Greece

At 30,000-something feet on my way to Athens and a series of mishaps have occurred such that I am superstitiously hoping that the nonsense is behind me. A late night in the office trying to tie things up before escaping for 16 days to the Cyclades and as luck would have it, when I descended the elevator to the sub-basement #2 level where my parking space is allocated, I was the last car on that level and surely the other two levels. Once I ascended to sub-basement #1, I saw the security door down and got out of my Jeep with the a/c still running to re-enter the building and take the elevator up one flight to alert Security that the security door needed to be opened to let me out. Except for the fact that the cleaning crew had taken all three elevators out of service, my plan was fine. So I climbed back into the Jeep and started laying on the horn. Which no one heard and/or acknowledged much less bothered to check the security cameras to notice my predicament. I thought about the colleagues that lived nearby and who might not mind getting in their car to drive to the office to tell the Security team on duty that I was trapped in the basement. I called my direct-report assuming she wouldn’t be too inconvenienced seeing as how I asked her to go to the South of France on my behalf for a business trip that would have wrecked the front end of my long-anticipated trip to Greece. She was on the other side of town having her nails done and couldn’t get there for at least an hour. So I called someone else, who didn’t mind and drove over. After 20+ minutes stuck in the basement and dumbfounded with the certainty of death in the likelihood of a fire, I emerged and wondered if I could send the vacationing CEO an email about my plight while imagining what the lawyers might do in the US if this idiocy had taken place there.

So, typical of a 4:45am wake-up for the airport, I couldn’t sleep after finally getting packed and leaving my orchids with the neighbors for them to tend in my absence. In typical 5am zombie-form at the airport, I checked into my flight and as I thought about charging my iPhone on my laptop, I realized that I left the charger to the laptop plugged into its socket in my bedroom. So I did the only thing available at the hour….I called my driver who had just dropped me and asked him to come back to the airport. Clinging to a double macchiatto with one bag checked onto Athens, I met him at the same curb and gave him my house key and told him to enter my apt, go to my bedroom and take the cord out of the wall and bring it to me. If he got caught in traffic and the flight was called, at least I could board the plane and buy another cord in Athens but it would be less expensive to pay him for a 2nd trip to the airport than to find an Apple store on arrival 8 hours later. So, in usual reliable form, he turned up 25 minutes later with the cord.

This is also the man to whom I entrusted my Jeep a few months ago to have it inspected. I couldn’t face the lines, the bureaucracy and the tedium of having my Jeep inspected so I gave him the keys and asked him to do it. The Jeep failed b/c of an expired bulb in one of the taillights I had not noticed so he went to the Jeep dealership and faithfully bought the factory-specific bulb and then took it back for inspection the next day, when it passed. I am finally learning that in this part of the world, there is a man you can pay to get just about anything done.

The heavy narrative and dearth of visuals is over. The Lumix point-and-shoot camera I bought in Cairo last June to replace my original Lumix after it was stolen (with photos still on the card of dawn at the pyramids of Giza) at a conference, died on one of the winter desert excursions. It must have been a dud and sold into the black market. Note to self- do not buy electronic equipment in countries with anemic GDP and crumbling authoritarian governance. So I am armed with a 3rd Lumix (16 mega-pixels).

I picked up the 3rd Lumix in Dubai Duty-Free on my way back to the home sandbox, minutes before picking up a few cold Perrier bottles in the lounge to drop into my work bag to keep 2 kilos of prosciutto, pancetta and Serrano ham cold for the next few hours of transit; it’s not haram in some of the Arab Gulf countries. Ironically, once though Immigration and going through the arrival x-rays at the home airport, the local attendant had me pull out the Perrier bottles from my bag. He could not read the labels and asked his colleague at the next machine if the Perrier was alcohol. She assured her colleague that they weren’t and waved me and the illicit meat through to the arrival luggage belts.

P.S. Arrived to Athens a few hours after tapping the above to a taxi strike. I emerged from the subway at a central Athens stop and met these Roman market ruins as I was told to board the back of a motorbike and shoved my bags onto it to zip through narrow streets and corners to my host's home, at the foot of the Acropolis.





