Wednesday is religion day

I can't believe it took me this long to visit the Grand Mosque. I have ridden by it many times--on the way to Dubai, on the way to shoot guns, on the way to drink cocktails. But until today, I hadn't stopped.

I'm glad I did. Unlike the impressive-for-different-reasons mosques I visited in India, this one was filled with elaborate and expensive touches, like expensive marble floors inlaid with other expensive marble; chandeliers weighing several tons hanging like bejeweled jellyfish over a football field's worth of hand-stitched carpeting; arctic air conditioning.

The courtyard does not, as you might expect, fry bare feet.

The white marble was Taj Mahal-esque, although not as graceful and beautiful. Inside, a tour guide talked a little bit about the mosque and a lot about Islam--it was a much an outreach and education effort as it was a "look at this bit of pretty architecture" speech.

All I regret, really, is dressing appropriately. If you show up looking immodest (shorts, T-shirt, etc.), women get an abaya and head scarf and men get a kandoura. I missed my big chance to dress like a native without offending anyone. I guess there's always next Wednesday....

Stranger in a strange building

I could tell I landed in a foreign country the moment I got off the plane. It wasn't just the piano bar, or the fact that stick figures on signs were wearing native garb.

A big tipoff was the architecture.

And that sounds strange to say, because it IS a modern city, with glass, steel, concrete--all the elements of a proper urban existence. But things just look kind of funny. You can tell there is a different culture at work. Lines that were straight are broken; windows exist where there should be walls; things that should be dull are shiny.

Let me try to explain with pictures. Bear with me. I'm a words guy. We start out normally enough (except for my feet--hey, I was going to the beach, OK?):

Big buildings, big toes.

You might think, hey, those are newer buildings. Of course they look more "normal." But then look at this:

So many rectangles, so little time.

That's a new building. And, full disclosure, I work on the bottom floor. It's nice. There's a coffee shop. But it has an air of alien-ness about it, no? Like something you might find on a Star Wars planet where the only construction materials were cement and tinted glass.

Speaking of tinted glass....

It glitters!

Funny-hued windows, oddly placed arches, a lack of ornamentation--it's got it all. Plus laundry for bonus points.

Line up a whole bunch of them on a street, and you get....

... this.

So see? Things do look different here. Except, maybe, me. I still haven't gotten sunburned.