Useless

A momentary departure from Jordan (Ma'in Hot Springs photos still due) with a short nonsense entry. Last night I was at dinner with a Siberian-born Australian who has lived and worked in India, Italy and now the Arab Gulf and is married to a Palestinian. She made a delightful dinner and I brought some obscure foreign film dvds as the entertainment. We had to call the husband, who I thought was in Basra working but was actually in Jordan to ask him how to turn on the dvd player. The conversation I heard from my end on the couch was hilarity incarnate. My blonde Russian girlfriend imploring her husband with terms of endearment in Italian laced with expressions of frustration in heavily accented English with definitive articles missing. I was laughing and told her to forget about it and we watched something else on her Mac.

This incident recalled a previous ridiculous international phone expense. I found myself at the Serge Lutens shop in the Palais Royal and I was intent on purchasing the perfume a consultant from Hong Kong brought with her that I found divine. Note: I cannot for the life of me purchase eye shadow or perfume without supervision....for all my vast talents in matters of taste and aesthetics, I am useless in this realm and throw away good money on ill-fated purchases. I knew the bottle had a grey label and the contents was almost a red wine color. The Parisian saleswoman was not impressed in the least by my confusion when she placed two such bottles in front of me and I could barely tell the difference. I called our consultant, who was trying to recover from severe food poisoning in India before joining us in Paris, from my roaming Gulf mobile on her Hong Kong mobile 4 km away to ask her to go into the bathroom and read the label on her perfume. The sneer of contempt on the Parisian's face took an exponential hike, especially when I asked her to fill out the paperwork for the VAT reimbursement. That's the perfume above: "Fille en aiguilles," also sold at Barneys in New York. Sublime.

I was diagnosed with frozen shoulder (WTF, right?) two weeks ago and I am getting a cortisone injection tomorrow, just before I travel abroad for business at the end of the week. At least I'll smell good.

Petra

Some archeologists consider ancient Petra as the eighth wonder of the ancient world - a dead city carved into the stone by the Nabataeans, an Arab tribe with origins in the Arabian peninsula who settled in southern Jordan more than 2200 years ago. This location was the strategic crossroads of trade and the Nabataeans were masters of the routes by levying tolls and protecting the caravans laden with Arabian frankincense, myrrh, Indian spices and silks, African ivory and animal hides. These profits enabled them to establish a kingdom from Damascus, the Sinai and greater Arabia.

A friend now living in Glasgow and I traipsed to Jordan in early January for 3 nights with the aim of seeing Petra and then some R&R at a hot springs next to the Dead Sea. We woke up at 6am to be able to enter the gates of Petra at 7am. It was windy and really cold and we knew we were in for a long day to walk the length of the UNESCO World Heritage site, about 7 miles in total.

This is the most famous image of Petra, the first building in the settlement called The Treasury (Al-Khazneh) with a facade 30 meters wide and 43 meters high. It was carved in the 1st century B.C. as a tomb for an important Nabataean ruler and reflects Hellenistic and Alexandrian Hellenistic architectural inspiration.

These are tombs.



I am standing in front of something significant but can't remember or recognize it:

And, as usual, "the real thing" claims a presence, even here:


This is the Urn Tomb, the largest of the royal tombs, carved approximately 70 A.D. and altered in the mid-fifth century when it was reconsecrated as a Byzantine church:
Some of the architectural details of the colonnade, the main street in the ancient city:





These two, Khalid and Mohammed, should have been in school but were trying to earn a living selling donkey rides to tourists up the 800-stair hike to the last monument on the site, the Monastery. We must have politely declined two dozen times. Persistence did not pay in this case, but they were very charming and visually compelling.


Some of the steps:
A tomb on the way up to the Monastery:

The Monastery (Al-Deir) at the end of the 800 stair climb through the cliffs. It was probably a pilgrimage site and later used as a church during the Byzantine era.

Ruins of a tomb, which is effectively a cave and sometimes inhabited by the indigenous Bedouins. These photos are snapped on the climb down back to the site entrance, 3 or so miles in length with the clouds rolling in. I can't wait to get to the spa later that night!


