Lemon

In Greece, they squeeze lemons on everything. This is definitely my kind of country.

Unfortunately, the amount of things I want to post greatly exceeds my amount of freedom, but I'll try to remedy that soon.

Lebanese Flower, the Corniche and Al Ain

The last few days have been a lot of fun and I’ve gotten to explore Abu Dhabi more. Wednesday night, Laura called me because she was locked in the office and didn’t have her key. I went to go rescue her, and we both decided that this problem was a symptom of the fact she was working too hard. We decided dinner and cocktails were the inevitable solution. She took me to a delicious and cheap Lebanese restaurant called Lebanese Flower. It has an attached bakery, so fresh, warm bread accompanies all meals. I think my favorite dish was hummus with pine nuts and ground beef. I'm a terrible former vegetarian.

After dinner, we went to Ocean’s bar in a hotel down by the waterfront. Laura says it’s the only bar she’d voluntarily go to if it was back home in London. It had nice lighting and these pretty woven fans flapping from the ceiling. Upon getting a table, we discovered drinks were free for women on Wednesday night (the gender ratio in the expat community is extremely skewed in our favor, so I guess this was an effort to even the score). This was fun but dangerous, especially because we both had work the next morning

At one point during the evening, Laura commented on how much the UAE was like America in some ways, and I knew exactly what she meant. There is a little bit of a Times Square meet (how I imagine) LA meet (how I imagine) Los Vegas in the neon lights and impressive gleaming buildings and ostentatious displays of wealth. There’s a Starbucks on every corner, and American chains like McDonald’s and Dunkin Donuts are common too.

Laura and I plan a repeat performance this Wednesday before I leave for Greece, although first we are going to a corporate iftar at a friend of her boyfriend’s office. I like Laura a lot. I’ll be sorry to leave her, although I guess it’s always good to have friends in different places.

On Friday, I worked in the morning and took a walk along the Corniche, the waterfront, in the evening. I left my hotel at 4:30 and arrived at the Marina Mall just in time for iftar to buy my groceries. It was about a two hour walk, but so pretty it was worth it, especially as it cooled down as I walked. At one point, there was a beach and people sat along the water with their families or with picnics. I waded for a bit and then tried to scrape the sand off my feet. I still haven’t gotten it all out of my shoes. As I left the mall, the city was all lit up and I could feel a warm breeze by the water and for the first time, I could imagine learning to love this city.

I decided to take all of Saturday off for some exploring. I’ve been meaning to go to Al-Ain, the UAE’s 4^th largest city that sits right on the border of Oman, but had heard that a taxi (150 dirhams/45 dollars) or private car were the only ways to get there. I discovered there was actually a “worker bus” that left Abu Dhabi on the hour, and only cost 10 dirhams (3 dollars). I was both the only women and the only person of European ancestry on the bus, and I don't think the driver was very happy that I was there, but they sold me a ticket anyway, and made me sit in a special seat up front.

The bus ride itself, which lasted 90 minutes, was very pleasant. The landscape changed dramatically as we got closer to Al Ain. The desert around Abu Dhabi is barren and flat, but after we had driven about an hour, we were surrounded by rounded golden hills and small date farms. Near Al-Ain, there were even trees and purple and pink flowers. There was a large statue of a deer, so I’m assuming there are even other forms of wildlife there. I could see the large grey plateau of a mountain that Al-Ain is built at the base of. In truth, it wasn’t a very pretty mountain—it looked like a large scale version of the sides of those highways in New York where the boulders were blasted with dynamite to carve out a place for the road—but it was so nice to see a landscape that wasn’t artificially constructed and vegetation that didn’t look planted.

Al Ain has been inhabited by humans for over 4,000 years and is the cultural capital of the UAE. I’d read its archeological museum was very good, and made that my first stop. Unfortunately, because of Ramadan, the museum had extremely limited hours, and I only got to peek in before it closed.

