Ugh

So let me tell you a story. And let me preface it with a quick explanation of my attitude toward this country.

The UAE gets a lot of bad press. You read screaming headlines about sensational cases in which someone is arrested and jailed for a couple of months for a microgram of marijuana "found" on his shoe (true), or a couple arrested for kissing in a mall at 2 a.m. after a local woman complained it was corrupting her kid (true), or the water taps at the Atlantis gushing nothing but cockroaches (false).

Sometimes the outrage is justified; sometimes it is manufactured. They are not especially common. But the events that trigger that outrage do happen--they are not imaginary or created by paranoid Westerners.

And now I know that first-hand.

Last night, Mrs. Blog and I went to the grocery store to refill our fridge after being away for a couple of weeks. It was crowded. Lots of families stocking up for 2011, I guess.

Oh, what a magical journey it was, wandering through the aisles of imported high-fructose corn syrup. Eventually, we paused by the bread section to consider our carbohydrate options. Mrs. Blog suggested that we should make fondue at some point this week. And because that idea, of eating gooey cheese and bread together in our cozy (if not well-situated) Tanker Mai apartment, made me happy, I leaned in and gave her a peck on the lips.

Do you see where this is going?

Maybe 10 or 15 seconds later, after we had moved on to discussing whether to buy sandwich rolls or a loaf, an Emirati woman in an abaya and burqa arrived at the scene, wagging her finger at us. Surrounded by several other younger women (also in traditional dress), she bestowed upon us some good, old-fashioned self-righteous chastising.

How dare we kiss, she said. You are not in the West anymore, she said. I will call security, she said.

The last sentence, of course, is the one that gets your heart racing. Both of us dived in to placate her. I pointed to my ring finger--look, it's OK, we're married. Mrs. Blog apologized for offending her. I said, there's no need for security to get involved. And so on.

I'm not sure what, exactly, we said that eventually worked. I think it was another apology from Mrs. Blog. But the woman clucked some more, made another threat about security, then stalked off with her friends--none of whom had said a word.

What a depressing experience. At just a basic level, it is really disheartening and angering to be chewed out by someone whose face you can't even see. It just doesn't seem like a level playing field. Kind of like the legal principle of the accused being able to confront their accuser.

The deeper you dig down--and this process lasted, for us, the rest of our shopping trip--the angrier you get. Let's leave aside, for the moment, the fact that although the kiss was loving, it was pretty tame by any standard. A step above holding hands. There's no accounting for what will offend people, and cultural mores, and blah blah blah.

Focus instead on the woman's reaction. It upsets me because instead of simply asking us to stop (which we already had--see above) or telling us we were behaving inappropriately, she threatened to throw us in jail. Or at least Carrefour's version of it. Is there not a way of expressing displeasure or distaste without being accusatory? This seems in the same vein as someone smoking where they shouldn't be--if it's bothering you, you politely ask them to stop. Not difficult.

Focus also on how we reacted. There are, without a doubt, places in the U.S. where someone might threaten to call store security on you for the T-shirt you're wearing, or for the things you're saying in a private conversation, or even for kissing in public. The difference is, in those cases, I know my rights. I'm not going to jail. I'm probably not even to get harassed by security, because THEY know what my rights are, too. No, the correct reaction in that case is to ask your accuser to be a little more polite and, if that fails, to suggest that they can go... well, you know.

But that surety of one's rights just doesn't exist here. Hell, the surety of the law doesn't even exist here. You can be accused of things that aren't illegal while things that clearly are (c.f. the bizarre alcohol laws), are routinely ignored. And in any case where it is one person's word against another's, the expatriate is at a disadvantage from jump street. Get caught up in the legal system, right or wrong, and you're in for a lengthy and unpleasant experience.

So instead of standing our ground, we just said whatever we could to keep her from escalating it--no matter how out of line she may have been. And that's humiliating.

In the end, no security was called, we finished our shopping in uncomfortable silence and vented on the way home. The night got better. We even found a good parking space in Tanker Mai, which in terms of miracles is right up there with the parting of the Red Sea and the Seahawks making the playoffs.

But here's the thing: Incidents like this bury the idea that we're all living as equals here. Until that changes, the UAE is never going to have the type of integrated, productive society that will move it forward into the big leagues.

Congratulations, Carrefour lady, for making that point--whether you realized it or not.

Uncharted territory

There isn't much of it anymore, at least on Earth. Although we continue to discover new things (like arsenic bacteria!), mankind's boots have pretty much stepped everywhere they can.

Off the planet, though, it's a whole different story. And one of the first space probes is on the verge of taking the biggest step in the history of the species. It's leaving our neighborhood--the Solar System--for good.

Voyager 1, the most distant spacecraft from Earth, has reached a new milestone in its quest to leave the Solar System.

Now 17.4bn km (10.8bn miles) from home, the veteran probe has detected a distinct change in the flow of particles that surround it.

These particles, which emanate from the Sun, are no longer travelling outwards but are moving sideways.

It means Voyager must be very close to making the jump to interstellar space - the space between the stars.

