Departing Dubai

The last few days in Dubai were spent on the beach by day and out on the town by night.  Spent the last night with Rich and Jen along with my new friends from Cerner, Rhae and Jeni.  After an amazing dinner at the sushi restaurant Nobu we partied at the artificial peninsula'd bar 360 under the Burj Al Arab.  A fitting last night for capturing the essence of Dubai.

A big thanks to the Berner family for permitting me to crash their lives for the last 3 weeks and allowing me to see such a fabled locale, that normally would not have been afforded on my travels.

A hour before I left for the airport, I got a positive lead on a Couchsurfing experience in Cairo so we will see what works out.

From new to old empires,

Brian

A Hundredaire in the Land of Millionaires

Things are still gravy over here in Dubai. Janey's last couple days here were spent trying to enjoy the beach and giving her some assurances that I will not take any unnecessary risks in this next leg of the trip, which may be the longest yet. These fell short with her with her knowledge of my quest to get an Iranian visa. She did me a solid by coming over and helping me out with the kids, proving once again that she is the best mother you could ask for. Love ya Janey!
With Janey gone as of last Friday, I held down the fort until Rich and Jen arrived back from Italy on Saturday night. I have gotten the whole childcare thing down pat--I just write reminders all over my hands to get me through the day-"take kids to school," "pick up at 12," "naps at 3pm," "locking children in the closet is no longer an acceptable disciplinary practice," etc, etc. Probably my best talent as a Manny is the long-winded bedtime stories that are occasionally required. With the memory capability of a pasta strainer, I usually have to think hard to pull up a story suitable for children under 9. Quickly running out of appropriate material, I started telling G-rated adaptations of movie story lines that are fresh in my head. I was halfway through the Caddyshack story, when Emma the 8 year-old called me on the ruse and said that my story sounded exactly a movie she has seen. I sure hope that she was referring to similar storyline of The Legend of Bagger Vance with Will Smith.....
As usual, once being in a spot for a lengthy amount of time, I start to get the itch to press on. Just bought a ticket for Cairo for this Sunday. Got any travel advice for the region? Friends there I should know about? Loving words? Shoot me them.
Have the rest of the week to soak in the last of Dubai and hang with Rich and Jen. Will give you the last scoop before I depart.

Yours,
BQ

Desert Skiing

Wanna go snow skiing but are faced with the tiny hang-up that you live in an arid desert? Well, in "Make it Happen" Dubai, they do not see this as a problem and have built the largest indoor ski facility in the world. As seeking out these kind of over the top attractions are part of the Dubai experience, Janey and I spent an afternoon hitting the indoor slopes of Ski Dubai located inside the shopping mall, Mall of the Emirates. There is basically one run with different routes down with varying degrees of inclination. The most difficult route being somewhere equaled to maybe an average blue run on Colorado's ski slopes. Just too make things a bit more surreal, they have built a log cabin lodge/cafe in the middle so you can rest with hot chocolate in between runs. After a while you actually forget that you are indoors and start adjusting to the concept that you are in an below zero degree environment. Taking your skis off and walking outside to blast the A/C in your car is also a new concept in after-skiing routines.

What will they think of next?

Brian

PS. Pics uploaded in the album.

A Lesson in Islam

After a few days of getting settled into our task of watching the girls, Janey and I decided to take a morning road trip the neighboring Emirate of Abu Dhabi to visit the Sheik Zayed Grand Mosque, newly finished and considered one of the biggest in the world (go figure). It also is only one of three mosques in all the Emirates that allows infidels like my mother and myself to enter.

Here is what she had to wear to enter:

(the convert leaving, maybe never to be seen again)

Constructed with materials and artistic influence from around the world, the mosque's size and white grandiose exterior was enough to awe even the most secular minded. The inside of the mosque contained a 47 ton Persian carpet that allowed room for 20,000 worshippers, with room for 20,000 more outside. During a 3 hour period between prayer sessions, Janey and I, along with about 75 other visitors were allowed to view the mosque in its entirety with the accompaniment of a female muslim tour guide, who, interesting enough, appeared to be a British expat. It was one of the more informative tours I have been on and lended me a great deal of information on Islam that I did not know. Leading groups of visitors comprising mostly of educated Westerners, the guide had the difficult task of espousing Islam's supposedly progressive stance on gender equality without running into the minefield of contradictions; providing weak explanations for why women are required to worship in a seperate area of the mosque, why men are allowed several wives and not vice-versa, and why women must remain covered. But, like a female tour guide at a Catholic Cathedral trying to justify why she can't be a priest, minor issues like being a second-class member of an institution didn't seem to faze the devotion.
Need more proof of the inherently unequal standards?--check out the phallic symbol pictured below:)

