Gubbi of Arabia: Expat Life in Dubai

The already Kafka-esque, week-long process of getting my Blackberry service switched from my old company’s account to my new company is made all the more rage-inducing by the fact that the account manager has this as his email signature:

If we lived in a country with free speech, I’d tell you JUST where you could put that smiley-faced little service bee, my friend…

So yeah, you know how I’m running the Dubai marathon, um, tomorrow?

Well, I’d like you to meet my running buddies:

Proving once and for all that I’m Not As Young As I Used To Be (TM), my two weeks in the States - replete with late nights, cold weather, too much carousing with colleagues, and about 48 hours’ worth of time spent in airports or on airplanes - have taken their toll.

At least this is what I learned yesterday, when I finally succumbed and went to the doctor.

(I also learned that my clinic now segregates waiting areas by gender - ah, it’s good to be back in the Middle East. And yes, all doctor’s offices here have indoor palm trees and zen atmosphere fountains and sleek leather couches… I once went to a clinic that actually brought you a “welcome drink” along with a “refreshing towel” but that felt a little gratuitous, even for Dubai.)

The very nice Syrian doctor took one look into my ears with the little flashlight thing and immediately hooked me up to some kind of fancy machine which printed out a nifty pair of ear graphs. Sadly I was not allowed to keep them (I asked), so I have drawn an Artist’s Rendering for you in PowerPoint so you may share in the experience:

Apparently getting on a 15-hour flight when you have the beginnings of a sinus infection tends to embiggen the infection and push a lot of crap all up into your grill (yes, that’s the scientific explanation), especially your ears, not only making you feel like shit but also rendering you functionally deaf. (WHAT?!)

“But Gubbi,” you say, “You don’t run a marathon with your ears!” To which I say, “I know, right?! MAN UP FOR GOD’S SAKE!” But everything above my neck is stuffed so full of junk that whenever I take a step, I feel pressure in my teeth… and then I think about taking that same step tomorrow and being like “okay, great, just 26.199999 miles more!” and then I want to curl up in the fetal position and make wounded-animal noises and probably die.

Anyhow, I know you’re all super-interested in my sinuses… the whole point of this post is really just to make myself feel better about the emerging reality that I am going to be That Girl Who Has Excuses To Not Run A Marathon (gah, don’t you hate That Girl?!) for the second year in a row.

No but really, I loathe being That Girl so much that it is making me feel dirty to continue writing this post. So to protect my own vanity (which obviously is the point of blogging, right?) I will sign off with a picture of me not being That Girl (shudder) but rather being Another Girl, a girl who is hearty and robust and prancing her way through mile 22 of a 34-mile race like it ain’t no thang because she is young and carefree and can treat her body like shit without suffering any consequences!

Those were the days, my friend.

Hey y’all!

Dubai, right now.

It’s 5:30 AM in Dubai and I’ve been up for an hour despite the fact that I took a heavy-duty ultra-profesh sleeping pill around 9 PM last night in the hopes of dealing a death knell to my jet lag… ‘twas not to be, apparently. 

Well, as my mom says, “if wishes were horses then beggars would ride,” (hmm - that seemed more relevant in my head) so since I am up and on my second cup of coffee, let me give you a mega-epic data-dump update on my last two weeks, because - as my #1 blog fan J.Wo recently admonished me - “Facebook stati do not count as blog posts.”

So yeah, I did a little America road show for work over the past couple weeks. The trip started inauspiciously, when I arrived in the Atlanta airport after my 16-hour flight from Dubai with just one thing on my mind: waffle fries.

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

After swearing to the gods of fast food that I would pay someone, anyone a hundred bucks to come open up the Chik and make me a meal, I had a Toto-we’re-not-in-the-Middle-East-anymore moment and realized that all the Dubai-style problem-solving skills in the world would not budge the nation’s collective Chick-Fil-A employees from the depths of their church pews. So I had a sausage biscuit from McDonald’s instead. 

[Sausage biscuit huffily not pictured.]

After I arrived in DC and checked into my hotel, I hit the Potomac trails that were my stomping grounds during college and for several years thereafter - the place where I trained for my first marathon, ran with my first boyfriend [Ed. note for Alex: he was asthmatic and only made it about a half mile, so be nice], and contemplated quitting my first job.

