Around the Neighborhood

Over the past few weeks I have been collecting a series of actual things and personal impressions from our environment, all so I can share them with you. These are all things we encounter everyday, and find them noteworthy enough to point them out.

1. Arab Google. I love it. Go visit http://www.google.ae/ and you will see what I mean. How cool is it to type your search command in from right to left?

2. Arabic Blogger Log-in. Yes, for this very site, we have learned how to log in in arabic. Not by choice, but because when the page opens here, the dashboard is in arabic, making it somewhat difficult to find the button for switching to english. Since it is fairly obvious which boxes are for the username and password, we just go for it and it seems to be working!

3. Censorship. Yes, the web is censored here. Some restriction does not bother me: i.e. pornography. But come on--can't we have some free music and videos? And don't you think a little pornography might help assuage the problem at the beaches where men go in hoards and just stand there looking at the sunbathers in their swimsuits?

4. Lebanese Music Videos. How to find the words. Imagine a hip-hop video, but multiply the sexual suggestiveness factor by about 100, and you will have the Lebanese music video. Except the zoom-ins on female body parts are not onto nicely lipoed butts and other, no. We are talking full-on cellulite. Normally I would think, how cool! They take women as they are! But actually, when you are at the gym working away at your own lumpy parts, it is rather disgusting to see another woman shaking hers right in the camera, right in front of you on the ellyptical trainer. Yuck. Especially when combined with over-executed coquettishness and other simpering female behavior. I know some of these things are culturally bound, and thus difficult to understand. But I swear, these videos make Beyonce look like a choir girl. And further, considering number 3 above, the whole thing is slightly hypocritical.

5. The FIDC Lifestyle. I work in the "first purpose-built business center in Dobby". Yes, on entering my building complex, which was specifically designed as the principal financial center (with its own courts), stock exchange, and capital market center for Dobby, your first impression will likely be WOW. Swanky. The halls are lined in black marble, classical music is playing, and everyone is wearing a suit.

Of course, entering the building is dependant on getting to the building, and for a "purpose-built business center" you would think the exterior would be well thought out too. But no, not if you approach the building on foot. By car you are fine (if you are lucky enough to have a parking spot). But on foot you are screwed, because the one thing left out of this "purpose-built" fantasy land are crosswalks. And the entire place is surrounded by roads.

Since I walk to work from Harry's office parking across the street, I face this problem everyday (as do many other business people I have noticed walking as well). I have to cross four two lane roads to get to the FIDC. Seems like it should not be a problem. Sadly, it is, for me and others, because cars here are not only pedestrian un-friendly, they are actually pedestrian-aggressive. Drivers will speed up when they see you in the road, rather than slow down and let you pass. The result of this mess is nicely clad business people, in suits with briefcases, are all doing these weird little hop-scurry-leap dances across the roads to get to the FIDC every morning without getting smashed by a Range Rover or Porsche Cayenne. It's hilarious. And severly pissing off (since I am one of these people). And basically, another one of those Dobby situations of "what the f*&*^ were they thinking when they built this mother-*&^*%er?.

6. Working Girls. And I don't mean lawyers like me. I mean expensive female prostitutes that are shipped in directly to some of the five star hotels from their resepctive countries of origin by the hotel-owners (usually some Sheikh). It is really disturbing, but for several reasons. First, how sad, these women have so few choices in life that this one is actually viable. Second, how intimidating! These women are so perfectly put together, tall, thin, young, expensive, and seemingly perfect that being a normal woman, working long hours in some form or fashion, all of a sudden seems really frumpy and unattractive. Which brings me to point three: How irritating! What a mockery of femininity. These women create an illusion that is is normal to be six feet tall (thanks to the shoes), 100 pounds, well enhanced, and always excessively made up and put together in designer brands. If this is what men believe a woman is supposed to be, sorry ladies, those of you unattached (and some that are) are basically screwed. It is a little like being surrounded by models and modelizers...... The problem is, you can't go out to the nice bars and resturants without being surrounded by them.

And this ironically brings me to closing with:

7. The Burkini. Brilliant. If you can't tell by the name, this is a swim/athletic suit designed for "conservative" women. In other words, women who are not supposed to show skin, or just don't want to, can wear this top and pants outfit (with an attached head covering that looks like a swim cap) for swimming, running, sports, etc. It is made out of special sports fabric, can be worn in the water, and while form-fitting, it is not tight by any strectch of the imaginiation. I may sound sarcastic while writing this, but actually, I think it is great. Many Muslim women don't do sports because they don't want to be immodest (one reason all the gyms here have a seperate little gym for ladies only). But this is not good for health at all, so having sportswear that gives these women (and burn victims, or others who don't want to bare all) a comfort zone is fabulicious. Check it out on google. You could even try google.ae!

Shout out and Apology

I now see it is February 16th, and the last time I posted was back in January. That is just inexcusable (alhtough I have some really good excuses like new lawyer job, traffic jams, grumpy husband and so forth). SO now, it appears a regular feature of this blog will be an apology from Sadie, as only an oldest child who tends to the overly-responsible/guilty can make.

I'm sorry for not posting more! And I am sorry for me, because writing this blog is proving theraputic, and despite my earlier claims to having "adjusted" to life in Dobby, and being "un-fazed by the traffic and bad customer service," I can now honsetly say I was completely delusional when I made those statements. You should see me screaming explicatives in the morning on our way to work (via a massive traffic jam), and degenerating into tears on our way home at 9PM (via another massive traffic jam). Harry just looks at me like who is this creature I bound myself to for life?