On a separate note, 33 years and it can still send a strong data signal more than 10 billion miles? I want me some of those batteries.

I missed the space-boat

I lived in Florida for two years. There were many things I did, and didn't do, that went well. Others not so well. But let me tell you my biggest regret: I didn't make the three-hour drive to the Cape for a Shuttle launch.

The video below, pointed out to me by The Guy Who Sits Next to Me, really drives that point home.

Big rocket go whoosh, 1981-2010.

And now, of course, the whole program is being retired. That's a bummer (unless it is replaced with something niftier--a doubtful proposition in the short term).

Christmastime is here!

And I know this because carolers came to our door last night. As we were watching the latest episode of Glee, in which the cast went... caroling. Life is weird sometimes.

It was an especially surreal experience here in the Middle East, where there is no snow, are few seasonal decorations (no, National Day doesn't count) and churches are semi-required to keep it low-key. Hell, even when we lived in Chicago carolers never came to our door... of course, this is mainly because our door was up three flights of stairs and behind two buzz-in doors in the foyer.

The carolers last night were from a Filipino Catholic church here in the 'Dhabs and included our former cleaning lady. And although they were armed only with a guitar and maracas, they put on a nice, festive show.

Guess it's time to put up our non-denominational holiday wreath....

(Very) little green men

As promised, let's dork it up.

Last Thursday, NASA announced it had discovered a new form of life. This new beastie was not found on another planet, however, but right here on Earth, in California's Mono Lake.

That environment, while not extraterrestrial, is certainly interesting. The water contains tremendous amounts of arsenic, an element that normally acts as a poison on your basic Earthbound animal. The reason (and forgive me, Mrs. Howk, if I screw this up) is that literally EVERY BIT of known life on Earth is built from and operates using six elements: carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, phosphorus and sulfur. All are crucial. In human biology, for instance, phosphorus is an essential part of our energy-generating mechanism, fueled by ATP, or adenosine tri-phosphate.

But look just below phosphorus on a periodic table and you see arsenic. It is remarkably similar... but dissimilar in too many ways to simply substitute. In fact, the reason arsenic is so deadly is because the body mistakes it for phosphorus and tries to use it in normal metabolic processes, which doesn't work.

Until now.

This new microbe can use arsenic to survive. Here's how one of the scientists put it:

“These data show that we are getting substitution across the board,” said Dr. Felisa Wolfe-Simon. “This microbe, if we are correct, has solved the challenge of being alive in a different way.”

Tiny bug, big discovery.

And what THAT means is a) all life did not necessarily evolve from a common ancestor, i.e. there were, at some point, at least two separate "tracks" viable life was taking, and b) we now have a lot more environments off our planets in which we could conceivably find life.

How cool is that?

So although NASA didn't trot out E.T., a Gray or, heaven forbid, something out of a Ridley Scott movie, it's still an exciting discovery. Here's to more big announcements. I can't wait to blog about faster-than-light travel and aliens made of silica-arsenate.

How I Spent My National Day

First of all, don't worry--I'm planning to blog, at some point, a bit about my thoughts regarding the new arsenic-metabolizing life form NASA discovered in a California lake. It is, needless to say, pretty mind-blowing considering that literally ALL life uses phosphorus (along with five other elements) as its building blocks. This new bug subs arsenic for phosphorus. It is, literally, a unique life form... at least for the time being. Awesome.

Now then. Let's talk about the last couple of days, starting with yesterday, National Day. The natives, and, let's face it, everyone else took to the streets for a colorful and noisy celebration of the UAE's 39th birthday. It's weird--you never see Emiratis acting so unreservedly happy until Dec. 2 every year. And boy do they take it to the extreme.

A VERY tame vehicle.

The fireworks were shorter this year than last year; the walk to find a cab (several miles) was longer and there was more backfiring. So much, in fact, that when I came home, Mrs. Blog--who sat it out because she was not feeling well--commented that I smelled like a gas tank. Which, upon close reflection, was accurate.

Today involved a lot less silly string and engine revving. We have wheels this weekend, thanks to a generous friend, and we took advantage by heading out for a picnic in the park. It was packed! But we found some nice shade, settled down, ate some snacks and watched a spirited game of pickup basketball at the nearby court. Mrs. Blog practiced her Arabic with me as flash-card holder and I daydreamed about walking onto the court and showing these guys how a KU grad can hoop. (in my case, slowly and with a gradually worsening limp.)

It looks like the evening will end with a delicious meal, the only kind Mrs. Blog knows how to make, and a funny movie. Not a bad start to the weekend. The UAE will be fortunate to have as good a start to its 40th year.

Here's how you know it's UAE National Day

You come to work, get fitted with a patriotic baseball cap and handed a falcon.

I'm glad the falcon can't see me.

Tomorrow is when the fireworks begin (literally) and all the nation's white SUVs are decorated with stickers, decals and streamers declaring them the most patrioticest vehicles in all the land.

One of this year's celebratory Big Deals is the world's largest convoy of school buses. And yes, I'm totally serious. How can they possibly top that next year, the nation's 40th anniversary?