Visitors!

by Cindy

November 16, 2011 UPDATE - At the request of those who read our blog and comment (thank you Carolyn and Trish!), here are some additional pictures of the indoor ski slope.  We don't have any of the indoor roller coaster, sorry.

The slope is actually a L shape.  The lift curves and this is headed up to the top/upper half.

Looking at the top half of the slope.  The lift is in the middle and you can ski down to the left or right of the lift.

Skiing down the 'expert' side.

There is a lodge half way up, at the turn, where all of these pics were taken.  This is looking back down the slope, right before the lift curves.  You can see the windows at the far end, the mall is on the other side of those windows.

Looking back down the slope, the lower half.  Again, the mall straight ahead through the windows.

The upper half of the slope.

Looking down the slope with a part of the lodge on the right of the picture.

Overall, the slope is not big at all.  Sabra and I were taking 10 minutes for a round trip of riding the lift up and skiing down the slope.

November 14, 2011
We have been very blessed this fall to have visitors.  Jeff and I had a great time showing them around town and seeing and doing things we have not done before.  We would love to have more of you come see this amazing place we live!


Here are some fun pictures of the new things for us:

Ski Dubai - I'm guessing you have heard of it.  First of all, it is located in a mall - very typical of Dubai.  You "rent" your clothes, boots and skis.  For the clothes, you just pull them over whatever you happen to be wearing that day.  When my brother and Eddie skied, they had on shorts underneath their outfits.  It was really weird to ski indoors when you know it is 100 F degrees outside.  I will admit, Sabra and I got really, really cold and quit early (they keep it at -1 C).  Very strange experience but glad I did it.

Ferrari World - the world's largest indoor amusement park is pretty cool but take note, the world's fastest roller coaster is only open on the weekends!  Bummer.

Burj Khalifa - the world's tallest building.

Seawings - we got to take an aerial tour of Dubai on a seaplane, it was really cool.

The Star of The Show

by Cindy

Jeff was asked to lead a lecture on Decision Making to the student workers on campus.  His picture was plastered all over the campus.  Jeff think he looks fat but appreciated our friend Nick who told Jeff that his arms look big and muscular.

Ko Yao Noi, Thailand

by Cindy

Jeff and I were fortunate to travel to Thailand for a few days in early November.  We didn't plan for it but it definitely turned out to be a second honeymoon.  It was secluded, romantic and quite fabulous!  We rested quite a bit, swam in the Phang Nga Bay, kayaked through a mangrove forest in the Ao Phang Nga National Park, enjoyed the sweeping vistas, learned some Thai cooking, partook in a couple of wine tastings and just really enjoyed ourselves.  I can never get too much one on one time with my husband so I enjoyed every minute of the trip!  Here are some of the pictures - if you ever get a chance to travel to Thailand, I highly recommend it!

The view from the pool.  Wow!

Our view at dinner each night

Us with the real chef.

Watching a movie each night while overlooking the bay.  It was rough, we know.

Our villa was amazing, we called it our "tree house"

 

Our yummy creation - Pork and glass noodle salad

Eid Al-Adha

by Cindy

We have just finished celebrating the Eid Al-Adha holiday here in the UAE.  Eid Al Adha is the holiday celebrated by Muslims to commemorate the willingness of Abraham to sacrifice his son Ishmael (not Isaac as Christians believe) as an act of obedience to God, before God intervened to provide him with a sheep— to sacrifice instead.

One of our friends passed along a picture she took of some stamps she saw in Lubbock, TX - celebrating the Eid holiday.

It's a little bit hard for me to translate since it's in calligraphy but Allah is definitely in there.

So, as we would say here, Eid Mubarak (blessed Eid)!

The View from the Top

This photo was taken last week in Dubai.  We have fog from time to time in the mornings since we're on the coast, but above it all, things are absolutely gorgeous.

Beat This Neiman Marcus

by Cindy


If you are looking for that "one of a kind" Christmas gift for your significant other, I have the gift for you!  I checked the 2011 Neiman Marcus catalog and they don't even have this available!


This is definitely the gift that no one else in your neighborhood will receive.  The gift requires very little water or food or much upkeep and actually keeps on giving.  The keeps on giving part might be the downside of the gift actually, because the gift is smelly and snorts and spits a lot but no one else has one, I promise! The gift?  A camel!  It will set you back about $1,000,000 (yep, that's six zeros).


So, to help prepare you for your gift buying, I have a few tips for you:


Lessons with your Camel:

• Hiss to make the camel stand
• Click to make the camel sit
• Call him with a cry of "hay hay oooay"
• If you want him to slow down, pull the rope
• Never confuse your camel with a horse and say, "whoa". This will make him speed up and running without stirrups puts weight on the rider's spine
• Sing to your camel to make it forget its thirst
• Don't beat him. He will remember it for 10 or 12 years and bite you in your sleep

And don't worry, once you buy your camel, you can attend camel boot camp to learn basic knowledge of camels.  As I said, it's a 'one-of-a-kind' gift.

