). Then when I got home yesterday, and went out on my balcony, I heard this little meow. I looked out on the roof and saw Cav's head poking up so just his ears were showing.


I was like "Dude, what are you doing? Come here!" Cav came running over to the building but he was a floor below me.

I threw him some cheese, since I was out of cat food, but he didn't want it (unlike Lance, he's not a fan of laughing cow). I told him I would get him some food and be right back. He started crying, and then running around trying to find a way to climb up to my balcony. It was so cute, but made me feel bad (in this pic you can barely see his little body and tail as he tried to climb up a pipe).


I got him some food but by the time I got back from the co-op (15 minutes, I was running) he was gone. I didn't get to see him because I had to go over to Ireland's house to pick up my shoes.

I decided this morning that I have to find Cav a home. I emailed feline friends, and organization here that rescues abandoned animals. Here's the response I got:

"Thanks for your email.
Does that cat have a V cut in one of his ears? If so, it might be a cat we have already sterilised. There was a whole little black and white colony there, that we sterilised.
I cannot really tell from the pic.
Please call me on my personal mobile [] after the 26th of Dec. as I will be away from the 24th to the 26th.HOping to hear from you after the 26th of Dec."

So maybe, hopefully, I'll be able to get Cav into a nice home or shelter. I wish I could sneak him into my room, but if I get caught they're definitely going to throw me out of the hotel...

security sneak

Today I went to a government base to do a briefing for some high level government people. I'm always paranoid that something will happen to my presentation, so I normally copy it on to two USBs (no single point of failure).

But today Dr. T decided I should also bring my laptop as a back up. I was like, hm, secure facility, that seems like a really bad idea, but he insisted.

We got half way to the building where Dr. T thought we were doing the presentation. It turned out, we were expected in a different building half way across town. We got to the base in a rush, and Dr. T attempted to drive right in. Another bad idea. Three guys with machine guns got very excited. Then, to make matters worse, Dr. T opened his car door (his electrical system isn't working and he can't roll down the windows). More yelling. We made a U turn and parked outside the base, then went in to get our badges. As we were leaving the guy noticed my computer bag and asked if I had a computer. I pretended I had no idea what was going on, as first my colleagues tried to pretend I didn't have a computer. But I was busted.

Meanwhile, the presentation was supposed to start in 10 minutes, and we were not even close to being able to get on the base. We were detained at the gate while they tried to figure out what to do with my laptop. I offered to give the bag to the guard, but that agitated him to the point that he stood right outside my car window with the barrel of his gun pointing in my direction. I noticed the safety was off. I wanted to slide out of the way, but I was trapped by children's car seats.

Finally our gov sponsor came out of the base in his car, accompanied by two other high ranking officers. We made a U turn again, drove down to the end of the street, pulled over, and I gave them my computer bag. Then we all went back to the base. This time, because we were following high ranking officers, they let us through the gate. We noticed a car of 4 american military guys who had been sitting at the base check point for over a half hour. They didn't look happy at all. As we drove by them Dr. T said "are you trying to bring a lap top in?" I don't think they found that funny.

The presentation went well, and after it was over we again followed the officers off the base, to the end of the street, and they gave my laptop bag back. The one who had taken it made a joke that he hoped nothing was missing (no one ever steals anything in this country, even if it's something valuable that you leave out in public, like a wallet). And I was happy that almost all of the officers shook my hand as we were leaving.

But next time, I'm going to tell Dr. T to take his computer.

dinner at M's

On Thursday night Ireland and I went over to M's flat for dinner. Unlike me, when she visits the UAE she takes a flat.

We were late, as usual, but M didn't mind because I brought her a box of Patchi chocolates. I'm not sure who makes them, but they are the best chocolates ever. Even I occasionally eat them, even though I'm not a huge fan of chocolate.

M made a salad that had a little baked goat cheese pie in the center. Then we had tuna, wasabi mashed potatoes, and asparagus. I got some looks from M and Ireland when I picked up an asparagus spear. I said "It's a finger food, you can look on the web" and M said "Someone needs to teach you americans how to eat properly".

Then we had a bottle of pink champagne. While it was good at the time, I woke up the next morning with a headache. We sat on the sofa and started planning our travel for next year. Ireland is going to take me to Ireland. And we are going to go to Stockholm to visit the Bouncer and his family.

I was telling them that I wanted to take surfing lessons for my birthday. M devised a plan where I would fly to Italy, and she and Ireland would hang out on the beach having wine while I surfed. I expressed some doubts that there is surfing in Italy, but M assured me there was. So, hopefully, that's what I'll be doing for my birthday next year.

Ireland fell asleep on the sofa, but M and I kept talking. Finally Ireland woke up, and we realized it was 2.30 in the morning. We took a taxi home, and I decided to stay in bed the next day until 11 am, then came into the office to get some work done. I spent the rest of the weekend in the office, and only spent 2 hours working on my book.

Hopefully my schedule will lighten up in the new year...

egyptian, the sequel

There are a lot of idiots in the world. Somehow, they always seem to be attracted to me.

Today I had a very long day at work, and went to the gym as soon as I got home. I ran for a while, and then headed back to my room. I had to walk through this outdoor courtyard where some insane christmas festival thing was going on. Wall to wall kids carrying cotton candy and screaming. I left my MP3 player on to block out the sound of the band mangling christmas carols.

And, who should stop me as I was dodging some woman attempting to run me over with a humvee style stroller? The egyptian H. He grabbed my arm from behind, and I turned around ready to punch someone. Then I was like, are you [bad word] kidding me. Ech.

He said "Do you remember my name?" and I was like "Yes, H". I want him to know I know his name in case he does something bad. Then he said "Why did I no see you for a long time?" I was like dude, I just saw you on Saturday, and that visit was enough for the month. I tried to walk away from him, but he grabbed me again.

"I want to send flowers, and a fruit basket to your room. Where is your room?" Someone on the staff told him I was staying at the Meridien. If I find out who it was, I'll break his legs. I was like "I am not going to tell you where my room is. Please stop touching me." He said "Let's go for breakfast tomorrow or come by for a free drink in the evening". As if I don't have a job, and as if I would spend my free time with him.

Giving him a few pity points because, I don't know, maybe he didn't get enough nutrition as a child causing his obvious lack of brain power, I explained that I wouldn't be going to breakfast with him tomorrow morning, or ever. I patiently reiterated that I didn't want a fruit basket, flowers, or a free drink from him.

He said "I'm glad, because I don't like you when you're drinking. You're mean." I asked him how he came to that assumption (I am actually quite happy when I'm buzzed) and he said "You were being mean the other night (when I told him to f off)". I pointed out to him that I wasn't drunk that night, said I had to leave, and tried to walk away again, except I was blocked from making much progress because of all the kids with cotton candy milling around the sidewalk.

H said "Why don't you give me your room number?" and I said "Because I don't trust you". He said "If you can't trust me, who can you trust?" I didn't have time to make a list for him, so I left instead.

I hope H doesn't make the mistake of following me around the hotel for the next few months. Because I'll have to get one of my special forces guys to chat with him. Or get the Bouncer to come back. No one messes with the Bouncer.

tigers

I've been having a philosophical discussion with myself the past few days because of the whole Tiger scandal. Not that I usually care about shit like that, but, it's been better than reading about all the unrest happening in my neighboring countries...

I heard two interesting things, both said by women. And, I'm not sure they're true. The first thing was about what attracts people to each other. It was along the lines of "half of the attraction to someone is that they're attracted to you and interested in you, so that makes them attractive". The second thing was a snarky comment "If everything is fine in your relationship, you aren't looking around".

While I think both of these things apply to WOMEN, I don't believe that they apply to men. But, I may be wrong.

In the first instance, I think men are just as attracted to people who aren't attracted to them. I see this all the time at work with these nimrods who will do things that even becoming physically threatening to me just to get my attention. It's not that I think they have some great interest in me, but rather that they hate that I am not interested in them. Once I show interest the problem usually goes away.

In the second instance, I think men are ALWAYS looking around. They aren't doing it for the same reason as women. Women are looking around to see if they can find a better guy. Men are looking around because they're worried they'll miss the opportunity to fuck someone who might want to fuck them. Most of the time guys who cheat, at least the ones I've known, are not looking for a new girlfriend, they're just looking for a new piece of ass. And when they're done, they'll dismiss that piece of ass without a second thought. Women, on the other hand, usually want to keep the new piece of ass around, preferably to replace the old piece of ass.

I may be wrong. Or maybe I just know some fucked up people. But this is what my experience has shown. I know plenty of married guys who mess around behind their partners' backs, not because they are unhappy with their partner but because they can. That might be why men and women have so many problems. Someone in the media was speculating that Tiger loved one of the girls that he was fucking. I thought that was a preposterous assumption. He did it to feed his ego, not because he cared about any of the girls, even if he was telling them otherwise.

Lesson learned, the hard way. Just because a guy says he loves you and is attracted to you, if he isn't with you, then what he's saying is bullshit. Sure, he might "love" you; but he really loves the person he stays with.

Also, just because a guy screws around on you, you can't assume he doesn't love you. Maybe he just loves himself more. He isn't cheating on you because he loves the person he cheated with. He did it to make himself feel better and to build up his ego, at the expense of yours. So it's not necessarily the right thing to leave him, because most guys will put themselves before you.

Until women start doing the same, we'll keep getting screwed in this game.

talk like an egyptian

Friday was Bouncer's last day, and his flight left at 2 am Saturday morning (that's normal for this area of the world) so Ireland and I met him for a glass of wine at Wakatua (which I've been mistakenly calling Chi Chi's all this time). Then we had dinner at an Italian restaurant.

While we were at the restaurant the egyptian manager, H, came over and said hi to Ireland. They've known each other for 4 years. Then Ireland introduced me to H. He grabbed my hand, and then dropped it and said "your hand is too cold to shake". He asked if I had a hot heart because people with cold hands have a hot heart. And then he felt my forehead to see if I had a fever, but my face was red because I was blushing because I was embarrassed that I was being hassled by a maniac egyptian guy. I didn't respond to anything he said to me and stared at my bread plate until he walked away.

Undeterred, H brought a three string roaming band over to our table and had them play John Lennin's "woman" while he stood on the balcony above our table and stared at me. The romance of the gesture was somewhat marred by the filipino band's english, resulting in lines like "the little child in spite of a man" and "please remember my life is in the band". I thought it was weird, but decided to ignore it.

The Bouncer left and then M, Ireland's friend, showed up. We got our check and decided to sit at the restaurant outside the italian place to have another glass of wine. H came over and sat down on the bench next to me, and put his arm around me. Again, I thought it was strange but didn't want to piss off Ireland by being mean to her friend. Ireland told H he needed to upgrade me to the suite the Bouncer had. H said there was a nicer suite and told me he had a key for it. He said that he could give me a 20 minute tour of the suite.

That really pissed me off. I know exactly what he was implying. So I looked at him and said "Can you please not touch me?" He looked offended, but I was just getting started. I said "What exactly do you mean you're going to give me a 20 minute tour of the suite? Do you honestly think that I would go anywhere with you? And would you talk to an Eastern woman like that?"

H obviously didn't know what to say. He got up from the bench and said he was sorry. I was like "You're damn right you should be sorry. You assume just because I'm a western woman that you can just come up to me and put your arm around me and proposition me? What the [bad word] is WRONG with you?"

H apologized again and walked away. Ireland and M and I were talking about what a creep he was. Even if what he said was meant as a joke, he didn't know me well enough to say things like that. And frankly, I am tired of guys in this area of the world treating every woman like she's nothing but a prostitute. Of course, H positioned himself right outside the Italian restaurant and kept staring at our table.

About 20 minutes later I went in to the ladies and when I came out H walked up to me and apologized again. He said he had seen me hanging out in Wakatua with the Bouncer and that he liked me. I was like WHATEVER dude. He asked me to come by the restaurant some time to see him so he could talk to me. I said "Let me think about that for a second. Um, no."

I went back to the table and told Ireland and M what happened. I was tired anyway so we decided to leave. The stupid waiter brought our bill, and then, after I paid it with cash, told me I owed him an extra 100 dirhams. I thought that I might have put in the wrong cash because I'm always getting the money here confused (a lot of bills look alike, and it was kind of dark outside). As we were walking away from the table H came running up to me and told me the waiter had ripped me off, and gave me my 100 dirhams back.

Needless to say, I won't be going back to any of those places again. I really can't tolerate that kind of behavior anymore. I hate having to be distrustful of people because they think they can rip me off because I'm a western woman. I'm tired of guys coming up to me and acting like I should be happy they are paying attention to me.

Some times I wonder if this place is for real...

project close out

This past week has been insanely busy. It was my last week on a contract I've been supporting and since I was in Banff for 3 weeks I had a lot of work to do to get ready for the project close out.

Thursday night the project team got together for a celebration that went really, really late. We started out on the Bouncer's balcony with a bottle of champagne. The Bouncer got upgraded to the second nicest suite in the hotel, which included fresh floral arrangements and a platter of fruit every night. His balcony was larger than my hotel room. A band started playing below us and A was singing along, and he can sing really well, so I kept making him and Ireland sing along with the band (you could hear the music really clearly). I was like "We are starting a band and I'm the manager. I want you to practice!"

A got up and started dancing, including doing the moon walk. I was laughing so hard I was in tears. Then everyone got up and started dancing on the balcony. At one point A and I were doing chorus kicks. Unfortunately, Ireland took a picture of that. Then A and I threw rose petals off the balcony and they landed on people walking through the restaurant below the Bouncer's room.

The Bouncer gave Ireland and I all of his toiletries that came free with the room because they were from Hermes. I got a box of soap. It was so nice I kept taking it out of my bag and smelling it. Ireland was given some soap and shampoo and conditioner. We were joking with the Bouncer that I was going to move into his suite when he left because my room is crap in comparison.

We decided to go to the restaurant and the Bouncer, still in his suit, and A, wearing a suit coat, put roses in their lapels from a different floral arrangement than the one that A and I threw off the balcony. A guy came over to our table while we were having another bottle of champagne and made a comment about the Bouncer's suit and rose in lapel. Without missing a beat the Bouncer said "I was supposed to get married today, but the bride didn't show up". I said I was supposed to be the maid of honor. We kept the story going for the rest of the night. The guy felt really bad for making a comment to the Bouncer. Ha ha. The Bouncer later said "I never go into bars and do things like that". Ireland says I'm corrupting the team.

Then we met some helicopter pilots. One was very nice but the one who was sitting next to me was really creepy. I made the Bouncer switch seats with me. At one point we all decided to climb under the table and take a picture for Ireland's friend, who sent her a text saying that we should party so much we ended up under the table.

A ended up leaving early, and then I left about an hour later because I was totally exhausted. Ireland and the Bouncer kept going until 4 in the morning. I woke up the next day and was so tired I didn't do much of anything. I think I'm a little burned out...

don't see THAT too often in the desert

It's been raining here for two days straight. Which is weird because it usually rains here just a few days during the year in February, and it normally only rains for a few minutes (this is what the locals tell me anyway). Apparently last year they got so little rain that planes had to seed the clouds over the ocean to get a sprinkle in Abu Dhabi.


Well, the drought is over. Yesterday I went for a walk around 2 pm and got drenched by the rain. When I got back to the hotel it had started lightning and thundering. Same thing when I woke up this morning. The roof of my hotel is flooded. The roads are flooded. All the street signals went out in the tourist club area of Abu Dhabi so traffic was a mess. It was like experiencing a bad snow storm in the US. But worse.


Only two people came into the office today because of the weather. I left early because it had started raining again and I was getting worried the streets would be impassible going back to the hotel. Because I'm right on the beach all of the streets near my hotel are filled with water. This street next to my hotel is so flooded cars can't drive down it anymore.

Wishing I had a rain jacket and sweat shirt. It's chilly here too. I'm guessing Ireland and I won't be going to the beach next weekend if this weather keeps up.

my fake oatmeal injury

WARNING: kind of gross picture of my injury at the bottom of this blog

Today I sustained my worst UAE injury since I tripped over those tiles and cut up the top of my foot (I still have scars). I was injured by fake oatmeal.

I went to the co-op yesterday to buy some breakfast cereal since the breakfast here at the Meridien is crap (except for the coconut cupcakes). I bought what I thought was a can of oatmeal. The picture on the can sure looks like oats. And it had a name "Virginia", the only english writing on the can. Isn't Virginia a farm state? Isn't it very possible they grow oats there? They have lots of horse in VA too, and don't horses eat oats?

The "cereal" came in a tin with a metal seal on it (like a can of pringles). I started opening the metal seal thingy and somehow managed to gash my thumb with it as I was pulling the last part off. It hurt. A lot. Then my thumb started bleeding and wouldn't stop. I didn't have any bandaids so I took some packing tape and taped a kleenex over the cut. But, not before getting blood on the floor. I guess it kind of blends in with the carpet.

The worst part is, what ever is in that tin is NOT oatmeal. I poured boiling water over the "oats" and after 3 minutes, during which the oatmeal was supposed to be cooking, I looked inside my coffee mug expecting to see oatmeal. Instead there was this gelatinous goo with a few "oat balls" floating in it. I tried stirring to see if that would help but the balls just kept sticking to my spoon. I tried to eat it, but it was way too disgusting. It tasted like sand, actually.

I left what ever it is in the coffee mug and figured the maid would clean it when he did my room. Ha. The only thing he seems to spend time on in my room is going through my clothes. I had a meeting with Ireland, and when I got back to my hotel room 3 hours later I saw that the oat stuff had turned to sludge in a mug. Gross. I can't wait to find out at work on Sunday what this stuff is.

the wrong mercure

I'm back in Abu Dhabi after 3 1/2 weeks in Banff, Canada and a half week in Denver with my parents. The writing workshop I went to was the best thing I've ever done, and I would encourage any aspiring writer to apply for it (www.banffcentre.ca).

As usual, though, something weird happened on my trip from the states. Flying to Canada from UAE I ended up having a 30 hour layover in Frankfurt. I didn't realize I had such a long layover until I got to Frankfurt, so I called my company's travel desk and they booked me into a Mercure hotel close to the airport. I went to the airport info desk after I got the address and they told me there was a free shuttle to the hotel. Perfect. I got there, walked around the very nice village where the Mercure was located, had some great food from a street vendor stand, and made it to Denver even though there was a huge snowstorm.

On the way back to UAE, I had a 24 hour layover. I contacted the travel desk and asked them to put me in the Mercure again. I left pretty late on Friday night, and was exhausted by the time I got to Frankfurt because this terrorist kid (guessing age 3 or 4) screamed, no, not cried, screamed the entire flight. Yes, all 10 1/2 hours. It was so bad that people on the plane were yelling at the parents to shut the kid up. But, they were busy watching a movie, and did nothing.

Anyway, I went to the hotel shuttle station and got the shuttle. I was so happy that, in 30 minutes, I was going to be in a bed, sleeping. We pulled up to a hotel. Sure, it had the Mercure sign. But, it looked different. I got to the front desk and found out not only did I not have a reservation there, but the price of the room was 3 times what my company would pay. The woman that I would have to take a taxi to the Mercure hotel where I had a reservation. I said I would just take the shuttle back to the airport and catch the other Mercure shuttle to the right hotel. The woman and shuttle driver BOTH insisted there was no "other Mercure shuttle". I said "But I just stayed there a month ago and took the shuttle". The woman patted me on the arm and said I looked really tired.

I got a taxi and he took me to a Mercure hotel. But it was not the hotel I had stayed at. I asked him to wait while I went inside but he took off as soon as my suitcase was out of his trunk. I went in and found out, no surprise, that I didn't have a reservation there either. The check in desk told me there are three Mercure hotels in Frankfurt and that this confusion happens all the time.

Great. I stood in the rain for 20 minutes waiting for a taxi. Thankfully he spoke english. He promised me he could have me to the hotel in 15 minutes because by then I was ready to pass out from exhaustion. I fell asleep in his cab. I woke up when we got to the hotel and...it was NOT the hotel I had stayed in. I was like aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah! wrong hotel again!!!!!!!! and begged the taxi driver not to leave me until I found the right hotel. I went in and it turns out it was the hotel where I had a reservation. But it was definitely NOT the hotel I had stayed in before. As the woman was checking me in I asked her about the fourth Mercure hotel and she also insisted it didn't exist, there were only 3 Mercures in Frankfurt, and that the expensive Mercure I went to first was the only hotel that had a shuttle from the airport.

I thought maybe I was tired and going crazy. But then when I got up to my room I looked in my computer bag and sure enough, there was my Mercure hotel key from my previous stay. Then, because I'm obsessive compulsive, I did a web search to find the other hotel I stayed at. It didn't list in the results for Mercures within a certain distance from the Frankfurt airport.

Crazy. I wonder if I was staying in the twilight zone...

So, on deck for the rest of the week. Tomorrow's a holiday (National day, which means people driving their cars around at crazy speeds, and fireworks), then this weekend I promised Ireland I would go with her to rugby 7s. I may regret that. She said, after I promised to go, and I quote "It's so great! You get to sit in the stands with all these crazy rugby fans spilling beer all over you!"

Uh. Yeah.

why I love great whites

My fake publisher asked me to explain why I love great whites in this piece I'm writing. I told him I didn't know why I love them, and then he said I should write something to try to figure it out.

So, why I love great whites...

I'm obsessed with teeth. Not just shark teeth, but all teeth. I don't know why. They're shiny, and white, and when I look at teeth, nice teeth, it makes me feel calm. Sharks have lots of nice teeth. But, really I like great white teeth. And tiger shark teeth. I don't like sand shark teeth. Or alligator teeth. Okay...I like triangular teeth.

Fuck, I'm an engineer, of course I like triangles.

Great whites have well organized teeth. I like that. And they are well arranged. It's weird that they seem a bit obese, and I don't normally like that. They have the fattest necks ever. But for some reason, I like that on great whites.

That Jaws poster. I loved that poster. I used to cut the advert for Jaws out of the paper and put it on the wall next to my bed. Why would I like that poster? Because the shark has the element of surprise. I felt more like the shark than the person swimming.

Which is weird. I should take a poll. When people look at that advert, who do they identify more with? Am I the only one who thinks I'm the shark?

No one tells a great white what to do. They can't be tamed or kept in captivity.

I often have dreams that great whites take me to live with them. In those dreams I feel like I'm flying, I feel protected by the sharks, and I feel like the sharks have adopted me. I have always, insanely maybe, believed that even if I encountered a great white in the wild it wouldn't eat me. I also believe a great white would let me pet it.

If I were a great white, no one could fuck with me except for an orca. I saw a video of a great white getting fucked up by an orca. I didn't love it less. I felt bad for it. I like orcas too. But I don't like their teeth. They have the stupidest teeth ever. And they're totally black and white. Great whites are mottled. They can hide against the rocks.

Great whites travel a lot. So do I. They hang out in packs sometimes, but are really loners. Other sharks know how to do math. Great whites might know how to do math.

You can't ever tell what a great white is thinking. It doesn't have a pupil. It's like their dead. Which is weird. Because I don't like snakes because they don't have a pupil.

When people display dead great whites they're still scary.

Sometimes I think it would be fun if I could climb into a great white's mouth and ride around in there while the shark is swimming. I think it would be funny if the shark swam up to a boat and opened its mouth. Then I would wave to the people and then the shark would close its mouth and swim away. We would laugh about that for hours. The shark would keep saying "Did you SEE their faces when I swam up? I thought I was going to die laughing when you were all like "hi people on the boat!""

Time to meet everyone for dinner. I'm going to do my experiment. I still don't know why I love great whites.

climbing grade love

I've been thinking about love, and lack there of, lately. That's because I think it's strange when people say they love me. What exactly does that mean?

So this morning I got an idea. The word "love" should be prefaced with a grade, like a rock climb. That way everyone knows exactly what the claim of love implies.

Here's a suggested scale:

5.4 love - You're interested in love, but more as a tourist. You don't want to do anything too hard. You want to say that you loved, even if it was just a weekend trip. 5.4 love is predictable and easy. You feel a sense of accomplishment because you don't know there's more to it than what you experienced.

5.6 love - Now you're trying a little harder. There's a few challenges, but that's because you don't know what you're doing. Endurance is usually an issue with 5.6 love. You get pumped before you top out. A person who attempts 5.6 love will make a decision to step up the game or just go back to 5.4 love.

5.8 love - You can definitely say you're a lover now. But, maybe not the kind that knows how to handle challenges and cruxes. This is married people love, with the spouse and kids, looking at the harder stuff but being to scared to try it. People in 5.8 love like to play it safe. It might be challenging at first, but then it gets boring, but at least you know what to expect. There's little chance of getting hurt on 5.8 love.

5.9 love - There are a few crux moves here, and you might be surprised how hard it is sometimes. You might find yourself thinking "this is harder than 5.9 love should be". It's a weird place. You want something more exciting than 5.8 love, but you are afraid to push yourself to a 5.10 love. Basically, you're mediocre. Just go back to 5.8 love and quit wasting people's time.

5.10 love - This is the perfect love. Solid, but with challenges. It shows you've mastered love. It's the last love grade before things get start getting weird. 5.10 love requires dedication and style.

5.11 love - This is where love starts to get bad. Sure, it's great, but all you're doing is potentially hurting yourself hanging on to little bits and pieces of things, trying to make a route out of them. There may be some good holds to get you to the top, but there's a lot of crimp shit too.

5.12 love - Now you've over worked love. You've put it on some pedestal and are chasing after it to the exclusion of other, healthier things. You might feel great when you top out on 5.12 love, but then you have to do it again tomorrow. And the next day. Pretty soon you're going to be thinking that 5.12 love is really scary, and the rewards aren't that great. 5.12 love always hurts. It's like a Roy Orbison song.

5.13 love - This love is best described with an image: pet bunny in a pot on the stove.

banff film fest wrap party

Apologies for the stream of consciousness writing. I have a writing deadline and am not supposed to be writing on my blog...

So, I showed up to the wrap party fashionably late. That was what doomed me. When I got there I ran into Lana, who was my volunteer coordinator last year. I hadn't brought any money so I thought I wasn't going to be drinking. Instead Lana, who had been drinking, stuffed about 6 drink tickets in my pocket. Oy vey.

Then I ran into M and N, who were talking to this Jon guy. Jon said my turquoise necklace from Nepal was ceramic (I wasn't wearing the necklace, so he didn't see it, he was just being a negative nancy). Then some tall French (?) guy named Alain, who knows Jon, came up behind me and pulled my hair really really hard. I turned around and was like "dude, what the fuck???" in a mean way and that little french prick just smiled and said "I like your hair". Fucking french.

Then this guy who looked like a child molester started stalking me and I had to hang out with N but no matter where we went he kept following me. Then I went to get another drink at the bar and was accosted by a midget. The dude fucking glommed on to me and kept trying to touch me and wanted to introduce me to all his friends. I was like uh, I have to go smoke, exit stage left.

