Crisp American money

It never ceases to amaze me... every time I go to my local currency exchange place to get American money I get brand new, never used before money.  How do I know its really new?  The serial numbers are in order.

Why didn't I just get Singaporean dollars?  Good question... and therein lies the greatness of America.

The currency shop had only $300 Singapore dollars ($234 American dollars).  They just don't have a reason to keep lots of Singapore money around.  I know with American dollars I'll have no problem converting in Singapore.

Singapore

In six hours I will be getting in a taxi to the Abu Dhabi airport and heading to Singapore.  I am flying for free ($50 in taxes, but using Etihad miles).  Singapore - according to everyone I know who has been there - is a must visit place... so I guess I'll find out.

I know I don't blog and I wish I did.  Life has been very much a really roller coaster.  Great highs and great lows... Or maybe I just to be on better meds.

Let's see... In the past month I've taken in a fundamentalist Christian, had a guy try to threaten/extort me, had a great start to my summer class and my car is literally falling apart one major part at a time.

The good news?  I have some good stories to share when I'm back home because I really can't share them on the blog - even if I was blogging regularly.

Egypt revolution 2.0

Not that anyone - here or in the US - cares what I think about the situation in Egypt, but I have been in touch with my many Egyptian friends over the past couple of days.  Each of them is pleased to see Morsi ousted.  In each conversation I tried to play Devil's Advocate and say, "But this is not the way democracies change governments!"  Each person replied basically, "Morsi was going way farther down the Islamist road than he had been elected to do... Egypt is a majority Muslim country but it is NOT a religious country."

Each of them was surprised that Morsi was surprised by the backlash.

Update:  This account from the AP is worth reading. 

Summer trip home 2013

I will fly out on Monday, August 5 to DC.  I will stay with my niece Gina and her family for five days and fly out early on August 10 for Iowa.  I will stay until the day after Labor Day.  I have a direct Chicago to Abu Dhabi flight.

So I get Etihad from Abu Dhabi to DC and Etihad from Chicago to Abu Dhabi.  When you have to spend 16 hours on a flight it is good to be on the best airline for it.  Yippee!

******

Being the geek I am, I check four websites almost every day:  Expedia, Travelocity, American Airlines and Cleartrip.  On the weekends I check several more.

For two months I consistently saw the flights I wanted at roughly Dh 6000 ($1600).  All was good... I didn't want to book until I knew for sure of my dates.  Two weeks ago all good flights on Etihad disappeared.  Not a little higher in price, but simply disappeared.

I panicked.  I've researched countless other options.  All would cost $3-400 more and have some long layovers.

Miraculously, the good flights became available again last night so I grabbed them as quickly as possible.

Take the good days with the bad

June 2013 will be a month I will remember until Alzheimer's sets in.  Every single day for the first 12 days I got bad news.  Friend in a car accident, friend held in jail for hitting a Pakistani on a bicycle, a person I respected in Nepal killed in Thailand.  Seriously, bad news every single day for 12 days.

I also learned that the class that I thought I would be teaching this summer - strategic management - was not going to happen.  I felt screwed and had no problem telling my new boss that I felt screwed.  I think I might have yelled it.  I yelled at him on June 9th, 10th, and 11th.

So I was very surprised on June 12th to get an email, "Could you see me at 9AM?"

His proposal?  We co-teach the summer course.  

I accepted.   

*****

I am beyond-the-moon happy.  I know every one of the students.  I know the good students and I know the pieces of shit.  This is a class I have wanted to teach for all of my time here.  In less than two hours of this appointment I have received an email asking, "You won't be using the testbank, will you?"

Awesome.  Life is good.

Meet the cat

A few weeks ago I came home to find a very scared kitten in front of my door.  I took her in and thanks to some food and kitty litter from a friend she seemed quite at home.

She loved nesting in a pot where I had repeated killed plants.

I put signs around my compound.  No leads.  She was in heat and switched from going, "Meow" to "Mee-row-wer."  The local vet charged me Dh 1300 ($350) to have her spayed and get her shots.  It seemed high and later found it was more than twice the price I should have been charged.

The next door neighbors thought they'd be able to take her... but after two weeks of trying their other cat just wouldn't accept her.

Exasperated, I posted on a local animal welfare page on FB.  Less than two hours later I got a call from the cat's real owners.  They came around to get her.  The son offered up, "Yeah, she got out when Dad was drunk and forgot to shut the door."

Mom chimed in, "She hadn't tried to run before but the day before this happened she went into heat.  That night was her chance to go on the hunt."

Then, most astonishingly, they insisted on reimbursing me.  I said, "Look, I did this out of the goodness of my heart. If you want to pay some or pay half that would be great, but not necessary."

