Goodbye to our little house in Portugal.

B and I have been talking a lot lately of how we are ready to get out of Portugal. It´s been a great ten years and this country is exactly what we needed at the time.  We needed to de-stress, rid ourselves of the American materialistic mentality, get closer to the land, and basically get our priorities straight.  How we accidentally ended up here is a story for another time, but knowing what I do know now, about all the other European countries we could have settled in, I would still choose Portugal as the initial landing point for our life out of the USA.  Starting over financially  in your 40′s was tough enough, but Portugal welcomed us with open arms and showed us that money wasn’t everything, that we could live in a different culture, and that there was a lot more to life than the narrow minded perspectives we came over with. We have never been happier with so little.  Living in a country where the locals are very friendly, the air and food are clean, crime is low and the family unit is still intact reminds us of what we grew up experiencing in the states but, sadly, no longer exists.

We're leaving this view out our front door for the UAE.

But we are ready to leave. We feel we are well grounded enough to tackle the big city once again. We have our priorities straight, know what really matters in life and won’t make the same mistakes again. The economic crisis has affected Portugal and in a way, is forcing our hand to make the move to Abu Dhabi, in the UAE.  It’s going to be a big culture shock – almost two extremes on opposite ends of lifestyle choices.

My initial impression from visiting the area several weeks ago, which will most likely be proved to be completley inaccurate once I settle in there, is of an artificial environment created out of the barren desert with a lot of money. The feeling being in Dubai and Abu Dhabi can be hypnotic. Everything you could ever want to purchase is there, employment is practically 100%, streets are clean, beautiful architecture and not a stone out of place; an environment that could easily suck us back in to our destructive habits.  But I know that’s not all there is to the UAE. There are future friends and aquaintences from many different nationalities to be made. There is the the culture and history of the local Emerati to learn. Getting close to the land in the UAE means trekking into the desert, primarily via four wheel drive vehicles. This I am really looking forward to.

So the economic necessity of filling an empty retirement bucket in a land seemingly hostile and artificial might make it look like we are selling out.  But if we take the lessons we learned from Portugal and focus on the future relationships we will be developing, I’m sure we will find the beauty that really does exist underneath all the glitter in the UAE.

UAE camels lead the pack.

Emirati camels dominated the season’s largest and last racing festival in Kuwait yesterday.

Camels from the UAE won three out of four races on the final day of Kuwait’s tenth camel racing festival, with Freeda, a camel belonging to Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid, Vice President of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai, winning the main event: a 10-km race for females over five years old.

As they trotted across the finish line, the exertion of the race had caused their mouths to spew foam.  Child jockeys that were controversially used to race the beasts have been replaced with light machines that whip the animals’ back.

Racing camels do not have the velvet, shiny coats of thoroughbred racehorses; tufts of hair grow in patches over their muscular frames. Their long, gangly limbs, angled bodies and thin waistlines give them a model-like appearance, and the fastest ones can be worth millions of dollars.

Camels are plentiful in Kuwait, but most citizens prefer to eat them rather than race them, and the Bedouin see no contradiction in using the animals for transport or nourishment. Even at the track, the feast provided for the assembled guests included two large camels cooked tender and served on a bed of rice, their humps protruding from the trays.

This sounds like great fun and I am going to put camel racing on my agenda when I return to the UAE for the big exam.  I wonder if the losers are served for lunch?

Anki Screenshot

I have to tell you about a great free program that I stumbled upon while taking a break from studying. The product is called Anki and is basically a flash card system that helps you remember facts and concepts.  You write your question on one “side” of a virtual flash card and the answer on the other “side”. The program is free and there are many features that allow for customization of the types of questions.

You can find their website here: http://ichi2.net/anki/

Now you might be asking,  “Why not just make traditional flash cards on paper?” The answer is that the program tracks which cards you have difficulty with and which ones are easy for you. It then shows you the ones you have trouble with more often and the ones you have committed to memory less frequentlly.  It does so by timing how long it takes you to answer each question and taking into consideration the score you give yourself for each answer you give; hard, good, and easy.

Anki provides a number of graphs related to your deck: cards due by date in a per-day and cumulative graph, interval distribution of cards, cards added a day, cards answered a day, and ease distribution over new, young and mature cards.

I have found that studying this way has made the pages and pages of facts and information I have to go through “stick” much easier than just looking at it on a piece of paper.

The Icelandic volcano has paralyzed air travel in Europe.

