ZuteStar

The Greatest Taxi Ride Ever

2010-07-08T04:47:00.000-04:00

This morning I experienced the most hilarious taxi ride of my life. It was mid-morning in the Sodeco neighborhood of Beirut. Mahmoud just took off down the block towards his edit suite and I lingered on the sidewalk to catch a ride towards Hamra, where I planned to spend the day, as is my modus operandi in Beirut, ensconced in my “office,” which is where I’m typing now (a shaded corner of the outdoor terrace of Café Younes, where I drink iced coffees, eat absurdly delicious pastries from La Cigale, and to tend to the day’s work on my laptop – yes, I know, life is so tough – a little blob of cream from my éclair has made it’s way onto my keyboard, woe is me).

The normal sequence of events transpired to get me into a taxi – a decrepit car slows down, a grizzled old man peers through the window, I announce my desired destination with as much confidence as I can muster, grizzled old man scoffs and tosses his head back disdainfully and drives away, another decrepit car slows down, a different grizzled old man peers through the window, I announce my desired destination again, grizzled old man scoffs and tosses his head back disdainfully but with a slight tilt to the right which means “ok you can get in.” Standard procedure so far.

Then the fun began. But before my butt even hit the seat, the guy announces, “I sell fish!”

“Fish?” I ask, thinking my Arabic was failing me.

“Fish.” He switches to English. “All kinds fishes. Also shrimp, lobster, nice fish. I will take you to see fish. You can buy fish from me, good fish.”

I laughed it off, commenting “Taxis and fish are an odd business combination.” He gave me a serious look in the rearview mirror and responded, “ok you don’t have time to buy today.” I muttered non-committally.

He proceeded to take me on a guided tour of his fish selling career. We drove past the posh Beirut souqs: “before the war, we sell fish here. I was child, I sell fish, I make 500 Lebanese pounds every day!” We drove past St. George beach club: “before I was selling to this place, 11,800 pounds every week, lobster, prawns, king prawns, fish!” We drove past the university: “before, this was Swiss embassy. Swiss Ambassador very big friend to me. I sell him fish. Also here was French embassy and I sell them fish: sole and sultan ibrahim and prawns.” He pointed to a pink house on the next corner: “here was living Mr. So-and-So, he is big man, very rich, very big friend to me. I am selling to him for twenty five years, now no more.” A half dozen restaurants we passed along the way all used to buy his catalogue of marine delights. “I know everyone in Beirut,” he sang.

“You also buy fish!” he insisted. I gently explained that, as a tourist, fish are not the most practical purchase. “You stay in hotel?” “No, I stay with a friend.” “An American friend?” “No, a Lebanese friend.” His eyes light up. “A Lebanese friend! She can buy fish! Where your friend is living?” “Mansourieh,” I said, thinking that this little mountain town outside Beirut was probably outside his range of fish-selling history. “I have too many friends in Mansourieh!” he declares and commences to list the people he sells fish to in Mansourieh, a list which includes no small proportion of billionaires and army generals, all very great friends of his.

As sparklingly funny as it was to overlay this Bubba-Gump-style litany of seafood invoices onto a driving tour of Beirut history, there was also something mysterious and sad about it. All of his impressive sales were in the past tense. It was a nostalgic narration of past glory and faded success. It made me wonder how dire was his present financial state if a previous fish-peddling career now seemed so illustrious. His car was decrepit but no more so than most taxis in the city (at least this one had the inner door casing, unlike one we took yesterday which exposed the wires and levers of the manual door locking system like a biological model of a human with the veins exposed). In a more jaded moment, I wondered whether he was pulling a common Beirut taxi trick of chatting sweetly during the whole trip so as to catch the poor tourist off-guard with an outrageous demand of money at the destination. I made a point to remind him that I was paying for a “service” (a cheaper option where the taxi driver can stop to pick up additional passengers on approximately the same route). He loudly exclaimed, “I don’t care for the money! Hassan drives you because you are a gentle woman, nice American woman. I don’t care for the money. Money come and go. Friends stay.” And true to his word, when our fish purchasing tour was over, he tried to push my money away. I had to insist that he take even the meager 2 LL service charge.

He wanted me take his number so that my “gentle woman friends” can buy fish from him. So, out of an obscure sense of duty to this generous wacko, I hereby announce that, if you need to buy some fish (or order a taxi) in Beirut, you should call Hassan on 03 612 137.

Hmmmm

2010-05-11T02:21:00.001-04:00

I puzzled for a while about what to write about this.

In the end, I think it speaks for itself:

Ride the Wild Peeta!

2010-04-28T03:36:00.004-04:00

My new obsession is Wild Peeta. It’s fresh, it’s funky, it’s delicious, and it finally brings to Dubai what I consider to be one of America’s greatest innovations: the fast, healthy, multi-staged, choose-it-yourself sandwich creation.

Wild Peeta’s focus is “fusion shawarma,” where you start with fresh arabic-ish bread, choose your meat (chicken, beef, or veg), choose your sauce, and choose your veggies. Fusion shawarma is indeed an accurate description. The twirling pillars of grilled meat are traditional, while the bread takes the spirit of Arabic bread and gives it just the right amount of fluffiness and the sauces range from Mexican to Italian to Thai.

These people are sauce geniuses, by the way. I’d say genii, if that didn’t make them sound like they wear harem pants. But human or genii, they have crafted the most complex, multi-layered garlic mayo I have ever eaten. The thai sauce is nutty and slightly sweet. I even like the mushroom sauce and I despise mushrooms! The dressing on the fattouche, while not traditional, is so delicious I almost drank the remainder at the bottom of the bowl. Even their juices were startlingly good. Bravo, you Wild Peeta people.

My only suggestion is that they add one more stage of “choose-it-yourself”-ness. The sandwiches are missing a tangy, crunchy condiment. Our Thai sandwich was a tiny bit bland and would have been wonderful with a bit of spicy, citrus-y carrot salad. Our Arabic sandwich, which was wonderful, would have been divine with some of that Omani salsa-like condiment. And I can’t quite imagine the Mexican sandwich without some salsa fresca. In short, all of them would benefit from some sort of cruchy, vinegary condiment as the finishing touch.

But I’ll be back to ride that Wild Peeta again soon, regardless. The place is tiny and love-able the way that all independent, projects-of-passion are, especially in Dubai which has so few of them. The owners are charming and the staff were extremely cheerful and helpful. Overall, I’m thrilled that this place exists and, to quote from one of their comic-style murals, it is KASHKHAH!

WOMAD

2010-04-24T04:26:00.004-04:00

I am full of praise for WOMAD, the world music festival founded by Peter Gabriel and essentially franchised out to a handful of locations throughout the world. We’re in the middle of Abu Dhabi’s second free annual festival. After missing the first one last year to be a bridesmaid in Alli’s wedding in the Bahamas, I have been following every announcement leading up to this year’s event – generally shrieking to Mahmoud from the balcony as I read new line-up announcements in the morning paper. The biggest shriek this year came for Tinariwen.

I’ve been madly in love with this band since I first heard them about 5 years ago. They’re a group of Touaregs playing North African blues rock. It’s droney and tribal, a dense sound of voice, acoustic guitars, electric guitars and the tindé drum. It sounds like a view of the Saharan landscape, with Jimi Hendrix galloping past on a ferocious horse whipped by the sandy wind. At least, that’s what I thought when I first heard them on my iPod as I was walking through Hyde Park. I also figured it was extremely unlikely that I’d ever see them live, since I don’t spend a lot of time in the desert in Mali.

Lucky for me, the good folks at ADACH have brought them to me. They were wonderful live. The sight of them all on-stage was remarkably close to my desert/Hendrix fantasy! The lead singer is a battered-looking version of what Hendrix (or Shaft) might have looked like had he lived until 50 and the rest of the band performs dressed in the voluminous layers of traditional Touareg dress. Wikipedia has just explained to me that the Touaregs are a matriarchal culture where the women do not veil their face, but the men do, as you can see in this picture.

Anyhoo, long night – we didn’t get back home until 3am – but it was well-worth it. The concert was in Al Jahili Fort in Al Ain, which is a beautiful place for outdoor concerts. It feels a bit like being inside a giant, well-lit sand castle. Here’s a picture from the last event we attended there, the New York Philharmonic.

The other surprise highlight of the evening was concert of Pakistani singer, Faiz Ali Faiz and his Sufi backing musicians (2 harmoniums [harmonia?], 2 tabla players, and 2 clappers, all of whom occasionally sing as well). His music was hypnotic and moving in the way that I find all Qawwali music to be. But the real joy of it was the crowd. Being in the UAE, the population of which is heavily sub-continental, it should have come as no surprise that about a third of the audience would be Pakistani men. They went, quite simply, crazy. It was a bit like what I’d imagine a Pentacostal service would be. People were sitting in the audience, clapping and swaying, and suddenly – like popcorn – the spirit would enter someone and he would leap to his feet, arms raised in victory and start jumping everywhere, waving his arms above his shoulders in a vaguely dyslexic YMCA-style dance, grinning from ear to ear. Small groups of them would be jumping closer and dance together and it felt like a real privilege to be so close to what looked like an intensely private rapture for a segment of society we rarely get close to except in the taxis they drive. As the concert went on and the number of dancers increased to resemble a more modern mosh pit, we started to see eruptions of confetti thrown 20 feet in the air. The men were shredding the event program and heaving it towards the heavens, or towards the stage. We think it was to symbolize the traditional throwing of money on inspired performers.

On a more mundane note, we discovered that Pakistani men have absolutely lustrous hair and many of them have a penchant for architecturally-bold mullets.

DJ Dr. Eva the Cupcake Diva presents “An Homage to the Letter M.”

2010-03-23T03:56:00.003-04:00

I'm guest DJing at Clinic tonight. The Tuesday night program is called Alternative Medicine, which makes me a "guest doctor." I am DJ Dr. Eva the Cupcake Diva! Mwah haha

My playlist for the evening will be a tribute to that most mountainous of letters, your favourite bilabial consonant and mine… the letter M.

This memorable musical montage will range throughout the last century, from Memphis to Mumbai, from Mali to Manilla. It will melt and merge many genres: merry jazz, mesmerizing blues, mellifluous indie rock, marvellous electro, melodious world music, and much much more…

The Playlist
1) Larry Miranda – “Marupok Na Sumpa” from the album “Lumang Simbahan.” Larry is a crooner in the Kundiman style from the Philipines. I love it for its old school suaveness and faintly Mexican feel.

2) Mahmoud Ahmed – “Balomi Benna” from ““Ethiopiques Vol 7.” Mahmoud is a former shoe-shiner from Addis Ababa. He’s got the meanest “R” rolling technique I’ve ever heard. This song was released in 1975 and is a catchy concoction of soul and Ethiopian shuffle.

3) Mamani Keita & Marc Minelli – “Nani” from “Electro Bamako.” Mamani is from Mali. This track combines her deep lullaby of a voice with some nu jazz shenanigans.

4) Mugison – “Mugiboogie” from the album of the same name. All the spikiness of a capital M is here in this flamboyant industrial blues track (how’s that for the coining of a new genre?) from my favorite bearded Icelander.

5) Moving Units – “Going for Adds” from “Dangerous Dreams.” Californian dance-punk to make you bounce.

6) Mathieu Chedid – “Onde Sensuelle” from “Je Dis Aime.” This artist often records under the stage name “M” and I think we need to reward him for his dedication to the letter M with a place on my list. This track is a sassy little pop number with a chorus that’s fun to hummmm along to.

7) Jurassic 5 – “Modern Times.” Jurassic 5 is my favorite Tribe-Called-Quest-style hip-hop group. This brilliant track features a sample of the score of the 1936 Charlie Chaplin movie “Modern Times.”

8) Mukesh – “Suno Haal Meri Zindagi Ka” from “The Legend: Mukesh.” I’m obsessed with Hindi music, doubly obsessed with old-school Hindi music, and triply obsessed & mango-chutney-on-top with old-school Hindi songs that have the kind of kick-ass violin interludes that this one does.

9) Squirrel Nut Zippers – “Meant to Be.” This North Carolinian Delta blues / gypsy jazz / swing band has long been one of my favorites. The whole 1996 album “Hot” is infectious. The band's name comes the term “Nut Zippers" a southern term for a variety of old bootleg moonshine, and from a newspaper account which related the story of a highly intoxicated man who climbed a tree one night, refusing to come down even after authorities arrived. The article's headline read: "Squirrel Nut Zipper."

10) Memphis Minnie – “I Got to Make a Change Blues”. Minnie was one of the most influential and pioneering female blues musicians and guitarists of all time. She ran away from home in Louisiana at the age of 13 and began playing the guitar in nightclubs and on the street. She recorded actively from the ‘20s to the ‘50s and penned several songs which were later made famous by other artists, including “When the Levee Breaks.”

11) The Magnetic Fields – “The Luckiest Guy on the Lower-East Side” from “69 Love Songs.” This song from the Boston-based indie pop group is about the pleasures of joy-riding around Manhattan on a spring day with a hottie in the passenger seat.

12) Monty Python – “I Like Chinese.” I’m glad to finally live in a place where there are people around me who don’t need an explanation of who Monty Python are. I grew up in suburban Pennsylvania, watching bootleg VHS copies of the Flying Circus. I spent my childhood making references to empty halves of coconuts and no one would laugh. It was sad.

13) Crash Test Dummies – “Mmmm mmm mmm” from “God Shuffled His Feet.” Would any playlist devoted to M be complete without this one? I don’t think so.

14) Blockhead – “Music by Cavelight” from the album of the same name. My marvelous husband introduced me to this solo album by the American hip-hop producer also known for producing Aesop Rock, my favorite white hip-hopper. I’m pretty sure that this track samples a super-sped-up clip of the Hungarian song from the soundtrack to the English Patient.

