Contest: Most Exotic Reader-locale

We have recently become aware that we have phantom readers from far-flung places. We don't mind you reading, Anthony Perkins, but we'd like to hear from you and your crusty mother.

So tell us who you are and where you're reading from, and Jon will write a poem in your honour, or at least make fun of where you live in some affectionate, clever way.

Tempting, no?

Make-ah some-ah noises, e? Iht's a-verry naiss eeff yew dew!

(And this includes all of you who are the yous whose locale we already know: other enquiring minds want to know. Plus, we just might make it to blogspot favourites.)

Short and Sweet

No pics, no vids, no bling. Just a quick note to say a) we are okey-dokey (for you, Smash. We know how you worry!), had a great day at SC in Dubai. Robert Oaks and spouse spoke, as did our entire SP, and we had lunch with the Red Deer Stewarts, which is always a blast. Melonee talks a mile a minute, and Jamie stalks you with the most pre-meditated funnies in the history of funny. Jacob is a laugh riot--a hybrid of the two. They say hi to all who care.

Also (shame on us, but when you're in Dubai, you have to strike while it's in the mire, if Metamix we mayphor) replaced Riley's guitar today, and picked up a hard case. He's raring to go, and presses ad nauseam for an electric. But he's fired up about it and this will motivate the latent genius.

Last night: Jon picked up three suits, four shirts, and four ties at Pierre Cardin's 75% off sale. What would normally have cost around $3500 CDN cost a mere $800. Has now joined world of grownups, and will be wearing suits to work most days, until we hit the mid-40s, anyway.

Next purchase: iPhone. We know, we know: but by golly he actually has appointments and stuff these days, and the old organizational methods no longer pass muster, cut the mustard, or corner Custer, mister: and the matter must be mastered minus the muttering.

Shout-outs:

Deborah: welcome to the 21st c! Next stop: MSN! Then, we rule the world!

Hobo: We misses you, too, filfy hoboeses. Sniff. Don't forget our birfday presents.

HMac: saw it. Welcome back. And congrats on the front pages.

Ahnos: has been discovered, but we shall protect his/her identity with our very lives (or at least with fingernail clippers and a spatula, unless you offer us a sandwich).


Straw-poll: we are considering summering at BYUH, where I've been offered a class to defray housing and eating costs, or in Provo, where the library actually has books and stuff, and there's a greater variety of things to do--you know, besides getting stung by jellyfish and averting one's eyes.

Where would we be most visited?

Funnies, and not so

Subtle, but I get a kick out of it all the same.



I can't wait for the levitation part. And if they boil it I'm calling them out for cheaters, because nobody says anything here about transformation from liquid to gas. Nope, they've got to levitate it in its liquid form or I'm demanding a refund.


The poster is pretty typical of things around here: everybody gets a poster for everything, especially if they're already important. Like, "Sheikh Somebody-or-other cordially requests the honour of your presence as he enjoys his daily breakfast of jam-on-toast, crumpets, a fruit cup, scrumptious dates, and Arabian coffee what could levitate a horseshoe."

We are also fond of rubber stamps, whether they are legitimate or not, principally, we suspect, because a) We find it amusing to make the Western ex-pats beg, borrow, and steal to get the stamps in the first place, or b) the damned British done wrote them into the post-colonial rule book, like the continuing presence of ruggers and cricket, the usage of roundabouts, boots, bonnets, and spanners, and the occasional twirling of umbrellas as fashion accessories for the slightly effeminate.

Don't get me started on decrees. Wa'allah. (Loosely: ay caramba.)


Alright. Not sure this is going to work, and it's probably illegal, but it's a nice rendition of the "Adhan," or call to prayer. It's by the Cat Formerly Known As Stevens, or, if you prefer, the Artist Formerly Known As Cat Stevens, and whose tenure on Billboard is matched only by his tenure on the no-fly list after some injudicious comments made post-7/7. Without further ado, except for the production credits by the hired infidel, I give you Yusuf Islam:



Might wanna listen to it twice, just to let the stream catch up. His Arabic is a little different from what we hear around here--might be because he's a Brit: he does the kinds of things I can imagine Dad doing if he ever got his Lancashire jaws on a semitic tongue (which sounds rather violent, now that I think about it).

