Revenge of the Return of the Misc Box, Part II: The Boxening

Well, readers, I'm sure you're just as aware as I am that it has been a long time since we've exchanged electrons here on the blog. Like a long time. As usual, I will offer no excuses other than: life has become busier than usual.

Sure, Gerry, you may say. But that's true of all of us out here in the world, watching American democracy teeter and Hollywood greenlight remakes of movies that were great the first time around.

And you're right. We're all busy in our own way.

My particular way of being busy these days is another international move.

Mrs. Blog and I, now joined by Little and Littler Blog, as I guess I'm calling them, are moving to Singapore. And I have a new job, with another global news organization. New climate, new restaurants, new weird-but-iconic statues.

Weird-but-iconic merlion.

It's a whirlwind, moving a family. A real maelstrom of stress, planning and preparation. All you can do is keep putting one foot in front of the other, logistically and mentally speaking, until you're at your new home. At least that's the theory. We haven't arrived at that home yet, so I can't say for sure.

An artifact of previous international moves has been the existence, at the end of a day of packing up a home, of a catchall box. It's not full of one type of thing (like glasses) or even stuff that all goes in the same room (like the kitchen). No, it's a Misc Box that holds stuff you want to take with you but isn't easily categorized.

This time around, it doesn't look like we'll have one of those. That's partly because Mrs. Blog is an expert at organizing, and partly because this move will be the best supported in terms of relocation services. I won't go into the boring details, but it does appear that everything--regardless of categorization--will be neatly packed away, only to rematerialize in our new Singapore pad.

Instead there's a mental Misc Box. We've been here six years--my longest stretch in anyplace that's not Chicago or Kansas City. We have roots and friends and two little kids who were born here. What the movers can't take, but what I'm bringing with me, are those things. Those relationships, memories and experiences--good and bad--we found in Hong Kong. They'll always be with me, even if they defy categorization.

And so off we go. Soon we'll hop on an airplane, shake the dust of the 'Kong from our shoes, and embrace the future (which may or may not be devoid of chewing gum).

Hong Kong hasn't been perfect. But it's been home.

Sic transit gloria mundi.

Or as they say in Hong Kong, "Bye bye!"

Democracy in action

My fellow Americans (and everyone else), I come before you today to discuss that most American of all Greek-invented activities: voting. It is an act that is simple on its face--voicing support for someone to represent you in creating legislation and governance--but complex in execution and effect. Sometimes there's no one out there who represents your ideals. Sometimes the person who DOES represent your ideals has no shot of winning. And sometimes the person you vote for and wins ends up not really doing what you expected.

All part of the process. It's one I have been enjoying and growing into for nearly two decades now. Living abroad has given me a different perspective on democracy in a lot of ways, of course; in the Middle East, democracy doesn't really exist, so it was always interesting to explain to people that, in my opinion, it was better for people in a given country to be able to peacefully kick out whoever was running the country than to just allow someone to be in charge because of their surname. The results are messy and almost always imperfect, but on the whole, pretty nifty.

This year will be the first time I vote in a general election while living overseas. I know, I know… there was a congressional election in 2010, and I am a terrible American who did not participate. This was not out of protest or apathy, but simple laziness. As a citizen relatively new to overseas life, it seemed impossibly difficult to, you know, vote from 5,000 miles away.

The reality, though, is that it is impossibly easy to vote from 5,000 miles away. Or 7,000 miles away, as the case is now in 2012. You tell your most recent voting jurisdiction where you are--via a form you can e-mail--and that you would like a ballot. They e-mail you the ballot. You fill out the ballot and mail it back. The end. Democracy rules!

What democracy looks like.

If anything, it's actually easier than voting in the U.S., which requires me to do insane stuff like leave the house, walk a few blocks and wait in line for 10 minutes. And if you thought living 15 hours (direct flight!) from the continental U.S. meant I was far removed from the craziness of campaign season, think again. Mitt Romney had a fundraiser here in Hong Kong on Thursday night.

Wrong flag. But hey, there weren't any pictures taken at the fundraiser, so what do you want from me?