They insisted on reimbursing me fully.

This is as close to a Hallmark story as my life gets.

Student presentations

Presenting in English is hard for non-native speakers.

So I had to stifle a laugh when a student used this picture:

Too bad she didn't use common sense.

Later, another student talked about her internship by writing, "I learned to toke with my colleagues."

In the US I'm sure there are colleagues who enjoy toking with each other.  Here I will assume she "talk."

International Day

One of the reasons I love living here.

Today I had a group of friends over for brunch.  In this picture there is an American, a Canadian, an Australian, a New Zealander and mother/daughter Brits.

I left them in my apartment to continue having a good time as I met up with with two Afghani students for lunch.  (I didn't mean to schedule both on the same day.)  I wish I had a picture from that but suffice to say it was the hottest lunch I've ever had - over 100 degrees where we were eating.

Later I met up with two Pakistani guys who often cut my hair/shave.  Today was supposed to be a day off - I had planned to take them up the nearby mountain, but their boss decided today was not a day off.

And tonight I've been talking with a friend from Egypt.

A day spent with people from seven different countries?

It would be 8 if I included a brief conversation on FB with my Sanjaya in Nepal.

*****
In my conversation with Abdelrahman (the Egyptian) we were discussing how much people change or don't change.  I honestly don't think I've changed that much even though the idea of coming here scared the shit out of me.  That was fear of the unknown.  I'd like to think I'm still pretty much the same person but with new experiences.

When it rains, it pours

At the last minute my boss decided that he would teach the course I was planning to teach this summer.  He informed me that the old course I teach *might* be put on the schedule.

It's June 4 and I don't know if I will be teaching summer school.

So not happy.

Depressing, depressing day

The past month has gone much better than I could have expected... But today, wow... today was not good.  The first story is upsetting, but hardly surprising.   (If you don't like long posts just skip to the second story below the ****.)  The second story... well, read it.

First, in my classes I give three quizzes and only the best two count.  My best student this semester showed up to take quiz 3 and I said, "Why are you here?  You pretty much had the full mark on the first two quizzes."  He said he wanted practice for the final.  I watched him take the online exam.  The system automatically scrambles the questions so no two students get the questions in the same order.  I saw the questions he was getting and they did not match what he was supposed to get.  There were 26 students in the room and 26 taking the test.  He was clearly logged in as another student and the other student was logged in as him.

I typed on my phone, "I don't know whose exam you are taking but I will figure it out."  I placed it in front of him and he typed back... "Okay I can let you know."  By that time I had it figured out.

That students cheat is certainly nothing new to me.  That they take it to the extremes of actually doing another student's test is also not surprising.  I don't even know why it upsets me so much.  Too many of colleagues literally avert their eyes to "miss" the cheating going on right in front of them.

As the class was over he followed me and tried to explain/justify what he did.  I stopped, looked at him and flatly said, "It is best that I don't talk to you right now."

*****
Story #2
Following this I had lunch with a guy whose story I can't tell tonight.  I simply don't have the energy but I can summarize the end:

"I feel nothing. I wish I could die.  If someone killed me I would be thankful but then the cost of transporting the body back to Sri Lanka would be an even bigger burden on my family.  Is it too much to ask to be killed and dumped in the desert?  After all I've been through I don't even feel pressure anymore.  I hear the sad stories from home and I don't cry.  On the outside I smile but inside I am dead.  I am 26 years old and I have created such a burden for my family that I know they'd be better off if I had not been born.  I came to the Emirates 3 months ago. Just before I left my mother told me when she was pregnant with me she went to have the pregnancy ended but the nurse gave her the wrong dose of medicine.  I was not even supposed to have been born and everyone would be better off if I hadn't been born."

How, exactly, did I meet this guy? He works in the mall next door and I asked him to lunch because he always has a great smile.

*****
Today was Day 56 of working out. 8 weeks down... and today was pretty much the hardest day to feel the energy to do it.

Working out

This week I hit day 50 of working out.  I used the elliptical for an hour and burned 735 calories.  My goal:  100 days.  Day 100 will be July 17th - my brother's birthday. 

I definitely feel better.  So far it's worth it.

30 Days

On Tuesday, April 9, I started working out.  I have been working out every day for the past thirty days.  

Two nights ago I in a dream I had my shirt off and I was in shape.  I realized in the dream that it was a dream but I thought, "This could be me."  I have very few self-confidence boosting dreams.  That's almost as remarkable as working out 30 days in a row.  

I have only lost a few pounds because I'm not doing much on the diet but I certainly feel much better.