Anyway, we hear "Allahu okhbahr," not "Allahu aikhbaihr." Potayto, potahto.

Things you can do cheaply, easily, and cheaply and easily in the UAE

get fat
get honked at
get glowered at
get smiled at
get your clothes washed
get your clothes pressed
get your clothes tailored
get tailored clothes
get your groceries delivered
get your pizza delivered
get your fast food delivered
get your furniture delivered
get just about anything delivered
get lost
get found
get even
get odd
get over it
get around
get palm dates
get your hair butchered
get a cow butchered
get a chicken butchered
get your tank filled
get your car washed
get fired
get hired
get expelled
get offended
get rear-ended
get religion
get cable vision

but not (and this seems only to apply to us, excepting Christopher, who is always the colour of darkish milk chocolate, even in the dead of the deadest, wintriest winter) get tanned

Number Three turns Four

Birthday boy (yes, 5 weeks ago--we're doing our best). Ay caramba. Kid puts the kosher in precocious. Alright, that doesn't work here. He puts the halal in halitosis. No, that doesn't work either. Let's just say he puts the "Holy crap!" in our lives in general.



So his birthday requests--in the absence of friends his age--were simple: he wanted Cheese Muneesh (Geez Louise, we calls it: folded naan bread with melted cheese, melted cheese curds, and cream cheese--excellent for weight loss: kidney stones, anyone?) and chocolate milk for lunch. Cheesy kid.





Our South African fan club--well, Jonah's fan club, anyway--was over-generous, as always. When we drop the eldest off to pick up our second, we always have to roll down Jonah's window so he can say hi to Charlie, the Papillon (the one with the snout).



And later he opened his presents from us: this may well be the last glimpse we get of little baby Jo-Jo. Notice that he thinks he has to be facing the camera at all times. We don't know where he gets this stuff.



"It's in a bag!"

Yes, Boboji, it's in a bag, like everything else around here.

And this was his second request: a quad run at the mall next to our complex. He's anxious to show off his mad skeelz to Grandpa Knievel in two weeks.



We have edited, for the sake of the grandmothers twain, the fiery crash stage left. The scars are not permanent. And you should have seen the other guy.

Weekly Cute: together with “the brothers,” Jonah has discovered Weird Al, and our lives will never be the same. Cute, but also obnoxious: Jonah now suspects very vocally that we think he’s “white and nerdy,” and is trying very hard not to be “a Acadian idiot.”

We are also treated to strange and new renditions of “O Candida” on a regular basis. And he very loudly proclaimed that the chandelier above our table at the restaurant the other night was “church lights,” and that he hates crying babies, especially girl ones. J and J enjoy more and more sophisticated conversations, much to Wendy's delight and astonishment. Like we said: precious in precocious, with occasional bouts of Calvinism (and we don't mean the fatalist religious reformer: we mean the kid with the pet tiger named for the Restoration philosopher).

In other cute, Riley no longer looks away during kissing scenes on movies. And Christopher continues on his path to ladykillerhood, but is serendipitously clueless about it, which as I understand it is the key to ladykillerness to begin with.

Oh, and Christopher also had a birthday: Wii bowling tournament with a few good friends, representing South Africa, Canada, India, and, well, Canada (10 points to the first person to spot the Indian). He's done a smashing job of picking friends thus far. We're waiting for the other shoe to drop.



Eleven years old. Oy veh!

(Ahem. Masha'allah.)

Good Clean Fun

When you're young, male, and you don't drink--leastwise not in front of anyone else--I guess you turn to other diversions to compensate for the absence of stupidity brought on by inebriation:


http://view.break.com/398332 - Watch more free videos

It seems you find Darwin Award candidates in every culture: we once saw a kid riding in a shopping cart hurtled toward a sidewalk by his "friends." Of course, his feet got tangled in his dishdash as he tried to bail, so he wiped out pretty nicely in the desert grit, narrowly missing a makeout session with the grill of a Dodge Durango.

