Fog + Excessive Speed=Apocalyptic Yikesery

File this one under "Gadzooks." Looks like the government's efforts to cut down on fatalities has been a smashing success. This 200 car pileup--yep: TWO HUNDRED--on the Abu Dhabi-Dubai road last week left an amazing 6 fatalities and only 30-odd serious injuries, believe it or not.






























Now before anyone worries: no, we weren't there. Far as we can tell, these were taken by people who should all be melty cheese and charbroil, but who, thanks be to God, are not. Wow. Thanks to Lance for the forward.

Next week: Riley's debut as a guitarist, with a little help from Bob Dylan, the Monkees, and John Lennon.

Merv's new look

Well, we succumbed to the sun, at long last, and had Merv's windows darkened. We think he looks pretty swanky, but we're worried about what the cops might say. Here's the shot:



And here's the context:

Given that for nearly 350 of the 365 days in the year the sun shines bright, and often hot, the trend here is to darken one's car windows, just in case one has to leave it in the hot sun for prolonged periods (like, you know, more than 2 minutes), and in order to help reduce glare while driving. Ex-pats are allowed 30% tinting on side and rear windows. So that's what we got on Merv: 30% tinting, custom Bangladeshi-tailored shades for Merv (with a little higher potency on the top of the windscreen--at the tailor's assurance it would be okay). Cost us, with generous tip, around $60 cdn. Un-believable (I'm hyphenating for effect).

(As with everything else: meticulously done.)

So we were pretty excited about this: sure, there's been talk in the papers about cracking down on tinting: Emiratis are allowed 50%, to protect their women's modesty, but they often opt for what looks like one-way tinfoil--totally impenetrable. There will be little circles on the driver's and passenger's side windows to allow a view of the mirrors, but otherwise they're as opaque as silver dollars on a dead man's eyes. Kinda freaky, actually.

And we've spent a 5 months exposed: to the sun, to the curious stares and malevolent glares of other drivers, and given the, erm, rules around here, Wendy has had to refrain from putting her naked feet up on the dash because someone might see her toes and ankles and consider himself engaged to her. You know how it is. (Though she did say that the locals had darn fine taste in cologne the other day, so hum: maybe I should consider house arrest and bed sheets around here, too.)

But then Justin S told me at church that I will not be able to park inside the women's campus now that my windows are tinted. I'll have to fight for a spot outside, and hike in. Which isn't terrible: the walk's not bad (despite the singeing topside, wot?), and now that we're tinted, my steering wheel won't actually melt all over the leather, and my seatbelt will no longer sear its brand into my palms. But if I park inside I a) do not have to cross a desert to get to my building, and b) can park under one of the many covers that have been erected to provide shade to stationary vehicles. So that was a surprise. Guess they're worried about stowaways, abductees, and elopements. Anyway, I'll find out on Sunday.

Regardless of the outcome, this is an occasion for an occasional poem (and no, it isn't serious: mockingly so, anyway):

30%

30%, and 40 on the windscreen,
Like a visor carved in obsidian,
Greasepaint under a QB's eyes,
Or a lowered cap’s brim to shield a squint.

The world is somehow smaller,
The desert held at bay,
The glare contained, the sun defeated,
And it’s bittersweet.

Attached to a shadow,
And now swallowed by an artificial shade,
A portable dusk that shrinks eyes to the bone
And calls up claustrophobic sweat.

There are variations on this theme:
From this side, the implacable glass
Humiliates the seer,
Turns each window to mirror,

Refutes his glance and piercing eye
Like chainmail the assassin’s blade.
What bearded goddess hides, imperious,
Beneath th’obscuring shade,

Her equine features double-veiled,
Her languid, frightened looks walled in?
What family secret is covered over
By Bangladeshi palms: what fear or sin?


(What toes? what feet? what porcine meat?
What looks? what books? what ex-pat crooks?)

Kidding.

Shout-outs: Fadwa, you are always welcome. Just don't report me to the authorities if I get a little carried away.

S, w-o-A: welcome back. And yes, one entry per user, but it would be a tie, which means only one poem should you win.

