New addition to our household!

NO, I AM NOT PREGNANT. Nor did we get another dog (or cat/fish/bird/turtle).

Now that we've cleared that up I can talk about our new addition... Lori.... our Filipino house maid. For those of you who have not lived overseas (everywhere except Europe) you may be screaming out loud, "WHY DO YOU NEED A MAID!?! Are you seriously that lazy??"

Those that know me well know that I am generally pretty clean about my house. I hate dirty dishes and gross floors. So the reasons isn't that I'm incapable of doing it myself. Or that I am lazy.

Over here, things are, CHEAP. Getting your laundry done, handyman jobs around the house and hiring a maid are all close to nothing. The cost of living is low (except for the Manhattan rent prices). While I can be doing other things that I enjoy more than cleaning house (reading, working on art for work, etc) I can hire someone else to do, pardon the expression, my dirty work. While we're not getting a live-in maid, Lori does come once a week for two hours to clean the bathroom, floors, kitchen, etc.

Cost? 50AED or about $14 (also the cost of filling my gas tank.. thought I'd rub that in as well).

Monday Cake, part 4

This week's selection was a multilayer devil's food with chocolate ganache.
It took one hour to properly make the ganache (I am without an electric mixer). I think shaving down 2lbs of chocolate and beating it into the boiling cream was well worth it.

Alas! The holy grail

It's probably been eight months since I last had my fix of an 'original flavor pretzel with butter and salt'. While I did confirm the existence of Auntie Anne's in the UAE before I left the States, the pretzel chain had eluded me. That is, UNTIL I ended up in Dubai for an afternoon of snowboarding (Yes, there is snowboard in the desert. More on that later).


EEEEEEEEEE! Look how happy I am!


Thumbs up for tasty pretzels

While the pretzels were the same... the dipping sauces were sadly not. NO HOT SALSA CHEESE!!!! FOR THE LOVE OF GOD! OH, THE HUMANITY!

That small difference aside, I made Neil pose and gorge with me. Though I was hungry, I could not do a buy 3-get-1-free deal on my own.

Oh, the drama that is my life

Today is like any ordinary day in the newsroom. Deadlines, food orders, tea boys serving steaming hot cups of sweet milk tea... really, all the normal goings on.

It's totally normal today IF you completely ignore the television crew filming in the newsroom. Not only is there a television crew but it's for the reality show Hydra Executives.

While most of you will never hear about or even see the show (unless you're in the Middle East or UK) it's cousin program is the widely known one with Donald Trump at the helm. Yes indeedy Hydra=The Apprentice.


Who doesn't LOVE reality tv? (besides Wes)
On the Left Mr. Donald Trump and Hydra's big boss Dr. Sulaiman Al Fahim

Apparently what's going on today with the filming has something to do with the Pakistani vs. Indian team seeking out/writing/reporting a local business story.

Right now Neil and I are brainstorming a way to get into the background of a shot.

Buying up American like it's our job

Perhaps you've heard about it... maybe you haven't..

But Abu Dhabi is taking a big interest in American right now since, well, the economy ain't so great there.

Latest purchase? Oh, a 75% stake in the Chrysler building in N.Y.
Truth is, Abu Dhabi probably bought it because they had a small obsession with the latest Spider-Man. If they can't have Spider-Man, they'll take the building featured in it.

Oh yea, Abu Dhabi is also one of the largest shareholders in GE too. Spend, spend, spend...


Wes says:
Since not everyone can come work in Abu Dhabi like we have, it looks like you can work for Abu Dhabi when comes there!

The only way to make a Monday (our hump day) a good day

Meet the newsroom tradition I started, now dubbed Monday Cake.
This week's selection is a bit misleading since it's not cake. It's pie.

These tasty samplings were packed with apples and spices. And yes, that's my homemade crust on both.

Pie x 2

Me, my desk and pie

RIP Ugly Palm Tree

On my way to work, I always pass by the Ugly Palm. It is how palm trees really look when they are not trimmed and beautified as you would see in a movie or at a resort.