And there's one other interesting issue at play here. About 5 million Americans live outside the United States. If, like me, they are casting their ballots now, the homestretch of the campaign--including all three presidential debates--simply does not matter. I guess that's a good and a bad thing. On the one hand, if everyone in the U.S. voted early, it might mean a little less money spent on incredibly annoying partisan advertising. On the other hand, it might also just mean that most people have their minds made up already, no matter how hard any candidate campaigns. So much for intellectual discourse and persuasion.

Whatever. What it means for me is a lot more obvious: I get to cast my vote, then sit back and watch (or ignore) the fireworks.  And because I live 7,000 miles away, those fireworks will occur around breakfast time on Nov. 7. Breakfast fireworks and easy voting: now that's a platform anyone could get behind.

Ask an Offensively Sweaty Gweilo III: Playing it Cool

Hello, faithful followers of this irregular column. It's been a while since our last installment--which found the titular gweilo swimming in perspiration mid-summer--and there is news to report. Specifically, the arrival of autumn.

Summer was not. Not Abu Dhabi Hot, but uncomfortably warm, especially when walking to work in long sleeves. It was also wet. We had a big ol' typhoon, and for a while there it was raining almost every day.

September, though, seems to have been equipped with a meteorological "off" switch for all that stuff. It's sunny. It's breezy. And most important, I can make it from the MTR stop to my office without mopping my brow even once.

So with that in mind, let's dive into the totally-not-made-up mailbag:

Q: Dear Offensively Sweaty Gweilo: It's great that you're not offensively sweaty anymore, but I have noticed you still don't make much of an effort to stay in the shade. Don't you know what the sun will do to you? Carry an umbrella!

A: Oh, trust me--I am well aware of what the sun will do to me. I am familiar with the sting of denim on a sunburn and the soothing properties of aloe. But one cannot live in fear, right? And if nothing else, I'd like to get a little bit more color; I may never be anything but a "ghost man," but a bit of tan actually makes time in the sun more tolerable. That's one reason why I don't carry an umbrella. The other is that it's not raining. And when you've got 8 million people packed into a tiny island, carrying an umbrella to protect you from the sun AND the rain can get a little awkward, no?

Q: Hey, OSG--we noticed you at a Mexican joint in TST the other night. You're always making noise about finding good comida Mexicana outside North America... what did you think? (P.S. You did not appear to be sweaty)

A: Sharp eyes. Yes, Mrs. Blog and I went to place over there to meet some friends. And you're right--I was not sweaty. We were actually right underneath an air conditioning vent, which kept me a normal temperature and made Mrs. Blog chilly. As for the food, well... they have great happy hour drink specials. The search for excellent Mexican food continues, and I'll let you know if there are any developments. There is actually a place in our neighborhood that is supposed to be pretty good, but it has always been closed when we try to drop by.

Q: OSG, in your homeland, fall means the start of football. How's that going in Hong Kong?

A: Not well, both in terms of watching it and results. I can't say that the air here is crisp and full of the delicious aromas of tailgating, so my normal instinctual drive to find a game is not at its peak. But even if I did want to watch a game, they start--at the earliest--at midnight Hong Kong time. And also they're not on TV, meaning I would have to resort to [REDACTED] measures. On the plus side, both my beloved Jayhawks and Chiefs lost their games this weekend, so at least my eyeballs didn't have to endure that.

And that's it for the September edition of AOSGA. Remember, keep those questions coming, stay cool and please... look where you're going when you're carrying an umbrella.

This won't hurt a bit

I have a confession to make: I never visited a doctor in the UAE that I was not forced to. I got a physical because it was required for my insurance when I first arrived; I got a blood test because the government wanted to make sure I wasn't importing any horrible diseases.

But beyond that, I stayed away. This was partly because I didn't have any serious health issues, but mostly because I did not fully trust the system or my health insurance. In my work I encountered enough stories about badly trained doctors--or worse, doctors who had been kicked out of their home countries for some serious screw-ups--to make the idea of scheduling an appointment unappealing. Judging by my co-workers' experiences, a trip to the clinic was a bit of a dice-roll. Some people got good care, others got terrible care and just about everyone complained about Daman, the state-owned insurance company.

