Camel-Up

Thursday, December 11, 2008

Posted in Sharing at 12:45 pm by Administrator

It's raining outside now.  Downtown, the children play on the rooftops and in the streets. The ground doesn't stay wet at all, it just perks down immediately beneath the dust. We are get about 4 days of rain for the entire year.  It was even a little cold outside for a while.

National Day was a few days ago. OMG it was craziness in the streets. It's never taken that long to get home from work. Lot's of cars, actually SUV's where painted for the 37th UAE Independence Day. I'm certain it was 37 because 37's were painted everywhere. Long stretches of road were lined with illuminated 37 signs. Skyscrapers were blanketed in white, green and black lights.. Check out my pics.

http://picasaweb.google.com/wingfold2001/UAE#

Many SUV's were decorated with hearts and star stickers and featured images of the Late and current rulers of the UAE.  Sheikh Zayed  and his son Sheikh Kalifa respectively. Sheik always has the same pose with one eyebrow raised and Sheikh Kalifa looks like Jon Belushi. These images of the Sheiks were made with the same material you see on billboards or city bus advertisements. They did not look cheap and were probably installed by professionals. They were on almost every SUV that I saw last night. Most were full of young Arab dudes or chicks - always in separate vehicles. They were driving absolutely reckless. I saw 3 accidents, one was serious.

A popular thing for the locals to do, is to rev the engine hard, deep into the red while parked. These are BMW, Mercedes, etc. with stock motors so even though it was powerful, the sound was more whiny then throaty. That's one of the worst things you can do to any vehicle. They were sounding off air horns and spraying silly string in gridlock traffic. The guys would sit on the window or just ride on top of the cars blaring Arabic superstar music. There was to be the biggest fireworks display in the world so I wanted to get to downtown as soon as possible.  We heard the opening salvo at 8:30 but we were still stuck in traffic. Eventually we made it to the apartment and parked. The sidewalks were also packed with people. We negotiated a park which let people in but didn't let people out the other side so we had to back track a little. Finally we made our way north to the Cornish which is a famous boardwalk along the beach.  The show was good. We saw the last 20 minutes of it. It was the most gold colored fireworks I'd ever seen.  It didn't exactly live up to the hype, the final shot was a smiley face but it came upside down. I felt sorry for thousands of people who had to fight their way back home.

We went golfing the other day. There are no "greens" here they're called "browns". It's a mixture of sand and petroleum that needs to be raked when you walk on it like a sand trap. They couldn't spare any grass for the fairways. You departed the club house complete with a round of Astro turf. You are supposed to put the ball on the round before each shot. It worked well enough. My game was solid. You couldn't get any kind of roll or bounce from your ball in the sand and they were sometimes really hard to find in the whitish sand.  The sand traps were the best I've ever seen! Walking 18 holes in the sand is great exercise.

We did a traditional Bedouin caravan in the sand dunes complete with 2008 Toyota Land Cruisers. It's a popular sport to tear around in the sand dunes. I discovered where all the cops in this town are. They are bashing around out there all day in their patrol vehicles. Our guide was from Iran. He was not happy about the situation in Iran at all. He had been guiding for years and years in the UAE. He said all the newer Model SUV's are crap. He hated the Toyota Land Cruiser we were all in. He showed us the owners manual instructions for putting it into 4WD. It was 11 steps including shutting the car off. He said the best new ones are the Hummer, not surprisingly, and the Iguana which is more like a dune buggy. He said earlier model Land Cruisers and the SUV's from the 70's and 80's are much better. He said performance is very important because the river beds are prone to very dangerous flash floods. I wanted to get more details but his accent was heavy and he was speaking at top speed because it was his favorite subject.
We visited a camel farmer before 4 wheeling. The male camel was separated because he bites.  He was worth $50,000 because he was racing quality. His harem of females were very curious and friendly. They move silently. I was taking pictures of a 3 day old baby camel and I didn't realize a huge camel walked over to me until she nudged me.  The camels ate hay and heavily irrigated, bright green grass.

Our guide was chatting on the phone while driving in the technical roller coaster of the sand hills. We would come so close to tipping over and rolling but he deftly swerved and followed the contour perfectly. It was wild fun. The whole time he was just kicked back in easy conversation on the phone. Sometimes quickly sticking the phone in his cheek and shoulder and furiously wrenching the wheel. We stopped and walked around for a while taking pictures of the infinite sand dunes at sunset. We finished our  trip to the Bedouin style camp. The tents looked to be made out of very large wool blankets. The blankets and carpets were the highest quality fabric I'd ever seen. The carpets were very dense and thick. They were not pliable like a normal carpet but they were very soft and comfortable.

