Oh boy, A Roundup Post!

Just before we moved to the ME a year ago, I read a pretty funny joke about the region. It went: As an airplane taxied to the runway at the International Airport in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, the flight attendant ran through the usual landing announcements. But this time she varied it slightly, adding, “Ladies and Gentleman, welcome to Riyadh. To adjust for the current local time, please set your watches back 300 years.”

This article from just a few days ago reminded me of that joke, only this time I was not smiling, but agape. It appeared in the online English edition of the Gulf Times:

UAE police hunt for crossdressers

DUBAI: Police are hunting for men and women who crossdressed during celebrations in Dubai for the national football team’s triumph in the Gulf Cup last week, press reports said yesterday.
Thousands of fans took to the streets across the country on January 30 in convoys of horn-blowing cars, causing huge traffic jams, right after the final whistle sealed a 1-0 victory for the United Arab Emirates against Oman.Dubai police chief Lieut Gen Dhahi Khalfan Tamim said several people were called in for questioning on Monday over reports of “alleged public misdemeanours at the parade”, Emirates Today reported.The police had registered many cases of men dressed as women, as well as women dressed in men’s clothing, he said, without giving numbers.“Any man who wears women’s clothes and imitates women will be penalised as per the UAE laws,” Tamim told Emirates Today, adding that the same applied to women “dressing up as men and imitating male behaviour”.“They were not only from Dubai... Some of the groups were indulging in crossdressing in the celebrations in other emirates, and then came to Dubai to participate in the parade here,” he said.The daily said that “according to informed sources, the crossdressers were not homosexuals but were simply dressing up for fun”.– AFP

Which got me to thinking - in Louisiana, they’d call this “Mardi Gras”; in Brazil they’d call it “Carnival”; and in Las Vegas they’d call it “Thursday”. And evidently in the UAE, they call it a misdemeanor and start a MANHUNT. I also like that they had to clarify at the end of the article that they were not homosexuals. Oh, okay. I assumed that because they wore opposite gender clothing once, that they must all be gay. Glad that was clarified. And you thought the Midwest was conservative.

Last night the American Women’s Association hosted their annual ball. We bought tickets months ago, as leisure opportunities can be few and far between. It was the first chance to wear a tuxedo for me since Sean and Kim’s wedding, so it was as good a chance as any to dust it off and try it on. It turns out there was a faded red wine stain on the shirt front from that wedding in February of 2005. Thinking quickly, I remembered we had a book “How to Clean Almost Anything” which we got from Consumer Reports a couple years back. Sure enough it had tips, and I got that stain out with diluted bleach. I’m so domesticated sometimes. Anyway, Erin looked darn near perfect in a black gown with sequined flowers highlighting. We met another young couple there, and we exchanged info as we all quickly admitted we were a rare find in Doha. So perhaps we’ll get a new set of friends to hang out with. The ball was a lot of fun, there was a lounge singer in leopard print that butchered lots of good music, and we danced and bonded and generally just didn’t care that she sounded like karaoke night.



Recently, we decided that we just had to get away from Doha for awhile and so we checked our guidebook and found several beaches. There are many good beaches here but unfortunately none of them have any services – meaning you have to go off-roading to reach them and you’d better pack a lunch. I picked out the beach that had a description involving the least amount of duning and rock crawling, and we set out for Fuwairit Beach on the countries northeast coast. During our first trip to Fuwairit Beach, we discovered that many of the rocky outcroppings leading from the Jebel rock formations to the water were home to lots of little shells. Lots of abandoned clam shells and a greater number of little spiral shells, which you can see from the photos in the album. In any case, Erin quickly discovered this and spent a good portion of her stroll searching for pretty shells to collect, and we left with maybe 10 or so various shells. Zoom ahead to that evening. Erin had found a convenient place to keep the new shells, as we have a dish with a big candle in it in our bedroom, and filled in around the candle are seashells. So the new shells joined that dish. All was well until we'd turned out the light and started to fall asleep. We heard an odd scratchy noise close by, eliciting a whispered "What was that?" from Erin. I assumed as usual that FOD was into his annoyingly noisy night games, and had found a convenient wall to scratch. That was until I heard FOD mewling downstairs. So, if it wasn't FOD, what the hell was it? I snapped on the light and continued to hear the scratchy noises. The sound led me to the -- you guessed it - dish of shells. It seems not all of the shells we'd collected were unoccupied. A determined hermit crab was in the middle of a major home relocation effort. I helped him relocate all the way to the backyard, in fact. We should have seen it coming, since at the beach Erin had a shell try and escape her hand (Which was full of other shells), which for the hermit crab inside must have seemed like approximately seven stories high. So this was a desperate crab. As soon as Erin felt the things legs she predictably catapulted him and every other shell into the air. After that, we just weren’t careful enough I suppose. But the next time we go to Fuwairit Beach, we’ll leave the residents alone.

Last week, I was lamenting the “Sleepy Bowl”. What’s the “Sleepy Bowl” you ask? Why it’s a football game…you’d refer to it as the Super Bowl. Since it airs live in Doha at 1:30 am, I have the different name for it. I have never missed one, so naturally I decided that a 1:30 AM start time was no obstacle. Oh, I forgot to mention that’s a MONDAY morning, and our work week starts with Sunday. So, it’s like if you had to watch the game in the middle of the night on a Tuesday in the states. So naturally I did what any good American Ex-Pat would do – I got sick the next day and missed work. I even set my alarm on my phone for 1:30 AM before bed. But my plan failed… karma caused me to roll over onto my phone in the night, rendering it mute. I’d missed the whole first quarter by the time my body clock somehow woke me up. I think my body clock somehow knew my plan…anyway, so I woke up out of sorts, but in enough sorts to grab the remote and flip on the game. The rest is less interesting; the game, as many of you know was rather blah and over here we DIDN’T HAVE THE COMMERCIALS. All we saw were station promos for other shows. So naturally I did what any American Ex-Pat watching the Sleepy Bowl at 2:30 AM does, namely fall back asleep. I woke up for the fourth quarter, but that was pretty near time to get up, so I just dozed off. I think I saw about 40 consecutive minutes while conscious. Next year I’ll be petitioning the league to hold the game in Doha.