There's a lot more to say about health care in the UAE, but that isn't what this post is about. It's about Hong Kong and my first trip to a doctor here.

And I can sum that up easily: it was excellent. The office was clean and modern; the doctor was from Hong Kong but had trained in Britain; the process was efficient; the paperwork minimal. I literally had to sign one form and everything was taken care of. No money changed hands at all, not even for prescriptions. (I realize that for the Brits in the audience--wave so I can see you--this is not novel. But for me it most certainly is.)

The major difference from medical care I have gotten in the U.S., which has been excellent if not always easy to access, is a focus on treatment rather than prevention. It was my first time there, but no one measured, or even asked, my height and weight. The doctor took an extensive oral history from me, but his main concern was why I had come to see him and what he could do to fix me.

Like I said, all in all a great experience. It can be intimidating, at least mentally, to put yourself in the care of a physician in a foreign country, but this felt entirely comfortable.

I know I have a tendency to, shall we say, extrapolate good experiences; I didn't know what to expect from my visit, which made expectations easy to exceed. So this is not to say that there aren't bad doctors and decrepit offices in Hong Kong. But knowing you have someplace good to go for health care takes a little bit of the sting out of living far from home.

Oh, the places I've been

Good morning, Readers of the Blog. You have no doubt noticed yet another gap in my writing in this space. That's because Mrs. Blog and I pulled up stakes (i.e., checked out of our hotel in Abu Dhabi) and left the Big Sand for the Big City.

I'm typing this in Hong Kong. Specifically, in a serviced apartment in a neighborhood called Causeway Bay. Outside is a sea of people and neon, and I love it.

We're going to the sheep restaurant because it has such a great sign.

But it was a winding road to get here, people. From the 'Dhabs, we made a four-day trip to Beirut--an amazing, cosmopolitan place in which bulletholes and RPG-riddled buildings share streets with upscale boutiques and bars. Then it was back on tourist visas to Abu Dhabi for a couple of days. Then it was Doha for a half-day (nice museum, terrible taxi service, frustrating airport), then Hong Kong for the Chinese New Year.

Boom. (photo courtesy Mrs. Blog)

And THEN we went to New Zealand for two weeks for a much-delayed honeymoon. We visited some dear friends, I jumped off a bridge, we cruised through an unspoiled fjord that looked straight out of a Peter Jackson movie, we hiked up to a glacier face, we kayaked in the waters of the Tasman Sea, we rode a jetboat.

For those of you keeping score, the day we arrived in New Zealand we had been to five countries in a week. That's a personal record that I don't think I'll ever break.

Now we're settling down to the business of starting work and finding an apartment. We spent nearly eight hours pounding the pavement with a property agent yesterday, and although we arrived home with achy feet, our heads were also full of plans, dreams and furniture layouts.

We might be staying in one place for a bit, but the adventure continues.

Return of the Misc Box

As I described here, when we left Chicago, all of our careful packing ended with a pile of relatively unrelated items and an empty box. If we couldn't think of anyplace else it belonged, it went in that container: the Misc Box.

Now, as we leave Abu Dhabi, we are left with another Misc Box. (note: the boxes are smaller this time, so there are actually two)

Packing it is a matter of necessity. We can't take everything in suitcases, we don't need everything with us before we find an apartment, so it makes sense to ship it and store it. That's the only consideration.

But I wonder what they will be like to unpack? Will we be wondering why there are a handful of wall socket adapters, some playing cards and a bag of garam masala tucked into a springform pan? Will we be excited as we pull out a game we had forgotten about? Unfurl a poster we were thrilled to find?

I don't know the answer. But I can't wait to find out.

What would you do?

People living in the UAE consider it very safe. Violent crime is minimal and, for the most part, limited to the rather dismal industrial areas and prefab cities where "laborers," i.e., construction workers, are housed in massive, cramped barracks.

The main reason for this is that the justice system is horribly out of whack and you don't want to get caught up in it, even if you're innocent. If you're guilty (or found guilty), even some of the most minor offenses, like shoplifting, can get you deported. And for most of the blue-collar folks here--in other words, the have-nots, those most likely to commit theft--that's an economic death sentence, as their home countries offer worse wages, worse living conditions and fewer opportunities.