They're was a large hill outside the camp with a rope anchored at the top and crappy snowboards at the bottom. I grabbed one and ran as fast as I could straight up the hill. The rope was nice to have after about half way, it became a necessity near the top.  By the time I got to the top my lungs were screaming and I collapsed for about 10 minutes. I went down the hill as fast as I came up on that stupid snowboard.

We had a traditional Arabic dinner. Chicken, lamb, hummus, fish and tabule which is an Arabic salad with chopped greens and vinegar. All of it was very tasty. Afterwards, there was tea and shisha tobacco readily available in the fancy hookahs. Shisha is pretty harsh. Technically it's pure second hand smoke. I've heard shisha is 600 times worse then cigarettes. It is fresh tobacco soaked in syrupy oil flavored with strawberry, apple, mint etc. A red hot coal is placed on top and you draw the smoldering smoke through water. It's smooth death. I had a hangover from it.

It was a cool and clear night. They turned the lights off and we could see the stars while lounging on those carpets. Everything was perfect except the tiny bug I saw in the moonlight close to my head. I sat up and remembered about camel spiders. They are huge hairy and very aggressive spiders that live here. I was told that they are called camel spiders because they attach to the undersides of camels and embed themselves into the hide. It's not true. They do love the dark and people claim to be followed by them but the spider is just instinctively attracted to your shadow.

 ~Joseph S.

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Magic Carpets

Monday, November 3, 2008

Posted in Sharing at 6:34 pm by Administrator

There are loads of activities to do here. The weather has cooled off and the tourists are trickling in.

Another guy at work and myself organized a half day fishing trip. The boat was about 30 feet long and had two 150 HP Motors which was plenty. We jetted along the water for about half an hour straight to a channel marker. In the near distance were two oil platforms with wide restricted areas. The water was only about 50 feet deep where we spent most of our time. One of our guys, started reeling in fish before some of us had even received our baited hooks. Yes, the guide would bait your hook, remove the fish and probably even real in the fish if you wanted. In all we caught like 26 fish. Most were small Groupers, two of them were about as long as your arm. The guide wanted to keep them for dinner. None of us had fillet knives so that was fine plus we gave him a fat tip. It's always cool to prepare the fish that you caught yourself. Deep sea fishing is coming up in less then a month. Here is one of the best places in the world to catch Marlin and Sailfish. Our guide had been cited for unknowingly fishing too close to the oil platforms. The police took away his fishing license for a while which almost caused him to be deported. The Emirate citizens can fish as close as they want to those things which are hot spots for fish.

Singular or plural Emirate is pronounced with a tee at the end "Em-er-ah-tee".
The weather is just great. It is comfortable at dawn in shorts and a t-shirt and not too hot in the afternoon. We have lots and lots of sunshine because there is seldom a cloud in the sky. There were also clouds two days ago which I took pictures of. Dust is a different story. The dust is so hazy the horizon is a tan color. It makes for beautiful sunsets and sunrises because you can look directly at the disc of the sun. Couple that with the call to prayer from any nearby mosque and it makes for a striking moment.

The natural terrain is a steady expanse of flat with nothing but dust and wind. It's so flat you can see the back of your own head. To walk around in the soil in some places is like walking on powdered sugar. It must be the blowing wind that effectively grinds the sand into dust. I have seen the wind pick up and visibility becomes very bad, apparently it becomes much worse. I have to dust the place about once a week. It gets everywhere including the bottom of things. It sticks to the bottom of your shelves and on the walls.

The dusty soil contains a heavy concentration of salt. I had to be in a storm water retention area the other day. The ground was encased in a 1+" thick plate of salt. There was a small patch of standing water sitting in a pocket of the advancing salt tomb. I knew that if I stomped on the encrusted mud, my foot would break through like a frozen pond…I did it. I was right. Inexplicably, there were softballs - of the fast pitch variety - half buried in the stuff.

The fog can be massive in the early morning. Near the two bridges that connect the island of Abu Dhabi to the mainland the fog is blinding. The morning sun quickly burns it off. People drive with their hazard lights on during that time which doesn't really help. Bright yellow flashing lights and reduced visibility just adds to the confusion. Some people don't even slow down. It's crazy the people!!!

There is a huge class of folks here that account for at least 80% of the population. They send money to their families in countries like India, Pakistan and the Philippines. They aren't paid very much and housing is very expensive so I can't imagine there is a lot left over to send. Sometimes companies take unfair advantage of the workers. A common abuse is their passports are withheld so they cannot leave. It's difficult for them to quit one job to work for another because the companies can send them home for any reason.

