and it's only june

This was taken in the Texas Kid's car when he dropped me off at the intercon. That's celsius. For those of you (like me) who are metrically challenged, that's 133.7 degrees F. And this was taken at 5 pm this evening, when it's "cooling off".

I'm not exaggerating. It's hot here.

wonder if the taliban will try to recruit me

I just got back from shooting at the officer's club.

I almost didn't make it there. I got into a taxi at the intercon, and the driver drove aimlessly for 10 minutes before saying "I don't know where is this officer's club. You have a map?" I was like "you're the driver, don't YOU have a map?" He pulled out a cartoon map they hand out in the tourist club area. The officer's club is not in Abu Dhabi so it obviously wasn't on the map.

"You get out of my cab now" he said. I was like "WHAT?" It was unbelievably hot outside, and I needed to get to the officer's club in 20 minutes or I would be late. He said "my friend, he will come pick you".

So I sat on the side of the road fuming for 5 minutes and then the friend showed up. He took me to the officer's club hotel and said the shooting range was there. It wasn't. I started the kilometer slog in the hot sun to the range and then luckily ran into one of my co-workers, who gave me a lift.

The COO of the company I'm consulting for was there. He sat next to me in this theater style area (imagine a movie theater with only 30 seats, 10 in each tier) and we chatted for a half hour while we waited for our range time (the theater area is about 5 feet away from bullet proof glass that looks onto the range so you can watch people shoot). He's a super nice Jordanian guy who studied in the US, and he's always coming out with these crazy expressions. Today he said "holy toledo!" when he looked at my target, because I got a bull's eye (I admit that I had a lot of bad shots too). It always makes me laugh when he says stuff like that, and I think he does it on purpose. 


The COO had never shot before so he decided we would go together. There are 6 lanes at the range, but two were taken up by the sheik's kids, so only two of us were allowed to go in at a time (even though we had the range reserved, the sheik takes priority), with two empty stalls between us and the kids. A guy stood right behind me at all times to make sure I couldn't face any direction except forward with my gun. Then, when I was done shooting, he told me to put my hands up and back away from the gun before he reloaded my clip.


Then they left and some seriously terrorist looking guys came in. I don't know what the guy next to me was doing, but his casings kept flying over the divider into my stall. For those of you who have never shot before, the casing is HOT. My work colleagues were watching this and laughing as I would flinch every time a casing hit me on the head or shoulder. Then two of the guys that work for me that came decided it would be fun to sing "it's raining bullets" to the tune of "it's raining men", with the Texas Kid doing this little dance of me jumping around when a casing hit me. Ha ha ha.

The guy who manages the range is Paki, retired army, and not only did he find pink ear protectors for me, but he also let me load my own gun after I finished my first two clips and he let me shoot a fourth clip for free. As they say, you get what you pay for.

He thought he could instruct me to be a better shot. He stood behind me, holding the gun, and putting his finger over my finger to show me how to squeeze the trigger "more slow" as he kept saying. The problem was he was 3 inches shorter than me and I have gorilla arms. So I had to kind of fold up my arms so he could reach the trigger. Out of 15 bullets only 4 hit the target at all, and only two were in the black. Everyone from my project was watching behind me in the theater and laughing. When I was finished I held my target up to the bullet proof glass so everyone could see how bad it was.


I would like to take this opportunity to mention that the Texas Kid is a damn good shot. He wanted a casing so I took off my sandals and picked one up with my toes. After I gave it to him I said "I picked that up with my foot" and he said "you are so disgusting". Then he went to the bathroom and washed his hands and the casing.


While driving home Texas Kid was still laughing about the Paki giving me a "shooting lesson". I was like dude, you're people are retarded and he said that the guy just really wanted to touch my hands because it's a big deal for a man to touch a woman's hands.

Which may or may not be true. It's the middle east, so it's hard to tell what's real and what isn't.

some pictures

The view straight out my window. This traffic circle is where I get killed almost every day while I'm walking to get groceries or my laundry. It's not too busy now. Imagine three rows of cars going around that circle, with everyone headed in a different direction and cutting off cars to take their exit.

Scary. The pic is looking out towards the meridien, about 6 miles away. Notice the haze in the air - that's sand blowing around in the air.

Everything is under construction in this country, even the exit ramp out of the Intercon. It makes life interesting.

This is the "sand bridge", built to the sand bar you see in front of the beach. Why did they build this sand bridge and fake sand island? So they could build stuff on it. What, I don't know. It's spoiled the beach and the view. Normally the sand island has tents set up on it for the construction workers doing what ever it is they are doing with the fake island.

This is the view of the beach. Those little umbrellas are the ones made out of palm fronds. You'll notice, hopefully, the wall that blocks this little water area off from the real ocean. The water in this blocked off area is about 20 feet at its deepest.

And that's how the water gets so hot. The sand from the fake sand island blow into our little water area too, which is annoying.

gun club

Apropos of nothing I could think of, one of the guys I work for today, in the middle of a meeting, asked me "Have you ever shot anyone?"

"Not that I know of" I responded jauntily. Too bad I didn't read my horoscope today before I answered. It was "unless you're with like-minded people, your dry wit will be misinterpreted". Seriously!

There was dead silence around the table, so I clarified that I was just joking.

For some reason everyone is getting nervous about going shooting with me on Friday. The guy who arranged the trip (the same one who asked if I had ever shot someone) has arranged for everyone to have private instructors. The club where we're going has seats above the range so people can watch while you're shooting. I've been forbidden to watch anyone until they fire "practice rounds". I was also told that the targets would not be moved past a certain distance (the distance is so close a blind person could hit it).

