Stuck in the Middle East with You

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1753 Dubai standard time

09 February 2013


Foreign is not the correct way to describe how I feel. Alien is more like it. I watched 3 movies in the way over to Dubai and slept for a little bit. I can already tell how disastrous my adjustment to time will be in Bangkok, with 6 more hours of flying ahead. My body clock is an interesting thing. I will watch the sun rise, set, and rise again all in around 10 hours.


I am upset that I will not have enough time to explore the skyscrapers and souks of Dubai while I am here. The nice Indian man I sat next to for 14 hours had convinced me to hire a cab to drive me around for a bit. Assured me there would be time. I am normally pretty good at my sense of direction, but got completely turned around in the Dubai International Airport. Rode on endless moving walkways down an endless hallway and then found myself at the passport check. I would give it a shot.


Unfortunately, the customs officials had different ideas. I waited in line for about an hour and was 4th back in a line split in two.... With three agents only servicing the other split in the line. A precious hour gone that could have been used to see the Burj Khalifa and gotten a lamb kabob.


It looked magnificent when flying in, almost evil, a twisted spire emerging from the dusty haze surrounding New Dubai. Old Dubai remained clear, its mini story buildings set in compounds and grids unobstructed from my view above. The mega story buildings wrapped in obscurity, barely in view from my seat in the airport. I had given up on going downtown. I unclipped a velvet rope, reclipped it behind me and walked away from immigration, set out exploring the huge mall that is Dubai airport. Lord knows what the guys watching the cameras, manning the scanners that see if drugs are your sit system, or evaluating the iris scanners thought. My ideas of privacy are no longer a reality in the rest of the world, no matter how many Estée Lauder floor to ceiling ads are plastered along the moving walkways to make me feel like I am not a stones throw from the Persian Gulf.


Matching the surreal view of New Dubai is my new location. Called McGettigans, I am enjoying a Guiness and Jameson while looking out over an Emirate. I just had to. A nice man named Vipan is my server. As Irish as you can get in the UAE.


So here I am in the desert, a quick stop before the tropics. Feet of snow were just dropped in the northeast. We rode that storm for the first few hours of the flight, with my normal composed flying demeanor betrayed by the thoughts of crashing into the icy North Atlantic. CNN is showing the coverage of the snow storm that's affecting the US here in Dubai, what i think is a Kidz Bop cover of Katy Perry's TGIF is playing, and the call to prayer is echoing outside the Irish pub called "the modern Irish experience."


I suppose it is.

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