Speaking of stupid human tricks involving SUVs:



Then there's this:



How do you say "moxie" in Arabic?

Anyway, we used to bumperski in PG, and in Maple Ridge a favourite neighborhood game was four-square-dodgeball . . . with lawn darts. So testosterone-induced moronism is obviously universal. (No Arabs were hurt in the making of these films: al hamdulillah.)

But lions at parties is a new thing, I should think: and Siegfried and Roy nowhere to be seen. But, you know, they don't have Siegfrieds and Roys here. Clearly.

We suppose we could blog about Arabic language and literature, or lecture disquisitionally on the history of pearl-diving and dhow-making, but quite frankly it's the public behaviours that fascinate us. This is indeed a surprising and sometimes shocking culture, or rather clash of cultures. Must be something in the lookha. Sheesh.

Riley just back from his youth conference in Bahrain. Good times. He made some new friends whose names he cannot recall, and we will have pictures from Shari before long. Next week, all goes well. 'Til then . . . .

Happy Whatsama What? Huh?

File this under "Oddities." There were many things we expected to see, coming here. And there were many things we did not expect to see. We were told that Al Ain was like the Jeddah of the Emirate of Abu Dhabi, except not quite so much. But yeah, you can tell a difference between here and Abu Dhabi and Dubai, not only in what westerners generally try to pull off (and by "Westerners" we mean godless heathens--mostly European), but in what Arabs and Muslim "others" will get away with (or without).

We did not expect, for instance, to see so many flipping lingerie stores. Good golly. And even if we had, we wouldn't have expected provocative displays. Alright, so they're marginally toned down, but the dummies are anatomically correct, except for those without heads; and the models are always godless euro-heathens, but its not their compatriots who are in those stores, either as customers or employees. Weird!--I'ma say it again--Weird! to see women in the whole shootin' match--abaya (body covering), shaela (head scarf), and burkha (veil) shopping at Victoria's Secret and other local, and more, erm, lingerial specialty shops.

Okay, so we've grown accustomed to that. Not that we spend anytime there ourselves, or tend to look in as we walk by, of course. Ahem.

We were told not to hold hands in public, but guess what! Couples under 45 generally can and/or do around here, so all bets are off. We were also told to keep shoulders and knees covered at least, but the memo seems not to have enjoyed total distribution. I mean, you can tell a difference between here and, say, Ventura Boulevard or the Las Vegas strip. Generally speaking--98% of the time--even the Arabs who wear western dress sans abaya are in the main more modestly covered than the average 'tween at Johnson Memorial Junior High. So that's good. But now and then some godless euro-heathen blows by who would easily fit in on Ventura, the Strip, or at JMJH.

What's interesting is, despite my views of radical forms of dress and the mixing of social rule with religious dogma, I still experience a kind of sympathetic disappointment when I see Arab women dressed provocatively, at least by comparison. And the fact is they're not really being provocative.

But it makes me think that the veiling of bodies and faces is, at least culturo-historically, meant to be sensual--the very quality it has been appropriated by religious law to suppress. Because judging from what goes on at VS and fellows, well, let's just say Valentine's Day is a pretty big deal. No, we are not in Saudi Arabia, where that's all been more or less banned. Here it's on open display. Might not be very many folks at the movie theatre tonight.

But this is a family blog. Forgive me. I'm just in sociological shock, because I was over at the mall early tonight (V Day), and saw 5, that's FIVE, interracial couples. And I don't mean the common types: Arab and African-extraction, or Arab and Filipina, all-muslim. I mean by golly Arab and godless euro-heathen. 5 Arab men in different places in the mall in the company of geh's. 2 of the men were in dishdasha, spandex-wearing lipstick hos (God forgive them) at their sides. I had to rub my eyes and pinch my arms. I do verily believe that the Apocalypse is nigh.

