Heading Home from the UAE

I'm looking at a mess of stuff in my room, because I am packing to go home! I've been abroad for 4 years now, and I've had a lot of sorting to do, throwing away, giving away, and setting aside in case I come back. I'm leaving tomorrow morning veeeerrry early!

So to summarize, I've done some cool stuff. I've got a load of writeups to make yet, so I won't be closing this blog out too soon, but here's a summary of the last year in the United Arab Emirates:

I lived in Abu Dhabi!
I've visited Dubai!
I've slept in a mountain top resort
I saw too many beautiful sunsets to keep track
I walked, biked, drove, and raced around a Formula 1 track
I ate in some fabulous, unique restaurants
I saw some amazing architecture
I met and worked with some delightful people
I went for a trek in the desert
I gawked at the geology of some insane dunes and mountains
I held my breath and sat out numerous dust storms
I saw a Formula One race
I spent a whirlwind jam-packed trip to Austria to see Shannon and David
I hosted Dana here in UAE for the month of May, and again for Jan-Feb!
I cooked some great meals in my room with fabulous Boy Scout skills
I learned that you can move camels in pickup trucks!
I enjoyed a splendid variety of Christmas displays in every hotel, malls, and many stores
I spent a delightful family Christmas in Austria!
I saw and heard some insane cars
I took some great Mini shots for Darby
I missed my wife and family and talked to some of them every day, and we all talked together every week - God bless the Skype guys!

Just for fun, here are a handful of the photos I shot with my iPhone this past year.

Below, Abu Dhabi city center with setting sun

 What I've been working on for the past year!

 Sheik Zayed Grand Mosque in Abu Dhabi

 Cycling around the Yas Marina Circuit formula one track

 Aldar HQ - the world's first round skyscraper - very cool

 The view from near the top of world's tallest building, the Burj Khalifa in Dubai

The view OF the top of world's tallest building, the Burj Khalifa in Dubai

 The Burj Khalifa in Dubai

 Sheik Zayed Grand Mosque in Abu Dhabi - magical at sunset

 Omani desert

 Austria with Shannon and David!

 Somebody's little motor yacht, probably 200 feet long

 Camels in a truck!

 Dune of red sand on the Omani Border

 Formula One in November, Yas Marina on one side, Viceroy Hotel on the other

 Hotel Christmas decorations in Abu Dhabi

 

Family Christmas in Austria!

 With Dana in Oman out in a big desert wind

 Lamborghini - just fast!

 Homemade hotel room stew - just the best

 Rainy day Mini!

 Just a fun little Mini I came across

 I drove this car for 20 minutes at Yas Marina Circuit - great fast fun!

My penultimate sunset here, last night. Tonight everything will be packed away, so this one will have to do!

Now I have to turn off my computer and pack it up into my luggage, something I've never done before. And arrange every thing else into my bags in some clever way to get it all safely home. I have a good packing plan, and will hope for the best!

Love to all, hope to see you soon. Watch this space! Mark

#UAE #AbuDhabi #WorldTraveler

Day trip to Oman

Like I started to tell you in my last post, I've now been in the UAE for over a year. It's not a bad place to be if you must be in the Mideast for an extended period of time. If you're here all by yourself, it can be a lonely place, just like anywhere else. I was blessed in the past year to have Dana here with me for a total of 3 months, and that made it an enjoyable place!

The UAE was effectively founded by Sheik Zayed. He is rightfully revered by his people, because he was a visionary leader who planned and build his nation with the benefit of those people in mind. It is a beautiful place, even out on the highway between cities, with the main roads being lovely greenbelts. More on that below.

One of the treats of being here as a consultant expat is that every month I get to go see my friends at the Omani border, because I must go every 30 days to get a new tourist stamp in my passport. There are people here who've been doing this for years, and there are businesses that provide bus service over and back! The Google Earth image below shows a pretty fair view of what it looks like on the way. Better shots from the ground follow!

Leaving by 0930 or so  works out pretty well. You can arrive at the border around noon, and that is a very low traffic time of day. The forecast was for a high of 82F (28C), which is a nice temp for a drive and a walk. The shot below is on the outskirts of Abu Dhabi, from the right hand lane of an 8 lane highway - the buildings here are, for the most part, single family villas, i.e., nice big houses!

This complex is right off the road, also on the outskirts of the city. I think these are nearly completed, high-end housing units - there's a lot of that around here!