Pokhara

I am helping my friend Sanjaya get up a website to advertise his hotel.  As I'm looking through the pictures from my last trip in December 2012 I realized I never blogged about it.  It was a really nice trip.  I need to post more pics.

May Day - Part II

May 1 started as a painful day as explained in the post below.

However, it was also a humorously uplifting day.

I went to a local mall for lunch with my friend Youssef.  As we were walking to Fuddruckers we ran into a former student who is doing her internship in the mall's marketing department.  She was hyper-excited to see me.  She introduced me to her colleagues and gushed, "Oh, Mr. Steve is the best teacher at UAEU..."

False compliments is a way of life here.  If you want to feed your ego there is no better place to work than here.  This student was close to graduating and would never have me again so I thought her comments were more sincere and I thanked her.

As we sat down Youssef said, "As we were walking away she told her colleagues in Arabic. 'He really is the best.  I love him.'"

As we were leaving she stopped me again for a picture.

*****
In another part of the mall Youssef and I were riding up an escalator as 3 guys were going down.  One guy started talking very loud directed to us.  I don't know Arabic but it seemed like we were being made fun of or some sex joke.  Youssef got angry quickly and yelled something back.

When we got to the top I asked, "So what the hell just happened"

Youssef:  That guy was yelling his phone number to you and saying to call if you want a good time.
Steve:  What?
Youssef:  I said the Arabic version of "What the fuck are you talking about."  They then looked at me and said, "You can come, too."
Steve:  Are you sure they weren't mocking me and/or you?
Youssef:  No, you know this is what guys do to women here.  This is the first time I've seen it done to another guy.

*****

The odds of these events happening on a day when I lose my best friend of 30 years seems extraordinarily low... but it certainly helped.

May Day

Last year I booked a trip to Egypt with Ann and Mohamed.  Just before that trip Mohamed went crazy on a school trip to Canada and decided to freeze me out of Egypt.  Ann said that was OK with her and the two of them headed to Egypt.  I ate my non-refundable ticket and booked an expensive last minute trip home.

Logically I should have distanced myself from them.  What kind of friends do that to a friend?  Instead I doubled down:  I did everything I could to make things good for the three of us.  I wasn't being magnanimous; I was desperate.  I couldn't imagine living 7000 miles from home without Ann and Mohamed.  

Over the past year I caught them in a bunch of small lies... lies about things that didn't need lies.  I ignored the red flags.  Basically, Mohamed played me like a fiddle and Ann chose to accompany.

This saga came to a head a month ago with another spring break trip and a bunch more lies.  (Although they did such a bad job lying I suspect they wanted me to figure it out.) After they returned to the Emirates I told them I wanted time to sort things out.  In the meantime Mohamed deleted/blocked me on FB. 

I told Ann today (May 1) that I would like to talk and she replied that she would only talk if I went to AA.  (I know I drink too much.  It is something I would be willing to talk about but it has no connection to screwing me out of Egypt and lying to me for a year.  Or maybe it there is a connection.  I would have been willing to discuss that.)

I don't like setting a condition for a friendship but that's Ann's choice. It's unfortunate she wasn't willing to explain exactly how my drinking affects our friendship beyond the fact she doesn't like people who drink more than her (which is anyone who drinks.)

*****

As I told Ann, losing your two closest friends is a gut-wrenching experience.  The idea was so devastating last year that I swallowed every bit of dignity and begged them to be my friends again after the Egypt trip.  I simply couldn't fathom living in this country without them.  

The good news is that a year has passed.  Egypt was a definite wake-up call.  Before Egypt I would have considered winning the lottery more likely than having Ann and Mohamed leaving me behind.  Combined with the little lies I guess I saw this coming.  

My reaction today surprised me:  I'm relieved.  A year ago this would have devastated me.  I would have been on the floor crying.  Literally... on the floor crying. I have no doubt.  Instead it was honest relief:  No more lies, no more fake acts, no more "knowing glances" between the two of them.  Yippee!

*******

I know the next couple of months will be difficult.  I hope the story above does not read "anger" because that is not the emotion I am feeling.  I wish Ann and Mohamed well.  I wish them the best in their future friendships and relationships. 

Boston tragedy

I've been following the events for four hours and it is really, really time for me to go to bed.

A right-wing crazy friend of mine on FB posted this

Ah, and once again where the Muslim Community is given an opportunity to decry this cowardly act which took the lives of innocents and 8 year old girls, instead at best, crickets, and at worst, the shouts of praise from the bombers' fellow muslims.
But yeah, most Muslims are peaceful and hate this sort of thing right?  Right?