An arch from a building off the colonnade I didn't snap on the way to the Monastery. Check out the donkeys and camels waiting to pick up weary tourists:


The Palace Tomb:

The Djinn blocks near the entrance to the site:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jinn

The "money shot" - dusk over the hills of Petra as we make our way to Ma'in Hot Springs.

A glimpse at this life...

Petra entry will be forthcoming...I didn't take the photos and the one who did moves to Glasgow tomorrow. In the meantime, the year got off to a questionably auspicious start in anticipation of the dragon with a 4-day business trip to Paris, 3-day personal trip to Jordan, dead Jeep battery discovered at 8pm in the garage at work with a 7am meeting the next day, and a shoulder that cannot seem to be diagnosed for the trouble it's causing - all of which chronicled as follows:

Paris: 3 days of meetings and mild weather for January. Except for the wind. My boss left the day after the rest of our delegation and as we took a lunch break at an exhibition across town, she was in the air due to land in time to make the afternoon session. When we arrived at the exhibition venue, we couldn't open the taxi door to get out of the car due to the wind. This same wind was wreaking havoc for air travelers. We started the afternoon session and I started watching my phone for news of my boss. Finally a text message came arrived stating that she was lucky to be alive and that it was the worst flight of her life. An hour later, another message conveying aggravation indicated that the bags were 90 minutes delayed onto the belt due to the wind because the ground crew could not open the cargo hold. Another hour later a message of relief arrived that she was in a car on her way and would never check a bag again - she's about 2 hours late to the afternoon session at this point. And, because these experiences are usually epic rather than merely inconvenient, another text message came through 45 minutes later that the police had stopped the car for being in the bus lane at which I exploded with laughter in the middle of the meeting and had to read it out loud. Once my boss triumphantly arrived to the session for the last hour of work, she indicated we would go for dinner immediately after the end of the session where she provided the details over white burgundy and the most divine green risotto. The turbulence in the air caused the plane to drop treacherously in its descent whereby the passengers in her cabin all held hands thinking that it was their last moments on this earth. The guys she was gripping were a couple and one of them was a runway makeup artist, who had been in the Gulf to take care of a member of the Ruling Family's public appearance preparation. The three of them stood next to the belt cursing the wind, CDG ground staff, and the fact that they didn't plan the packing to avoid checking a bag. The taxi stand was hideous once the bags came out so the makeup artist invited my boss into the private car that was waiting for them. This was the car that was speeding into the city to get my boss to her meeting and chose the bus lane for expediency. When the cops pulled it over, the makeup artist indignantly declared: I am calling Carla. Merd.

Petra: stay tuned.

Jeep: I left it in the garage for a week when the battery died and bummed rides with colleagues and called cabs until I took a day off to have it towed out of the garage and taken to the freakin' middle of the desert an hour away from town where the dealership's repair shop conducts all maintenance. Since my Jeep is still under warranty (until July) I have to take it there or I invalidate it. So I borrowed a friend's car who was at work and followed the tow truck. I entered the showroom and saw that the service agent I usually try to avoid was the only one on duty, which was an indication that I was in for it for the entirety of this experience. So I asked for the 40,000km service, a new battery, side rails so I can step more lady-like into the Jeep, both front indicator orange plastic light covers to be replaced (scuffed from tight parking garages) and anything else that needed attention that will ensure the vehicle passes inspection next month. It was a Thursday midday, so nothing would begin before Saturday and I did not expect a call until Sunday.

Sunday morning|incoming call from service agent: Madame, you need a new electrical system.
Me: No I don't. I need a battery. A big one. Goodbye.

Sunday afternoon|incoming call from service agent: Madame, you need a battery.
Me: Yes, I know. Pls install a big one. Goodbye.

Monday morning|incoming call from service agent while I am in a meeting: Madame, you have an oil leak. The gasket is about USD30 to replace and install but the labor to get to it is about USD520.
Me: Thank you. I'll keep the oil leak. Goodbye.
I don't have an oil leak. I park in the same space at work and the ground is not stained with this supposed oil leak.