With that, a special treat. Three items for your reading and viewing pleasure. The last makes fun of Bush's Iranian twin, so I don't think you have to worry too much. And another disclaimer: poems just happen to poets. It's a mood thing, a kind of oracular mood swing, if we must have the truth. I don't feel this way today. In fact, I both fear for this wonderfully, comparatively moderate society and celebrate it, as long as it lasts. And may it last. Insha'allah. Because in the main, whatever they've inherited or adopted, these are good people: kindly, thoughtful, whispery smooth, and profoundly alight. And when the luxury train makes its last stop, I hope they're wide awake and ready to hoof it on ahead. We'll need them.


Sila, Liwa, Bani Yas

They keep this up, there’ll be no desert left,
No space to wreck, no four-wheel desert cleft
To winnow down: no dry-heave, tinder bone
To let a man alone.

The death-gasp of the culture that could tear
The banshee shriek of what is drawing near
Is such a modern thing it makes me grin
Like poison: sick of sin.

They keep this up, these mincing, drifting ghosts,
These zebra forms with all their Babel boasts,
They’ll blister from the artificial cold:
The center cannot hold,

The falcon cannot hear the falconer,*
The tent is void, the women too demure,
And from the mosques a bitter incense fumes:
It’ll bring them to their tombs.


And my valentine to Wendy: she'll forgive me for posting it. I was hoping she would either laugh out loud or say it was the most romantic thing she'd ever heard, but she, well, never mind. Let's just say she passed Go without collecting the $200, and the moment kinda fell a little flat.


Heart Failure: Averted
(Thanks to you)

Here are all the things I’d do
If I hadn’t married you:

I’d drive a motorbike too fast
And wouldn’t slow until I’d passed
Each station wagon, bus, and van
Along the hairpin-turn TransCan;

I’d live in Europe, catch disease,
And contract head lice, maybe fleas;
I’d prowl her humid streets all night,
Or stay up reading in too-dim light;

I’d eat too much of the wrong thing,
And sleep too late, and never sing
And I’d hate kids, and adults, too,
If I had never married you.

If I hadn’t married you
I’d probably have learned kung fu
And used it on some smaller bloke
And done some time in the provincial poke.

I’d fail at work, make big mistakes,
Spend too much dough on crappy dates
Grow far too old for the singles scene
And drown my sorrows in ice cream.

Then I’d move home, get fat and bald,
Spend afternoons in shopping malls,
Write little, think less, be profoundly depressed,
And despise myself. Yep, I confess

That this is where I’d likely be
If you hadn’t married me.


And finally, from JibJab (we don't know what he actually says, though this was clearly taken from his Columbia U speech),




By the way, it is confirmed: "Rai-li" does indeed mean "my husband." In their dreams.

*Credits (before I forget): "sick of sin" comes from Wilfred Owen's great "Dulce et decorum est"; both "The centre cannot hold" and "The falcon cannot hear the falconer" are from Yeats' "The Second Coming." Lest ye think me a base thief, and curse me for a hack . . . .

Can't resist

Check this out:

http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1710844,00.html?xid=feed-cnn-world

In connection with Simon Gathercole's The Preexistent Son and several other important concessions by old timey theologians, well, the world is waking up. Someone get this guy a copy of the Plan of Salvation discussion stat! Sounds like he's ready.

Shout out, long overdue, to mj, who has certainly been our most punctual reader, and among the most responsive. Appreciated, always. We'll be in touch on the school issue.

Salaam.

Things we learned this week

Profound lessons, every one.

First of all--and this is important, so pay attention--"Extra cheese?", especially in the interrogative mood, does not mean, "Do you want a surplus of cheese over and above what you already have?" That is to say, it is not a hermeneutic intended to uncover the presence or absence of an existential desire for supernumerary slices of cheese.

No, it means more simply, "Do you want cheese? That'll be extra."

"Extra" is in contextual effect a misplaced modifier, and in actual fact a dangling modifier. Dangling like melty cheese, for which I have now paid a surprising extra. We learned this by refusing the "extra cheese," thereby getting no cheese at all.

