If We Build It . . .

. . . we'll figure out what to do with it. I've always used this line when referring to life at Champlain College, where we all too often equate the word "nimble" with the academic equivalent of running with scissors. That said, Champlain has nothing on the UAE. Let me slide in a picture in the midst of a very quick posting. I was looking at pictures from my ill-fated bike ride the other night and I came across this one. One of my strengths (or weaknesses) is that I often pick up on (or fabricate) deeper meaning behind seemingly insignificant events or objects. So, a classic Scudder statement would be, "this is clearly a microcosm of . . ." or "this so clearly represents . . ." or "this is so completely symbolic of . . ." - at which point I normally throw in a quote from Marcus Aurelius and off we go. Now, as Marcus reminds us, "The secret of all victory lies in the organization of the non-obvious." So maybe my strength lies in my ability to organize the non-obvious (although I clearly pale in comparison to my friend Cinse - and you should read her blog, which can be accessed at the bottom right of this one). Maybe I'm digging deeper or just organizing the non-obvious. Anyway, this picture speaks to life in the UAE. On my bike ride I was really taken back by how amazingly manicured everything was, including roads that were going no place. In this picture we have a very carefully landscaped path that just ends. Now, maybe this is part of a much bigger plan that will all come together in the fullness of time - or maybe it is just designed to sit there and look pretty until someone figures out what to do next.

Why Me Laugh?

I was cleaning up my files - as with all professors, I'll do anything in place of grading - and came across this bizarre picture from right outside Red Square in Moscow. Why it has popped up into my consciousness two years late is beyond me. Maybe it's enough that it is a funny photo - I especially love how the Easter Bunny is using Spongebob Squarepants as a crutch. Or maybe it has to do with a lot of thinking I've been doing lately about the McDonaldization of the world. The very fact that Homer Simpson, the Easter Bunny and Spongebob Squarepants are flouncing around Red Square speaks to the continuing domination of American pop culture. I spent the entire semester torturing my poor students with variations of the same question: who are you? That is, what does it mean to be an Emirati? In your mad, headlong rush into modernity and western culture what do you have left? In an effort to spark a debate/argument I dismiss them as a nation of mall walkers and suggest that they're already the 51st state (which holding open the option that the US is actually the 8th emirate). If the true US religion is consumerism, which I always tell them, have they already converted? The girls do a pretty spirited job defending themselves, which, of course, makes me very happy because that was the point in the first place. I will say this for the Emiratis - they have done a better job at drawing a line than we Americans have. Life here is an amazing balancing act between the deeply traditional and the ultra-modern, and for all of their fascination with the glossy and new, they are also very protective of their culture (even if they struggle to define it clearly) and especially their faith - while we Americans sold everything out a long time ago.

This Is Why We Can't Have Nice Things

OK, so I borrowed that line from Archer. Here is a picture of the bike I rented on Thursday evening - well, the first bike I rented Thursday evening. Back in Vermont I ride my bike almost every day when the weather allows, and I've been meaning to get in a bike ride here for months. Yas Island is a great place for riding a bike because it is flat and, at least at this point, quiet and also possesses some nice bike paths. Renting a bike is easy because the Crowne Plaza, the posh hotel which is partnered with the more pedestrian Staybridge (or Hellbridge, as the Remnants call is - they still haven't forgiven me for moving out), rents bikes, and all one has to do is tell someone at the Staybridge to contact the Crowne Plaza, and, huzzah, a bike appears. After work on Thursday I decided it was finally time to get in a ride. It had been a long week and I wanted to get in some exercise which didn't include the elliptical machine at the Crowne Plaza fitness centre. Plus, the weather right now is perfect - it might be the middle of winter here, and people are bundling up and complaining about the cold, but it is actually lovely (think eary fall in Vermont, except a tad warmer). The only problem with my bike ride was that it had to be delayed because my first rental bike blew up, and I'm not exaggerating much. I hadn't gone more than fifty meters and during my first gear change the entire gear mechanism fell off the bike (here's the photographic evidence). As anyone knows I am hard on bikes, highlighted by the time I buried my bike (and face) into the railing on the Colchester bike path and the still inexplicable two week stretch last year when I had six flat tires. That said, even by my high standards the explosion of the gear mechanism was impressive. I dragged the tattered remnants of my bike experiment back to the hotel and they happily brought me a new one, while also staring in disbelief at the damage. Not to be denied, I took off on what proved to be a wonderful ride, but more on that later.

McTravel

As anyone who has had the misfortune to travel with me knows, one of my travel peculiarities is to stop at a McDonald's restaurant once on every trip. It's not as if I like McDonald's - I'm not a big fan of them, and I truly hate the McDonaldization of the world (another word which I which I would have coined). It's almost a perverse joy, because I almost never go to McDonald's back in the States. I want to see if a Big Mac tastes the same every place in the world, which it essentially does - although the meat in foreign Big Macs is sometimes even dodgier than back home. Plus, I want to see if they cost the same, which they always do, whether you are paying in euros or forints or lira or dihrams or dinar or yuan. However, the $4.50 that you are laying out for a Big Mac in the US is a very different $4.50 in equivalent yuan that you are paying in China; meaning that instead of a convenient throw-away meal on the run that you are wolfing down in the US, you are making a status statement in other parts of the world (you can afford to pay that $4.50 equivalent in yuan). One of my Hungarian friends told me that they were really excited when McDonald's showed up in Budapest because it showed that they had arrived on the world market (and because McDonald's had cleaner restrooms). One of the other reasons to eat at McDonald's is to try their usual clumsy attempts to regional dishes. Here's a picture of a McIberica, which I picked up at the Madrid Airport on the way back from Portugal. It has ham on top because, well, it's just what the Spanish do (check out my earlier posting about the Museum of Ham). Obviously, the McIberica would not be a big seller in the Islamic world, where you have to settle for the McArabiya (and let's not even get into the chicken equivalents at Indian McDonald's).