Monday afternoon|incoming call from service agent: Madame, I have the right side rail. Should I install it?
Me: No. I want both side rails. Is the car ready? I need it tomorrow by 6:00pm and I am not taking any more calls.
Service agent: Yes, Madame. I will call you at 3:00pm tomorrow.

Tuesday morning|me from the cab that arrived late, after the PT arrived late to treat my shoulder at 7am, making me late to a meeting: Is the car ready?
Service agent: Tonight, Madame.

I leave at 5:00pm for the dealership and traffic is excruciating. If I get there after 6:00pm, I have to turn around and go back and try again the next day as the service agent cannot keep the place open for me. Silent meltdown in the backseat of the cab, which surely took the s-l-o-w-e-s-t route (visions of Holly Hunter barking orders in the cab in that movie I can't recall).

Barely get there and make my way to the service agent's desk who starts walking me through the labor charges. There was only one indicator plastic cap in stock and the labor to remove the bumper to install this dumb thing was approx USD 80 and I'll have to pay again to install the next one, if they ever get it in stock - - as if I am going to drive all the way out there for an orange plastic light cover. I insisted that the labor had to be removed because I was called for all kinds of nonsense but not about this and I would have refused the installation of the one that was available if I was informed that I would pay bumper labor twice. Mini meltdown. Another discount. And finally finished. If I had said yes to all the crap this guy called me about, my bill would have been 4 times higher, if not more. I suppose I meet the customer profile where profit is realized on bogus work.

Shoulder: a year ago while traveling on a train in Japan, I remember struggling with my heavy bag to get it onto the overhead rail. I heard something snap or tear or both in my right shoulder and thought I would feel it over the next few days. As the year passed, my yoga practice was increasingly curtailed such that I was minimizing the weight on my upper body to zero practice by September when I started chasing relief for what was then an aching shoulder. Started with the chiropractor and the ultrasound machines that can decrease inflammation - no results, problem worse. Sports massage at a luxury spa with kinesio tape - after 4 sessions - no results, problem the same. Acupuncture with cupping - after 2 sessions, no results, problem worse. Physiotherapist (PT) massage with freelance professional making house calls - after 4 sessions, marginal improvement but now in crisis and PT won't treat me until I have official diagnosis with x-rays and MRI. Diagnosis has been rendered across all this treatment spanning the range: too much stress, frozen shoulder, arthritis and bursitis, tendonitis and pinched nerve to calcification of the shoulder ligament. I finally sucked it up yesterday and saw a clinic doctor affiliated with my employer. I walked into the office and it smelled like cigarettes. He seemed disturbed by my arrival as the place was empty. As I described my problem and the array of attempts to address it, he made notes on a post-it. He wrote a Rx for Celebrex and referral for the imaging I need to figure out what's wrong. As a parting gift, I received a shot in the bottom with pain reliever - didn't even ask what it was since the nurses dealt with my paperwork and spoke with the doctor in Arabic. At this point, I don't care. I have to travel Tuesday and it's super cold in Paris which means packing a heavy coat and winter accessories and lugging around a bunch of documents. Given last month's baggage episode, I can't check. C'est la vie.

Arab Spring SPAM...received today

From: Ali Kohler Al Hassan. [ifbvinfo@gmail.com]
Sent: Monday, January 23, 2012 9:03 PM
Subject: Last and Final Notification of Request.

From: Mr. Ali Kohler Al Hassan.
Investment/Legal Adviser.
To Mr. Saif Al Gaddafi.
Tripoli Libya.

Re: Transfer of funds for Investment.

My name is Ali Kohler Al Hassan, I am the Investment/Legal Adviser to Mr. Saif Al Gaddafi, son of the deposed Libyan leader Col. Muammar Gaddafi. I had to contact you because of an urgent need to secure the money in my possession before the rebels get hold of it. Presently I am out of Libya with the fund and will like you to stand as an Investment Partner to receive and secure this money.

I am holding in trust US$25m for Mr. Saif Gaddafi and another US$35m recently transferred into my secret account by some associates before the rebels took over Libya and over run the Gaddafi family. This money is under my custody and in a secret account outside Libya.