Also, for the first few months of his schooling, the Emirati girls would often tease Riley, giggling and laughing at the mere pronouncement of his name. He did not mention this, of course, until recently, when he was informed by a smirking colleague that "Riley," phonetically, means "my husband" in Arabic. Well, we gave this a good long Pooh-think, and determined that the appropriate response to the Emirati girls calling him by name would be "You wish!" or "In your dreams, Sweetheart!"

So you can imagine the scene:

Emirati girl asks, "Who knows the most about Canada?"

"Oh," replies another. "That would be Riley."

"You wish!"

Or another scene:

"I'll be in the seat next to Riley."

"In your dreams, Sweetheart!"

It goes without saying that Riley has had neither the courage nor the self-possession to follow through, though he did acknowledge the especial hilarity of the tagline to the accidental pun.

Now he tells us that Riley is in fact meaningless in Arabic, but I think his leg has been pulled yet again, and I intend to ask my students about it this week.



A bit early this time: I won't be able to blog on Friday, or Saturday, or perhaps ever again, if this pace keeps up. Wendy will likely tell you something about Christopher's Arabian birthday. We appreciate, as always, your faith and prayers, etcetera. We're considering a change of school next year, and could use some clarity.


Shout outs: Steve and Camille for having a new baby boy. Especially Camille cuz, well, she actually did the having. But boo-hiss for calling the poor kid "Perry." Ay caramba. I know it's a Clegg name, but c'mon. Congrats to Steve for the promotion. Camille, we hope you recover quick like a bunny.

Adam: for funniest comment almost ever, but on purpose. See Jonahisms.

All y'all for digging us so much and coming back for more. By the way, I've taken restrictions off commenting, so feel free to say a few words now and then. We like knowing you're out there. Ask questions, voice exceptions, make requests, sound off: just keep it clean, and don't ask us to work too hard.

Seacrest out.

These are the rulers in our neighborhood!

Might wanna magnify this one:



So these are four of the big five: from memory, on the left is Sheikh Mohammed bin Khalifa (Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi, Deputy Commanding Officer of the Armed Forces), then there's Sheikh Hamdan bin Mohammad, the new Crown Prince of Dubai, Sheikh Khalifa (Ruler of Abu Dhabi, President of UAE, Son of Zayed, all-around Big Kahuna), and Sheikh Maktoum bin Mohammad, Deputy Ruler of Dubai.

To clarify, the brothers Hamdan and Maktoum are sons of Sheikh Mohammad, Ruler of Dubai and Prime Minister of UAE, not Sheikh Mohammed bin Khalifa, Crown Prince (and therefore future Ruler) of Abu Dhabi. "Bin," sometimes "Ibn," means "son of": and boy howdy are there lots of "sons of," you know, given the whole polygamy thing. So chances are the brothers are half-brothers, but everyone's okay with it. "Big Love" ruffleth no feathers here.

Anyway, Sheik Khalifa is the son of Zayed, founder of the UAE, which you should all know by now is a union of separate emirates, or kingdoms, of which Abu Dhabi is the largest geographically and, by all reports, the wealthiest. There are also Dubai, clearly, Sharjah, Ras al Kaimah, and three others whose names I can never recall with certainty. Al Ain is part of Abu Dhabi, despite being closer to Dubai, and is in fact the birthplace of Zayed. Khalifa et al own 40% of the land in Al Ain, and have upwards of 20 palaces in the area. He spends roughly two days a year here, or so I heard. Maybe that's nights. I think he comes for lunch once a week to visit his mother.