Ambrose: glad your enthusiasm is on the rise. We aim to inform and entertain. Keep the comments coming, and let us know, eh?

Next week: how we were expelled for windows that were too dark, arousing the suspicions of the silken dandies in plastic dirtbike gear from CHiPS (or rather, CRiSPS).

Week after: life inside an Emirati prison.

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 . . . .

India II

Frogger, anyone?



Thanks to Lance for the referral. By the bye, we actually saw a hen and two adolescent chickens crossing the road the other day. They made it. (Cats, on the other hand, are rarely so fortunate.) Reason for the crossing was never determined.

Middle of January Bonus

Traffic in India: it's not quite this . . . balletic . . . in the UAE, but they can dream. Watch the pedestrians on the right hand side of the screen. Ay caramba.

Roundablock (or two): Google Earth Edition

Okay. Gonna try to go back to multiple small posts and spare your scrolling fingers a little. Here are some shots of the environs around our complex.

The Main Gate (whoddat sexy thang?):



And a shot of the corner store sandwiched between the "saloon" and a little restaurant/sheesha bar where I smoke all my sheesha and looka:



Our mosque--one of four within 1000 sq.m. of our place: kinda like being in Utah, only with muslims:



Singin' in the . . . sun:



Poverty is never far away. While there are newer neighborhoods that are exclusively upscale (and under-serviced), most of the seven original villages--Jahili, Mutaredh, Muwaiji, Markhaniya, Jimi, and two others--now organized as "communities," are a mix of older, poorer, and cramped worker quarters and posher row houses and compounds. This is 300 m from our place.



Another of our neighborhood mosques:



Hey! Chickens CAN fly! (If they're magical, that is.):



Al Murabba'a Fort:



And speaking of magic . . . carpets. Typical storefront (non-mall, anyway). These are places you would be expected to dicker. Along this particular strip you can buy toys, coats, canes, sheesha pipes, rugs, drugs, and bugs.



Looking under the flyover toward the Shaikha Salama Mosque:



Shakha Salama Mosque R/A (Fountain Roundabout) at rest:



The Mosque itself (sideways? yes. dang. will upload iLife this week and get this fixed):



Careful: man in dress crossing:



My bumps! My bumps! My lumpy speedy humps! (No, Ryan. Not that kind.):




For Google Earth geeks, here are our coordinates: /Users/jonathonpenny/Desktop/Penny House in Al Andalus.kmz



And now, just a fragment of the afternoon call to prayer. The footage doesn't matter. One of these days we're going to get a digital audio recorder and post all five from one day, with scintillating information about each.

Late Friday, Eyes are Itchy and Sore, . . .

(kinda like the red sands of the Arabian desert, only not so gritty. Trivia: the sand changes hue several times between here and Abu Dhabi: this shot is just outside of Al Ain, but the closer you get to the coast, the more tan the shade. 20 points to the person who can figure out why.)



. . . and I don't remember what I promised to blog about and am too lazy to check. Updates: curtains are in, nearly all hemmed. Wendy plans to take some interior shots this week during the daylight hours. Back garden is in better shape: we did some trimming there and in the front, and raked away the detritus. I transplanted our banana plants and one palm, and so far they seem to be managing. Cross your fingers.

Eid wasn't as insane as we thought it would be: only three major accidents, including a late-Ramadan one that Lance, Justin, and I came upon during our quick trip to Abu Dhabi: guy had plunged off of an overpass and ended up sideways behind a guardrail perpendicular to the overpass alongside the highway. Impressive bit of driving, that. Could have been very, very bad if he'd landed on the highway itself. A marvel and a wonder.

Also forayed into Dubai this week: not very far, mind you, and only to Ace Hardware and Ikea (exotic, aren't we?),



but it was apparently a good traffic day, and we made it home in one piece. Here's the proof:



Merv's a handsome fella, i'nt he?

Here's the soon-to-be new Tower of Babel I mean world's tallest structure in perspective.



Pic of the week: our first camels! Wendy's on the stick, as usual.



Moo? Mmmmm. Camel milk. . . .