After eating a divine Greek meal at a taverna 10m from her front door, we strolled around Athens as the sun set before leaving for the Pireas Port for the 4-hour ferry ride to the Cyclades. Enjoy.

Traffic Department

Sometime in January I remember going through an intersection and the traffic camera flash went off. I didn’t think I caused it so I didn’t bother to do anything about it. One must monitor these things b/c if traffic violations are not settled within a year, one can be denied access to an outbound flight at the airport without notice until the infraction is settled. I logged into the Ministry of the Interior web site with my Resident Permit # and discovered I had 7 points and a fine logged against my ID for about USD 1650. I have no idea what I did but knew I had to get it off my record.

So I called the fixer I used when I obtained my driver’s license and gave him my plate #. He called me the next day and told me that I had run a red light at a specific roundabout. He asked if I had been pulled over and issued a citation as the nature of the offense indicated that this should have happened and it didn’t. He told me that the police officer that issued the ticket was the former bodyguard of the Sheikh that runs the Traffic Dept, whom I met briefly when I obtained my license 18 months ago. I was told to turn up before 7am at the Traffic Dept and we would try to get it waived.

I have a new colleague from Lebanon. She goes through a lot of bureaucratic and administrative hell to obtain entry visas to other countries and to just get official stuff done due to the fact that she hails from a country without a government. She needed to obtain her license and was trying to get driving school waived and came along with me to face our respective driving fates.

I pulled up to the office at 6:30 when we planned to meet so as to go together. I watched the bus unload the tea ladies for another day of service in the office. It was surreal to watch them all enter the building wearing exactly the same thing – black trousers, white long-sleeved shirts and black vest – typical service penguin uniform. They were all petite in height and in varying degrees of body type. But they all had long hair and most of them were still putting the finishing touches on their hair look for the day and fiddling with their mobile phones as they entered the revolving glass door one at a time. Having to deal with my ambiguous albeit expensive traffic violation at 7am with the Sheikh did not seem too onerous given juxtaposed with the fate of these dozens of ladies.

My colleague showed up and we made our way to the Traffic Dept. We were shown into a ground floor office while others waited in the hot sun to be admitted to the same room. I wasn’t sufficiently caffeinated but remembered the Sheikh being on the 2nd floor last time and now we were in a large room with chairs lined along the perimeter of the room as if we were in a majlis. In the center was a small desk with men hovering around a seated man at a desk. I went up to the desk and the seated man knew who I was before I said anything. I was stunned but relieved that in the spectrum of predicaments one might face in these situations, I didn’t have to say anything to get the wheels of infraction elimination moving. The seated man had a nice smile and was very friendly as he confirmed that I was there about a moving violation without my saying anything and he told me to sit down in one of the big chairs for 15 minutes. I asked him if the Sheikh was around and he smiled bigger and said he was the Sheikh, much to my horror. I told him that his new office was a nice improvement over the little one upstairs and thanked him for his kind attention.
He signed my colleague’s license application but she was still stuck going to the same driving school I went to as a formality. He gave some instructions to another man, who ten minutes later handed me a slip of paper with my record that had the moving violation removed but a parking ticket to settle. It was not an inexpensive day once I took care of that and renewed my car’s registration. I went to the office after dropping my colleague off at what seemed a much more crowded driving school than I remembered. I was in the office before 8am and had moved bureaucratic mountains with a phone call and a smile...would that the rest of my existence could be a comparable cakewalk.

My colleague had quite a tale to tell once our preferred taxi driver picked her up from driving school and brought her to the office. The driving school was chaotic. She didn’t know the traffic signs for the verbal test but it didn’t matter. She got in the car and did a quick run around the parking lot and got in a third line requiring payment in the sequence of “completing local driving education” and neither her credit or her debit card would work despite more than sufficient funds available. She had paid cash for the other two payments but now this last one was bigger and the system wasn’t connecting to her bank account and without paying, she’d have to come back. The line was getting longer behind her and there was no ATM on the premises to bypass the machines. A Lebanese man within her proximity also trying to obtain his license saw what was going on and he paid her last bill. She was relieved to have a savior in that moment and took his card to make arrangements later to reimburse him. She came to the office flustered but overwhelmingly relieved.