So what would you do if this happened to you?

Paying the taxi, I realised I'd left my wallet in the car. I called the girl at the service centre and headed back to Al Habtoor. I was laughing and joking with her as we got to the car together and I picked up my wallet, which had been relieved of its cash contents, about Dhs400 in all.

It didn't sink in at all until later. Someone had actually taken money from my car. To those of you living elsewhere, this will come as no surprise, you're probably sitting there thinking, 'Like, obviously, duh' and I appreciate why you would. But I live in one of the safest places in the world. We're all of us on the hog's back here, from labourers through to CEOs we're all in the UAE because we're better off than we would be back at home. Any criminal conviction, once you've done your time in El Slammer, means getting sent home and so crime, for the vast majority of us, doesn't pay.

The service centre manager was, I was told, investigating. After a while, he'd drawn a blank and, well, that was sort of that, really. I asked him to call the police. He said they wouldn't do anything, he'd had experience of this sort of thing before. I insisted. He refused. I pointed out it was his secure area, his employee and his responsibility. He said they had internal procedures and he couldn't call the police. I asked him to escalate to someone who could call the police and he ignored me. It all got a little heated. It wasn't really about Dhs400 by now, but about someone who had chosen to steal from me. I called the police myself. After ringing out twice, the 999 number answered. I had tried calling police HQ, but they didn't answer at all. You do wonder sometimes.

The CID chap turned up, a young chap in a baseball cap and dishdash. The service centre manager and I explained (he had no English) and he nodded sagely and took my ID, borrowing a pen and piece of paper from the manager to write down my details. Watching him, I was strongly reminded of our friend captain Mohammed filling out Paul's charge sheet in Olives, his tongue stuck out in concentration...

At this point one of the service staff popped in and put a wad of money on the manager's desk and murmered a name. I got the impression the staff had taken matters into their own hands - nobody really wants CID snooping around their workplace asking awkward questions. The culprit was called for - the most stupid thief imaginable - the man whose job it was to drive the cars around to the storage area prior to work commencing. He had already been through 20 minutes of questioning with the manager before the police were called and had professed his innocence. Now he broke down and pleaded for mercy.

On the one hand, you have been robbed. Dh400 is about US$100, not a ton of money but not trivial either. And there is principle to consider as well; no one likes the idea of a wrongdoer simply getting away with it.

On the other hand, in the U.S. stealing $100 would be a misdemeanor. The offender gets a fine, maybe some community service. Jail time is not likely unless they are wanted for some other crime too. To me, that's appropriate. It's punishment commensurate with the severity of the theft. In the UAE, as we see above, that guy is getting tossed out of the country, whether he winds up in court or not. I'm not sure I would want that on my conscience.

It actually reminds me of something that happened to me and Mrs. Blog the last time we were in the World's Greatest City. While walking back to our hotel on Michigan Avenue, a commotion broke out at a sidewalk restaurant ahead of us. A young man came sprinting out of the crowd, followed by cries of, "Stop that guy! He stole my phone!" I and a couple of other people who happened to be in front of him kind of corralled him and kept him from running. The woman whose phone had been jacked ran up and yelled at him. We let go of his arms and he gave the phone back.

And then everyone kind of unconsciously took a step back as the woman continued to berate him. He apologized, she shouted one last obscenity at him, and then he jogged away.

No one stopped him. Why? Again, I think it is that feeling that maybe holding this guy and calling the police might be a bit too much. He stole something, he got caught, end of story. I'm not sure that was the right thing to do, but collectively, that's what everyone apparently decided. If it happened again--or, more important, if Mrs. Blog or I were the person whose phone had been stolen--I might do things differently and get the police involved.

But here, having seen the way the police and courts operate, I think I would be predisposed toward not allowing them to punish someone for a minor theft. Right or wrong, I think I would rather get my money back and leave it at that. Justice may or may not have been served, but my life would barely be affected by losing Dh400, and it seems disproportionate to ruin someone else's life as a result.

A moving experience

Well, Friends of the Blog, it's been a busy couple of weeks.