Funny that these guys thought they were going to intimidate me by taking me to a gun club, and they're all officers or retired officers, and now they are the ones intimidated. It's like when I invited them to go jet skiing (which we were supposed to do tomorrow). They were all enthusiastic but eventually every one of them came up with an excuse of why they couldn't go. I asked one of the Lebanese guys I work with if they were mad at me and he was like "dude, none of them know how to swim". Oh. Duh. But, wait a minute. They live on an ISLAND. I also pointed out we have to wear those floaty vests. He said "that's fine, until a shark eats you".

If there are any sharks in the water, they must be half cooked by now. It was 129 degrees today. The water temperature logged in at 118 degrees. Last night I walked a mile and a half to get my laundry, at 10 pm. It felt like someone was following behind me with a hair dryer, blasting me with hot air, assuming also that the hair dryer was full of sand (we're still in sand storm season). When I got home I had sand in my ears. Gross.

colloquial

I've been teaching my customer some colloquial expressions. Here's a story to illustrate. No, this really didn't happen to me today. Really. I mean, why wouldn't this story be made up because it couldn't happen on a real project...

The first expression is "thrown under the bus". For example, if my customer is having difficulties with someone else in his organization who is blocking our project, and tells me on Thursday he's going to have the guy fired, and I think he in the end agrees with me to just let things work their course, and then he calls the CEO on Friday and says "this guy should be fired and Franki agreed with me", I've been thrown under the bus.

The second expression is "blow back". The CEO calls a meeting with my customer and the offending party and says one will be fired. The offending party comes to me and says "why did you say we have trouble working together?" I try to explain that I never said that, with my customer present to verify. For the record, the offending party is VERY hard to work with, going so far as to suggest my company is at fault for a quirk of the XML standard and that I should find a way to fix it. Right. After the offending party leaves I look at my customer who is saying "oh, sorry, I didn't realize what I said would effect you". I ask why he would make something up at my expense and he said that my opinion has weight with the CEO. I point out to him that he didn't consider blow back.

The third expression is "molly coddle". So I have to spend the rest of my day with the offending party to assure him that I think he's just great. And people wonder why I have an ulcer. I'll be spending the rest of my evening doing my real work that I couldn't get done because of this unscheduled babysitting gig. When my customer asks why I was spending so much time with the offending party I pointed out that, because my customer is a knucklehead, I now have to molly coddle the offending party.

The fourth expression is "a rose between two thorns". The CEO called me into his office this afternoon and apologized for getting me caught in the middle of the political war between the offending party and my customer. I explained to him that I was a rose between two thorns (though, I am originally the rose between two different thorns, if you remember Mr. Krol). He then said "and I am the shield for the rose". Uh huh. He also said the offending party might indeed be fired but he's not sure. Meaning, I have to keep up the molly coddling even though at the end of the day it will all be for naught.

The fifth expression, which I haven't taught my customer yet, is cluster fuck.

Ech. This is why I have an ulcer.

Now, I'm off to work on my ITIL study guide. I am probably going to sit for the exam on Thursday because, yeah, I have nothing better to do.

deliver me from humidity

June is now in full swing. It's got to be the most disgusting weather on the planet. And, my air conditioning isn't working.

It's about 80 degrees in my room. All of the windows of the hotel are covered in fog because it's so hot outside. The place looks like a haunted house.

I woke up this morning around 630 and couldn't sleep because of the heat. I poked my head out into the corridor around 730 to get my newspaper. Dasan was standing outside my door. "I clean your room?" he asked hopefully. "Dude, I'm not going to the beach until 10," I responded. It's my first morning to relax in weeks. Dasan fiddled with his cart. I almost felt bad for not leaving.

He's recently presented me with a new card, almost twice the size of the one he initially gave me. I hope the new card is in response to all the letters I've written about what a good job he does. He turns the right side of my bed down. He always leaves me two chocolates instead of one. And he understands my organizational system and never rearranges any of my belongings into an unacceptable configuration.

At 10 am I head down to the beach, even though it's ridiculously hot and humid. Sitting in the shade, trying to read the newspaper, is almost unbearable. The paper melts into the sand like a piece of cheese. No breeze any more to stir the pages. The paper gets so soggy the pages stick together and the ink gets all over everything. I give up and throw it away. I pull out my ITIL books and start highlighting them so I can create a study document. My highlighter is liquefied and leaks all over everything.

I decide to go for a swim. Clumps of sand and salt float on top of the water like kitty litter. It's disgusting, like a huge ship carrying styrofoam has exploded off the beach. The water is around 95 degrees. Two lebanese girls get into a screaming match with a local. They say "Just because you're from here you think you have the right to talk to me?" He responds "Call the police, they will arrest you for being drunk" (the girls are standing in waist deep water with some kind of tropical drinks).

I check out my damsels. There are even more of them today. I see 7, including one big one I've never seen before. I also discover on the wall that separates my beach from the boat inlet, 2 crabs. They climb up the wall, and when the sun hits them they scurry back down the wall into the water.

I go back to the shade and try to read, but it's too hot. To put things in perspective, I've twice hiked across the grand canyon in 128 degree heat with my dad, carrying about 40 lbs of water. This is worse, and I'm doing nothing but sitting in the shade.

I go back to my room and find 3 filipino boys cleaning it. None are over 5'4" or 90 lbs. I slice up a pink lady and offer it to them, as well as some cold water from my refrigerator. My room feels hotter than 80 degrees even though that's what the thermostat says. Two of them sit on my bed and talk. It sounds like they are saying "la de la la la la, la LA LA de la la". I sit at my computer and try to work on my ITIL guide.