The next day, my colleague brought a nice box of chocolates and called our taxi driver to ask him to deliver it and the cash to the Lebanese savior at the driving school. Since he was going in the direction of the dry cleaner, she also gave him her claim ticket. I overheard the instructions and reached for my dry cleaning claim tickets. He was gone for an hour and called me when he was at the office door with two armfuls of my dry cleaning, one item for my colleague and a BIGGER box of chocolate from the same confectioner for her from Mr. Driving School Savior. We could not stop laughing.

Should I Stay or Should I Go?

If you're all about the photos, skip this one. Epic culture clash week survived by yours truly; this place is Industrial Psychology Nirvana.

The week started off poorly with the news that a dear high school friend has recently been diagnosed with breast cancer. It always seems like a live a hugely long plane ride away from home but when something like lands in the email inbox, one has to suppress the reactive impulse to board a flight immediately which then prompts an holistic and somewhat existential audit of the reasons one is here and how much longer to ride the wave. Ironically, I had asked my friend to send me the ingredients and measurements for a stovetop chocolate pudding - I could remember the ingredients and preparation but not the measurements....I made a cookbook for her daughters a few years ago and knew a copy of this recipe was in it because her youngest inhales the pudding as if it were chocolate milk (and I've actually served it with a straw to her and her cousin). My friend cheerfully replied within 24 hours with the requested information and then dropped the bomb. I'll always remember that email at every suggestion of chocolate pudding for as many days as I have left.

Back here...there is an organizational culture of "us versus them" that maintains a constant simmer and occasionally reaches a temporary boil. The phrase "time is money" is an affront to this culture but as an ex-patriot, you are expected to deliver results as if you were in the west. As in any professional setting where there is a large share of ex-patriots mixing with indigenous local talent that has been socialized and educated in vastly different ways, the propensity for culture clash is significant. As a westerner, one must remember that my local colleagues are usually from very large families. If there is only one wife, there are usually at least 5-6 siblings with which my colleague has been competing for the father's attention, approval, support and blessings. If the family is affluent and the father can afford to provide for a second wife in the same manner as the first, then my colleague is probably still competing for attention with 5-6 siblings from his/her mother and ultimately trying to seek the same attention, approval, support and blessings from a father that must divide his time equally across his wives. Imagine if my colleague's father has three wives. What this means is that my colleague spends a lot of time throughout childhood and the formative years moving "laterally" to align with siblings, cousins, etc to be viewed favorably by the father and elders of the extended family b/c there is such a small chance of receiving individual attention. That's why this patriarchal society and culture are never about the individual but rather the collective and inherently the honor of the family. Flies totally against a merit-based value system premised on independence instilled in the west. Welcome to the labyrinth where N*O*T*H*I*N*G is navigationally linear. Moving laterally is counter-intuitive to a westerner when time is money.

A lack of communication between myself and a peer resulted in some wounded egos that personally left me wondering what the hell I am doing here, especially now that the daytime temperatures exceed 100-degrees Farenheit and will climb steadily to an oppressive peak of about 125 by mid-July when an odious humidity from the Indian Ocean monsoon season blows this way before relenting slightly in August. Suffice it to say that the other party apologized with a HUGE basket of haute chocolate, which was an enormous relief given that he is a local and I am the hired overseas help. I am optimistic that his generous apology will go a long way in actually aligning our efforts on our complicated and stressful project. I've been told that this gesture is most unusual for a local male so I am pretty sure I was right but that doesn't mean what it means in the west.

