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!