One kid gets about 5 towels and tries to bring them in my room. I'm like "Stop! I only need one towel!" He puts the towels on my bed, goes back to his cart, and bring two more in. Great. Eight towels. I could have a beach party.

Dasan shows up and yells at the guys sitting on my bed. I think. He says "la la LALALA de la la!" One leaves and the other gets the vacuum. He vacuums the inside of my closet, and then my running shoes. He vacuums so close to me (I'm sitting at my desk, working on my laptop) that I'm half tempted to pretend I'm being sucked into the vacuum. Dasan picks up my ITIL books I brought to the beach and holds them while the kid vacuums the sand off of them.

I finish my study guide and call my parents in the lobby, since my phone doesn't work well in my room. I go outside and immediately feel like someone has wrapped me in a wet towel and put me in the microwave. You can see when someone has been outside. They look like they've been through a rain storm because hair, clothes, and skin are all oozing and clammy, like we're all in some kind of horror movie in the first stages of fever that will eventually lead to us all becoming flesh eating zombies.

At 7 PM I go downstairs and attempt to walk to a sandwich shop. It's too hot. I feel like I'm going to pass out. So instead I order room service.

I like to make my tray into a small piece of artwork before I put it outside my door with a theme reflecting my feelings about the dinner I've just eaten. Tonight's theme was "your pita bread sucks". Usually, I like pita bread. But here, seriously, it tastes like pita bread that's been frozen in the refrigerator for 6 months and then reheated for too long in a microwave.

I hid everything except the bread basket in the bottom of the tray. Then I made some flower petals out of the pita bread, and put the packets of butter at the center. They really did look like flowers. Then I turned the bread basket upside down and used the little mustard and mayonnaise jars as eyes on top of the basket. I took a pepper strand left over from my salad and used that as a frowny mouth on the basket. I fashioned my napkin into an arrow of sorts, pointing at the pita flowers.

I don't know if they'll get it. They'll probably think I've lost my mind due to the heat and humidity.

They may be right.

wasta

Yesterday I didn't have ITIL training, but I had a project managers' meeting with my customer. The meeting consisted of sitting around the brau haus, a german restaurant in the Beach Rotana, and having a drink and getting to know the other PMs. My customer asked me to do the meeting because he's hoping other projects will start to follow the same plan and schedule I've set up for my project.

One thing people like to do here is show you how important they are. There's a term "wasta" (pronouced "wha-sta) that means you know someone so important you could run naked through the streets screaming and not get arrested. So, for example, I mentioned to a canadian that I had briefed the general he works for. The canadian immediately called the general up and had a weird conversation with him that involved a bunch of veiled references to them apparently getting up to no good a few weekends ago when their wives were both out of town. After the canadian called his general, all the other PMs had to call their generals. I just sat there smoking cigarettes because I hadn't even brought a phone.

Because he's very competitive, my customer not only called his general, but invited him for belly dancing. It turns out I've never met his general, but his general had heard about me from work I'd done out here previously. My heart sank when my customer told me that. I knew what was coming.

I was invited to the belly dancing dinner night. Ech. The last thing I want to do in my "free" time. On top of my regular job I'm writing a white paper, preparing a web cast, and alpha testing some software. I literally do not leave my computer except to go to the gym or to get food. My disinterest must have been very apparent, even though it was bad for me to not immediately agree to go since I had already told my customer I wouldn't drink a glass of cherry schnapps with him.

"But exciting things will happen at the dinner!" my customer says. Yeah, I bet, I was thinking to myself. Then he told me a story about how he had taken a bunch of VIPs out one night for belly dancing. They weren't drinking, but the sheesha was consumed with abandon. The belly dancers aren't exactly small people, but some of the VIPs were. One of the dancers got a little too close to the head VIP, who was apparently nodding off from too much sheesha. The dancer bumped him with her hip and knocked him clean out of his chair. The story recounted here is not that funny but was very funny when it was told last night.

Anyway, I'll see how shooting with the officers goes next week, and then decide if I even want to think about a belly dancing dinner. Tourists go so it's not like it's an abnormal thing to do.

I'd just rather stay home and do something else.

idle training

The reason I haven't written anything this week is I've been taking a 2 hour class every day after work. It's so I can get ITIL certified. The class costs about $1200 in the US, but my customer is letting me take it with them for free.

Well, you get what you pay for. Here's how the evening typically goes. The class is supposed to start at 5:15, meaning I should be in a taxi, on my way home, by 7:15.

But the conference room where the training is, which can barely fit all of us students, is never open at 5:15. So we wait. I normally put my laptop on the copier outside the conference room and try to weed through my emails. Even though I don't have internet connection at the training site I can at least get the mails ready to send when I get back to my hotel.

By 5:45 the room is usually free. Then hurdle #2. Out here time is more of a suggestion than a reality. Half the students still will not be there even though training is now starting 30 minutes later than planned. We wait another 15 minutes for them to show up.

By 6 the class starts. But then Ahmed, the tea boy, sometimes forgets to order our dinner. The class is stopped while he is tracked down and told to get us food. The students then protest they can't look at one more training slide until they are fed.

By 7:30 I've already completed my exam. I've started passing the answers sneakily around the class to speed up the exam review. One student in particular will take 5 minutes to guess the answer to his question. He always seems to pick the wrong answer, and there are 5 choices, so we have to sit through him selecting 4 wrong answers before selecting the right one. On Wednesday I suggested to him that he pick what he thinks is the wrong answer and maybe he'll get a test question right. He smiled, but I wasn't joking.