Next, I decided to explore the wadi, or oasis, that Al Ain developed around. A well-built elevated stone trail with walls interspersed with an occasional intricate door wove throughout the wadi. The wadi itself was densely packed with trees and plants, forming a canopy over the path. It felt a little primordial, although the air was too dry for it to feel swampy. After seeing a small lizard on a tree, I imagined the possibility of dinosaurs, just out of sight. On either side, there were small livestock farms and occasional lean-to houses with corrugated tin roofs. I wondered who lived in them, and whether they were temporary or permanent residences. Occasionally, I followed a side path that led to a mosque.

Now, I had always imagined an oasis to be very small, like a lush pond, or the watering holes I’d seen in the Serengeti. Not so. At least not for the Al Ain wadi. This wadi was huge, and the path through it was a winding maze of turns and dead ends. After wandering for an hour or so, I realized I had no idea how to get back or how far in I was. I wished I’d used crumbs like Gretel or a ball of yarn like in Thomas Sawyer or a purple crayon or something. There were a few signs in Arabic but I think they might have just been warnings not to leave the trail. Luckily, it was almost time for the fourth prayer, and I could hear the crier calling out the prayer at a nearby mosque. I followed his voice until I came to the mosque, waited a little distance outside it, and then after the men poured out after praying, I followed them back to the main road.

I spent some time wandering around Al Ain. Although it’s a big city, it seems to have much more of a small town feel than Abu Dhabi or Dubai. The buildings aren’t as high and while Abu Dhabi and Dubai are gleaming masses of chrome and glass, Al Ain had more what I think of as traditional Islamic architecture. The air was cleaner and crisper, and the green grass and purple flowers looked very vivid against the off-white or sandy colored buildings.

I briefly stopped by the mall to use the washroom, and was amused to find it had several dome-shaped, attached buildings with eyes at the top, and vaguely resembled a mosque. The higher the floor within the dome, the higher end the brand. In keeping with this theme, religious music was constantly played over the loudspeaker. Shopping was elevated to a whole(y) new level. (I couldn’t resist.) I think this is one image that encapsulates part of the UAE for me: high tech, luxury end consumerism mixed with religious devotion. This is a cheap, Thomas Friedman-style way to sum up a country, but it does seem like a reoccurring union. The other example I have that captures this is the young women in their full abayas, their faces often covered, wearing Jimmy Choo shoes and clutching Prada bags. It intrigues me that religion and consumerism are so overlapping instead of being contained within separate spheres or demographic groups.

On the bus back to Abu Dhabi, at the time of the last prayer, the driver pulled over and people got out to pray and take iftar. I recently learned from Laura that pre-iftar traffic isn’t bad just because people are hungry, but also because it’s a religious duty to eat something as close to iftar as possible.

Three more days in Abu Dhabi, then I’m off to Athens.

De Waal on Darfur, or Reasons Why Not to Let a Conflict Become a Symbol

This is an excerpt from a (brilliant) article Africa scholar and envoy to the Darfur peace negotiations, Alex de Waal wrote about identity formation in Darfur, called “Who Are the Darfurians?”. Throughout the article, he argues for the historical cohesiveness of the Darfurian identity, and describes the way contemporary politics has fractured it:

“From the point of view of the SLA leadership, including the leadership of the communities most seriously affected by atrocity and forced displacement, the term “African” has served them well. It is scarcely an exaggeration to say that the depiction of “Arabs” killing “Africans” in Darfur conjures up, in the mind of a non-Sudanese (including many people in Sub-Saharan Africa), a picture of bands of light-skinned Arabs marauding among villages of peaceable black-skinned people, of indeterminate religion. In the current context in which “Arabs” are idenfitied, in the popular Western and Sub-Saharan African press, with the instigators of terrorism, it readily identifies Darfur’s non-Arabs as victims.