Usually I fall off the grid--and by that I mean Read Ink doesn't get updated--when I'm traveling. For about 10 days this month, that was my excuse, as Mrs. Blog and I headed to India for the wedding of two friends. This is the same couple whose nuptials took us to Dallas a few months back, a trip we enjoyed immensely, and not just because it involved huge amounts of barbecue and brisket tacos.

Nom nom nom, y'all.

This was the second time we had been to India, the first being two years ago when I first suggested to Mrs. Blog that she deserved an upgrade from Girlfriend of the Blog. That trip was memorable for a lot of reasons--the Taj Mahal at dawn, climbing through an ancient abandoned city, riding a rickshaw through one of the most crowded markets in the world--and I left so inundated with India that every time I closed my eyes for a few days afterwards, the swirling crowds appeared behind my eyelids. True story.

You would never find Waldo, ever.

This time was a little more sedate. We had a soft landing at one of our favorite hotels anywhere, The Imperial, then took on India from a different angle than our first trip. The sights had been seen, you see. So we focused on food. And, OK, fine, I'll admit it, shopping. The payoff was remarkable. Let me just say that if you ever find yourself in Delhi, go to Hauz Khas market and track down the Gray Garden and Yeti. Thank me later.

But India's real embrace came when we traveled to Siliguri, the bride's hometown, for the wedding. She and her family welcomed us (and several dozen other friends from Abu Dhabi) with a gusto and charm and warmth that you will see in few other parts of the world. They whisked us to our hotel. They ensured that we had delicious, spicy meals waiting whenever we turned around. They treated us like VIPs.

And what a remarkable family, too. The bride's parents, both doctors, have been involved for decades with treating those who society has neglected. We visited a community her father founded for people who had been stigmatized by leprosy--they themselves were healthy but the disease had struck their parents, leaving them outcasts. Through the bride's father's efforts, people who would otherwise have been begging in the streets were learning job skills; their children were attending school just steps from their front doors. That's what having an impact on society is all about. Everywhere around us were people whose lives were better because someone believed in them. It's not the sort of lesson you expect at a wedding. But it was a welcome one.

The wedding, of course, was an explosion of colors, sounds and lights, as Indian weddings are wont to be. It began with a marching band leading the procession through town and it ended with a 2,000-person reception at a water park outside town. There simply aren't enough superlatives to do it justice.

This is where you say, Hey, wait, Gerry--aren't pictures worth 1,000 words? And I reply, Yes, they are, and I haven't gotten them off our camera yet. Settle down. Pictures to come.

Suffice to say we arrived back in the UAE richer in spirit and with suitcases full of well-haggled Indian merchandise. Clothing, mostly. Including leather shoes that actually fit my feet.

But there was a cloud to all this glittering silver.

For reasons that are too boring and frustrating to explain, our apartment in Abu Dhabi went from being company-owned to owned-by-someone-else in a matter of days last month. The people living in the building had more or less six weeks to get out. And the deadline happened to be Friday, just a few days after we returned from India.

Rather than avail ourselves of the frustrating Abu Dhabi rental market (the linked story is old but still remarkably applicable), in which rent is paid for an entire year up front and a one-bedroom place in the good part of town can cost US$30,000, we decided to unload our furniture and move into a serviced apartment.

In a way, this was the perfect week for all of this to happen. Yes, it was scary and stressful to sell all our furniture, pack up and get out in a matter of four days while we both were working full-time. I cannot overstate how little sleep we got and how tired I got of people calling up to offer me one-third of my asking price without even bothering to see what they were buying.

Thanksgiving was Thursday, though, and Thursday was when we packed up and got out. Our Budget Building flat, with paint choices more colorful than probably any other apartment in Tanker Mai, is echoing and empty.

But I am full of thanks. Thankful for Mrs. Blog, who was always there to remind me to breathe when the move hit hardest. Thankful for our friends, who offered help in myriad ways. Thankful for a massive Thanksgiving spread at one of their houses (and for the poker tournament in which we finished in fourth place), and the heaping helpings of fellowship.

And thankful for the relaxing rooftop pool of our new building.