15) Ms. John Soda – “Hiding/Fading” from “No P. or D.” This is a relatively obscure German ‘glitch-pop’ group from the famous Morr Music label. I saw them in a peanut-sized club in Boston in the early 2000s and have been hooked ever since.

16) Metric – “Blindness” from “Fantasies.” Metric is my favorite band, whom – by chance – I first encountered in that same peanut-sized club. Emily Haines’ voice just melts me. This track is from their latest album.

17) The Memory Tapes – “Green Knight” from “Seek Magic.” This one is hot off the presses from New Jersey. It’s got to be the most mellifluous use of a basketball court in the history of pop music.

18) Martyn Bennett – “Blackbird” from “Grit.” Caledonian techno-folkie Martyn was an incredibly talented multi-instrumentalist who died of cancer at the age of 33. I love every track on each of his 5 albums. This one is from his last album, recorded during his final struggle with cancer, and it fearlessly brings together majestic orchestration, synth beats, and what I think is a vocal sample from the Gaeltachd traditions of the Hebrides.

Honorable Mentions [highly commmmendable but not able to fit into my mix]:
- Donovan – “There Is A Mountain.” This is my favorite track by the 60s folk icon. I love the part about halfway through where he is singing “oh Juanita, oh Juanita, I call your name…” and someone (presumably Juanita) responds with a dwarfish cry of “wyAAH!”

- Feist – “Mushaboom” and “My Moon My Man.” Both very merry and delightfully catchy.

- M83 – “You, Appearing.” Music to listen to while dissolving into the universe.

- Mariza – sweet, sexy Portuguese music for an afternoon by the pool.

- Marvin Gaye – “Here, My Dear.” This track sounds like Prince imitating Isaac Hayes imitating Marvin Gaye. Delightfully kitsch.

- Múm – “If I Were A Fish.” In this track, from their latest album, you can hear what Múm sounds like when they sing in regular voices instead of channeling the spirit of Icelandic icicles.

- Tom Jones – “Motherless Child (feat Portishead).” Melodramatic, but so loveable.

About the letter M:
M is the thirteenth letter of the basic modern Latin alphabet. Its name in English (pronounced /ˈɛm/) is spelled “em” and is an acceptable play according to the standard rules of Scrabble.

The letter M derives its shape from the ancient Phoenician Mem. In binary code, capital M is binary 01001101 and lowercase m is 01101101.

About the DJ:
DJ Dr. Eva the Cupcake Diva likes moist macaroons, meditation, medieval history, maple syrup, mash-ups, mashed potatoes, mailmen, meerkats, and alliteration.

She dedicates this playlist to all the m’s in her life: her brother, father, late mother, two sisters-in-law, mother-in-law, father-in-law and, of course, the biggest m of all, her movie-making-maestro husband, Mahmoud.

A Mahmovies! Valentine’s Surprise

2010-02-16T06:18:00.002-05:00

As if last night wasn’t amazing enough…
Watching the phenomenally creative and colorful movie “Sita Sings the Blues” is enough to make my day all on its own…
Selling my little cupcakes-for-Haiti (flavors: chocolate, vanilla, and Bounty this week) as fast I could ice them is enough to satisfy me for a week…
Being present at a concert as new and deeply moving as last night’s, where we enjoyed the rare opportunity to interact with the men who built this city, will keep me buzzing for quite a while…

On top of all this, my dashing husband concocted a wonderful valentine’s day surprise through his role as Curator MC extraordinaire! He arranged for one of the guys, Mohamad Farooq aka “Mr. Love” to sing a song from Fana’a (one of my favorite Bollywood soundtracks) and dedicate it to me. It was the best valentine’s day surprise ever! Mr. Love knocked it out of the park – his performance was spot-on and highly entertaining. Thank you, Mahmoudi!!

But back to the programme overall, it was truly a remarkable evening. The response to the concert especially has been overwhelming; in attendance were videojournalists from two publications and reporters from three more (we’ll stay tuned for the release of their stories), someone was supposedly almost in tears describing it on the radio this morning, the twittersphere is ablaze, and the bloggers keep on bloggin’. From my perspective, as I try to define why it was so special, I think Mahmoud really nailed it in his introduction when he said this is not an event with a political agenda, this is not about charity, and there’s no pity or condescension – it was simply a moment of acknowledgement and celebration. On their own terms, in recognition of their talents and passions. For many of us, certainly for me, it was the first opportunity to do so.

Eva from Marienbad Continues Her Cupcake Crusade

2010-02-08T01:38:00.001-05:00

As you all know, I devoted the proceeds from cupcake sales in the previous season of Mahmovies! to the MESCO schools and nurseries in India. What you might not know is that I have received an avalanche of very touching comments from the MESCO folks as well as the amazing creatives of “Creatives Against Poverty” from around the world. I really didn’t think my little fundraising drive would mean so much – it’s been a thousand times more gratifying than I thought it would be.

I even got a little mention in the latest MESCO newsletter! It reads:
“Eva champions MESCO’s cause
Your effort in your eyes may look small, but the idea and the sentiments behind these efforts are far reaching and have catalytic effect. It just invigorates us and tells us subtly that the power of giving is with each one of us.
A young lady Eva Star Sayre in a town of Marienbad, who had never experienced hunger and hardships of life or so called outcome of poverty, brings life to many by her sincere efforts. She being a member of “Creative Against Poverty” an NGO, decided to do her bit (for MESCO), to provide snacks (Batawada) to the students of Std. X in a School in Mumbai by making cupcakes and selling them at Mahmovies Festival, with an intention to forward the proceeds (profits earned from such sale) to MESCO, using the slogan “cupcakes for you = batawadas for them”
Through such effort she raised $300 in one attempt which will be sufficient to provide two batawadas each to 100 students of Std. X in a School, during their lunch time for a period of two weeks. It ensures that they will attend the supportive extra classes until the end of the academic year. This will make all the difference between going beyond school and being a school drop out. Eva and her friends plan to raise funds for children through innovative methods. It's the “Efforts” which bring reward from heavens no matter how insignificant these may seem in our mortal eyes.”

Isn’t that so sweet? I love it, and am happy to be mislabelled as Polish for a good cause ☺

Moving forward, I’m raising funds for Haiti in this current season of Mahmovies. We’re in the middle of it now and achieving record attendance. This is our best season yet in terms of both music and movies and the press coverage has been fantastic. I’ve been selling out of cupcakes each week!

Week 1 flavors were dark chocolate strawberry and white chocolate cappuccino.
Week 2 flavors were chocolate cheesecake (Mom’s famous “black-bottom cupcake” recipe) and vanilla-on-vanilla.
I need to put away the laptop now and tie on the apron for the Week 3 kitchen explosion: nutella and carrotcake with cream cheese icing.

Sayre Design: What Makes a Good Logo

2010-01-30T05:43:00.003-05:00

Look! It's my dear Daddio, authoritatively explaining the importance of logos to corporate identity.

Here's the video: http://www.lehighvalleyentrepreneur.tv/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=234

More info about Sayre Design at http://www.sayredesign.com

Happy National Day / Let’s Go To The Fish Market

2009-12-03T03:29:00.003-05:00

Today and yesterday are beautiful bank holidays, glazed golden by a lazy gentle sun. We’re celebrating UAE National Day, the 38th anniversary of the founding of the country, which happened to take place at the base of a flagpole about 300 meters from my bedroom window. Yay UAE!

The traditional manner of celebrating National Day is to decorate your 4x4 with flags, pictures of the country’s leaders, and various other shapes (stripes, hearts, etc.) in red, black, white, and green. Then you drive slowly down a beachfront street, honking like there’s no tomorrow, revving your engine, making popping sounds with your exhaust and screaming out the windows. If you have many children, you put the youngest on the roof of the 4x4 and have one of the teenagers sit on the window ledge and reach up to hold on to the young one’s leg, honk, clap, rev engine, repeat.

It’s also encouraged to circulate Happy National Day emails, some of which come illustrated with motivational pictures. This one is my favorite, courtesy of Tabitha and the Dubai Metro crew.

Buildings also get decorated in celebratory portraits, some of which are inspiring, some of which are not. We spotted this one last night, which I find a bit creepy. Best leave Sheikh Mo without the unflattering lighting, I think.

I don’t have a 4x4, or a small child to put on top of it, so I celebrated UAE National Day by going to the Shindagha fish market and fruit & veg market. I’m embarassed to admit this is the first time I’ve gone, despite having lived here for almost 4 years. It’s amaaazing! And it’s about 2 miles from my house. I love Dubai’s capacity to still surprise me. These markets are incredible – bountiful, bustling, cheap, colorful, and smelly – everything a good market should be.

First, we parked our “fish vehicle”, then sauntered through the fish stalls, admiring the monstrously large hammour head, we bought a beautiful obsidian-colored tuna, we wandered amidst technicolor fruit stands and admired the bite-sized bananas and walls of melons, bought some dates, Mahmoud gave me a bouquet of mint, and then… the fish cutting factory!

On your way out, you stop here and for about $1 they’ll remove the skin, bones, and guts and chop up your fish for you. Amazing! Yay UAE!

Thanksgiving Recap

2009-11-28T06:32:00.002-05:00

I promised you all a recap... but what to say without tooting my own turkey?!

Perhaps it would be more modest to review it in the words of my guests: Maryam said "5 stars habibti!" Denise proclaimed it "a triumph!" Mohammed said "indescribable" (which I hope is good!). Maya kept sighing and whispering to herself "mmmm, mashed potatoes..." Mahmoud and Emil didn't say anything because their mouths were full. And Amira said "excellent everthing, including the company!" Nuria, the world-famous food critic, hasn't weighed in yet -- I believe her review will appear on the 'Vini Edi Dormi' blog...

Our menu:
Roasted turkey and gravy (big thanks to Denise for the bird-mentoring)
Stuffing (classic Baba recipe)
Mashed potatoes
Corn casserole
Cranberry sauce with fresh herbs and pomegranate syrup
Brussel sprouts
Sweet potato casserole
And for dessert: pumpkin pie, chocolate pecan pie, and vanilla ice cream

In addition to the pleasure of the feast, I enjoyed making it. I especially got a kick out of learning that cranberries pop when you cook them! And I was amazed to discover that there is no wizardry involved in roasting a turkey.

Now the only problem is that, as with any good thanksgiving spread, there is a fridge full of leftovers. Since I live with only one person, and that one person doesn't really believe in leftover-eating, I anticipate a full week of thanksgiving-sandwich dinners. It will be carbo-overload, but the fact is that I do love the thanksgiving-sandwich! It reminds me of high school, when we used to order thanksgiving subs from the store in middletown which called them "Bobbies" for some reason that none of us ever understood.

Happy Thanksgiving!

2009-11-26T02:23:00.002-05:00

After 3 years of hilariously bad thanksgiving dinners in restaurants in the UAE (read: chickens instead of turkeys, HOT cranberry sauce, “pumpkin what?”, etc.), I have decided to take matters into my own hands. After all, this is my favorite meal of the year and why should I be deprived just because I’m a few thousand miles away from my grandmother?

Building the menu was easy and making the shopping list and preparation schedule was a pleasure (after all, my brain works in bullet points and timelines). However, sourcing ingredients was more of a challenge than one would expect for a city this awash in American brands and franchises. I had to make 4 trips to the store to get my hands on good turkey, I had to make my own bread cubes for the stuffing, frozen cranberries don’t exist, you wouldn’t believe how much I had to pay for fresh cranberries or for pecans, and so on. But where there is a will, there’s a way and by the shiny buckle on my pilgrim shoes I swear to you this will be a respectable Thanksgiving dinner!

I’m a bit intimidated by the turkey roasting. It is a form of magic I have dared not dabble in. But my superneighbor Denise is here to supervise and I’m armed with instructions from Baba over the phone and – here’s my secret weapon – written instructions from my mom! How cool is that?! I was rummaging through my recipe box when I found this, which is her menu and prep schedule from Thanksgiving in 2001. I remember looking at it when I was going through all her kitchen stuff deciding what to keep but I completely forgot I had it. It’s amazing! She should have been a project manager for one of the big developers over here. The buildings would have gone up on time and tasted delicious!

Ok, now it’s time to get to work. Please keep your fingers crossed for a juicy outcome. I’ll report back tomorrow (if I haven’t burnt the house down)….

Last Cupcake in Marienbad

2009-11-11T08:45:00.002-05:00

Wowee this season of Mahmovies! is kicking some cinematic booty. This week's screening of "Last Year in Marienbad" was stunning, mysterious, and atmospheric. This was the first time I ever watched a French movie and didn't even bother to read the sub-titles the whole time -- it almost didn't matter what they were saying. It's all about those costumes! And cornices! And, sacre bleu, those cheekbones!

We're doing well with the cupcakes, too. This week's flavors were chocolate and tiramisu and they sold well (which is good because otherwise Mahmoud and I gain weight from the leftovers). We're well on our way to raising enough to cover food costs for a MESCO nursery for 6 months!

Next week I'm thinking about carrot cake... and some sort of chocolate something... any requests?

Cupcake Revolution

2009-11-09T00:07:00.006-05:00

Nearly everyone who knows me knows that I will seize any excuse to stuff you full of cake. Really. Any reason at all. It’s your birthday? Here, have some cake! It’s my birthday? Here, have some of my cake! You’re having a bbq? Why, it would be better if we had some cake! It’s Friday morning? Let there be cake! And so on.

But it’s only Mahmovies that allows me to really rev my kitchen engine because, for Mahmovies, I get to bake for the whole town. It’s a deluge of cupcakes! I bake and bake and bake all day until every level surface of my kitchen is covered in cupcakes. During last season, we christened our apartment “Le Chateau des Gâteaux.” Here is the sign I made this summer out of some scrap material.

Today is the second screening of this season, “Last Year in Marienbad,” for which I will create some chocolate cupcakes with chocolate icing and also tiramisu cupcakes (dark coffee cake with marscapone whipped cream icing). I don’t have a recipe for the latter, but I’m feeling confident.