"From the point of view of the government in Khartoum, the labels are also tactically useful. While insisting that the conflict is tribal and local, it turns the moral loading of the term ‘Arab’ to its advantage, by appealing to fellow members of the Arab League, that Darfur represents another attempt by the west (and in particular the U.S.) to demonize the Arab world. In turn this unlocks a regional alliance, for which Darfur stands as proxy for Iraq and Palestine. Looking more widely than Darfur, the term “Arab” implies global victimhood.

"The U.S. determination that Darfur counts as “genocide” has played further into this polarizing scenario. It is easy for self-identified Arab intellectuals in Khartoum (and elsewhere) to see this finding as (yet another) selective and unfair denigration of Arabs. If, in the confrontation between the Arabs and the Israelis and the Americans, Arabs are cast as “terrorists,” warranting preemptive military action and a range of other restrictions on their rights, in the context of Africa, they are cast as ‘genocidaires’ and similarly cast beyond the moral pale and rendered subject to military intervention and criminal tribunals. Arab editorialists are thus driven both to deny genocide and to accuse the U.S. of double standards, asking why the killings in (for example) the Congo are not similarly labeled.”

De Waal goes on to detail the process by which State Department lawyers reluctantly concluded that genocide was taking place in Darfur.

“The broader interpretation of the Geneva Convention, while legally correct, is one that diplomats have been avoiding for decades, precisely because it creates a vast and indeterminate grey area of atrocity in which intervention is licensed. A tacit consensus had developed to set the bar higher; now the U.S. has lowered it and the Arab critics are correct; if Darfur is genocide, then so is Congo, Burundi, Uganda, Nigeria and a host of others. The neocons do indeed have another weapon in their armory of unilateral intervention. Arguably, they didn’t need it, already having sufficient reason to intervene on the basis of the September 2002 National Security doctrine.”

I’m someone who, after reading good analysis, aches for something normative to hold onto. The more nuanced and subtle and dead-on seeming something written about Africa is, the most lost it leaves me when trying to scramble for a hypothetical prescription. I first discovered this in Tim Burke’s classes at Swarthmore, where I walked out feeling like my head was exploding with both my new understanding and my confusion as to how to convert it into policy.

The De Waal piece is no exception. He’s slyly normative: Do we really want to broaden the definition of genocide? Do we really want to give the neocons another tool? To the first question, I can respond with something like “yes we just need to make sure there are legal structures that compel multilateral action in the presence of atrocity so the term doesn’t become hollow” but given the current lack of faith in international bodies, my use of ‘just’ is wildly inappropriate. As for the second—I worry that flavors of this question are cropping up all over the place in the wake of the insurgency in Iraq. The strongest emergent response to neoconservatism seems to be: get out, stay home, be more like Europe, you don’t get it.

This frustration is my own fault, for finishing reading a piece about identity formation in Darfur with the hope it will tell me how America should behave in the next fifty years. I think De Waal’s true normative message is: don’t tell a simple story. Although an attachment for simple narratives seems to lie at the base of American misadventures in Iraq, Afghanistan and Colombia, for starters, I still want something with a little more normative force.

Stevens, my former facebook religion

The New York Times ran a really interesting profile on Justice Stevens a few days ago. Particularly interesting was a paragraph on page eight about the debate over what traits the next (Democratic) president should look for when and if picking Stevens’ successor.

Al Jazeera

I've gotten addicted to watching Al Jazeera while I've been here, both because the programming is so good and because it's nice to have another voice when I'm in my hotel room. Two things about the channel that have surprised me:

-It takes the UN and its initiatives much more seriously than most US news programs do. (This could be a timing issue due to the important Iraq meeting coming up, etc.)
-The country that has received the most negative coverage is France. Again, this may be because of recent events (Iran policy, blood testing for immigrants) but it's interesting.

I plan to update about the weekend tomorrow.