By 8:00, if I'm lucky, class breaks up. Then I stand outside on Khalige Al Arabi street and hope an empty taxi comes by. I normally wait about 15 minutes, sometimes more. I let a student give me a ride back to my hotel the first night of class, but he ended up purposely driving the long way so we could "chat". I was stressing out because I had a conference call and now have decided that rides from students take longer than waiting for a taxi.

Every night this week I had a conference call. Around 9:15 or 10, depending on how long my call goes, I start to think about dinner, decide I'm too tired, and then I go to bed. I haven't even had a chance to work out a single night this week.

Training ends next Wednesday and I take my exam. After all of this, I better get that stupid certification.

cyclone

Cyclone Phet is hitting Oman now, and is said to be headed towards the UAE coast near Fujairah.

Today was overcast and there is a strong wind blowing noisily outside my hotel window. It sounds like a really bad wind storm in Denver. I went to the beach for a swim, and it was obvious something was going on.

The water here is green, and is so salty it doesn't have the usual weight of ocean water. I think it would be hard to drown in it as everything is very bouyant, though drowning is the second leading cause of death of children in the UAE, car accidents being the first. There's no current or waves to speak of, especially off the intercon beach since the water is closed in by a wall.

But today the water was different. There was poor visibility and the sand from the bottom was stirred up so badly I couldn't see more than a few inches into the water. It was as if there were a fire on the bottom of the ocean and the smoke was obscuring everything. There was also a strong current pulling everything out towards the wall dividing the swimming area from the rest of the ocean. The currents were on scale with currents I've experienced swimming off the coast of North Carolina.

I just went for a walk to get a sandwich for dinner and the air is so humid it was as if I was walking in the rain. Sand was blowing everywhere. I'm wondering if we'll have the same kind of flooding that we had in November when I had to walk home from the office in water up to my knees, and subsequently almost lost my flip flops.

Whatever happens tomorrow should be interesting. I have some snacks in my hotel room in case things get bad. I just hope the weather isn't bad on Sunday. Driving in the rain here is like driving in a blinding snow storm anywhere else in the world. And I'm going to be upset if the power is out in the gym tomorrow.

It's the first cyclone to hit the UAE in almost 50 years. Once again, bringing natural disasters where ever I go...

culture shock

I was in a meeting a week ago with a few guys and some emirati women. The building where I work has normal-ish office cubes, and then a room at the far end of the building with a door that says, simply, "women" on it. This is where the local women are housed as they aren't allowed to be out and about with all the riff raff men (having been exposed to the men myself I think in a way this isn't a bad set up, but, all joking aside, it's kind of strange).

We were talking about the incident management processes for the company. This manager guy pontificated about how it was done. I think I'm a good consultant not because of any marketing skill, but because I'm pretty good at logic. I listened to the guy, and, having some experience with incident management, suggested that the steps he had outlined to me were illogical.

There was dead silence in the room. But, I could feel some kind of response from the local women even though I couldn't judge their reaction because they are covered up. The guy started to argue with me. I argued back. It was weird. I almost felt like somehow the local women were spurring me on. I finally got the guy to admit that he perhaps didn't understand the details of the process and that I should let the local women (who do the job) tell me how it's done.

It's like I've created a monster. The women came to a meeting on Sunday, but this time they didn't cover their faces. They argued outright with their boss. At the end I think we accomplished a lot and created some processes that actually reflect the way work is done. The boss took everything in stride and seemed, if anything, bemused that I'd turned his silent workers into outspoken critics.

After the meeting we all sat around and I guess "socialized" which is an important thing here. The boss mentioned his kid's birthday party and invited everyone. Money is important here so he made sure I knew I was being invited to a party in a private compound where one of the sheiks lives. Yawn. I do not attend children's birthday parties. Then he mentioned the drunk guys hanging around during the weekend and how he doesn't let his kids go out.

I said "stop the presses - drunk guys?!?!" (and then had to explain what that expression meant). It turns out the guards at his compound let people in if they belong to certain families even if they are not technically allowed in the compound. Some of them get drunk but no cop with arrest them for fear of being deported (many of the police force are from other countries).

I was like "that is insane! you would never be allowed to do that stuff in the US (e.g. driving drunk in a private compound, making noise until all hours of the morning because you're drunk and having a party.). The local women looked at me in shock. Then one of them said "but it's okay to be drunk in the US".

I was like not really and then explained to her how bars can get sued for serving someone to drunk, how paddy wagons wait outside certain bars to arrest drunk people, and how bad the laws are for drunk driving (okay, you don't get potentially sentenced to death like here, but still). The women were shocked. It's like they thought the US was one big block party with drunk people running around every where or driving around with a fifth of tequila sticking out the sun roof.

I also told them the drinking age was 21 which surprised them because it's lower in the UK (18). They were visibly shocked about this, and then when I told them some states don't sell alcohol on Sunday, and that in some states you have to go to a special store (like here) to buy alcohol, it was like I had told them that not only do UFOs exist but I was an alien from one of the space craft.

Anyway, strangely enough, one of the women came up after the meeting and invited me into the women's room if I ever wanted to talk. I should note that I hope that invitation is not effected by my team, all men, who seem to instinctively go into the women only bathroom at every office we visit (this is a very, very bad thing, and they should all know better because they've been here for a while).

