I just realized that I lost the weekend. It was just Friday night and now it's Monday and I'm in St. Louis. I spent all day Saturday doing school work and unpacking/repacking luggage. On Sunday I traveled to St. Louis and here I am in a hotel room on Halloween. There's nothing to do here and it's raining as usual. The hotel didn't even decorate with any pumpkins or ghosts!
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Friday night. Movie night. Except I'm living the life of a student and doing homework. This month's class is fairly easy and now I've moved on to surfing the net. Mondo came home from London today and let me know that I missed the best day of the year. It turns out that after I cam home there was an unusually warm and clear day on Thursday. Mondo took the Thames river cruise to Greenwich and had a great time. I'm at home with a cold from rainy London so go figure. I've taken the school break to investigate Hotel 1898 in Barcelona as the possibility of our family Thanksgiving trip. It looks promising and I'll give them a call in the morning to confirm rates and internet connection. Spain at least has the same climate as San Diego. It's probably warmer than Carlsbad and certainly not as foggy!
Above - me next to the giant lion sculpture at the British Museum. According to the plaque the lion crowned a monumental tomb at the edge of a cliff overlooking the sea in former Knidos (now Turkey) during the Hellenistic period in the late 4th-early 3rd century BC. The eyes were probably inset with glass to catch the light. Mondo in front of the Lord Mayor's coach at the London Museum. The London Museam doesn't try and impress you with works of art. It has the cool stuff - wax heads scarred with syphillis and leprosy, recreations of jails, exhibits of the great fire, exhibits of stuffed rats and the plague. It's free and fascinating!
Mondo and I have made it to London and managed to get our exercise in today. We wandered around Chinatown and checked out the food in the grocery stores... Ate at an Indian restaurant where Mondo decided to drink coconut... Went to a pub so I could have a beer... And wandered the streets of Picadilly and Soho!
Three days at home were just enough to get caught up on school, power through a ton of work duties, and repack the suitcase. Mondo and I are going to London for an extended weekend just for fun. I don't have major plans this time. I'll check out the British Museum, the new Winston Churchill Museum, and possibly the Egypt Museum since I didn't go to the one in Cairo. Our big plan is tha Al Stewart concert on Tuesday night. He's celebrating his 60th birthday by working. It should be fun. Other plans include eating and drinking. The British Film Fest is going on so I might check out some movies.
As if jet lag wasn't enough to deal with I went to the Black Eyed Peas/Gwen Stefani concert last night. The concert was okay but somewhat low energy. BEP's just kept shouting out San Diego! as a way to get the crowd motivated. Gwen Stefani had so many costume changes that a good portion of her show was watching videos and break dancers. The true entertainment was the crowd around us. It was a constant fashion parade plus a mix of the drunkest people that I've seen at a concert in a long time. Homer said it was because I wasn't drinking myself that I was so tuned into drunk people but it was a staggering night for many.
Now I know why 3 Iraqi planes were just sitting at the airport in Amman. They were waiting for official release to start operations again. CAIRO (AFP) - An Iraqi Airways plane touched down at Cairo airport Thursday, marking the resumption of regular flights by the national carrier between Cairo and Baghdad after a 15-year hiatus, officials said. Some 100 passengers were on board the aircraft, including 20 journalists from various Iraqi media organizations, led by Ahmed Abdul Wahab, a media advisor at the transportation ministry. Egyptian civil aviation officials and Iraqi embassy staff, including charge d'affaires Saad Orabi, welcomed the party at the airport. "The arrival of this plane is proof of Iraq''s return into the international community and the beginning of a new era," Orabi told reporters. Iraqi Airways will offer bi-weekly flights to Cairo on Mondays and Thursdays. Commercial flights to and from Iraq were suspended as a result of UN sanctions slapped on...