By the time I get to Ugly Palm, which is about 2/3 of the way to work I am starting to get hot and sweaty, so this palm has represented the point at which I begin thinking "ok I am almost there, just a little farther!".

Except a couple of days ago, on my way to see it, I noticed that the green top of it was missing! What happened to it?!

Well, I arrived at the tree and found the top 3 meters laying on the ground below. It had fallen off! I was surprised, and then began wondering if it had managed to land on a car since it was laying in a parking spot.

Now my new waypoint is Dead Ugly Palm, and it just isnt the same anymore.

Next stop: Bangkok

Wes and I have decided on a place for our next journey!

Bangkok in December!

Yay for a fun first anniversary!

This is what $2.3 billion will buy you

Neil and I decided we better go take a tour of the Sheikh Zayed Mosque. It's usually the first things tourists do and well, I have to say, it's one of the first sights I noticed when I arrived in the city.

Here's a few shots from our day trip just down the street from our apartments.


My arrival


Lots of gold plated marbled pillars


Outside in the courtyard


Wide shot


Neil looks up, way up


Getting dressed to enter the mosque

Men laugh as I struggle to figure this thing out

Tada! I almost look local


Inside the women's prayer room



The world's largest chandler, hanging from the world's largest dome, above the world's largest carpet.


Carpet close up



More lighting


Glam outside

It feels like the end of the world

It started when I looked at the blue book in the lobby of our apartment building. I usually check it out once in a while because it is the Maintenance book, and lists all the problems that people in our building enter into it. It often has humorous quotes in it from people desperate to get the problems they are having fixed. These usually consist of, 'The sink is leaking', 'the toilet is broken', or 'Why is the trash room door locked?'. This time I noticed something odd, there were a sudden rash of complaints about the AC being broken in a few different flats. Many of them said things like 'It is 25C and rising fast!'. Then later that day, I got home, turned the AC back on, and lay out on the couch. As I lay there, taking a nap to be prepared for the fun and party time later that night, I woke up, hot and sweaty. This is very unusual, often it is very cold in the living room, and mildly cool in the bedroom. But yet, here I am, laying on the couch, all sweaty. I look at the thermostat, and realize that it shows is it 25C. I turn it down to 21C where we usually leave it, and try to sleep some more. And I sweat more. Oh damn. That means our AC is broken too! I start asking around in our flats and am told that a fan went out on the roof and it will not be fixed until Sunday. This was on a Thursday! Are we going to make it? I go to a party, and come back home about 4am. It is hot as hell in the apartment, the temp has reached 30C and as I try to recover the next day, all I can do is lay there sweating out all the water my body has, water that could be used in combating my hangover! We have to get out of here. It has now reached 31C (about 88F) in our flat and the temp is still climbing.

Screw this, we are going to a hotel tonight until it is fixed tomorrow!

Men's night out at the Arabic club

Last night I went to an Arabic nightclub. They were not sure that I would enjoy it because it is quite a different experience from the usual expat oriented clubs that most of the newsroom goes to. I was quite excited to go however, because the usual club here in the hotels is just like any normal club back home. So, right after getting done with work, we walked back to my apartment, I dropped off my laptop and we took a big shot to get us on our way. Back in the heavy humid heat of the Abu Dhabi nights, we walked as fast as possible to the road nearby to catch a taxi. The driver was listening to an audio tape, as most taxi drivers tend to do which sounded like a sermon. As usual, relaxed and watched the buildings go by, and enjoyed the wild skills taxi drivers use to get you to your destination. Maximum speed, Minimum time. We headed into the hotel which looked old, yet still in good condition. One thing you quickly learn here is that 'old' means anything built more than 5 years ago.

The first thing that surprised me was that the lift had a glass wall, and I could see into the lobby. So I kept watching out of it to see what would come next. The next floor I caught a glimpse of an Indian nightclub, then the floor above that one was also a club! Each floor had a different theme or was for different nationalities! I had discovered not just one new club to visit but 6! The lift stopped, and Muhammad pointed at the sign that said 'under 21 not allowed' and mentioned that this must only apply to the men because all the women look younger. I was not sure what to make of this since he had explained that this was a men only club, and that I should not bring Elysia with me because it was not allowed.