Turkish Food in Dubai, Coffee and Dissidence

Last night, I met A. for dinner. A.interned with us this summer and has been invovled in several programs we have run. I assumed we'd get food in Abu Dhabi, but he decided because the roads were relatively empty, we might as well go to Dubai. Now, this is about 90 minutes away if one drives at a speed legal in the United States, but apparently it's normal to go to Dubai for dinner or a movie. Perhaps this is a consequence of living in an economy largely fueled by oil.

We went to a delicious Turkish restaurant in the Mall of the Emirates. I went to Istanbul and Selcuk with my father over winter break, and the food made me feel a little like I was home because I remembered eating it with my father. Unfortunately, my delight far exceeded my appetite. I ordered a Turkish variation on dolmas (they had nuts inside them which gave them an interesting texture,) a pumpkin-yogurt soup, and lahmajoun, which is a thin piece of bread covered with a mix of ground beef, tomatoes, and basil and sliced like a pizza. I was too full by the time I got to my lahmajoun, so I'm looking forward to eating it for lunch.

After dinner, we met A.'s friend D., a Bulgarian commercial model (lots of models in my life lately) for coffee. We talked about the World Cup for a while, and then got into an argument about the source of violence in South Africa/whether it would be ready to host in time. (My ability to have neutral, nonpolitical conversation is apparently nonexistent.) D. is about to get married to an Australian and move to Sydney. She's lived in the UAE for the last ten years and is really sorry to go.

D. and A. had a nostalgic conversation about Abu Dhabi in the late nineties that was exactly like the conversations people have everywhere about changes in a place they love. "It used to be so nice," D. said. "People were so relaxed and friendly and you could walk on the Corniche for hours. Now everyone is always in a hurry and works too hard. It's not the same." Then they talked about how much worse traffic has gotten, and complained about the number of new development projects. D. worried that buildings were being built everywhere without accompanying increases in roads or parking. At first, A. blamed the changes on these projects, and then they both settled on a different landmark, the death of Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan al Nayhan in 2004 and his replacement by his son, Khalifa bin Zayed al Nayhan.

A. focused on the Khalifa government's rollback of the fuel subsidies, which mean the price of gas has more than doubled in the last three years. D. discussed the plight of the migrant workers, who make about 600 dirhams (about 160 dollars) a month. A. worries that there isn't enough support for public higher education, pointing out that only 11% of emirati adults hold a Bachelor's degree. (D. thinks this is because emirati youth don't want to study, but A. thinks cost is a big factor, especially when marriages cost 200,000 dirhams [60-70 thousand dollars], so even youth who are comfortably off must sometimes choose between marriage and education.) What alarms them both is that the government is making so much money off oil and foreign investments and it's difficult to see how that revenue is benefiting the population.

The 'story' I've heard about the UAE many times is that it is a government unusually conscious of the hazards of dutch disease, a government that takes great and creative pains to avoid this plight. While the government has been very successful diversifying the economy away from oil into financial services and real estate, and has wisely invested oil revenue abroad, it seems that it hasn't devoted the same focus to increasing human capital. Many young emirati who don't need to work just don't work. This gap in the development of a skilled workforce isn't an economic problem because the UAE can recruit ex-pats with the required skillsets, luring them with its generous tax policies.

By the end of this conversation, D. was visibly upset. She wondered what A. could do about the need for public education, and suggested that he write a letter to the paper and see how much public support there was for the idea. He said if he were to write such a letter, he'd get thrown in jail for a few days. All her proposed solutions were met with similar responses.

I think in general, people here like the government just enough-- and receive just enough government benefits-- that they are too happy and well-off to feel that they live in a repressive state. Also, it's very much a rentier state-- because they have no affirmative duties to the state, the things they receive from the state are perceived as largesse rather than the duties of the state.

One thing that strikes me is the way a quiet climate of fear seems to be a larger factor than actual government actions. There is an almost nonexistent state presence. I almost never see cops or security guards. People are worried about what other people might do. I got a ride home from a British girl at work yesterday who is dating another British expat. Sometimes they stay over at each other's apartments, and she worries that if someone in her building started disliking her, they could report her to the police and she'd wind up in jail or sent home. I'm almost positive the police would turn a blind eye, but the very fact that she's afraid is a powerful comment on the climate.