So anyway, Zayed, as you may recall from last week's lecture, was the one who ushered in the era of oil exploration and development, taking Abu Dhabi and the UAE out of obscurity, and perhaps unintentionally turning them into a veritable orgy of shopping malls, fast food outlets, sheesha bars, car washes, Afghani cabbies, Pakistani barbers, Indonesian gas jockeys, Filipina nannies, luxury watches, ubiquitous incense, mysterious women, lonely men (though obviously not all of them are lonely), starving cats, befuddled moviegoers, stupefying architecture, theme parks, and marginally bemused expats. There can be little doubt that Zayed was like Gorbachev: hoping for a gradual accommodation rather than an explosion of wealth and development, though he was impatient to get things goind in terms of human resource development and infrastructure. But he also took a soft view of development: height restrictions in Al Ain, for instance: nothing over four storeys in the garden city, spank you very much. And Abu Dhabi seems to be less frenetic in its development as well when compared to Dubai. It is the seat of government, and some modicum of sanity prevails.

In sum: Abu Dhabi rules, Dubai helps out, and the others basically tag along.

Test next Friday.

Brrrrr!

In the spirit of EC's plaintive entries on the weather, we offer this in solidarity: it ain't all beaches and cream here. . . .



In the immortal words of Nelson (not Lord) from the Simpsons: "Ha-ha!"

Hey, it's been as low as 10 degrees here in the frigid inland. We've had to wear a coupla shirts and sometimes even a light jacket. Erin: you're not alone. We feel your pain. Especially in our knees and on the soles of our feet: no inlaid carpet, no central heating. Life's hard.

On Family

Shout outs:

Ambrose--don't worry about commenting on every post. Save yourself for the ones you really get into. And we all know you're capable of incomparable wit.

Todos--thanks for the compliments on the poems. Well, they are what they are. I'm glad they served.

Note the note at the bottom of the page: we'd be glad to include more blog links if you have 'em. Remember that this is a family station.

Ahnos--still nothing. We miss you, and wish we knew who you were.



Alright. We were a bit neg last time, so we're going to point out some of the cultural high points in the coming weeks.

The first and best of these is the importance of family in Emirati culture--informed more by Arab heritage than by Islam, I think, but with its share of influences. We'd love to say that this is true of the muslim world in general, and it probably is to some extent, though it is also true that Islamic communities have historically tended to a quasi-pathological patriarchal structure. And we must also say that Emirati culture is not without its warts in this respect as well: women are still relatively limited in terms of the choices and kinds of choices they can make.

That said, domestic life here seems really very tranquil. We rarely see parents abuse their children in any way (even when we sometimes wish they would), and we see them together a lot. Emirati families love to be out and about, especially in the evening hours. There are parks all over the place, and these are generally busy: picnics in the evening, games and fun during the day. Couples and families shop together, and you'll actually see men with their children more than you see women alone with the children. Families that have nannies--the pyjama-wearing, deflated, Eeyore, subaltern types or the hip, chatty, liberated types--will generally always have the nanny in tow, especially a mother with her children.

They love them some kids, though. Jonah is regularly mobbed and always ogled wherever he goes. His hair has been tousled, stroked, finger-combed, and otherwise assaulted. His cheeks have been pinched, kissed, tickled, and scratched. He's been lifted up, full on mouth-kissed, cornered, chased, and traumatized in a thousand other ways. All in good fun. Kismet, we suppose, for the time he knocked that poor pregnant woman over on her keister (how does one spell that?).

Emirati children are a handful, mind you. We've dubbed those ones "Emibratties." We mean it in the best positive way. But they can be very sweet, and all in all kids is kids.

And we suppose that's what distinguishes and humanizes our Arab others: we all have fundamentally the same stresses, concerns, joys, and loves. Whatever its failings, Arab culture has learned to safeguard children and is increasingly egalitarian in its view of parenting and marriage. Modest displays of affection are evident even here: the holding of hands, an exchange of whispered jokes or glances, a watchfulness and patience. We've much to learn as westerners, in that respect at least. We probably chalk our own newly discovered family unity to our spiritual isolation, but we think it may well be part of an identification, an awakening, that connects us to our hosts, even as language and habit and doctrine still divide us.

And that's the way it was this Friday, February 1. We're not Paul Harvey (nor are we Walter Cronkite--whoops), but good day anyway.