The music was loud and the smells were louder. The smell of shisha greeted us at the doorway, and we walked in to the club with flashing lights and the band blasting around us. I took a moment to look around and saw the room consisted of a stage shaped like a large bulbous T with tables placed all around. Men in dishdashas and western clothes sat puffing away on shisha and cigarettes. Some had beer or other drinks while others of them drank juices and ate fruit slices. We spotted Alaa on the other side of the stage and made our way over to him to pull up our own chair.
We ordered a drink and sat back to enjoy the show. The show mainly centered on watching the beautiful, almost but not quite scantily dressed women dancing. The singer/announcer sang songs I did not understand at all, but the beats were really enjoyable. I have found that there is something in the flow of Arabic music that is entirely different from what we are used to, and I like it very much.
I smoked a bit from the midwakh with my first drink, then moved on to the easy drags of apple shisha. I puffed out clouds of smoke over the dance floor while watching the dancers shake and move across the floor in time to the music. Then one of the girls danced to the edge of the stage where a man placed a Lei around her neck, then put one around each of her arms. She danced back towards the middle of the stage, then threw all 3 of them off the stage into the corner of the room. Well, I thought, that was odd, I was half expecting her to do some sort of dance involving them. So, back to watching the singer and the dancers and the crowd puffing away. Until it happened again with another girl. I asked Alaa, "Why does she keep throwing them away?" "So another girl can have a chance to get one." Of course this didnt explain anything to me. After seeing my look of that plainly meant 'uhh...?', he told me that the men can pay for one to give to the girl they fancy the most and that each one cost 50dhs (about 13$). "Each girl makes only 1200dhs a month here and so they get money buy receiving the Lei as a sort of tip. They get to keep 5% of what the club makes from each one." That makes this similar to the practice of pushing some cash into the thong of a stripper, but much tamer, as one would expect here.
I was asked, "which ones do you like?" Always a difficult question to answer with two single guys on both sides of you and a wife at home. Naturally I said they were all beautiful and it would be too difficult to decide this. It was easy to see that some men in the audience had no such trouble deciding who they favored. One fellow, probably in his late forties with a mustache (basically looking like thousands of other men in this country) chose as his favorite a tall asian girl with pouty lips and highlights in her hair. I had noticed her earlier, and she was most remarkable for what she was doing. Or rather, not doing, as she was in the back of the stage most of the time, looking not very happy to be dancing like many of the others who were quite into the show and were dancing fast, and 'jiggily' and all over the stage. This one simply stood in back and did a sort of one, two, one, two slight leg kick to the beats the whole time in her tall knee high white boots. I was most impressed with how bored she looked as opposed to all the others. The singer called her forward and began to throw leis at her feet as she stood, barely dancing and not looking happy to be making money with each one that was thrown. At first they had been putting the lei on the chosen girl's neck, or around their arm, but with this one it was different. The manager was throwing lei after lei onto the floor around the girl while the man sat, watching, and waving his hand to throw more! Every ten minutes or so the manager would arrive with another armload of leis which the fellow would wave to be thrown to her. After a few armloads, the manager took a piece of paper from the man, and gave it to the girl. I was told that he was giving her his number.
After watching this spectacle of all these leis being thrown to the girl I started to realise that the sums of money he was spending were getting to be out of control. I said to Muhammad that it looked like he was probably going to spend an amount equal to our monthly salary if he kept it up.
Finally the show was over and all the girls took their bags and walked off stage to applause. I waited around while the bill was paid. As we walked out, they said that the manager told them he had spent 11000Dhs (3000USD) that night. Of course I was amazed by the throwing away of so much money, quite literally. As I was saying how crazy he was to spend so much money to give the girl his number, they told me that one man had spent 20000dhs (almost 5500USD) for a night with one of the girls. damn, thats a lot of money! But some people have the money to blow it seems. Or maybe not. As we left in Alaa's car, he told me that the man paid with 2 credit cards. "Put 7000dhs on this one, and 4000dhs on the other" he said. I hope it was worth it for him!