Last week’s cupcakes (vanilla with vanilla icing and chocolate cheesecake) were a big success. In fact, to stay in keeping with the theme of the movie, “I am Cuba,” I think we have to call it A CUPCAKE REVOLUTION. As the icing on the cake (no pun intended), I even had a t-shirt to announce it so! The one and only Fatima Najm gave me a fabric cut-out of Che Guevara... and that evolved into this nice cupcake revolution t-shirt!

Fatima also gets credit for the other major innovation of this season, namely that all proceeds from cupcake sales will go to charity! My personal mission is “cupcakes for you = batatawada for them!” I’m working with a group called Creatives Against Poverty, which is a collective of journalists, consultants, photographers, NGO workers, entrepreneurs, etc. who pool and contribute skills for social impact. We support many different NGOs, one of which is the MESCO schools and nurseries in Mumbai (http://www.mescotrust.org). This organization works on the quality and affordability of education for children from the slums, who often fall through the cracks of the education system in India. My contribution particularly is towards the daily provision of batatawada (a potato patty sandwich), which is sometimes the only hot meal these kids get in a daily diet of stale bread and chili paste. MESCO started providing food when they realized that faintness and hunger pains were among the leading causes for student absenteeism. Now they include the expense of batatawada in their operating costs and they have a full, smiling class!

My goal is to raise enough money from the Mahmovies cupcakes to support an entire nursery of 20-30 kids with batatawada for 6 months.

Happy Belated Fighting Breast Cancer Month

2009-11-02T00:44:00.004-05:00

I celebrated the final weekend of October, which is the official global month of pink-ribbon-wearing, with a breast cancer walk. It was fun to do something like this in Dubai. The city’s typical recreation activities are indoors and commercially-/gastronomically-oriented, so it was quite a sight to see however many thousands of people up bright and early to parade around like normal bipeds. Granted, the walk route was circling a mall, but at least we weren’t IN the mall! This is progress.

Plus we got to raise money for breast cancer research and treatment while marveling at how much pink clothing some people own. Here’s Marwa, for instance, looking ravishing in rose from head to toe to camera.

I was not quite so pink, but I enjoyed wearing my various breast cancer event pins and also a tremendously unfashionable magenta baseball cap, emblazoned with a capital B. I would like to believe that the B is for BREASTS, but it is in fact for Bur Juman, the mall sponsoring the walk.

My only complaint is that we celebrated the start of the walk with a balloon launch. A balloon launch! In a region with enough of a littering problem as it is, we released thousands of pink latex balloons into the skies. Granted, it was beautiful, but really! Are we going to have a walk next week to raise money for the little beach birds who choked on these balloons?

On the positive side, we injected some amusement into the day for the construction workers working nearby. Here they are, clustered along the route, snapping pictures of us on their mobile phones to send home. I can’t imagine what captions they put on them…

Oktoberfest im Dubai, ach ja!

2009-10-24T02:14:00.002-04:00

It was another weird and wonderful evening in Dubai. This is a different genre of fun from the "total immersion" experience; this one I like to put in the category "Multi-Cultural Surrealist Masterpieces."

In a tent on the grounds of the Grand Hyatt, you can buy a bucket-sized glass of weissebeer and listen to real live oompa band, complete with a mountain-sized yodelling man. The beer is German, the music is German, the crowd is... well, at least partly German and definitely mostly European...

And then you have the Indian waiters in leiderhosen.

And the Phillipina waitresses in serving wench outfits.

All in all, a brillian rendition of Oktoberfest for our fair sandy city. My only complaint was that, if you get hungry and order a plate of sausages, you receive what is clearly a hot dog. But perhaps that was a blessing in disguise for me. I saw someone eating a chilli dog on tv last week and I literally cried out with longing. A chilli dog, a chilli dog, my kingdom for a 5 minutes in Yocco's...

US Healthcare Reform Debate for Dummies

2009-10-20T08:20:00.002-04:00

I'm a bit ashamed by my cluelessness regarding the healthcare debate raging in the states these past few months. I know there IS a debate. I know it is quite heated and involves a lot of "town hall" meetings around the country. But given the lack of coverage in regional publications here, I don't really know what they're arguing about.

I suspect that they don't either; the few excerpts I have heard about the debate go something like this:
One guy says "we have the worst healthcare system in the world in terms of value for money and we need to fix it."
Then another guy says "this reform means we'll have SOCIALIZED medicine!" and the crowd gasps.
Then some loony in the back of the room screams "Obama is a gay terrorist muslim socialist who is going to kill your grandparents!"

And this is about as deep as the public debate seems to go. I find this a little frustrating, especially that critique of the reforms is often limited to the word "socialist" which is generally bandied about as if it is synonymous with "apocalyptic." It's not actually a bad word. It's just a system of political organization like any other, with pros and cons that can be debated like any other. If you put it in a sentence, you don't automatically win the debate! This is similar to Rule #1 of debates about ethics: If you attempt to invoke Nazism as your trump card, you lose and you need to go home.

Anyway, despite my raging against ignorant debaters, the fact is that I can scarcely say more myself because I don't know anything about the proposed reforms. I sheepishly admitted as much to a girl I met in August, who happens to work in DC as a healthcare policy researcher and I asked her if she could recommend any good summaries online to bring me up to speed. Surprisingly, she had trouble thinking of any source that is both smart and easy to digest.

Hence my excitement when I recently discovered just such a source! The ever-brilliant HowStuffWorks podcast (which you can download for free from iTunes) did a four-part series on the healthcare debates and it is interesting, funny, informative, and easy to listen to. They cover:
1) How Healthcare in the United States works Right Now
2) President Obama's Healthcare Plan: Soup to Nuts
3) Rumors, Myths and Truths Behind Obam's Healthcare Plan
4) Healthcare systems Around the World

The first episode is a little slow, but I found the others genuinely informative. So, if you're as clueless as I am (or the great majority of my enormous countrymen are), then give it a listen...

Two Brief Observations on a Drive to Oman

2009-10-12T08:30:00.002-04:00

1) Driving through mountains makes one's heart scream WHOOOPPEEEE!

I have discovered that this is true even when the mountains are kind of scrawny and brown. I have also discovered that the WHOOOOPPEEEE in one's heart is much louder when in the driver's seat. Lastly, I discovered that Fats Waller makes a great soundtrack to the mountains of Oman. He might not have been aware of that, but it is nevertheless true.

2) I saw a driver's ed car out near Hatta.

Hatta, for those of you who don't know, is a solid hour and a half away from Dubai, from whence the car originated. Usually you see these cars within a 5 minute radius of the driving school, crawling along at half the speed limit, signaling turns 200 meters away, and cringing into the gutter everytime another assh*le Dubai driver screams up behind them with high beams on. But not this guy! He was on the road to Oman at a respectable 120 km, with his giant "learner" sign flapping in the wind. I like to imagine that he got fed up with the driving instructor's directions and just decided to floor it onto the highway, exam results be damned! Or maybe he and his driving instructor suddenly fell madly in love and are making a dash to the border to be married upon a dhow on the Indian Ocean. Ah... we can dream, can we not?

Et voilà! Veritas Films!

2009-10-07T01:10:00.006-04:00

Behold the Veritas Films website: http://www.veritasfilms.ae. It’s finally done and we’re so very proud of it! It’s loaded with film clips of our work and info about the company and the type of work we love to do. My favorite thing about it is the rotating background which features some stunning stills from our projects.

It was quite a journey to get here – well over half a year since we started designing the layout of the site. Along the way, Mahmoud has discovered that he never wants to use DropBox again and I have discovered that I like writing XML code. Who knew?!

Big thanks to Stephane for his gorgeous design of the site, to Jes for the fantastic programming, to Nas for his general surly charm and advice, and to my father again for the sublime logo which graces the top right corner of every page. If anyone out there needs a website or logo and wants to work with these wonderful artists, please let me know and I’ll be glad to put you in touch.

Now go admire our gorgeous site! Go! Admire!
http://www.veritasfilms.ae

Happy Navratri!

2009-10-03T14:27:00.003-04:00

On Thursday night, I had one of those experiences that makes living in Dubai worthwhile, when the extraordinary density and diversity of the expat populations here allows for complete immersion experiences of the sort generally impossible outside of the country in question. On Thursday, it was India...

We went to the public celebration of the ninth and final night of Navratri, the Hindu festival which marks the beginning of autumn and honors the Goddess Durga. I think it has the best tradition of any holiday I've encountered -- it's basically a week-long dance marathon! We went on its final and most frenetic night when Dubai's gujarati community rents out the football pitch of a local social club, pitches a stage for the dozen-strong band, and fills the place to capacity with Indians of all ages: toddlers to teenagers to grandparents, all decked out to the nines in their most colorful clothes and jewellery. Men in technicolor kurtas embroidered with gold, women in a rainbow of saris, gold and silver sequins on every swirling hem, everyone dancing ecstatically, dripping with sweat, beaming smiles...

I'd estimate there were about four thousand people total, but it had a wonderfully friendly feel to it because the dancing style is communal. People drift in and out of different groups, each dancing in a circle of around 15 or 20 people people. It seemed to me that there were maybe about a dozen different dances (all involving some combination of clapping, kicking, twisting, spinning, shoulder shaking, and slowly revolving around the circle in a clockwise direction), any one of which could be chosen by the group to go with any of the songs being played by the band.

At first, we were trying to stay discretely between circles, just marveling at the energy and colors, but we couldn't stay inconspicuous for long. We were absolutely the only non-Indians in the whole place. Like magnet, if we came within 5 feet of a circle, I'd get pulled into the circling ring (with some kind soul giving me tips on when to spin or clap) and Mahmoud would get escorted to the center of the circle where the young men shake it with machismo. There's a fine line between laughing with us and laughing at us -- I'm not always sure which side of the line we were on -- but they certainly full of smiles!

Happy Birthday to Me!

2009-09-22T06:00:00.003-04:00

Sana Heeeeeelwa ya gamila, happy birthday to me!

Thanks to everyone for the birthday wishes and to Mahmoudi for the special midnight birthday jig and the amazing cake decorating equipment, which will allow me to exercise a little creative energy in service of my eternal quest to make you all chubby.

I’m really happy with 30. Here are some things I can do now that I couldn’t do last year:

1) Do handstands
2) Play squash
3) Small talk with grandmothers in Arabic
4) Count the colors in my hair (red, yellow and purple currently, if you’re wondering)
5) Cook mujadara
6) Say that I got to hang out with my brother not once but twice in the past year (after 3 years of being thwarted by bureaucracy)
7) Proclaim – with confidence – that the world’s best burrito is made in Berlin
8) Plan a wedding
9) Make cupcakes profitable
10) Create a small Wikipedia empire
11) Knit a monkey!
… and several others not fit for public broadcast ☺

It’s been a good year, has it not?

A Poem for Me!

2009-07-30T06:59:00.003-04:00

This one courtesy of Miss Maya Kaabour, poetess extraordinaire. It's modeled on "Annabel Lee" by Edgar Allen Poe.

(One language note: adding "tee" to the end of a feminine name is the way to indicate "my __" in Arabic.)

It was a few days ago,
Somewhere on Mina Street.
That a maiden there lived of whom you may know
By the name of Eva-tee:
And this maiden she lived with no other thought
Thank to bake cookies and eat cookies with me.
I was a child and her pancakes were wild,
In this kitchen on Mina Street.
But we loved with a love kept warm by baking gloves-
I and my Eva-tee:
With a love that the winged dessert chefs of heaven coveted her and me.

Backlog of Blog

2009-07-26T01:50:00.003-04:00

I thought I would do a lot more blogging in these last few months. But here I am, halfway through the most leisurely summer of my adult life, and I have scarcely a blog to show for it. I have no excuse nor explanation. All I have is a backlog of blog, which sounds like a fattening thing, if you ask me.

SO… through several posts over the next few weeks, my aim is to squeeze out some of the bloggable nuggets that have become lodged in my brain. I may be a bit rusty. They’re likely to read like outlines because I think in bullet points, but nevertheless, let’s get started. Today is a little crafty blog:

One thing I’ve been doing a lot of recently is making stuff. I finally formed my little crafts collective and it has indeed given me the desired boost of motivation to actually turn my sewing machine on every once in a while.

Here’s a laptop case I made. It’s made of fake blue plastic snakeskin, some fake suede snakeskin in camouflage colors, and the remnants of the most lovely neon jungle material which once was a mumu. This, incidentally, is one of my greatest crafting tips: when cruising thrift stores for fabrics, buy mumus. Clothing for fat people = more cloth for the money.

Monkey, meet world

2009-04-05T03:04:00.002-04:00

World, meet Monkey.

This Monkey, yet unnamed, is currently en route to London where he will take up residence in chez Lenz, in the small room at the top of the stairs, in the possession of one adorable baby named Cecilia.

I started to knit Monkey when Ceci was a mere spot on her mother’s ultrasound. Yes, that’s right – it’s taken me over a year and a half to knit this thing! There have been a few mishaps along the way, including one point when I was most of the way done with the head and torso and realized that I was using the wrong size needles and was going to end up with a monster-sized monkey. So I unraveled him. Have you ever unraveled a monkey? It’s an experience I recommend.

I used some ever-so-slightly more advanced techniques on the scarf and hat, but otherwise I followed the instructions exactly. I bought this enchanting little kit that included instructions, yarn, tiny needles, stuffing, everything and I thought, “this is going to be a breeze – I’ll be done in a week.” And do you know why I thought that?... Because the box was clearly labeled “For ages 8+” and was plastered with pictures of 8-year-olds proudly hugging their perfectly knit monkeys. BULLSHIT, I say, unless those are all 8-year-old knitting prodigies. (Or maybe I’m knitting-handicapped?)