There is a 23 year old british girl in the news lately, who was picked up by a taxi driver while drunk and leaving a bar, and then she was taken to her parents' house and raped by the taxi driver outside her house (apparently he thought she would be too drunk to notice what he was doing). She was arrested for being drunk when she called the police after finally escaping the taxi. Nothing has been done to the taxi driver. Everyone is saying what happened to her was her fault for being drunk.

It's stupid, for many reasons, to get drunk in this country. But that doesn't give a guy the right to rape anyone.

I hope that some day these women I'm working with (sort of working with) will walk into a meeting and not be shocked by a woman arguing with a man. I hope they will someday not have to argue with the boss, because they will BE the boss. And I hope that they won't be silent when things happen that shouldn't.

dislike of tv runs in the family

I got this email from my brother. Kind of funny how much everyone in my family is alike...

"I just got in from Presque Isle, Maine (just south of Loring AFB)

I was staying at the Caribou Inn (seriously) for $79.95 a night. I too had a personal assistant. OK, not really, but the maid's name is Cheryl and I was the only guest at the hotel.

People in Maine are different. We were testing radio comms with our airship by parking along roads at certain distances from the base. Old guys on riding tractors kept coming up to us and asking us questions. They didn't seem to understand that we were testing an autonomous airship - they were more concerned that we might be messing up their satellite TV. They wouldn't believe us when we told them this was the first time we've turned the system on in 4 months. I guess satellite ranks on par with cable TV (it sucks)."

my tv is stalking me

It's hard to believe, but I get at least 5 emails a day from my TV.

Hard to believe because the internet connections here have really gotten bad. At the hotel it's consistent but so slow I'm transported back to 1995, and not in a good way. At work the internet connection is like a crack head in the midst of a binge. It will sometimes drop every 5 minutes. That's particularly annoying not because we are using outside internet, but because we're doing all of our work on a server that we connect to via a wireless connection.

The joys of working here just keep increasing by the day.

And then, after working in the insane customer environment, where I sometimes have to waste up to 15 minutes that I need for working trying to find a place for my team members to sit, I come home, sit down with the paper, and try to relax.

And the tv turns itself on, announcing its presence with a civilized chime. Oh, ANOTHER email? Let's see. Today's emails first apologized for a mistaken fire alarm at 2 pm. Then the tv informed me another might happen and my tv was really sorry if I was inconvenienced. Why doesn't my tv know that I'm usually not in my room until 8 o'clock at night? Then the tv was wondering if I wanted to try today's special for dinner (I'm so tired right now I can't even order room service). My tv followed that email with another saying I had a bunch of unread emails. Finally, the tv informed me that the phone was going to call me (which it did, shortly afterward) to explain how to use the hotel messaging system.

My phone called me twice and left 2 voice mails. I deleted them to turn off the annoying flashing light, then I unplugged both phones and put them in a drawer. Which is where the tv would be right now too if I could fit it in there.

Please don't leave a comment telling me to unplug it. I can't reach the plug, it's behind a very elaborate cabinet. How ever, if anyone knows how to delete emails so the little envelope light would stop flashing on the tv I would be grateful (the arrow keys on my remote don't work, and Dasan keeps removing the duct tape I put over the flashing envelope, even after I left what I thought was a strongly worded email suggesting he leave the duct tape where it is).

beach

I like to go to the beach for a few hours every weekend to at least get in a swim and to get out of the air conditioning.


The guys here are very nice, setting up my chair for me. The beach has umbrellas made out of palm tree bark that look to be over 100 years old but are probably replaced every few months. If a spark landed on one it would likely incinerate completely in seconds. The sand looks like something from a construction site (they import it from the desert) and it has all of these weird sharp things in it that end up cutting my feet, which almost burn to a crisp as I try to walk from my chair to the water. Weirdly, the beach feels like a construction site because 200 yards from the beach there IS a construction site. They've built a little island, and I'm not sure what they are doing on it, but trucks are always whizzing by carrying loads of migrant workers. The dust from their trucks eventually filters over the low wall separating our water from an inlet where boats and jet skis make a racket. There's another construction site next to the hotel and you can hear the clanging and banging on the beach.


The water has been really clear the past two days and I spotted three damsels that were surprisingly large. They are the only fish I've seen in the water here except for some clear, very boring fish that are like the non-descript guys wandering around the office.


The water is warm. Hot, actually. It's around 98 degrees now, and will only get worse as the summer kicks in to full swing and the temperature goes up to around 140. I'm trying to swim but normally it's so hot my goggles fog up and it seems that the other people on the beach like to watch me swim so they tread water right in the path where I'm trying to swim. After I give up and go back to my chair they normally do the same. As soon as I get back in the water, there they are again, swimming a perpendicular course so we almost run into each other.


I saw a very old guy with a big gut floating around with one of those noodle things. It was dark blue, in a drastic contrast to his pasty skin. He had made the unfortunate decision to straddle the noodle, and the front end of it was sticking out of the water in front of him. I laughed.


Some of the other beach goers drag plastic chairs into the water (there's no tide to speak of) and sit on them up to their waists in the water, having drinks and smoking. It's like they were having a get together and the flood waters rose but they're all too drunk now to seek higher ground.


Guys walk by as I'm trying to read the paper. They're either staring at me because I'm a female in a bathing suit or perhaps they're amused at my attempts to turn the page of my paper in the wind, which can get quite strong down on the beach.


I stay in my chair until I'm so hot it feels like my scalp is crying tears and then I get back in the water. Within minutes of leaving the water my skin is covered with a chalky residue from the salt.


