My apologies for the lapse since last I posted. Even given the relatively light workload here at AUD, midterm weeks demands a little extra commitment. That’s my excuse and I’m sticking with it, although it will become harder and harder to defend as this entry continues….
Since the road trip to Oman, my free time has been dominated by a string of highly touristy yet exciting activities. For the first activity, less touristy than the rest, perhaps, I conducted a rudimentary social experiment in which I wore traditional Emirati garb (remember my purchase with Hammood?) to class and observed the reactions of those around me. Garnering mostly confused laughs, or confusion outright, for the first half of the day, I upgraded to the stereotypical (though often accurate) Emirati-with-Aviator-glasses look to disguise my blue eyes. Unfortunately, no “real” Emirati students sought me out to reminisce on childhood in the desert, although my altered appearance did startle a professor to the extent that he stopped his lecture mid-sentence to take another glance at my part of the room. My most poignant memory of the experiment, however, must be the excessive warmth in what should have been an outfit with good circulation. I am still uncertain if the air conditioning unit was broken that day or whether the heat of the collective stares (or so I perceived) was getting to me.
A real Emirati with a real Palestinian
Stepping back into the role of American study abroad student, I later attended a desert safari excursion with a few hundred AUD classmates. It was an event “put on for AUD” by Lipton Iced Tea, belying the tremendous purchasing power and trend-setting potential of the AUD student body, and included dune-bashing (driving 4WD SUVs over sand dunes), camel-riding, sandboarding (think snowboarding in a different medium), a belly dancer, food, and good company. There are some fun pictures below. Soon thereafter, a friend acquired free tickets to the Dubai Desert Classic Golf Tournament, where we got to watch the likes of Tiger Woods, Sergio García, and Rory McIlroy all fall to a relatively unknown Spaniard, Álvaro Quirós. No pictures were allowed, although Tiger looked focused as usual, even if he couldn’t sink a put all day.
Tara, Furat, and I out on the dunes. (Click for more pictures and video.)
More recently, a couple of very cool opportunities fell into my lap. Both were a result of the distinct phase of development in which Dubai and the UAE find themselves. That is, Dubai and the UAE have the capital to bring in large-scale international attractions, but do not have the population at the moment to fully take advantage of them. The result is a degree of access to popular figures and events that is far in excess of what one would find in the States. The small size of the gallery at the Desert Classic is one example. Another involves my friend Tom, who writes music reviews for entertainment magazines here in Dubai in exchange for free concert tickets. Well, the Dubai Jazz Festival was in town last week, and the last night’s performers included Joshua Radin (a tad embarrassingly, I am a fan) and Train. Tom got a press pass for the event, meaning he got to attend the general press conference with Train the morning of the final concert. On his way out the door, his manager exclaimed, “Tom! Where are you going? Your interview with Train is next!” Dumbstruck, Tom stumbled entirely unprepared into a personal interview session with the members of Train, who he quickly discovered were from the same part of California as where he goes to school. I repeat, small world. An additional perk that comes with the press pass is that the holder gets to take pictures of the artists in the pit in front of the stage during their performance. Not knowing anything about Joshua Radin, Tom lent me his press pass for that set, the result being a very happy yet photographically hapless Nick snapping blurry pictures of Joshua Radin from feet away with a camera whose lens was the length of a man’s forearm.
With Joshua Radin, observing strict professional protocol by not posing for pictures while shooting
And, because the UAE really is in many ways a big, playful sandbox, a few of us just today attended the International Defense Exhibition (IDEX) in Abu Dhabi, a biannual arms and defense technology sales display. Allowing visitors to handle anything from sniper rifles to anti-IED remote-controlled robots (think The Hurt Locker) to shoulder-mounted anti-tank RPGs, IDEX was a veritable toy store for the world’s militaries. We met quite a few interesting people (including some very informative Norwegian engineers), received frequent inquiries about our business ties (ummmmm…), and came to understand very quickly that killing (efficiency!) is not at all a taboo subject in the defense industry. Two questions arose from our experience: How much longer will humans be relevant to waging war? And given the technological sophistication of these weapons, how has the U.S. been unable to defeat the Taliban?
Finally, and unrelated, it should be noted that with reports of club-wielding police officers in Algiers, the capital of his country, Issam (my roommate) was comically up in arms that he hadn’t received a single e-mail—not even spam—in the past three days. A telling sign of how our generation defines social worth. Further, I have instituted a budget for my daily expenditures: further evidence the whole region’s gone loony. But really, not to diminish the seriousness of the events sweeping the region at the moment, it truly is remarkable to be so close to the epicenter of the breathtakingly powerful developments transforming the Middle East and North Africa. Dubai has been largely spared from the unrest due, I would argue, to a combination of three factors: 1) a visa system that ties workers’ residency to their jobs, making labor unrest highly risky; 2) the glut of white-collar expatriates who are concerned more with their pocketbooks and “the good life” than with political rights; and 3) the massive subsidies paid to nationals. Still, Dubai and the UAE face longer-term political contradictions that must be resolved, a topic I will broach on Sunday following a brief camping outing.
dubaiornotdubai 
February 25, 2011 at 5:28 pm |
I have never heard of Joshua Radin or Train. Seeing you holding a weapon of mass destruction is frightening to say the least. Seeing the desert in all its lonely beauty was a treat. If you had a camel following you, you still would not look like a native – too many teeth. G.B.