In any case, Monkey will be missed around here. Over the past year and a half, many of our friends have watched him grow and have fallen in love with him bit by bit as he began to assume a more monkey-like shape. He was complete for about a month before I had the courage to pack him in a box and send him away. I hope he has a good life with Ceci…

A cultural obstacle course

2009-03-28T01:59:00.003-04:00

Earlier this week I went to get a blood test for the renewal of my residence visa. Little did I know that it would be an entire morning of adventure.

First I went to a hospital called al Wasl Hospital. It’s not on al Wasl road, in case you were wondering. In fact, in a freaky metaphysical way, it’s barely on the road it is on. As one drives toward it, you pass it from several directions, each time following the convenient brown road signs which indicate what turn to take next. One such sign actually described a serious of upcoming turns in the shape of an ampersand (&). Such are the highways of Dubai.

When you get to al Wasl Hospital, you will be surprised to discover that the parking lot is a tropical garden. Lush and full of delightful planty smells! Unfortunately, the delights do not extend past the parking lot for the average visa renewer. Once you enter the “Blood Center,” you quickly discover that, although all government hospitals do blood tests for visa renewal and this is a government hospital, there are no blood tests here. “Go to Maktoum Hospital in Deira,” they said. Oh boy.

For my non-Dubai-based readers, let me pause here to explain that the concept of driving into Deira should fill you with dread and panic. Dirty Deira is a wonderful place, full of people and sidewalks and cheap food, but the roads are a tangled gridlocked mess, full of detours and horns at all hours of the day. An unlucky turn can leave you mired in traffic for the rest of the afternoon.

But I was in an adventurous mood so I picked a nice long NPR podcast to keep my brain occupied and off we went… and I got there, by some miracle or another. I even managed to park directly in front of the hospital. And that was the last normal thing to happen to me for the next 3 hours.

As I walked to the parking meter, rummaging for coins, I realized that I suddenly had a shadow. He was a middle-aged dark-skinned Indian man. He told me later that his name was Mhmd (no vowels the way he pronounced it). He explained that this part of the hospital was closed and “visa you need visa?” was done in another building. He also seemed keen to help me find change for my 5 AED bill to feed the meter. This is not normal; he clearly wanted to sell me something. But I was only in the market for a blood test that day and I surely wasn’t going to buy that from him, so it was a little confusing. Before I knew it, he whisked me down the street, around the corner, and up the block into his brother’s friend’s cousin’s grocery shop to break the 5 AED, back to my car, then to the visa-you-need-visa reception building, whose attendant informed me that I needed to go to a typist to get a picture, laminated healthcare ID care and some mysterious paperwork in Arabic and English. So my shadow then whisked me down the street, around the corner, and up the block into a different brother’s friend’s cousin’s
T
Y
P
I
S
T
shop. I have to spell it for you vertically because of the several dozen “Typist” shops clustered around the clinic like anemones on a reef, every single one of them displayed the word “Typist” vertically on the storefront glass. It was a little strange.

It was also a little strange to have a shadow. It was partly protective, partly helpful, and partly annoying. Nevertheless, oblivious to my emotional interpretation of it, Mhmd Shadow led me into the brother’s friend’s cousin’s Typist shop, a tiny linoleum-lined room with a high desk on one side and some plastic chairs on the other. I was plonked down into a plastic chair. A different Indian guy pulled down a plastic window shade behind me, switched on a fluorescent light and came veeeeeeeery close with a small digital camera to take my new ID picture. Then I sat and sat and sat until finally all my mysterious papers were ready. I paid the bill, which included an intriguing 10 AED charge for “Knowledge Dirham,” and then Mhmd Shadow took me back to the visa-you-need-visa reception room.

From here I entered into a series of rooms. In each room, I got in a queue or took a number, waited, then sat opposite a person who looked over my mysterious papers, added a new one to the stack, and sent me to the next room. This went on for quite a while, with no one demonstrating any particular interest in my blood. Then suddenly I get to the final gate. And the room is full of a million people, some of them accumulating dust with the length of their wait. Oh boy.

Fortunately for me, there seems to be a dedicated room for western ladies only and since I am definitely the only western lady I had seen all day, needless to say the wait is short. I’m in the chair, stab in the arm, here’s your band-aid, bye bye.

I made my way back to my car, dodging a few lost rain drops, and thought to myself, this is the first time in a long time that I’ve felt like I live in a foreign country and, as baffling as it was, it was kind of fun.

A Cake for Pop

2009-03-22T08:50:00.005-04:00

This weekend our friend Scott threw another fabulous dinner party. I brought a friend (CARLENDER!) and dessert. Out of the pages of my chocolate cookbook, a recipe for "Torte del Nonno" jumped out at me. Delicious crust and chocolate custard and roasted pine nuts! Yum!

It also happens to be Italian for "Grandfather's Cake"... and so I hereby dedicate this dessert masterpiece to Pop, who has just came through double bypass surgery with flying colours! Hurray for Pop! We love you!

Eva, radio DJ

2009-03-22T08:33:00.002-04:00

Last night, Mahmoud and I guest DJ'd on Dubai Eye. It was my first time on the radio and I was a little nervous. Fortunately, Mahmoud is a pro and Zahrah, the host, made it easy. I was told I didn't even mumble!

Here's us dancing while a song was on air and below is our playlist:
1) Time to Get Away - LCD Soundsystem
2) Dead Disco - Metric
3) Pump Up the Jam - The Lost Fingers
4) Oh Mandy - The Spinto Band
5) I Put a Spell on You - Screamin Jay Hawkins
6) Prezlauerberg - Beirut
7) Undone - DeVotchka
8) Flashdance, what a feeling - Yael Naim
9) Parentheses - The Blow
... We had 8 more songs but, alas, not enough time.

The nicest thing was that Dad, Nancy and Joe were listening live -- 7000 miles and 9 time zones away!

Au revior, corporate hair!

2009-03-08T01:24:00.003-05:00

My pink streak has come out of hiding after 3 years! Hurray!

21 Hours in Athens

2009-03-06T00:25:00.007-05:00

I'm back in Dubai now, ensconced in my normal coffee-quaffing spot on the balcony and reflecting on my few hours in Athens earlier this week.

I have high praise for my hotel, the Magna Grecia, which, while much smaller than its name might suggest, boasts a friendly staff who were quite patient with my inability to open and close my safe and who continually insisted that it was a little cold out and that I should put on a coat.
... Oh, and the view of the acropolis from the lounge isn't bad either. I was plugging away at a contract on my laptop for about an hour before I finally looked up and thought "hey! that's the acropolis!"

I didn't get out much though. I spent most of my time on the computer and, at some point between 3am in the time zone where my soul was and 3am in the time zone where my body was, I dozed in front of George and Magdaleni's crackling fireplace. I didn't think it was possible to doze in front of a crackling fireplace and simultaneously to create a cash flow model but, when I awoke, what to my wondering eyes should appear but a beautiful cash flow model with complex formulas clear! Eureka!

The next morning before my flight, I managed to snatch a few hours of Athens on foot. Here are the highlights:

- Down the street from my hotel, I came across this pint-sized church. It's placard indicated it had been there since the 1600s. I love the way its neighboring building has grown up and over it organically.

- Guards with pompoms! It was one of my most hilarious discoveries of my first trip to Greece that the guards of the parliament building are dressed with woolen white tights and giant pompoms on their shoes. To this day, I have never -- anywhere in the world -- seen a less intimidating guard uniform.

- I bought some Menthos. They were mysteriously labeled "chewy dragees" -- anyone able to explain this to me?

- I found a guy who sings worse than me!

- A merry crisis to all and to all a good night!

Adventures in Greek Television

2009-03-01T13:17:00.003-05:00

So, what does one do whilst waiting in an Athens hotel room for someone to come pick up one's jetlagged self? We flip on the TV of course and see if it's still as surreal as I remember it being from my month here in 2004... I have the most vivid memory of laying tucked up in a twin sized bed in Patmos (the bed was hard as a board), eating greek yogurt and watching -- and crying, to be honest -- some movie which involves Macaulay Culkin dying.

Well you'll all be pleased to know that Greek TV is still as spectacularly random. On tap today:
1- Black and white footage of some people singing in Spanish on a bus. This is not merely one scene; I deduce from my repeated visits to the channel that this is the subject of the entire show. The singers appear to be hippies and radiate the type of joy you'd expect of hippies on a bus.
2- Home shopping network, seemingly devoted entirely to beaded necklaces. It is possible that the channel is called Ricardo. That is surely not the name of the model. I would guess she's an Elena and she looks bored shitless of beaded necklaces.
3- A cowboys & Indians movie. The lead character is named Charles White Eagle. He has a son who wears feathers in his hair. Everyone is speaking in American accents so sharp you could cut cheese with them.
4- Documentary about russian gymnasts. The adult being interviewed looks like she is pining for her days of glory.
5- A music concert that looks like it was filmed at a school gym. The singer resembles a young hippopatomaus, if it were possible for a young hippopatomaus to have her make-up done by a drunk prostitute. She's dancing enthusiastically, though, which is much to her credit considering that it doesn't appear there is any one in the audience.
6- The news. American soldiers somewhere.
7- A news panel set in front of a gold and purple wall. There is a silent blonde woman and two male commentators (one with a lot of hair on his head and one with none) who rattle like machine guns at one another.
8- Softcore lesbian porn. It conveys a surprisingly gentle and soothing mood through its black-and-white tone and near-silence. It's layered behind a mild fuzz of static which occasionally makes one half of the screen jump. There are unintelligible logos and phone numbers covering most of the juicy bits.
9- Football. Gooooooooooooooaaaaaaaaaaalll! There is no static on this channel.
10- More news. John McCain, looking much less stiff than he did during the election.
11- Something so static-y I can't even figure out what I'm looking at.

That's it from Athens tonight. Over and out!

In Praise of the New MacBook

2009-02-15T06:10:00.004-05:00

I am blogging for the first time from my new MacBook 2.1, fresh out of the box with a perfect scratchless platinum finish and a dizzying English/Arabic dual-keyboard.

I resisted for a long time, insisting on remaining loyal to my old 2004 PowerBook G4. "I can still turn her on," I'd say, "it's fine -- what do I need a new computer for?" But the fact is that she is old, at least 90 in computer-years, which makes her a starra-Baba laptop, and she's also never been quite the same since her concussion in a tragic dining table accident last year. She's pretty much on life support now, unable to stay awake for more than a few minutes unless plugged into the wall. She forgets where she puts things and sometimes cries softly in confusion if I ask her to do too many things at once. Occasionally when we sing songs together on iTunes, which was always our favorite way to pass the time, she forgets the words and sings instead in her native binary blips and beeps. Poor starra computer. I think she has earned a restful retirement as part-time keeper of my music library.

Now that I'm on the new laptop, woooeee I'm whizzing around with this amazing trackpad and its glorious gliding and pirouetting. My fingers are dancing like Fred Astaire. They're flicking and flowing like the conductor's baton for a tiny magical orchestra. Thank you, Apple, for making my fingers so happy!

Many more blogs to come, now that typing is so fun!

...and also now that I have Photobooth, which is an ENDLESS source of narcissistic entertainment...

The Death of Cynicism

2009-01-20T12:56:00.003-05:00

If patriotism were helium, I'd be afloat above the Burj Dubai right now. What a night. What a speech! What a country!!

I am so proud to be an American. This is a feeling which I had forgotten entirely before the elation of election night, which I watched all night until the results were called and I danced in my pajamas as dawn broke through my living room windows. Michelle Obama -- who I adore as much as her husband, for her brains, her sensibility, and her incredible beautiful hugeness -- could have been speaking for me when she said "for the first time in my adult life I am proud of my country."

I love the fact that Obama didn't shy away from the difficult messages. I love that he delivered that entire speech without defaulting to lazy rhetoric, without once saying "terrorism." I love his focus on the need to redefine our relationship to the world. I loved his call for responsibility: fiscal, diplomatic, and environmental. I just love HIM. I would take a job bringing this man coffee in the morning. For free.

On a less profound but equally giddy note, I also want to celebrate Aretha Franklin's amazing diva hat.
Yay!

¡¡Andale, andale!!

2008-10-28T08:15:00.002-04:00

I am completely enchanted with the idea of the Biblioburro. Luis Soriano is a Colombian teacher who has started a private mobile library for the battered rural area around his hometown of La Gloria. He has a collection of 4,800 books, which he personally circulates by donkey every weekend. How cool is that?! To have books delivered by donkey!

There’s an excellent article about Luis y tus burros en el International Herald Tribune: http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/10/20/america/colombia.php

Though a world apart from Colombia in terms of socio-economics and urban development (not to mention a world apart in terms of the actual world), Dubai also lacks library institutions. I recommend that we establish Ktab bil-Camel!

Please go away, Sarah Palin.

2008-10-19T03:52:00.002-04:00

I can’t take it anymore. I’ve avoided blogging about politics until now but I am so offended by this election campaign that I have to write this.

Her rallying cry “you folks, you just get it!” summarizes everything wrong with the way McCain is allowing his campaign to be run. It is divisive, inflammatory, and intellectually deadening. It encourages people to cheer wildly in favor of their unexamined fears. It takes those fears, which are legitimate and deserve to be discussed openly and analyzed deeply, and encourages people to harden themselves around them. “You just get it!”means “hey people, you can claim to have moral and political conviction and you don’t even have to be able to explain what it is!” It is a rallying cry which encourages people to be complacent and self-righteous.

Elections are an invaluable opportunity for the country to engage in productive conversations that help us all think more sharply about where we stand on matters of critical domestic and foreign policy. How can we accept the nutritionless garbage we are being fed in this campaign? Why do we take seriously a candidate for the number 2 position in the country who stands up in the one and only vice presidential debate and says openly that she doesn’t want to give direct answers to the debate moderator’s questions?! Why are we wasting our time listening to irrational, McCarthyesque challenges about who is more “Pro-America”? We are squandering an important time to examine qualifications and policy plans, and it is our duty as voters to do so.

