Shamal

The past two days we've had a shamal which is the word for "westerly winds" and from context is synonymous with "sandstorm." It's not all that bad, but makes visibility worse and really sucks to go cycling in.

Yesterday, I had a terrible time cycling in the wind. The sand itself is more like dust and doesn't hurt unless the wind picks up the bigger grains of sand. For the most part, I just felt gritty feeling in my teeth. I'm also guessing that it wasn't that great for me to be breathing it in while exercising.

Afterward, I met my wife and kids in the park for the kids' classmate's birthday party. My wife got a sore throat from all the sand in the air. I guess that it was bad for me. That was a good enough excuse for me not to wake up to go swimming.

Censorship

My copy of National Geographic arrived today with a few of the pictures having the more "sensitive" portions blacked out. Look at the link and see if you can figure out which pictures had black marker over them. My wife asked a good question: Did the UAE government black out the naughty bits or did the printing company do it knowing where it was headed?

Sonic

I saw the best, most ridiculous car today. It was parked in the student parking lot of my school this afternoon and must be the car of one of the night students. What would persuade a adult male to have images of the 1990's video game character Sonic the Hedgehog all over his pink car in the year 2010 is beyond me.
When I went back to my desk to get my phone to take pictures of the car and told my co-workers what I had seen, one of them said, "I think the owner is a man." My response was, "I'm sure he is. No woman would drive something so tasteless."
The best thing for me is the grill. This car is obviously the result of someone who enjoys their rye bread while playing video games, regardless of the expiration date. I'll have to keep my eye out for the owner of this car so I can congratulate them.

Donation

A really odd thing happened tonight that I would imagine is not common at all. We had just sat down to dinner when the doorbell rang. I was half-expecting one of my co-workers to stop by and was surprised to see a woman dressed in Emirati clothing. I think she was as surprised to see us as we were her but she continued anyway. After finding out that we didn't speak Arabic, she continued in fairly passable English.

Apparently, she has three children and her husband is in Lebanon with heart problems. Due to her inability to express herself in English, I'm not sure of the extent of her husband's illness, but I got the feeling that she's pretty desperate. She asked us for money, food, or anything we can spare. She said she needs things like diapers, but has no job or income and no way to get anything because of her husband being in in the hospital in Lebanon. My first reaction after having been the victim of scams before was, "That serves me right for answering the door," "My tacos are getting cold," and "How am I going to get rid of her." After a little thought, I looked at her a little more closely and noticed that she seemed pretty desperate.

My wife and I regrouped in the kitchen and decided to give her some money and food. I reasoned that the bit that we gave her would make little difference to our family's well-being and in the off chance that she was scamming us, at least our conscience would be clear. In poorer countries, the hesitation with giving money to people on the street is that I will be inundated with hoards of others trying to take advantage of my magnanimous generosity. Here, however, I don't see that happening among the local population.

I would be interested in the opinions and experiences of people who have live in the UAE longer than me. I know that not every Emirati is rich, but I never expected to see people going door to door.

Sports Day

Today was the sports day at my kids' school. I was reprimanded by my wife for not paying better attention to the schedule and letting her know about it. I usually pay a small amount of attention to things like that, but this wasn't really all that well advertised. It wasn't until this morning that I realized why it was such a big deal to her. She was picturing the elaborate staging of a Japanese Sports day involving weeks of rehearsals and a full weekend morning of events. I didn't want to discourage her from going by telling her that it was just going to be the kids playing a few simple games for about an hour and going back to class. Also, it was early morning and I didn't feel like getting into a discussion about it.

When I came home and asked her how it was, she confirmed my expectations. She said that even if she'd have known what it was going to be like, she would have still gone. That's one of the adjustments that we've had to make with us moving to Abu Dhabi. In our family dynamic, I'm used to being the person who doesn't have any idea of what's going on. However, in Abu Dhabi, there are a lot of things that feel perfectly natural to me but my wife has to adjust.

Charity

Today was the 15th anniversary Terry Fox Run for Cancer in Abu Dhabi. Oddly enough, it was better organized than the Abu Dhabi International Half-Marathon. Because the start was pretty close to where we live, I decided to make my family go. I mostly wanted to get my kids used to being involved in events like this. My son had been hearing about this event and what led up to it at school. I wasn't sure if we were going to do it so I didn't register with his school, instead, just showing up ten minutes before. It was mostly just a walk and the kids had to stop a lot. We only made it a quarter of the way before we saw a park that the kids wanted to play at. That was fine with us. We had a bit of playtime at the park before having lunch at Pizza Hut and going home.

Assassination

Something that's been in the news here recently is the assassination of a top Hamas leader in a Dubai hotel. (The Hamas are a group whose goal is to create a Palestinian country separate from Israel.) The story itself is a bit like a movie. A team of what was originally thought to be 11 people carried out a plot involving surveillance teams, fake passports, wigs, costume changes, and fake mustaches. Most of the people involved were out of the country by the time the body was discovered. Dubai police have since realized that there were at least a total of 17 people involved. While there is no admission, the belief is that the squad was an elite Israeli group. As the story unfolds, more and more odd details are surfacing.

Don't let my boring description stop you from reading the article about it. It really is a story out of a movie. When they eventually make this into a Hollywood film, I may audition for the role of the guy third from the left on the top row.