I never get it when people say they don’t like DC… how? Why?

Since Washington is a place I’ll forever associate with being an earnest 22 year-old, I took a jaunt down to the monuments to remind myself that freedom isn’t free.

(“It costs a buck oh five.”)

And of course, I had to route myself through the ol’ alma mater…

… where I raided the bookstore and bought a host of age-inappropriate campus wear, which I would then spend the rest of my business trip wishing I could wear to meetings.

My Lebanese boss was not amused when I told him I thought the opening cocktail reception at our hotel that night should be “sweatpants casual.” 

The next week in DC was spent in meetings, meetings, meetings with my counterparts from all over the company, so we’ll skip that part other than to quote my Pakistani colleague from Dubai, who took me aside the first day and murmured, “Watch out, Jessie - there are other blonde American girls here!” - a fact which had already struck terror in my heart because, oh my gosh, what an rare and unnerving peer group to deal with! 

After DC, I headed down to TN to enjoy a weekend with my family, where I spent two days hanging out with my parents [not pictured… whoops], shopping, getting various spa treatments, and, uh, gratuitously trying on engagement rings at Nashville’s poshest jewelry stores:

(Don’t worry, Amy, you’re still the captain of that ship when the time comes.)

Then Sam helped me pack for Nebraska…

(I know the beach hat and the many boxes of fondue mix are hard to put into context, but there’s not a US trip that goes by where I don’t find some utterly random crap that I absolutely have to bring back to Dubai.)

And with that I was OMA-bound!

Oh yeah, forgot to tell you that I upped my suitcase game while I was in TN… don’t hate just ‘cause you can’t keep up with the eye-popping cray that is my luggage collection. (Although my mom worries that I’m diluting my personal brand by straying from the Pink Princess… it’s a valid concern.)

Nebraska was a productive but loooooooooooooooong week, one highlight of which was watching chunks of ice float down the Missouri River during the occasional breaks in our 12-hour training days:

PS - that’s Iowa across the water! Who knew?!

I also seized the opportunity to eat gross-yet-wonderfully-All-American meals from the office cafeteria:

Tater tots, bacon mac ‘n’ cheese, and a cheeseburger in one meal? Yes please! My only guilt was at fulfilling the stereotypes that the foreigners in my training group had about American “cuisine”… ah well, probably too late for that one.

And - posted for my mom because she likes to style me - I had some fun apparently pushing the limits of “business casual”… since when does biz caj mean suits, oh my Type-A colleagues? Whatever, overachievers gonna overachieve…

Go ahead, take a moment to luxuriate in the plush environs of the Homewood Suites Omaha that surround me here.

All jokes and snark aside though, the trip was a great learning experience and I feel really privileged to be working for a company that’s investing so heavily in my development… and yes, that’s kind of a caveat in case anyone from new job stumbles across my blog, but it’s also a genuine statement because, dare I say it, I really like this gig so far.

Okay, sorry for the data dump. This is now a blog about Dubai again… at least until I have to go back to Nebraska at the end of next month. Onward!

Broadcasting live from Chicago Midway airport - IT’S GUBBI!!!

(The crowd goes wild… oh wait, that’s just everyone around me watching the Packers-Giants game at the Terminal B sports bar… same same, right?)

Yep, back in America again - I know, right? Before I even had time to recap New Year’s Eve in Dubai (in a word: fireworks) or the awesome Palestinian wedding I attended the first weekend of January (in a word: bling), I headed back across the ponds last Saturday for two weeks of work meetings in DC and Nebraska (plus a bonus Family Fun Weekend in Tennessee) and have not had a second to catch my breath since.

So while I will inevitably post super-belated recaps of the aforementioned fun exotic international events at some point in the future, some bullets in the interim:

• Oh my gosh, America. So here’s one of the things I find most crazy about being home in the US: you can have a conversation with anyone about anything at any time. Spending time stateside makes me feel like I must be absolutely starved for social interaction at in Dubai, because wow, talking to random people is a thing here. It’s not something I actively miss when I’m overseas, since 90% of the people I deal with on a daily basis in Dubai are either (a) not native English speakers, or (b) from cultures where idle small talk between strangers is frowned upon (I’m looking at you, subjects of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland). So it strikes me as absolutely hilarious that I am permitted, nay encouraged, to talk to ALL THE PEOPLE about ALL THE THINGS here. Think the security line at the airport is too long? Gripe to me about it! Want to know where I’m traveling and why? Ask away! Have a comment about the way I’m getting my nails done at the salon? Go ahead, share! Like my purse? Compliment me and I’ll be happy to tell you where I got it, how much it was on sale, and my views on its pros and cons. It is simultaneously exhilarating and exhausting to be this involved with everyone around me… but I’m not complaining.