Gimme Some Lovin' (without the lovin')

Mrs. Blog and I went to see one of the greatest movies about Chicago ever made: The Blues Brothers. It's getting to be winter here, which means people are emerging from their concrete-and-bad-tile caves to do things outdoors. In this case, it was Cinema by the Sea, which is exactly what it sounds like. It was a nice distraction from frustrating issues with the housing "market" here.

On paper, it's a perfect idea. Great weather? Check. Great movie? Check. Beanbag chair seating? Check. They even threw in some fireworks as a bonus.

But, as Mrs. Blog noted, this would not be Abu Dhabi if everything went as it should. About halfway through the show, for instance, workers set up floodlights illuminating an EXIT HERE banner... and half the crowd.

The thing that got me the most, though, was the censorship. It wouldn't be the Blues Brothers without gratuitous swearing, and sure enough, that was untouched. There are two scenes that involve male-female relations, however. Perhaps 30 seconds, total, of footage. And by relations, I mean kissing.

Yes, the pivotal scene at the end where Carrie Fisher confronts her ex-fiancee, Joliet Jake, starts with him pleading with her and ends with her lying in the mud, with no indication of how Point A got to Point B.

Happily, they left in the part where a Nazi henchman tells Henry Gibson, "I've always loved you" as their red Pinto plummets into a crater in downtown Chicago. And I had forgotten how fun the car chase at the end is; legend has it that Lower Wacker Drive never recovered from all the damage done during the movie's filming.

All in all, a fine way to spend a Tuesday night. If nothing else, it's something you couldn't do in Chicago this time of year.

He falls away into the dustbin of history

It has been a busy spring in the Middle East. Waves of revolution, civil war and regime change have reshaped the region in ways that few would have foreseen even five years ago.

And now there's this: Osama bin Laden is dead. Shot in the head by U.S. Special Forces and, according to some accounts, buried at sea to simultaneously measure up to Islamic traditions and avoid creating a terrorist shrine.

Aftermath.

I can't remember exactly how long it took to identify him as the mastermind of the attacks on September 11, 2001. I can remember how that day felt. Awakened by a phone call in the early hours of the day, I listened groggily as a good friend of mine described a plane hitting the World Trade Center. Then I watched in dismay as the second plane hit the other tower.

The rest of the day I spent on my couch, glued to the TV and wondering what would happen next.

I don't think it's fair to say that bin Laden's death has brought me--and perhaps anyone--real closure, to use an overused bit of psycho-jargon. Yes, he has been the face of global terrorism for the last decade-plus, but in the end, he's just a man. And more important, the ideology he represented has already taken a severe beating this year as mostly non-violent, mostly secular protests have toppled regimes against which al Qaeda has railed for years. Corny though it may sound, it has been a collective desire for freedom and fair representation that shoved longtime dictators from their pedestals, not bombs and extremism.

At the same time, though, I have some difficulty understanding the criticism of those celebrating in the streets of Washington and New York on Sunday night. One BBC viewer wrote:

One of my strongest memories from 9/11 is people celebrating around the world. I remember being disgusted. Now I have just seen Americans celebrating the death of Bin Laden outside the White House, I am again disgusted.

One of my strongest memories was the sense of shock and horror and loss as Manhattan was enveloped in a cloud of destruction. So I don't have much problem with people getting emotional at the death of the man who made that happen.

Here in the UAE, the reaction is that there is no reaction. Business, and life, have gone on as usual; my morning walk to work takes me through a muggy beehive of commerce and it was no different today than it is any other day. Furniture vendors and carpenters, most of them Pakistani, seemed unmoved by the news as they toted couches and ran planks through table saws. Even the government has, for the time being, remained silent.

I think Obama's speech this morning (late Sunday, U.S. time) hit a lot of the right notes and adequately summed up what transpired today.

It was nearly 10 years ago that a bright September day was darkened by the worst attack on the American people in our history. The images of 9/11 are seared into our national memory - hijacked planes cutting through a cloudless September sky; the Twin Towers collapsing to the ground; black smoke billowing up from the Pentagon; the wreckage of Flight 93 in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, where the actions of heroic citizens saved even more heartbreak and destruction.

And yet we know that the worst images are those that were unseen to the world. The empty seat at the dinner table. Children who were forced to grow up without their mother or their father. Parents who would never know the feeling of their child's embrace. Nearly 3,000 citizens taken from us, leaving a gaping hole in our hearts.

