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Yemen

More on the bombing in Yemen…

Another reason that I doubt that Al-Queda is involved in this is that the Yemeni government claims that it is the work of Al-Queda. The government cannot admit that it has no control over vast swaths of it’s own country, it cannot admit that there are many places where the local sheiks will not allow the army into their territory. The government cannot admit that Salah (the king, er… sorry, “President”) is known as the “Mayor of Sana’a” by the bedouins in Marib. The bedouins do not fear or respect the president or his government. Salah cannot have his allies, or the world at large understand these things, so Al-Queda is responsible. You know, that crafty, mysterious organization that even the mighty US can’t really defeat. That sounds much better than some rebellious group that is only 4 hours drive from the capital. I will need to be convinced that Al-Queda really is involved and it’s not just the government covering it’s ass…

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Yemen

How I hate American media

Well, it happened. Someone blew themselves up along with a couple of cars full of tourists in Marib, Yemen. I heard about it as I flipped through the channels, of course the newsman said that “Al-Queda” is suspected. Al-Queda my ass. Anyone that does ANY research will know that the bedouins have been raising hell there for a while, they killed 4 government soldiers sent to reopen a road a little while back. They have some grievances having to do with what they think a company and the government “owe” them (don’t get me started). Even I know that this has nothing to do with Al-Queda or Islam and everything with jobs and tribalism. They have upped the ante, they used to be happy kidnapping tourists from there, now they want to kill them. I do wonder what the general feeling about this is in Marib, they have never shown this kind of hatred towards westerners before. They used to kidnap them in order to embarrass the government, I can assure you that the government response will be brutal…

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odds and ends

That wasn’t so bad…

Got my tooth out this morning. It was no big deal, I feel better now than I did before the procedure. Turns out the tooth was cracked down to the root, no wonder it hurt. It also turns out that having it pulled was the best idea. My dentist said that a root canal would have stopped the pain, but that it would have been a temporary thing. So things are going pretty well, I have no pain, and my mouth feels good…

Categories
travel

I’m here!

OK, so the trip was not so good. It turns out that it is not my jaw, but a bad tooth. It was killing me all through Dubai, the flight, and waiting in NYC. I called my dentist from NYC and arranged an appointment. I got off of the plane at national airport and went straight there. He looked around and sent me to another doctor, one that only does root canals. I went there the next day. With a little (painful) exploration, he narrowed it down to one tooth. It has a vertical crack in it and probably has an abscess forming there too. His opinion was that the crack was too severe to do a root canal, so he recommends extraction…

I have to go to my dentist on monday and get this thing out. I’m not sure what’s going to happen. I’ve heard about implants and bridges, but I’m not sure how much they cost or how necessary they are. I’m also wondering if it is something I could have done back in Yemen. I really don’t want anyone there doing any surgery on me, but they could probably do an implant or bridge, it’s probably much cheaper there… Anyway, I’ll talk to my dentist tomorrow about my options. In the meantime, I’m on some serious pain killers. They make me very sleepy and I can’t think straight. With any luck I’ll be off of these things in a couple of days.

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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