It's nice to have a hotel on the beach. But, it's not exactly St. Maarten.

3 wives and I share a view

Returning from the A&E (the alcohol store) and having trekked 6 km in the hot sun (it's over 100 degrees), I walked up to the elevators in the intercon behind an emirati and his three wives. I had 2 bottles of wine in my beach bag covered up with my dry cleaning, and I was wearing a sleeveless shirt because I'm kind of over the whole cover the shoulders thing in this heat (never would have dared to go out like that 3 months ago). I was feeling a bit uncomfortable.

Emiratis don't mingle with us westerners really. Most of the time I get dirty looks in the intercon because I'm not wearing designer clothes and my hair is a mess. Most of the emirati women here are so contemptuous of me that they won't ride in the same elevator (don't blame them really, I'm normally sweating from the gym or from walking around here in the heat).

But this guy invited me into the elevator with him and his three wives. He held the elevator door until I got in. I was holding my bag really tight trying to keep the bottles from clinking too much.

It turns out they are staying on the same floor as me. As we rode up I stared at the floor and hoped they wouldn't notice the shape of the bottles through the canvas of my beach bag. I tried not to move so they wouldn't clink around, but accidentally when the elevator stopped on the floor they clinked. The emirati man was not talking to me, but he was talking to his wives in english giving them their keys (adjoining rooms, the young skinny one with him the two older ones next door). They normally don't speak english so I felt, in a way, that he was somehow, I don't know, trying to make me feel comfortable around them.

As we walked out of the elevator he saw the view of the marina from our floor, which is spectacular. He got so excited he pointed out the window and then said to me "Look! Ships!" I smiled and said "It's pretty amazing". Then he said "sandbar!" pointing to a small sandy island. "You like view? It's a very good view! With many ships in this view!"

I concurred on the view and walked to my room. The emiratis followed me and stood in the hallway outside my door looking uncertainly down the hallway. I told them that their rooms were on the other side of the elevator banks, and then walked them there. The guy asked how I knew where they were (admittedly, the room numbering scheme here is confusing) and I said "because I live here". Then he said "It's very nice for you. Very nice indeed!"

I don't know why but I was flattered he talked to me. I've only spoken with one other emirati outside of work. It made me feel good that I wasn't even following the dress code and this guy obviously wanted me to feel comfortable (not realizing, I hope, that the main source of my discomfort was the alcohol I was carrying) around him and his wives. It was nice to share the great view from our floor with them because they felt the same way I did when I first got to the hotel and came up to my floor and saw the marina at night with all the lights on the boats.

It's the little connections in life that make life bearable and even joyful.

bloody sunday

Sunday I got to my customer site at 730 and spent 1 1/2 hours arguing with the system administrator trying to get a log on to a server I need for my project. Then I sat in my "office", which is just a desk shoved in a stairwell outside my customer's door.

It's a bad location because everyone walks by. Worse some of them want to talk to me. I normally just say good morning and avoid turning around, but some guys are quite persistent, including this little indian guy who had the cheek to ask me yesterday if it's true that blond women have different pubic hair than women with black hair.

Not knowing how or wanting to respond, I went downstairs to get some tea. When I got back to my desk I discovered the office boy had stacked what is possibly all of the paper in Abu Dhabi on my desk. Which, I should mention, besides being next to the printer, is next to the shredder.

Are you goddamn kidding me I thought to myself as I tried to work through the noise and vibration of the shredder. I can't yell at the office boy though. He's very nice. Last week I bought him a pot holder because he's always carrying this metal coffee pot around and it's really hot. But, instead of using it to protect his hands, he hangs it around his neck like it's the biggest employee badge ever.

Also, I got sunglasses for the guys who clean and do work outside because they don't have any and they'll end up with cataracts and not able to work. I thought, when I gave them the glasses, I had explained that to them very clearly. But, every time I see them outside, they don't have them over their eyes. They wear them on top of their heads, like I do when I'm in the office (that's how I, um, fix my hair - wake up and pull it off my face with my shades). When I say "No, put your sunglasses on your face" they say "yes madam we wear sunglasses" and point to their heads like I'm the one who potentially has problems seeing.

There is a door out to a patio near my desk, which I was quite chuffed about since that meant I wouldn't have to walk down 3 flights of stairs and then go out a locked door to smoke (there isn't usually anyone to open the locked door so you risk a long wait in the hot sun if you go out it). But the door is broken and won't close. It's very, very hot at my desk. And I'm surrounded by 5 offices belonging to the loudest screaming arabs on the planet.

As it seems things can't get any worse about my work place, they do. Yesterday around 10 am the fire alarm went off for 5 minutes. One arab, E, started screaming "shut that fucking thing off!" as loud as the alarm. Finally I went to his door, said "as an engineer, you should know that yelling doesn't fix things" and then I slammed his door. Point taken. He later attempted to get back into my good graces by bringing me dried sugared pineapple (they taste like smarties, but better and after I eat two I feel like I'm going to vomit from the sugar overload).

The alarm went off intermittently for the rest of the day. I got back to my hotel around 7 feeling like I had a concussion, did my workout, and was getting ready to take a shower after eating the biggest pizza ever (I needed it, I've already lost 10 pounds from the heat). It was 915.

But no. I heard a muted boom, and then the power went out. I went down to the lobby in my workout clothes. They said that only a sector of the hotel lost power, and that they would send someone to my room to fix the problem. I went back and laid down on my bed, still in my work out clothes. And waited. And waited.