All the technology in the world can’t hold a candle to the power of nature letting off a little steam. Volcanic ash from an Icelandic volcano has drifted towards the UK and has grounded 11,000 flights worldwide.

Tens of thousands of passengers are unable to fly out of Dubai and Abu Dhabi today as Etihad Airways, Emirates and other airlines cancel flights to the UK. About 18,000 passengers travelling with Emirates alone have been affected. Emirates airlines has booked 3,500 hotel rooms in the vicinity of Dubai International Airport, costing US$1 million (Dh3.67 million) per day in accommodation alone.

With no change in air patterns forecast, the cancellations forced by the volcano ash over the UK yesterday were expected to extend into tomorrow. 

I have to be in Dubai on June 2nd and hopefully this will all blow over (sorry) by then. Otherwise I am going to have to drive there or take a boat. I’d better start packing now, just in case.

I finally have a date for the HAAD qualifying exam for a dental license in Abu Dhabi. The official website posted the date for the next exam for June 5th, about 7 weeks away. Rumors were that they were going to postpone the next exam until SEPTEMBER! I am a happy boy today. I think I would have been standing in the median strip of large intersections with a squeegie in one hand and a bottle of windshield cleaner in the other trying to make ends meet if I had to wait until the end of summer. My improved outlook on life will also probably mean that I’ll have nicer things to say about the UAE and stop focusing on negative topics.

Cross species kissing would probably get you beheaded.

A British couple accused of committing a public sexual act by kissing on the lips will spend a month behind bars, after losing their appeal against their conviction in the Dubai Court of Appeals today.

Original article here.

AN, 24, a marketing executive, and CA, a 25-year-old tourist, were convicted in January and sentenced to one month in jail followed by deportation, and fined Dh1,000 for consuming alcohol.

The defendants were arrested after an Emirati woman with her family filed a complaint on November 28 claiming that the two had been kissing and touching each other in a sexual manner in front of her children at a diner in Jumeirah Beach Residence. AN and CA both admitted drinking alcohol but denied committing a sexual act, claiming they had kissed each other on the cheek.

The defendants’ lawyer, Khalfan al Hosani, told the judges that the 38-year-old Emirati woman – currently the only adult witness in the case – had presented two different testimonies to police and public prosecutors.

What a great way to promote tourism, an industry your country depends on.

First of all, before my friends and family get upset about my move to the UAE, this story is from Saudi Arabia, not from where I will be moving. The UAE lives in the 21st century.

A Lebanese man condemned to death for witchcraft by a Saudi court will not be beheaded today as had been expected, his lawyer said.

Ali Sibat, a 49-year-old father of five, made predictions on an Arab satellite TV channel from his home in Beirut. He was arrested by the Saudi religious police during his pilgrimage to the holy city of Medina in May 2008 and sentenced to death last November for witchcraft.

See the original article here.

The Saudi justice system, which is based on Islamic law, does not clearly define the charge of witchcraft.  Sibat is one of scores of people reported arrested every year in the kingdom for practicing sorcery, witchcraft, black magic and fortunetelling. The deeply religious authorities in Saudi consider these practices polytheism.

Don't open these in Saudi Arabia

Made predictions? Death by beheading? Witchcrat?

Christianity embarassed itself 300 years ago with these same kinds of antics. The Salem witch trials and public executions of people that didn’t quite fit into society were “justified” because of the Puritan’s extreme interpretation of the Bible.

But Ali Sabat just made a prediction and this is interpreted as polytheism. I suppose carrying fortune cookies or one of those fortune telling magic 8 balls are also a captal offense in Saudi Arabia.  Is meterology considered heresy as well?

I did see a weather forecast on television when I was last in the UAE, so I am not worried about losing my head the next time I go there.  I am going to make it a top priority to befriend some Emirates and find out more about the culture.

Yes,  the UAE is in official mourning as the body of the missing sheik was recently found after a glider accident in Morocco. Sheik Ahmed bin Zayed al-Nahyan, head of the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority and younger brother of the emirate’s ruler, was ranked 27th in Forbes‘ most recent list of the world’s most powerful people.

Associates described the sheik as quiet and cautious, despite the fact that he was one of the most powerful men in the world.

The 40-year-old prince had no deputy director at the $650 billion fund, which invests Abu Dhabi’s oil revenue. Experts believe his death is likely to spark a power struggle within the emirate’s royal family. The sheik wasn’t part of the powerful clique controlled by his nephew, the crown prince, who is now expected to attempt to gain control of the fund and consequently control of virtually all of Abu Dhabi’s economy.