But the dude followed me outside, where I was next accosted by some stupid little snowboarding punk who was wearing this totally retarded outfit and who kept trying to tell me a story about some invisible animal that he made up that's his only friend. Finally I was like "if I give you a cigarette will you leave me alone?" I had to give him two, because after he finished the first one he came back. Oh, and that kid told me my writing probably sucks because you have to be ego less when you write. Out of the mouths of 16 year old punks. And midget boy told me about writing one line haikus about mountaineering, and I was like dude, if it's only one line, it's not a haiku, but then realized it wasn't worth arguing about when he recited his haiku "men, we will go into the mountains, and we will climb to the sky" or some shit like that. He puts his poems on a web site. Ech.

Finally I saw N, who I think was hiding from me because I was making fun of him because he can't swim and said "octopuses" instead of "octopi", and F. I mouthed "help me" to F and we stuck N with the midget while F and I went and got cake. Actually, F got cake, but I just pulled the strawberries off the tops of the pieces of cake and ate those. No one seemed to notice because people kept eating the cake. F said "that creepy guy is still following you" and I thought he meant the midget but it was actually the child molester guy. So we went over to the coffee and F revealed a top secret aspect of his story which he had just found out before the wrap party. F jumped up and down for like 5 minutes after he told me the ending. Like, seriously jumped up and down. It was cute.

Then F went away and N got mad because I wouldn't dance with him on the dance floor, so he walked away, and the midget came up to me again. I tried to lose him at the bar, but then he took me over to a table and introduced me to some good looking guys.

Then I started talking to this swiss guy named U. U was mad I missed his presentation on the Eiger. I mentioned I have a friend who's climbed the Eiger 4 times and U said he's climbed it 37 times. I'm going to guess he's a water sign, and that we wouldn't have gotten along anyway, but I'll never know because midget guy came up to me and yelled at me for dropping pretzels all over U because I had two handfuls of them because I was hungry and drunk so the only way I could eat the pretzels was to take a bite out of what ever piece was hanging out between my fingers and then sometimes I would accidentally squeeze my pretzels too hard and they would break and fall on U's little vest thing he was wearing. Oh, and I punched U in the arm for god knows what reason and a pretzel flew out of my fist and accidentally hit him on the ear but he was laughing. Uh, from what I remember.

After midget boy yelled at me for dropping pretzels on U he was telling everyone to do these hula hoop things. Everyone was horrible. Midget boy was trying to show off I think, but he was the worst. While he was distracted with the hula hoop I ran away and found N, but by then I was tired, drunker than drunk, and ready to leave.

U followed me over to N and I was going to say goodbye to him too but midget boy accosted me again as U was approaching me and U just waved to me and walked away. So I headed up the stairs and then midget boy grabbed my arm and I do NOT like being touched by random people so I palmed his face and pushed him backwards and then ran up the steps. Then N ran up after me to make sure I remembered where I left my coat because he had promised me earlier in the evening that if I got really drunk he would keep track of where I left my jacket. Because I was so drunk I think I said "Nice work soldier. You remembered your mission, and executed it well." Then I saluted him and almost fell over.

...and woke up with a class 4 hangover for a 730 am conference call. My head hurts. The end.

fake labels

Today we had our second writing workshop. We had it in this cool house that was moved from somewhere in Banff up to the Banff Centre. There's no alcohol allowed in the house and our editors strongly emphasized this.

So, I went out and bought a bottle of red and white (the discussions are always more fun when alcohol is involved) and created two fake labels for the wine. The first one, for the red, had a picture of a cheesy little girl angel and said this:

Absolutely Not Alcoholic Juice Stuff

Nope, no alcohol in here. It’s just purple liquid made from grapes with antioxidants that’s really good for you. We would never break the rules.

For the white bottle, I made a label that had a picture of a little girl in goggles swimming under water next to a white whale. That one said:

Great White Whale Solution

No whales were harmed in the making of this non-alcoholic drink that has no alcohol in it. In fact, it’s alcohol free!

The problem is, no one realized it was a joke. They all thought I had brought non-alcoholic wine to the work shop. I finally had to point out that the labels were taped on the bottle with packing tape. Then everyone was like "oh, ha ha ha".

I won't go into the assassin jokes around the table because I killed three flies during the workshop. Ha ha ha.

finally, I figured out what I'm doing

So I was busily editing my stories for my book, trying to ignore the massive doubts I was starting to have about my book.

I met with my publisher Tony, and he was having the same doubts. Uh oh. I tried to talk through the point I wanted to make with my book, but I couldn't even do that very well.

Tony suggested I write a piece about the motorcycle accident that led to my pursuit of extreme sports. I sat down on Saturday morning to write it.

I wrote, and wrote, and wrote some more. It was horrible. I'd never documented what happened when I went through my two horrific knee surgeries. After everything was said and done my career was in tatters, my husband had left me, and I had been forced to leave San Fran to work on the east coast. It was really hard to write about all that stuff. At the same time, what was wrong with my book is that it was just about stupid adventures I'd had, with no personal information. It's going to be really hard to let people read the stuff I'm writing now, but at the same time it's cathartic. Though the past two days have been really hard, emotionally, because I'm dredging up all this stuff I've been suppressing.

I finished the story in about 4 hours of intense writing. I then spent all night Saturday (until 1 am) and all day Sunday revising and trying to make the story funny.

Tony liked it, and liked my new idea for the book. I'm going to introduce each story with a piece that explains what was going on in my life and why I chose that particular adventure. The interspersed pieces will be a little cliffhanger and will help add some cohesion to the stories.

I'm pretty excited about the book now. I'm getting my first piece workshopped on Wednesday. I'm the first to go. Should be interesting.

which one is it?

Last night I had one of the worst dreams I've had in a long time. All the guys in this dream are climbers I know or knew.

In the dream I was walking through an area that was like the Banff Centre, but it was a rough neighborhood. I was walking with my friend Will. He was supposed to be taking me to a climbing gym, and we walked into this building, but it looked like an administration building.

He was like "oops, we must have come through the office!" Just then I noticed a little girl with brown curly hair. I realized I was in my ex-boyfriend Chris' office, and that the little girl was his daughter. I was like "dude, why did you take me here? there has to be another climbing gym!" Will apologized and we went outside, where we ran into my fake co-author Dave.

Dave was standing kind of hunched over and had a big beer gut. I almost didn't recognize him. But then he stood up and all the weight from his gut moved into his chest. He was a lot bigger than anyone else. Will asked him where we could climb and Dave said "I need to meet with Franki about the book". Just as I started telling him about the book I'm working on now this blond woman from Europe came up. She was beautiful. Dave turned to me and said "Watch, I can hypnotize her into having sex with me".

His eyes turned this really weird purple color and the woman couldn't stop staring into them. Dave was saying something quietly to her. I realized that he was asking her to be his new co-author. I was like "dude, you're an asshole! I was supposed to write that book with you!" He told me to shut up and then took the European woman off to have sex somewhere. As they were walking away he said "You see, I can fuck anyone I want".

Will apologized to me again and started saying something about divorce. I was like "you mean Dave got divorced?" and Will said "No, Chris got divorced". Suddenly Chris showed up and started saying "Someone needs to help me clean up this mess!" and Will asked me if I wanted to get back together with Chris. I said no, and then Will said "I'll help you do whatever you want" and I told him I wanted to get away from this horrible place.

I started running and Will didn't follow because he was stuck talking to Chris, who was bragging about owning the biggest climbing gym in the world. I got to this area where there was a narrow sidewalk surrounded by buildings on either side. Then these 5 guys came up and I realized they were going to rob me and beat me up. I said "Did you see that giant man? I was with him and if you touch me he'll kill you!" And they said "Well, he isn't here now. And he said he doesn't know you."

Then I was running down this narrow spiral staircase that had barbed wire on the top. The only way I could get my legs to move was to lift them with my hands. I kept cutting myself on the barbed wire. Then, as I got to the end of the spiral staircase, I was on a roof and my family was there. We were supposed to take a helicopter off the top of the building where the spiral staircase had ended. When I looked out over the city skyline I realized I was in Dubai.

I got on the helicopter and the pilot said we couldn't bring my mom because there wasn't enough room. I got off the helicopter and told my mom that. She started crying and I realized she was drunk. My dad started yelling "I told her she couldn't come!" Then I saw that my mom had jumped across a huge gap from her hotel roof to this roof. That was the only way she could get off the building roof. I was afraid she was going to jump and fall because she was drunk. She told me she didn't care if she fell and started running towards the edge of the roof.

Then I woke up.

artist in residence

So here I am, ensconced in my very nice hotel room in Banff, two days into my artist in residence writing program.

Things got off to an interesting start when I had an unscheduled 30 hour layover in Frankfurt because my company bought such a cheap ticket that I was forcibly bumped from my flight due to overbooking, only to arrive in Denver to massive snow storms. My friend Will kindly picked me up at the airport, fed me, and even helped me pack. The poor thing drove me through a snowstorm to DIA so I could catch my flight to Banff the day after I got to Denver. The flight was delayed, and I ended up getting here at 1 in the morning Friday. Jet lag doesn't even begin to describe how I'm feeling right now. I won't even go into dealing with the switch from 100 degree F temps to 30 degree temps.

Friday at 8 am I had a work con call (was I even there? not really) and then a 10 am orientation for the writing program. I almost fell asleep. The other participants in the program are famous, most of them athletes, they've all published before, and I was getting more and more intimidated as we went around the circle to talk about our projects. I was the last to go, so I started by saying "I think I'm the outlier in the group. I actually have a corporate job." One of the participants said "You mean...you get a paycheck?"

Everyone has made a huge effort to make me feel at home, and I'm embarrassed to say I've been having these insane conversations just because I am finally in a group that can talk about subjects other than farting. The publisher I'm working with is great, and I'm meeting his wife on Monday because she has a similar story to mine.

I met with him one on one this morning. I was worried about the meeting because, on the multiple plane rides out here, I realized I wasn't quite sure what my book was about. We spent most of the 2 hours talking about structure. He gave me a new writing assignment that needs to be done by Sunday night so it can be workshopped next week (I'm the second writer to be workshopped - the first is an award winning, published writer - yeah, no pressure). I wrote for most of the day today, and will be getting up early to finish tomorrow. I spent 5 hours on the writing assignment and am only halfway through (never could say anything in 20 words or less, to quote concrete blonde).

I did take an hour and a half to go to the gym. I ran two miles, felt fine, except that towards the end all the stuff in my lungs started making bad noises. The last 5 minutes of my run I sounded like a rattling car. Right after I got off the treadmill a woman sprayed it down with chemicals. How embarrassing.

But. Carrying on. It's the first time in my life I've had the opportunity to do nothing but write. So, I'm happy.

commodities

There's a little bar called Chi Chi's on the beach at my hotel. It's pathetic that I've been working so much, and not going out, except when Ireland drags me out, that I didn't even know this bar existed until the bouncer came. He invited me one night to sit with him and have a glass of wine. He goes there every night to work (but only drinks when I'm there - yes, I know, bad influence).

We were hanging out there before my flight to Frankfurt (which left at 2 in the morning, how insane is that) and we started talking about love. He's been married for almost 20 years. He said he thinks that the most important thing any person can learn is how to love. The second most important is to make other people happy.

He was a little taken aback by some of my comments about relationships. I was talking about how hard it is to find a guy that will accept that I have a career and that I might make more money. Sports are a weird thing too. Guys seem to get intimidated by women who are athletic. Then there's the whole travel thing. The only person I know who travels more than I do is my dad.

The bouncer said that in a relationship partners should support each other, and that the success of one should be seen as a success for both. I think women are good at understanding that, but I think most men suck at understanding that. In fact, of all the men I know, I can't think of a single one that is successful in business AND married or partnered with a woman who is as, if not more, successful. I only know a few guys who have wives or partners that work. Bouncer said maybe that's an american thing and that I should move abroad for a while.

The most interesting thing he said had to do with sex. We were talking about how neither of us watch tv. I mentioned that the few times I'm exposed to the tv in the gym I'm appalled by the shit they show (that's the main reason I turn off all the tvs in the gym, even though it drives the trainer nuts and he turns them all back on as soon as I leave). The bouncer was talking about generations, and he said that our generation (we're around the same age) was raised to think love is the most important things. Younger people are more focused on material wealth. The generation before us was more about "free love".

I asked him what he thought about that since, culturally, the country he comes from supports the idea of free love, and not committing to a single partner (I say this not because I'm an expert in his country's culture, but because of what I've read on the web and in the news). He said when you have relationships where the driving factor is sex, and that you are not having sex because you love the person, you are commoditizing sex. I thought that was a very profound thing to say, and it makes a lot of sense to me.

Love is something I often wonder about, and try to understand, because most of the time it seems so fucked up. But if you look at it from the bouncer's perspective, things are a little clearer. People who are trying to get other people to have sex with them not because they care but because they want to show some kind of ownership...makes perfect sense.

I am hoping the bouncer is still there when I get back to dhabi. We've had a lot of interesting conversations.

cutting the cheese

I don't know why, but I seem to be bringing out the most immature side of my team. Even Ireland, after sitting in a car with three of my team members, listening to us laughing about fart jokes, said I'm a bad influence. The fart joke, as told by Texas Kid: Two saudi guys wanted to get drunk but obviously there's no alcohol in the kingdom. One of them reads on the internet that drinking jet fuel causes a buzz. So the two guys drink jet fuel and go home. The next day one calls the other and says "How are you feeling after drinking jet fuel?" and the other says "I'm fine, but don't fart". "Why not?" the first guy inquires. "Because I'm 200 km away" the other responds.

The joke is funny at 5 o'clock in the morning when you've only gotten a few hours of sleep.

Anyway, the other day I was sitting in the office and someone had once again switched out my chair. I tried to lower it to fit under my desk, turned a screw, and the bottom side of the chair fell apart. Hm, I thought, and continued on with my work. When I went to turn around the chair tilted precariously to the right side. I almost fell out of it.

I tried to fix it, but couldn't. So I switched my chair out with Texas Kid's chair. He sat in it a few minutes later and almost fell out of it as well. We started laughing and calling it the fart chair because he would tilt the chair over in my direction and pretend to fart, especially when I was asking him the status of his tasks to update the project plan.

Texas Kid had also brought in some swiss cheese. Many jokes about cutting the cheese ensued. The bouncer came in at one point while we were making these jokes, but he didn't say anything. At some point, as always happens, I started to get pissed about something and went off on a little tirade. Bouncer said "Uh oh, Franki's cutting the cheese!"

Texas Kid and I looked at each other and started laughing hysterically. It turns out, the bouncer thought the expression meant getting angry and yelling at people. He asked me the origin of the expression but I have no idea where it came from. Texas Kid got a lot of mileage out of that one. Every time I tried to talk to him he would say "Franki, are you about to start cutting the cheese?"

I introduced them to the expressions "going postal" and "I love me jacket" (a straitjacket, that courtesy of Jeffy). I also explained to them "stove piped organizations" and "pulling off the kid gloves".

I guess Ireland is right. I am a bad influence.

Another totally inappropriate joke going around the office among the pakis: A paki guy is really depressed so he calls a suicide hot line. The person answers and the guy says "I'm so depressed I want to die." The hot line guy responds "Well, do you know how to drive a truck?"

I bet my dad is going to yell at me for putting that joke out here...

octoberfest

They had a three day octoberfest celebration at my hotel. Ireland made reservations for us to go on Friday.

We have a new team member, from Sweden, and I immediately nicknamed him "the Bouncer" because he's been good at stepping in between me and who ever is having a problem with me at the office. He's a typical tall, burly swedish guy, and he's very sweet. But, I found out that he was upset at first that I called him the bouncer because apparently there is some show in Europe that has a dog called bouncer on it, and he thought I was insulting him.

Anyway, the bouncer and I got to octoberfest, which was set up on the tennis courts here at the hotel. There were flags across the top of the courts, and plaster statues of two germans, two horses, and a weird cow in one corner. The cow was about half the size of the horses, and nowhere close to the size of a real cow. Some people who were drunk picked the cow up half way through the night and ran around the tennis courts with it.

Ireland and her friend M showed up and we went to get food. Everything was pork, which I don't eat, except for one section that had sauerkraut, a weird purple salad thing, cooked carrots, and these balls of something that tasted like flour. I only got the balls because I thought they were potatoes. They looked like potatoes.

Anyway, as the night progressed I was getting drunk, due to being dehydrated from the beach, as well as the meds I'm taking for my bronchitis. At some point M ordered shots of schnapps, but after one sip I decided there was no way I was going to finish the shot. I dumped it in the bouncer's glass while he wasn't looking (he was filming these insane people dancing on a table next to us - I was sure the table was going to collapse).

At some point I decided to read everyone's palms. I told Ireland she was going to get married and have an affair. I told the bouncer that I thought he was going to have a short life. This bothered him so much that he had a nightmare about it. He told me that he dreamed we were in a meeting and I said "I've done some models to show that you will have a short life", and then I started showing him architecture diagrams. The dream was so bad that he woke up at 430 in the morning and couldn't go back to sleep. Oops.

I was somehow talked into procuring some shot glasses and putting them in my bag before we left. It was kind of funny because as I was walking I was making a clinking sound and everyone was freaking out but me. Luckily the security at the party was distracted by these two idiots that decided they wanted to have their pictures taken on the horse. They jumped up on the horse and the legs broke off the horse. It was really funny but also sad. Then they tried to pick up the horse and run around with it, but security stopped them.

We ended up going to my room. M laid down on my bed and Ireland ate all my patchi chocolates that the hotel staff keeps leaving on my pillow. Someone had given me a bottle of champagne so they drank that, and we also finished a bottle of wine. The next morning when I woke up I was like "what happened to my room????" because there were glasses everywhere, and a big ice bucket. I think I got to bed around 4 am.

I got Ireland to promise to take me next time she goes home because I've never been to Ireland. Of course, I don't know if I could survive the trip, if it's anything like octoberfest.

catastrophe averted...hopefully

This morning I got to work stressed out because I had a presentation for a very high ranking officer and there was no news on my passport. I was worried I'd have to go to Dubai immigration and didn't know how I was going to do that since I had my presentation. Matters got worse when I found out I had to do the presentation in another building, which I couldn't get into, because they required my passport, which I didn't have.

I was talking to one of the officers, who was teasing me about leaving, and I told him I couldn't leave due to my passport issues. I also mentioned to him that I couldn't get into the building where I was supposed to do my presentation.

He called the military guy I work for, who called the high ranking officer, who said he would call immigration and get everything straightened out. An hour later my passport was delivered to me. Also, the officer I was supposed to brief told me to wait until I come back here to come see him because he didn't want me to be stressed and tired before leaving for Canada.

What a great guy.

So, the day ended up well, except that, when I got back to the hotel and tried to check in on my flight, the check in didn't work. That's when I looked at my itinerary and realized my last name is spelled wrong. I called the airline and the travel agent, and they both said that it's no big deal. We'll see when I get to the airport.

Hopefully I'll be in Canada in a few days and not still in Abu Dhabi waiting for my ticket to get straightened out.

death by doughnut

First, a funny story. Texas Kid was upstairs in the conference room with me waiting for me to start a presentation. He found a box of doughnuts, and ate some of them. It turns out the doughnuts were for the base commander to eat during my presentation. Worse, Texas Kid ate the commander's favorite flavor doughnuts. We pretended we didn't know what happened to the doughnuts when the meeting started.

Then, I got a call back finally from the [insert bad word that begins with B] who is supposed to be processing my visa, and who is a total twit from the UK. I am supposed to leave at 2 am monday morning for Banff, and, as thursday is the last working day of the week, was wondering why I didn't have my passport back.

Turns out B has the flu. Yeah, I'm sympathetic. I've been going to work with bronchitis for the past two weeks. She didn't follow up with the PRO to see if my passport was ready. Worse, they were supposed to expedite it so that I could have it back Thursday. But B outright lied to me and said that wouldn't be possible (I confirmed it IS possible with the immigration office).

So, I may or may not get my passport back in time to leave on Monday. Worse, B, who is about the rudest person I've dealt with here, told me if I wanted my passport back I could go down to immigration and get it myself. I pointed out to her that it's HER job and what she is getting paid for. She said "I have the flu" and hung up on me.

I called back to try to get the number of the PRO to make sure his ass is in the immigration office Sunday to pick up my passport. She refused to give the number to me. Other things have happened, but I won't go into them now, except to say that she wanted me to email her my travel itinerary to prove I had to leave on Monday (I should note when I gave her my passport almost three weeks ago she assured me it would only take 7 days to process it, and when I checked with her on Sunday she said I would have my passport back by Tuesday - I also told her a million times that I had to leave on Monday).

So, I have a screaming pain in my stomach from my ulcer, I may arrive for my class late, and my ticket, assuming I can change my existing one, is going to cost a fortune. I have never experienced such incompetence in my life. If I ever see B again I am going to have to restrain myself to not punch her in the face for lying to me and then being rude.

In the mean time, an Iraqi colleague of mine is going to immigration for me on Sunday morning because he has contacts there and thinks he can help me. Allah willing...

And I'm going to tell the base commander that B ate his doughnuts.

excuses

I haven't been updating my blog because:
- I've been working 90 hour weeks the past few weeks
- I have bronchitis (though, hopefully at the tail end of it)
- I'm leaving for Banff in a few days and have been trying to get my project in order before I go

escalation unknown

Well, the events of last week's cranial explosion still haven't blown over. The guys in my office are getting more and more evil with their little pranks, especially since they were also yelled at by my customer for distracting me when I'm trying to work.

Sunday they hatched a plot where one of the guys would pretend he had to talk to me about work, luring me out of my chair. As soon as I would get out of my chair, and walk away from my desk, another guy would run over, sit in my chair, and fart. I know. Forty years old going on four. This little prank left me with a dilemma. I didn't want to sit in the fart chair. No one would exchange their chair for the fart chair, unless they farted on their chair first, leaving me still with a farty chair. I tried standing up to do my work, but that just caused more problems, namely...

They also paid the poor guy who cleans our office 30 dirhams (the equivalent of about $9 US) to constantly sweep around my cube (if you guys are reading this, I have moles in your organization). So if I am standing up trying to work on my computer, this guy is constantly behind me with his broom trying to sweep up my feet. He's not exactly right in the head, and finds this riotously funny, because everyone else in the office is like "sweep more!" and "you missed a spot!". I can't get mad at the poor thing, so I have to let him sweep, but it really makes me want to wring the necks of other people who shall not be mentioned here.

They keep raiding my stash of food, eating it, and stuffing paper into the packaging so that I won't know my food is missing until I decide I'm hungry. One enterprising chap took my grapefruit today, ate it (he better have eaten it), and then spent who knows how long retaping the peel together after filling it with little pieces of paper. I pulled the grapefruit out after a meeting and it fell apart, spilling paper pieces all over my desk. Then the guy with the broom came to clean it up. Though, I don't think they were smart enough to coordinate that. I think it was an unplanned outcome of the exploding grapefruit attack.

Today the pranks got a little dangerous when we had a meeting in the downstairs conference room. It has chairs normally screwed into the floor in a row, like a movie theater. I always sit in the front row because I'm a total control freak, and have to get up and fix things as people are drawing diagrams. I am working on not doing this, but it's hard. And the guy drawing today was purposely doing stuff that he knew would upset me, because his group had a nefarious plan.

Every time I got up to fix something today, the clever lad behind me unscrewed one of the screws under my chair. I facilitated this little prank because after I'm done at the computer I always slide across the floor (in my flip flops, on the marble floor, it's fun) until my shin hits the row of chairs where I'm sitting, then I do a little spin and drop ungracefully into my chair. After the last screw was out, when I dropped into my chair, it caused my entire row to fall backwards. I ended up in the lap of the incredible hulk.

Ha. Ha. Ha.

I was so sad I wasn't holding a scalding cup of tea at the time.

What they don't know is that I'm hatching a plan of my own, to be executed the day after I leave for Banff. Then we'll see who gets the last laugh.

Um, if anyone has any ideas for the above mentioned plan, please let me know.

suspicious, with potato chips

Today was a great day because my unrelationship with hot guy is finally over. After not seeing him for a week I went to the beach today and he showed up in the afternoon with 6 kids in tow. None of them appear to be over the age of 8. I knew he was going to have a billion kids. His wife is even better looking than he is, and he appears to be like typical dads, shuffling the kids over to her when they start crying. Good for her, if she likes doing the shit work.

And, I finally figured out today why he might have been staring at me. He's friends with the guy who runs the gym here. The gym guy, if I were going to describe him as an inanimate object, would be one of the bottom stones in the great pyramid. He's about as wide as he is tall and looks like he could bench press a truck.

I've always thought he was annoyed by me because I'm always making suggestions on the music, how to save energy by turning all the tvs off, better configurations for the gym equipment, etc. But this past week, every time I've gone into the gym, he gets on the treadmill next to me and walks really slowly while staring at me. I finally figured out today that he has a crush on me because I was looking for the scale and he ran and got it for me, and then he stood near the treadmill and picked my towel up off the floor every time I dropped it. So, I think hot guy was staring at me maybe trying to figure out what the gym guy might see in me.

Of course, the gym guy is married, which goes without saying here. The single men here are all migrant workers and Nepalese taxi drivers who want to marry an American so they can get a blue passport.

The good thing is I discovered on the scale at the gym that I've put on 3 pounds in the past two weeks. When I got here I weighed around 120 lbs. After ramadan I was down to 106. Now I'm at 110.

Likely that's because my colleague N introduced me to my new most favorite thing ever, mango frescettas. We get them from this french coffee shop across from the base. They take two mangos and grind them up with ice. It's the best thing ever, although half way through I get a sugar headache and have to take a break from drinking them. I have one every day, though one day I had two. I felt sick and had to lay down.

Though, after the first run to get mango frescettas I was no longer allowed to go pick them up because N got me in trouble. I don't have an official pass to get on the base, but most of the guards just wave me through as long as the driver of the car I'm in doesn't slow down when we get to the gate. But N, for some inexplicable reason, ALWAYS slows down. Usually I can talk my way into the base by showing my temporary pass and smiling.

But, the first time we went to get mango frescettas I only brought money and didn't have my pass. I was sitting in the back of N's car because when I sit up front and can see his driving first hand I'm so terrified I almost have a heart attack (it's never a good thing when N is entering a traffic circle with a billion cars in it going so fast on the turn that the steering wheel is shaking - but, that's a normal occurrence). He thinks it's funny that I sit in the back and calls it "driving miss daisy".

Anyway, I was in the back of the car with my mango drink and a bag of potato chips that I was only supposed to be holding for N. We were approaching the gate and I was like "N, speed up, speed up speed up" because he was slowing down. He did speed up and then suddenly slammed on the brakes when we got to the guard shack. I was like "DUDE, why did you do that???" as the guard approached. N didn't have his pass either. The guard made him get out of the car, and asked him who that suspicious blond was in the back of his car. N said "why do you think she's suspicious?" and the guard said "because she's eating potato chips".

