Month: June 2007

Categories
travel

Oh Lord, stuck in Dubai again…

With all due apologies to John Fogerty… Yup, I’m in my most frequent haunt and there really isn’t much to do except take advantage of the free wi-fi. Here’s some random observations:

Good God my computer is filthy! I’m using it in decent light for the first time in who knows when and I am appalled. I’m going to have to do some serious cleaning when I get back.

I saw a couple of Yemeni girls get on the plane that stood out a bit. They were both wearing hijabs and baltos, but one was sporting some Italian styled sunglasses (huge ones with sparkly things on the sides) and the other had “Dior” written in rhinestones on her hijab. I’m no fashion maven, but I’m pretty sue that Dior is not making hijabs, and I’m pretty damn sure that they would not use rhinestones if they did.

I thought I had a toothache, but now I think it’s actually my jaw joint (TMJ) on my left side. I’m thinking this because the pain moves around a bit and it seems to subside if I keep my jaw in a certain position. That’s good, I think. I really can’t afford any actual dental work at this point, hopefully I’ve just tweaked the joint and it’ll heal on it’s own (can you sprain a TMJ?) The bad news is that the position that minimizes the pain leaves me with a slack jaw, so I sit around with my mouth slightly open looking like an idiot. Whatever, this thing hurts like hell sometimes, I’ll look like an idiot if I can minimize that.

It’s 102 degrees here in Dubai along with the usual humidity, Oi!

I continue to be amazed at the music offered on the Emirates in flight entertainment. I heard two (two!) Rolling Stones songs that I had never heard, one of which (We Love You) had both John Lennon and Paul Mcaurtney doing backing vocals. They also played “Death of a Clown” by Ray Davies (not with the Kinks as I had thought) and a Syd Barrett song that I can’t remember the name of right this second. A really good mix… Those were all from the year 1967, when they went to 1977, you could really tell which was the better year. The late 70’s had some of the most amazing rock and roll ever being made (Sex Pistols, Talking Heads, Ramones, the Clash, etc.) but the charts were dominated by the likes of Debbie Boone, Peter Frampton, and Olivia Newton-John. God was she terrible. I managed to miss her whole pre Grease, “Let’s Get Physical” career. “I Honestly Love You,” and “Sam” are all I ever need to hear to thank my lucky stars. At least they didn’t play “Jazzman” by Carol King, that was another inexplicable hit in the late 70’s. I’m chalking it up to the bad taste in general during that time. The clothes, the hair, the TV, etc.

I will never, ever fly without noise canceling headphones. Even if you’re not listening to music, maybe especially if you’re not listening to music, they are a godsend. It’s alarming how loud the cabin of an airplane is, and it’s even more alarming to hear how loud you usually play music to overcome it. I keep them on my head when I attempt to go to sleep. The really cool thing is that everything else, announcements, conversations, etc. are much easier to hear when you cut the ambient noise by 20db or so. Seriously, get some of these for your next trip, they’re not that expensive, 40-50 bucks, but your ears and nerves will thank you. I use a lithium AA battery in mine and get 20-30 hours out of a single battery.

I’ll probably post more as I get bored…

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travel

Leaving tomorrow

I’ll catch my plane tomorrow at 10M. That means I should be there at 7, which means I’ll have to get up at 5:30 GROAN… I always get thrown off by this, I look at my itinerary and think, “Hmm, 10AM flight to Dubai, 11:30PM flight to NYC, arrive at NYC at 7:30AM and fly out of there at 1PM, arrive at DC around 2ish.” Not too bad until I realize that I’ll most likely be awake for more than 20 hours during the next 24… I hope I can sleep this time. Now that I’m a member of their frequent flyer program, I can pick my seat if I do it early enough. I figure 12 hours is plenty of time… I hope to get a seat up close to the business class section (and near the emergency exit) so that I can have some actual leg room. The only potential drawback to that is that area is also where they put the babies… I’ll take it, I then have at least a chance to get some sleep…

Categories
Economics

"Working Class"

Henry (my Scottish housemate) used a phrase that I have only heard uttered by people from the UK and Ireland. He said something about the “working class.” I mentioned that in the US, we don’t use that phrase and his response was, “What do you call them?” My thought was, who is them? It’s a really telling thing I think… Americans really don’t tend to think in those types of Marxist “classes,” we do talk in real vague terms like poor, rich, and middle class, but not “working.”

After all, everyone “works” in the US, even Bill Gates works… We’ve never had an aristocracy. For me, using the term “working class” is a little repulsive. It assumes that there is an entire group of people that are only good for a certain type of job. As the economy continues to change, there will be fewer and fewer blue collar jobs, the Brits will have to come up with a better description…

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Yemen

Latest newspapers in Yemen…

Some random observations from the latest English papers here in Yemen…

An article about ongoing mediations in a tribal conflict mentioned not only the government’s Committee to combat revenge, but the sub-committee of that organization as well. We all know that the best hope we have against violence is sub committees…

The authorities seized 136 video cds that contain what they consider pornography. The phrase “Tip of the iceberg” comes to mind… The video and audio CD shops are everywhere. The official in charge of this operation made some strong statements condemning the sellers of these types of movies and urged more crackdowns against them. I’m sure that this would stop people from viewing porn, why would a guy living in a country where he can’t even see woman’s faces or hair want to look at stuff like that?