You'll see hundreds of people lounging around the city together on any empty patch of grass. They are workers who are waiting for their bed spaces to become available. 3 - 8 hour rotations per day per bed. One person gets up to go to work and another drowsy worker arrives for waiting for his turn in the bunk bed.

The mode of operations here is very labor intensive. They employ many people instead of machinery. Ditches are dug by 20 guys with shovels. Bricks are loaded by hand, one at a time. There is no rush. The late Sheik wanted to hire and bring in more and more people to stimulate the economy. Even after irrigation was laid for 20 miles outside the capital to water the Cedar trees, they still retained workers to water the grass. You'll seen guys standing in the sprinklers, watering the grass with a hose while the sprinklers are on.

I was lucky to visit Lulu Island which is a small island right outside Abu Dhabi. It's very close, just a 10 min. Ferry ride from one of the shopping malls. The water is protected from the open Gulf by a perfectly symmetrical rip rap barricade about 250 yards from the beach. A few coworkers and I swam out to it and rested on the hot boulders. The top of the wall was carefully set so that the flattest side of each rock faces out. In the distance are the ever present oil tankers. Beyond that is hostile Iranian waters.

Lulu Island is a great place to relax because there aren't many people and it's so close. There is about a $4 fee for the ferry / bus ride to the beaches. The water seemed extra salty which made your body very buoyant. The water was warm and calm like a bathtub. The date palm trees were fully brimming that day. They were bigger and sweeter then the dates in the store. Exactly like candy - I probably ate 50 of them that day. We went out there last weekend and the date palm flush was pretty much over.
 
We went to Dubai and checked out the sites. They say everything is amazing in Dubai which is pretty much true. The architecture is  tasteful and occasionally over the top. The Burj Dubai is the tallest building in the world and it's not even finished being built. It doesn't have the towering calmness of Taipei 101 which is the incumbent tallest and my personal favorite. The Burj (tower) Dubai is very thin like something from a fantasy world. Approaching Dubai from Abu Dhabi, you can not see the tower even on a clear day. Suddenly if you know where to look, you can see a thin line and it looks absolutely - impossibly tall. Far higher then everything else. The elevators being installed will be the fastest in the world.
 
I couldn't stop looking at the hug Burj Al Arab, the sailboat shaped 7 star hotel perched on it's own island. It is the tallest hotel in the world. Rooms start at about $1,850 per night. Near the Burj al Arab there is a huge beach for miles and miles. They are near completion on a monorail that will connect Abu Dhabi and Dubai. I took pictures of some of the futuristic train stations along the route. They spared no expense with these and many other buildings.
 
In Dubai, there are large palm tree shaped islands that have expensive condos and hotels all with waterfront property. The oldest of these man made Islands is called Palm Jumeirah.  At the end of the Palm Jumeirah is a water park / hotel called Atlantis finished late last month. They have insane water slides and giant aquariums. One of the aquariums has a whale shark that they captured in the wild. There is a big push to rescue him from the hotel aquarium and put him back in the sea. I think they might have succeeded already. We drove onto the Palm Jumeirah, that is the photographs with the flags lining the road. We didn't have enough time to spend the day at Atlantis.
 
Dubai has got to be the worlds largest construction zone. I've heard they have 24% of the worlds construction cranes and I wouldn't dispute that. There is a huge demand for American educated, English speaking managers and workers. Dubai is very friendly and much more liberal then any other place in the Arab world. # 2 is Abu Dhabi. Beware the housing situation in Dubai, it's worse then Abu Dhabi. If you accept a job that pays $100,000 per year, you'll pay a huge portion of that for a place to live unless the company puts you up. Companies are doing that less and less because the housing prices are getting out of hand. There just isn't any apartments available, they can't build them fast enough.

You'll see some pictures of the Gold souk (market). It won't be hard to tell which ones those are. I went to a watch and jewelry show a few nights ago. Cameras were not allowed so I had to be extra careful. I got one picture of a diamond tiera that cost $1 million. You can see that it's basically a pile of enormous diamonds. There were watches and bracelets that looked like they had been dipped in glue and rolled around in icy diamonds. There was some great photo ops that I wanted. Imagine a glass case full of jewels and huddled from end to end are women in all black ninja burkas. Muslim Women here are modest but not always shy. They are very good at haggling. It's cool to watch both men and women raise there voices and use big sweeping body language when they negotiate prices. It's astonishing how much money these guys have.
 