N looked over and started yelling at me for eating his potato chips. I told him I had to because the mango drink was giving me a sugar headache. Then N said that he hadn't had breakfast and now he was going to starve because I ate his potato chips. I handed the bag to him and apologized. The potato chips were from Kuwait and tasted horrible so I didn't want anymore anyway. The guard interrupted us yelling at each other, yelled at both of us to never forget our pass again, and let us go.

Then the project manager got a call about us not having our pass, and said I'm never allowed to get a mango frescetta during work again. Which is fine with me. The less time I spend in N's car the better. Lest you think I exaggerate about his driving, he failed the driving test in the US 7 times and wasn't allowed to take it again. So he took it in Malaysia and failed twice before passing. Then he failed the UAE test, but realized he could get an international driver's license with his Malaysia license and that's what he drives on here. Scary.

hot dog

After my outburst yesterday some of my paki colleagues have given me a new nickname, in urdu. It's pronounced "garum kut ti". It means hot dog. I thought this was a reference to me being pink, but it turns out the urdu word for hot dog literally means "dog that is on fire". And, the "ti" ending means a female dog. But, they didn't mean it in a bad way. I told them that I was going to have t-shirts made up with that phrase, and that I would give them each one once they had joined my fan club. I later had to tell them that I was joking about that.

But I was certainly a bitch on fire later in the afternoon when I went all the way to Dubai to get my medical exam for my visa. After my driver tried to take me to a veterinarian clinic, twice, we finally found the right clinic, conveniently located behind a huge shopping mall, with no sign, on a different road than the road the clinic claimed to be on when I called them.

I got in line, and when it was my turn at the desk was told I needed my "papers" to get the exam. I was ushered into the "papers" room, labeled "typist area". They took many photocopies of my passport, and then informed me I couldn't get my exam until I had applied for a residence visa.

That's weird, I thought to myself, because I had been told by my company that I had to get the exam first. Turns out, my company was wrong. So I spent 2 hours of my life that I will never get back driving to Dubai for no reason. I was told to contact my P.R.O. (no idea what that stands for, but they are the liaison between me and the UAE gov) by the person who sent me on the medical exam boondoggle to find out what I was supposed to be doing, which was obviously not getting my medical exam.

The PRO emailed me her mobile number so I could call her. But, she sent me the WRONG number. There was also an office number on her email, but that was out of service. After a while I figured out even though she gave me an area code of 040 I was supposed to call area code 050. Ridiculous.

Then I had to give my taxi driver directions to her office, even though I've never been there before. It's in an area called Internet City. Imagine the largest office park ever. I'll spare you the rest of that story. It's sufficient to say we found it. Eventually. And I learned some bad words in urdu.

The PRO greeted me in the lobby and asked why I hadn't submitted my paperwork 2 weeks ago. Grr. I told her I had TRIED to but was told I couldn't until I got my medical. Then she informed me they couldn't expedite my visa, and that her assistant is on vacation for the next month so she is processing all visas herself.

I may never see my passport again, which is bad, because I'm supposed to be leaving for Canada in a few weeks. My ulcer was kicking into full gear when I got back to the hotel, and saw my horoscope for the day:

I guess, cosmically, everything is okay.

european skirmish

Last night I went out with Ireland (never again on a week day will that happen though - I got home at 1 am and woke up this morning at 430 feeling like I had a concussion) and met a friend of her's, M, who is in charge of this big football event thing that is going on in Abu Dhabi. M and I hit it off right away and I told her I would be a volunteer at the event (it's fifo, or something like that, all these soccer teams from all over the world playing in a world cup). She said I get to be security because I have nice arms, and if I have time to do it, will be guarding the soccer players. Ireland was offered a position doing data entry. Hee.

This morning I was planning to sit at my desk all day and draw diagrams quietly, in the hopes my head would feel better. But, a fight broke out between the french and scottish guys I share an office with. One of the french guys used an electric tea kettle belonging to one of the scots. The scot got really mad (though, in the entire time I've been here, I've never once seen him use the kettle, and it's sitting on a communal table) and said some rather inflammatory things about french people in general.

So the french guys started making fun of the scots because for some reason they all wear really squeaky shoes. It's so annoying. You can hear them coming when they are still miles away. One french guy said something about wanting to know where the scots buy their shoes so he would never be seen in such a cheap and horrible place. Then the scot said something about french guys' wives hanging out in cheap and horrible places, but the reference was no longer about shoes.

My old nemesis frog said "darling, your hair makes you look like the incredible hulk" (I admit, I'm the one who first noticed that, and told the frog). The scot, who really does look like the incredible hulk, was so pissed I thought he was going to punch the frog. Then all the scots moved their stuff to one side of the room and kept saying "death to french people". Then the french guys responded by insulting the manhood of the scots. Because of where my desk is, I was literally smack in the middle of this insanity.

Then an englishman joined in on the scots side, so the french kept saying to him "Oh, cook my beef. You are too unsophisticated to eat it raw." More insults to each other's wives and sexual prowess. I should mention, these are MEN, all around my age, or older. And though it comes across here as joking, it was actually quite tense. And it was making it VERY hard for me to get any work done.

Finally one of the french guys took my lighter off my desk because he was going to set fire to something on a scot's desk, since the scots had decamped to the conference room to complain more about the french. I'd had enough, and when the scots came back to find a smoldering paper on the incredible hulk's desk, at which point they threatened to kill the french by means that I don't think would have been physically possible, I stood up and yelled "If you (explicative deleted) guys don't (explicative deleted) sit the (explicative deleted) down and do some (explicative deleted) work instead of (explicative deleted) running your (explicative deleted) mouths, I am (explicative deleted) going to (explicative deleted) scream !" Though, at that point, I think I was kind of screaming. Absolute silence descended. I stomped out of the room to take a breather because, even though I wasn't even part of the skirmish, I felt like punching someone.

While I was standing outside trying to not scream, the two muslim men who had been in the room came out. I apologized to them because I had used profanity. This caused one of them to get a big smile on his face. He said "You know, when you first got here, you were so nice and trying to be gentle. Everyone thought you were afraid of us. Now we see you, and we are afraid of you. No one will ever wish for you to be their wife again."

Then he shook my hand and said "(explicative deleted) europeans".

We could have our own reality show here.

the OTHER beach story from yesterday

I wasn't going to mention this incident, but since certain individuals that I work with who read my blog have threatened to leave comments about this "incident". I've decided to tell the story before someone else does.

There's a hot guy at my hotel. I used to call him the spaniard but recent evidence suggests he's actually lebanese. For purposes of the story, he'll be hg. He's been at the hotel since I got here, and he works out in the gym around the same time I do, and I always see him at the beach. This guy is so hot that I noticed him immediately the first day I was at the gym (harbinger of things to come - the first day I saw him he walked by me and I dropped a weight on my toe). Also, I've seen him in a bathing suit so I know there's no "surprises" about him, e.g. the hairiest back ever.

I mentioned him in passing to a guy I work with at the base because aforementioned guy was trying to set me up on a date with someone. I really, really hate people trying to play matchmaker because they always think some idiot cousin of theirs with no hair or muscle tone would be a good match for me because we're both single. I politely declined the offer and said I was interested in hg.

Well, all you have to do is tell one person something on the base and then everyone knows. People in my office starting asking me what was up with hg. The truth is, I just wanted to look at him, and had no desire to talk to him in case he's a moron. But, the longer time has gone on, the more pressure people put on me to talk to him.

So, last week I decided to say hi to him in the gym for the purposes of reporting status back to my office. But, he didn't come to the gym all week. I was sure he was gone from the hotel, breathed a sigh of relief that I managed to avoid yet another attempt at a relationship, and that was that.

But then on Friday, while I was cleaning off my flip flops in this little sunken pool thing because I was done swimming, I spied hg walking by himself on the stone path that goes around the beach. He was about 30 feet in front of me. It's the first time I've ever seen him alone as he's usually with this group of equally good looking guys (but, I like him the best). Since I was leaving the beach I had this big beach bag with me that had two full bottles of water, two rather large books, my swim stuff, and a towel. Visualize a big and bulky bag, tucked under my arm.

I got this surge of adrenaline, and as he got closer I took a quick step towards him to kind of get in front of him on the path before he went by me. Unfortunately, I forgot I was standing in the sunken pool, and tripped, practically face planting right in front of him. Then my beach bag swung around and hit me in the face. I got up as quickly as I could and ran in the other direction before he had time to say anything to me.

I saw him at the gym on Thursday, walking in as I was walking out, but, I was walking out because I had to puke, so I didn't have time to stop and say hi (gym was insanely hot and I drank way too much water before deciding to do some sprints on the treadmill - stupid mistake - that always makes me puke). As I was explaining this to Ireland later in the evening she said that she was going to come to my hotel and track hg down if I didn't do something.

Friday I was at the beach when hg showed up with his friends. They were sitting about 40 feet away from me, next to the beach bar, which is currently being renovated. Hg was standing by himself, again, and I thought maybe he was looking at me. I texted Ireland and she told me to put my phone down and go over to him IMMEDIATELY. Then she said "I want scandal in the office on Sunday! Go get him!"

I made my way carefully towards him, focusing on not tripping, when I was suddenly cut off by this 20 something french girl. She threw her towel down on a beach chair positioned as kind of a dmz between me and hg, and then proceeded to take her top off.

All of hg's friends swarmed her chair and started talking to her. That's when I realized hg speaks french (and I heard him speaking arabic and english in the gym, thus the guess that he is in fact lebanese). I sent Ireland a text explaining what happened, and went for a swim. When I came back someone had yelled at the french tart to put her top back on (total no no to go topless here), and I thought maybe I could get hg's attention. But then this guy showed up with a yellow canoe and hg and his friends started talking to canoe guy. I sent Ireland a message that the situation was hopeless as I'm not as interesting as a topless french girl or a yellow canoe. I gave up talking to him, slumped onto my beach chair, and started reading the new yorker.

Lance showed up, and we were hanging out, and I was telling him about hg. Suddenly, and I am NOT making this up, Lance ran out from under my chair and ran under hg's chair. Then he started crying really loudly. I sent a text to Ireland saying Lance, the little kitty genius, had found a way for me to talk to hg. I started walking over to hg's chair to retrieve Lance, on the same stone path as the previous week's disaster.

Unfortunately, in the time I had spent texting Ireland, a billion little kids from the pool had run over and surrounded hg's chair. I was so focused on Lance, and trying to figure out how to get all those kids out of my way so I could talk to hg, that I failed to notice a foot tall pile of tiles that were being used to renovate the pool bar.

I tripped right over them and once again fell in front of hg. But this time was worse, because the tiles falling over made a lot of noise, and the guys working on the bar saw me and kept going "Oh my god! Are you okay?!?!?" and making a big production. I was like "um, I'm fine" even though the top of my foot was sliced to shreds. I got up and tried to, with some dignity, walk back to my chair but my foot was gushing blood and one of the workers was yelling after me "you should go get a tetanus shot!"

When it seemed matters could not get any worse, they did. A little indian fellow, who cleans up trash on the beach, started following me down the stone path with this huge blue bucket full of water, trying to wipe the blood from my foot up with this little white cloth. Well, he would splash around in the bucket, take a few swipes at my bloody footprints with the cloth flying all around, and then he would pick up the bucket and run as fast as he could, which, frankly, was unnecessary, to wipe the next bloody footprint.

I was totally humiliated, and Lance must have been too, because I didn't see him the rest of the afternoon. As soon as my foot stopped bleeding I decided to leave the beach, making sure to use the flip flop cleaning pool located as far as possible from hg.

When I got into N's car to go to the base this morning, he was like "gross! what happened to your foot?" Why I told him the truth, I will never know. And now everyone knows.

I just got a text message from N about 15 minutes ago that said "fastest thumbs in the west but the slowest toes in the east - pls watch where you step".

Sigh...

Lance comes to the beach

I was laying on a chair at the beach today, reading back issues of the new yorker, when I heard someone crying. I looked around, and there was Lancelot, whom I haven't seen for two weeks. I was like "dude, come here!" because he was hiding in the bushes about 15 feet away from me.

He ran over to me and then crawled under my chair (the sand is insanely hot). Then he put his head in my beach bag to see if I had any cheese (it was under there because that's the only shade on the beach). I didn't, so he looked at me and started crying again. I was like "fine, I'll go get you some cheese". I went to my room and when I came back he had taken a bite out of a few pages of my new yorker. I was like "dude, that's totally not cool". He smirked back at me and waved his tail like "hurry up and open the cheese!"
I put his cheese on a little plastic lid and he knocked it into the sand and started crying. I had to brush the sand off with my beach towel before he would eat it. I noticed one of his teeth looks a little messed up, but I don't know if I'll be able to convince him to go to a kitty dentist.

I went for a swim and when I came back Lance had bitten some holes in my water bottle and was drinking it. Luckily I had another bottle, so I let him keep that one. It was nice to have him to hang out with. I was laying on my stomach on the chair with the new yorker in the sand, and every time a breeze would blow and the pages would start to ruffle I would see this little white and orange paw come out from under the chair to smack down the page.

He might be a brat, but he's also helpful when he wants to be.

the making, and breaking, of planets

The children of my colleague were in the office the other day, waiting for him to get done with a meeting because they were going to Dubai. The boy is 4 and his sister is 7. My colleague is always, always running late. So when I saw the kids in the lobby of our office, looking bored, I asked them if they wanted to make a planet with me.

Of course they did. What kid wouldn't want to make a planet? We went into the kitchen and took the glass plate and that little rotating ring thingy out of the microwave (the tea boy looked on, fear in his eyes). Then we got some binder clips out of the supply closet (no one uses paper clips here, weird, they didn't use them in Greece, either). Finally we took some paper out of the trash next to the printer, and headed to the conference room.

We spent a few minutes making space debris by wrinkling up the paper into balls. Boy seemed to really enjoy that. Then we put the space debris on the microwave plate so we would have our solar belt. An argument ensued between Boy and Girl, because they both wanted to be the sun, but then I convinced Girl that being the space debris manager was a much harder job, so she finally agreed to do that. While I was selling Girl on the management position, Boy was practicing making sun noises. He did a good job of sounding like the sun.

We got our solar belt rotating, and then Boy, playing the sun, started having sun flashes and knocking the space debris out of its orderly orbit and into other space debris. Girl did her best to keep up, but she's very methodical, and it was taking over a minute for her to combine to bits of space debris together with the binder clips because she wanted it to look nice. Meanwhile the sun was going crazy with sun flashes, and spinning the microwave plate way too fast. I explained to Girl that no planet is perfect in shape, and that they are more interesting for being not perfect in shape, and we were able to continue on at a faster pace.

Finally, all the space debris had been joined up. Girl was holding this mash up of wadded paper and binder clips. Boy was interested in seeing it, but luckily did not try to grab it away from her. His hands were busy still spinning the microwave plate.

"Behold," I said, "the planet you created!"

Now, most people might be excited for at least 5 minutes after creating a planet. But, kids have a shorter attention span than that. So, after naming the planet ("Dog" because they both want a pet dog), I realized they were getting bored and that perhaps the microwave plate was going to get broken.

So I asked them if their planet was going to be dense or light. They wanted dense. Then I created another planet, out of one piece of space debris, and said mine was a light planet, and then I was going to show them how these planets could orbit, except that they took this as an opportunity to chase me. So we started running around the conference room with our planets, and I started to worry because there are a lot of power strips laying on the floor, and most of them give off sparks because they aren't fully plugged in to the wall sockets, and I didn't want anyone to get an electric shock or trip, so I thought it might be time for a location change.

My planet, coming to the end of a conference room rotation, near the door, said "this galaxy is too scary, I'm going to another galaxy somewhere else where planets aren't trying to crash into me". Then I ran out of the conference room, but not before slowing down the killer planet Dog by closing the door after I exited. I dashed across the lobby, ran into my office, and hid under the desk.

By this point I could hear the planet Dog, more clever than I, slowly walking across the lobby so as to not get yelled at for running in the office. I could hear them whispering in the hall, trying to figure out where I was, so my planet said "I like this galaxy a lot better, because no planet is trying to get me". Boy and Girl ran into my room and I jumped out from under the desk, brandishing my planet. They both shrieked, and then Boy slapped my planet out of my hand. It landed on the floor and was flattened by Boy's sandal. Girl participated in the destruction too, grinding the little paper wad ridges down with her fabulous low heeled sparkly pink shoes.

"This is a cosmic catastrophe!" I said. I picked my planet up and pretended it was crying.

Girl told my planet that it could be part of planet Dog if it would just stop crying. So my planet stopped crying and we tried to fasten it on to planet Dog. But it was crushed so badly the fastening wasn't working. We finally folded my planet up and put it inside their planet (this can actually happen in real life).

Meanwhile, my colleague had walked into the office. He was giving me that look like what in the hell are you doing besides teaching my kids to run around the office? They showed him their planet. I think he was expecting something a little more, I don't know, stylish. He wanted them to throw it away but they wouldn't. He growled at me "I don't want that thing in the car" because he's a super neat freak (worse than me, even). I said I would keep the planet in my galaxy until they came back to the office and that it might get lonely not being with other planets. Girl said "But we can make more planets at home". My colleague looked even more unhappy.

Anyway, last I saw of planet Dog, it was leaving my galaxy and heading off to another galaxy far, far away. I got a text from my colleague last night. Boy is still making noises, pretending to be the sun, and Girl keeps saying "this is a cosmic catastrophe" every time the littlest thing goes wrong.

two burners

Today I was reading an article in a back issue of the new yorker (thanks mom for fed exing! even though I know you never read my blog!) written by David Sedaris. He was talking about this succeed in your career seminar. The woman giving the seminar said people should imagine their life as a four burner stove. The burners are: family, career, health, and friends. At any one time, only two burners can be going at the same time.

I thought that was really interesting because I've been having a bit of a life crisis lately because all I do is work and work out. Even though I thought my assignment in the middle east was going to be less stress and work, it's the same as in the US except that I don't have to fly (thought about going to Muscat or Petra this weekend, but then was like I have to work, and if I went I'd have to get on a plane). Some of my colleagues here think I'm crazy, but I can't stand having something work related looming over my head. Even if I took a day off I wouldn't enjoy it because I would be stressing the whole time about getting my work done.

I guess I'm lucky in a way that my family and friends are geographically dispersed, so they don't expect to see me that much. I actually do pretty good on email though some of my friends don't like that and want me to call them. I never call because I'm always busy working.

I don't know. I've punted things in my career to try to make a relationship work. But the end result is always the same. It drives the pakis that I work with nuts that I am not married and won't even meet their single friends (single, I'm sure, for a reason). I had a long conversation the other night in the office with Dr. T, who was almost thrown out of his family for marrying a european woman. He was going on blah blah blah and finally I was like dude, I have no idea where anyone else in my life will be in 6 months. All I can worry about is where I'm going to be.

The weird thing is, this seems to be working, in some ways, in my favor. A relationship I had that imploded due to my job/master's degree/cancer has come full circle and I'm friends with the guy. And I can't say that for most of my ex boyfriends. And most of my US friends send me supportive emails and pictures to get me through some of the shit show experiences I'm having here.

Maybe some day my priorities will change. After putting in a 16 hour work day on my "saturday" (even though it's friday) all I can think of is laying on a chair tomorrow listening to the waves coming in on the beach.

Though I know, in the back of my mind, I'll be stressing about getting all my stories in order for Banff. Thank allah for sand on the beach. Otherwise I'd be sitting under an umbrella pecking away at the keyboard.

get rich or die trying

Today I learned a valuable lesson, which is never ever ever, ever, go to the co-op on Friday (which is actually Saturday in most countries, but, I forgot since I was at work today). The traffic in there was worse than the traffic going from the base to Abu Dhabi. I actually glared at a woman who cut in front of me in line with a shopping cart full of produce, when I only had a bag of tangerines and nectarines to get weighed. My death stare must have frightened her because she moved and then apologized, and that never happens here, as people don't really understand the concept of orderly queuing.

That was probably karmic payment for the silliness I've been up to lately. Now that the gov guys are talking to me, they want me to teach them American things. So I've been educating them in gangster parlance. I taught them the concept of OPP, which they liked a lot. I taught them the expression "don't be a playa hater", though they don't always use it appropriately:

me: I'm going to the kitchen for tea, does anyone need anything?
customer: Don't be a playa hater. Bring me an orange juice.

Some of their favorite expressions include:
"I wasn't born a hustler, I was birthin them"
"This ain't TV but I'll show you what a fear factor is"
"I'm expressin with my full capabilities, and now I'm living in correctional facilities"
"Oh look how he's rapping, look how he's collapsin"
"I want y'all to reach in your (edited for them because I don't want to use bad words) pockets and pay me some (edited for them because I don't want to use bad words) attention"

And, after sitting through a few breakfast "meetings" (during which I'm getting an ulcer because I have a lot of work to do but am spending quality time with the customer instead), I was asked what the US gov says when a meeting has ended. This question was posed after I impolitely left to go work on architecture. I told them that every meeting ends with the top ranking officer saying "get rich or die trying". They loved it.

Okay, most of the US military doesn't say that at the end of meetings. But the cool guys do.

america's most wanted

My etiquette handbook is really lacking for the situations I find myself in. For example, when my customer invited me to go shoot RPGs tomorrow, I really wasn't sure how to respond. So I said maybe we should stick to guns and archery. The customer said "oh, but it's so much easier to hit the target with an RPG". When my manager got wind of this invite, he said I couldn't go. I can't say I'm too disappointed.

And today, I accidentally stuck my hand out to the wrong guy, and was completely humiliated by his reaction. This happened in a group of my customers. I apologized profusely but then one told me afterwards not to worry about it. I would like to point out that my etiquette book SAID I should offer my hand first as most ME men will not take the initiative. That was completely wrong, and in fact it's the opposite. I'm supposed to wait until they offer their hand to me.

And, I'm never quite sure what to do when people bring me things. One of the frogs has started calling me "the don" because people bring food to my desk all the time (today I was brought a Thai banana from a frog, a normal banana from a brit who gets fresh fruit at his hotel, a sandwich from one of the officers who doesn't even work in my building and whom I've met once, a bag of sesame sticks, a breakfast bar, and a coke). He jokes that he is my tea boy, and made a big production in the office the other day, shifting my tea cup around saying "Today, she wants her tea here. Tomorrow, if she is not happy, I will move her tea here. And every day I will clean her desk." The tea boy in our office cleans my desk every morning and then arranges my cup exactly where it was when he started cleaning my desk. I don't know why he does this. He doesn't clean anyone else's desk. Maybe because my desk is always sticky from eating grapefruit.

I've started calling the frog that fixed my hotel room, and that pretends to be my tea boy, "Cheeky". He calls me "darling" (well, he calls everyone darling). I've nicknamed one of my colleagues "gangsta" and the other one "kid Texas". The brits call me blondie, the MEs are all starting to call me Freddie, and the scots, I just found out today, refer to me as "america's most wanted". Who knew they were fans of Ice Cube.

My etiquette book, BTW, says that nicknames are considered inappropriate since they are normally reserved for family because they are considered too informal for outsiders.

the boy's club

Today I was summoned to this AF guy's office. I was surprised, and a little apprehensive, as the officers avoid me like the plague unless they have to talk to me. Except for the 3 secretaries I'm the only woman in the building, the only woman in western dress, and I'm taller than most of the men I work with.

I walked into the office and there were four other guys there. I was invited to sit down, and given a large glass of watermelon juice. Then a tea boy came in and gave everyone else orange juice. The AF guy told me that he had heard I like watermelon (probably from the meat sandwich incident) and he had sent someone out to get it for me.

I tried to discuss something I've been working on, but the officer finally told me to chill. He just wanted to hang out. It was kind of strange because people kept coming in to his office to get papers signed and permissions for things and we were all just sitting there while he yelled at people and refused to sign forms.

Then I was given a hummus wrap. The officer asked if I knew what hummus was. I launched into a description of the different places I buy hummus in the US. He asked if I was scared to be in his country. I told him I wasn't, and that I wanted to go rock climbing in a particular area which, by coincidence, is where he is from, though most people never visit there because it's really remote and considered the back water. Brownie points.

There was another officer there who apparently thought I was british, who launched into a diatribe about americans who come to this country. Then someone else pointed out I obviously am not british. I told the officer that I enjoyed his diatribe, and that he should have his own TV show. This was surprisingly the right thing to say. I also nicknamed him the Rock because I couldn't really pronounce his name. More brownie points.

After about an hour I said that I had to get some work done. The officers invited me to go shooting with them. But they shoot not just guns but RPGs. I was like I don't think I should shoot an RPG and one of the officers said "they are much easier to hit targets with than guns".

So, somehow, I suspect because of my colleague AH, I've been inducted into the boys' club at the base. They apparently frequent the restaurants at my hotel so I'll probably meet up with them one night. Weirdly, I think rock climbing is what made them think I might be more fun to hang out with than the average girl. They want to learn.

As I was leaving, the officer who invited me up said if I ever have any problems to call him. Since I am scheduled to go out for ladies' night with Ireland and her UK friends, I thought it wouldn't hurt to have an ace in my back pocket.

french high five

These days, I am perplexed and a bit confused by the world in which I live.

Take, for example, my hotel odyssey this weekend. Every day, for three days starting Thursday night, my hotel would call me and say that they had expected me to check out, even though, in the system, my reservation clearly shows I am at this hotel until I leave for Banff at the end of October. When I would go down to the front desk to try to sort the matter, I was told they could only check me in for one more day, and the next day the process would be repeated (going to the front desk, having my credit card imprint taken, closing the previous day's bill, having my passport re-copied, getting new keys, having the towel boy stop by my room to see if I needed fresh towels, and then the annoying phone call from the manager welcoming me to the hotel).

I was complaining about this at work on Sunday, when I discovered one of the frogs I work with knows the general manager of my hotel (all the frogs here know each other). He called the GM, got my reservation sorted, and even got me invited to the nicest restaurant in my hotel for a private dinner with the GM. Since I have all my hotel room phones stuffed in the bedside table drawers because I really don't like phones, I missed that invite. But still. I was amazed the frog tried to help me.

Then, today, he brought me a "surprise" of "sweeties". The "sweeties" were these miniature Thai bananas that are sort of dried out, but they still look like miniature bananas. They are covered in something brown, which isn't honey, or sugar. Maybe I don't want to know what the brown stuff is. But it's mildly sweet, and the bananas were really good.

Being somewhat suspicious of the frogs being nice to me, I headed into a meeting this afternoon with the one who brought me the bananas. It was supposed to be only an hour, but ended up being almost three hours. We worked out some strategic issues on a new project, and then, at the end, he said, in french, my hat is off to you. The only reason I knew what he was saying is because of reading a version of cat in the hat with a french translation that went along with the english. Then the frog gave me a high five.