Quick and dirty update

+ I've started a new tradition in the newsroom it seems, as I am the official baker of the "Monday Cake." This week's flavor is sour cream lemon.

+ Soon our apartment will carry the title of finished. I've been buying cute storage boxes to put our ugly things in. Our lights shall be hung soon. And one last rug will be bought. Then we will take pictures and host parties of the dinner variety.

+ I've been on a reading terror. I think Wes is actually amazed by this because the whole five years we've know each other he's never seen me finish a book. (I generally can't finish a book because 1.) I hate surprises so I read the last chapter first, thus, spoiling the book. 2.) Can't finish a book I'm not in love with. I feel like it's a general waste of time to read something I'm only feeling lukewarm about. Right now I'm half way through "The Man Who Ate the World" and am about to start a science of baking book.

+ The other thing consuming my life (but not Wes') is our upcoming wedding celebration. Yesterday I signed the paperwork and booked The Whitney! My dream venue, by far. That and I've been crunching the numbers. We're gonna be saving A LOT for this damn thing. There's no way I will allow us to charge it. We're just getting done with credit card debt! No need to do it all over again.

+ Wes and I will be taking a week off in December to travel somewhere. I don't think we've settled on a place yet but we've ruled out Europe because we don't wanna pay Christmas prices. I think it's down to Cairo or Istanbul for our one year anniversary getaway. I'm still pulling for Bangkok though.

+ My plans for my September Vegas work conference are just about settled! Sooooo excited for that! A few days stop in Detroit will also happen on the way back to tie up some loose ends.

more water please!

As I walked home last night I was relieved how nice and cool the summer air was. Once the sun is down the oppressive heat goes down to a reasonable level of about 100F. Walking to work that day, was a different story. Humidity was approaching 70%, and the apparently temperature (which is the opposite of wind chill) which takes into account the actual temp and humidity to best explain the temp that it feels like was up to 125F. 10 or 15 minutes walking in 125 and its almost time for a shower again by the time I get to work.

This morning my sunglasses fogged up the instant I walked outside. People tend to think that we are in the desert, which we sort of are, and usually assume 'but its a dry heat, right?' Well, it is not a dry heat. Being right on the edge of the Arabian Gulf, we get all the humidity from the water, mixing with the burning heat from the sun and the deserts around us to get the most difficult of situations.

I am glad for A/C

"No sex please, you're British"

With a headline like that, you can't but help read this crazy Dubai-related story.
Click HERE to read about the girl who got arrested Friday.

What we did on July 4th

What do you do in the Middle East for an American holiday? Well, probably the same thing we'd do on any other day... spend the day in the sun. Wes organized a trip with 10 other people in the newsroom to rent a bus and spend the day at Dubai's Wild Wadi Water Park.

The park (image from the Web site)


Our VIP cabana (complete with view of Lazy River, towels, chairs, private waiter, VIP cuts for the water slides , water and snacks). Not a bad deal, really.


Will goes surfing. I did too and it was soooooooo awesome.


Lots and lots of tubes and water slides

Send us music!

Friends.
I am dying here.
There are basically no record stores. And the iTunes store doesn't work here (although illegal downloading does). AND radio here is horrid.

Send me music via snail mail! Make me a mix of your current favorites! Copy some new albums you've bought. ANYTHING.

Elysia Smith
C/O The National
P.O. Box 111434
Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates

It's about $2 to send a card/CD mailer to the UAE and it takes about 2 weeks to reach me if you send it regular speed. PLEASE PLEASE label it as a MUSIC mix on the CD. They are very freaked out by burned CDs at customs in this country because porn is banned here. Yes, I am serious.

And if you don't care enough to send CDs (yes, I just put on the guilt trip) ... at least respond by telling me some new good stuff out there so I can (SLOWLY) download it myself.

Miss you all.