  The road between Abu Dhabi and Al Ain is a modern 6 lane highway in perfect condition. There are trees lining both sides and the median. The trees are multipurpose - they block the wind, slow down the dust, stop the sand before it gets to the road, and they're very pretty and green!  There are also speed cameras every few kilometers. You rarely see a police car but most people drive at the limit because the cameras don't miss, and you get the ticket in the mail.

On each side of the road are dunes, farms, towns, and orchards. I saw one scene as I went past at 80 mph that I wish I could've captured in a photo. It looked a lot like the shot below, but there was a line of camels coming toward me. Camels have a somewhat ungainly gait, although they can move very quickly at top speed, and camel racing is big sport here. This line of camels was trailed by a young man on a camel, which you don't see very often, and I hope the camel knew where it was going because the teenager was totally absorbed in the smartphone in his hands! What a contrast.

Almost to Al Ain the sand turns reddish, a very unique shade that influences all the architecture in the area. These dunes are huge and fascinating, and the locals love to drive all over them! I don't know how they retain their shape despite vehicles traversing them when I cannot even walk up the slope without starting a slide, but they do!

Not to overkill the topic, but the color differences here are wild. From one part of the drive to another the entire color scheme changes. The image below shows the UAE-Omani border on the right. Just left of the road to the border is Jebel Hafeet - the tallest mountain in this part of the country. It is a stunning jumble of faults and cracks and erosion that I would love to visit with one of my geologist friends just to learn how this big rock happened! A photo of Jebel Hafeet follows.

The border crossing is pretty simple, and you can do it in a car or on foot. During the hot summer I've done both, and just about prefer walking. On this trip it took me 50 minutes to make the 2 mile round trip across and back. I've rarely done it faster in a car - I just hit it perfectly on this day and I was the only one at each of the four stops required to get exit and entry stamps in each country. There's a lot of commercial traffic at this border, with one of my favorite cargos shown below.

When I was getting into the car after crossing, I noticed a mosque I'd never seen before and decided that might make a good shot. The mosque was out away from any other structure, and was impressively backed up by the flank of the jebel.

When I got in the car to leave and go find some lunch, the midday call to prayer started. I jumped back out and got the short video below - sadly the wind took over most of the audio, but if you listen carefully you can hear a beautifully done call. Standing there in the wind in the desert was a very peaceful moment.

As I drove back toward the highway a small, wiry man on an ancient, rattly bicycle slowly pedaled by on his way to the mosque, and gave me a great big smile and wave as he went by.  Regardless of what you may see in the news or hear from some political leaders, Islam is a religion of lovely, peaceful, welcoming, friendly, positive, delightful people. Of course there are extremists, but probably as a far smaller percentage of the total than the Christian extremists who don't get nearly as much press as the phantom menace promoted by one of the major US political parties. Don't be misled by cruel, deceitful rhetoric.

The rest of my trip was nice and uneventful. I had lunch at a nearby mall (where I could choose Chinese, Italian, Lebanese, Greek, or 5 others from America - I went with Chinese!) and then drove the 1.5 hours back to Abu Dhabi. Not as nice a day as when Dana was here and we went together in February, but otherwise it was about the best monthly trip I've made. Thanks for reading!

#JebelHafeet  #PeacefulIslam  #UAE 

A Year of Change

I arrived in Abu Dhabi a year ago yesterday, so in an odd way it was appropriate that I spend the day going out of the country and back. More on that tomorrow.

It’s been a year of ups and downs and great uncertainties. I came here on the promise of being hired locally, which never materialized. Instead I’ve been kind of an indefinite consultant, not really belonging to anyone, but since I’m competent and reliable and continued delivering on assigned tasks they’ve pretty much left me alone to drift along.  My project has been extended, cancelled, reinstated, cancelled again, extended again, etc.  It’s been quite a roller coaster, but I’m still here.  The only thing about it I know with confidence is that I have a ticket home in a few weeks, and I can hardly wait.

The trip hasn’t been without its benefits. Dana was here for the entire month of May, and we were able to spend our first anniversary together in 3 years, and we saw all the big sights! (We may be the only couple in our town to have been to the top of the Burj Khalifa, the world’s tallest building!) We were able to all meet in Linz, Austria for Christmas with Shannon and David, and then Dana came back here with me to spend January, which we extended until the end of February!  Those 9 weeks is the longest period we’ve been together in the past 4 years, which is how long I’ve been working abroad.  But she went home week before last, and that’s the latest hard thing to deal with. 