The french, they are such an odd group. They bring you nice snacks and then try to kill you. They're moody, prone to strange pronunciations, and think the entire US is built on a foundation of chicken wire.

But every once in a while, you get along with them. And that's nice.

my special forces surprise

Today I was sitting in my cube drawing a data model and trying to drown out the conversation around me. With all the euros back from vacation I felt like I was in a Wallace and Gromit cartoon. They were complaining about having to work a 10 hour day right after getting back from vacation.

I was also a little worried because my base pass has expired and my colleague AH had taken all of my paperwork to get a new one. If security came by to check everyone's papers I was going to be in trouble.

So when a high ranking commando in cammos walked into the office I tried to pretend to be really busy so he wouldn't notice me. But he walked right up to my desk. He said something like "are you Franki?", but he couldn't pronounce my name, so that isn't quite what he said (my name is as hard for them to say as theirs are for me). I turned around and noticed he had two guns strapped outside his uniform. Uh oh, I thought. Conversation in the room ceased as everyone was well aware I didn't have my base pass.

I admitted to being me, and then saw he was also carrying two plastic bags. One had what appeared to be a sippy cup full of something pink (for reasons I'll never understand, people here put drinks in plastic bags, and then hand them to you, causing the drink to spill inside the bag and the cup to get all sticky). The other bag had something oblong in it.

He said "strawberry is heavy, watermelon is light, so light for you" and he handed me the sippy cup. It contained watermelon juice. Then he said "I present you." He handed me the other bag. "A meat sandwich". Though I've had guys say and do many strange things around me, I've never had one give me a present of a meat sandwich. I must have looked confused. He said "with hummus". I nodded and smiled as if I understood exactly what was going on, and thanked him. He did an abrupt about face and left the room.

It turns out my colleague AH put this guy up to delivering me a lamb sandwich, I think because he was tired of listening to me whine about how much weight I lost during ramadan (gained back a total of 7 lbs as of today). But then it was like the flood gates opened. After I finished the sandwich another guy in the office brought me falafel balls. The little french twits that sit near me were like "oh, did you see that dog outside?" as I bit into one (admittedly, it did look like poo).

Then my colleague brought me a lunch box from this Saudi restaurant. It had two huge pieces of fish, more rice than one person could eat in a day, yogurt sauce, something like salsa but not, and a salad. It will probably take me three more lunches to finish it.

One thing I'm learning is that in general arabs are very hospitable and generous. And if you show the least amount of gratitude they will go over the top to do even more for you. The other day I was walking with two of my colleagues who had both offered, in spite of my refusals, to carry my bag and one finally said "This is embarrassing. You are with two men and you are carrying your laptop. If anyone sees us they are going to wonder what kind of men we are to make you carry your own bag."

Now I'm thinking. Could I have been getting these guys to drive me around, get me food, and carry my stuff all this time? Hm. I wonder how long it will take me to turn into a total prima donna in these conditions.

fire that translator

I can't make this stuff up.
Really.

more meridien madness

Saturday

I woke up at 7 am because my hotel phone was ringing. Of course I didn't answer it but instead decided to get up, eat some oatmeal, and read my book in bed.

An hour later I heard some fumbling outside my hotel door, and then a swishing sound. I went over to the door to see what was going on, and there was an envelope addressed to "Annie". Always curious to read other people's mail, I opened the letter. It was actually for me. The letter stated I had to move out of my room by 10 am "to accommodate another guest".

I figured this was a trick to get me out of my nice room into a room I wouldn't like so I called the front desk. They told me there was a handicap guest coming to the hotel that needed my room. Apparently they had asked all the other people on my hall and no one was willing to move. I agreed to move and they gave me a new room number.

I packed up my stuff and went to the beach. When I came back I picked up a key for my new room, went in, and discovered the air conditioning in my room didn't work. I discovered this because it was like a million billion degrees in my room.

They sent someone up to fix the problem. I went to the gym for two hours. Came back, and waited another two hours. The room was still boiling hot. So I packed up my stuff again, and this time was relocated to a really nice room one floor above with a private balcony overlooking the beach. Very nice.

Except, the hot water didn't work. I took a shower around midnight and almost froze.

Sunday

Before going to the gym in the morning, I asked the front desk to fix the water problem. It wasn't fixed by the end of the day. So they made me pack my stuff up again, at 6 pm, and moved me back to the room with the non-working air-conditioning. The bell hop who was hauling my stuff around turned the thermostat down to 12 degrees C and the room cooled off. Somewhat.

Monday

I decided living with cold water was better than living with no air-conditioning. So I packed up my stuff, again, and moved back to my room on the third floor. After I moved I realized that the water temperature knobs were installed incorrectly and realized that was why I had no hot water.

So now I have a room I like, with a private balcony, that's quieter than my last room, and won't have to move until I leave for Canada at the end of October.

If I could only get them to clean out my mini bar so I had a refrigerator...

etisalat epic

Anyone who has known me for any length of time knows that, with a few exceptions, I never answer or talk on the phone. But here everyone lives by their mobile, and it isn't uncommon in the middle of an important meeting for someone to answer their phone and carry on a conversation (this happens in movie theaters as well, from what I've read in the papers).

So, being without a phone here is considered the worst possible existence. My phone stopped working on Thursday, though. I couldn't figure out what was wrong and then AH told me I had run out of money. No problem, I thought, I'll just add money using my online account.

I did that Thursday afternoon and then was swept up in my hotel room epic so I never got a chance to test my phone until Friday. It wasn't working. I called etisalat, the phone company here, to find out what was wrong. They couldn't tell me over the phone but instead kept sending me text messages in arabic that I couldn't read. I tried to find someone in the hotel that could read them but no luck.

Finally, while waiting in line at the co-op with a bag full of nectarines on Saturday, I got a guy in line behind me to read the message. It turns out etisalat changed their policy a week ago so they no longer allow foreign credit cards to be used on line to add minutes to their phones. I was like how do I get my phone to work? He told me to buy a card to add minutes.

Seemed simple enough. I got a card and followed the instructions on adding minutes to my phone. All I had to do, according to the directions, was type in the number on the card and the minutes would be added. But every time I did that I got an error message that the number I entered was invalid. Meanwhile my colleagues here were getting aggravated with me because I never answer my phone and couldn't respond back to text messages. I tried to go back to the co-op to enquire what was wrong with my card, but it was closed for Eid.

Finally, I was sitting in my lebanese pizza place waiting for my food and the girl at the cash register told me that I had to scratch off this silver band on the card to get the number to add the minutes. How I would have known that if someone hadn't told me remains a mystery. Anyway, my phone is working again after 4 days.

Although no one is texting me anymore. I'm sad.

Not really :D

meridien odyssey

I spent most of last night packing my stuff up to move to a studio in my hotel. But I kept worrying about what would happen to Lance. He's just a kitten and even though there's plenty of food to eat around here, I was worried he would starve.

So, after work AH dropped me off at the residence part of the hotel. He insisted on coming in with me to make sure everything was okay. It wasn't. They had no reservation for me. AH tried to straighten things out for me, but everyone at meridien was moving at snail's pace (like this morning, when it took me 25 minutes to check out of my room - seriously, 25 minutes, mostly because the guy behind the front desk kept folding every printed piece of paper and putting it into an envelope - and somewhere, a tree screams).

They brought my luggage over to the residence compound (not exactly close to the hotel), and then showed me this room they were going to put me in. I was like um, I don't think so. It was tiny, horrible, and I didn't like the bed at all. The manager of the residence compound was a little aggravated with me, but I was like you are not seriously expecting me to move into a room for the next 5 months that is no where near as nice as my hotel room, are you? Apparently, he was, but I decided I was going back to the hotel.

The poor bell hop with my luggage on the trolley had to take it all the way back to the hotel (well, don't cry too hard for him, he loves me because I pick up stuff for him when I go to the co-op and I tip him well) so I could check back in. I got this guy that I really don't like. He argued with me about the room rate for 45 minutes. I was like dude, this is a [my company] negotiated rate. We are not at the bazaar. You can't change prices on me. But still, he kept trying to do all this crazy stuff to try to get me to pay more for my room, culminating with him telling me I would have to check in every day because he refused to make me a reservation for more than one day.

I was like fine, what ever dude, just give me my key. Even the bell hop kept going behind the desk to try to move things along. I got my key and went to my room. It was on the other side of the hotel from my original room. Everything in the room was backwards. I was not happy. But, I thought, at least I'll be close to Lance again.

Then I realized the roof system off of my balcony in my new room didn't connect to the roof system off the balcony of my old room. So there was no way to get to Lance. And, I had lost my ocean view. So I went back downstairs, and got the guy I like at the front desk. I told him I didn't mean to be difficult, but I really just wanted to go back to my old room. He started to make me a key and the guy I don't like got upset and was like you can't move her back to that room because of the rate her company negotiated.

Another long discussion ensued until I invoked the name of AH, at which point I was given two keys to my old room. The bell hop came up with me and moved all of my stuff, and when I tried to tip him he refused to take it. At this point I had about 10 keys and the bell hop tested each one to see which ones worked while I unpacked all of my stuff again.

Hopefully Lance didn't listen to me last night, and will be waiting for me on the roof. Even though I wasted a lot of time moving out of my room just to move back in, I'm glad to be back here.

When traveling, it's the little consistencies that mean a lot. The best part of the story is that I had a big box of cookies that I didn't eat, and, rather than throwing my cookies away, I hid them behind the safe in the closet and left clues in the mini bar as to their whereabouts. The maid inexplicably threw my clues away. The cookies could have been there forever. But, instead, I'm eating them.

relocation

Tomorrow I move from my hotel room to a studio in the same hotel, but a different building. I have no idea what the studio looks like but it supposedly has a refrigerator and is smaller than my room.

I've been trying to explain this to Lancelot because I'm worried he won't be able to find me. For the past week I have told him that I'm moving, and then I point to the building where the studios are, but he usually just gives me a look like "um, why don't you stop talking and give me my sandwich?" Tonight, after he finished dinner, I brought him some cheeses (he likes them for dessert) and had a great idea to explain to him where I'm going to be moving.

After some experimentation I discovered that Lance really likes laughing cow light cheeses (I told him that he's a little skinny to be eating light cheese but I don't think he cared). Since they are triangular I thought I would make a cheese arrow pointing to my new building. But, Lance ate the arrow before I could finish it.

Hopefully I can call him and he'll know where I am. He responds when I call him now, though he only let me pet him that one time. Usually if I get to close to him he cries and then hisses at me. Sometimes he's in a rotten mood and acts really mean. I'll bring him a sandwich and he won't touch it until I walk away. And then when I check on him to see if he ready for his cheeses, he'll give me this look like he doesn't know who ate the sandwich, but it wasn't him, because he's too mad at me to eat anything I might bring him.

Other times he'll sit outside my sliding glass door and cry. But when I open the door he stops and looks at me like oh, what are you doing out here this late? Some days he's really excited about dessert and he runs around on the external roof piping. Other days he lays on the roof like it's too hot to move (it is) and gives me this attitude like "oh, just put my cheese over there, and maybe I'll eat it".

Strange cat. I never know what he wants. I hope he finds me in my new place. I'm going to miss my nightly walks on the roof. Maybe I'll sneak over to the roof every night until Lance figures out where I am. Now that I've been feeding him I don't think I should stop.

fat face

My poor colleague N. He had to drag me all over hell and gone today trying to get my visit visa updated so I don't have to leave the country to renew it. We couldn't find the immigration building and then, once we found it, it took us a while to get a parking space and find the room where they process the visitor visas because the building looks like it was designed by some hollywood director making a movie about scary government buildings. It was really hot today, and not a fun task to do when fasting and not getting sleep.

I had actually hired someone to renew my visa, but he needed a photo (for some inexplicable reason). N and I were working away on a technical reference model when he got the call saying we needed to come down to immigration immediately with the photos. I was freaking out, but then realized immediately in arab time means they aren't expecting you to show up for at least an hour.

N found a photo shop close to the base and the guy said he could make my photos in 10 minutes. I walked into the room where he was going to take my photo and tried to do something with my hair. I haven't washed it since last Thursday (it gets a salt water rinse when I go swimming so why wash it) and it was looking kind of bad as I haven't taken it out of a ponytail in forever.

N stood behind the photographer and made faces at me, including one that made him look like his eyes were going to pop out of his head. So I ended up with a horrible picture with my hair looking like crap and a stupid look on my face. The photog did not show the photo to me. He showed it to N, apparently thinking I was N's bitch or something. N told him to print 20 copies of the photo (and then complained about the price, roughly $20 - I was like dude, in the US you only get 2 photos for that price).

When the photos printed out I got to see how horrible the picture was. N was laughing the whole way to the immigration office. I told him that if I got kidnapped and he gave someone that photo so they would know what I looked like that I would kick his ass. I then said I was going to throw all the photos away, and N said he wanted them so he could make a collage of me, like a serial murderer. Hm. That seems creepy when I write it, but it was actually pretty funny when he said it.

We got to the immigration office after driving around for a while. Whenever N was getting aggro about the traffic I would pull out the picture and show it to him and he would laugh. Then while we were waiting for my visa guy (after we rushed to get there, he wasn't even there, so we had to wait 10 minutes for him) N examined the picture in more detail.

N: You look really fat in this picture. Which is weird because you aren't fat.
F: Thanks. Give me my picture back.
N: Look at your hair. It's so weird.
F: I look like a lesbian, I know.
N: Like you have a mullet. You would be the guy lesbian.
F: Nice. Give me my picture back.
N: You know, you look at least 10 pounds heavier in this picture. I think the problem is you have a fat face. (He holds the picture up next to my head). Yeah, you definitely have a fat face.

A short discussion ensues about how Africans have the best bone structure, and I obviously have flawed genes because I have no bone structure in my face, which is why it looks fat. Then my visa guy showed up right before N had the chance to totally destroyed my self esteem.

When we got back to the base, he told everyone about my picture and now they all want to see it. This french guy I work with said he wants a copy to put up in his cube. They all think it's so funny I have 19 horrible pictures of myself, and one horrible picture forever in my UAE government file. Great.

I am, however, grateful to N for helping me out with my visa renewal. I never could have figured the system out by myself, and he did everything for me.

this emirati life

Things are going to be slow at the office this week with ramadan wearing people out and Eid about to start next week. There was a lot of chit chat today, and I found out some interesting things.

First, it's almost impossible for a westerner to meet an emirati family. The women are kept more or less locked up. There is a separate entrance in every house for men and women. Even siblings are separated when they turn 13. Some emirati girls sneak out and try to have dates with boys. If they are caught (there are special police patrolling the corniche, a popular area that runs along the sea) they are arrested and put in jail. Most emiratis have arranged marriages, and the potential groom will normally send his sisters to the house of the girl he might be marrying, and they check her out for him. It's very expensive to get a divorce here, but if you are caught having an affair both people are killed (men usually by hanging, and women by stoning). And an emirati woman who marries a foreigner loses her emirati benefits (they get housing and health care), but the same does not happen to an emirati man if his spouse converts to islam and becomes a UAE citizen.

Second, playing chess is considered haram, or, forbidden. This is because some imams think it takes away from time that is supposed to be spent praying.

Third, it is an accepted thing that most pakistani men have, um, relationships with other men. Almost everyone I work with, except for the frog, are pakis, and they discuss this as if they are talking about the weather. I was pretty shocked to hear that homosexuality is rife in the pakistani community because it's illegal in UAE and punishable by jail or removal from the country. But the pakis were like whatever, what's the big deal? That conversation started because the frog told me that I shouldn't take taxis after 10 pm, and that if I did, not to get into a taxi driven by a paki because he might abduct me (one thinks this is wishful thinking on the part of the frog). The pakis jumped in and said "oh no, they only do that to boys".

Fourth, since everything is supposed to be bigger and better in the UAE, I get special attention because 1. I have the biggest hair (which currently looks like a 70s afro) and 2. I'm the tallest person in the office. One of the retired generals who now work in my space came over during this part of the conversation and asked me how tall I was (the height conversation started because I said I thought a taxi driver wouldn't abduct me because I'm too big) and then he said "you must be at least 6 feet tall". Figuring his grasp of english measurement was equivalent to my grasp of the metric system I said "no, I'm only 5'8"". A short silence ensued, and then the general said "You must be at least 6 feet tall, because I am 5'8" (he's 5'4")". Realizing what I had said embarrassed him I admitted that yes, I am 5'8". Now everyone is calling me "the amazon".

Fifth, when I was commenting on the fact that UAE was able to build a metro in less than two years, but at a huge cost, when they have not provided public transportation to anywhere else in the country, I was told "yeah, sheik [one of the sheiks in charge of UAE] had a temper tantrum because he wanted a train, so they built one". UAE is one of the few countries I've visited with no bus service between cities. If you want to go to a remote part of the country, your only option is to rent a car (which has it's own dangers as rentals here are renowned for being unreliable and breaking down in the middle of the desert). There is a bus that goes from Abu Dhabi to Dubai, but there's no station for it, it's always crowded, and there is no set schedule for it.

And, about the metro, it opened Wednesday. There is a gold class car that is supposed to be like business class on a plane (considering the entire metro line only takes 45 minutes to traverse, that seems a bit over the top). There were technical difficulties that caused huge delays because the emiratis riding the trains (which are computer controlled and have no driver) kept pushing the emergency button and stopping the trains. The paper yesterday had a huge article that people would be fined the equivalent of $200 for doing that.

Sixth, the worst thing you can do in UAE is run a red light. In fact, my colleague AH said "You can kill someone here, but don't run a red light". I looked this up on line and it's true. There's a huge fine and jail time because of the potential that you could have caused an accident or a death, even if you didn't.

If you kill someone here you can pay the family blood money (what ever amount they think the life of the person you've killed was worth) and then you don't even have to go to jail. This is especially true in the case of women. Most killings here are kept out of the press unless the case is so high profile that the public has found out about it.

And, finally, this (http://www.thenational.ae/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20090912/MAGAZINE/709119988):

Muslims are extra careful when dealing with fruits and vegetables mentioned in the holy Quran because we consider them very healthy and respect their holistic qualities. When eating a pomegranate we make sure to not drop any seed on the ground or forget it on the plate because one could be the seed that blesses us to go to heaven. The heavenly paradise of the Quran describes four gardens with shade, springs and fruits — including the pomegranate, which, legend has it, contains a seed that has come down from paradise.

the ramadan diet

Ramadan is over Sunday next week. I don't know if I'm going to make it to then without starving to death.

I don't mean to whine, but, as a westerner, it kind of sucks to be forced by law to follow the ramadan diet. In what feels like the billionth week I have lost so much weight that my stomach is actually concave. It's not that I don't want to cheat. It's that I can't. Places that sell food aren't open during fasting hours and I only have a tiny refrigerator (currently stuffed with dates) and a little kettle that makes hot water. So even if I could buy food during non-fasting hours I have no where to put it or make it.

For the muslims, it's not that bad. They have family spending the entire day cooking food for iftar. They stay up until the wee hours of the night eating. I have a narrow window to get food and then I have to eat it all in the 3 hours between the breaking of the fast and when I have to go to bed.

Yesterday, as an example, I had four packets of oatmeal and two cokes for breakfast. Then, 2 hours before the breaking of the fast, I found myself laying on my bed trying to not throw up because I was so hungry. Literally the minute the fast was up I was at the food court buying dinner and snacks. Over the course of 3 hours I ate an entire medium pizza, two garden salads, two rolls, two nectarines, 3 plums, 8 cookies, two oatmeal bars, half a bag of yogurt potato chips (and I don't even like potato chips) and before I went to bed, another packet of oatmeal because I was still hungry.

I would buy cookies and snacks to eat during the fast except you have to keep everything in the refrigerator or else it goes bad in a day. Even my oatmeal turns into these disgusting clumps and I have to break it up before I can fix it, and it doesn't taste quite right. Cookies will turn into a crumbly mush about 12 hours after the packet is opened. And I've found from past experience that I will eat an entire box of cookies waiting for the fast to end, causing me to have a stomach ache for the rest of the night. Part of the problem is the heat and humidity, and that's compounded by the fact that there's no air conditioning in my room unless I'm here. I've gone to work and come back 10 hours later only to find my grapes shriveled up like raisins in the short time I was gone.

Oh well. Just 8 more days. I can survive that...

dates

I just got back from the fruit and vegetable market. AH took me so I could buy some dates. I've been kind of obsessed with them since I had them Thursday night.

It's kind of surprising how many different types of dates there are. That's why I enlisted AH to help me. We went to the stall of his date person (there are at least 50 date vendors in the market). He told me to sample some dates (I had to sneak into the back room to do this since I'm technically not supposed to be eating) and figure out which ones I wanted.

I had a local date, a date from Saudi, a just ripened date, a date that's supposed to be eaten when drinking coffee, and a date for people who aren't supposed to have a lot of sugar. There were also yellow dates, red dates, dates in various stages of becoming dehydrated (the less raisin-ish the date the less sugar it has), dates in a fancy package for giving to guests, light brown dates, dark brown dates, dates from Kuwait, dates from Turkey, dates for cooking, dates for dessert, dates covered in chocolate with the pit replaced with an almond, dates for drinking tea, dates for kids (small and super sweet), and dates "for the health" as it was explained to me. And that was only the first part of the stall.

I ended up getting a mix of dates, and the guy didn't charge me for them. He said since it was my first time to the market I was considered a guest, so it would be rude for me to give him money. He said next time I come I can pay.

Then AH drove me around the rest of the area. Back 10 years, Abu Dhabi had a souk right in the middle of the city. But, about 7 years ago, the government decided that was not the impression they wanted to give people of the city. So they moved the souk out to this area called the port (though, there was only one boat there). AH said it was hard for the vendors at first because people didn't know where the souk had gone and so not many people were showing up to buy stuff. But now it's crowded (though, more so at night than when we went).

Besides selling dates there are also fruits, vegetables, and a fresh fish stand. It's funny to watch the emiratis "shop". They pull up to a vendor's stall, stay in the air conditioning of the car, order what they want, and then the vendor stacks what ever has been purchased into the car. The emirati doesn't have to even turn off the engine. This is quite different from the souks I've been to in other parts of the world, where the streets are so narrow you can barely walk through them.

AH showed me the carpet souk (he said he would take me if I wanted to buy one), a place that sold baby stuff, the abaya shops, the shops for men's traditional dress, and what he called a nursery. The nursery looked to me like a few palm trees in the sand, but maybe they didn't have much due to the season.

I also found out some interesting things about the men's traditional dress. A head covering that's a turban is considered "young wear" and is worn, traditionally, by younger guys. Collars are kuwaiti style, saudis wear robes with buttons. In the summer everyone wears white, but in the winter men will wear different colored robes. A head covering with one rope hanging down the back is traditional emirati. Two robes is Saudi. The ropes are a nod to the old days, when they were used to tie a camel's legs together so it couldn't run away (or run far). The more detail of the robe (collars, cuffs, etc.) the more formal it is considered.

So now I have two packs of dates to eat and am a little wiser in understanding men's clothes, which will be helpful next time I have a meeting at the base...

a night out in Dubai

I had a meeting in Dubai yesterday with some customers from Pakistan. Because they flew in to see us, we took them out for iftar.

My colleague, AH, made reservations at the Palmyra restaurant in the Atlantis hotel. I was looking forward to the experience as I've never been to iftar before. I wasn't disappointed. However, our dinner almost got canceled because some idiot in my company started to worry the dinner could be seen as a bribe. We were like dude, they already bought stuff from us. And it's really, really rude to not take a customer out for dinner when they've flown to see you on their own dime. But, the lawyers at my company have to justify their existence I guess.

The restaurant is in a hotel owned by the Jumeirah group. They built the first 7 star hotel, the burj al arab, which is on the same property as the Palmyra. The iftar consisted of 6 food stations, sort of buffet style, with all kinds of middle eastern food. For drinks I had what was described to me as "rose juice" (roses squished into water...it was interesting) and "fruit juice" (juice of local emirate fruits, each country has their own special juice they serve at iftar and everyone is supposed to drink that juice to break their fast). One of my customers tried to talk me into drinking this purplish pink concoction (milk with roses in it) but luckily I'm allergic to milk.

I had the best hummus ever, a dish that consisted of pumpkin and chick peas all squished together like hummus but it was orange and tasted like pumpkin. Dr. T said I had to eat at least one unhealthy thing (a lot of food for iftar is fried) so I had this pastry with a sweetened cheese in it. I was a little worried about eating it because I brought it back to the table and everyone was like "ooh, what's that thing?" but it was good. I could go on and on about the food (we were there for almost 4 hours eating) but I will spare you. Except to mention that I also ate a bunch of dates, and I always thought I didn't like them, but they are actually quite good so I'm going to buy some next time I go food shopping.

Then AH and I left our customers (they were headed to the airport with Dr. T - in fact, they had so much fun at our iftar they almost missed their flight home) and he took me to the Burj Al Arab. It's funny, when that place first opened I told a bunch of people I worked with on TRAILBLAZER that I was going to go there some day. Finally made it...

We went to the Skyview Bar. AH goes there all the time and was able to get us a reservation on an hour's notice (impossible for the mere mortal). He then yelled at me for trying to order the house wine (there was a $75 per person cover just to get in) and had his waiter bring me some wines to sample (go me, I picked the most expensive one, $200 for one glass, Jeffy, see how you've spoiled me). We got the best table, with a view of the city, and they brought us snacks like these little cheese quiches, cucumbers and olives, and this sushi thing which was smoked salmon wrapped in tamago, with caviar on top.

A long conversation ensued on a number of topics. I found out AH's family is very famous in Pakistan (they are like the bin Laden's of Pakistan) and that's why he has so much pull in the UAE. We both love to talk about architecture frameworks so that was a couple hour conversation. Then we came up with this little side work project that, if we can pull it off, is going to be a huge deal in the middle east. My favorite story that AH told was about his crap work issued laptop (he uses a mac). He said that the only reason he still has his work laptop is that when his 1 year old son cries, if he puts him in front of the laptop, he'll start banging the keys and forget about crying. Well, the story is funny if you could see him acting that out, and if you knew what our work laptops were like (pieces just randomly fall off of mine, and in the past 6 months I've replaced the keyboard, memory, and the mouse, which I actually had to replace twice).

Finally AH's wife called and said she was heading back home from her mom's, so we headed home as well. We got this poor cab driver who was not happy about taking us to Abu Dhabi (it's an almost 2 hour trip, and it was in the wee hours of the morning by this point in the story). AH asked him if it was his last trip of the shift and the cabbie said yes. We were like uh oh. The cabbie fell asleep 3 times that I saw, and then we almost ran out of gas.