Soon I felt like I was going to suffocate from the heat. I wandered down to the lobby again, mostly to be in the air conditioning. It was 1130. They told me to go back to my room immediately and that someone would be coming soon. Yeah. That's middle eastern soon.

I drifted off into a light sleep around 130. At 330 all of the lights on my room came on and the air con kicked in. I was so happy suddenly that I started laughing out loud.

Or, perhaps, I was losing my mind.

In any case, 530 rolled around quickly and the day at the customer site could not have been any longer.

Tonight, inshallah, I will go to bed at 10 and the power will stay with us.

wazis, taxis

I've explained before how weird things are here with taxis. But, a refresher in case you forgot...

Gold taxis are old taxis, and they are driven by people new to UAE. That is to say, crazy indian and pakistanis. They never know where anything is, and they don't speak english.

There are silver taxis, more expensive (color coding probably designed by the same idiot who put red before orange on the airport safety scale). The drivers, though they also don't know where anything is, speak moderately bad english and usually try to carry on a conversation, which is, most times, painful.

New taxis are available for ladies only, and they are called purple taxis, though the interior is more like lilac. They are driven by women, and usually the safest.

I always seem to end up with a gold taxi. The taxi drivers then proceed to drive me around to rack up the fare, and won't listen to my directions or look at my map. It's been frustrating dealing with that.

So today, I was standing outside the intercon at 730. The patio in front of the hotel is black marble, and was radiating heat. It was already over 100 degrees and humid. A half hour went by and I'd almost decided to take an intercon sedan (which is three times the price of a taxi) when a gold taxi pulled up.

My driver was a crazy guy with bad english. He wouldn't listen to my directions and kept trying to take me the wrong way. Normally I just give in but this morning I had to get to work. I ended up having to use my marine words on him. Blanking those out, the conversation went something like this:

me: Please....stop trying to....go the wrong way and....listen to...what I'm....saying before I...lose my mind.
driver: hurhefhor keblah blah kobloblablabla ec hallah hon haralla blah blech blah blah
me: I'm...late for work...so JUST DRIVE STRAIGHT or I will.................!
driver: en haffa blah blah (I'm not sure, but I think he was cursing me)

Later, as we were nearing my building, I decided to go for some positive reinforcement so I thanked him for listening to my directions. He told me he was from Waziristan, possibly the most lawless place in the world. He was having visa problems, and hiding in his cab. He asked me "do you like taliban?" and I felt he was baiting me so I said "Actually, I am taliban (the nickname, at work, has stuck)". Weirdly, he turned around to look at me, almost sending us into a palm tree.

"You taliban?" he asked. "Only when I am at work" I admitted. He suddenly grinned at me like he had finally gotten my joke.

I gave him a big tip because it sounded like he needed it. And as we were pulling up to my office he was pointing towards the other side of the street saying something that sounded like "sha sa san". It was only when I got to the door of the office that I realized he was pointing out the sand to me.

Yeah, I haven't seen any of that before.

water slides and blood eyes

Last night I had a dream that I was visiting my parents' house, except the house was in this small town in west virginia and there was this trashy water slide theme park there. I was walking through the town wondering why my parents bought a house in the town and then somehow I was in this boys' catholic school and all the boys were running around wearing those alter robe things they wear in church. A priest was showing school pictures of children to these three alter boys.

There was a cafeteria, so I went inside looking for an apple but I couldn't find one. Then all the people in the cafeteria were talking about how this serial murderer was on the loose and he was killing children. I told everyone that I could find and kill the serial murderer, and they said they would go outside and put up signs challenging the serial murderer to meet me in the school.

I went out and stapled some signs up, but it was hot, so I went back inside the cafeteria to get a bottle of water, but they didn't have one. I went to the basement of the school, which was now surrounded by police who were clearing it in case the murderer showed up, and was drinking out of the water fountain. There was an escalator on either side of the 10 foot wall where the fountain was that went down to the basement. I had walked down them because they weren't turned on.

As I was drinking water from the fountain this asian guy walked up to me and pointed a white gun with red streaks at me.

He said "I'm the serial murderer and now I'm going to kill you" and I said "That's total bullshit because I don't have a gun. We should fight each other instead". He said "I don't want to fight you, I want to shoot you" and so I quickly pushed him and then somehow knocked him to the floor. He still had the gun.

I started struggling to get the gun away from him and I could hear people moving around on the upper floor so I shouted for help but no one came. Then the serial murderer said "what ever you do, the opposite of what you want to happen is going to happen". I noticed that every time I grabbed his right hand the gun would magically go to his left hand. Then I grabbed the gun away from him and he suddenly had two guns.

I started to get worried that with his two guns and magical powers he would kill me so I pointed the gun at his heart and said if he put his weapons down and let me tie him up I would kill him. He kept saying "the opposite will happen!" and laughing. Then he pointed his gun at my head and said "you're going to die" so I shot him in the heart.

He laughed as he was dying and red fountains of blood shot out of his eyes. He whispered "the opposite" and then I heard shouting coming from upstairs. A cop who had been in the basement ran up to me because he had heard the shooting. He said "don't shoot a gun! we haven't cleared the upstairs yet!" and I said "it's okay, I just shot the murderer" and then the cop said "well then who's shooting?" and I realized there was a lot of gun fire coming from the cafeteria area of the school. Then the escalators started moving and there were at least a 100 bodies of small dead children piled on the escalator. There were clots of blood where their eyes should have been.

I suddenly realized that the serial murderer got me to kill him because that triggered the alter boys I had seen upstairs with the priest to start shooting children. And I realized every child in the town was dead.