A new organic restaurant opened up in Sana’a, the first of it’s kind apparently. The caption under the photo of the establishment says, “Now peace loving health nuts have a place to dine.” The photo showing patrons of course featured a woman in what we in ithaca called a “Lola granola” dress…

Those were in the Yemen Observer. The Yemen times, normally a slightly more sedate paper, had pictures of various sleeping positions. The report was trying to show how different sleeping positions revealed different aspects of people’s personality. There was a chart, probably copied from the internet, showing different positions and their titles. One of them was titled “Shake that ass.”

I wrote a rather pointed letter to the “economics” editor of the Yemen times. I asked why a variety of topics that are plaguing Yemen do not have adequate economic coverage. Many times, there are obvious (to those that are economically minded) reasons why certain things happen, but they are not reported. He wrote back with a fairly good response, explaining a lot of the problems with wheat prices here. He also made it clear that there are certain things that papers cannot really say due to either government pressure, or pressure from powerful individuals. The press in the Arabic world is quite a bit different than the US. The letter I got partially explained why the English papers here are filled with “fluff.” The papers are only 12 pages long, 4 of which are nothing but ads. There are also ads scattered throughout the rest of the paper. Of the remaining 10 pages, 3 or 4 of them are things like sleeping positions or painting on glass stories. With so much to possibly report on, there is much that the journalists can’t really say out loud…

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Yemen

Children that might explode

There are several kids here that always seem like they are on the verge of blowing up. This morning for instance, one of them was running up and down the short alley by my window, screaming his head off for twenty minutes. The alley is only about 8 feet wide, so the sound bounces around pretty good. He wasn’t in pain or anything, just yelling, and running, and yelling… The other day a truck backed up near my house. He and another kid proceeded to imitate the sound while running around for 25 minutes or so. They would scream BEEP BEEP BEEP as they ran past each other, turned around and did it again.

I figure if they don’t do this, they will probably explode. I guess kids are like this all over the world, but here they are much more confined in the old city. There aren’t any parks or open spaces to really run around. Grass is rarely seen, and you certainly can’t play on it (it is for show, you don’t want to tear it up). So they run around the streets until they’re old enough (and lucky enough) to get a bike. Then they go tearing around the streets on their bikes.

Once, back in my Penn camera days, a father came in with his rambunctious kid. Apparently, the kid had already been a bit of a problem in another store because as soon as they walked in, the father took the kid aside and said in a stern voice, “Do not move from this spot!” The kid didn’t, but he was fidgeting and the demon in him was trying really hard to get out. After a little while, the kid couldn’t take it and started to jump in place and spun in the air. Now there was a kid that needed some wind sprints or something….

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Arabic

Translations

We’ve ben translating some short kid’s stories from English to Arabic the last couple of days and I’m getting a little frustrated. The teacher keeps changing things to the way he thinks they ought to be instead of translating the text. Maybe I’m being too anal about this, but if the exercise is to translate, the meanings should be as similar as possible. In my mind, this means not changing indefinite into definite articles, altering quotes, etc. Some examples:

“One of his uncles” gets translated to “His uncle”
A quote from a character in English is “Mother told me to stand by the door.” He translates it to “(his) mother told him to stand by the door.” When I protested that the charecter didn’t say that, he replied that it was more “correct.”

“He saw people from his window” turns into “He watched the people from his window.”

My teacher didn’t tell me that I didn’t understand the Arabic, but he didn’t see the difference. His versions were more “correct” in his mind. I really don’t think it’s the job of a translator (or a student trying to translate as an exercise) to “correct” the style or shades of meaning in the original. If the author said “He sat by a window,” in the original, there’s no reason to change it to “He sat by the window…”

The other, and more likely but depressing thought, is that his English comprehension just isn’t all that good. Normally I’d forgive this, but he is finishing up his degree in English, he just took an exam on “Macbeth.” True, it was a multiple choice (!?) exam, but still, he shouldn’t have any problems with the stuff we were doing. He certainly shouldn’t be corrected by his student… Grrrr… I don’t mind being wrong, but there isn’t any indication that I am…

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travel

It’s the little things

I have a carry on bag that works alright, it’s the right size, and I like how the pockets work. The only thing I’ve never really liked is the fact that the handle for the rolling option is about 3 to 4 inches too short. I don’t consider myself overly tall at 6 feet (that’s 2 meters for you non US types), but you’d be surprised what that 3 inches does to your back and/or shoulder if you have to wheel it around for a while. Anyway, the top handle broke on my Malta trip and it has been the perfect excuse to go look for another. I managed to find one bag tonight that had a tall enough handle, but it was incredibly ugly. I’m not usually real finicky about how my luggage looks, but this thing was terrible. Plus, this thing felt like I could rip it apart, there’s no way it could handle a full load without self-destructing. The guy kept telling me that it was “real leather” when it was obviously vinyl… I’ll look when I’m back in the states, I’ll deal with this bag for at least one more trip…

Categories
odds and ends

The best story I’ve heard this month…

One of my housemates was telling me about how he once bought some pot from an… brace yourself…. albino Rastafarian from Greenland. This happened in Rome… Imagine white dreadlocks and pink pupils in one of the plazas in Rome… He said it felt like he was in the Matrix or something. I haven’t laughed so much in ages. My mind was severely bent trying to imagine that….