The cabbie of course waited until we were in desperate straits to look for a gas station. Here's a description of the road between Dubai and Abu Dhabi: sand, construction, more sand, unfinished overpasses, sand, more sand, some road work, construction. We took this little, I wouldn't even call it an exit as much as a random turn-off that just happened to connect to the highway. We drove around this weird installation that had all these armed guards. I was getting a little worried. Then we finally found a gas station and the cabbie's credit card didn't work. I was exhausted and hot by then (running around in a suit and real shoes, the first time I've not worn flip flops since arriving here) so I was like just give him some money for the gas. But AH said we shouldn't, and miraculously, after about 10 minutes of arguing, the cabbie's card started working again.

As we pulled into Abu Dhabi we were almost in a major accident because the cabbie was speeding like crazy and the police, for what ever idiot reason, decided to set up a blockade around a blind corner to make sure everyone had on their seat belt. Our cabbie didn't, but the cops didn't notice, probably because we almost hit them swerving to avoid hitting the stopped cars in front of us. I think AH was saying some really bad words in Urdu, but every word in Urdu kind of sounds like a bad word to me.

The best part of the story is Dr. T called us when we got into the cab and said the pakis want both of us to work on their project in Islamabad. I was worried they wouldn't like me because I'm american and a woman, but they were incredibly nice. In fact, one of the guys, who is a general in the paki army, told me "you should come to Islamabad because it's not as dangerous as everyone says". I suppose, being under the protection of a general, that's probably true.

Then he said "We are a civilized society. You will not see our women covered up." That was an insult to all the emiratis in the room, since here all the local women must wear a burqa that even covers their face (though some don't cover their eyes). This area of the world never fails to confuse and amuse me. The stereotypes of most people in the middle east are totally true, but then not true at all.

timing is everything, and nothing

Today I had a meeting with the new base commander to brief him on some potential new projects. I wore pants today instead of making him look at my knees again. I got to the briefing room 30 minutes before I had to start to make sure the room was set up and the AV was working. My colleague N did everything because I think he was afraid I would screw something up.

Then, right before the briefing was supposed to start, these cleaners came in and started cleaning everything. I was like WTF? I guess the commander wanted everything spit shined before showing up. The program manager and Dr. T showed up 15 minutes late. I was in a panic by then, but they were like "the customer is always late so we didn't rush". I was told that you usually have to wait for 2 hours after the scheduled meeting to have a meeting. Sometimes you have to wait all day, and then the customer decides not to see you after all. I told Dr. T I had read in my customs and etiquette book that it is considered very impolite to show up late for anything, and he said "Yes, it's impolite for YOU to show up late."

Meanwhile, we had a moment of panic because the cleaning people had dis-engaged one of the wires going to the computer, and we couldn't get the presentation up. We ended up crawling around in a rat's nest of wires until N found the one that was disconnected. The general finally showed up only an hour late (I was told that was "a good sign"). He made a joke that "Obviously arabs could not have been behind 911. We are late for everything and would have missed our flights." I can see his point even after living here for less than one month.

The presentation went well, and we'll see what happens next. In the mean time, hopefully my company is working on my residence visa, and I'm going to renew my tourist visa for another 30 days so I don't have to take vacation during Eid. Eid is like Christmas, except it lasts 5 days, and only little kids are supposed to get gifts. There is a second Eid later this year, but that's more of a feast than a gift giving thing.

The Christmas Eid happens at the end of ramadan, and the dates are not known until the imams all agree they've seen the new moon. It's kind of weird. Everybody is on a different schedule for all these religious things. For example, Dubai breaks their evening fast 4 minutes sooner than Abu Dhabi. In Pakistan, they start ramadan two days later than everyone else (to start ramadan, as with the ending, all the imams have to agree they've seen the new moon - apparently pakistan always "sees" the new moon later than everyone else - when I ask a pakistani why that was, he said "it's because they are fools").

So, basically there's a 5 day holiday, but you can't really schedule travel, because the day the holiday starts might change if no one can see the new moon, like if it's cloudy. As some people at work explained this to me I was like dudes, they have lunar calendars that will tell you when the new moon is - why exactly do you have to see it? They looked at me as if I had suggested we sing the dreidl song. I was also told that anyway, Eid is the worst time to travel (imagine christmas and thanksgiving in the US happening at the same time) because muslims are supposed to spend the time with their family. In fact, any family.

One of the other consultants was telling me he is going to Pakistan for Eid to celebrate with distant relatives he's never even met before because his immediate family is in UK and he just got back from visiting them and doesn’t want to fly there again with his young son. When I asked why he didn’t just stay here and celebrate with just his wife and son he said “You can’t do that. That’s not the way Eid works for real muslims. Only muslims that are not serious would do such a thing.”

And, in the car on the way home, I mentioned to N that I was surprised the commander told that 911 joke. He started in on a tirade about how Osama bin Laden is not a real person, that there is no proof he ever existed, and that the US government made him up to make muslims into "bad guys". I decided to just keep my mouth shut because I was too tired to have a debate.

I may get the hang of this culture eventually, but I doubt it.

pandemic paranoia

Everyone in the UAE is totally paranoid about getting swine flu. Since the epidemic began 4 people have died (none of them emirates, all of them visitors from somewhere else). When you get to the airport they check you out to make sure you aren't sick. One would think that check would be good enough for my company.

But, if you thought that, you would be wrong. A consultant in the Dubai office, who sometimes comes here, just got back from a business trip to South Africa. Because he was traveling for my company, they knew he had been there. Apparently SA is on the list of countries that have a swine flu problem, at least according to my company's HR department.

The consultant went into the office in the morning, was there until early afternoon, when someone in HR spotted him and told him he had to leave the office immediately. Further, he was told not to come back until he had a letter from a hospital saying he didn't have swine flu.

So this poor, poor consultant went to 3 hospitals and 4 clinics, but no one would give him a letter. The reason is that they can't confirm someone has swine flu until they develop symptoms. So, unless he gets sick, and proves he has swine flu, there is no way to tell he doesn't have swine flu (Joseph Heller is laughing in the ether).

Meanwhile, most of us consultants in Abu Dhabi are having visa problems that no one in HR is responding to. It's gotten so bad (people's visas getting cancelled) that we have a big meeting tomorrow about it, since HR is incapable of doing something less intrusive on the work day, like responding to an email.

Of course, I'll be late for the meeting since I'm briefing a colonel tomorrow on some projects we are going to do for him. At least I'll get something useful done tomorrow...

my favorite feline

I was walking through the parking lot that separates the hotel from the co-op, where I had just picked up my laundry, when I ran into my favorite feline, Lancelot.

I've never seen him not on the hotel roof so I was surprised. I asked him what he was doing and he just meowed at me. I think he followed me, but I'm not sure. I didn't feed him yesterday because he didn't show up on time (left some cheese for him but even though it was gone this morning that doesn't mean he's the one who ate it).

While we were standing on the sidewalk another cat came up and Lance boxed him on the ears. I told Lance I was disappointed in him, and he gave me a look like he was really sorry and not just pretending to be sorry like some cats who fake apologize and then do more bad things.

I went and got him a tuna sandwich from Subway (he likes them, although I'm not sure they are healthy for him, because I think cats are not supposed to eat bread, but I also get him olives and green peppers so that might make up for the bread, because I'm pretty sure cats are supposed to eat vegetables). Anyway, when I got back to the parking lot I started to unwrap his sandwich and he jumped up on a car and batted me with his paw. Then he let me pet him for the first time ever. Usually he insists I put his food under this air conditioning unit on the roof with only a foot of space under it (he's smart enough to know I can't get under it), and then he drags the food off and eats it. This weekend he let me get within an arm's distance of him but then he cried so much I didn't try to force him to let me pet him.

So, even though things are a little stressful at work right now, the day has ended on a very good note because Lance let me pet him. I might get him some proper cat food tomorrow, but I don't know if he'll eat it.

ramadan traffic

Lest you think I've exaggerated about the traffic, here are some statistics:

Between Dubai and Abu Dhabi (population around 1 million) 20,000 speeding tickets were issued the first 10 days of ramadan.

There were approximately 600 traffic accidents the first 10 days of ramadan in Abu Dhabi.

3,000 people were ticketed for not wearing seat belts. The whole seat belt thing is a big deal here. No one wears them, and the old taxis don't even have them. But statistics have shown people in the back seat get injured just as badly as those in the front if not wearing their seat belts. There are posters all over Abu Dhabi of nascar drivers urging people to wear their seat belts.

Probably the most horrifying thing I've seen in traffic is a children's school bus, on a service road that runs parallel to the highway, cross over the median (which was not a small median, but more like a big concrete curb, with 5 feet of grass, and then another curb down to the highway), and pull right into highway traffic going about 50 miles slower than everyone else. The incident is worse than you might be thinking because most of the buses here have folding chairs that are not bolted to the floor. There is a big effort underway to fix this problem (I mean seriously, they build islands for no reason, but can't provide school buses that are safe for children?) but the effort won't be completed until 2012.

The good thing is the weather has been slowing cooling down. It's only 100 degrees outside right now. Did I just say that?

conspiracy theories

While sitting in the worst ramadan traffic with my colleague N, we started talking about how John Ashcroft can be sued for wrongful detention. It's been all over the news here. We started talking about 911. N had some interesting theories, most of which seem to be shared by people who live here in the emirates. His theories, in the order that he thinks most likely are:

There were no hijackers. Israelis took remote control of the planes, and crashed them. When I asked him how this could possibly be, he said "it's been proven they have the technology". I asked where he heard that it's been proven, he just kept repeating "it's been proven". He also said that one of the hijacker's passports was found on the ground in NYC. I had never heard that, but would like to investigate it further, as it sounds like total BS to me.

Second theory, is that the Israelis planned 911. N repeated the insane rumor that no jewish people were killed 911, and that they were all told not to come to work. I pointed out to him that I had a friend who was jewish who was killed in the second tower. N looked at me, and with no hesitation at all, said "Maybe no one told him. Do you know any other jews that were killed?"

Third theory is that the US government planned the attacks. While the US government was more than incompetent at preventing the attacks even though they had plenty of evidence (and had an asset that tried to warn them THE DAY BEFORE that something was going to happen at the WTC) I said I couldn't possibly believe that what he was saying was true. But many people here believe it is true, and that it was done so the US could invade Iraq and Afghanistan.

I am amazed that someone who was born in the US (though not raised there), with a college degree, could believe these things. I also am curious to find out why the UAE hates jewish people. Israelis are not allowed in this country, and until a few years ago, if you had a stamp in your passport from Israel they wouldn't let you in.

Regarding the US's culpability in the attacks, it doesn't help matters much that news stories have been breaking here about the poor conditions in the Iraqi prisons (prisoners beaten, tortured, and then let go with no charges being brought against them) which in the media at least are being reported as worse than those under Saddam Hussein. It isn't that people here are outwardly prejudice against americans (like in Athens, when I was there) but there is definitely a mistrust.

And the french apparently hate us too. N told me that a french guy has been saying bad things about me on the base (something about my "loose morals" which is insane for reasons not even worth going into here), and I said "why would he say things like that about me, when he doesn't even know me?" and N replied "because all french hate americans".

I brought up the fact that it was ramadan and it didn't seem like any of the things we had talked about were indicative of charity and being better people. N concluded the discussion by saying no real muslim believes in jihad unless they are first attacked, and that committing suicide, especially as a suicide bomber, is totally against muslim beliefs and is stated as such in the koran. I did know that, but mention it here for those who didn't.

Anyone interested in reading the news here can check out www.thenational.ae. The articles about ramadan are pretty funny (e.g. if food or drink touches your throat during the ramadan fast you have to either feed 60 people, do 60 hours community service, or donate money for 60 poor people). An interesting blog I found about jihad is www.jihadica.com.

240 volts, that's pretty dangerous, right?

I was using a le meridien power converter, and it stopped working last night. I can't possibly be without my laptop for more than a few hours, and, rather than bother the nice people downstairs who will probably charge me for breaking their converter, I decided to buy another one (I actually need it for work). So I went to the co-op, since it's the only thing open during ramadan hours, and bought the only converter they have. It SAID on the package "works with US". It SAID "universal converter". I bet you know where this story is going.

I got back to my room, plugged in the converter, and sparks and smoke came out of the plug. I'm not sure if I got shocked or just burned from the sparks, but what ever happened, it hurt like hell and my finger has a blister on it. Huh, that's weird, I thought. I decided to try it in another plug, being careful this time to keep my fingers away from the plug by pushing the converter in with the eraser of my le meridien pencil. Same thing happened.

But, I had noticed at that point that all the power was out on that side of the room. Thinking, for who knows what reason, that another experiment was in order, since the power was out the second time I plugged in the converter, I checked a plug on the other side of the room, made sure it was working, and...this is embarrassing to admit...plugged the converter in again. Guess what happened.

So, now I was in my room with no electricity, a burnt finger, and a dead laptop battery. "F this!" I thought to myself, I'm going to the gym. Anyway, I couldn't call the front desk to report the problem because the power was out. As I was leaving my room I noticed a bunch of people gathering in the lobby on my floor, looking at me with disdain as I walked by in my running outfit (not showing knees, but showing shoulders, which are almost as bad as knees) carrying a bottle of water (big no no during fasting hours). What the hell are they doing up here? I wondered. Then I saw the signs and realized the hotel had set up a prayer room two doors down from my room. Honestly, had I known that, I would have waited until call to prayer started before leaving my room dressed in my workout clothes. Oh well.

I did my workout and then stopped by the front desk to tell them my power wasn't working. The bellhop, an annoying guy who has worked there for like a million years and who never calls a taxi for me in the morning, told me it was because I hadn't put my key in the power slot. I was like noooo, that's NOT the problem, and explained about the converter. Suddenly the woman at the front desk's eyes went huge, and she made a hurried phone call. I went to my room.

A few minutes later the power came on. A paki knocked on my door to make sure everything was okay, and I told him what happened, showed him the converter, and told him "you plug it in and see what happens". Of course, it was fine. He told me "Do not buy these local goods, they are very, very bad. And so cheap." Everyone around here is such a snob. There will never be a wal-mart in UAE. I thanked him and gave him a tip, and, as he was walking out the door he said "By the way, do not plug in cheap converters before call to prayer, because you make the electricity go out in the prayer room, and no one knows what is wrong, since you don't tell us what you did".

Oops :D

I apologized profusely, and, I swear I'm not making this up, he said "do not worry, it did not matter - it was only the women's prayer room".

Ech. Sorry sisters!

socks, smoking

Some people have been requesting pictures. So, here are some pictures.

These are my socks, which I just picked up from the laundry but someone else did it place, whatever you call it. Yes, the name of the place is Jeeves. Anyway, my socks were, I swear I'm not making this up, ironed, and then put in this lovely bag with a piece of tissue paper between them. It seems excessive.

Laundry was so much fun to drop off here. They had no idea how to classify my western clothes so they put things like "sports abaya" for my dress I wear over my bathing suit. They called my yoga pants "pantaloons". They ironed everything, even my sports bra, which they put in a plastic bag, with a hangar, but the bag was opaque so no one could see my sports bra.

This is the balcony outside my hotel room. Or should I say "balcony" since, after you walk down that little step, it's the roof of the hotel. I feed all of my new pets here. I have a cat who looks like an orange tabby left out in the sun too long, named Lancelot (he likes fish tikka but not fish with lime, and he really likes fish and chips but they are way too disgusting - I ordered them, took a bite, and fed the rest of them to Lance - now he whines all the time when I try to get him to eat more healthy). Then I have 5 birds. The birds showed up when one night I had a temper tantrum because the coconut cookies I bought were actually saltines with coconut sprinkles, and I threw the cookies out on my balcony after stomping on the package twice. Now I feed the birds grapes, rolls, pizza crust, and these milk biscuits that I bought, opened, and then forgot to eat for two days. Anything left out for more than a day here gets stale and then it hardens up. Gross. This is also where I smoke, since it's Ramadan, and you get arrested for smoking in public.

Hm, it just occurred to me...Lancelot showed up after the birds showed up...I hope he's not going to eat them.

This is my little hidey hole that the guy in the garage made for me (the pic is crap because I took it with my crackberry, but you get the idea). You can see the cardboard boxes stacked at the end there. I go here to smoke. I know, it's pretty gross. That's the garage guy's car duster. It's funny to see him walking around with it. It's almost as big as he is.

Oh well, Ramadan will be over in a few weeks, and everything can get back to normal...

bunker

Today I had a meeting with the new base colonel and I did something really bad. A dress seemed in order for the occasion, so I put on my new grey dress (Joe, that was one of my new dresses I showed you), with my sandals. The dress is a business dress, would pass for uber modest in most countries, and it's grey i.e. boring.

One thing I did NOT check with said dress was what would happen if I sat down in it. I got into Dr. T's car this am to head to the base and realized that, when sitting down, the hem of my dress, which is below my knees when standing, does not cover my knees when sitting.

Women get fined here for showing their knees in public. It's considered very bad form.

My stomach started hurting and I wanted to jump out of the car but Dr. T, who realized my problem, found it amusing.

We got to the colonel's office and it was weird. He had put two chairs sideways against his desk for Dr. T and the program manager to sit in. Then he directed myself and Ireland to this other area of his office (which was quite big) where there was a sofa, two modern leather chairs, and a coffee table. It looked like the set of a talk show. Dr. T said "Franki, why don't you sit right there?" pointing at a place on the sofa directly in the line of sight of the colonel. I sat down, and immediately the colonel started staring at my knees. I couldn't tell if he was horrified or intrigued. Anyway, the meeting went poorly, I thought, because the colonel didn't say much but Dr. T thought it went just fine.

Then I went into my office and found that it has been invaded by scottish guys. Very strange. They were all sitting around arguing and reading the paper, and I had to try really hard to not laugh because they all sound like that character Bubbles on Ab Fab. The noise of their arguments was only slightly less annoying than the fighter planes right outside my window (the runway is seriously like 200 yards from the bunker where we work) that seemed to be taking off every 10 minutes. I don't mind the C-130s because they just make noise. The fighter planes shake stuff around and make this horrible screechy metal sound.

There are female fighter pilots in UAE, by the way. How cool is that? There was one that used to work in my area but she got promoted and moved. Then she crashed her plane on accident last week but ejected in time. I'm sure it was the other driver's fault.

Tomorrow I tour an "apartment" in Le Meridien to move into when my reservation is up. At least I'll (supposedly) have a refrigerator and a microwave (though, I never use microwaves because I think they're gross, unless I'm making edamame). Hope I still have a balcony. I wonder if my pets will be able to find me when I move...

stranger in a strange land

Dinner last night was an interesting experience. Everyone at the table was from UK or Ireland, except for me and the husband of one of Ireland's friends, Evan. Evan asked me where I was from and I said "I'm from the US. I didn't vote for Bush." Evan said "Bush didn't run in the last election", missing my point.

Apparently he took offense to what I said, because he ignored me until the topic of running came up. He met his wife running with the harriers in Abu Dhabi. I asked if they had a web site or something so I could join and have a group to run with. He made some comment about "husband shopping" (he met his wife in the harriers) and then said he thought the harriers might be too competitive for me. And because everyone kept teasing him about his age I asked him how old he was. He said "that is the RUDEST question anyone has ever asked me". He wasn't joking, though I find his statement hard to believe because he's retired navy.

I tried to follow the other conversations going on around the table but was lost in idiomatic expressions and the inability to understand some of the accents. There was a conversation going on that seemed really interesting until I found out it was about a tv show about housewives. Every time someone in Ireland's group goes home they bring back the latest DVDs of TV shows that people like to watch here but that aren't on the TV. They asked if I had any DVDs. I thought about mentioning my 12 disk series on chaos or maybe my lecture series done by Neil deGrasse Tyson on the universe, but then decided to just say no.

Everyone was talking about this palace which is a 7 star hotel. Ireland and her brother and his wife went there Monday night for iftar (breaking of the ramadan fast, usually happens after sun down, and involves a tent with a ton of food - people sit around at tables in the tent eating and smoking sheesha). Ireland said she wanted to get married there. The whole dream wedding conversation went on for forever. I started thinking about what it would be like to be married to Neil. I could just see us sitting at a candle lit table, and him saying "Travel to the closest star would be an amazing journey. But if anything went wrong, you would die." Or "Black holes are fascinating things to study. But if you get to close to them, you will die." I think he's one of my favorite people and not just because he could get me into the Hayden planetarium for free (for more NdGT quotes: http://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/12855.Neil_deGrasse_Tyson).

I rejoined the conversation when Ireland's brother mentioned someone was attacked by a great white in Australia. I started explaining some shark stuff to him but Evan interrupted me and said "Stop talking about sharks. They're too depressing."

This morning Ireland was in a bit of a mood because she stayed out late last night. And we had the worst taxi driver ever. I got to the base and a parade of French guys kept coming by my desk while I was trying to work making loud comments. Seriously, what is wrong with the French? Though, the nationality with a bad rap here is the brits. They get arrested more than any other nationality by a factor of 3, mostly for drugs, public drunkenness, and sex related offenses. Last year a british couple was caught having sex on the beach and they were thrown out of the country. One wonders what they were thinking considering you can get arrested for holding hands in public here. No, I'm not making that up.

The day ended with me finding out I'm getting thrown to the wolves tomorrow at the base. Some meeting with some commanders for which I don't even have a presentation to present. Then I'm meeting with some guys from Pakistan next week. I'm not looking forward to traveling there. The flight to and from Islamabad leaves at 3 in the morning and you have to be there 3 hours in advance. Then you get driven everywhere. You are only allowed to go to your hotel or the customer site. And Dr. T warned me the power goes out a lot, and he was almost injured there his last trip when he was running on the treadmill and it came to an unexpected stop when the power shut off.

The good news is, there is a lot of work to do. That, of course, is also the bad news.

the tender trap

from a comment about an article that cited 3 warning signs that a guy is not a good guy to have a long term relationship with:

"I dont (sic) think that relationships can last unless you have both parties so wrapped up in one anothers (sic) lives that extricating themselves would be like ripping off a limb. Those relationships survive. The ones with not much invested as far as family friends and effort seem doomed to fail. I still feel that unless a man is open to falling totally in love with you right from the start your (sic) wasting your time trying to convince him. Hearts (sic) open or heart is closed. Cant (sic) make something out of nothing."

from the article "Is Sex Interesting?" by Wallace Shawn (Aug 2009, Harper's Magazine):

"Perhaps it is the power of sex that has taught us to love the meaningless and thereby turn it
into the meaningful. Amazingly, the love of what is arbitrary (which one could alternatively
describe as the love of reality) is something we human beings are capable of feeling, and perhaps
even what we call the love of the beautiful is simply a particular way of exercising this remarkable ability...Sex has always been known to be such a powerful force that fragile humanity can’t help but be terribly nervous in front of it, so powerful barriers have been devised to control it—taboos of all varieties, first of all, and then all the emotions subsumed under the concepts of jealousy and possessiveness, possessiveness being a sort of anticipatory form of jealousy. (A recent survey of married people in the United States found that when asked the question “What is very important for a successful marriage?” the quality mentioned most frequently—by 93 percent—was “faithfulness,” while “happy sexual relationship” came in
with only 70 percent. In other words, to 23 percent of the respondents, it seemed more important that they and their partner should not have sex with others than that they themselves should enjoy sex.)"

from "the once and future king", T.H. White:

"It is difficult to explain about Guenever, unless it is possible to love two people at the same time. Probably it is not possible to love two people in the same way, but there are different kinds of love...It had been a successful union, as "made" marriages generally are, and before Lancelot came on the scene the young girl had adored her famous husband...she had felt respect for him, with gratitude, kindness, love, and a sense of protection. She had felt more than this - you might say she had felt everything except the passion of romance."

"A woman can forget a lot of love in two years-or at any rate she can pack it away, and grow accustomed to it, and hardly remember it more than a businessman might remember an occasion when, by ill luck, he had failed to make an investment which would have made him a millionaire."

from an article about Neil deGrasse Tyson's book "the pluto files":

"...Disney's dog Pluto was sketched the same year the cosmic object was discovered. And Pluto was discovered by an American. So here you have a recipe for Americans falling in love with a planet that really is just a tiny ice ball...

So that was the famous Planet X. And eventually, Clyde Tombaugh in Arizona discovered a planet, which got named Pluto. Not by an American, though, because an American would never have named it after a highly advertised, highly marketed laxative of the same name that was popular then."

new kid on the block

In the taxi today, riding home with Ireland from the base in the worst traffic ever, I found out why all these weird people were stopping by my desk today. I guess word had gotten around the base that there was a new woman working there.

It's funny that when I first got here I thought I would find a bunch of people like me, and that I would have ample resources to climb and dive with. But it turns out most of the people I've met that are ex pats are out of shape married men who probably took their assignment to get away from the wife and kids.

The french guys are the most obnoxious. One guy came by my desk today and said "bon jour". I had no idea who he was so I said "good morning". He then counseled me in French to greet him in French. I told him to (insert explicative here) himself in Greek. For the rest of the day he would stop by my desk and say something in French. I answered him in Spanish, Arabic, or Greek depending on what I could remember. He finally got the message and decided to leave me alone after calling me a bad name in French (A speaks it and translated after the guy left).

Then, when A and I arrived at Ireland's building (she works on a different part of the base) to pick her up at the end of the day today, two other french guys were waiting with her. As she opened the door to the car (it's a 2 door BMW and I was sitting in the back) both guys came over to try to shake my hand or something. Then one, named Bruno (how could I make that up) actually tried to climb into the back seat of the car with me. Scary. Ireland had to push him out of the way and then A peeled out of the parking lot, though that was more to show off than because he was worried about me getting molested by a frog.

In the 15 minute drive across the 6 lanes of traffic we were laughing about most of the contractor guys we have to work with. Then we were talking about how even the muslim guys can be overly friendly, and during ramadan they use the excuse of trying to convert women to the muslim religion to hit on them. It's one of the tenets of their religion to convert people. Ireland said she would never want to convert to a religion where she would have to be one of four wives, and that she would rather have four husbands. I told her that sounded like way too much work.

On the drive back to Abu Dhabi, ramadan traffic was compounded by a bunch of construction. It's amazing how much building is going on in this city. They're building tunnels and bridges to islands that they had previously built. Then, on the islands, they're building buildings so people have a reason to go to the islands. It's all rather strange. In Abu Dhabi they're ripping down existing short (3 story) buildings and replacing them with tall skyscrapers with mirrored windows. I asked Ireland why they were ripping down what I thought was a cute little building and she said "because it isn't shiny enough".

Tonight I'm meeting Ireland, her brother, her brother's wife, her best friend and her spouse, and two americans she knows for dinner at a mexican restaurant. I finally discovered why there are no restaurants on the street. A place has to be located in a hotel to serve alcohol and most restaurants, other than lunch places and bakeries, could not survive not being able to sell alcohol. So they either open in a mall, or open in a hotel and serve alcohol.