This is a guy who graduated from my HS with zero friends.  I was relentless from Jr. High on making fun of him because he's as despicable a human being as I have ever met.  I accepted his friend request on FB as a "Seriously?"  and I've enjoyed just seeing how crazy he could be.

I, of course, had to respond:

Speaking as a Christian raised not very far from you (and now living in the Muslim world) I have to say you are such an amazing piece of shit.

*******
This tragic event happened late at night in the middle east.  There is NO official reaction from anyone with any authority here.  I very much hope the person who did this was not Arab or Muslim.  I think the right-wing crazies (like the guy I quoted above) are just scared this is one of their own.

I'm rich! I'm rich!

Not really... but after not being able to log in to my bank back home for months I was finally able and surprise, surprise! I actually have more money there than I expected.  Like $2000 more.  It means I don't have to send money home this month like I thought.  Or next month.

I should be kicking myself for not doing much of anything during the two week spring break.  After all, I had more money than I thought.  I soo wish DC had worked out.  I wanted to see Gina and her family and take in the museums and monuments.

Instead of kicking myself I am content.  This opens more options.  I will probably still do summer school but if I decide not to I won't spend the summer broke like I did in the summer of 2010.  That summer I spent 3 months back in Iowa trying to live on a tight budget.  It was just not fun.  I'd rather work summer school, come home and have a great time for 3 weeks than to be pinching pennies and be home for 3 months.

With this new found cash in my bank I could possibly have a summer at home and not feel desperately broke.  I'll probably still do summer school because I just don't like that much time off... but it's nice to have options.

******
Bigger news:  I am officially free of all credit card debt.  I was broke in 2005 and I closed all credit card accounts that had not already been closed for me. (read: I couldn't keep up with payments) The one account I was never delinquent was Bank of America where I've been paying $60/month since.  I had no idea what my balance was but I assumed I would be paying $60/month until 2060.

Starting last fall Dad saw checks in the mail from B of A.  $240 one time... a few months later $180...

It turns out my account has been paid off and now every couple of months they are sending my money back to me.  Yippee!

This is the second time in my life I have paid off $6-10,000 in credit card debt and vowed to never have that debt again.  Let's hope the vow sticks this time.

North Korean restaurant

A long time ago I heard that there was a North Korean restaurant in Dubai.  As one who likes trying new things this was very tempting.

Finding it took some walking but the weather was spectacular - low 80's - in Dubai.  (Usually it is in the mid-90's by now.)  I wish I could show pictures of the place but they had signs about not taking pictures.  I did, however, take a few pictures of the food I ate.

The decor was relatively simple and very clean.  Some paintings on the walls and references to Korea.  Interestingly there was no picture of the dear leader.  There were no customers when we arrived at 2 but they quickly made us feel welcome.

The waitresses:  Four identical looking women wearing identical lime green perfectly pressed polyester uniforms.  It was like I stepped back to the 1950's and met airline stewardesses.  The cliche of they all look alike came to life as the third one asked where we were from and a friend said, "Didn't you just ask us that?" They did have one descriptive feature:  Different colored platform neon shoes.

We took a pass on the steamed intestines with rice and squid.

We ordered kimchi, what they called bbq beef (marinated flank steak is my guess), a basic salad, needle mushroom salad and a beef with rice dish.  I knew I wouldn't like the kimchi - way too spicy - but my Arab friends liked it.  I loved the rest.

What you are seeing:  The marinated steak was cooked at our table.  The waitress/chef cut them into small pieces.  She suggested making a wrap using the needle mushroom salad.  It was great!

While I was eating the beef dish I found a long black hair.  The manager saw it and immediately came over and apologized.  Then each of the waitresses apologized.  I know that really grosses a lot of people out but it didn't really bother me.  

As an apology they brought us a desert:

A simple vanilla ice cream with fresh strawberries minced on top.

Dubai Marina

After the North Korean restaurant we went for a walk at the Dubai Marina.  The weather was fantastic and the Marina is always a nice look into the world of how the rich live.

 Youssef is my Moroccan friend with whom I hope to visit Morocco someday.

 Abdul Hakim with Youssef.  

After the great lunch my friends pretty much switched to speaking in Arabic and I felt like a third wheel.  I probably should have spoken up - as I have before... but since it's a point I've made before I decided to stew about it and let it pretty much ruin my day.

I need to find more constructive ways to communicate.

A wet spring in Iowa?

Tonight we are having our first thunderstorm in a year in Al Ain.  I'm happy and feeling homesick because a thunderstorm here is pretty much nothing compared to a real thunderstorm.

After last year's drought across the midwest this is good news:

According to this model it is likely have above normal rain  back home for April - June.  I so hope they have this right.  Iowa in a drought is depressing.  I was happy I was living in the desert last summer.