We are at a critical point in the history of the US. Our moral authority has crumbled, our military successes are patchy at best, and our economic dominance is severly eroded. We need the smartest minds of the century – on both sides of the party line – to guide us into a safe and productive future. I feel cheated by the offensively inadequate ticket the republicans have put to us, and I am baffled that 40% of the country finds it acceptable.

I am reminded of the anecdote my father tells to explain how the obnoxious pretensions of art school culture in New York in the 70s compelled him to drop out of Cooper Union. He said he was in class one day for a group critique. One of his classmates walked in the door, late, swaggered over to the board at the front of the room and pinned up a plastic baggie of feces. He said, “This is a crap I took this morning. It is art. Analyze it.” My father walked out.

This is the way I feel about the republican campaign in 2008, except I don't want to walk out -- I want them to walk out. A president is only as good as the people around him and, in my opinion, McCain has made an unforgivable mistake in appointing this bad joke to be his closest political associate. You can dress it up in lipstick and let it make some feminist-sounding comments about high heels and mom-power, but anyone who doesn’t recognize what’s been pinned up to the board is kidding themselves.

The only way I know it's Autumn

2008-10-15T00:51:00.000-04:00

My pumpkin cravings are out of control.

I have 8 ramekins of pumpkin pie custard in my fridge today (basically the pie without the pie crust, due to a kitchen catastrophe last night in which my crust was destroyed), and that is after eating it for dinner and dessert last night and breakfast today.

Do you think I’ll turn orange?

Current Jogging Conditions

2008-09-20T12:33:00.003-04:00

Yesterday I decided to hit the track. The worst of the infernal summer blaze is over so I figured it was time to end my summer's hiatus from outdoor exercise. I bounced out the door with a load of new gear: new socks, new hair band, new headphones, and a new playlist.

Current conditions are still pretty sticky though. And HAZY. As I jogged along, to one side, the sky and ocean fuzzed into a single blue-gray hue and, on the other side, the haze obscured all the towers, save the upper tip of the Burj Dubai which emerged about 500 meters up into the sky. Ahead of me, the bent arms of construction cranes on the Dubai Maritime City port were sunk into enough haze to resemble from afar an enormous slow-moving tarantula.

Another aspect of jogging conditions at the track on Russian Beach is that it remains an immensely popular hangout for all sorts of non-jogging people. Yesterday, cricket was the order of the day with the Indian men. There were 3 pick-up cricket games at different points along the track and, yes, I did almost get hit with a tennis ball at one point.

A Good Night in Dubai

2008-06-27T08:05:00.001-04:00

A good night in Dubai starts with Mahbartender shaking some nice peachy drinks in our kitchen, before we swim across the street (summer humidity has kicked in) to the house of wonders that is the Capitol Hotel.

A good night in Dubai continues when one discovers that behind the humble façade, the Capitol Hotel houses a restaurant that serves… BURRITOS! At last, after 2 and a half years of craving Mexican and finding only a few wilted restaurants with nary a Latin American in the kitchen, I found a decent burrito. It’s not amazing, mind you, but it is just across the street. This is a milestone of my life in Dubai.

But the best part is that this is no ordinary restaurant. This is “Savage Garden,” which is a perfect microcosm of Dubai’s gloriously weird side. It’s a small restaurant with ground and mezzanine floors, all decorated like an Amazonian version of the Tiki Room ride in DisneyWorld, with giant fake trees and vines protruding from the walls, interspersed with fake birds and animals and ethnic masks. It may or may not be named after the cheesy Australian pop duo. It has a fabulous live salsa band, comprised mostly of Philipinos and fronted by woman dressed much the same as the working ladies in the lobby. The dancefloor of Savage Garden is aswirl with Dubai’s tight clique of semi-professional salsa regulars, most of whom are Lebanese. And then there was my table of friends, a mélange of nationalities typical of any gathering in Dubai: 1 American, 2 Lebanese, 1 Egyptian, 1 half-Egyptian/half-Swiss, 1 Brit, 1 German, 2 Argentinians and 1 Dane.

A good night in Dubai continues on my favorite club, which is grungy, friendly to all shapes sizes and persuasions, spun by the best imported Lebanese DJs, and underground (literally underground – it’s built into the corner of a basement parking lot).

A good night in Dubai typically ends with some munchies (my fave is a cheese and zaatar mana’oushe), though last night I skipped that part and went straight to the part where I fall into bed with a big grin on my face.

My second hammam

2008-06-20T12:36:00.000-04:00

Today I went to the spectacular Imar Spa. It’s in the middle of nowhere in a neighboring emirate, about an hour drive (or two hours, for a trio of chatty girls).

After stripping down to our disposable spa underwear, we were led one by one into a long, narrow marble room. I stood at the far end, tentatively clutching the metal rail on the wall, while a sturdy grandmother-ish Moroccan lady picked up a small fire hose and proceeded to hose me down from about 15 feet away. Back, arms up, front, side, arms down, kinda felt like I was doing the Macarena in a carwash.

Then they took us into the blue-tiled hammam room to cover us with a gritty henna mixture and leave us to steam for a while. There was much topless giggling.

Then they scoop cups of warm water from the fountain in the center of the room to wash off the henna before slathering us in something that they claimed is soap but looked more like brown Vaseline. Then they spread us out on the marble benches and started to scrub. Wow. I thought the scrubbing in my first hammam in Istanbul was intense, but this was a different league of loofah. When they say exfoliation (which is, of course, not what they say – they have some incomprehensible Moroccan word for it), they really mean it. She twisted me all around to get to unexplored angles – even my armpits were exfoliated! And the stuff that was sloughed off was incredible. About a dozen times through the course of the scrubbing, she would shake off the mitt and drop a little gray 3 inch worm of dead skin. Gross, yet fascinating.

Then they rinse us off, slather us up with some sweet-smelling, curry-colored clay, rinse it off, smooth us down with olive oil and send us on our way.

A Fine Choice of Occupation

2008-06-16T13:30:00.000-04:00

I’m reading the riveting “The People’s History of the United States” over my lunch breaks and I came across an awesome list of middle-class jobs from the 18th century. It includes “Measurer of Coal Baskets” and “Fence Viewer.”

I am pleased with my relative career path.

Indiana Jones and the Last Lame Wobble

2008-06-14T05:50:00.002-04:00

I saw the latest Indiana Jones and was not impressed.

I will admit first that there were a few good things about the movie. For one thing, the reappearance of Marion from first movie was a stroke of genius and nearly saved the movie. Secondly, the filmmakers make great use of the knowledge that the audience is there to relive their childhood fantasies. All they have to do is play the theme music and show the shadow of the hat to send shivers down our collective spines – and they do exactly that in the first scene Indy is in. And then they move on within the first 20 minutes to lob a very interesting question at us: what does it mean to be Indiana Jones in a different decade with a changing world order? After emerging from a refridgerator in which he survived an atomic test, Indy stands silhouetted against a violent sunset-coloured mushroom cloud, battered and bruised, holding the bullwhip, watching the might of a weapon he can’t possibly defeat with his typical gruff and sweaty, giddily hyper-intellectual feats of derring-do. I was wondering, what is our leather-clad hero thinking?

It was an interesting question which, unfortunately, they never got around to acknowledging. They were all too busy sparring terrible dialogue and CGI-ing their way through tedious, unending action sequences. On top of that, I really can’t forgive them the stale old plot and characters. We had 1 almost admirable villainess, who ends up undone by her own ambition as the ancient temple is crumbling. We had 1 man who might be a traitor, or maybe not, but is in any case undone by his own greed as the ancient temple is crumbling. And we had 1 newly discovered son who chafes under the nickname “junior.”

RETIRE! RETIRE! Leave my childhood fantasies in peace.

the best book description i've ever read

2008-05-19T13:40:00.002-04:00

From "Publisher's Weekly"

Eternal Pleasure, by Nina Bangs

In a series inaugural from Bangs ("One Bite Stand"), the Gods of the Night are incarnated for the first time in 65 million years, summoned to protect humanity from an all-encompassing evil that is coming in 2012, at the end of the Mayan calendar. While currently incarnated as deadly, handsome men, they have the ability to assume their prior forms- those of gigantic dinosaurs.

Bangs's skillful blend of vampirology, Mayan lore and extinct monoliths lays solid groundwork for the series- and almost makes it possible to wrap one's head around the idea of men with the souls of dinosaurs as sex objects.

A moment

2008-05-08T00:10:00.001-04:00

I had a beautiful moment on my drive to work this morning. As I was waiting at a stand-still on Dhiyafa in the leftmost lane next to the grassy median, I noticed a bird very close to me. It was a small bird, brown and black with bright yellow rings around the eyes and a yellow beak and legs. It was quite a slick little bird… until it chirped, when it would puff up like a pufferfish with feathers fluffed up in all directions!

I watched him for a while, totally entranced, with my mind rather numbed by the previous night’s work on infrastructure asset operating models until 3am, with the window open in the mild morning heat, with the sun on my face, with Willie Nelson on the iPod.

I think that was one of the only times thattime stood still for a moment while the Dubai traffic stood still.

My brother, Tarzan

2008-04-28T14:23:00.002-04:00

In the midst of his current deployment in Okinawa, Metro is out in a jungle training course for a few weeks. He called to give me an update on his recent activities, which include paintball combat simulation, fending off poisonous snakes, ... and swinging from vines. Now, at first I thought, "yeah, swinging from vines seems like the obvious thing to do in the jungle." Then I realized, I'm pretty sure I don't know anyone who has actually swung on a vine before. That's pretty cool. Like, Tarzan cool.

I'm impressed!

No support for female athletes

2008-04-19T05:16:00.002-04:00

A sports bra, a sports bra, my kingdom for a sports bra!

I’ve been in Dubai now for over 2 years. This is of course 2 years of fairly regular exercising, though I’ve only recently started running again, thanks to the miraculous appearance of a real running track on Russian Beach (those of you who are non-Dubaians might not realize what an incredible thing this is for the municipality to create a non-profit generating thing which encourages bipedal activity, this in a city with no sidewalks). Anyway, this 2 years of athletic activity naturally indicates a time to upgrade various sportswear necessities.

New running sneakers? Check.
A few new comfy, stylish sports trousers? Check.
New sports bra? … ? … ? NEIN.

When I checked all the sporting goods stores (four of them, if memory serves) in Mall of The Emirates and did not find a single sports bra, I was annoyed.

When I checked all the sporting goods stores (another two of them) in Bur Juman and was directed to racks of stretchy spandex shirts, I was beginning to get offended.

When I checked all the sporting goods stores (another three of them) in Festival City and found two stores bereft of anything resembling a sports bra and one Nike store with an unwearably misogynistic range, 80% of which were sold out leaving only 32A and 40C (neither of which would suit my bosom anyway), I was indignant. I was incandescent. I was full of fury at their ignorance of what they are selling. How dare they expect to sell me their overpriced wares when they decorate their walls with motivational action shots of sweaty female athletes and fail to stock the basic necessary items for any form of rigorous exercise.

Argh.

But then when I checked a random sporting goods outlet store in Deira, and reduced the middle-aged, amply-moustached Indian store attendant to hysterical giggles with my explanation of what a sports bra is… well, I guess that was pretty funny.

But still, really, I need a new sports bra.

An unexpected treat at Ice Pack

2008-04-12T15:18:00.005-04:00

Tonight after a long walk in Satwa, we stopped at the glass-fronted milkshake shop, Ice Pack, on the ground floor of our building. What stopped us was the rare sight of a large group of kids in dubai -- the benches were full of adorable kids in football uniforms emblazoned with ICEPACK on the back, all happily sucking on jumbo sized milkshakes and vaguely paying attention to a guy at the front of the room who looked like he was presenting a large round trophy.

We were quite content to sneak peaks and pics from around the corner when a young employee and an older Iranian woman ran up to me and started to get very excited about my scarf. Earlier in the evening, I grabbed my mom's old gold and neon green scarf to throw over my orange tank top (a yay-ish yet somewhat modest outfit suitable for Satwa, I figured). I was a bit perplexed at first, mildly annoyed that they might be protesting to my rather garish color combination, and concerned that they didn't like that we were taking pictures of their ice cream guzzling soccer boys.

But it turns out that the woman who owns the shop was desperately looking for something to wear as a headscarf. Ice Pack is an Tehranian franchise and there were camera men there who wanted to interview her and take photographs for distribution back in Iran, which is possible of course only if she were dressed to Iranian norms. This is what we found out while waiting and chatting to the older woman, who was the owner's mother, and was also at the Googoosh concert (and nearly kissed my hand when I mentioned that I listen to Googoosh CDs in the car all the time), and was intent on showering us with free milkshakes.

So. There you go. Two mothers, 1 bright green and gold scarf, distribution in the Iranian press, and loads of milkshakes. It was a good end to a good night.

a little thought

2008-04-12T11:40:00.002-04:00

When I'm driving down a palm tree-lined street, past the villa walls overflowing with bourganville, listening to hindi music on the radio, I am really quite happy.

Googoosh Live in Dubai!

2008-04-04T12:05:00.002-04:00

Last week I went a massive, chaotic, and wonderful concert by Googoosh, the biggest Iranian singing/acting diva. She's a smoking hot 57-year-old with an enormous voice and a decades-long discography.

I went expecting to have a good time because I like her music (and damn can she belt it out live), but I did not expect the added benefit of cultural observation, getting immersed in a 4-5,000-strong crowd of excited Iranians. Definitely the most Iranians I've ever been around. And I was definitely the only non-bleached blonde in the arena.

I was with Mahboyfriend and my Iranian friend, Sara, who promised me as we walked in that, in a crowd that size, we would get to see "the best and worst" of Iran.