During the day, taxi drivers turn the meters on and riding in taxis is cheap. $1.50 can take you to the mall about 2 miles away. At night, the meters go off and they try hard to gouge you. Especially if your western and they think you've been drinking - which is illegal unless you stay in your hotel, they will act like you're in trouble and demand money. When that doesn't work, they beg you for more money. "America is full power country, 60 AED ($16)" they say. 
 
Thanks for being patient. I know it's been a while since I hollered at you all. Talk to you soon. Here is a link to my web album. I update it from time to time.
 
http://picasaweb.google.com/wingfold2001/UAE

-Joseph S.

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Sun Shades

Wednesday, September 17, 2008

Posted in Sharing at 12:06 pm by Administrator

Hey whats up everyone. The desert is all right. If you want affordable luxury this is the place to go. This is a popular tourist attraction in the winter time. The weather getting very pleasant early in the morning. There are only two seasons here. It is still no place to be without sunglasses because it's incredibly bright. The sun has bleached the desert so it is screamingly bright white when you open the door. Indoors it's almost cold, when you walk by a bank or Lamborghini dealership with large open glass doors, it's like the frozen pizza isle.

Is America the only place with sane drivers? People drive like ANIMALS here. Maybe they once remembered that other people exist, but all the money - I don't know. It's a lot of posturing here, they feel entitled to be one car length ahead and they'll get in an accident to prove their point. The weird thing is, if you make eye contact, they'll back off right away.

When they're is any kind of cue, nobody has heard of a line. It's like hungry fish to food flakes. Remember scenes from a natural disaster and the guys in the truck are tossing life giving water to the dirty suffering masses? It's like that just to be handed a number to see the immigration officer. Even when your number is called, you have to elbow your way to the desk. The locals don't have to wait in line. The officer can ask you a question and then suddenly he's giving a high five to someone in a dik dak (white robe) like they're old friends. They've never met before, that's just how it works here. They're both wearing gleaming white robes with the white head scarf and black headband therefore they're from the same area (Gulf States). Other Muslim regions wear white robes with red, black etc. checkered head scarfs depending on their location. Either way I have to wait.

If anyone can give me some incite or tell me stories about this kind of thing, I'd love to hear about it.

The site manager put it this way; they will not answerer a question that you didn't specifically ask. You could be in a dark room. And ask "Is the door in front of me?" If it is behind you they will just say no. It's a big world.

I was waiting in line at the grocery store with a coworker the other day and a child, about 12 years old, steps in line in front of us with a newspaper. At first I thought he was with the family in front, but he wasn't. He just stepped in line in front of us, probably because we were foreigners. It was just beyond cheeky. To top it all off, the kid was absolutely engrossed in the newspaper. Who reads the newspaper when they are 12?

Apartments are difficult to find in Abu Dhabi and Dubai. The landlords often only accept the entire years worth of rent up front. They don't accept checks and you must have a resident visa. If you and your roommates can come up with $30-$40K American dollars, it's not too bad of a deal. It's much better then the hotel apartment rates. However, you don't get any of that money back if you leave before 1 year.

They don't like cameras here. I accidentally went NEAR an area that didn't allow cameras. It was in my hand and the guard confiscated it. Earlier that morning, I had taken pictures of the grand Mosque in Abu Dhabi. It is 3rd largest in the world - a huge stunning building that is just begging to be photographed. It's a memorial to the Sheikh Zayed who died in 2004 and is buried there. He was the founder of the UAE. Anyway you aren't supposed to have pictures of mosques. That rule is subject to interpretation because I've seen images of mosques including the grand mosques on brochures and posters. But what you definitely aren't supposed to have is pictures of your girlfriend in a bikini. In the area I was in, it's considered pornography because you can see her midsection. The secure area that I went to took that very seriously. Lucky for me there were some American interpreters at the guard house. While I was giving my information to them, my camera was sitting on the desk in front of me so I quickly removed the sim card. They told me I could pick it up on my way out and they turned it over to the Emerites. Bye bye camera.

About a 10 days later, after a lot of time and hassle, I got my camera back. The site manager said it was the first time he'd ever seen anyone recover their property. It might have been a religious act that I received it. The cameras menu had been changed to Arabic so you know they were snooping around like a bunch of moms. Ramadan is traditionally a time of clemency. I've heard about people having car debts forgiven. By Islamic law, it's forbidden to loan money at interest.

Other then that the country is very safe. The police will occasionally hand out 1000 AED fines ($272) for eating or drinking (water) in the daytime during Ramadan to set an example. There is no violent crime here to speak of. I've heard of abuse along the lines of indentured servant type situations. There is a huge foreign population from poor countries. Women have to be careful. If you're an unmarried woman traveling alone through the airport, expect to be hammered with questions. What are you doing here, who will you be meeting, how long have you been together, where is he, does he have a car, what does he do, where are you staying etc. They ask you many questions.