• I seem to have been away from the US for long enough at this point that I’m woefully, embarassingly behind on the norms of American technology. My mom and I picked something up from the Apple store in Nashville last night and I was totally slack-jawed in amazement when the guy scanned the bar code of the product on his iPhone, swiped my mom’s credit card on his iPhone, emailed the receipt to my mom on his iPhone, and then sent us on our way with nary a line or cashier in sight. I got all overstimulated by the experience and was like, “OMG THE FUTURE IS NOW - IT’S MAAAAAAGIC!” which then required my mom to explain to him that I live in the Middle East where we don’t have technology, which then necessitated a round of small talk (see Bullet #1) on why I live in Dubai.

• I have roughly the same level of apprehension about flying into Omaha at 10 PM as I have had about landing in random cities in Nigeria in the middle of the night. Let me be clear, I’m from Tennessee, so I am not in any way trying to be high falutin’, but I mean, this is the proper midwest… what adventures await me in Nebraska?! Will there be cows slaughtered upon my arrival for the provision of unlimited USDA Grade A steaks? Will everyone possess a BMI indicative of morbid obesity? Will the tropically conditioned blood in my sensitive expat veins freeze immediately upon stepping outside into the harsh prairie winter? Is Nebraska on the prairie? WHAT IS A PRAIRIE, ANYWAY?!

Okay, boarding now… more hijinx later!

So obviously, I can’t make a trip home to Tennessee without the obligatory post on my family’s dachshund / yorkie mix Sam, The Dog of All Dogs.

In a recent development that is bizarre even for my family (and that’s saying a lot), my parents have taken to seating Sam on a high chair next to the table during family dinners so he doesn’t feel left out.

Note that I am not saying it’s not awesome to have a canine dinner companion, it’s just… well, undeniably bizarre.

Occasionally Sam is used as a validator when my dad wants to prove a point…

“Isn’t that right, Sam?”

… until he gets bored with the conversation and conks out on the table.

Tired puppeh is tired.

I think this whole post could be entitled, “A Photoessay on the Ramifications of Empty Nest Syndrome for Canine-Human Relations,” but who am I to psychoanalyze my own parents?

“How was your day at school today, buddy?”

In other important Sam news, I got Sam a stuffed Bizarro Sam for Christmas.

Sam, meet Bizarro Sam.

Although Sam had little interest in Bizarro Sam while he had his ball around to play with, we knew it was only a matter of time before he decided to eliminate his competition…

Alas, Bizarro Sam was not long for this world. (Yes, those are his innards all over the rug.)

Having vanquished the enemy, Sam took the obvious next step:

Because honestly, it wouldn’t feel like Christmas Day without the opportunity to curl up on the couch for a little snooze after viciously dismembering your doppelganger, right?

/ End dog blog, resume normal content.

So at the risk of being the absolute last person on the interwebs to post a holiday recap… Merry Christmas!!!! It’s like, so passé that it’s almost not passé, am I right?

(You’d think I’d learn by now that a week at home with family + a week back in Dubai hosting visitors + a couple of 24-hour flight odysseys thrown in the mix = an inevitable 2-week Gubbi internet hiatus, but no, every time I’m like “I’ll toooootally find time to blog in the midst of all the cray!” False.) 

Mia famiglia, in all our Christmas Eve glory.

This was my fifth (!) year making the trip from Dubai to Tennessee for the holiday, and though it’s not an easy journey (2 days of travel for 6 days on the ground, a 10-hour time difference-worth of jet lag, and many many hundreds of the American dollars spent on plane tickets), every year it inevitably proves worthwhile. I know someday I have to become One Of Those Adults Who Doesn’t Spend Every Christmas With Their Family, but, well… every year I hope I can stave off that milestone for just one year longer. 