....

The American people did not choose this fight. It came to our shores, and started with the senseless slaughter of our citizens. After nearly 10 years of service, struggle, and sacrifice, we know well the costs of war. These efforts weigh on me every time I, as Commander-in-Chief, have to sign a letter to a family that has lost a loved one, or look into the eyes of a service member who's been gravely wounded.

So Americans understand the costs of war. Yet as a country, we will never tolerate our security being threatened, nor stand idly by when our people have been killed. We will be relentless in defense of our citizens and our friends and allies. We will be true to the values that make us who we are. And on nights like this one, we can say to those families who have lost loved ones to al-Qaeda's terror: Justice has been done.

And I think that's about right.

As I walk home today, through a city untroubled by the unrest that has gripped the rest of the region, I think it is safe to say that bin Laden's death has no direct impact on my life.

But it does feel like today's news was, if not justice, at least a just end for an incredibly malicious person, who twisted religion and snuffed out innocent life in its name.

The Aerosmith version, not the Gene Autry version

You know the song I'm talking about.*

Mrs. Blog and I returned to the UAE yesterday from the United States of Awesome yesterday. A country, I should add, that was true to its promises of delicious food and good company. For instance, I had barbecue in four states and margaritas in three. I even saw a bald eagle, soaring on the winds of freedom. And by freedom, I mean eastern Iowa.

Actual Arthur Bryant's sandwich consumed by actual blogger.

How great a visit was it? During an afternoon at my friend's bar I ran into this guy. That's a bonus vacation experience you can't put a price tag on.

It's always a difficult transition back to the Middle East, with the little differences driven home almost immediately. There is simply no way to soften the impact of arriving at an airport festooned with construction barriers and signs that lead nowhere.

Like this but with 150 percent more plaster dust.

The jet lag doesn't help either; I am writing this with the help of unhealthy amounts of caffeine and equally unhealthy amounts of sleep deprivation. On the bright side, though, the imbalances in my body chemistry might help me appreciate the royal wedding a little bit more.

Anyway, dissociative feelings aside, it is good, at least, to not have to consider another long plane ride in the immediate future. Now, if we could just find some way of staving off the onset of the oven-like summer....

*And if you don't, click here.

The story of my life

It's official. The Internet is now everywhere. On my desktop, my laptop, my phone and even, as it turns out, my childhood.

For the first time in history, every home I have ever lived in is now visible on Google Street View... with the exception of the Budget Building, whose Abu Dhabi locale a) doesn't have a searchable address and b) Google probably doesn't want to bother with anyway.

And I actually had a lengthy post planned out, as you can embed a pannable, zoomable Street View frame in the blog. Wouldn't it be neat to show people all these places, I thought to myself?

Yes, Smarter Self replied, but it would be a lot less neat for anyone with a keyboard to be able to see your entire residence history, steal your identity and use it to start an online brothel in Bangkok.

So never mind.

Suffice to say it was a roller-coaster journey from Midtown Kansas City to almost Abu Dhabi. As I said, Google, like good customer service and excellent club sandwiches, has not yet arrived in the UAE. Perhaps someday it will, and when you type "Muroor Road, after Delma Bridge, opposite Al Wadi Furniture... no, farther down. Yes, stop by grocery" it will pop right up on Street View.

For now, though, I think I'll just enjoy entertaining applications of technology and basking in the fact that I have lived in a lot of great places.

Tournament time

Yes, the most glorious time of year is upon us. Hordes of fans are huddled in front of their TVs for the days' worth of wall-to-wall basketball known as the NCAA tournament. Of course, in my case, this actually means sitting alone in front of a computer screen because of the obscene eight- to 11-hour time difference between here and the courts where the games are taking place.

Kansas' two games have started at 2:30 and 4:45 a.m. Abu Dhabi time and I, being a big fan of basketball in general and Kansas in particular, have watched both. It's fine at the time but hard not to regret the next day.

As Mrs. Blog can attest, I am not at my best after three hours' sleep. That meant most of Saturday was wasted, dissolved into a blur of recovery, and on Monday my brain cells were powered almost exclusively by caffeine.