There is always a chance that one day you will be asked to leave the country. Apparently it happens all the time. Many times the person has no clue what the reason is. The answer is pretty much always the same… Someone who is close to the Emir (King) simply didn't like you. You might not have even known they were in that kind of position or even known them at all. If it happens, you don't have any choice in the matter. Let's see how long I can keep them off my tail.

The food is awesome. You can get the very best smoothies ever here. It's fruit, in a blender - that's it. No ice, usually no sweetener. Same with the juice you by at the store. Just blended up mangoes for example. It's thick like it would be if you pureed a bunch of mangoes or bananas. Great stuff. You can get shawarmas which are pita bread wraps with gyro meat. They come from the large, cone shaped mass of spices and meat that's slow cooked on a rotisserie. Absolutely spectacular. It's originally from Greece or Lebanon. They cost a little over $1.

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Abu Dhabi

Tuesday, September 2, 2008

Posted in Sharing at 11:58 am by Administrator

Abu Dhabi is very different then any other place I've been. First of all, there are few women here. There are officially 2.5 men for every women, but it seems more then that. Seriously, from my observation so far it's like 1000 per 1 women. More women come out in the evening when it becomes cooler. Commuting to and from work in the daytime you see only men. Crowds of workers, usually from other asian countries are milling around. When you reach downtown you might notice one women. If she is Muslim, she'll be wearing a full black burka showing only her eyes or face. Otherwise she is usually Filipino or Chinese. Even in the hotel, which caters to Westerners I only see one or two women. Who by the way, are older and don't look like they're on vacation. I've been told that women get what they want here.

5 times a day beginning at day break they broadcast prayer songs. Through loud speakers attached to mosques plays the traditional mournful singing. People don't stop and bow towards Mecca like I thought they would. Nobody does anything. It's a reflective moment, especially early in the morning. There are mosques everywhere. Most of them are a little bigger then a house and some are much larger. The biggest and most beautiful building I've ever seen is just outside of town and is like a little city. No mosques are allowed to be bigger then the most important one in Mecca. Non Muslims are not allowed to enter a mosque.

There isn't any urban sprawl in Abu Dhabi. It goes downtown, residential area, then blistering desert. That's probably for water management. There is lots of trees and green spaces in the city. The Cornish is a long boardwalk along an inlet that leads to the Persian Gulf. It is about 10 blocks away from the tall buildings of the city. In between are parks, roads, sculptures, etc. The boardwalk overlooks a long beach for westerners so people can wear swimming suits, bikinis are not allowed. I think there are two separate beaches for Muslim people, one for men and one for women. The water used to be farther up where the buildings are. They moved the beach back to create more usable space. A big time developer began building offices and hotels on the other side of the park, separate from downtown in the newly created land. The sheik at the time, sultan Muhammad al Zaiyed, the creator of the UAE stepped in and said, permits or not nobody can build here.

There will probably be lots of big soap opera stories like that for me to hear about.

Tomorrow Ramadan starts. That means eating or drinking is forbidden from sunrise to sunset, including twilight hours. That goes for everyone. I can do it, but my co-workers say to be quick and very discreet about it. I'll have to actually hide, like a crackhead, and drink my bottled mineral water…"from the foothills of the Massafi mountains". The businesses will have shortened hours, restaurants will be closed. It's very likely that I'll be fasting whether I want to or not. That will be interesting. I'm glad I'll be able to be a witness something like that because I've never seen anything like that. It lasts for about a month, maybe I won't be so enthusiastic in a couple weeks.

Traditionally Muslim families break fast together at the end of the day. Nowadays, it takes a long time to get home because of traffic.  The workers will get together and eat under the trees. It's hot here, so driving home without drinking all day is dangerous.

People drive fast. The cops don't care about speeding, that is for the traffic cameras. People figure out where the traffic cameras are and slow down. If there aren't cameras, Audubon rules apply. Most cars won't let you go faster then 212.5 km/per hour, that's about 140 mph. The cops are only there to fill out accident reports.

There aren't any billboards. Strict Islamic laws ban images but I'm not sure if that is the reason. There are images here just not big advertisements. There is a lot of ornately designed windows and furniture. The buildings all clean and very stylish. From the pictures you can see that marble and custom lighting are very popular.

Joseph S

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Arrived to UAE

Posted in Sharing at 11:54 am by Administrator

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