My observations:

(1) Shimmery metallic shirts and rhinestone-studded clothing are a passion, perhaps even a wardrobe necessity. For men and women.
(2) Iranians do not like to stand in a queue. Rather like Indians, they tend to move like a river, flooding all available space around a gateway / ticket counter / etc., piling partly on top of one another, and then spilling out backwards. It was immensely chaotic.
(3) There is a striking diversity of complexion and facial features.
(4) The middle-aged women in headscarves tend to be rectangular in shape.

Here's a clip from the concert. I hope the sound quality is good enough to hear the grown men wailing along with her:

A Subprime Primer

2008-02-18T05:00:00.001-05:00

This link is amazing: http://docs.google.com/TeamPresent?docid=ddp4zq7n_0cdjsr4fn&skipauth=true

I feel smarter already.

No love from Saudi this year

2008-02-14T11:03:00.002-05:00

I was kind of shocked to learn that Valentine’s Day has been banned on 90% of the land mass of the peninsula on which I reside. Apparently, all symbols of the holiday are banned, punishable by arrest.

Surely this is a gesture of defiance against the western commercialization of sexuality, which seems pretty clear on an abstract level but I find it difficult to articulate exactly what they object to on a tangible level. Is it the sale of chocolate? I think that is generally allowed in Saudi. Ditto the sale of sentimental greeting cards. And they can’t possibly be objecting to the principle of buying gifts for one’s wife/wives (what a revolt there would be if GCC women weren’t having diamonds, mahnolos, and solid gold bricks lavished on them). So is it the imagery of fleshy cupids? Is it the possibility of flirting via candy hearts between 2 unmarried, unrelated people? Is it the vestigial prefix “Saint”?

I’m hoping it’s one of the above. Otherwise my only conclusion is that the same town leaders who banned dancing and rock music in Footloose moved to Riyadh and joined forces with the Grinch to steal Valentine’s Day. Boo.

And on a more serious note, what does this mean to ban symbols of something?? Is this not a terrible can of legal worms to open? It's easy enough to say "red roses = valentine's day, so no red roses allowed" but doesn't this pave the way for next year's rule to be "anything red is a symbol of a red rose, so no red allowed" or "you're wearing a pink shirt which means you must be thinking about valentine's day, so i will arrest you" or "you're considered a social dissident so i will find something in your house that symbolically refers to a heart, a piece of chocolate, a greeting card, the color red, or the color pink, so i will arrest you." ?? Slippery slope...

pittar, patter - part two

2008-01-17T06:22:00.000-05:00

This is what happens when it rains for 3 days in Dubai.

pitter, patter

2008-01-13T08:33:00.001-05:00

I arrived back from New York late last night and awoke this morning to a surreal Dubai (even more surreal than normal).

There are epic traffic jams due to security sweeps of certain areas in preparation for George Bush's visit tomorrow and it was just announced that 4 major roads will be closed entirely tomorrow. This essentially cripples the city so most companies are declaring it a day off. Kind of like a snow day. Thanks Dubya, I guess?

In addition to that, it's raining cats and dogs.

So, I'm sitting on the balcony, enjoying the rain's pitter patter on the pool, feeling a little sorry for the palm trees which look quite confused and a little embarrassed to be so wet, and wondering if I'll go to work tomorrow anyway...

A Handful of Yuletide Cheer

2007-12-07T10:01:00.000-05:00

O, Christmas tree, leeeetle Christmas tree...

Isn't it adorable?

Doha Dancing

2007-11-13T11:32:00.000-05:00

Korean delight

2007-11-07T13:29:00.000-05:00

Here's why I love where I live:

Tonight, I walked across the street to the Korean restaurant and enjoyed a very cheap and utterly delicious table full of spicy things next to a party of about a dozen collared korean guys who seemed to be having some sort of going-away party where they did round after round of toasts. And BOY do koreans have a funny toasting style. They stand up, start talking blah blah blah blah, then conclude their speech with about 20 seconds of very gutteral, aggressive yelling which sounds rather like they're about to storm the great wall. Then that guy sits down and the next one stands up, and round and round they go. All in all, it's excellent, if somewhat jarring, dining entertainment.

A Gem from the Archives

2007-10-27T04:44:00.000-04:00

"The Scarlet Sirens and Their Doubly Dangerous Swords of Doom!"

Dubai, the bestest city - Part 7

2007-10-04T09:12:00.000-04:00

Dubai has the FASTEST and MOST STYLISH firefighting force in the universe!

The Dubai municipality has recently unveiled the new fleet of fire-fighting vehicles. Here in the land of gold and luxury, no mere clunky truck will do.

Here we have the world's first, and best, fire-fighting Corvettes...

Who cares whether they can transport any water or not; the important thing is that fire victims feel they are getting the 5-star service they deserve.

Live from Singapore!

2007-08-04T05:02:00.000-04:00

Holy giant sea creatures, batman!

The prawns here are as big as my forearm! Wish I had put something in this picture to set it to scale, but you'll just have to believe me -- you could pick one of these up and give someone a wet, smelly club to the head.

And speaking of heads, the thing in the middle is a lobster head. It is the size of my head. It was like looking into a lobster mirror.

Once Upon a Time...

2007-07-07T10:07:00.000-04:00

Once upon a time, there was a fairy princess who was exiled to a very hot place.

Everyday, in this very hot place, the princess would drive amidst enormous sky-piercing monsters, fields of metal insects with blinking antennae, and a never-ending horde of road-raging strangers.

She would do her best to obey the prevailing laws of the land ("work work work shop shop work shop")... but at night she would dream.

She dreamt of recycling for fun. She dreamt of bicylcing to a yoga class. She had organic vegetable fantasies, and... one night... she dreamt she was lost in The Enchanted Brocolli Forrest...

... to be continued...

Dubai, the BESTEST city - part 6

2007-07-01T01:04:00.000-04:00

Another reason Dubai is the bestest:
We have amazing companies like DAMAC. With its recent launch of a new tower building, it revealed that it's no mere real estate developer... but actually an innovator in the field of neuropsychology, charting the furthest researches of the brainpower of humankind.

From their Chairman in a recent press release: ‘Overlooking Palm Jumeirah, DAMAC Heights offers a pioneering, premier residential complex that offers distinctive lifestyle expressions with unparalleled opportunities. DAMAC has always believed in unique offerings and DAMAC Heights is a truly one-of-its-kind masterpiece, offering the highest form of luxury that anybody can comprehend.’
(http://propdubai.com/news/988/index.php)

a confession, a tragedy + my first video post

2007-06-17T01:34:00.000-04:00

My dirty secret for today is that I have a big soft spot for songs with falsetto. This explains my love of Muse and their gossamer wailing over rumbling bass, and my passion with The Rubettes' "Sugar Baby Love," which slaps you in the face with a full-on falsetto after a mere 15 seconds' diatonic warm-up. And now my obsession has turned to Mika and his "Relax, Take It Easy."

The problem is that, though I love this song and hear it in my head on repeat during most waking hours, it is not possible - in the name of human decency - to sing it aloud. I sound like a trampled cat. And if I sing it in the shower, I sound like a wet trampled cat. And if I sing it in the privacy of my car, zooming through the traffic of SZ Road, I sound like a gay ambulance siren.

And so I am sad. This is my tragedy -- to love a song, and yet to be unable to sing it...

Dubai, the BESTEST city - part 5

2007-06-15T04:39:00.001-04:00

Because they've cracked the secret of linguistic alchemy.

Paracelsus couldn't do it.
Isaac Newton couldn't do it.
Tycho Brahe couldn't do it.
But here in Dubai, they've turned our leaden tongues into... you guessed it... GOLD!

A day in the life of Eva: bathroom surprises

2007-06-10T05:56:00.000-04:00

I've been meaning for quite a long time to start a "day in the life" series. I think now is the time, considering I've featured a dent on my car without ever having shown the car itself which I've had for almost a year without yet posting any pictures of the gleaming white beauty (the car that is, not my pale albino self... though I will do my best to arrange a picture of me dressed in white lounging on the hood of the white car... it will be like one of those posters that you stare at for 5 minutes before some 3D images lunges for your jugular with a dizzying leap).

Anyway. I will never have the patience to document one real day in its entirety so you'll have to tolerate this "day in the life" series being out of order.

Let's start with my morning bathroom break at work...
One of the great benefits of my job is the incredibly diverse team I work with. We have over 30 nationalities in the headquarter office of my company and, despite the unusual odors from the microwave at lunchtime, this is overwhelmingly a positive thing. However sometimes it does sneak up and confuse me.

For instance, I was recently minding my own business in the toilet when I noticed a Listerine bottle out of the corner of my eye.
Fine, fine, until I looked a little closer and spent the next 30 seconds convinced I had been stricken with dyslexia:

Yes, the bottle reads:
Melawan kuman-kuman penyebab bau mulut, plak & radang gusi gingivitis

Dubai, the BESTEST city - part 4

2007-06-05T14:17:00.001-04:00

Where better to experience the wild, wild middle-east?

Let me introduce you to another of Dubai's most excellentest visionarinesses:

From it's website: "Western City was designed using state-of-the-art technology combined with historical elements to create a country environment for tourists by including farms, cowboy shows, and sound and light shows. ...Shows take place the whole day until night giving the public enough time to enjoy each respective show. The public may even choose which show they wish to see at their own convenience, and these shows take place everyday so they may even see them again. The shows involve cowboys driving cattle, Indians chasing buffaloes, wagons of settlers, etc……."

Now, I am thoroughly convinced of the subtlety, class, and cultural tact of this future development, but I would like to clarify a few things about these state-of-the-art shows. For one, are the Indians chasing buffaloes AND wagons of settlers? And secondly, will they import real live American Injuns? I'm sure it would be cheaper if these Indians (like all the other minimum-wage workers in Dubai) were played Phillipinos. Or India-Indians. In leather chaps.

Actually, I'm quite sure I've already seen some of that in an evening entertainment venue in Deira...

Yeeeehaw!

An Homage to Ron

2007-05-26T14:12:00.000-04:00

In honor of my dear neglected friend Ron, I am inviting you into my kitchen to enjoy a modern updating of "humble pie"... HUMBLE BROWNIES...

INGREDIENTS:
250 g dark chocolate
1 large rabbi, melted
2 dwarves, beaten
2 cups pixie stick
1 tsp. ABBA extract
1/2 cup puffyamiyumi
pinch of constitutional law
1 drunk olsen twin (doesn't matter which one)
walnuts

RECIPE:
Preheat the oven to 375 degrees.

Bring the chocolate and melted rabbi to a boil over low heat, stirring constantly, then remove from heat.

In a large bowl, beat the 2 dwarves until light and fluffy, then add the pixie stick and the abba extract and continue beating until creamy.

Beat in the slightly cooled chocolate rabbi mixture, and alternate in puffyamiumi with a pinch constitutional law. Fold in walnuts and the drunk olsen twin.

Pour into a 9x11 glass brownie pan and bake for 35 minutes or until the olsen is slightly browned on top but still gooey in the middle. Let cool for approximately 3 months so Eva knows how you felt when she ignored your utterly fabulous email.

"Cause every time I seem to fall in love... Crash! Boom! Bang!"

2007-05-21T06:42:00.000-04:00

I crashed into my boyfriend from behind! Not metaphorically, really, I hit him when we were waiting at a light.

Here's my little dent. I don't know whether to be proud of her or embarrassed that she's so small. Or just embarrased that I crashed into a stationary object.

Though, it must be said, it isn't nearly as embarassing as when mahboyfriend crashed into the back of a Rainbow milk truck because he was busy making faces at Ve and I as we drove alongside.

The innocent milk truck:

The not-so-innocent provocateurs of the crash:

A poem for today: friday may 18

2007-05-18T07:20:00.000-04:00

"Oatmeal"

I eat oatmeal for breakfast.
I make it on the hot plate and put skimmed milk on it.
I eat it alone.
I am aware it is not good to eat oatmeal alone.
Its consistency is such that is better for your mental health if somebody eats it with you.
That is why I often think up an imaginary companion to have breakfast with.
Possibly it is even worse to eat oatmeal with an imaginary companion.
Nevertheless, yesterday morning, I ate my oatmeal porridge, as he called it with John Keats.
Keats said I was absolutely right to invite him:
due to its glutinous texture, gluey lumpishness, hint of slime, and unsual willingness to disintigrate,
oatmeal should not be eaten alone.
He said that in his opinion, however, it is perfectly OK to eat it with an imaginary companion, and that
he himself had enjoyed memorable porridges with Edmund Spenser and John Milton.
Even if eating oatmeal with an imaginary companion is not as
wholesome as Keats claims, still, you can learn something from it.
Yesterday morning, for instance, Keats told me about writing the "Ode to a Nightingale."
He had a heck of a time finishing it those were his words "Oi 'ad a 'eck of a toime," he said, more or less, speaking through his porridge.
He wrote it quickly, on scraps of paper, which he then stuck in his pocket,
but when he got home he couldn't figure out the order of the stanzas,
and he and a friend spread the papers on a table, and they
made some sense of them, but he isn't sure to this day if they got it right.
An entire stanza may have slipped into the lining of his jacket through a hole in his pocket.
He still wonders about the occasional sense of drift between stanzas,
and the way here and there a line will go into the configuration of a Moslem at prayer, then raise itself up
and peer about, and then lay \ itself down slightly off the mark,
causing the poem to move forward with a reckless, shining wobble.
He said someone told him that later in life Wordsworth heard about the scraps of paper on the table, and tried shuffling some
stanzas of his own, but only made matters worse.
I would not have known any of this but for my reluctance to eat oatmeal alone.
When breakfast was over, John recited "To Autumn."
He recited it slowly, with much feeling, and he articulated the words lovingly, and his odd accent sounded sweet.
He didn't offer the story of writing "To Autumn," I doubt if there is much of one.
But he did say the sight of a just-harvested oat field go thim started on it, and two of the lines,
"For Summer has o'er-brimmed their clammy cells" and "Thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours,"
came to him while eating oatmeal alone.
I can see him drawing a spoon through the stuff, gazing into the glimmering furrows, muttering.
Maybe there is no sublime; only the shining of the amnion's tatters.
For supper tonight I am going to have a baked potato left over from lunch.
I am aware that a leftover baked potato is damp, slippery, and simultaneaously gummy and crumbly,
and therefore I'm going to invite Patrick Kavanagh to join me.