A pre-dawn dunking against Illinois.

And I'm not out of the woods yet. Kansas has advanced to the Sweet Sixteen, and game time is... 3:30 a.m on Saturday. As long as they keep winning, though, I'll happily suffer a little grogginess--and I apologize in advance for inflicting Zombie Gerry on the rest of the world.

The really tall building by that one mall in Dubai

Conversations involving directions are always a bit comical in the UAE. Taxiese, for instance, exists solely because there is no other way (besides learning Urdu) to navigate via cab.

Food delivery is also an adventure, mostly because there are no addresses. It's all "after Delma bridge" this and "opposite mosque" that. And even navigating by landmark is difficult, as the definition of landmark varies from person to person. Some landmarks, however, should be universal, as illustrated by this conversation related to me by a friend (note--"Du" is one of the two telecoms providers in the UAE):

DU

What is your location, ma'am, so we can send our engineer?

FRIEND

Burj Khalifa.

DU

And what is your landmark?

F

I live in Burj Khalifa.

DU

Yes, ma'am, but we need a landmark so our engineer can locate you.

F

I live in Burj Khalifa, the tallest building in the world.

DU

But we need a landmark.

F

Really? OK, Dubai Mall. Are you actually in Dubai?

DU

Yes, ma'am. And how do you spell Burj Khalifa?

F

K-H-A-L-I-F-A.

DU

S for sugar.

F

No, F for Freddie.

DU

OK, we will send our engineer to you at Burj Khalisa near to the Dubai Mall.

Now, in Abu Dhabi, they are considering addressing (ha) this problem by using GPS coordinates for mail delivery and, it is assumed, things like emergency services. I guess if you throw enough money at that solution, it could work. Still seems a little more expensive and complicated, however, than just putting numbers on all the buildings....

The best kind of earthquake

Last night, a 7.5-magnitude (depending on whose figures you trust) temblor hit Pakistan. Fortunately, it was a remote part of Pakistan... so remote, in fact, that the area is where the nation has tested nuclear weapons. So ideally the population is not just small, but nonexistent. No one killed, no one hurt.

Not pictured: my apartment.

Pakistan is a long way from the UAE, but people felt the quake here. Including Mrs Blog and I, although I didn't realize it at the time.

Just before we went to bed, the wall unit door--loosely hung glass--was rattling for no discernible reason. Mrs Blog noticed it... it stopped after 20 seconds or so... and that was that.

The next day, reading about the earthquake, we assembled the facts and I realized that, yes, this was a momentous occasion: my first quake. A lame one, at least where we were sitting, but an earthquake nonetheless.

I wasn't expecting this. Mother Nature-dispensed trauma seems to avoid me; I grew up in Tornado Alley and never saw a twister, spent two years in Florida and didn't come within 500 miles of a hurricane. No fires in Chicago, either.

So as far as introductions to natural disasters, this one worked well for everyone involved.

Why the "Hey Song" is stuck in my head

For the first time in forever, the Chiefs have a playoff game that I can watch. And for the first time ever, I will be watching that game in the Middle East. It is just the latest in a long string of moments where ordinary things seem weird when you do them in such an odd place.

I watched a ton of football growing up. It was kind of a weekly ritual: I and several Friends of the Blog, six to 10 or so, would gather at one of our homes. There would be lots of soda. Pizza, usually--the square kind from Little Caesar's, which was cheap and made right down the street. We'd go outside to throw around the football at halftime. There was a heavy punching bag hanging in my parents' laundry room on which we would occasionally take out our frustrations if the game were going badly.

Jamaal Charles was 4 years old when I started watching the Chiefs. Ouch.

Now there aren't really any rituals. Sometimes Mrs. Blog and I go to friends' houses to watch the games. Sometimes there is pizza. Once there was even a football.

The only point here is that I'm happy the Chiefs are in the post-season again, and I'm happy to have so many good memories of cheering them on as a kid. And who knows, maybe someday I'll look back and recall how one year, my favorite NFL team won the Super Bowl when I was living in a part of the world where the halftime ads constituted the best programming of the year.

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.

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....

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?