On the way home, I asked A. lots of questions about everything. I tried to absorb his answers, but I wish I'd had a tape recorder. Here are the segments I remember, out of order and unrelated:

A: …for them, going to Iraq is like a guaranteed first class ticket to heaven. It’s the easiest way to get one. That’s why there are suicide bombers every day.
B: Is it a more guaranteed route than being a suicide bomber in Palistine?
A: Well, it’s much harder to get into Palistine.
B: How much of this do you think is due to poverty or the lack of other opportunities?
A: It is definitely a major factor, especially in Saudi Arabia. There, when someone is unemployed, it is their best option. Everyone can serve God by defending their country, getting rid of invaders. But in Islam, you can also serve your country by becoming educated and supporting your family and building your community, and anyone who has that choice will not choose to die. This is why in the UAE we have very very few people who go to Iraq. They hold onto the chance that they could help their community, find some way to impact 10,000 people and this chance, this opportunity is much better than being a suicide bomber.

***
B: What country in the region do you think has the best model?
A: The UAE. Saudi is too closed. Qatar, closed. Oman is like the UAE. Kuwait is much too open. Bahrain is also too open. The UAE is a good mix of open and conservative.
B: What if I throw in Iran?
A: Iran is too open.
B: Oh?
A: Don’t look at the government. Look at the people. Look at the Iranians and how they behave when they come to Dubai.
B: So what criteria are you using for “open” and “closed?” Drinking? Dress?
A: Yes, drinking and dress. Also, the places where culture intersects with religion. My discussion is more about culture than religion and people often confuse the two. For instance, in a closed society, men and women don’t meet before marriage. In a liberal society, they may do all sorts of things before they marry. In some families, brothers and sisters can’t all sit together. In my family, for instance, we all sit together, but my sisters stay covered. This is a good balance.

***
B: What happens to people who speak out against the government?
A: They go to jail.
B: How heavy-handed is the government? What is jail like?
A: There was this one dissenter, I think he was a dean at a university who then resigned who spoke out against the government. He was instead tried in court for having a relationship with a European women. It is impossible that he would have had a relationship with this women. She was old. Another man who tried to start an organization to change the government was going to be arrested but went into exile instead. I think Amnesty International is working on his case. Sometimes people disappear and their families have no idea what happened to them. In general, it’s not arrest itself. You can talk to your friends and family about the government. But if you write a letter to the paper or something, or try to organize people, you might be thrown in jail for a few days. What happens more often is that if you were to write an article critical of the government, the editor would refuse to publish it. It’s more that there’s a climate of fear for everyone. When people get in trouble, it is usually not the government, but the authorities under the government.
B: In the U.S., university professors can sometimes get away with saying things other people wouldn't say. How about here?
A: No, definitely not. We can't even talk about the situation in Iraq or the goverment or anything.
B: So there aren't political science classes, or international relations classes or government classes?
A: No. I took one required class, the UAE and the GCC (Gulf Cooperation Council), but it was all sociology, not politics. We couldn't ask why something was the way it was, the teacher would say, "No, that's politics."

****
In my Latin American Politics Class, we spent a lot of time discussing "political space" and the ways it could be created or repressed. It's hard for me to see how political space will open here, because the average local is too materially comfortable to want to take the risk and go to jail. Also, people seem to have thoroughly accepted the government's constraints. What does a "pedagogy of the oppressed" look like for the fantastically wealthy? What does it look like for people who have no rights and want desperately to hold onto their small opportunity within the system?