Categories
Religion

The New Testament

OK, everything I said about the Old Testament doesn’t go for the New. I’ve read Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, and Acts and I am most impressed. I had read one of the accounts before, but i don’t remember which one, probably Mark. Here are some random thoughts I’ve had so far:

Jesus totally kicks ass. He is the first one in the entire Bible that speaks with any authority. Everyone else (Moses, Abraham, Jacob, David, et. al.) would probably shrug their shoulders and say “That’s what God said,” if anyone questioned them. Jesus is the only one that knows which way is up. Perhaps my frustration from the Old Testament makes Jesus’ teachings seem even more authoritative.

My favorite Jesus moment. Someone asked about the truth of the resurrection, after all Moses and everyone else didn’t seem to mention it. Jesus pointed out that David and other prophets referred to “The God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob,” God is the God of the living, not of the dead so those people mentioned are alive. That blows my mind…

Matthew starts with the heritage of Jesus as traced through Joseph. What does Joseph have to do with anything? I thought God was Jesus’ father, so why trace through Joseph? Jesus wasn’t a descendant of David, there is none of David’s (or Joseph’s) blood in Him. I can understand if they did it through Mary (they don’t of course), but I see nothing that would change my notion of Joseph as the supportive step (or foster) father…

I begrudgingly admit that my reading of the Old Testament helps understand the New. I still stand by my thoughts that most of the Old Testament isn’t very useful and that most of the “prophecies” about the Messiah are incredibly vague. Why not a little more clarity? Perhaps I’m missing some stuff, but I don’t recall any prophecies about the Christian era other than the end of days. It sounds like people were expecting a literal descendant of David to rule on the throne forever, none of this dying and living in heaven stuff.

It’s shocking how dense the Apostles were. Jesus told some parables that I thought were pretty straightforward, but they stumped the Apostles. it makes me worry what else they missed of His teachings…

What, exactly, did Thaddeus and Bartholomew do? Maybe they come in later, but so far I don’t think they were credited with doing anything.

Judas is portrayed in a much more narrow way than I was anticipating. According to what I have read, there wasn’t any deliberation or even any thoughts as to what he was going through, he was just evil. I’ve always found this to be odd, he was one of Jesus’ disciples and he was instrumental in the events that lead to the salvation of all mankind, so where’s the love for Judas?

Jesus admitted that Moses had “put in” that whole thing about divorce to make people (men) happy. Was there anything else he put in there?

Since Gentiles weren’t expected to follow Mosaic or Levitical law, what is it that we nonJews are supposed to do? Jesus mentions a handful of commandments, but it sounds like the whole of Mosaic and Levitical law are not applicable to us. That raises interesting questions about a variety of “sins.”

There is a tremendous amount of duplication of the description of what Jesus did. On one hand, this makes it seem that these were the most important things that He did. Of course, if He was God, then it would seem like everything He did would be important. Even “Pass the salt,” would have some sort of importance if God said it. This is my biggest frustration with the New Testament, we get relatively little Jesus. Not only are huge parts of His life missing, but huge parts of His days of preaching. He did that for what, three years? And we get a couple hundred pages worth of description and several thousand of His words. Very disappointing… The other thing that the duplication does is it makes you winder about the provenance of the books. It really sounds like they were copied from a common source with minor embellishments…

More thoughts to come as I think of them…

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Yemen

A possible explanation for the trash truck…

The trash trucks here are equipped with deafening sirens. I think I have heard a police siren twice here, but the damn trash truck comes every day. 8:30 may not sound real early to some of you, but it is well before I usually get up, or at least it’s well before I want to get up. I get woken up every day around that time. The trash service here is actually very reliable, it’s one of the only things I can think of that seems to operate the way it should. Anyway, I’ve been asking people why the trash truck has to be so fricking loud, and no one has had any idea. I asked my teacher today and he told me that he had recently had a conversation with some of the trash guys about this since he didn’t know either. What he was told is that it makes sure that people know when the truck comes by. This didn’t make any sense to me, after all, in America, we all know when the truck comes by. If we miss it, it’s our problem. The difference is that here, if people miss the truck, they just throw their trash into the street, making an enormous mess. The trash guys are just covering their butts, by using the siren everyone knows when they are there, if the streets are a mess, it isn’t their fault. Apparently, they are worried about their supervisors seeing streets filled with trash. It sounds like this may have happened before. It sure is refreshing to hear of government employees being worried about what their superior thinks. If only the rest of the government were like this…

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