Galway Kinnell

Slightly belated but still as weird as ever

2007-05-12T05:22:00.000-04:00

What scandalous discrimination against coconuts. How can I celebrate Mahashivratri Day without my coconuts?

But in all seriousness, if anyone can explain to me why Mahashivratri Day this year was coconut-free, or what agarbatis are... or what Mahashivratri Day is, that would be grand.

Hole-in-the-Wall Bakery

2007-04-21T03:20:00.000-04:00

From a midnight walk in Satwa, wearing my yellow salwar kameez, which makes all the Indians extra-smiley

My Brother, the Mexican Pimp in Training

2007-04-13T03:40:00.000-04:00

I am pleased to announce my brother's recent acquisition of a vehicle to facilitate his various misadventures. It is a '79 Ranchero, which is indeed a very Metro-esque car, and I expect they will spread good cheer and cheap beer throughout southern California.

I conducted an email interview with him to learn a little more about this exciting new partnership:

Metro: "YEAH!!!! CAR!!!!"

Eva: "What is your car’s anthem song?"
Metro: "Donkey Butt by 2 Live Crew"

Eva: "What is your car’s drink of choice?"
Metro: "Bacardi's Watermelon Rum"

Eva: "If your car could pick its own dashboard decoration, what would it be?"
Metro: "Pizza"

Eva: " Is your car allergic to anything?"
Metro: "Crayons"

Eva: "Does your car like pie? What kind?"
Metro: "Yeah, Pizza Pie. On the dashboard"

Eva: "If your car could replace its wheels with something else, what would it choose?"
Metro: "Tank tracks"

Eva: "If your car witnessed a bank robbery, what would it do?"
Metro: "Honk cause it likes cookies. And robbers"

Eva: "Does your car wear tighty whiteys or boxers?"
Metro: "Boxers. Feel the breeze."

Eva: "If your car had a voice, who would it sound like?"
Metro: "Johnny Bravo"

Eva: "What would your car do on a rainy afternoon with a can of green paint, 3 rollerskates, a pair of ninjas, and a ham?"
Metro: "PARTY!!! Each ninja gets A roller skate to wear on their left foot, push themsleves around with the right foot, and chase the green painted ham that's been stuffed in the other roller skate and is being pushed around by my car. The rain means nothing."

Thanks Metro and Señor 79! I wish you many happy and speeding-ticket-free days together...

Jurassic Bedroom

2007-03-17T13:08:00.000-04:00

Not to toot my own trumpet, but I believe I have achieved a monumental scientific breakthrough and I humbly request you to shout my praises from your rooftop.

Last week before I moving house, whilst most non-geniuses would be preoccupied with packing, boxing, and other plebian concerns, I was double-checking intricate pulvo-pulmotic tests in my highly secure underbed laboratory. When the anticipated date finally arrived, I assembled a prestigious audience of members of the Umm Suqeim Amateur Scientists League and some Keralan moving men to announce the hitherto undreamt-of evolutionary alteration… THE DUST DINASAUR.

I took the DNA of the common dust bunny, injected it with 12 months of darkness, rage, and neglect, carefully modified its intake of oxygen, and eureka!... a dust creature with massive bulk and unsurpassed predatory skills. Note how they travel in tribal packs, laying waste to any socks or small pieces of paper that they come across. Beware, beware the dust dinasaur, and tremble before my mighty scientific power.

Dubai, the BESTEST city - part 3

2007-02-17T11:46:00.000-05:00

What's more impressive than a very tall building? ...
A very tall building upside down! And we have one!

"Amlak Al Madina Real Estates announced the launch of the Upside Down Tower in Dubai with a total cost of AED 800 million. The tower consists of two buildings next to each other one of them is an upside down replica of the other. ... Not only that the tower will look inverted from the outside but it will look inverted from the inside as well. Mentioned examples are palm trees, other indoor plants, water fountains, elevators, and even the numbering sequence of floors."

Woopee!

Dubai, the BESTEST city - part 2

2007-02-16T09:29:00.000-05:00

Why is Dubai the bestest city, you ask?

We could withstand an attack by Godzilla, that's why.

If Godzilla ever stomps his way down from Abu Dhabi, roaring bloody murder and flexing his enormous claws in anticipation, he would be deterred by a security guard his size. You see, local developer AAA Group is doing the citizens of Dubai a great service by building a sentry formidable enough to stop Godzilla in his tracks. They are building... a 35-storey tower in the shape of a man in traditional Gulf dress.

I am not kidding.

So, let's applaud; everyone now, let's applaud the AAA Group for creating a city hero who would open a 140 meter tall can of khaleeji whoopass on any passing mutant lizards looking for a fight, and let's recognize that Dubai is the bestest at city security.

And let's also get excited about the world-firstestness of this innovative structure! I for one would like to pre-register for a 2-bedroom apartment in the man's left buttock! And I'm hoping that, when I want to visit my friend living in a flat in his shoulder, I can ride the spine-themed elevator! Nothing says "class" like chrome-detailed vertebrae.

But that's not all, I read in a different artice that "the peak may include a rotating restaurant and conference centre." Assuming that the peak is his head, we could have the world's first (and BEST!) exorcist-themed architectural triumph, in which you can enjoy a 360 dirham glass of champagne and some fine canapes as you rotate 360 degrees in finest cranial luxury.

Dubai, the BESTEST city - part 1

2007-02-09T06:03:00.000-05:00

We (lebneni and I) have decided that we should be hired by the big man to run a coordinated marketing campaign for Dubai. We would prefer payment in shawarmas, but will also except gold nuggets, gold boulders, gold buildings, and/or a private island, made of gold.

Our new campaign will harness and build upon already-existing marketing messages, most of which are perhaps too subtle to convey the true awesomestness of this place… e.g.,
“Burj Dubai: the most prestigious square kilometer on the planet"
and "Dubai Mall: the earth has a new center"

These are eloquent and delicate messages and I’m concerned that a visitor, groggy still from his red-eye flight and with his sense of urban potential numbed from years of living in New York or London, well, he might fail to grasp our world-class premiumosity and revolutionary visions of classic luxury.

So, let’s make it easy for everyone with this campaign theme… "Dubai is THE BESTEST CITY EVER!"

And with that, I would like to begin a series within this blog, which I will dedicate to updating you on Dubai’s bestestness.

Stay tuned, it will redefine your sense of lifestyle...

Save me!

2007-02-09T04:16:00.000-05:00

I have most alarming news. The golden-rumped elephant shrew and the slender loris are in danger of going extinct.

I have to admit that, despite my flax-munching, yoga-twisting, recycled toilet paper hippy ways, my commitment to species saving activity has hitherto been limited to buying those deeelICious Endangered Species Chocolate bars (http://www.chocolatebar.com). But now that the golden-rumped elephant shrew and the slender loris are on the line, I think it’s time to step it up!

But, um, what do I do? How do I save these little critters? Can I pull a Dian Fossey and live in their midst, studying their quiet majesty, and running with them through the jungle? Can I start a Slender Loris farm here in Umm Suqeim? That sounds like a sweet plan... I’ll recreate their natural habitat in my back garden and, for those of them that want to adopt a more modern Western lifestyle, they can come inside and live in my cupboards. I’ll sew little tuxedos for the lorises (lorii?) and tu-tus for the golden-butted shrews and train them to prepare fancy cocktails, and talk. Yeah.

Tell me this guy wouldn't look sharp in a tux?

Onions

2007-02-09T04:09:00.000-05:00

I have a terrible eye infection. I feel like The Flaming Eye of Sauron. But I don’t want my blog to be invaded by freaky little Tolkien fans, so I will instead pursue this metaphor: it feels like the floor is made of onions.

And on that note, I have some fun facts about onions for you:
1) Egyptians believed onions had strength-producing powers, therefore, they were fed to labors who built the pyramids.
2) Roman gladiators were rubbed down with onion to firm up their muscles.
3) In the Middle Ages onions were such an important food that people would pay for their rent with onions and even give onions as gifts.
4) Libya boasts the maximum per capita consumption of onions with 66.8 pounds of onion consumed per person per year.
5) Parsley can help you get rid of onion breath.
6) The largest onion ever grown weighed 10 pounds 14 ounces. It was grown by V. Thorp of Silsden, England.

just a thought

2007-02-08T09:09:00.000-05:00

I don't like movies set in outer space.

Better at science than playing with others

2007-01-25T08:59:00.000-05:00

3 recent BBC news articles indicate that the US military is astoundingly smart. Really.

No, really! Look, this stuff is amazing:

US military unveils heat-ray gun
The US military has given the first public display of what it says is a revolutionary heat-ray weapon to repel enemies or disperse hostile crowds which projects an invisible high energy beam that produces a sudden burning feeling, but is said to be harmless.
(http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/6297149.stm)

US military looks to 'black ice'
The US military is developing a novel weapon - artificial black ice - for use in arid environments. It would cause enemy vehicles and soldiers to lose footing, whilst a spray-on "reversal agent" could be incorporated into boots and tyres to prevent friendly forces sliding around.
(http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/6295567.stm)

US 'plans stealth shark spies'
Pentagon scientists are planning to turn sharks into "stealth spies" capable of tracking vessels undetected. (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/4767428.stm)

So that whole bully persona is just a front to disguise the fact that we are actually lovable, EVIL GENIUSES!
muahaha MUAAAHAHAHA MUAAAAHAHAHAHAAAAAA!!!

A clarinetist to watch out for

2007-01-19T14:55:00.000-05:00

Bet you thought I was being ironic with that title.

But no, just as there are lady accordianists whom I respect and admire, there is a clarinetist that you MUST watch out for, if you are interested in gypsies, Joy, or clarinets. His name is Ismail Lumanovski. He is a 22-yr-old Julliard student with devilishly fast fingers, and he fronts the New York Gypsy All-Stars, which gave the best live concert I’ve ever seen last Saturday. I was screaming along to songs in languages I don’t even know.

No recorded albums yet, but I’m waiting. With my breath held. (Hurry up, Ismail...)

Opera for the masses?

2007-01-19T14:38:00.000-05:00

In Manhattan last week I was lucky enough to catch a global premiere… the first-ever live simulcast of a Met opera into movie theaters around the world. I think this is a fab idea. An opera ticket for $18…and you can wear a hoodie and jeans… and munch popcorn and slurp a diet coke!

I was especially excited about the opera itself, The First Emperor, by Tan Dun (composer of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, which I adore for its exotic epic sentimentality and magic twinkly treetop theatrics). Unfortunately, I think the opera was only a partial success. Costumes were glorious, the set and lighting were grand, and the purely instrumental musical interludes were by turns majestic and spectacularly eerie (including some handheld instrument that looked like a bottomless, haunted birdcage turned an upside-down and played with a bow). Another highlight was the chinese acrobatics and the way the actors imported from the Peking Opera would sometimes contort into ludicrous 'praying mantis’ positions to emphasize a sentence. Oooh, and my other favorite thing was watching the orchestra grapple with ancient Chinese grunting – there was one shot of a middle-aged musician in pearls and a prim black sweater chanting along to the chorus’ “HAAA!!… HOO!!… HAASHY!!” which is what I imagine one would say whilst stomping, glowering, and preparing to decapitate one’s mortal enemy. That was worth the price of admission alone.

On the downside, the production completely failed to engage me on an emotional level. For one thing, the lyrics were in English – a fatal flaw as far as I’m concerned. As a novice opera-goer, I find the art form to be awkward enough with those stiff stage movements and warbly vocal abstractions. It’s even harder to swallow when you know that they've boomed out two dozen syllables to say “you are the princess.” Even worse is the story itself. It’s the story about a man who unites a country by killing everyone who didn’t want to be united. How you can ruin the excitement of that is really beyond me.

Still, kudos to Tan Dun for putting some Chinesiness into opera. And kudos to the Met for being brave enough to challenge the elitism of the medium and giving us cinema-goers a treat. I hope they make it a regular program…

A Neon Kiss

2007-01-17T05:07:00.000-05:00

Good Names for Falafel Shops

2006-11-06T09:40:00.000-05:00

(in all the names below, you have to pronounce "falafel" like an american: "fuh-lah-fuhl")

The Awful Falafel
(for the ironic, urban hipster crowd, in need a snack after a drizzly 3am exit from a bar)

The Unlawful Falafel
(for Texas where they’re soon to ban the idea of Arabic people)

A Jawful of Falafel
(for hungry boys)

A Troughful of Falafel
(for hungry, messy boys)

A Draw’ful of Falafel
(for Bostonians who keep their falafels in drawers)

Belgian Waffle ‘N’ Falafel
(for the transglobal munchies, working off the same basic principle of LA’s successful establishmen,: Roscoe’s House of Chicken ‘N’ Waffles. Yes, this is a real restaurant and, yes, it is deeeeelicious! www.roscoeschickenandwaffles.com)

Thanks to PoorDaniel for his invaluable input to this promising new concept.

A Dream Come True

2006-11-05T08:28:00.000-05:00

I've always wanted a shawarma man in my garden... and, thanks to my villamate's 30th birthday bash, I finally got one! Yippee!

Concrete Ninjas!

2006-10-25T10:27:00.000-04:00

Who knew Metro could have so much fun with a big shovel??

... actually, we should have guessed. Fun with Objects is his speciality.

Saving the World, One Naive Suggestion at a Time

2006-10-20T05:28:00.000-04:00

Wouldn't it be great if all churches and mosques were dual-function?

Rub-a-Dub-Dub, Turkey in a Tub

2006-10-16T13:17:00.000-04:00

Well it wasn't really a "tub"... and, strictly speaking, neither was it a bath, even though "Turkish bath" is usually how it's translated...