Merry Christmas to Me!

by Cindy

This summer Jeff and I tackled the storage unit we have back in America.  I have a love/hate relationship with the storage unit.  I like to see my 'stuff' that is familiar to me and my 'stuff' allows me, in some weird psychological way, to stay attached and grounded in America. However, it seems ridiculous to pay for storage on stuff that, by the time I get around to using it again, will be ruined or non-usable.  So, this summer we went through it, gave a few things away and shipped a few more things to the UAE. 

When we moved to the UAE, we were not sure what we would want or need so we made the best guess.  Now that we've decided to stay indefinitely, we wanted to have more of our 'stuff''.  We shipped two bikes, a lot of golf stuff, kitchen gadgets and my pots and pans.  I have missed my kitchen gadgets and pots and pans.  I love kitchen gadgets.  Every time I would go into Crate and Barrel here I would get home sick because I would see all of these cool gadgets and think excitedly to myself, "I have something like that..."  Which would immediately be followed by a sad thought "...back in storage in America."  But no more!  I now have all my kitchen gadgets and pots and pans.

More pots and pans than two people need.

Enough space for pots and pans for two people.

The obvious next task will be finding a place for all of these goodies!

The Office

The university where we teach opened a new building for the business school this year.  It's a great space for us with great classroom space, new offices, and great technology.  Here are a few photos of our new space.

Hallway outside classrooms

Jeff's Office

Cindy's Office

Jeff again.

Classroom (40 seats), where both Cindy and I teach.

Student Lounge

Milk - It Does the Body Good

by Cindy

We have all kinds of milk here.  Maybe America does too and I never paid attention but just the other day I noticed you can get a variety six pack of milk -  raspberry, strawberry, banana, camel, date and regular.  Wow, who knew.  I didn't get the six pack but I did try three of them.

Camel milk (we do live in the desert after all) is gross.  My brother and I agreed, it tastes like dirty milk.  The Banana milk tasted like you would expect and was pretty good.  It would really enhance a banana milkshake.  The date milk (we have date palm trees all over the UAE) was not very good.  It tasted like sweet milk with a bad aftertaste. 

If you are not as adventurous with your milk selections, we do have 'regular' milk for you.  'Regular' milk comes in Skimmed, Low Fat, Full Fat, Double Fat or Double Cream.  I presume Full Fat is Whole milk. I have no idea about the other two, do they take the fat from Skimmed and Low Fat and add it to Double Fat and Double Cream?!?!

The other notable thing is that the Skimmed only comes in the 1/2 gallon equivalent.  They don't even make it in the gallon equivalent.

Get Your Guns Up!

by Cindy

We had an article in our paper recently about Randa Ayoubi.  You probably don't know her by name but you might know of her work.  She is the creator of Rubicon, the multimillion-dollar animation and production company that has partnered with Paramount, MGM Studios and CBS Television Network.  She is considered one of the most successful businesswomen in the Middle East.

If you still don't know her or her company, maybe you've heard of 'Ben and Izzy'?  It airs on the Cartoon Network.  The plot revolves around the tumultuous relationship between an American boy, Ben, and his Jordanian friend Izzy, and although its purpose is to be entertaining, it became a symbol of a bridge between the West and the East.  The cartoon was described by The New York Times as "perhaps the most memorable "pitch stunt" among the nearly 300 proposals for series that  Cartoon Network sifts through each year".

Still don't know her?  That's fine.  What you probably really care about is that she holds a BS in Computer Engineering from Texas Tech University!

Country Music Reviews

by Cindy

Our newspaper here is not dissimilar from yours.  We have the news along with all of the extra stuff - food reviews and recipes, movie reviews and music reviews.  I was quite surprised last week when we had Country music reviews in our paper. I even double checked to see if it had been written by someone local or if it was from a foreign news source that had just printed in our regional paper.  It was local, totally local.

The reviews seem to be okay, not terribly kind but not too harsh either

This really had me wondering...We just had another really big Virgin store open in one of our (many) malls so I dropped by to see if they sell country music.  To my surprise, they had a small section.  It seemed to be mostly old school - Willie Nelson, Johnnie Cash, Dolly Parton and Kenny Rodgers.  A few more recent artists in Faith Hill and the Dixie Chicks along with 'The Best of Ally McBeal'.  [Go figure on that one.]

I guess the bottom line is that you can in fact get country music in the UAE!