I was devastated that the American electorate was gullible enough to elect a candidate who was a brazenly open serial liar, misogynist, and failed businessman.  Questions of his background and financial interests were swept aside as he spread hate and fear and empty promises, running the Nazi playbook of how to handle an ill-informed people.

Now I am watching in shock, but not disbelief, as day by day more details emerge that he is in place with the help of the Russian government’s active efforts to hack and influence our election, and is currently working much more to their benefit that ours, such as dismantling the US Department of State and undermining US intelligence agencies. And the GOP leadership just happily goes right along with it, dismantling social and environmental and regulatory protections that have taken 50 years to build.

I think if anything is to save our nation and way of life, it will be the free press guaranteed in our Constitution, even though Trump fights against them every day. I highly recommend The Washington Post, The New York Times, and The Rachel Maddow Show on MSNBC. (BTW, if you don’t like my sources, fine. Please go pick your own independent news source anywhere in the world except for Russia Today, Fox, Breitbart, and other extreme right wing propaganda sites.)  Even Fox News has started turning against Trump and calling out his outrageous statements, behaviors, and practices – if even their blinders are coming off, you know there must be awful truth behind the shutters.

I know many intelligent conservatives who are Trump supporters, for a variety of reasons, all of which are highly personal, or highly partisan, or based on uninformed, blind hatred of the name Clinton. They don’t seem to care in the least what damage Trump does to the nation, as long as he seems to be on the side of their niche issue – just remember, he is an unapologetic liar who will say and promise anything to anyone to get what he wants.

If you are one of those people with very narrow vision, I hope you will try to look at the larger American issue, and get beyond your special interest.  This man and his team are actively working to undermine America’s strength and place in the world. Mr. Trump has already destroyed our position of world leadership.  Take off your blinders of ignorance and look at the facts. Journalism and a free press have been a bedrock of this nation since it was founded. The electoral system built by America’s founding fathers relied on an educated, informed electorate, which we obviously no longer have.

Open your eyes to what is really going on in the White House and the GOP-controlled congress. Be an American, not a Republican, for a change, and see the damage being done to you, me, and everyone.  Notify your GOP representatives that you didn’t hire them to destroy social programs you rely on, even though they told you all along that that was their goal and intention. Tell them you don’t want Trump to destroy our nation and you will hold them accountable at the polls.

These guys wasted years and millions of dollars and tens of thousands of hours investigation Hillary Clinton for rumors that they started, but are now unwilling to investigate Trump’s Russian connections when a fresh, still-smoking gun of evidence shows up every day showing collusion between the Trump campaign and Russian intelligence agents. The hypocrisy is breathtaking. If ANY of the recent allegations against Trump had been even suggested about President Obama the impeachment hearings would've been started the next day, with cries of "Treason" resounding in the halls of Congress. Now? Silence. Treasonous silence.

It might not be too late to stop the damage and save the nation, and I hope not, but we must all open our eyes and work together. Please put aside your personal and special interests and join the rest of America. Look beyond the GOP message of fear, mistrust, and devastation and you might see that America has been and is still GREAT! It didn’t need saving or remaking by a liar.

[ADDED 11 March 2017 from Washington Post, a good read if you are interested in preserving American democracy:

How President Trump has already hurt American democracy — in just 50 days

Closing thoughts from some of America’s best:

“If ever the time should come, when vain and aspiring men shall possess the highest seats in government, our country will stand in need of its experienced patriots to prevent its ruin.” - Samuel Adams, revolutionary

“There is also an artificial aristocracy founded on wealth and birth, without either virtue or talents. The artificial aristocracy is a mischievous ingredient in government, and provisions should be made to prevent its ascendancy.” - Thomas Jefferson, third US president, architect, and author

“America will never be destroyed from the outside.  If we falter, and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves.” - Abraham Lincoln, 16th U.S. President

 “The President is merely the most important among a large number of public servants. He should be supported or opposed exactly to the degree which is warranted by his good conduct or bad conduct, his efficiency or inefficiency in rendering loyal, able, and disinterested service to the Nation as a whole. Therefore it is absolutely necessary that there should be full liberty to tell the truth about his acts, and this means that it is exactly necessary to blame him when he does wrong as to praise him when he does right. Any other attitude in an American citizen is both base and servile. To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public. Nothing but the truth should be spoken about him or any one else. But it is even more important to tell the truth, pleasant or unpleasant, about him than about any one else.” - Theodore Roosevelt, 26th US President

#DishonestDon  #Resist  #GOPTreason