Back in Dubai, things are going well. My main function in the daytime revolves mostly around driving the girls to and from school. A lot of car time. Lets just say that I now know the new Miley Cyrus album like the back of my hand. Although, when it's just Ava (the infant) and I in the car, I have been trying to introduce her to the wonders of Steve Winwood and all his 80's glory.

The one road block experienced so far that is sure to be a mainstay of my middle eastern tour is the access to liquid spirits. Although alcohol is forbidden in Muslim societies, Dubai has partially relaxed the doctrine, to allow their foriegn residents to imbibe (money has a funny way of doing such things). Even with this "relaxed" law, all alcohol serving establishments have to be part of a hotel or resort, keeping the average price of a brewskie around $9 (ouch!) or the alternative being that you need a liqour license to buy alcohol at the local sin dens or liqour stores in Dubai. Not in possession of a liqour license, I pulled a stunt reminiscent of the early high school years and did some old fashioned shoulder-tapping outside of the liqour store. Buying wine never felt so clandestine.

Distilling some bathtub gin,

Brian

Sim City: Dubai

At this point I feel that something has to be bit extreme to be worth doing, so it only seemed prudent that the comfort pendulum should swing from the utmost isolation and deprivation of Amazon living to the opulent and swank life of Dubai in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Flush full of oil money, the city of Dubai seems to be trying to invent ways to try and spend it. Artificial islands, skyscrapers, and an unchecked lust for bigger and grander has made this desert oasis synonymous with excess. Everything seems to be described with superlatives; the biggest hotel, the tallest building, etc. The street beggars even wear three piece suits (rumor has it as I have not seen one yet). And I think I actually saw a money growing tree yesterday.

How can the Planetary Vagabond afford to even step foot on such an extravagant locale? He can't. But lucky for him, his cousin Jennifer Berner and her husband Rich have recently relocated here due to his position as a VP with Cerner. In need of a babysitter for 10 days for their girls Emma, Lily, & Ava (ages 8, 4, and 16 months) they offered to fly me over do the job. Habitually putting myself in situations way over my head, I was lucky that my mother signed on to come too.

Viewing the cityscape is a surreal experience with buildings jutting upward into the perpetual haze of dust and sand clouding the skies. Continual construction is a way of life around this burgeoning metropolis and the city is reputed to contain 25% of the worlds cranes. An architect and engineer's playground, all hellbent on making in name in manufactured elegance. A must see for even the most uneasily awestruck. Dubai's central location between Asia and the West has made it a commerical capital of the Middle East and a center for trade. Inundating this growing commerce is a flood of foriegners, mostly from Great Britain, the U.S., and Europe. Indians and Asians make up the much of the laboring class and with all these together, I don't think I could pick a true Emirati out of a line-up. English is widely spoken along with everyone else's native tongue. Probably the only place in the world where the pizza deliveryman is tri-lingual.

Fortunately, we had a few days to spend with Rich and Jennifer and they were able to show us the ins and outs of their daily life in Dubai. Rich is busy inking deals to secure Cerner's growth in the region and Jen is busy tackling the chore of trying to adjust to raising the girls in a new environment and culture. After a few days, they were off to Italy to meet up with the rest of the Carey family, and Janey and I along with the housekeeper/nanny Gemma, were holding down the fort. With a pool and beach outside of the complex, life should be easy, breezy.

Trying to find a morsel of old culture in this rapidly growing city, Janey and I spent a morning touring the various Souks, or markets specializing in jewellery, spices, and Persian rugs. A maze of backalleys and canopied stands, all the stores were basically selling exactly the same wares as their neighbor, making it hard to conceive just how anybody made any money. We perfected a pretty good haggling routine and came away with a few souvenirs.

More to add later.

Until then,

The Manny

Here is a video taken from the balcony of Rich and Jen's penthouse on the artifial island, Palm Jumierah. The sailboat looking building in the backgrond is the Burj Al Arab, the supposed biggest and nicest hotel in the world.