Another colleague took a long weekend where they sell prosciutto. Since it's not sold in this country and forbidden by the local religion, of course, I want it. Every time I travel abroad I order bacon and prosciutto because I can, not because I must have it. So my colleague clandestinely brought some back for me and because I was so distracted with the other matters that surfaced last week, I didn't blink when she placed it in our small refrigerator in the office for me to take home. The next day, another office mate who is a steadfast follower of the faith informed me that she had the tea lady remove it from our fridge and place it in the tea kitchen. Apparently, this could get me in deeper _ _ _ _ than I have ever imagined. My offended office mate is currently stuck in Dubai for the 2nd day waiting to board a flight to Baghdad that won't clear. To cheer her, I emailed her that I have had the fridge defrosted and wiped down with bleach to atone for my lack of judgment. This is serious stuff here. I need to constantly remember that if something is haram that means that it is not to be messed with...in any way.

An interview with a Brit exploring a senior role with us and visiting the region for that purpose prompted explicit thought on the stay/go matter. Having arrived in early September 2009, I experienced my first Christmas here by hosting a dinner (see "Pearl of the Desert" entry) that required a purchase of Pernod to make a salmon and fennel main course. I have another recipe calling for Pernod and made it recently, observing that the Pernod is almost half gone and I thought about the possibility of having to replenish it....will I still be here when the Pernod runs out? Is the Pernod an indicator of how much time I have left here? The candidate asked me if I planned to learn Arabic. I replied that of course I would love to but an exhausting job made it a challenge to squeeze it in and one has to calculate the return on that investment...how many years do I plan to work in countries where Arabic is the primary language? It's a commitment. So I dodged the question by talking about the Pernod. Don't know if he was amused or baffled. At least he enjoyed the Yemeni restaurant I chose and the food I ordered for the table.

I follow the news not only with the NYT online but through various podcasts downloaded off the iTunes store. I always listen to The New Yorker's "Political Scene" and this week's podcast is called "Political Sex Scandals." It will not download surely b/c the word "sex" is in the title so I will not hear the latest on Anthony Weiner and his tawdry albeit non-criminal behavior. Hypocrisy? Does the name David Vitter mean anything? The resignations of Newt's campaign manager and half-dozen senior staff inspired a much-needed huge smile.

Happy summer.

Arabian Winter

With the temperate weather of the winter lamentably behind us, I will share some of the weekend fun had in the dunes with visiting family, friends, and colleagues. In February, my sister's sister-in-law was in the Emirates for a conference and routed the return trip with a weekend visit to me. With a 9am Friday morning arrival, there was little else to do but indulge in a huge brunch at noon and take a dinner desert excursion.

My first taste of these standard excursions was early in my arrival to the region on the first night of Eid Al Fitr in 2009 (see blogpost "Toasting Eid in the Desert"). At that time, one of my colleagues had us do the now-famous "jump shot," into which which I coerced my sister-in-law and her colleagues into compliant submission. The initial response to this exercise is patented...the "subjects" mumble something unintelligible and the body language is one of reluctance lacking enthusiasm. Once a few shots are snapped and images are reviewed, the enthusiasm factor rockets and everyone wants to do it again and again until the perfect shot is snapped. Below see some distinguished US Attorneys and judges perfecting the jump shot:








As the triathlete of the crowd, my sister-in-law was naturally the best jumper!





The standard excursion goes to a location near the Saudi border and a local driver wearing traditional dress picks up the group in town near a supermarket. We ran into the market to ensure we had our soft beverages of choice in his cooler and set off for our adventure. About 40 minutes into the drive, there is a standard stop where the tires have to be deflated to about half because now the driving is in the desert and this is how the tire can "grab" the dune angles. A good driver will take the face of a dune on its side and then slide down the dune as if hydroplaning. And if full entertainment value has been factored, the Beastie Boys are blaring and it's a bit of a show. It was definitely a show to this crowd! Here's one of the camels on display at the tire letdown spot:



Once the sun set, we enjoyed a traditional dinner of lamb, chicken and beef kebabs, cardamom-scented rice, hummus, and bread baked over fire in this camp:



And dusk in the desert is always magical...



