The things I've seen
4 Comments Published by Tom Gara on Tuesday, March 18 at Tuesday, March 18, 2008.
Thanks to the iPhone, here are the top 5 phone pics of the last couple of weeks:
CNN were reporting live from Austin, Texas on the day of the Texas Democratic primary/caucus. For an otherwise totally straight news piece, they certainly chose a good store mural to do their piece to camera in front of...
The proudest moment of my wannabe-Egyptian life: When we went to get fingerprinted (yes, they fingerprint everyone applying for residency here), the guy at the first counter takes my documents, and a few minutes later, hands me back this.... Finally, my Egyptian blood is recognised legally... I asked him if perhaps there was a mistake, and he seemed to be trying to say that "Place of Birth" is an inaccurate translation of the Arabic and is meant to say "country of origin." Whatever, I was Egyption for a day and it was a beautiful feeling. Appropriately, I spent my day of Egyptian'ness standing around in the sun being watched over by military policemen and waiting to be let into a small dark room to have my privacy / dignity / presumption of innocence taken away arbitrarily by the state....
Novak Djokovic on his way to a convincing win over Marin Cilic at the Dubai Tennis Championships. Thanks to some fine corporate hospitality we were sitting ludicrously close to the action. In the next game of the evening, when big-server Andy Roddick aced his way past Juan Carlos Ferrero, I was getting legitimately worried that a wayward 230 km/h serve from Roddick was going to take one of our heads off...or at least spill our beers..
Marry a nice classy Arab woman and one day you too could sleep in a bed like this. Spotted in a big home furnishings store, that was, in true UAE fashion, clearly divided into three ethnic/economic sections: one area full of gilded, glittery, faux-royal, ornate Louis XIV style stuff (at Louis XIV prices) for the Emiratis and Arabs, a fairly stylish modern place for the moneyed expats, and a bare basics/ economic necessity section for the "workers." But by gosh, that bed. I know some pretty princesslike Arab girls but this is just one step over the line...
On facing this honorable warrior of the ocean, I immediately bowed in respect. What a beast. He had it all planned out - hundreds of millions of years of evolution leading to this, the perfect emperor of the deep: impenetrable spiky carpace, slick undersea camouflage colors, the whole deal. He made just one mistake though - his delicious, delicious flesh. Now he's stuck in a Hypermarket with the rest of us....
CNN were reporting live from Austin, Texas on the day of the Texas Democratic primary/caucus. For an otherwise totally straight news piece, they certainly chose a good store mural to do their piece to camera in front of...
The proudest moment of my wannabe-Egyptian life: When we went to get fingerprinted (yes, they fingerprint everyone applying for residency here), the guy at the first counter takes my documents, and a few minutes later, hands me back this.... Finally, my Egyptian blood is recognised legally... I asked him if perhaps there was a mistake, and he seemed to be trying to say that "Place of Birth" is an inaccurate translation of the Arabic and is meant to say "country of origin." Whatever, I was Egyption for a day and it was a beautiful feeling. Appropriately, I spent my day of Egyptian'ness standing around in the sun being watched over by military policemen and waiting to be let into a small dark room to have my privacy / dignity / presumption of innocence taken away arbitrarily by the state....
Novak Djokovic on his way to a convincing win over Marin Cilic at the Dubai Tennis Championships. Thanks to some fine corporate hospitality we were sitting ludicrously close to the action. In the next game of the evening, when big-server Andy Roddick aced his way past Juan Carlos Ferrero, I was getting legitimately worried that a wayward 230 km/h serve from Roddick was going to take one of our heads off...or at least spill our beers..
Marry a nice classy Arab woman and one day you too could sleep in a bed like this. Spotted in a big home furnishings store, that was, in true UAE fashion, clearly divided into three ethnic/economic sections: one area full of gilded, glittery, faux-royal, ornate Louis XIV style stuff (at Louis XIV prices) for the Emiratis and Arabs, a fairly stylish modern place for the moneyed expats, and a bare basics/ economic necessity section for the "workers." But by gosh, that bed. I know some pretty princesslike Arab girls but this is just one step over the line...
On facing this honorable warrior of the ocean, I immediately bowed in respect. What a beast. He had it all planned out - hundreds of millions of years of evolution leading to this, the perfect emperor of the deep: impenetrable spiky carpace, slick undersea camouflage colors, the whole deal. He made just one mistake though - his delicious, delicious flesh. Now he's stuck in a Hypermarket with the rest of us....
Hey Tom!
Good to hear about your adventures in the UAE.
Cant believe you were at the stadium watching that game.. I was there too!!
You should definitely drop me a line so that we can get together one of these days around some nice moroccan tea and shisha!
Cheers
Ana
Hope all is going well for you in the UAE, bud! x
I would be remiss for not commenting on your mention of Austin TX. 2 things:
1) You're right, that is a good store front. But were you implying that perhaps it was also an "appropriate" store front?*
2) Your snapshot view of a tv showing CNN makes me wince... I forget sometimes that CNN, Fox News, MSNBC etc etc are being watched around the globe. What percentage of folks in the middle east watch this US info-tainment? What percentage watch with interest? What percentage watch with disgust? Tom Gara once said, "my buddies (aussies) and I were watching TV (satellite) and we came across Fox News (March/April 2003) and we weren't even sure if it was supposed to be a spoof or actually news..." I don't know where this bullet point is going, but i just had to share my cringe
Adam, Austin TX
*If by implying that this is an appropriate store front, I rush to the defense of my beautiful city by mentioning that the UAE must have its own fair share of smokers as well. I mean imagine how the conversation went:
- "What would you do if you had 250 Trillion dollars?"
- "Hmmm... well, I've thought a lot about it, and I've decided that i would build an island shaped like a palm tree - a large one. It could be seen from space."
- "Word"
- "cough cough, AND, we’ll build a really really really tall building, right... cough... that you can ALSO see from space... it’ll be like Disney World only cooler and bigger man."
- "pass the cheetos"
- :-)
And even more appropriately you were EGYPTION and not EGYPTIAN!