It's Monday morning and my last day in Cairo. I head home tomorrow and it will be nice just to have the downtime on the airplane for a day. It's a total of 24 hours travel time to get home so I'm trying to block that part of the trip from my brain. Yesterday we drove out to Maadi which is 75 minutes from Cairo during rush hour or 25 minutes with no traffic. This was the best drive of the trip! I was able to see the other side of life up close and if not personal at least through the car window. There were people selling everything all along the road. The fish were freshly caught and the sellers were holding the fish out for our view. It was a bit disturbing to see the fish gasping for air but at least they were fresh. There were donkey carts, and horse drawn buggies. The main produce was watermelon and I have to wonder where is there space to grow so much watermelon? All I see for miles are buildings and concrete. We passed a goatherd and a flock of 15 or so goats, right on...
I'm at the Beirut airport waiting for the flight to Cairo. I finally had some breakfast before I go back into a country that strictly observes Ramadan. The Ramadan diet is not for me and I am dreaming of stuffing my face full of food. Egypt brings a whole new food problem, since so much of it is contaminated and will make me sick. My pants are looser today than when I started this trip. I think about food a lot which is the whole point of Ramadan, to empathize with the poor who look at food but cannot afford to eat. The headlines in the Beirut paper were all in Arabic or French, so I'm not sure what the local media is focusing on. My guess would be Syria and the political situation. The NY Times edition was more global and there was little reference to Lebanon at all. CNN and the BBC are so focused on a blond James Bond that I'm a little tired of that story. After all, Roger Moore is blond and somehow he made a good go of the character. Other television headlines are the ...
I've made it to Lebanon and it's a unique place. One thing that I didn't realize is that the electrical sockets are not the same as the rest of the Middle East and I don't have an adapter. As such, I'm about to lose battery power. I have a few pictures to post tomorrow when I make it to Cairo. Now that I know people who live here, I will always think about them and worry when political tensions are high. The people here are under a lot of stress after the assassination of their leader back in February. I saw the house today where the truck loaded full of explosives drove right into the home. The place was huge and now it is in shambles. Much of the downtown area is still destroyed from the last occupation. There are lots of buildings going up so perhaps there is hope for the future. I like Beirut. I wish them well.
Yesterday was a travel day and I'm now in Jordan. This is the third hotel in a row where there is construction going on. It seems as if all the cities are undergoing rennovation. After Kuwait, Jordan seems like the most open and free society in the world. Of course it's not, but there is more of a sense of normality here. Also, Amman reminds me of Tijuana, so it's almost like home!
Here are two views of Kuwait. One from my hotel window where the city stretches on for miles and looks pretty much like this throughout. The second is of the beach and the day was too hot for anyone to be walking along the Gulf Sea coast. It's one area of beachfront where it's always easy to find a parking space.
At the airplane glided in over Kuwait City, my first impression was that the city looked exactly like it’s shown on television. A vast desert with a dusty city springing up at the edge of the desert. The customs process is easy for a US Citizen and we’re the first on the list of airport obtainable Visas. As I went through Kuwait, I noticed that there are lots of sculptures along the streets and strings of lights that add a festive atmosphere to the city after sundown. Kuwait is one of the more conservative countries during Ramadan. No restaurants or shops are allowed to be open, even for delivery. At 5:00 pm is when the everything comes back to life. There are still few people about because everyone is having dinner at home with their families until about 9:00 pm. In the business district the people are mostly men. I stand out at my hotel even though there are women who work at the front desk, business center, and the concierge. Go a few miles down to the beachfront and new downtown an...
The front page of The Gulf Today has the following headlines: Arab Nobel peace winners White House denies Bush spoke of divine intervention Bali blast suspect evades arrest 6 Marines killed in Iraq bomb attacks SUV’s ‘kill more pedestrians’ Dissolution of Bihar (India) assembly illegal 80 candidates to view for Miss Earth title Page 2: The dangers of being a couch potato Page 3: UAE progress in human development Page 4: Today’s Ramadan message. "Noblest is the best in conduct" and all the prayer times are listed for each Emirate. Best conduct today is in relation to backbiters. In the teachings of the Prophet Mohammed "A backbiter, if he repents, will be thelat to enter paradise, and if he does not repent, then he will be of the first to enter hell." Since The Gulf Today is aimed at the International audience, there are pages devoted to Europe, US, India, Pakistan, Asia, and the Middle East region at large. The hot topics are Turkey joining the EU, Pakistan and Indi...