I will arrange for the transfer once you have indicated interest to work with me and receive this fund. There is absolutely no risk involved and the Gaddafi family does not have any information about these funds. All Mr. Saif Al Gaddafi accounts in Libya has been frozen except outside Libya where this US$60m is domiciled now.

Contact me by email immediately so I will give you details of how this will work out. We have to do this immediately and consolidate the fund before the rebels establish their Government.

Trustfully,

Ali Kohler Al Hassan.

Blogger Snaps

On popular demand.....some photos of yours truly taken in December.....lunch at the Printemps Cafe in the 1st. Raucous Christmas Day lunch at the Ritz. Boxing Day boat excursion on the bay. Taking in the fireworks at a sporting event opening ceremony.












Back to Paris and then Petra in early January. Could be worse. Watching Iowa with a chuckle.

Happy New Year.

Majlis - The Boys II

Eighteen months ago I generated an entry called "The Boys," from a tourist's perspective. After more than two years here, my appreciation, respect, and admiration for the locals is firmly latched onto an indefinite positive slope. The trajectory of anyone's experience living and working abroad would hopefully be configured as such.

Last night, my boss and myself were invited to a majlis with four colleagues from Paris working on our project. The Arab Gulf social order is very much segmented by gender and the majlis is the revered space for men to gather for many purposes. The urban majlis is filled with large formal armchairs and brightly lit with rugs. The head of the majlis has a group of family members, neighbors and others linked by business or other ties that meet regularly to drink coffee and tea and smoke while discussing any number of topics. In Islamic architecture, the entrance of a home is the majlis for the men and the upstairs is the harem for the women with ornate screens that does not permit one to view who is in the harem and what is taking place there.

This particular majlis belongs to a local who breeds and races camels and who also collects salukis (the Arabian hound) and falcons. The majlis is a 3-sided tent with rugs and back-rest lining the space with a special corner allocated for the falcons on their posts. There's a pit at the entrance with a fire keeping coffee and tea hot in brass and aluminum kettles. We arrived after an 80-minute drive after dusk due to some logistics complications in town and were shown the pens with the camels. The females are separated from the males. Camel breeders keep a majority of females so there and a half-dozen or less males as the stud factory. We met a new mother whose udder was wrapped to prevent her baby from eating all day and night. We met a pregnant camel who is due in a month in a separate pen. The males are kept in compartmentalized pens about 20 meters away from the females and they are just getting into their prime mating season with the onset of winter. They want nothing to do with that activity in the long summers.

We viewed the camels by flashlight so no photos this time. We were then invited into the majlis and served traditional coffee and dates. We met the head of the majlis' brother and his two sons and other men and their children. We asked the young boys about the women and girls in the family and where they were and the standard response was; "not allowed." We knew this but it was fun to hear an 11-year old's response and to discern his entitlement to his uncle's space, hobbies and weekend activities with the livestock. The boys are in training with their falcons - teaching it to be released and fly back and to hunt. They participate in competitions and learn their craft as cultural heritage passed on by their elders. These are some snaps of our beautiful evening.


This is one of about 8 falcons in the majlis, wearing a hood (falcon burqa) and tied to its perch. This is Mohammed, who is 8 years old and handles his falcons with stealth and command and was wearing a khaki thobe from Syria as opposed to the white the others wore. In the first snap, Mohammed has taken his falcon's hood off which demonstrates how calm the bird feels in his control.






This is Khaled, Mohammed's 11-year old brother, who engaged with us as a raconteur, telling us about lunch at his grandmother's every Friday, training his falcon, attending English school and plans to have only one wife because it's entirely too much work to have more than one. I can't help but wonder what he hears in the majlis or when all his siblings are together since his father has more than one wife.