I spent a lot of college involved in GOTV efforts. I worked for my campus newspaper, first in the news section, then opinions, and then wrote my own column. Most of my friends, in one way or another, could be described as activists. However, I don't think it was until this point that I realized just how great it is to be able to do these things. As I criticized our management of the Iraq War with A., I felt an overwhelming joy that I could, and have, said these exact same things in the classroom, in the airport, in the capital city, in front of the White House, to my superiors, on the internet and in the newspaper without fear. I have the right to vote against leaders I disagree with, and to encourage others to do the same. Best of all, I have the right to fight and work against the things I hate about my country. In a democracy, an individual always has a source of hope, however distant. I'm glad to be from a place with so much scope for optimism.

Post Article on Iraqi Refugees

Iraqi Refugee Processing: Can We Speed It Up?

Moments of Idiocy

Whenever I've been in a foreign country, I've had a couple of absolute idiot moments, times in which I've tried to be useful and sensitive and realize I wind up making everyone's day just a little bit harder. These moments bite not only because I realize I am an inconvenience, but also because they demonstrate to me just how much there is a social and situational literacy required in being a thoughtful person. They are rarely major things-- their scope is more like, "Gee, wouldn't it be nice to rewind about now," but back home I work hard to be a thoughtful person, so I think they grate on me. I don't mind getting lost or being unable to work the ticket machine or speaking with huge gestures, but social competency is important to me.

I had too many of these moments to count in Tanzania. When I was in Selchuk, Turkey, with my father, this shoe-shiner asked to shine our shoes. The town was pretty muddy, and my shoes were filthy, so we agreed. He told us he had a new baby in the house (and these stories, the same stories everyone asking for work tells, always weigh heavily on me. I don't really care about their veracity, I just figure if you need to tell a story like that, you are experiencing some type of desperation.) As he knelt to shine my shoes-already a slightly uncomfortable transaction-we realized we didn't have change anywhere near small enough.

There are three non-Muslims who work in our office, Rachel, Laura (British) and myself. The two other ex-pats both converted. I felt sort of bad to be eating lunch at all when so many people were intent on fasting, and had high hopes of running downstairs and discretely microwaving my food at a non-optimal time and sneaking back upstairs. Unfortunately, said lunch was (surprise!) instant Indian food, so as soon as I opened the package, I realized everyone in the office could smell it. I decided I'd have to be very fast and cover it up with a bowl in order to carry it back upstairs.

Noor, a Pakistani worker who has lived in the UAE for seven years and works in our kitchen, had other plans. Every day, when I go down to get my lunch from the fridge, Noor insists on carrying it upstairs behind me and placing it on the table, covering his hands with napkins. After I microwave it, I know it's too hot to touch but he picks it up right away anyway even when I try to warn him. This is unavoidable and makes me want to cry. He faces the challenge of desperately wanting to hold onto a job, which, in actuality, requires very little, and thus he over performs any task he can.

Today was no different. Noor ceremoniously set my Indian food and Diet Coke on a silver tray, and slowly we proceeded upstairs with them. I could feel everyone downstairs in the office turning towards the smell of the food. I felt ridiculously, and upset both that I had intended to be more thoughtful about eating during Ramadan and that Noor's job was to carry my lunch upstairs for me, and there was no way for me to escape that without making it seem that he was not fulfilling his duties.

I have a lot more to say about the migrant workforce in the UAE, and hope to post some thoughts sometime this week.

Location Update

This is kind of out of the blue, but I'll actually leaving Abu Dhabi soon due to a change in funding. My last day here in September 27th. I will then be in Athens from Sept 27th-Oct 10th and am moving to Yokohama, Japan for a few months on the 11th. I return to the states for winter break on December 20th and start work again around January 11th. At that point, I think I may be based in DC and making UK/Japan/Middle East trips frequently, but this is pretty indefinite. I'm a little (well, ok, quite) surprised by this, but am excited by the chance to see a whole new continent. I'm going to try to pack in a lot of exploring during these next two weeks.

Ramadan Mubarak!