Weather's turned cold: 35-37 degrees during the day, and a downright chilly 20 at night. Brrr. Might have to turn off the a/c if this keeps up. Wendy says while she misses autumn, she'll settle for spring in reverse: everything is in bloom here. Very strange. We're hoping our little garden blossoms before long.

Kids' turn will have to wait a week: sorry. Thanks for the questions. We'll queue them up. And while we're on that subject, all you silent skulkers out there need to make some noise. Let us know you're reading and what you think. Let us know what you'd like to know about as well. Sorry it's not hi-larious tonight: taxing week. I'll make sure to commit a faux-pas or two this week so I have something humorous to recount.

Salaam.

Eid Mubarak!

That is, Happy Eid!

For those of you playing at home, Eid al Fitr (or Eidul fittr, depending on who's transliterating)--pronounced alternately "eed" and "eyed"--is the roughly week-long celebration of the end of Ramadan. I get three days off work, and the kids get the whole week off school, but from the sounds of it most westerners either flee the country or hunker down in their homes waiting for the smoke to clear, because after 3+ weeks of fasting during the daylight hours, dem Arabs settle in to par-tay! It's like Italy at new years, from the sounds of it. Or the red mile after a Flames win during playoffs. Or Auschwitz after the Russians showed up. Well, maybe not like Auschwitz. Maybe more like Red Square after Stalin had finished a speech and the security forces prompted applause, only they're not commies and they don't need prompting.

Or maybe not like any of these things: we'll fill you in next week. But we can imagine that it will involve stupid human tricks in high-powered, fast-moving suvs, consumption of gobs of dates and date by-products, shopping, nose-touching, the occasional high-five, and gridlocked traffic from dawn to dusk.

Anyway, Eid Mubarak!



Here at Roundabout, we keep our promises. We promised to talk about misrules of the road and Arabian soaps.



Road's easy:



1) Roundabouts aplenty, driven at 2x20.
2) Don't ever leave the roundabout in the same lane in which you entered it: drivers who enter in the left lane, which is intended for those meaning to turn "left" (180 degrees), should exit in the middle lane, preferrably one turn early, and without signalling; drivers who enter in the middle lane, which is meant for those going "through" the roundabout, should exit in the right-hand lane (see additional rules for left-hand turners, and apply accordingly); drivers who enter in the right-hand lane, intended for those planning to turn right as soon as possible, should go like stink or die a horrible death crushed under the belly of a leviathan Nissan Patrol or Armada, or they should cut across to the middle or left-hand lane and gesture wildly when greeted by the klaxoning hordes careening wildly behind them.
3) Park wherever you can, even if this involves enabling the four-wheel drive.
4) Never wait in line to make a u-turn when you can cut in front of 40 other vehicles.
5) Always yield to Emiratis, especially when they come barrelling up behind you at 3 times the legal limit and flash their headlights several times in succession.
6) Speed limits are minimums, not maximums.
7) Taxis should stop without warning at least once on every block.
8) Headlights are optional.

Arabian soaps are just too darn precious to really capture. Let's just say they explode all stereotypes. The makeup is awful, the acting melodramatic, the plotlines convoluted to the point of indecipherability--Fatima gives a picture of herself to her brother Salid, who, weak and addled from fasting, gives it to a friend, which now makes here a vassal to the friend and a blight on her family's honour, but the friend is recruited by a radical imam for martyrdom, which enrages the conservative but loving patriarch, who shouts passionately and at length and ends up holding his daughter tenderly while she weeps in gratitude for her father's forgiveness, etc.--but they have that same earnest, dewy-eyed vacuity of the American brand. That's entertainment.



Actually, we have no idea what the soaps are about. They're in Arabic.

Next time: Eid update, and a few observations about intercultural relations in the workplace.

Post the Second: Eh-coal

"The time has come" the walrus said, "to talk of many things.
Of schools, and fools, and parking lots, of SUVs and springs."

Guess that means "I am the walrus."