But we have both resolved to communicate more with all of you, especially since we miss you all terribly and have yet to click with a group of friends here....although we have met some wonderful people and can count a few neat individuals as part of a network under development.

And now for the Shout-out. Being basically blog-illetarate, other than posting and sometimes adding a photo, I have had trouble listing the two other blogs I read regularly, written by people I admire and love. One of these blogs was the inspiration for this blog, and is written by someone Harry and I hold near and dear, admire greatly, and die laughing almost every time we visit her site. That said, I ENCOURAGE all of you to visit http://www.adventuresinselfloathing.blogspot.com/ (formerly http://www.selfloathingsuckers.blogspot.com/).
And to you Ms. Laaw-yher, if you are reading this, you have some mucho mas huevos and I am excited for your big, ongoing change. Kudos, and much love. And please come visit.

One other Shout-out. To my mother's fifth-grade class: we loved your letters! And yes, we have lots of running water here, and no we don't have our own horses, but lots of other people do. We will write a special posting to answer all of your questions, and send along more if you like. Maybe my mom will give you extra credit :-).

Good News and Happy Times

As you all should bloody well know, we have two newspapers in Dobby because Dobby is a world class city that believes in open competition, and two can compete better than one.

Ladies and gentlemen,


Allow me to present the two marvels of press freedom, editorial independence, and integrity of news reporting in the Gelf... the Good News and the Happy Times!


In keeping with Dobby's vision of having only the world's largest, biggest, tallest, longest, and other superlative things, the Good News is the World's Thickest Newspaper. It is rumoured that many unexplained deaths in Dobby are the result of unhappy, overworked housewives swatting their husbands with the morning's Good News to "wake them up"and then going "oops!"


Happy Times on the other hand, appears to be taking its weight problems seriously. On most days, Happy Times knows it has little to contribute to the discussion and goes off to a corner and slunks (but Happily). Also, since it is a newspaper, and has to actually say something to justify its existence, it paraphrases everything that Good News has to say, and tries to say it better.


The word of the year seems to be "subprime," right? Well, not so in Dobby!


In Dobby, everything's hunky-dory and tick-tock because..., guess what? We have a new crown prince! And a sub-crown prince (or some such). And what makes things even better is they were personally chosen for their new jobs by Big Chief himself! What a pleasant surprise! And so the Twin Typeset-Tragedies would have us rejoice in the knowledge. The two newspapers don't just compete, they bait each other and seek to draw blood every morning... and they pretty much compete on just one thing: who can praise Big Chief better.


So, if Good News says something on the lines of, "Big Chief Rocks!", Happy Times will follow that with "Go Big Chief!"... And then each paper will throw in half a dozen photos of various Chiefs and their sons and their brother and their cousins and so forth in various stages of Rocking in different situations. If they can't find any recent evidence of Rocking, they will get some musty old file photos of period Rocking and plaster them all over with inane headlines like, "Big Chief Rocked back then too" or "Big Chief has been rocking ever since".

Big Chief actually got a little irritated once, and said something on the lines of "The Dobby press is free. It is not freedom that they lack. They are just timid." Well said, Big Chief. As you all can easily predict, Big Chief's comments were plastered on the front pages of both papers. And then, well, they just sort of moved on.

What is singularly irritating is the way the Dobby papers expect everyone to have a short attention span. A case in point being how they refer to Big Chief, or any of the other Chiefs. Big Chief is never just Big Chief in the Dobby papers; he is "His Highness Vice-President and Prime Minister of the Federation and Ruler of Dobby"... I think he is also the Supreme Commander of the Federal Armed Forces or some such, and that is something that doesn't escape the papers' attention. I mean, come on! Everyone in Dobby and Aboo know exactly who all the Chiefs are, how they're related to each other and what titles they all carry. Why waste newsprint space repeating their FULL titles every time?? Don't ask.

There is a theory that the reason for the full title business is, every article is written by a "journalist" of a different nationality, and there is no common editorial policy that requires them to ocordinate their writing styles, so they want to save their skinny a**ses thorugh the use of superlative honorifics.

The one thing that Dobby papers are good for, though, is the fact that they reproduce news from every part of the world. Sincee the majority of the people in Dobby are from one of three nationalities, Good News has rights to reprint ENTIRE newspapers from those three countries as part of itself. Ergo, World's Thickest Newspaper.

As for balanced reporting, well, it's not as bad as one might imagine. Except for the Chiefly families, and their friends, and the government machinery (which takes away a majority of the stuff that newspapers elsewhere like to bitch about), everyone else is fair game. For example, the Happy Times' headline on Dubya's visit to the region said, "Middle East on Bush Alert" followed by his itinerary.

Crime reporting is another hilarious form of journalism here. Every suspect, accused, convict, witness, and victim is referred to by their initials and their nationalities. Nationalities!! Like their being Philipino or Indian makes them worse human beings than say, Saudi or "Western".

The eagle-eyed among you may remember Sadie's post on job listings a while ago. "Wanted smart Western executive secretary: salary 18,000 bucks" and "Wanted Indian Sales Manager: salary 5,000 bucks" and so forth.

Nuff said! Sadie and I are sick of the newspapers here. They suck. Luckily for us, Big Chief decreed a long time ago that TV was ok, and you get TV channels from all over the world. The ones from those parts of the world where they have real editors and real people are especially good. That includes Al Jazeera, from what I hear, contrary to what Bushie might tell you.

Alright. So now we have a TV, and the daily paper shall henceforth park itself directly in the recycling pile. More on the TV when we've set it up. I'm sure the cable company won't make things any easier.

Cheers, all!