Friday is the holy day and all businesses shut down until Sunset. This meant a day off work for me! Friends invited me to go to their beach club and I'm glad that I did! It was a chance to relax, hang out by the pool and just do nothing for a few hours. The pool overlooking the Gulf Coast. The Burg Al Arab hotel is in the distance. The water was probably over 90 f. Today people could go swimming. There's a board that lets you know if the water is open for swimming. Hazards include sea snakes, jellyfish, and stingrays. I stayed near the shore just in case there was a random sea snake. Tomorrow is a travel day and I'm off to Kuwait.
Yesterday I went out to Abu Dhabi. It's a two hour drive from Dubai and the scenery is pretty much the same as the drive from LA to Palm Desert. Lots of building and then lots of desert. It was dark when I arrived in Abu Dhabi, so no pictures but there wasn't much to see. Just lots of buildings and I could have been anywhere. I slept through the night so today I'm finally on local time. The pot of coffee this morning helped a lot with that too!
The Grand Mosque in Sharzah. Day 2 - the jet lag day! I woke up at 3:00 am and maybe got another hour of sleep after that. It's going to be a long, hot day and I hope I don't fall asleep in a meeting. Note to self, next trip insist on coming in a day early! Yesterday was the first day of Ramadan which is the Holy Month where Muyslims abstain from eating, drinking, or smoking during daylight. It means the rest of also do the same unless we're tucked away in our hotel and out of sight. I just ate three pastries to keep me going for the rest of the day! Dubai is safe. The population here is so mixed that when you go to a mall, you'd think you were in LA, NY, or London. Everyone I've encountered speaks English at some level so there have been no language barriers.
10/02 – SAN. There’s nothing like the knowledge that the airline system has probably tagged me as a traveler to watch. I have all the trigger signs that are in the system. I’m traveling on a one-way ticket to the Middle East. I have only carry-on luggage. I’m flying buisness class. My tickets were issued by a travel agency in Dubai and I have an Arabic/English ticket jacket. And, I have a new passport that has never been used and it beeped when the airline agent ran it through the computer. I went through secondary search in San Diego without any fanfare. My breakfast got smushed but it was still edible. I would have checked my bags I decided that the luxury of having all of my luggage with me when I get off the plane in Dubai would be worth the effort of carrying it around. ORD – Weather delays in Chicago, wouldn’t you know it! A freak thunderstorm came through and delayed all the flights. I was pretty worried that I would miss my connection in London. After a 90 minute delay, the pla...
Corpse Bride
Corpse Bride was on my movie list and even though I had lost some of my enthusiasm for seeing the movie, I decided to give it a chance. Tim Burton rarely fails to entertain me with his live action movies but his animated genre has never really captured my attention. In Corpse Bride , we have the usual Johnny Depp-Helena Bonham Carter duo, and Danny Elfman provides the musical score. The animation is fantastic, especially when it is all done with the stop-motion technique that is used for the main characters. The story is a combination of dark humor and just plain darkness. I’m not sure if it’s really a kid’s movie as the kids in the theater were pretty quiet. They might have fallen asleep. In a world where movies are often disappointments, Corpse Bride is at least different and not a clone of other movies. If singing and dancing skeletons are your thing, then you’re in for a treat. I’m not a fan of singing in movies so while I found the skeletons amusing, it was time to be quiet alre...
Serenity
In a perfect world, today would have been a day of eating, drinking, and watching Serenity with friends. As it was, I had two papers to finish, a suitcase to pack, and run last minute errands before I leave the country for two weeks. But, my priorities are clear and I did go see Serenity . Now as a solid fan of Joss Whedon and the related Buffyverse, I liked the show Firefly and was sad to see it go. I realized the show was not perfect but it was quirky and had it's moments. As the full lenght feature of Firefly, Serenity takes us back into the future with the entire original TV cast. If you liked Firefly, then you will love Serenity . No if's, ands, buts, or maybes. You will simply love the movie. If you like Sci-Fi, then you will like Serenity. The rest of you, I'm not so sure about. The movie doesn't have an all-star cast and is not the average run of the mill Sci-Fi thriller with good guys that conquer the aliens. In fact, there are no aliens at all, only human...