Such is life on this side of the world...

flip flops vs. combat boots

Last week I got to meet some of the contractors I'll be working with when I did a two day training class for them. It was interesting to watch the expression on their faces when they walked in to find me as their instructor. Most of the guys took it in stride. One guy, though, was pretty militant about his views of women, and refused any help from me when he was trying to complete the exercises. Then the little bastard gave me a "good" rating on the evaluation, while rating everything else about the class "excellent".

The very important person to win over in the class liked me so the rating doesn't matter. The VIP is an ex fighter pilot, and we had some interesting discussions about the F-16 (my dad was the lead designer on the F-100 engine, so I immediately had street cred with the VIP). While at first I was worried to do my usual routine teaching class, after a few hours when they were responding to my jokes I decided to just pretend I was in the US.

I had been warned that people would fall asleep in my class and would want to leave early because of ramadan, but actually it was hard to get rid of them at the end of the day. And at one point everyone was laughing and yelling so loud the program manager came in to see what was going on (we were having a drawing race, and at the end I realized I had written all over the white board with a permanent marker - enter the tea boy to clean it with windex and a billion kleenex while the VIP gave a demonstration of "dry erase markers" and "permanent markers" in engli-arabic - I am probably glad I couldn't understand the arabic parts).

Today I went to the base to meet my customer. The base is in the middle of nowhere and is surrounded by road construction so it's pretty difficult to get to. I had to take a taxi to the supermarket across the street, where A was waiting for me. Then we drove out of the parking lot, made a u-turn, and entered the base. What's so crazy is that I could have walked across the street (it's only 6 lanes) but there are barriers up everywhere to keep people from doing that. So instead of a 5 minute walk we have to drive 10 minutes to get on base. And then, after all the drama of getting my pass so I could enter the gate, the guard didn't even ask for it. He just waved at me.

Most of the people I met today were very nice. My favorite is a captain, female. She looks like the emirati version of Angelina Jolie and her uniform is really cool. She wears a black head scarf, then has this very masculine looking square jacket with a bunch of military stuff stuck all over it, and then she has a long skirt that goes to the floor, and poking out from the hem are her black combat boots. She even has her own office.

Most of the day was spent with A trying to figure out our work schedule for the next few months. There's a lot to do. I found it funny that, at the end of the day, when I gave A a list of what I was going to work on for the rest of the week, he said "it's really weird to me that you are doing work". I sometimes wonder if I'm not really a consultant.

And, I've decided, unless something horrible happens, I'm going to Banff in November. Work is fun, but I really need to get my book published. I'll be breaking the news to Dr. T later this week.

ramadan ruse

Today I was talking to a guy from the Dubai office and he was asking me where I sneak off to when I want to eat or drink something. I told him that I was fasting along with everyone else in the office. He started laughing and told me most of the people in the office are having lunch while I think they're saying prayers. Don't I feel like a sucker.

I read an article in the paper yesterday that was talking about ramadan. What ends up happening here is people sleep all day because it's hot and they're tired from fasting. They wake up at night and hang out in iftar tents (tents full of food) to break fast. Then they watch TV, have the last meal before sunrise, and go to sleep. It sounds more like a night club life style than a religious event, but I'm sure some people take it seriously.

Another article talked about the top 10 bad things that people do during ramadan. Eight of the 10 things were about women. Among their list of bad things they do at ramadan:

Pretending to have the curse when they don't (women with the curse don't have to fast)
Wearing too much perfume (not sure about that one)
Talking to people at the mosque instead of, and I quote, "being silent"
Cooking too much food
Spending too much time in the kitchen cooking food and making it look nice
Claiming to be tired during fasting (while taking care of the kids, no doubt)
Not encouraging pre-teens to fast
Becoming anorexic during fasting

The bad things that men do included watching too much TV and sleeping too much.

death cab

You can always tell what the weather is like outside, A tells me, by looking at the sky. The closer the color of the sky is to the color of the desert, the hotter it's going to be.

I woke up this morning, and the sky was as blue as I've seen it. I walked outside and spent 30 minutes waiting for a cab. Just when I was thinking I would walk to the office because the weather didn't seem so bad, a cab showed up. I should note that when I got to the office everyone was talking about how it was "only 120 degrees" outside. Guess I'm getting used to the heat.

In the 30 minutes I was waiting, a cab actually did show up, but he refused to give me a ride. After the cab left I asked the bell hop why he didn't want to give me a ride, and the bell hop said "because he's Pakistani". Hm. Then I got to the office and met N, who I will be working in parallel with (he is a consultant for software that integrates with my software). It turns out N was born in Dallas, Texas but is Pakistani. When I told him what happened with the cab he laughed and said it's more likely the guy didn't want to give me a ride because I'm a woman rather than because I'm american.

N took me to get a SIM card, an arduous process involving mobs of people shoving at the phone counter and computers that kept breaking down, capped off with a lecture from a Palastinian woman about how my photocopy of my passport was "no good, no good at all". Then we found out the SIM card doesn't work in my crackberry, so I also had to buy a phone (we used to have spare phones in the office, but after my old company was taken over by my new company they got rid of the spare phones - but, they did hire a tea boy to bring everyone drinks - someone in corporate should get a huge raise for that decision).

As we were driving back to the office N told me that I was lucky to not end up in a cab with a Paki. He said they are the worst drivers in the world. I believe him after he told me that he had "only been in 2 accidents this year". Um, that's a good driving record? He was driving his mom's car because his was in the shop from his last accident. He said he was driving a little fast when "suddenly this Indian stopped rather suddenly at a red light". I was like "yeah, that happens all the time in the US too". Then I asked if, for the rest of the trip to the office, we could stop at the red lights just so we didn't get into an accident (for the record, everyone stops at red lights here, except, I guess, Pakistanis).

The guy who walks around the office parking garage cleaning cars surreptitiously made me a little hide away to smoke in by stacking up a bunch of boxes, which I found today, much to my surprise and delight (I only had two cigarettes over the course of 8 hours, so nip it). I know he's the one that did it because his cleaning supplies are in there too. As I've said before, these people are all about service. When I was asking N where I could do my laundry he looked at me as if I was right out of the trailer park and said "Do you mean, do we have laundromats like in the US? Franki, no. Here, we pay someone to do everything for us. Just send your laundry out."

N and I worked until late afternoon, and then I turned down an offer from him for a ride home, because I felt like he had already been so helpful to me (Pete, N says hi btw, you taught him DXL). I ended up in a cab with a Paki (cab drivers always tell me where they are from as soon as I get in the cab - why, I don't know) who didn't mind driving a woman around. The only problem was, he really was a bad driver.

It's the first time since being here that I actually feared for my life. He was speeding down a three lane road when suddenly traffic stopped in front of us. He slammed on the brakes and the car began turning sideways. Everyone was honking at us. Then he decided, for no reason, to cross three lanes of traffic without looking. We almost side swiped a range rover. By then I'd had enough so I yelled "HEY!" He looked in the rear view at me, and I said "You are making me VERY angry." He slowed down a little after that, and used his turn signal as he was cutting cars off. The important thing is I made it back to the hotel in one piece.

Tomorrow I'm doing my first training class for the air force here. It should be exciting, since the training material did not show up today. It will be there for class tomorrow, inshallah.

quitter

The second day at work during Ramadan was really hard. I'm not surprised that, as I read in the paper, people just stop showing up to work. It took forever to get a taxi this morning (30 minutes) and the whole time we were driving I saw taxis, empty, parked on the side of the road. People are too tired to work, especially in this heat.

Even though I ate two things of oatmeal this morning, I was really hungry around lunch time. I'm sure some of my clients may be a little shocked that I wanted to eat something during the day...I guess not drinking tea and not smoking gives me an appetite. I found myself staring at the Wahoo's web site, contemplating how many fish tacos I thought I might be able to eat. It was kind of sad.

Worse, though, happened this afternoon. I was ready to knock off around 3 (our quitting time during Ramadan), head back to the hotel, chain smoke a billion cigarettes, and then work out. But N, one of my colleagues, called and asked that I stay in the office for 40 minutes and wait for him. I was like "but with this nicotine headache I might beat you up when you finally show up". Instead I said I would wait.

So, not being able to smoke on the streets (you get arrested - ask me how I know that), and not being able to go home and smoke, I decided to sneak down to the bottom floor of the building, a parking garage. As soon as I walked off the elevator I could smell smoke. I snuck off behind this huge metal structure and was happily smoking when suddenly a car started coming down the parking lot ramp. I quickly killed my cigarette and ran back over to the elevator. I was panicking that who ever was in the car was going to yell at me, but then realized that HE was smoking in the garage.

Quitting smoking, while also quitting eating and drinking, sucks.

When I got back to the office I waited 45 minutes and then N called to say he wasn't coming. Traffic was bad heading back to the hotel because everyone leaves work early during Ramadan. But I'm not mad at N, that was the lack of nicotine talking.

The good thing is the gym hasn't been crowded at all.

UAE cacti

Here's a picture of my two cacti. The little one is the one A originally gave me. The bigger one is the one he gave me after I said I liked succulents.



I think I'll name the small one Poke Istan and the tall one Ali bin Stickers.








And this is Ireland's cactus. It has fungus.

cakes, and other things I can't eat

Today is the second day of Ramadan. The whole purpose of Ramadan is to fast from sun up (around 630 am) to sun down (around 630 pm) to teach muslims patience, modesty, and spirituality. Fasting means no eating, drinking, smoking, or chewing of gum, and you aren’t supposed to have any evil thoughts. At the end of Ramadan every muslim is supposed to give a month’s worth of expenses to someone who is poor, though this distribution of charity appears to be ongoing throughout Ramadan.

It’s a lot harder than it might seem at first to go 12 hours not eating or drinking anything. It’s especially true of Ramadan this year, because it has fallen during the summer months (Ramadan falls at a different time every year because it isn’t based on the solar calendar) and it seems like it will be very easy to get dehydrated during the day.

Most muslims break fast as soon as the sun goes down, and they stay up all night eating and drinking until the sun comes up. Then they have a nap for a few hours and get up and go to work. Ramadan, as reported by my colleagues here and in the paper, is the most dangerous time to be on the road, especially in the hours before the fast is broken, as people are trying to rush home and are tired from being up all night as well as light headed from fasting.

Technically I don’t have to fast, but there’s not really a way around it. Some offices curtain off an area for non-muslims to eat or drink but we haven’t done that in our office. All the restaurants and food places are closed until sundown. There isn’t a place to sneak off and smoke. It’s considered very rude to eat or drink in front of people fasting (for obvious reasons). I think I better get up super early tomorrow and drink as much water as humanly possible. I didn’t eat anything before I left the hotel today, which was another tactical error. I’m teaching class all day Wednesday and Thursday, which could get interesting on an empty stomach.

As a side note, I read in the paper last night that there is a panic over the availability of cakes and other baked sweets in Abu Dhabi. It seems that people are buying more confections this year than last, and bakers are working over time to keep up. There was also a helpful chart in the paper on how to break fast in a healthy way (e.g. don’t eat cakes first, eat fruit).

A cake would be nice to eat right now. I have a low grade headache from lack of water and nicotine. Oh well. Only 29 more days and then fasting is over…

on the eve of Ramadan

Today's corrections: my not anymore manager Chuck pointed out to me this morning that the email was sent to a different Charles that isn't him. That Charles did not see fit to inform anyone that he had received an email in error. He probably wishes he was a cool as Chuck, in fact, he might be obsessed with Chuck and pretending to be him like that guy in The Talented Mr. Ripley. Personally, I think the safest thing would be to fire him, or make him change his name.

I was a total slacker today. It's the first time since my arrival that I've slept through the morning call to prayer (430 am). When I woke up I finally got around to unpacking (discovered I forgot a few things) and had planned to do a little exploring (the weekend here is Friday and Saturday). But when I went out at 11 am the heat was so unbearable that I took a cue from the locals and went over to the mall. If you can imagine getting into your car on the hottest day of summer after it's been sitting in the sun all closed up for 6 hours, and closing the door without opening any windows and then trying to drive somewhere, you can imagine the heat here.

I returned to the co-op I went to last night and got a power adapter that actually works (unlike my current one). A very nice woman from Pakistan helped me pick out some nail polish. Then I checked out the food court in the mall proper and found an Indian place where I imagine I'll be spending a lot of time eating (fish tikka - yum). Oddly, there aren't many middle eastern restaurants, or if there are, I don't know where to find them. In Abu Dhabi most restaurants are located in hotels or malls. I thought I would find a small local place to eat at near the hotel, but that hasn't happened yet. There are McDonald's and KFCs everywhere. McDonald's sells something called a McArabia (fire the marketing person who came up with that name) which is kofta on a bun. They have signs for it everywhere.

Then I went to the gym at my hotel, which I love, love, love! They even have two rower machines. My experience so far is that the women all work out, and the guys stand around scratching themselves and watching the women work out. I ran two miles even though I told my dad I was going to ease back into running slowly and follow the workouts in the non-marathon runner's handbook, which said I was only supposed to run a half mile today (whatever!).

Finally, I went to the beach and planned to swim a mile, but that got boring really quickly. Instead I ended up sitting on a beach chair trying to read while this Greek guy on the squash court behind me made obscene noises every time he hit the ball, and 3 german kids set up camp in front of me and took turns burying each other. I assume, though I haven't verified, that the sand on the beach came from the desert, because it's super fine, like talcum powder, and it gets into everything.

I was debating going to check out a bar or club on the hotel property, but decided to stay in and read my book. Best to wait until Ireland is back in town, I think. This evening while I was at the beach I noticed that, although I took a chair in an area that was completely deserted, by the time I put my book away and decided to get dinner four of the guys who were at the beach when I got there had moved to chairs a lot closer to mine. One of the guys was so hairy that when I first glanced over at him, curled up on a chair, I thought "oh nice, someone brought their dog and it's sleeping on a lounge like a person". Gross!

Speaking of which, the coconut crackers didn't work out very well. They were literally like saltine crackers sprinkled with coconut shavings. And I found out my cherries were grown in Iran, not Turkey. I wanted to get more today but most of the fruit was sold out since Ramadan starts tomorrow.

"welcome to the country...illegally!"

Today I was supposed to get my residence visa. Ha ha ha. Didn't happen.

I know what you're thinking. You're thinking wow, the bureaucratic mess of UAE's government! You would be wrong. The problem is actually MY COMPANY.

I got to the office in Dubai after a two hour tour of the city by my colleague A, who knows everything about Dubai, including where all the sheiks live. I have to admit that Dubai is aesthetically one of the most amazing cities I've ever seen. It doesn't look real, it looks like Dubai Disney. Even the concrete overpasses are decorative, having been painted and with ornamental cement flourishes. There was no trash, anywhere (and they have recycling bins!). The city has grass, trees, and flowers everywhere. All the buildings sort of match each other.

Anyway, I was told by the HR rep who was supposed to do my residency visa that someone had failed to fill out "the initialization form" and that I was "in the country illegally". The HR rep, V, is french, very attractive, and prone to dramatic fits. In fact, what she said to me was "Welcome to the country...ILLEGALLY!" I calmly pointed out to her that I had a visa for 60 days (though, in my passport they only put 30 days, which worried me, but I was told by both V and Ireland "of course they only put 30 days in your passport" - as if I'm the one being illogical) and that only my COMPANY considered me to be in the country illegally. More wringing of hands and sighs from V. "I can do NOTHING about this situation. NOTHING!" she finally said, throwing her hands up to the heavens, perhaps to implore some higher being to remove me from her sight (I did wash my hair today, but have to admit my outfit was no where near as stylish as hers - she was wearing Jimmy Choos and this ring that I've always coveted from Tiffany's, Elsa Peretti collection).

At this point Ireland stepped in (we seem to have naturally developed a good cop/bad cop routine) and said "I swear on my heart I don't know what this "initialization" thing is. We thought we had done everything right." Even when she lies through her teeth, she sounds sincere due to her accent. More back and forth, while I stared out V's window and wondered why an HR person would have such a posh office, overlooking an oasis, when suddenly I heard V say "But I sent the email to Charles". I was like "I don't even KNOW a Charles!" when suddenly I realized she had sent the email to my manager who isn't my manager anymore, Chuck.

Everyone knows Chuck's email is a black hole. Things get sucked into his inbox and proceed towards the event horizon until they are overcome by exponentially increasing gravity, ceasing to be an email, and instead becoming a spaghettification of zeros and ones from which no sense can ever be made (and worse occurs if you get a lotus notes database link, which causes the black hole to increase in size, beyond lotus notes, to consume applications and documents standing too close). All this happens while Chuck is sitting on 6 hour conference calls. It isn't his fault.

Anyway, we have 60 days to clean up the mess. Ireland is working on the "initialization" thing tonight even though she has to leave for Pakistan on Saturday at 3 in the morning and has loads to do before then. I got the task of getting an official diploma for my master's degree to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in the US, so they can send it to UAE, because without it I won't get a residence visa (I was like can't I just get a copy of the one I have, and V, horrified, said "a COPY?" as though I were suggesting giving Audrey Hepburn a knockoff birkin or something). In the mean time, the scope of my job here is expanding rapidly. But that's a good thing.

I finished my day at the Abu Dhabi co-op, a store that's like Target, but better. The push carts are beautifully painted, there's everything in the world there, and I bought a bag of cherries that must have come straight from Malatya. I also bought a box of something that I'm really, really hoping turns out to be coconut cookies. Though, the box could contain something else. I hope it isn't a facial. I once bought what I thought was going to be a bag of dried strawberries in Greece, only to find out a week after I opened and ate the contents (which I assumed to be some kind of yogurt) that it was a facial. I found out when I brought another bag in to the office to have for breakfast during a meeting - yes, I did that in front of a customer.

note to luggage: next time I want a post card

My lost luggage showed up today, after taking a short vacation in Brazil. I don't know how my luggage got routed to Brazil from Heathrow, but the tag was still on my bag when I picked it up from the front desk at Le M this evening. And, contrary to my dad's fears, nothing appears to be missing.

Today was a busy day at the office. Ireland was gone all morning because our idiot company first failed to copy and paste the correct text that Ireland had sent them into her visa request for Pakistan (she leaves Sunday). Then they did the copy and paste correctly, but failed to stamp the letter. She received it 20 minutes before the Pakistani embassy closed. When I saw her this evening she was in a bad mood because of her foot. The bruising is really setting in and it looks marvellous. She told me after it happened at the wedding she took one of those champagne buckets, filled it with ice, stuck her foot in it and prayed her parents wouldn't walk by and see her. It's almost like we're twins, separated at birth.

When I got in this morning I decided to move to a new desk because I didn't like the ethernet cord at my original desk (it's black, yuck, I only use the blue ones). The desk was kind of dirty so I asked the office manager where I might get some cleaning supplies. She looked at me, horrified, and said "you can't clean the desk!" I thought maybe that was for religious reasons, and decided I would sneak clean it while she was at lunch, but then I heard her telling our "office boy" to clean my desk.

The office boy is a very sweet skeletal little youngster. Yesterday he was so afraid of me that if I entered any part of the office where he was he would scamper away and hide in the supply closet. I told the office manager that I could clean my desk myself, but the office boy had already sprinted in and cleaned it for me. As I thanked him he drew in his breath and made this horrible sound. His eyes got really big. Then he gingerly lifted my water bottle, which he had placed on another desk so he could clean my desk, and placed it exactly where I had set it earlier that morning. Then he covered his ears and ran away.

Well, he'll be in the closet for at least the rest of the morning, I thought to myself. But he came by my desk at lunch to see if I wanted him to bring me some food. I said "what would you recommend I have for lunch?" I guess he didn't know what to say, because he backed away from me slowly, clutching the front of his shirt, and when he got to the door, he ran away again.

A, who is the other architect I will be working with, came in at 4 pm and wanted to talk shop. I was pretty tired, having been working since 730, but we chatted until 6. He gave me a little cactus. He gives all the architects a cactus when they start working his program. I started telling him about my cacti, currently residing with Joe (tammy faye cactus, I miss you!) and he went to his desk and brought me a bigger cactus, with a flower on it. Ireland was like "hey, how come she gets the cactus with a flower on it?" and A said "Do you even know where your cactus is?" Ireland claimed someone stole it, but then A walked over to this cabinet next to Ireland's desk, flung it open, and pulled out the saddest little yellow cactus you've ever seen. Ireland said "I wonder how it got in there?" like it had magically transported itself into the cabinet.

Tomorrow I'm going to Dubai to get my residency visa. And hopefully a new SIM card for my phone. Then Ireland is taking me to the "special" store, where one can procure wine. Important to do before Ramadan starts...

dude, where's my bag?

My flight from Denver to Heathrow reminded me why I never fly american carriers overseas. Besides being packed the service was horrible. If the US government is going to give money to the auto industry, why not also give the airlines a subsidy so I don't have to pay for wine on my flight?

The carrier I took to Abu Dhabi, Etihad, was ornately decorated and very, very small. I ended up in the second seat in a row of four seats, sandwiched between a guy from Pakistan who didn't really want to be sitting next to a western woman, and a woman from Iraq (I know where they were from because I saw their passports). Her husband had the other end seat. I'm not sure if they purposely don't let women sit in the aisles, but I didn't see any women with an aisle seat.

The guy from Iraq seemed a little crazy. He kept having these uncontrollable outbursts, where he would suddenly shout things like "there's a little problem here! a LITTLE problem!" in arabic. He would also lean over and tap his wife's tv screen, causing it to switch to another channel. Then they would start wrestling. Not a conducive environment for sleeping. Of course, with three little kids under the age of 8 sitting in front of me, I probably wouldn't have slept anyway. They had worked out a very efficient schedule where one would start crying as soon as one would stop. Hard to believe anyone could cry for 8 hours...

The crying started because of the Iraqi guy. One of the kids, a 3 year old red headed girl, stuck her head over her seat and looked at the Iraqi guy, prompting him to yell, in English "HI! What are you? Fine? What name you!" He then burped loudly right in her face. She started to cry. But apparently didn't learn her lesson, because she kept peeking over the seat at him and the same scene would repeat (except the burping, which appeared to be happening spontaneously throughout the flight rather than being triggered by any particular event).

Weirdly, when we were about to land, all the lights went down on the plane and then our tv screens showed footage from the plane's camera, so we could see ourselves landing. Everyone stared at the screens transfixed, including myself. It was kind of disconcerting to see the plane bouncing across the runway, but at the same time kind of cool.

After what seemed like hours I made it to the door of the plane, stepped out on the stairs, and was hit in the face with a hot wind that was so strong it blew me backwards. I knew it was going to be hot here, but didn't realize it would be so windy. Everyone was having problems getting down the stairs because of the wind.

Arriving at 1 in the morning is a good time. I breezed through customs. Everyone else was getting hassled but the guy took one look at my blond hair, smiled at me, and stamped my passport. They also did a retinal scan, which was kind of weird.

Then I got to baggage claim and realized that Etihad is arabic for "we forgot your luggage". I waited for an hour while these Etihad agents ran all around the baggage claims looking for my bags. I was told by everyone in the office lost luggage from Heathrow flying Etihad is more commonplace than having luggage that arrives. My backpack with my climbing and diving gear arrived, but unfortunately TSA forgot to rezip the zippers after searching it, so I lost all of my emergen-c and green tea. Insert explicative here.

I had to fill out a report, and by that time it was 2 in the morning. I wandered out into the main airport area only to find all of the ATMs and money changers shut down. I was like great, no money, need a cab to the airport, I'm exhausted, what the hell am I going to do? I finally talked a driver into taking me to the hotel and got the hotel to pay him. One thing is definitely true about this place...they are all about service. And incredibly kind. They even gave me an adapter, for free, at the front desk since the one I brought didn't work.

I finally got to bed at 3 in the morning, and rolled into the office a little late. Everyone I met today was extremely nice. And I can tell the Irish woman I'll be working with and I are going to get along great. First, she wears flip flops to the office (and I can too - hooray!). Second, she had her foot wrapped, and when I asked what happened she said that she was at her brother's wedding back in Ireland a few days ago, dancing barefoot, and someone stepped on her foot with a stiletto. I tried not to smile, because that sounds like an injury I would get, and she said "I had to get shots, you know". And finally, she said "thank god there's someone else in the office that drinks wine". She was disappointed that I didn't get any at the airport, but, it was 2 in the morning, and I wasn't thinking straight.

In any case, it appears I will spend my time here living out of the Le Meridien hotel. I go to Dubai on Thursday to get my residence visa, and will possibly go to the AF base first thing next week. And I have a training class scheduled for the end of next week. I have a feeling I could stay here a long time and never run out of work.

Hopefully tomorrow my bag will show up. In the mean time, I took Irish's advice and ordered dinner in. I hope to get more sleep tonight.

because everything should taste like bacon

As a fellow seasoned traveler, I always read with interest Jeffy's suggestions on products I could use as I bounce around the globe.


There was the time, after I got leptospiriosis, that he suggested a water filter. It's a filter used by the military and it kills everything. That was a useful suggestion, but, since I already had lepto, I wasn't sure what I might do with it, except shove it up my ass and kill the bacteria post consumption.


Then, he sent me a link to a knife that looked like something OJ Simpson might cherish. Getting it through customs might have been difficult. But, some day in a sand storm, I may regret not having it, as I won't be able to saw open my camel and climb inside.


But my favorite was the recommendation today:


J&D's Bacon Lip Balm
From the makers of Baconnaise and Bacon Salt comes a bacon-flavored product that you don't even have to eat. J&D's Bacon Lip Balm ($13/4-pack) will protect your lips with beeswax, aloe vera oil, Vitamin E acetate, and other ingredients, all while offering a subtle bacon flavor both you and your partner can enjoy.

http://www.uncrate.com/men/body/skin/jds-bacon-lip-balm/

I am really, REALLY hoping this isn't a real product. I'm picturing a guy with this shit smeared all over his lips and it makes me want to vomit.

Which, since we're talking about lip balm, reminds me of one of my pet peeves. Guys with shiny lips are a total turn off. It makes me think of two things: either, he just went down on someone, or he's wearing lip gloss.

The thing is, it's okay for guys to have chapped lips. As long as there isn't skin sticking up all over the place. It's rugged. Like calloused hands. If I ever touch a guy's hand and it's smooth I get the shudders. What kind of guy has hands like a little girl? Go do some yard work or something. Poke around in your car's engine and bloody up your knuckles. If you have hands and lips like a girl, why would I date you? I would date a girl, who hopefully has shoes I like and clothes I can borrow.

But, I wouldn't date a girl, because the bitch would probably take my favorite coach bag and get lipstick all over the inside of it. Or worse, leave a tampon in it, and I would be pulling out my ID at the airport and the tampon would come flying out.

So not cool.

heading east and other exciting news

I finally got the go ahead for my trip to the middle east today. I'm leaving for Abu Dhabi on Sunday. I'm not sure when I'm returning, likely February. But, it may be later than that because...