Today is the third day of Ramadan and during the day, the streets are pretty empty and all restaurants and shops are closed down. The other day, Rachel and I ate lunch in a near-by hotel, the only places that serve food during the day, and the dining area was curtained off and the hotel had incense burning outside so that other people didn't smell the food and feel tempted to break their fast. I felt bad for the waitstaff. I think I should try keeping the fast once while I'm here for the sake of empathy.

A little after six, at dusk, there's the final prayer call and people can break the fast with a celebratory meal called iftar. You can feel the anticipation as this time draws nearer. All the shops and restaurants suddenly open and there are long lines everywhere. It's a huge street (or mall) festival.

I've been holed up in the hotel doing some work all day but will go out and explore tonight. I have a lot of other impressions to write about, and some big changes to discuss, so hopefully I'll post again later.

Kerala and the UAE

An interesting article that claims Kerala’s success is due in large part to Migrant Workers in the Gulf.

Kerala’s been a puzzle of a development success story. Although it remains really poor, human development indicators such as literacy, life expectancy, and infant mortality are very positive. Advocates for a Kerala model have argued this is because of increased government provision of healthcare and socialization of industry.

The article finds that a lack of jobs in Kerala has driven workers to the UAE, where they more than quintuple their salaries, but are far away from home. Without their remittances, there may have been several famines and about one in three Kerala residents is dependent on foreign income. In addition to the grimness of the plight of migrant workers in the UAE, this article may have sad implications for the replicability of the Kerala model.

Runaways

Many of the expats I’ve met here seem to have something they are running away from—a messy divorce, a cold family, an abusive relationship, a bad job. I’ve tested out this theory on other people leaving the country throughout the last year or two. I’ll express my desire to travel, confide my fear of being lonely and ask if they are close to their families. By and large, they then bring up the things they are trying to leave behind. It’s a classic piece of the mythology about aid workers (I’ve heard they sometimes even ask Peace Corps interviewees what they are trying to escape) but perhaps it extends to many expats.

I’m very fortunate in my personal relationships. I don’t have anything I’m trying to get away from. All this adds up to make me wonder why I’m leaving behind so much. What kind of person leaves a wealth of people who she loves and who loves her behind?

The best and most comforting answer I can come up with: A person who has led such a happy life that she is secure in the permanence and inevitability of love.

Settling in at Cassell's Hotel

September 10th, Cassels Hotel, 2007

I’ve spent the last two days settling into Abu Dhabi and my office. It’s not nearly as hot as I expected and its actually fairly pleasant to walk outside. We just moved to a new office a little bit away from downtown and it’s hard to catch a cab there, so we’ve been walking part away part. One of my intial fears was not being able to spend any time outside, so I’m so glad it’s cooling off.

The new office is great. It’s a small villa we share with two other Emirates Foundation supported projects that all fall under a loose heading of being civil society-promoting. There are a lot of people “my age” (the quotations imply an ish), both emirate and expat, working for them. The neighborhood the villas are in remind me a lot of the ritziest neighborhoods in Tanzania, with the gates and the palm trees and the bright peaches and turquoises.

Workwise, I’ve gotten a lot done, which is satisfying. It’s so much easier to be working on site than through email. I haven’t had much time to explore much, but yesterday I went to Ikea with my boss, Rachel, after work to look for new office chairs. Ikea, except for the clientele, is more or less the same everywhere. I thought about how many times I’ve gone there in the past two years, testing out beds, running through the strip curtains in the kids section, falling backwards into case of pillows. Sometimes I went there with Doug or Katie just to get lunch. Usually I only left with a corkscrew, some thumbtacks, or once a storage compartment that was supposed to hang from the ceiling. I got home to realize there was no space in my dorm room to put it up. This time I bought crucial things such as hangers. Rachel hasn’t lived in the United States since she was in college, so she was surprised by the wide variety of things you could find there. We didn’t buy office chairs, but resolved to come back.