The cop started yelling at me "oh my god, oh my god, what have you done????"

Then I woke up

Dasan

I've been assigned a "personal assistant" at the hotel, who's name is Dasan. He's a very nice and helpful guy (he's my maid from the previous entry, today he gave me a card with his name on it).

You don't realize how ridiculously spoiled most people are here until you end up at an upscale place like the intercon. Today Dasan asked me, as he was cleaning my room (he usually cleans mine first but today was running late), why I never use the bathtub (my room has a separate bath and shower stall). I thought about that for a moment, since my tub is really big. I said "I guess because I don't have any bubble bath". A few minutes after he finished cleaning my room, he knocked on my door and handed me a bottle of bubble bath.

Then he came into my room and mentioned that the reading light on the side of the bed I don't sleep on was not working. It wasn't working because the light on the side I do sleep on had gone out and I swapped them. Having once tried for two weeks at the merid to get a light bulb replaced, finally having to go out and buy a new one, I figured it was the easiest thing to do. Dasan presented me with a light bulb in a box, as if it were a bottle of wine. I wasn't sure what to do so I peered at the box and said "very nice! my dad works for GE".

He wrinkled his brow and then said "but is the wattage alright for madam?" I said "it's fine" having paid no attention as to what it was. He said "we use this for soft light, but if madam wants to read, I will bring a different wattage". I assured him I wouldn't read on that side of the bed and he replaced the bulb. He went out to his cart AGAIN and brought me two large pillows. I have 8 pillows in my room so I wasn't sure what he was doing, and then he pointed out to me that they are more firm and I can use them when I'm propped up in bed reading instead of piling the 8 squishy pillows I have against the head board.

He stowed them under my sofa, informed me that he was taking tomorrow off, and inquired as to whether or not I would be alright. I assured him I would be and then he stood at the door. I was busy sending emails so didn't notice him until he cleared his throat. "If there is nothing else for madam I will go" he said. It was weird. Like, what am I, the queen or something? I said "There's nothing else. Enjoy your day off!" and, seriously, he bowed and exited my room.

Also, I went to the gym today right after the beach and accidentally tracked some sand in on my shoes. A cleaner in the gym was literally SWEEPING the treadmill behind me while I was running.

I need to get into a different frame of mind because I am back at work tomorrow, and I can't get anyone but the tea boy to do a damn thing.

intercon

Even though I'm not terribly excited to be back in Dhabi, at least I'm staying at the Intercontinental, which is a massive step up from the Meridien. Though, it has it's quirks. And is located on a hill in the middle of no where (residential area, though I found a grocery I can walk to in 20 minutes).

My maid introduced himself to me shortly after I checked in, and said if I had any requests I should let him know (I am living here for 4 months, which, apparently, is a record for this particular hotel). One request I made was to not change my linens or towels more often than once a week. That request was met with a pained smile. We negotiated changes every three days. At least it isn't every day...he's a very nice maid and brings me extra berry tea packets (I know it sounds hideous but it's really good).

I have this weird TV that turns itself on and sends me messages. The problem is I'm not sure how to delete the messages so after one arrives I turn the TV off and it continues to turn itself on again 3 more times before giving up hope. I'm sure there's a button or something I'm supposed to be pressing but I can't figure it out.

No one is going through my stuff here, but I have noticed that the plate covering the peep hole in my door keeps getting opened (it opens by flipping upward so, unless there is some strange gravity thing going on in my room, it's being manually opened). But I just check it when I get home every night and close it.

I've checked out the gym which has a new machine I'm going to try out called the power plate. I'm not even sure what it does so I am going to watch some YouTube videos and maybe test it out first thing in the morning when no one else is at the gym.

Everything in my room is managed with this controller thing that I failed to find the first night I was here (the maid thoughtfully plugged everything back in for me the next day and put the controller on the bed so I could find it). I can even turn on the do not disturb light outside my room from bed.

And the best part is they do yoga classes 4 days a week here. It will be nice to get back into yoga...

Tomorrow I'll report on the beach. I'm spending the weekend having some R&R since I haven't had much chance to lay around and do nothing the past few months.

flops

For this trip to the ME I decided to bring high flops and my low flops. My high flops are flip flops with a heel on them. They make me the tallest person in the room. I am wearing them to work every day. My low flops are my chacos. I use those to walk to and from texas kid's apartment. It's not so hot here that I can't walk. I'm sure that's going to change soon.

I'm staying at the Intercon. Super posh but everything is expensive, and, typical of Intercons in these types of countries, it's on a hill in the middle of nowhere. My room is about twice the size of my place at the merid (no balcony though, boo hoo). I have a huge bathroom and the shower is a rain shower.

I was surprised my hair got such a good reception. After Dr. T initially almost had a heart attack (I walked up to him and he didn't even recognize me) he's adjusted. I don't know why I ever grew my hair out in the first place. I like short hair.

I had my first project meeting today. It went poorly in the morning (utter confusion, as usual, attempts to extend the scope of the project, and complaints about the doughnuts) but the more I ramped up my performance the more the team started to respond. I found myself, this afternoon, yelling (jokingly) at one of the guys on the team "You don't need to go on vacation! This is more fun than vacation!" By the end of the day everyone was giving themselves nicknames so I could spell/pronounce their names.

I hope it goes well. It will be a lot of work. And now I'm exhausted. It's hard for me to be "on" all of the time. I sometimes feel like I'm the writer, producer, and actor of a sit com with a live audience. And I'm worried every time I do this that the show will flop.