We were treated to fresh camel milk. Fleeting concerns about pasteurization were not to be entertained as Mohammed handed me my bowl and showed me how to scrape the foam up with a date and pop it all into my mouth. When I expressed that I liked it, he was jubilant, like some sort of national triumph for an American to have enjoyed such a treat in his family's majlis. The milk was light but very tasty and slightly salty. I will try it again and again if it elicits the same response. Here it is next to the coffee and tea pots:


After the milk, two men brought out a huge round platter wrapped tightly with foil. It was set on the majlis floor on top of plastic and surrounded by drinks. The foil was lifted and an entire roasted baby lamb was surrounded by the head, kidney and liver tidbits, and golden raisins adorning the saffron-scented rice. Plates and cutlery were brought for the guests but all the men ate with their right hand, deftly clumping the saffron-scented rice into bespoke portions. They pulled the meat off with their fingers and tossed it unto our plates. After a few minutes they all seemed to be done and retired while most of us westerners kept picking at the serving plate. The boys were quiet on the other side of the majlis, waiting for the adults to finish before they got their turn, a custom that teaches respect for elders at a very young age.



The snap of the head is quite gruesome and I didn't eat from it. In a more formal setting with a sheikh, the person of honor will be offered the eyeball and it is very ungracious to refuse it. Luckily, I didn't rank last night! We were invited to come back with some daylight to enjoy seeing the camels and to meet the salukis, who were at an exhibition this weekend.

The top is down on my Jeep. It's going to be a good winter.

Eid Al-Adha 2011

The Eid Al-Adha holiday starts tomorrow, which means it's been 70 days since the end of Ramadan. There won't be another event that shuts down the bars again until the feast of Lailat Al Miraj in mid-June. On a quick business trip to Dubai this past June with a big night planned at Nobu, I heard about Lailat Al Miraj when Nobu's reservation system sent me an email indicating that it would be a dry dinner in respect of the holiday, which was reason enough to change the reservation. This week, everything closes for 2-3 days and our offices are closed for 10. But alas, yours truly is still emerging from the post-summer, post-Ramadan, post-Eid Al-Fitr steamroll and will work about half of it to ensure my head is above water for the balance of the year. I am going in/out of Paris monthly through next spring so not having to deal with the airport at this peak time is a slight relief as is knowing that I have an ongoing exit in the works for 6 months; several days on a cardamom plantation in Kerala await.

After the 3-day Eid closure, I am facing the state Customs authorities at the airport. A few weeks ago, I cleared something from Beirut at the airport and it was a serious learning experience. One pulls into the parking lot and a lanky Egyptian (they're all Egyptians working in the clearance/duty dept) latches onto you, following you into the Customer Service counters. You cannot do anything without one of these spontaneous fixers despite having a copy of the waybill, commercial invoice and identification as the consignee in hand and the ability to speak English with the Filippina handling all the internal paperwork in Customer Service. She tells him the clearance fee through the glass which I hear perfectly as I am standing in front of her and he repeats it to me. I hand him the cash so he can hand it to her. Then I go to another section where he is the go-between on some other fee and I am instructed to return the next day so my shipment can be collected from the cargo hold and brought to the front.

So I complied and came back the next night, calling my Egyptian fixer on his mobile to make sure he would earn his go-between fee to point me to my shipment. More papers and stamping and then he called for a lower caste of worker to follow me to my Jeep with the box. On our way there, I noticed a new Lamborghini in tangerine being unwrapped on a flatbed tow by workers wearing gloves. I wondered what Sheikh or uber wealthy local was importing a new toy and if I might see it on the road one day.
















Above pls note the circa 1925 Orientalist (see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orientalism) etching by Charles William Cain, "On A Baghdad Roof," I picked up in London last month. It appealed to me for the outdoor harem it seems to depict as well as fond distant memories of my former Manhattan rooftop garden. I was taking the Eurostar to Paris and wanted to avoid the (20%) VAT so I arranged for it to be shipped to the Gulf. Assuming it would be more reliable than the building where I live, I provided my work address and have hit all kinds of bureaucracy as a result thereof. The state has assumed that the shipment is a commercial transaction because of the address and it is therefore subject to duty and cannot be released. In tracing the shipment, the exception status noted that the shipment had passed government clearance and is now subject to duty payment by recipient. "Government clearance" is likely code for the religious authorities deeming that the print can enter the country, it being borderline lewd with the topless Arab woman depicted on the roof with her attendants. Next time, I pay the VAT and drag it to Paris. Eid Mubarak.