I also found out today that I was accepted into the Banff mountain writing program, which starts in November. I guess when I get to AD I'll figure out whether or not it's feasible for me to go. I am hoping it is as it will give me an opportunity to get my book finished and, allah willing, published.

I have no idea why I was picked for the program. My list of publications reads more like an engineering snorefest than something "mountain" people might want to read. Maybe they liked my story submissions, or figured anyone stupid enough to do an open water swim without knowing how to swim would be good entertainment, albeit a possible insurance liability.

it's sweet

I hope to spend at least a couple of weekends in Turkey while I'm over in that area of the world. It's possibly my favorite country I've ever visited. I loved the shady characters in Istanbul, the beaches, the mosques, the food (best cherries ever), and the people.

While I was there on a trip in 1999, I decided to travel to a remote area of the country to see some Roman ruins. I had been counseled not to go to that area because there were problems with the Kurds, and it was close to the Iraqi border. But I went anyway.

I hired a taxi driver to take me around for the day. I went to five sites. When I would get back to the taxi after visiting each site I would find my driver progressively more and more drunk. By the time I got to the final site I was worried he wouldn't be able to drive, but it was the site I had most wanted to see, so I told the driver I would be back in 10 minutes or less and headed off to take a picture of this really cool Medusa head.

When I returned to where I had left him, the taxi driver was gone. By then it was evening and the sun was going down. I was in a very remote area with nothing but my guide book. It would have taken hours to walk to the nearest town even if I had known what roads to take.

I walked until I found a house and knocked on the door. The guy who answered, amazingly, spoke English. He told me not to worry, that a bus would come by, and I could take it back to town. I asked where the bus stop was and he pointed to this corner of the street that was overgrown with weeds. No sign, no nothing. I was a little dubious so I asked when the bus would come. "Soon," he said. "Very soon."

Uh huh. So I stood on the corner, in the weeds, feeling like someone was playing a joke on me. As the sun sank lower I saw a car coming down the street. It was a big white sedan, and there were four men in the car. As they drove passed me the car slowed to a crawl, and all the men were staring at me, standing in my sweaty clothes looking like a scrawny and defenseless idiot. Great, I thought, here's the part of the trip where I get kidnapped by terrorists.

The car drove up to a wider part of the street and turned around, coming back towards me. I felt like I was going to have a heart attack, but I didn't move. There was no place to run to. The car stopped on the street, and the four men got out. One walked over to me, reaching into his shirt. I speculated that maybe they were going to shoot me instead kidnapping me.

To my surprise, the guy pulled out this enormous cucumber and handed it to me. We stared at each other. I suddenly wanted to cry, but instead I laughed. The man gestured at the cucumber. I laughed harder and wondered what the fuck was going on.

Finally, he took it away from me, pulled out a knife, and cut off the end of the cucumber. Then he cut a slice and handed it to me. "It's sweet" he said to me in arabic. I realized that these guys had seen me looking like a wretchedly sweaty and lost tourist, and they stopped to give me a refreshing snack to eat while I was waiting for the bus. I felt horrible for assuming the worst about them.

The bus finally came, and I eventually got back to my hotel. I ate the whole cucumber. It was sweet.

health "care"

I've always thought our health care system was stupid. For example, the fact that I had to pay for my chemo out of pocket because it wasn't covered under the plan, while this idiot woman I worked with got $45,000 worth of fertility treatments, and then needed $100,000 of treatment during the birth of her kid because she was obese and that caused complications.

And my experience this past week...I was diagnosed with shingles on Monday, but told there was no treatment for it because I had waited too long to see a doctor (my doctor said the drug treatment is only effective if taken in the first 48 hours of a breakout). Of course, the reason I didn't see a doctor right after the rash started is because I couldn't get an appointment. I told the doctor I was worried that I would have another outbreak while traveling in the middle east, and asked for a prescription that I could fill before I left.

He didn't want to write that prescription, but was more than willing to write me a 30 day prescription for any pain med I wanted. I was like you will give me oxycontin, but not a fucking antibiotic? He finally gave me the prescription, which is a good thing. I found out from another doctor that the 48 hour rule was bullshit. I took the meds and my rash and the pain cleared up within 12 hours. But, now I have to go to ME without drugs because the doctor refused to write me another prescription. Ass pipe.

Then, he gave me a prescription for a quit smoking drug, since I'm going to do that. When I went to pick it up at the pharmacy they said he should have known he would have to call in to get approval for the prescription before he gave it to me. I called the doctor's office to ask them to do that, and faxed them the information they needed. It took 2 days for them to call me back, and that was with the news that my healthcare plan doesn't cover smoking cessation. How fucking stupid is that?

I went back to the pharmacy and they said they could fill my prescription but it was going to cost me about $400. I asked if there was another, cheaper drug, and they said there was but I would have to get a new prescription from my doctor, and when they had suggested that to him he declined to give me a new prescription.

I was so pissed that I told the pharmacist "Fine, I'll just keep smoking". He sighed, and then told me to sit in the waiting area for a few minutes. Then he called my name, and gave me THE SAME prescription that they were originally going to charge me $400 for, and told me that it was now $94.40. I was like HOW is that possible? He told me that he filled it under some plan they have for people without insurance. At first I felt bad taking the meds because I didn't want to cause someone who really didn't have insurance to not be able to get the drug, but he said the system doesn't work that way. And I was really grateful to him for helping me out, so much so that I wrote a letter to the president of his company.

So now I'm wondering why I'm paying $200 a month for health insurance. I've had one doctor's visit this year ($60), and the shingles drug was so cheap I didn't have to use insurance to cover the cost. I can't get timely appointments with the doctors in my network, and the things I really need aren't covered in my plan.

Stupid.

2046

2046 has become one of my favorite movies. And not just because there are the best stilettos ever that light up when the female character walks in them.

There are three women in the movie, and this perfectly horrible guy, who is a writer. He's also a gambler who isn't good at controlling his impulses.

First, he falls in love with this woman who is married. Or he says he loves her. He says in the movie that you can meet the perfect person, but if the timing isn't right, it won't work out. I don't agree with that. I think if you really love someone, even if the timing is wrong, you can eventually find a way to be with that person. Even though I've had a few relationships that didn't work out because of what I thought was bad timing, I eventually realized the real problem was a difference in goals and what we wanted.

Then the guy falls in love with this totally innocent, sweet girl, who helps him do his work and takes care of him while he's sick. The girl doesn't know he's in love with her though, because she's in love with someone else, though she's unable to express her love.

He helps her get together with the guy she's in love with, even though he claims it broke his heart. But the more I see the movie, the more I think he wants her because he can never have her and he never has to deal with the reality of being in a relationship with her. That's one of the weirdest things about relationships. I think women tend to be supportive of the person they're with regardless of what he does (sleep with someone else, act like an abusive asshole). But men aren't that way. One little thing goes wrong and they turn on you. Like every guy I work with that complains his wife is fat. What did you think was going to happen after she had your fucking kids? These are always the same guys who don't help out around the house, so by the time their wives get done taking care of all the shit they have to do, they don't have time to work out.

While he's in love with the innocent girl, he starts a relationship with an escort. The escort really loves him, and he humiliates her for that. He pays her every time they have sex, and refuses to spend the night with her. She puts up with all this bullshit until she can't take it anymore and then she leaves him. He says he regrets the way he treated her, but when he has an opportunity to do the right thing he fucks her over again. Yet he writes about her in his stories.

The movie is a movie within a movie. The guy is writing a screenplay called 2046, about how people in the future can travel back in time to 2046 so they can live in their memories. In the screenplay, his character decides to leave 2046 and go home. While he's traveling home he ends up having a relationship with a robot. He falls in love with the robot. But then the robot's circuits wear out and she is taken out of service. He says of the robot that he never knew if she really loved him or not.

The conclusion I came to after watching this movie (where, actually, the characters are the same people, watch the watch and the way they smoke) is that guys want the robot. She does what ever he wants and is obedient (a theme that recurs throughout the movie). Also, guys are uncomfortable with emotion so they don't want to be with a partner who is emotional, like the escort. They want someone who's available when it's convenient for them, and they don't want to have to deal with other people's needs.

I guess the difference between men and women really boils down to birthing. Guys don't really have to do anything except get their dick in the right place. Women have to be pregnant, have their body ruined, and then take care of the kid. If they weren't emotional they would do a horrible job at parenthood. Women have to accommodate the needs of their kid whether it's convenient or not. Guys never have to do that, and it makes them emotionally stunted.

And it's funny. Most relationship books counsel women to be more robotic (don't get upset, don't ask him where he's going, don't be clingy). And women put up with this shit because, unlike men, they are capable of really loving someone. That's fucked up.

Cage

Last night I had a dream I was walking down this outside stairwell in Georgetown and I recognized a guy walking up the stairs. So I said hi to him and we started talking. The guy was like "I haven't seen you in 10 years!" and he invited me to go to a party with him. So we started walking to the party and I realized I had no idea who the guy was. But he kept saying how much he had missed me and how glad he was that he had run into me so I kept walking with him.

We came to this dorm building that had loud music coming out of it. We walked through a warren of hallways and through a bunch of messy dorm rooms. Sometimes the guy would move a chair or a trunk in the room and we would have to get down on our hands and knees to crawl through a tunnel to get to the next room. Finally we came to this space that looked like a gym but there were women's clothes strewn all over the place and people standing around drinking beer. They were all really young.

We found the bar and the guy got me a drink, put his arm around me, and said "I want to introduce you to my friends". Just then these three college aged girls came running up to him and said "oh my god, Nicholas Cage!" And then I looked at the guy and realized it was Nicholas Cage. The girls tried to pull him over to their friends but he said he had to take me to meet his friends so they glared at me and walked away.

We went in to a dorm room that led to another room. The first room was full of guys that knew Nick even though they were also college age. They looked at me and Nick told them I was his girlfriend. I started thinking it was weird that he would say that since we had just met. Then he took me to the next room, and there was a full sized bed with a green cover on it. There was nothing else in the room. He said I could lay down and take a nap if I wanted to and that he would be back later.

I laid down on the bed but then started thinking that I should find Nick, so I got up and looked into the room where his friends were sitting. His friends had gotten a lot bigger since I had first seen them and they were really drunk. I was afraid to walk into the room because I thought they might beat me up, so I climbed out a window and ended up in a parking lot that looked the like the parking lot of my hotel in Seoul. I was wondering how I had gotten to Korea since I had just been in DC, but then Nick started walking towards me and was like "I have been looking EVERYWHERE for you!" All these girls kept grabbing him as we were walking through the parking lot but he kept saying to them "please be respectful of my girlfriend".

He took me over to this deserted area of the parking lot that had a chain link fence that was broken and part of it was laying on the ground. I realized if we stepped over the chain link fence we would be back in DC. Nick said "Before we go to DC, there's something I have to tell you. I love you and I want to marry you". I said I wasn't sure it would be a good idea to get married since we had just met. And he said "What are you talking about? We've known each other for 10 years!" I said I didn't remember being his friend, or ever hanging out with him. He said "Don't you remember when we met?" and he was really upset.

I said "Did we meet in college?" and right after I said it I realized that if I had said anything but that, everything would have been okay. His face turned angry and he said "maybe you aren't who I thought you were" and walked over the fence, away from me. I wanted to follow but I looked down and saw the chain link fence was wrapped around my legs and I couldn't walk. I was going to call to him to ask for help but he was talking to a group of about 10 college girls and they were laughing. I didn't want them to look over and see me, because they would laugh at me, so I started trying to untangle the fence by myself.

The more untangled I tried to make the fence the worse it became. I started thinking I would be in Korea forever and never get to go home again. The sun was getting hotter and hotter and I felt like I was going to pass out.

Then I woke up.

killer sock puppets

Two nights ago I had a dream that I was in England, in the country, and was staying in a hotel in this little village. It was nighttime, and there was a huge wedding going on, but I wasn't invited. The hotel was deserted.

So I decided to sneak over to the church where the wedding was being held. It was a small stone building. I crept through some bushes and looked in one of the windows. The glass was so old my view was distorted and I couldn't make anything out. So I pushed the window open. I could hear wedding music.

When I looked inside I could see that the bride and groom were saying their vows. But, they were sock puppets with no faces. Then I noticed all the people in the church were just sock puppets without faces. They had these skinny wooden dowels coming out from their bodies where their arms should have been, and at the end of the dowels were these round wooden knobs.

I started to get scared that everyone in the village had turned into a sock puppet and that I might turn into one too. I began backing away from the window, but the sock puppets heard me moving through the bushes.

They flew out of the church door and began beating me with their wooden knob arms. At first I was afraid and then I started laughing and said "you can't hurt me with your arms". But they started flying at my face. One sock puppet wedged himself in my mouth, and another somehow was able to block my nose and eyes by wrapping around my head tightly. I started to suffocate. The other sock puppets were holding my arms so I couldn't move. I began to pass out.

Then I woke up.

who invited the asshole?

Last night Brassy invited one of his friends over for dinner. The friend, here after referred to as X, is a doctor. If his ego were a vehicle, it would surely be a blimp.

X was obviously uncomfortable in my presence, so I asked him about healthcare reform and his thoughts. He proceeded to tell me I'm a horrible patient, and that the reason I get bad care from my doctors is because I don't threaten to sue them. Interesting.

Then X insulted my doctors at Hopkins, and said the cancer treatment I received there was wrong. He said that hospital's reputation is way overblown. When I defended my oncologist, who was brilliant and nice, he wouldn't listen to me. He said my knee doctor was a hack and did a horrible job on my knee scar, and that he would never want to sleep with me because my scar is so hideous. Really. I love the way guys assume every woman wants to sleep with them.

I was getting pissed off, but could see in Brassy's eyes that he really wanted X and I to get along. So I walked outside and had a cigarette, then did the dinner dishes. Brassy and X were talking about the publishing business for a while. I decided to just ignore X the rest of the night because having a conversation with him was impossible.

We ended up on the back porch where I was lectured about smoking, as X took one of my cigarettes without asking and proceeded to light it. Then he did this weird Clint Eastwood impersonation of him doing surgery. I wasn't sure what to make of that. He looked at my shingles and confirmed the diagnosis, and said I must have an unhealthy diet. I mentioned that I eat mostly salads and fruit, as well as edamame, and he said that I am eating all the wrong things. He said "lay off the tea, coffee, chocolate, and milk products". I was like "I don't consume ANY of those things" but he didn't listen.

Then he offered to check out this swollen lymph node I've had for years. It needs to be biopsied (like I have time). He immediately diagnosed it as probably lymphoma, and said I needed to come to his office this week to have it taken care of. I was like, no, not going to do that. This caused him to fly into a rage about how stupid I am to turn down and offer from such a brilliant doctor as himself. He said I was going to die while I was over in the middle east. I was like great, thanks.

Things deteriorated super fast after that. He said smokers have stinky cooches and that guys never tell you. Neither do doctors. He said when he has patients with smelly cooches he puts on two masks with peppermints in them. I was like if that's true why wouldn't you tell them? You're their fucking doctor.

A discussion ensued about how guys would never tell a girl she smelled bad, with me saying that's the stupidest thing I've ever heard. They both said they would still go down on a girl even if she smelled. Brassy got the spins and X realized it was 3 in the morning and he had to get up for surgery the next day. I can't say I was sad when he left. And, no offense Brassy, you can keep X as your special friend. Because I'd like to kick him in the balls.

cake stealer payback

The cupcakes remind me of another story...

There was this total tool of a woman that worked in my building. One of her "jobs" (she never really worked, but walked around talking to everyone) was to order food for customer meetings. She would always order way too much food, and then take it home with her. It was really pretty retarded.

So I was having a meeting and she ordered this cake that I really like (well, not the cake, but the frosting, coconut, yum!). But the cake never made it into the meeting. I asked her where it was and she said she needed it for another meeting. I was like you lying bitch, you're going to steal my cake.

So after the meeting was over I found the cake in the refrigerator and tried to take a piece of it. The woman, Carmela, came in and took the cake literally right out of my hands and walked away with it. So I waited a half hour and went looking for it again. I found it in her private refrigerator. So I popped open the lid and stuck my finger in EVERY single piece of cake, and then closed it back up so she couldn't see that it had been tampered with. When I saw her carrying it out to her car that night I cracked up laughing.

The other thing I did to her was even more mean. She used to walk into my meetings and take soft drinks that were for our customers. So before my meeting started I took a can of diet coke, which is what she drank, and shook it up. Then I kicked it around on the floor. I put it in an accessible place. Sure enough, 5 minutes into my meeting she came in and grabbed the coke. I didn't see the explosion but I did hear her scream.

Unbelievably, my manager yelled at me for the explosion. I played dumb. And then I said, well the guys who brought the cokes in dropped a few on the floor. But none of my CUSTOMERS who were drinking the cokes had a problem.

Point heard. That stupid woman never came anywhere near my meetings again. Though, we always had the WORST food, and she would "forget" to order drinks.

muffins

HP2.0 and I went to a charity event for denver youth at risk. He introduced me to some of his friends and then had to go talk to someone else. So I was talking to the guys and they had met HP2.0 in a leadership course, and then some of them did Rainier with him.

They were laughing because one day at the leadership course HP2.0 brought in muffins. He forgot the tin and sent an email to everyone looking for it. HP2.0 is one of the few people that is worse than I am when it comes to A type behavior and I guess he was being a little over-reactive about his muffin tin. Yeah, he could have gone out and bought a new one, but he wanted his own tin back.

The class decided to play a joke on HP2.0. They started taking the muffin tin around and taking pictures of it. They apparently even set up an email address for the muffin tin, and the muffin tin kept emailing HP2.0. One of the guys took the tin to Vegas and had a stripper put it between her tits.

The tin was finally returned to poor HP2.0. He laughed about the joke, but I don't think he really thought it was funny. The moral of the story is, of course, muffins suck. I don't even know why anyone would eat them. They have that weird top part that's like a cookie but not good. Then the bottom part kind of looks like a cupcake but tastes like crap, unlike a cupcake. In fact, why make anything that shape that you can't put frosting on. Which is to say, I don't really like cupcakes either, but I do like frosting as long as it's lemon or vanilla - chocolate frosting is disgusting.

In fact, I once had a work meeting and ordered cupcakes. There were 4 left over after the meeting, so I licked all the frosting off them, and called my then boyfriend and asked if he wanted the cupcakes. He ate one but didn't finish the rest after I told him the reason they weren't frosted is because I had already eaten the frosting. But I was like whatever dude. You stick your tongue in my mouth, why should it matter if I licked the cupcake.

I bet he told everyone that story after we broke up.

rashy and brassy

As if I don't have enough to worry about with my impending departure to the middle east and work, I woke up on Thursday morning with a monster rash on my lower back.

At first I thought it was an allergic reaction to something, so I tried to ignore it. By friday it was so painful that I could barely stand to sit for more than an hour. It literally felt like I had a horrible bruise on my back, like the time I wrecked my mountain bike.

Of course, by the time it occurred to me to call a doctor, I couldn't get an appointment. I thought I would give it the weekend and then maybe it would get better. I put cortizone on it like every hour. Saturday and Sunday the pain in my back was so bad I spent most of the weekend working on white papers instead of getting out and doing something fun. I couldn't even ride my bike because it hurt to have anything like clothes touching my back. And to put this in perspective, I walked around with a broken hand and finger for two weeks without taking any pain meds. I ate a caramel apple two days after I had 4 impacted wisdom teeth taken out. So I'm not a pussy.

Jeffy was surmising that maybe I have an alien growing in my back, or that I've been taken over by a mutant fungus that's going to slowly kill me. Turns out, the truth isn't that exciting.

Finally got in to see a doctor today. I have shingles. Fuck fuck fuck. And because I waited so long to go to the doctor's there's nothing they can do (the rash is starting to heal so they can't treat it). He did give me some drugs in case it comes back again. Bottom line, I'm not looking forward to a 20 hour flight with this shit on my back. I can barely stand to sit on my couch...

But, pain relief is on its way. Joe (aka Brassy) just left for the airport to come here to pick up Jakey. He's going to watch him while I'm gone, along with my cacti, including Tammy Faye Cactus and St. David Thornstein. As soon as we get to my house I'm popping open a bottle of wine. I just know I'll feel better. And so will Joe, who is dealing with a neighbor who's underage kid drove a bronco through Joe's garage on Saturday right as Joe was leaving for work.

To give credit where it's due, Joe came up with the phrase "rashy and brassy".

tug boat

Painting number 10 is for my friend and colleague Lou. I was telling him about how I made a painting for the UK guys and offered to make one for him. He asked what they wanted and I explained the whole "robo-chicken fighting a were pig with light sabers and binary stars in the background" thing they had come up with. He was hm, how about a tug boat? Lou, as you can see, is much more reasonable than the Brits.

But, when I got ready to paint I realized I didn't know what a tug boat looked like. I did a search on the internet and found this picture:

It seemed like it might be easy to paint. But, I over estimate my skills, greatly. After trying to do a picture based on this photo, I also downloaded this to help since I couldn't get the details right. Also, I wanted a worse picture than the one I was painting to look at to make myself feel better. Even if that painting was done by a 5 year old.

Anyway, here's how the painting came out. It's okay I guess. Maybe he'll throw it away. Probably he will keep it if only because I named the tug boat after our software.

As you can see, the proportions are totally wrong, I tried to make things 3-d and that didn't work out at all, the ocean looks like it's about to engulf the tug, and then there's the matter of the rivets. After I got done painting it I was looking at the picture and realized the boat had no rivets. I'm pretty sure every boat has rivets. So I started putting them on and I couldn't stop. Everything ended up with a rivet border.

Oh well. Hopefully he has children and people will think they did it. Or maybe he can say he bought the painting at a charity auction of art made by retards. I think I'll call it tug two.

I should also note here that I was IMing with Jamesy and he said that he would have thrown away the painting I gave him if I wasn't the one who had made it. And that I showed the uranus painting to Eva and Dan and they laughed at it. And that I showed my paintings to my sister this weekend and she laughed so hard she choked on her diet coke.

Maybe I should do a stand up routine of my paintings. I guess I'm happy to bring a smile to everyone's face, even at the expense of my art.

dinosaurs

My sister, her husband, and my niece and nephew came to visit me this weekend. My nephew Michael, 5, is obsessed with dinosaurs, so we thought it would be fun to take him to dinosaur ridge.

At first he was excited about the idea, but as we got ready to leave the house, he suddenly said "I think I'll stay home". I thought that was strange so I said "Don't you want to see some dinosaurs?" He was like "No, I don't want to see them anymore".

After further discussion, which caused him to get VERY upset and almost cry, I realized he thought there were going to be REAL dinosaurs at the park and he was afraid one would eat him. Once we told him that there were no live dinosaurs he got excited about going.

We saw some dinosaur bones in rocks, and some dinosaur tracks. You can touch everything at dinosaur ridge, which is really cool. You can distinguish between a dinosaur bone and rocks because the bones feel waxy when you touch them. Then we went into this museum. There we were accosted by this excitable young lad, age 21, who wanted to give us a tour of the museum (we were the only people there).

He started in on his lecture, which was interesting, but Michael kept farting really loudly. My sister and I had to walk away because we were both laughing so hard. Every time my sister starts laughing it makes me laugh even harder. I used to get in trouble for that all the time when I was a kid because my dad didn't like it when we would start laughing. She also used to do things to make me laugh but she wouldn't laugh.

Anyway, at one point the guy started showing us dinosaur parts and then he would show us these toy dinosaurs the part came from. We saw plates from a stegasaurus and spikes from the tail of a triceratop. The guy mentioned that they've found teeth from a t rex but have never found a whole one in Colorado, though they believe t rex lived here. I suggested that another dinosaur may have eaten the t rex in like Utah or something, and then pooped the teeth out in Colorado. He said "but the t rex was the apex predator" and I was like "maybe they ate it after the t rex died". He made a face as though he had a headache, and then said "um, interesting theory".

He asked if we had any questions so I said "I would like to know how dinosaurs painted their toenails". The guy gave me a look and said "they didn't paint their toenails". Then Michael, who was holding a t rex toy model, held it up and said "yes they did! this t rex has red toenails". The guy took the model away from Michael and hid it behind a display.

"Any other questions?" he asked, glaring at me. I raised my hand, causing my niece and nephew to start giggling. I play a game with them all the time where I raise my hand and when one of them calls on me I ask a ridiculous question. The guy sighed and was like "go ahead, what's your question?".

He had just given my niece the horns of a triceratop to hold, and they were really heavy. So I said "how did dinosaurs used to kiss if they had all these horns and stuff on their heads?" I took a apatosaurus model and pretended it was trying to kiss the triceratops. I made the apatosaurus go "Ow, you poked my eye!" The guy took the models away from me and hid them with the t rex. Then he said "I don't think they used to kiss each other like people".

He suggested that we look at some other display, and excused himself. My niece and nephew said it was their favorite museum visit ever.

a short question about penises

I've wondered, for a long time, when guys' penises stop growing. I find it a bit odd that no guy I've talked to can ever answer this question. Joe suggested I ask the question on my blog.

actually, that wasn't what I was going to say...

I never tell a guy I love him first. I always wait until they say it, and then usually wait a while to say it back to them. I would never tell someone I loved them if I didn't.

But, sometimes I find myself in strange situations. Take, for instance, this guy that I dated a while ago. After I got divorced I didn't go on a date for two years. Then I met this guy at the gym and he bugged me until I went out with him. Our first date was kind of strange. When I met up with him for dinner the first thing he said to me is "I'll give you 20 IQ points for free". I was like what the fuck are you talking about? He assumed I guess, because I'm a woman, that I'm stupid. Even though he hadn't even graduated from high school and had a college "degree" from some unaccredited university in Colorado.

But, I was bored, and he seemed like he was really in to me, so I went on another date with him the next night, which was christmas eve. We went to the gym and then back to his apartment, where he made dinner. We were sitting on the sofa and he started talking about how he had been in love with this girl who died climbing. Then he started sort of crying. I wasn't sure what to do so I said that I was going to leave.

He didn't want me to leave, and, as fate would have it, it had just started snowing really hard. He suggested that we retire to his bedroom (the sofa was tres uncomfortable) to watch the snow from the huge window in there. So I sat down on the side of the bed and watched the snow while he excused himself to go to the bathroom. It was cold in his apartment so I put a blanket from the bed over my legs. He came out of the bathroom but I didn't turn around. Then he slid under the covers and pulled me under with him.

That's when I realized, I seriously am NOT making this up, that he was naked. Totally naked. I was like "Dude! What are you doing????" He thought he had made it obvious what "going to watch snow in the bedroom" meant. Apparently I missed the message.