Well, when I was in contact with some folk here early on, they advocated enrolling our children in Al Ain English Speaking School. Said it was the best bang for the dirham, loved the activities and things, lobbied for the "gifted and talented program," and in short had nothing negative to say. So we trusted them, and registered the kids in May. I was asked to provide a "family bond" in the amount of 8,000 dhs, roughly 3,000 cdn. Did so, by wire, and sent as much info as I could by fax and scan. Kids were enrolled in years 5 and 7, and away we went.

When we arrived, we found the landscape had changed significantly. Several crises had hit the school over the last year or two, and I discovered that the "family bond" was not, in fact, an advance on the very steep tuition, but a separate account, like a damage deposit, that would be returned to us when we withdrew our kids. What its purpose is I still do not know. Also, turns out the school is on the British system, which meant that the kids were supposed to be in years 6 and 8, not 5 and 7. And they had run out of room in year 8. So in effect, I was asked to pay 46,000 dhs in tuition for the kids to repeat a year.

Frustration 2: the university currently covers only 15% of my gross salary in tuition for up to three kids. In effect, the amount covers Riley's tuition. We can handle it until Jonah starts school, but after that--oy veh! But instructors in the Undergraduate Requirements unit--people largely with MAs--have a much hugher benefit because they negotiated it a long time ago. Also, other state schools have better benefits for this sort of thing. In short, I was disappointed.

Oh, and it turns out that I had to pay more money because their special programs were not included in the regular tuition. SO bang, another 3,000 up front if you please.

So I took the kids over the Chouiefat academy for testing. Slightly less money, very rigorous academic focus, especially in maths and science, very stressful environment, but nice people, well organized. They had already started their year, but they accommodated us anyway. Kids would have been placed in years 5 and 7, however, because of their math issues: they begin algebra in year 5 in that system. Also, they were very tense after my three-day crash course in fractions and basic algebra. So I went back to AAESS and said look, I'm considering a move. You didn't tell me about the years issue, even though you clearly knew, and if you had I would have enrolled them accordingly, so what are you going to do about it?

To their credit, they saw reason, and allowed us to enroll the kids in the proper years. Still had to pay a whack of cash, but they agreed to bill the university for their portion off the bat, so that's helpful.

And the kids are happy. More on that in their turn, as you have seen.

We'll see what happens with tuition benefits in the next couple of years: I bought Chouiefat's math curriculm lock and stock (not barrel) to work on at home, and if I have reservations next Spring, we'll try that again.

Parking lots:

This city is very well designed for traffic flow. In fact, I'm grooving on driving here. Reminds me of Rome. The only boneheaded move they made was putting all the schools--and there are many of them--along the same stretch of what is a very busy road. It amounts to a six-lane highway, with drivers doing between 80 and 140 kph, with service roads branching off that feed into a handful of these schools.

Last year there was a pile-up on the main road, and as I understand it several injuries and a death or two. I haven't fared badly: we leave for school at 7:10 or so, so I get them there before things really heat up. Picking them up is wild, though: parents are, in the immortal words of the Police, packed like lemmings into shiny metal boxes/contestants in a suicidal race." What's funniest are the SUVs: they end up parked off road, or crossing medians, just to avoid the thickest traffic. And those are the responsible ones. Others stop right in front of the school to get their kids and block all egress and ingress (never mind egrets and regrets and ingrates). Anyway, I remain calm, try to park strategically to avoid the crush, and keep my middle finger to myself (as of course I've always done, mom).

Speaking of SUVs:

we are now the proud and car-poor owners of a Honda MRV (Pilot). Sweet ride. Haven't taken it off any sweet jumps yet, though. Up around 250 kms after 5 days. Might take a jaunt to Abu Dhabi tomorrow. Actually, we did alright. Vascillated b/t that and a much cheaper Honda Accord, but decided that not having the three-year-old sit between and systematically abuse his harried older brothers was more important than saving a few hundre bucks every month. So we paid more than a third in cash, and have a moderate car payment for three years. Trying to get the paperwork together so we can import this if we go the US or Canada in the next few years. It's very, very nice: leather, sunroof, personal masseuse nice. Okay, maybe not the masseuse.

Next time: "We're s-h-o-p-p-i-n-g! Adventures in Materialism" and "The Great Curtain Caper" in three languages!