Their stockings were hung by the chimney with care…

For now I’ll just be thankful that, once again, I got to be part of the annual Christmas morning top-of-the-stairs kids (+ partners, + pets!) family photo shoot:

In case you can’t tell from all the glasses, being almost-legally-blind runs in my family… Alex is less than excited about the little squinty-eyed mole-children I will inevitably produce. 

Since the incorporation of Alex into our family Christmas last year, we’ve adopted a whole new host of holiday traditions: Christmas Eve backyard shisha featuring coals expertly heated, barbecue-style, on the patio grill…

Still no word on what the neighbors think of our innocuous flavored-tobacco pastime.

… and English-style Christmas crackers - complete with bad jokes and funny hats! - a reflection of Alex’s misspent youth in the UK.

Honestly though, gift giving (and receiving!) is still my favorite part of the holiday:

A new sweater, hat, and socks for my increasingly dapper father…

Babby’s First Le Creuset for my master-chef little sister…

And a little uplifting reading for my ever-optimistic (?) counter-cultural brother.

Of course, it wouldn’t be a proper Tennessee Christmas if the neighbors didn’t pop over to play a little banjo in their overalls…

… and my mom and sister didn’t bake a batch or two of disturbingly perfect Christmas cookies.

Christmas at home means never having to say you’re sorry for eating cookies as breakfast.

All in all, a trip well spent and a journey happily taken… Merry Belated to you and yours!

Me ’n’ my baggages, triumphantly arriving back home after our 30-hour flight odyssey from South Carolina to Dubai last summer.

Since the holiday travel season is upon us and I am now in my fifth straight year of traveling 24 hours each way to get home for Christmas - and also since I am currently scheduled to be on no less than eight 15-hour flights in the next four months - I feel imminently qualified at this moment in time to unleash my travel wisdom upon the interwebs.

So brace yourselves for Gubbi’s Guide to Surviving Long-Haul Flights:

1) Build up a sleep deficit before you go. This isn’t usually a problem for me, as I inevitably find myself either (a) on a flight that leaves at 3 AM, or (b) up until 3 AM packing / doing my nails / downloading TV the night before a flight, but for those of you who are more plan-in-advancey than me, I genuinely believe that going into a long trip a bit sleep-deprived improves the experience. Not only are you better able to sleep on the flight (True story: I once fell asleep around 11 PM on a flight from Dubai to Atlanta. When I woke up, checked my watch, and saw that it was only 11:30, I was really confused because I felt like I had been asleep for much longer than thirty minutes… then I realized it was 11:30 AM and I had, in fact, slept for over 12 hours) but I think your body also adjusts better to new time zones and “goes with the flow” a bit more when you’re tired to begin with.

2) Drink copious amounts of alcohol. Anyone who tells you not to drink on a long-haul flight hates you, hates freedom, and probably wants to kick your puppy in the face. The only way I survive any flight longer than 7 hours is to spend as much of it as possible in a dream-like, twilight haze of prolonged semi-awareness, and obviously alcohol facilitates this process. (The same goes for any prescription / non-prescription pharmaceuticals you may have at your disposal, but you didn’t hear that from me.) Sure, drink lots of water, too, and drink caffeine upon arrival if you touch down in the morning - but mostly, drink booze. Remember: on a long enough flight, it’s always five o’clock somewhere on your flight path.

3) When it comes to entertainment, set your intellectual pretenses aside. If I had a dollar for every issue of The Economist I had purchased in an airport bookstore and never read, I would probably be able to cover the cost of a business class upgrade for my 15-hour flight from Abu Dhabi to Chicago this coming Tuesday, and that shit ain’t cheap. Same goes for New York Times best-selling non-fiction, NPR podcasts, and any critically acclaimed Oscar-winning documentaries or foreign films that may be available for viewing on the plane. Acquaint yourself with the fact that in your drooling, ambient, in-flight stupor, you are the lowest common denominator, and select your media accordingly. US Weekly, reality TV, and young adult fiction are all great choices. On an 8-hour flight from Dubai to Hong Kong last summer, I watched Justin Bieber: Never Say Never after a couple mini-bottles of Sauvignon Blanc and literally wept because I was so inspired by this compelling story of a humble young Canadian with a big dream. Truth be told, it was one of my most enjoyable flights in recent memory.