I also picked up some groceries at a grocery store in the basement of the mall. There were two full aisles of yoghurt products and a really good assortment of microwaveable Indian food, my summer dinner staple. We then went out for Iranian food, and ice cream. It was all around delicious.

I suspect it’ll take a while to get into the rhythm. Ramadan starts tomorrow, and I’ve heard that businesses shut down and people sleep during most of the day while fasting, only coming into work between ten and two. Apparently there are street festivals at night. I’m going to go explore them with Ahmed later this week. Today I did some ‘normal’ things like making dinner and working out.

Right now, I’m washing down microwaveable Indian food (yes, I’m aware this may not sound like making dinner, but it totally is because there’s no microwave, so I had to make it on the stove. Now I’ve mastered that, maybe I’ll branch out into stir fry tomorrow night) with some diet coke while watching Al Jazera.

I’m not positive how I’m going to use this space yet. I really like the idea of a blog rather than mass emails because it feels less like an imposition and I’m likely to update more quickly. However, I think work is going to eat up a lot of my day and there’s only so much I can really say about that. So far, my biggest challenges include getting in and out of cabs in a pencil skirt without showing my knees and learning everyone’s name. I’ve definitely introduced myself to some people twice. I suspect that once I get in the rhythm, there will be more posts about thoughts or specific moments in the day. Until then, expect a little tedium, loyal readers.

Airport Stories, Round I

On my way here, I had a four hour layover in the Frankfurt airport. While waiting for my transit ticket, I struck up a conversation with two other people who were on my flight. They were both Americans. One of them was a 18 year old girl from the South who was going to college in Edinburgh, and the other was a 29 year old man who lived in Virginia who was going to Bangalore for two weeks. He was some type of contractor.

We all had some time to kill, so the man suggested getting lunch somewhere. We sat down and talked for a long time. I discovered he had gone to Dickinson, and we tried to revive Centennial Conference rivalry. Unfortunately, neither of us remembered the name of the other's mascot (I refrained from telling him we didn't really have one) so it wasn't much of a rivalry. His wife was about to have their first baby, so he was worried about being away from home.

Over lunch, we had a surprising personal conversation. The girl told us that she had gone to Europe the summer before to model in the Dior show, and had done that for six months before "divorcing it." (She was impossibly pretty, and very tall and thin, so the fact she was a model was somewhat of a relief to me. I try to emulate Dar and not be afraid of women, but it's hard not to be intimidated by someone looking that polished after a transatlantic flight.) She told us that fashion was "as far away from helping people as you could get," and thus made for a better hobby than job. She also spoke about her struggles with eating disorders.

The man told us about his wife's difficult pregnancy and their fears of Type II diabetes. He also told us the name they'd picked out for the baby, a fact they were keeping from all their friends and relatives. I talked about my fears about leaving my friends and family behind. I think what made the conversation so special is that we were at three different but sequential beginnings in our life-- she was starting college, I was starting my first job, he was having his first child. At the very end, we realized we didn't know one another's names.

Other than that, my flight was pretty unremarkable. I somehow got an Express Plus seat instead of an Express seat on the way to Frankfurt. I'm not sure if this was because they were out of Express seats or because my work was being really nice to me. The perks: 1) 6 inches extra legroom (intentional perk) 2) free financial times (intentional perk) 3) man in front of me bought me drink (unintentional perk) 4) our food came first (perk of dubious intentionality). Verdict: Not worth the 89 dollars it would have cost me, but very nice as a free seat.

The rest of the way I flew Lufthansa, and was able to confirm my emerging airport hierarchy. Emirates>Lufthansa>All other carriers, except Southwest, which belongs in its own special category because I like its egalitarian seating scheme. I hope to flesh out this hierarchy as the year goes on. The women next to me on that flight was going to Bahrain to work for the government.

I'm in Abu Dhabi now, and so far, so good. I don't even feel jet-lagged. I plan to post more about Abu Dhabi tomorrow.