Consultants from Europe were invited into my convertible Jeep for a self-guided excursion into the desert with two other local ex-pat colleagues in March, where the jump shot was again met with anemic enthusiasm. Within moments, there was an insatiable need to "perfect" the shot irrespective of the effort required.







And, of course, the cyclist in the group took the jump shot to new heights of expression and excellence:



On this trip we encountered the desert hyacinth in situ, which looked much like a succulent. These flowers dot the landscape where they have self-germinated the winter prior and aren't easy to find.





Once the temporary foreigners cleared out, the resident foreigners headed into the desert regularly on the weekend afternoon to catch sunset from a different vantage point, start a fire (to keep unwanted critters away), and make dinner. There's always something new to see or experience. Here are some snaps of various spots and the "chef" among us, checking the marinated tuna with a headlamp to ensure a rare result in a dune surrounded by basalt and jasper deposited by a river that disappeared a couple million years ago.

Chronology. Who Cares?

It's almost Memorial Day. It's hotter than hell. Again. Ice now included in the washing machine cycle b/c the tap water is too hot. I don't drive to midday appointments away from the office or on the weekends when I can't be sure that I'll secure a covered parking space and prefer to take cabs. I may take slice and bake cookies and place them on my black soft-top roof and see how long it takes for them to bake when it's Ramadan and everything slows to a grinding halt. And it's even hotter!

So I am dreaming of cooler days and nights...such as the mid-December evening the night before I departed for the US for the Christmas holiday. I attended my first wedding at a palace since the bride is a member of the ruling family. Her father's house was the setting for the grand affair but it was actually held in an exquisite tent, erected flush with the side of the house such that I did not notice that it was a temporary structure.

I decided to "go local" and had my hands done. Below is an image from a magazine because I didn't manage to snap a photo of my own hands. I didn't have all my fingers done and once it was Christmas, 10 days later in Miami, my hands looked awful because it was fading badly and no longer "cool." This art form and cultural practice dates back 5000 years because henna is regarded as having blessings and is applied to the hands, feet and the body for good luck and for beauty at celebratory or festive occasions. I sat on a henna-stained vinyl couch with the city's best known henna artists with two barefoot Indian women outlining the pattern I chose - one on either side of me - from little plastic tubes filed with natural henna, blended with eucalyptus and clove oil to enhance the color. Twenty minutes later, a fan was turned on me to set the henna. Thirty minutes later, they scraped it off and applied Vicks Vapor Rub to bring out the color faster because it first looks like a faint orange stain and then matures to a deep brown within 24 hours.



A work colleague picked me up in her Porsche that night and we found the palace with seurity at the gate. Of course, the other ladies in attendance had drivers dropping them at this entrance so my friend dropped me and I waited for her to join me after she found a parking space...one can always note immediately who the westerners are by the "do it yourself" behavior. We presented our elaborate invitations and were shown the entrance to the party. I've never seen such a beautiful space for a wedding....the ceilings seemed to be midnight blue and over each table there was a cascade of individually threaded orchid blooms falling from the light source over the round tables that were mirror tops with only candles on them. "More is more" was not the theme here. We found the sisters of the bride who had invited us and were introduced to their mother. We thanked them all graciously for including us in the beautiful evening.

We enjoyed about nine courses of food that was French-inspired but also Arabic...very eclectic and delicious. The ladies didn't throw money on the runway and the dancers were hired from Morocco. I was told that the male performer was very famous in the Gulf and he was singing "live" in another room because he could not be in the same room as a couple hundred ladies spanning at least four generations without their abayas. There were screens at various points in the large hall where he could be observed.

The groom entered the party with the bride but not before an announcement was made to cover up because he was arriving. It was an extremely memorable night especially in how different it was to the weddings I have attended in hotel ballrooms.

With a few hours sleep, I boarded a very early morning plane for New York and spent a week there seeing friends, attending to tedious personal administration matters, doing last minute shopping, explaining my hands to friends and strangers alike, and generally freezing my ass off.