4) Dress comfortably. Let’s face it, the days of being upgraded because you’re a ”sharp dresser” (or whatever the old wisdom used to be) have long since passed. Nowadays you get upgraded because either (a) you have status with the airline, or more rarely, (b) the airline grievously wrongs you and you rage so explosively that they have no choice but to bump you into the fancy cabin to shut you up. Neither of these have anything to do with wearing heels or a blazer, or even real pants - and as far as I’m concerned, leggings become acceptable as pants on any flight that involves crossing an ocean. I think I stopped wearing actual clothes on long-haul flights about a decade ago - my standard uniform is yoga pants, running shoes, a cute t-shirt, a sweatshirt or pashmina, plus makeup and all my nicest jewelry - and I have yet to be laughed out of a business class lounge. (And ladies, don’t forget that the worst pain in our lives besides childbirth is underwire digging into your ribs as you try to nod off sometime around hour thirteen. Sports bras, always.)

5) Don’t talk to strangers… Ohmygosh, nothing strikes terror in my heart (ehrm… except turbulence) like hunkering down for a transcontinental hop and discovering my seatmate is a Chatty Cathy. Sartre and I don’t often see eye to eye, but I firmly believe that when you’re a captive audience hurtling through the sky in a metal tube, hell is other people, and I can’t tell you how many miserable hours I’ve spent listening to fellow travelers ramble on about their volunteer trip to Uganda / secret missionary work in Qatar / pharmaceuticals conference in Saudi Arabia when all I’ve wanted to do is zone the eff out. So do as you would have others do unto you - with one exception, below.

5 & 1/2) … but be kind when strangers really need to talk to you. Flying halfway (or even a quarter or a third of the way) around the world can be a daunting thing whether it’s your first time or your umpteenth, and sometimes the person next to you is the only source of comfort you have. On my last trip back from the US I was in a particularly angsty flying place (in general, I range between “mildly uneasy” and “bat-shit crazily terrified” as a flyer, and during this period I was trending towards the latter) and United - because they treat passengers as cattle rather than as human beings - was unable to sit Alex and I next to each other for our 14-hour flight from DC to Dubai. No one would switch with either of us because we were both stuck in middle seats, and I was suuuuuuuper stressy about the flight ahead, so I started peppering my neighbor - a big burly retired Dallas cop working in Afghanistan as a defense contractor - with really inane conversation (“What airline are you flying from Dubai to Kabul? Did you know that there are four different airlines that do the route because there’s so much demand? When I went to Kabul, I flew Pamir there and Kam Air back! Did you know that Emirates really wants to add Kabul as a destination, but the price of insuring their planes there overnight between flights makes it cost-prohibitive? Did you also know that Air Arabia used to do the route, but had to cancel it due to a security scare back in 2008?”) to keep myself distracted. He put up with me until we safely reached cruising altitude, then answered a final question - “So, what exactly will you be doing there?” - with the conversation-killing “I’ll just be trying to keep my men alive” and pointedly donned his Bose noise-cancelling headphones. Nevertheless, I was grateful for the rest of the flight that he had humored me off the ground - especially despite my typical reluctance to do the same.

So there you have it - my learnings, distilled for you. Bon voyage, friends!

Tonight’s running wear:

Short shorts and a teeny tank.

I ALMOST shivered.

***

Pay no attention to the zen masters of traditional Japanese poetry rolling in their graves thanks to my use of CAPS LOCK in a haiku, and instead distract yourself with my moonrise view from the track at Safa Park…

(Yes, this will continue to be a weather-gloating blog until sometime around April.)

Tuesday Morning, 8 AM (Dubai): wake up, think about upcoming travel plans, and excitedly realize, “Ooh, we’ll be leaving for the airport to fly home to the US at EXACTLY THIS TIME NEXT WEEK!”

Wednesday Morning, 8 AM (Dubai): wake up, calculate current time in the US, and not-so-excitedly realize, “Oh… we’ll be landing in Nashville at EXACTLY THIS TIME NEXT WEEK…”

As much as I try to tell myself it does not take a full 24 hours to get from Dubai to Tennessee - well, the facts would beg to differ.

It’s the personal touch that I find so beguiling…

“SIR, THIS IS NOT YOUR PARKING SLOT PLEASE CAN YOU PARK TO YOUR SLOT PROPALY THANKD YOU FAROOK.”

Love you too, Farook. <3