As if things weren't already strange, he started making out with me. I hadn't made out with anyone for two years so I decided to play along for a while. But things weren't right. In fact, they were, shall we say, flaccid. I am not used to kissing a guy and not having his tackle poking me in the stomach. I wondered what the fuck was going on.

After about an hour of making out, I decided to ask him. Earlier in the evening he had made this dramatic declaration that we were going to be together forever and that I should be able to tell him everything and not keep secrets from him. It seemed like an ideal time to test his sincerity about that.

But, first I decided to go to the bathroom and compose myself. I splashed my face and then drank some water, trying to figure out the best way to phrase my question. I had decided that I kind of liked the guy, and I didn't want to screw up my second date in two years.

So I went back into the bedroom and crawled back into bed. The guy had propped himself up on some pillows while I was gone. I tried to put my head on his chest but he grabbed my shoulders so I couldn't hide my face.

He looked at me and he said "You. Are. A. Coward." I tried to look away but he wouldn't let me. Then he said "Since you won't say it, I'll say it first." Thank god, I thought. Now I don't have to ask what's wrong with his penis.

He said "I love you."

I was so shocked that nothing really came to mind to say. He pulled me into his chest and wrapped his arms around me. He said "You don't have to say it back to me now. Because I know some day you'll say it." He kissed the top of my head and I started giggling uncontrollably. I tried to stop but I couldn't. Finally, realizing I was on the verge of laughing hysterically and not being able to stop, I told him I had to go home.

He said he would walk me to my car, and if there was more than an inch of snow on the pavement that I would have to stay. We got outside to discover that the wind had been blowing so hard no snow had accumulated on the pavement. He raised his hands up to the sky and yelled "Fuck you snow!" For some reason, I found that incredibly charming.

It was 3 in the morning by this point, and he insisted I talk to him on the phone the hour drive back to my apartment because he was worried about me. Then he told me he would come by to see me in the morning. We were having christmas dinner with my friends Eva and Dan, a dinner we called "three jews and you". I got to bed at 430 in the morning, and was awakened by him knocking on my door at 8 in the morning. I was like what are you doing here, and he told me he came as soon as it was morning because he missed me.

I'd never dated anyone who seemed so dedicated and who wanted to spend time with me. I got sucked in, especially because he would say things like "30 years from now we're going to do (whatever)". Every guy I had ever dated was incapable of making plans even a week in advance.

But, later everything went to shit. He dumped me by email and then married someone else 4 months after we broke up. I saw him twice after that. The first time he said to me "I'm pretty sure that when I said I loved you I meant it. But only at the time I said it." The second time I ran into him at a deli near my work, and he offered to buy me a salad, but he did it in an insulting way, as if buying my lunch was going to make up for him breaking my heart.

Guys. Fucking stupid.

the broken vase

Last night I had a dream that I was in a tv show. It was supposed to be a comedy. The first part of the show I had signed up to do a bouldering competition at my ex's gym, but it wasn't really his gym because it was outside and it was on this small jut of land that had cliffs on all three sides. But I couldn't climb because every time I touched the holds on the wall they would fracture into a million pieces. Everyone was yelling at me that I was ruining the competition. My ex told me I should have known I couldn't touch plastic since I had frost bite. So he grabbed me and threw me into this copper metal pipe and I was falling through the pipe not sure where I was going to land.

The pipe finally dropped me into a huge metal tub full of water. Drew Barrymore was there, and she told me she was going to be on the show with me. I told her I didn't know how to act and that I didn't watch TV and she said "look, I can blow bubble bath out of my mouth". She started blowing these weird iridescent bubbles out of her mouth. I was like "can we talk about the show please?" but she kept blowing bubbles and just giggling instead of talking.

Then I looked over and saw my friend Joe riding a unicycle on this metal railroad tie that was a fence to keep people from falling off the cliff. He was in a contest to juggle three green tennis balls while riding the unicycle on the narrow railroad tie. Also, they made him wear these glasses that were a swirl of white and black (like the cover of Vertigo) and every time he pedaled the swirls in the glasses would start turning. There were other people in the contest too but all of them fell off the cliff and died immediately. I could hear them scream when they fell off the tie and down the cliff. Joe was the only one who was able to ride the unicycle and juggle. Everyone was clapping and cheering, but I was yelling at him to take the glasses off and stop riding because he had won the contest. Then Joe fell over the cliff.

I was afraid he might have died so I ran over to my ex, who was reading a clipboard. I asked him to help me find my friend Joe but he ignored me. I got mad and started yelling at him. Then he looked up at me and I realized he was my co-author. He smiled at me and I saw that his teeth had grown together and he couldn't talk. I was scared so I ran away and found a producer for the show, and told him I wouldn't be on the show anymore if he kept changing people on me and killing my friends. So the producer told me to go to another set of the show, which was a house not on the cliff, but somewhere else.

In that house there was a couple from Jamaica. They had a vase made of black glass. The bottom of the vase was a black woman's head, and then there were all these pipes coming out of her head that went almost 6 feet up. Between the pipes were tied these off white china ovals, and each of the ovals had a face painted in water colors. They told me the faces were their relatives and the vase was sacred and had special powers.

There was a laugh track for a while because Drew Barrymore and the Jamaican man were joking back and forth, and then the Jamaican man accidentally bumped the vase and broke one of the pipes off. His wife got really mad and said that Drew Barrymore had to be punished for the vase. I said I thought it was unfair because her husband was the one who broke the vase, but she pulled out a huge knife and told me to shut up.

Then Drew said the woman could cut her hair off with the knife as punishment, and she leaned over and put her forehead on the table where the vase was, and pulled her hair forward so that her neck was completely exposed. The wife pulled back the table cloth on the table, and I saw that the table was actually a grave full of dirt. I realized the woman was going to kill Drew. And then I heard the producer whisper "you see, it isn't a comedy at all".

Then I woke up.

freedom to fall

In August of 2005, I had just moved into my house. I had spent 3 days, at the tail in of my last chemo treatment and defense of my thesis, running around trying to unpack and fix things because my dad was coming to visit me. I had gotten maybe 10 hours of sleep in those three days, and then had a party. I rolled into bed at 4 am, and had to get up at 8 am to pick my dad up at the airport.

I woke up before my alarm, and found a guy sitting on the edge of my bed. I was startled and asked who he was. He asked "you're a climber?" and I said yes. He said "I used to be a climber, but I died." Then, he was gone.

The dream was so vivid that I wrote it down, and that's when I started documenting my dreams. Anyway, 2 years later I had taken over as the president of my HOA and was talking to a woman who lives two doors down from me, Carol Hampson. I had only really known her as a neighbor, sharing only idle chit chat with her. I have a lot of climbing pictures up in my house, and she was asking me about them. She told me she was writing a book about her son, Chris Hampson, who died climbing in Yosemite in 2003. The book is called Freedom to Fall. I am sure that the guy sitting on the edge of my bed that morning was her son, and I was able to describe him to her even though I had never seen a picture of him. It created a sort of bond between us.

Today, we had an HOA meeting, and she brought me a copy of the finished book. We were looking through it and she was showing me some pictures taken by Jonny Copp. Jonny climbed with her son, and when Chris died Jonny and Carol had formed a close relationship. As we waited for the last person to show up at the meeting, she told me Jonny had died in China two weeks ago.

This is how small the climbing community is: a friend of mine, Mike Pennings, was good friends with Jonny. Though I didn't know him personally, I was shocked by his death. I wonder how Mike is doing. There is a fund for Jonny set up at adventurefilms.org.

It seemed appropriate this afternoon to start reading Carol's book, although in a way I was dreading it. It's never easy to talk about loss and death. Carol said to me today "You guys have friends die, and you just keep trucking. But there's a process you need to go through to grieve." I thought about friends I had lost not just climbing, or doing other sports, but also at work and in the war, and how I normally just try to forget about them rather than crying and being sad. The third chapter of Carol's book is about dealing with loss, and it's very raw emotionally, from journal entries and letters about her son's death.

I decided I couldn't read that chapter, so I just started randomly opening the book and reading. The first thing I opened to was a story about the first year after Chris' death, on his birthday. Carol had gone to J tree thinking she would climb because she felt she had to do something for his birthday. In the end she didn't climb, but watched two of Chris' friends climb. The passage moved me to tears:

"One twenty-eight. I am waiting for a sign. I yell up to Greg and Sarah, "In ten minutes Chris was born!" They say, "Oh." It is a tense moment on the wall. Sarah, a newcomer to climbing, is frightened. She can't find a hold. Greg is standing on the ledge above, encouraging her. They can't hear each other because of the overhang. I yell their messages back and forth, thinking Chris will help her up. She will step on the ledge at 1:38-that will be the sign!

The wind and cold are fierce. More yelling as Sarah lifts, descends, pulls, gropes, and hugs the immense, unyielding rock. I am mesmerized, waiting for the next words to shout. I'm part of the team. I glance at my watch. One forty-five. Sarah is not going up, not this time.

I meander a long sandy trail, then go back to the car and weep.

...Chris gave up his attachments for a higher truth. He loved all earthly things and being, and still he let go. That was the greatest achievement of his life."

Carol has self published the book. You can buy it, and read more about Carol, at www.morningsongpress.com. Her purpose for the book is not to make money, but to use it as a way to help people deal with loss. I think the book has a very important message, even for people who aren't climbers. She has been on a road trip, and will continue on her trip, to share Chris' story and to talk to people who are going through the same process she went through when she lost her son. I think what Carol is doing is amazing, and want to support her any way I can. I hope you will tell everyone you know about the book so they can check it out.

a robot chicken and were pig fight over uranus

So I finally finished the painting that my friend in the UK requested. He asked for a painting of a robot chicken fighting a were pig with light sabers. I think it may be the worst painting I've ever done. This is the first draft of it.

I started it when I got back from the software conference. But, I ran out of paint. Then I had to stay in DC, then go to Korea, blah blah blah, so I just returned to it this Wednesday.

It was really hard to finish because I had custom made the colors for the sky and grass and then couldn't replicate them. Also, I wanted to put some binary stars and planets in the sky, but it turns out those things are pretty hard to paint.

I was trying to fix the painting and it just kept getting worse and worse. Finally, I added uranus in the corner and said fuck it, it's done.

The good thing is, my friend has kids, so if anyone ever sees the painting he can just say one of them did it.

a greenland shark in the red sea

Last night I had a dream that I was on a yacht in the red sea, and I wanted to get in the water for a swim but all people on the boat told me not to get into the water because there were 3 huge sharks. Everyone went inside for lunch or something so I jumped in the water and started snorkeling. Then a guy came out to see why I hadn't come in for lunch and he started screaming at me "the shark is coming to bite you!"

So I surfaced and saw a huge object coming towards me. I went back underwater and saw it was a greenland shark. It was huge. There were 2 others as well.

I was puzzled because greenland sharks are only found in frigid waters. In fact, it's one of my goals to some day do an ice dive and maybe see one. They are big sharks but not dangerous.

Anyway, I asked the shark what he was doing in the red sea. He kept answering me but I couldn't understand him because his voice was all messed up, like when you really try to talk underwater. He kept swimming close to me and finally I realized he was saying "pet me". So I started to pet him and then the other sharks came over and wanted me to pet them as well. But then I accidentally cut my hand on one of the shark's skin. I told them I'd have to go back to the boat and they were really sad.

So I swam back to the boat and everyone could see I was bleeding. They told me to get away from their boat. I tried to explain that I had just been petting the sharks and had cut myself but everyone was really afraid and wouldn't let me back on the boat. Then I heard this guy yelling in arabic, and I turned around to see the three greenland sharks swimming towards me in an aggressive manner. Then a guy said "you see, that's just a trick they play, so then they can bite you". I tried to tell them they were wrong when I was suddenly pulled under the water by a huge force.

Then I woke up...Shut up Jeffy. How else am I supposed to end my dream blogs? So spare me the text message after you read this making fun of me.

"look at my penis" - my male behavior postulation

During a brief email exchange with a friend of mine, during which my blog about married guys was discussed, my friend, who is male, told me that I'm probably not as hot as I think I am, and that guys get into this state where they will fuck anything, including, to paraphrase, and elephant or a knot hole. That for some reason triggered a memory of a line from my super ex-girlfriend (but not my favorite line from the movie, which is "why did g girl throw a great white shark at us?") where this asshole guy is telling this bartender that the two happiest days of his life were when he graduated from harvard law school, and when he met her.

And that's when I finally realized something, which was maybe what that book he's just not that into you was about, but I missed the point. Guys talk shit. All the time. Especially about sex. I think it might even be fair to say that 99% of what comes out of a guy's mouth is bullshit. Which explains why guys always say they love you but then fuck someone else or turn out to be married.

And, I would guess, this behavior is caused by guys not being able to process their feelings. If you intimidate a guy, he says he loves you in the hopes of bringing out your softer side. If a guy doesn't like you, he'll say he loves you so he can brag to all of his friends about how much he doesn't like you and how much you like him. If a guy wants to fuck you, he'll say he loves you because he thinks that will get you into bed, or he is not sophisticated enough to realize there is a difference between lust and love. If a guy does something horrible to you, he'll say he loves you because he thinks that will make you feel less hurt.

This goes for everything guys say, not just the I love you bullshit. So, from now on, when a guy says something to me, I'm going to attempt to translate it into what he is actually trying to say. I think that will make things less confusing for everyone. Body language may be a good indicator.

One thing I've noticed is that guys will try to bring your attention to their penis if they are trying to make a connection with you, sexual or otherwise. They do this by sitting with their legs open, resting their hands on their thigh (likely thinking the whole time "watch my hand move over here, and now look! it's resting near my penis! okay, just look over a little more...maybe I should move my fingers...yes! you're looking at my penis!"), putting their hands near their pockets when standing, etc.

But, just because a guy is doing that doesn't mean he is being sincere, so maybe body language won't work. I think I'll start observing facial tics and involuntary eye spasms.

And, on a side note, maybe I should start a new business venture where guys can log on to a web site and show their penis. I'll hire women from China to look at the penises. Maybe I'll give them some phrases that they can send back to the guys about their penises.

stop that hole!

As if things aren't hectic enough with my impending departure to the middle east, travel, work, and requests for paintings, I got home from Korea to discover a hole in my back yard.

At first the hole appeared to be just a foot or so out into my yard. I was hoping it was caused by the rain we've been having, but after my dad decided to dig into the hole, we discovered a much worse problem. It turns out there is an old sewer pipe in my yard that cracked. I had to dig almost 5 feet down to find it. And it was cracked in two places.

I was thinking back to two summers ago when the same thing happened to my next door neighbor. So when I saw him outside I called over to him and asked what he had done to fix his hole. He looked into my yard, where I had, by that time, a huge gaping hole that I had to dig to find the cracked pipe, and he said to me "are you going to bury a body there?" ha ha ha ha

Anyway, he paid someone a million billion dollars to fix his hole. But after conferring with my dad, Jeffy, and my UK genius Pascal, I decided I would fix the hole myself. The experts all recommended tar paper, concrete, and some gravel.

So I went to home depot. I couldn't buy tar paper because it came in these huge rolls larger than the back seat of my car. I asked the guy if he could just cut off a little piece for me and he said "There's no such thing as a little piece of tar paper". Then I got the concrete which was heavier than fuck. It was so heavy I could barely steer my cart. My grocery store mishap kept playing through my mind as the front wheel of my cart spasmed out every time I got near a display.

Anyway, I used the old tar paper I found in the hole, dumped the bag of concrete into the hole, added water and started stirring. The directions on the bag weren't too clear because the amount of water used was in proportion to how elastic the concrete was supposed to be. I had no idea how elastic it should be, so I just guessed how much water was enough. Then I put gravel on the concrete and went back into my house to check my email...

Only to find an email from Pascie recommending I "check with the authorities" before blocking up a sewer pipe. Oops. But I'm pretty sure it's not a pipe used for anything because I had to have an inspection done before my garage was built, and there were no water or sewer lines going from my house into my back yard. Oh well, I'll be out of the country if everything goes to, hee, shit.

When my neighbor got home last night I showed him what I had done and he said it looked fine. He also introduced me to his new puppy, and said that someone from the government came by his house asking about me. Nice. No wonder why I can't get a date in denver...

the general's banquet

Well, the first two meetings I had on Thursday were a waste of time. Me sitting there doing nothing while everyone talked in Korean. People talking trash about the tool. The sales guy didn't even know what an audit ID was so he asked me in the middle of the discussion. I was getting totally aggro at everyone for talking shit about my software in front of me (I love the software I support). I wanted to bitch slap one of the customers into next year because he said the tool wasn't working and the problem was not the tool, it was him.

Then we went to talk to a gov agency in Korea. I walked in exhausted, because it was 5 in the evening and really hot (no air conditioning in most of the offices). I figured I'd be sitting around waiting for the translator to ask me a question in English as I had the previous calls. Instead, I walked into a packed room and there was a presentation I had never seen before. The colonel running the meeting was like "you can begin doing the presentation". I was like shit shit shit! But what's a girl to do?

So I cranked through the slides, fearing for my life every time I hit the "next" button because I had no idea what was on the next slide. I was sweating bullets. The presentation lasted 2 hours.

At the end the colonel I presented to said that the general was so pleased with my presentation that he wanted to take me out to dinner. All I wanted to do was go back to my hotel, take my shoes off, and collapse. But instead they took me to a traditional korean restaurant. All the sales guys were psyched we got asked out to dinner. Then I told the general I couldn't eat pork, so we got beef. Later the sales guys were like "Nice job! Beef is 5 times as expensive!"

We were in this room with sliding doors, a low table, and mats on the floor that we were supposed to sit on. The general made me sit in the center of the table as the guest of honor. He sat across from me and stared at my legs while I tried to find a way to sit in my skirt and not pull a Sharon Stone. One of the korean sales guys gave me his jacket to cover up. The general and I had a conversation, but I have no idea what he said because his english wasn't that great, even before he started drinking. Alcohol was flowing like the rain we had had all day.

I started to worry the general was trying to get me drunk, so I used a ruse that I learned about reading a book on Korean etiquette. You're never supposed to fill up a glass of alcohol until it's empty. The general caught on to this and started filling my glass, saying "we do this american style". So I started shifting my glass around with everyone else's. The sales guys were more than happy to drink my drinks since the general wasn't putting out for them, and it saved me from getting drunk.

As a side note, one of the sales guys told me Korea consumes the second largest amount of alcohol in the world. Russia is first. I totally believe it. I couldn't understand how everyone drank so much and was still standing.

I was sitting on my bad knee in a tremendous amount of pain. The food was great, marinated beef (cut with scissors because the koreans think having knives at dinner is rude, perhaps they worry about sharp instruments and drinking), this corn thing, tofu with hot peppers, some vegetable that was a really cool acid green color, 8 kinds of kim chee, and what was described to me in english as "vinegar soup". It's impossible to describe the taste, which was kind of like vinegar, but it's the coolest soup I've ever had.

The only real bad thing I did at the dinner was say something inappropriate to the general. He was telling me how he had been stationed at Lowry AFB and how he missed the winters in Colorado. I started to get excited about snow (it was so fucking hot in the room) and I said "DUDE! You should have SEEN the snow we got two years ago!"

The room went dead silent. The officers attending the dinner all paused, mid eating, and stared at the general. I was suddenly like oh my fucking god, did I just call the general dude???? Shit shit shit.

But, he laughed and told his troops that "dude" is an english term of affection, and that I called him that because he was so americanized I forgot he was korean. Uh. Nice excuse. The rest of the night everyone called each other dude because the general was doing it. One of the sales guys said that is my mark on korea and the government will never forget me because I did that at dinner.

Then the dinner was finally over. As I was standing outside the room putting on my heels (even in bare feet I was the tallest person there) and the general grabbed my arm to "help make steady of you". Then we went outside and I tried to shake the general's hand and thank him for dinner. He said "No shake, american style (the phrase that preceded all the inappropriate things that happened to me in korea)" and then he suctioned himself on to me like a little bear. I looked at the sales guys, unsure what to do since I couldn't move my arms. They finally peeled him off me and his troops escorted him back to the base.

We got back to the hotel and the sales guys insisted we get a drink. Because I was with them they could drink and eat for free. They were really psyched that the presentation went well (they were probably worried after the previous day's little shit show). More drinking. I had one beer and then tried to stay awake waiting for everyone else to finish their evening because it's considered rude to leave people when you are out with them.

But, I finally deserted everyone for the hotel because I was tired as hell. I got lost getting back to the hotel from the bar. Seoul is such a difficult city to get around in everyone has 3D GPS. There are all these side alleys and unmarked streets and it's easy to lose your way.

The final result of my trip is that the general wants me to come back and train his staff. My liver would never survive. Plus, I'm bad at the fake smiles when people talk to me and I have no idea what they are saying. Or so the sales guys tell me.

And, a quick word about them. They were the absolute sweetest, most thoughtful people I have ever worked with. They called me "the iron woman" because my computer bag was so heavy. They insisted on carrying it for me and had to switch off turns with it. They were always worried to get me the best food in any restaurant we went to. They ordered a huge thing of fruit at every bar we went to so I could eat dragon fruit (one of my favorite, except when it's dried out). They even called me on the bus back to the airport to make sure I got on the right bus.

They told me I should move to seoul and marry a guy there because they treat their women like they are queens. There's none of the chauvinism you find in some countries. So far seoul is my favorite country I've been to in Asia.

Unless you consider Turkey Asia. Which I don't.

almost death by power point

So the main reason I came to Seoul was to do a seminar today on a military framework I support. I put together some slides, which were revised all Sunday night, which is why I didn't get any sleep. I thought I was presenting to 50 people.

I show up at the seminar and find out there's 200 people. I only had half the time I thought to do my presentation because it was being interpreted. My computer mouse died right as I was revising my presentation, 10 minutes before I had to give it. The interpreter was freaking out that she didn't have a paper copy to translate from because I couldn't get the copy off my computer without a mouse.

Anyway, those issues were overcome, but then right before my presentation they showed this cartoon about a knight slaying a dragon. I was standing at the podium like what the fuck is going on? At the end of the cartoon the woman running the seminar looked at me and was like "Go!" because the time schedule was so tight.

I fully admit to bungling my way through the presentation. Because of the computer problems and slide changes I didn't get to practice doing the presentation with the interpreter, and it was really hard. She was translating me almost sentence for sentence, and would sometimes interrupt me before I was finished talking to interpret and I would lose my train of thought. Not that I blame her and she did a very good job, it was my lack of experience presenting with an interpreter that was the problem. They did laugh at the one joke I made, and, when I realized the audience was totally confused by my presentation, I ended it and opened the floor to discussion.

It turns out, the audience's confusion was caused because they thought I was presenting on some other topic. Seems my compadres at the company I work for switched my topic without telling me.

The interpreter had warned me beforehand that no one would ask questions so not to even ask if anyone had a question. But, with time left over and the audience looking at me in a confused manner, I figured, why not? The first question was "why didn't you present on X topic and why did you present on Y topic". Yeah. Don't know the answer to that one...

Surprisingly, I got a lot of good questions, and that was really the best part of the presentation. I got the interest of a colonel whom I'm meeting with tomorrow. And I think it was more entertaining for the audience than the other presentations which didn't have questions.

Everyone else on my team seemed happy with the way things went. So I'm trying to not feel too badly about it. And at least I learned what to do in the future.

The highlight of the seminar was getting to try 5 different kinds of kim chee at lunch.

bulk head breakers and other seoul adventures

Well, this has been one of my more...interesting...trips.

To start off, I got to LA and was trying to take a bus to the international terminal. The problem is, I got on the wrong bus, and only realized when we started heading into downtown LA. I had mis-read the sign on the front of the bus. Blame it on being really tired. Anyway, the bus driver let me off about 15 minutes away from the airport and called one of his other bus buddies to pick me up. Then another bus passenger, who is a security guard at LAX gave me a free bus pass.

So I got on the other bus and the guy completely skipped his route to take me back to the airport. The catch is he was an adventist and kept trying to convert me. I listened politely since he did me a favor.

Then I got on the plane and luckily business wasn't that crowded. And I had a seat that reclined all the way back. That was great fun to play with until I broke it. I accidentally closed one of my shoes up in the chair and it took two stewardesses to pull it out. The guy sitting across the aisle from me was doing god knows what and ripped his plastic magazine holder off the wall. They couldn't fix that.

The kosher dinner that Korean Airlines had was crap. And it was the same dinner twice. The stewardesses brought me a bunch of fruit and cheese to eat. I was surprised as the kosher food is usually better than the regular stuff. I don't think I'm going to order it on the trip home.

Then I got into Seoul and had to take another bus to my hotel. The problem is, there are two intercontinental hotels. I went to the wrong one. They directed me to the right one but it took a while for me to find it. I ended up going to another wrong hotel, and a convention center with the same name as my hotel before I got here.

But, I'm here. The air conditioning is working. They have US plugs. And I don't have to leave for the office until 9 am. I might try to find the gym, or I may just go to the bar...

almost death by chocolate

I took time off today from running around like a maniac getting ready for my last minute trip to Seoul to go to the grocery. My parents are coming into town on Thursday (I won't be there, I'll be in Korea) and I had to get some food as the only thing in my house, pre-trip, that was edible was 6 bags of edamame, a box of cereal, and some month old feta cheese.

I was in one of the middle aisles looking for snacks to take on the plane with me. I normally only shop on the periphery of the grocery store, but this trip I had to go down some aisles to get the stuff my parents want. Anyway, I was leaning over to look at the biggest bag of Haribo gummi bears I've ever seen, when the bill of my cap hit what turned out to be a precariously balanced shelf of M&Ms. One of the bags slipped off, and like lemmings, the others followed. One bag hit me in the face and another hit my shoulder. I threw up my hand to try to stop the slide and accidentally hit a bag on the shelf above, and that shelf avalanched too.

I tried to get out of the way but one of the bags had broken open so I slipped on the pile of M&Ms that had come out of the bag. That caused me to step on another bag that also burst open. I tried to get away from that bag and tripped over a bag of peanut M&Ms. It broke open too. Every time I moved it seemed another bag would wedge itself between my foot and my flip flops.

The guy who had been stocking shelves at the end of the aisle came running over. I was going to try to run away but I was buried in M&Ms. He said something to me in spanish that I'm quite sure I'm glad I couldn't translate.

We put as many bags back on the shelf as we could (note: never buy M&Ms at the Safeway in five points) and then he wandered off muttering epithets at me. Hopefully he was going to get a broom. I almost fell again as I tried to push my cart out of the M&M mess. The whole time I was walking through the grocery M&Ms kept falling out of my cart and onto the floor. It was mortifying.

And then I got yelled at for going into the express lane. I tried to point out to the woman that there was no sign indicating it was the express lane, but she yelled at me "THE SIGN IS RIGHT THERE!", pointing to a sign that was one check out lane over.

And anyway, I only had 12 items. And the express lane is 15 items or less.

I will never, ever go grocery shopping again.