A week later I was in Miami for Christmas and enjoyed the much anticipated pig roast my brother-in-law prepared while he smoked the Cuban cigars I brought back for him from the Middle East (despite the fact they were manufactured 90 miles away). Here's the chef enjoying a scotch and a smoke while the pig roasts in the "caja China."



The "caja China" is an insulated cooking vessel on wheels where the coals go on the top. When I first looked at the pig, I thought it looked like something one would see on "the Sopranos."




I helped him turn the poor thing and what all Cubans love is the crisply skin, which is cut into squares and called CHICHARRON for guests to pull off with their hands.





Scotch, pork, Christmas....it's all "haram" where I live. It was a great Christmas Eve in Miami!

Naoshima

So on a very enthusiastic recommendation from a colleague, I spent only one night in Kyoto and took 3 trains and a ferry each way to Naoshima Island in the Seto Inland Sea for one night. The Benesse Corporation purchased land on this island to build a home for its growing modern art collection in the early 1990's. The Benesse House is a hotel complex within a museum designed by Tadao Ando. The nearby Chichu Museum is an architectural and contemporary art marvel in that the museum is largely underground, designed with specific art installations selected for it, and lit solely by natural light. Works include several Monet water lilies, sculptures by Walter de Maria, and remarkable installations by James Turrell. Check it all out at: http://wikitravel.org/en/Naoshima


The closer I got to the ferry port via train stations, the less English was spoken or provided as public way finding aids - the ferry sign was an anomaly! Here are some snaps from the late afternoon ferry journey, which docked at dusk in Miyanoura Port:







While in Manhattan over Christmas, I discovered Kusama's spotted pumpkins - an icon of Japanese contemporary art - there was a small one in the apartment where I was staying for a week. Check out: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yayoi_Kusama. One month later, I came across a huge one in Naoshima, which has apparently been appropriated as the local logo of this art lover's destination as evidenced on the local bus:





This one is on the premises of the hotel:





The 4-hour journey from Kyoto was rewarded with an overnight stay in a hotel designed by Tadao Ando with many contemporary art installations. It was extraordinary! Here's a view from my room at dusk with a view to the Seto Sea and a steel installation in the water feature below my balcony:



Here's the info on the Benesse House Art Site: http://www.benesse-artsite.jp/en/benessehouse-museum/portfolio.html.

My accommodation included another kaiseki meal but it was served in the hotel restaurant. Because I am a foodie at heart (and hopefully not a wretched western tourist), I snapped photos of all the courses and think I actually figured out the "food" setting on my Lumix. So here's another culinary report:

Course 1: Hors d'oeuvres of prawn and cicely dressed in a yolk and vinegar sauce; bamboo shoot with sansho pepper and spinach; thick omelet; rape flower dressed with a mustard sauce; fish roe rolled in radish; fried sliced arrowhead; mamakari fish; carrot; and Chinese yam.








Course 2: Soup of oyster minced and steamed; carrot; spinach; thin-sliced turnip; and citrus shaped like a pine needle.





Course 3: Sashimi of sea bream and tuna.







Course 4: Cooked dish of sea bream with soy sauce.






Course 5: Grilled dish of butterfish broiled with slated entrails of sea cucumber.



Course 6: Additional dish of prawn and vegetable tempura (always served with a small sheet of wax paper).



Course 7: Rice dish of rice porridge with Chinese yellow chives and pickles.






Course 8: Dessert of orange jelly and strawberry.



Bon appetit!

After dinner I walked around the Benesse House Museum, open only to hotel guests until midnight and just loved this installation by Yukinori Yanagi called "The World Flag Ant Farm" (1990)....it is a series of rectangular plastic containers connected to one another with plastic tubes that are filled with sand and houses an ant colony for "fun." It was fascinating and I'll let you determine why:





I walked around the island the next day after a continental breakfast and took a few pics of the winter landscape and external installations before being blown away at the Chichu. If you are a museum enthusiast or professional, your life is not complete if you do not visit the Chichu Museum.