Homesick

by Cindy

I really don't get too homesick but when I do it is for two things - cold weather and Christmas.

When we back to the UAE from our visit to America this summer, I lit some candles around the house and attempted to freshen things up a bit.  The candle I chose for our bedroom was 'Creamy Pumpkin' from Bath and Body Works.  I always put the 'bedroom candle' on my nightstand that way I can even smell it when it's not lit.  Plus, Jeff's not big on smells so it's away from him.  This 'Creamy Pumpkin' candle has really thrown me for a loop!  To me, it smells like Christmas.  When I smell it, I feel like I should be able to walk into the living room and see the Christmas tree.  I think I should be able to walk outside and feel a cold chill in the air.  It seems that when I go to the mall, Christmas carols should be playing in all of the stores.  The candle makes me homesick - it hits right at the only two things I really miss.

In case you are not familiar with where we live, it is in the desert, in a country that does not celebrate Christmas.  When I walk into the living room, I don't see our Christmas tree but I can hear the call to prayer.  When I walk outside, I do not feel a cold chill (I never have and never will for that matter).  I think the temperature today was 102F.  When we go to the mall, we don't hear Christmas carols but we do hear R&B songs and the call to prayer (go figure, I know).

So, even though we had just returned from America I found myself homesick.  'Creamy Pumpkin' went back into the closet and I replaced it with 'Autumn.'  I seem to be doing much better now.

Election Day!

Tomorrow - Saturday, September 24 - is election day here in the United Arab Emirates.  There are 469 candidates  (including 85 women) who are vying for spots on the Federal National Council (FNC), the highest elected body in the UAE.

There are 40 representatives on the FNC.  Representatives serve 2-year terms.  Each of the seven emirates that compose the UAE are represented on the FNC according to their population (similar to the way that the number of representatives a state has in the US House of Representatives is determined by that state's population).  Here, the FNC has the following number of representatives from each of the 7 emirates.
   8 are from the emirate of Abu Dhabi,
   8 are from Dubai,
   6 are from Sharjah,
   6 are from Ras al Khaimah, and
   4 from Ajman,
   4 from Umm Al Quwain, and
   4 from Fujairah.
Not all of the 40 seats on the FNC are elected, however.  Each emirate elects exactly half of its representatives, while the remainder are appointed by the ruling sheikh.   Currently, of the 40 seats, there are 8 women (20% of the FNC, with 3 women from Dubai, and 1 woman from each emirate except Umm al Quwain).

As far as voting rights go, the UAE does not yet have universal suffrage.  This year does, however, represent a significant expansion in voting rights from the previous elections.  Furthermore, the UAE has a far larger percentage of its citizens eligible to vote than many of the countries in the region.  In this election, 129,247 individuals (out of approximately 978,000 Emirati citizens) will vote.  These individuals are chosen by the rulers of the emirates in which they live.

The FNC is not a legislature that develops and votes on laws.  Rather, it functions in an advisory role to the rulers of the country.  Drafts of laws and the nation's budget are discussed, with recommendations passed on to the rulers.  Additionally, the FNC provides oversight of the various Ministries of the country (Ministry of Finance, Ministry of Health, Ministry of Foreign Trade, etc.).

Here are a few campaign posters.  I have no idea about the platforms of the candidates.  Since all off the voters are Emirati, all of the campaigning and materials are in Arabic.

This guy has prime advertising space in front of a mosque.

A better angle of the advertisement near the mosque.

Signboards on the median.

One of the female candidates.  Notice here that all candidates have a number (visible in the other candidates' ads, too).  At the voting booth, candidates are either selected by entering the number or selecting the photo of the candidate.

Family Time Part IV

by Cindy

We concluded our American Tour with time in the DFW area to see my family.  I'm fortunate that my mom, dad, brother and some extended family all live in the Metroplex area.  Unfortunately, I got confused about what day we left town, so I was not able to catch up with extended family this year.  The only friend I was able to catch up with was one I haven't seen in 7 or 8 years so it was nice to see her.

We enjoyed our time with family over long dinners, Labor day weekend at the lake and playing with my niece who has grown quite a bit this past year.  Jeff and I always try to get in some American Football while we are in town so we enjoyed the LSU vs. Oregon game this summer at Dallas Cowboy stadium.  My brother even got us some tickets to a suite for the second half of the game.  It's nice to have connections!  In Arabia, we call that 'wasta' which translates to 'influence'.

Here are some pics from our trip:

At the game with my brother and his wife.

Before the game started.

From the suite - joining us were Chavi and Dan.

Reagan, 21 months, ready for the LSU game.

My nieces, Reagan and Haley, 6 years.  Swimming at the lake.

Reagan swimming at the lake.

The squirrels eating corn at the lake.  They even have their own lounge chair!