The hamam is actually a big marble steam room, with a domed roof and crazed, half-naked bath attendants who sing slow, echoey, yodely songs in Turkish. First they lead you into the central room where you lay on a hot marble slab with a fire underneath it until all your muscles slowly melt. Then they take you to a side room where you take your towels off and sit down to have several bowls of water thrown in your face before they tie black brillo pads to their hands and scrape your limbs until all the dead skin (and rather a lot of live skin) is removed. Next, they toss you onto a little marble shelf -- and here's I started giggling uncontrollably -- they have some Incredibly Soft Thing which they dip into a bowl of hot soapy water and, when they rub you with the Incredibly Soft Thing, an enormous volume of soap bubbles suddenly appear. After a few minutes of Incredibly Soft Thing magic, your entire world becomes soap bubbles and you float around in it while the crazed, half-naked bath attendants massage you. After the massage comes the merciless bowls of shriekingly cold water, then they let you collapse onto the hot marble until you can breathe again, then they wrap you up head-to-toe in giant dishtowels!

You can make fun of us for looking like homeless elves, but we are SO CLEAN!

Baby's First Sandstorm

2006-09-05T07:41:00.000-04:00

The world outside looks like it's been immersed in a giant tan-colored cloud, or like my life has been gently sepia-stained.

The Emiratization of an Eva

2006-09-01T06:47:00.000-04:00

For some reason, the girls in my office have latched on to the idea that I would look great in local dress. Maybe they're tired of looking at my un-ironed button-down shirts... maybe they just thought my face would be improved by an inch of make-up... maybe they were hoping it would make me speak more Arabic so they could laugh at my accent (apparently I sound like giddy little "baby")...

In any case they convinced me be hijab for a little photo shoot the other day. I was hoping it would come with a free Cavalli handbag, but no such luck!

Bored in Kuwait, thinking about balls

2006-08-30T00:32:00.000-04:00

This one goes out to my darlingest wittle bwother who is being subjected to long, long days of welding and concrete and is getting delusional under the Gulf sun. He regressed to singing the jingles of decades-old children’s games and, somewhere, from the dim dusty corner of his attic of memories, he found this gem with the dirtiest jingle I’ve ever heard… Lyrics below, or you can watch the commercial on http://youtube.com/watch?v=73CeugDTQjA

That's right, I'm Mr. Bucket!
I'm Mr. Bucket toss your balls in my top
I'm Mr. Bucket out of my mouth they will pop
I'm Mr. Bucket!
We're all gonna run!
I'm Mr. Bucket! Buckets of fun!
Announcer: The game's Mr. Bucket! The first to get their balls into Mr. Bucket wins! But look out, the balls will pop out of his mouth!

I'm Mr. Bucket, balls pop out of my mouth
I'm Mr. Bucket, a ball is what I'm about
I'm Mr. Bucket!
We're all gonna run!
I'm Mr. Bucket! Buckets of fun!
Kid: I win!

Buckets of fun!
Announcer: Mr. Bucket, from Milton Bradley

YOU WIN, METRO!!

In celebration of cerebra

2006-08-29T08:42:00.000-04:00

Here's to happy, healthy brains!

How do you say “OUCH” in Thai?

2006-08-26T04:21:00.000-04:00

Today was a sad day for Dubai. We bid adeiu to Thiwa, the Thai masseuse / sadist par excellence. Goodbye, Thiwa! I will miss your iron-capped elbows and brutal thumbs…

I’ve been paying Thiwa to hurt me on a near-weekly basis since I moved here and I fear my trips to the Bliss Relaxology dungeon of excruciation and involuntary yelps will never be quite the same. I’ve been kneaded by the other masseuses and, though their sweet giggles mask no small measure of cruel delight in their ability to dig fingers in non-existant crevices between muscle and bone, none have quite the effect of Thiwa. He pulls me apart limb from limb then pats me back in shape. Kind of like a pulled pork bbq sandwich. Or like a potato in the utter joy it feels upon metamorphising into a delicious mound of mashed potatoes. Mmmm…. pulled pork bbq sandwich and mashed potatoes…

Eek, did I just catch myself being nostalgic for North Carolina?!

I love MP Galloway!

2006-08-08T10:57:00.000-04:00

This is hands-down the most fabulously articulate political commentary I've ever seen on an english-speaking media channel. Please watch it!

http://news.sky.com/skynews/video/videoplayer/0,,31200-galloway_060806,00.html

My First Khaleeji Wedding

2006-07-29T09:51:00.000-04:00

Tonight I crashed a local wedding with my friend Hissa. “How is that different from a western wedding” you ask? Well, for one thing the prevailing opinion is that adequate decorations require a team of set constructors; in this case, they were going for a lavish high school production of Mid-Summer Night’s Dream look (you know, all whimsical trees and flowery bowers). The other main difference is that they’re segregated by gender. I’d like to imagine that the men have epic limbo contests or something but I really don’t know what they do. However, I do now know what the women do… they jiggle around in preposterously awesome dresses.

Seriously, these things are a wonder. I’ve never seen anything like them in the west. It’s as if every dress must have 5 dresses’ worth of stuff on it. Lace? Check. Satin? Check? Rhinestones? Check. Emroidery? Appliques? Sequins? Check, check, and extra-check (the more sequins the better). Velvet? Mesh? Pearls? Attached 3-quarter lengths sleaves? At least 3 conflicting neon colors and an asymmetrical neckline? Check! More than anything else, they resemble figure skating costumes made into full length ballgowns.
These are some extremely restrained examples:

Adding to the peculiarity of it is that, whilst all the women are dressed like this, not all of them will show it. Some are sashaying their magenta be-ribboned asses around, cleavage everywhere and eyes so heavily made-up that they sink to slits. Others wear the abeya (floor length black gown) but with their perfect coifs uncovered. Others keep the head scarf and the abeya on. Others, usually only a few older women, wear the headpiece that extends over the nose and covers the mouth with a triange of metal (the shape of these always reminds me of a beak and so when I see their wrinkled faces with pointed metal beaks I see some sort of half-hag / half-hawk creature of Greek mythology). Anyway, all this is in the same room, so as you look around, you see a lot of black, a few bird monsters, and pockets of intense color and cleavage.

I wish I could share pictures, but of course cameras are forbidden because no man can see them dressed that way unless he’s the hubby. Sorry! Girls only!

Disproportionate is hardly the word

2006-07-21T06:12:00.001-04:00

This is a picture taken Monday of Israeli girls signing shells to be fired into Lebanon.
What kind of world is this? These girls should be scribbling cutsy flirtations in ballpoint pen on the soles of boys' converse all-stars. Instead, they're drafting messages of hate on notepaper that does this:

and this:

These are innocent civilians, and they're being killed by the hundreds. The Israeli girls' "notes" are supplemented by internationally prohibited chemical weapons (a fact that seems curiously absent from the american news coverage).

More pictures, petitions, donations links etc. on www.fromisraeltolebanon.info

Speechless

2006-07-13T10:33:00.000-04:00

What does one say to someone whose hometown is under attack? I don’t know, and feel a lesser girlfriend for it.

I’m scared by the recent activity in Lebanon and Israel and don't know what to do about it. Life here in Dubai is just the same as normal, spinning by at a pace I can’t afford to step away from. But an airport runway I’ve actually landed on now lays in smoking ruins and a suburb I’ve driven through is about to be flattened by Israeli tanks. It’s surreal and terrifying, and that's just the reaction of a girl who's visited once.

I can scarcely imagine how people in Beirut are reacting. When I was there, I was struck by the prominence of the scars left on the public psyche by the civil wars. Years of relative peace have ticked by, but still “in the war” “during the war” “because of the war” is in every sentence and on every brick in the city. It didn’t seem to me to be a negative preoccupation, just an acknowledgment of the centrality of the war in their city identity. I even felt something positive in it, in that there seemed to be a palpable sense of relief, still, in the termination of that danger and chaos. My heart goes out to them now – it must feel like relapsing into a nightmare.

What Lebanonsense!

2006-06-03T12:01:00.000-04:00

Beirut recently dislodged Sevilla as my favourite city I’ve never lived in.

Gorgeous, gregarious, bursting at the seams with charm.

Crimson cabs.

Bullet-bruised buildings.

Beiruti balcony bliss.

Downhill stripping

2006-05-10T14:16:00.000-04:00

You can take the girls out of boarding school, but apparently you can't take boarding school out of the girls!

Congrats to the half-naked bride-to-be taking the picture!!

a baby step towards hell

2006-04-07T08:33:00.000-04:00

I bought expensive sunglasses. Very expensive sunglasses. With a name on the side.

WHAT HAS BECOME OF ME?!!

Raining gerbils and hamsters

2006-03-02T08:32:00.000-05:00

SO… I moved to Dubai.

I moved on a whim, thinly disguised as a job. I came for some sun, I came to see the shiny buildings, I came because I’ve never been to the Middle East aside from a midnight layover in the Abu Dhabi airport, which rather resembles a spaceship dressed as a Las Vegas peacock.

Dubai is an odd place. Modern, bustling, incredibly exciting, and yet somehow hollow. No heart, no soul. I guess this is the Tin Man of cities. More on that in another post… For now: let’s talk about the weather. 75’ and sunny everyday, not a cloud in sight. Apparently it rains here 3 days a year. This is likely to drive me insane eventually (I live for thunderstorms), but it’s OK as a novelty for the moment.

We had one of our three days of rain earlier this week. It sprinkled for a few hours and, amidst panicked cries of “it’s raining cats and dogs!,” I watched from my glass office tower as the city streets transformed into accident-clogged canals. There are no sewage or gutter systems here! Traffic fatalities (already the highest per capita in the world) quadrupled that day and the camels looked confused.

People keep asking me if I’m going to stay. I’m not sure yet. I’ve met some brilliant people, including my long-lost twin brother, but it lacks the quirky, historic, and cosy elements of a city which I usually gravitate towards.

I certainly COULD live here. It’s full of interesting things to look at…

… but I COULD get along pretty much anywhere, and that includes most cardboard boxes.

(though not a box with one of these in it.)

The question is not COULD I make it work here, but should I? Or should I shove off in favour of a city with a wardrobe broader than business suits and evening glitter?

Answers would be most appreciated.

Thank God for Grannies

2006-01-16T21:30:00.000-05:00

Mine bakes sublimely delicious cherry pies. Because I’m her “sweetie pie!”

R. Kelly Touches Us All

2006-01-14T23:03:00.000-05:00

When I heard the rumblings last year about a new R. Kelly album, my whoop-di-doo-o-meter registered a negative 3. I’ve never been a big fan of the “hoodlum with a heart of gold” school of R&B… and then there was that sex scandal. He handled that so badly. Really, R., everyone knows that you have to cut off their tongues and hands so they can’t identify you later.

So it was with much protestation that I let my friend Patty O’Mallory play me a selection from this new album. He introduced ‘Trapped in the Closet’ to me as a complex and delicately rendered tale of domestic strife, each track an elegant “chapter” of a visionary masterwork. He pressed play. My distaste quickly gave way to prune-faced disgust – “there’s no tune! and the lyrics are stream-of-consciousness!” – which evolved into confusion – “wait, this second track has the same aimless instrumentation” – then wonderment – “did he just say the neighbor burst in brandishing a spatula?” – incredulity – “did he just say ‘I said what, you said damn, I said I know?’ and why is there still no tune?” – awe – “there’s a midget in the closet! and still no tune!” – and finally fanatical flabbergastification. “This is it,” I declared, “the Ulysses of our generation!”

Now, R. Kelly knows his shiznit is radicizzally insurrectionizzlist, but he’s mistaken as to the nature of his innovation. He claims he is a genius for pioneering what he daringly labels “hip-hopera.” Most fans of the genre would credit that honor instead to Prince Paul’s ‘A Prince Among Thieves’ (an outstanding album with, among other virtues, a tune… several in fact), released in 1999. However, as I just learned this evening, most fans would be wrong because the Animaniacs beat both Prince Paul and R. Kelly to the punch with their 1997 album, 'Animaniacs Starring In A Hip-Hopera Christmas.’ Yakko, Wakko, and Dot in da house.

No, R. Kelly’s genius is in the way he shatters our narrow modern notions of lyricism. He eschews the hackneyed verse/chorus structure. He heroically dismantles our feeble dependence on meter and melody. He altogether transcends the primitive habit of rhyming (though, oddly, I read an interview in which he congratulated himself on his ability to deliver the complex narrative in rhymed prose, which is a surprising claim given his failure even to capitalize on the opportunities presented by a character named Bridget having an affair with a MIDGET). But even amongst these bold innovations, his greatest accomplishment is the subtle blend of microscopic detail with gritty dialogue:
- He says “move.” / She says, “no.” / He says “move.” / She says, “no.” / “BITCH MOVE!” / She moves.
- whoo while Twon & Sylvester sniffin’ around / tryin’ a figure out what’s that smell / as they turn and look at each other like whaaat the hell?
- *Cough cough* *cough cough* / Twon starts coughin'. / *cough cough*
- Then she cries out “Oh my goodness, / I'm about to climax.” / And I said, “Cool.”
- Then the midget takes his inhaler out / and says, “This is not good for my heart.”
- whoooo the midget faints again / while Twon and Sylvester is trippin’ / “The midget is the baby's.....daddy” / whoo!
- The midget say “God I think I just shit'ted on myself”

Best of all, he has figured out how to convey heightened emotion and narrative tension by simply singing louder. It’s a masterpiece. A towering accomplishment in the history of musical endeavor. A virtuosic reflection on the grit, glory, and heartbreak of the human condition.

But would you expect anything less from a man who pees on fourteen-year-old girls?

Plumps When You Cook It

2006-01-04T16:02:00.000-05:00

“What’s my favorite meal? Why, hot dogs and champagne, darling.” (Marlene Dietrich)