Word Coinage: Remasculate

Several years ago I was talking to my friend Colin and I used the word exoticize, as in, if I can remember correctly, "we always tend to exoticize other people's lives." Colin responded that he thought I had made up a new word. I told him that I couldn't have made up the word because he knew what I meant, but he argued that he knew because the word made so much sense, and not because he had heard it before. Anyway, on the way back to my office I checked out a couple of the dictionaries in the library at Champlain and couldn't find the word, and so I managed to half-convince myself that I had, in fact, made up the word. As it turns out I didn't make up the word because I later found it in the Oxford English Dictionary, so it was just one of those words that the more brilliant British use, and which I had probably read in a Martin Amis or Julian Barnes novel. It did get me thinking about making up words and how one gets credited with them - as in, you look up a word in the dictionary and after the definition they cite some source. I think I missed my chance with douche baggery, which I started using around three years ago - as in accusing some student of some immeasurable feat of douche baggery. However, I later saw many people use it and I realized that I had been plundered and not given the appropriate credit. However, I have no one to blame but myself. So, with that in mind, I'm going to lay claim to the word remasculate, which I used the other day in conversation. My definition of it is some gesture that a man's girlfriend or wife does to make up for something that they had done earlier to emasculate him. It's not the same as simply doing something nice to make up hurting someone's feelings, but rather an act which makes the man seem or feel more masculine. For example, she might have earlier, and within earshot of his or her friends, told the man not to bother carrying something (with the perception being - or at least the man's bruised ego-inspired perception being - that it should be carried by someone younger or stronger). Later she will make up for it, either consciously or unconsciously, by praising, again within earshot or his or her friends, her man's strength. Thus, she has remasculated him. There, I have officially laid claim to the word - or at least until I get the official letter from the solicitors of Amis or Barnes that they have been using the word for years and expect to be reimbursed.

Beautiful

Yesterday morning I was walking into breakfast here at the Staybridge when I just about bumped into an elderly Arabic man of uncertain nationality who was walking around with a little girl that I assume was his granddaughter. He smiles at me quite brilliantly and asks, "are you Saudi?" Now, I was just wearing a blue button-down shirt, jeans and sandals, so I didn't necessarily look the part. I was so taken back (and it rather difficult to silence me completely) that I just smiled back. He then said, "you are beautiful," before walking off happily with the little girl. Not since I was flying out of Mumbai and an Indian stewardess stopped me as I was boarding to plane to tell me that I was "so very handsome" have I been so certain that I had entered another dimension. Or it could just be a case where my hearing is even worse than I think. Who knows what he actually said or what he actually meant to say. Maybe the best answer is the one my great friend Andy proposed - that he actually said, "you are juvenile." My perceptive, and obviously kind, friend Cinse said that maybe he just saw some essential goodness in my nature and was recognizing that. I like that answer, although whenever I think of someone seeing the true me I imagine it ending up like the devils in the coffee shop complaining about Frank Black seeing their true essence in the "Somehow Satan Got Behind Me" episode of Millennium.

A Cozy Meal in Istanbul

It is probably quite telling that I include so many posts about eating. Here's just a quick posting, mainly, I suspect, to distract me from grading final exams. Here are three pictures of a wonderful little meal that I had at the Cozy Cafe in Istanbul, right around the corner from the Hagia Sophia (about three doors down from Starbucks). It was such a great meal that I went there a couple times. Great food and wonderful, friendly service - everyone spoke impeccable English and could not have been friendlier. I just asked them, "what do you think I should eat?", and they took that as a personal challenge.

I especially liked the beans, which look really plain, but which were fantastic. Apparently it's a staple dish both in Turkey and in Greece. It was advertised as kidney beans, but I believe it was butter beans (as my good friend Kelly Thomas observed). It was just butter beans cooked in olive oil, garlic and thyme. Combine it with Efe, a nice Turkish beer, and you have a lovely meal.

The Shrine

One of the most pleasant experiences of my wonderful three week stay back in Vermont was walking into my office and discovering that it had been turned into a shrine by my office-mates, Bob and Craig. They had not told me a thing about it, so it was quite the pleasant surprise. My desk and books were covered in plastic and various items strewn around in voodoo fashion, all designed to assure that I return to them and not stay permanently in the UAE.

I was truly touched. I think they miss me as much as I miss them.

Bilbo's Car

Finally, five months into the Abu Dhabi experience, I have a rental car. Technically, I suppose, I could have rented one earlier, but I was waiting until I had all forms filled out. So, once I squared away my Emirati ID card (more on that epic adventure later) and my driver's license, I finally felt empowered to go rent a car from Hertz at the airport (which is only around ten minutes away). While several of my friends here have cars, I grew tired of mooching rides off them and wanted more freedom. So, I popped over and rented a Toyoto Yaris, which is a little hobbit car. However, they are pretty peppy and pretty popular. I've had to memorize the license plate because so many people own or rent a white Yaris. I pleased with the nice woman at the counter for a blue or red one, but they are very rare. So, here it is. I suppose it's not that big of a deal, but if you factor in the fact that I haven't really owned a car in over two and a half years I'm oddly happy to have my little Yaris. Now I only have to avoid getting creamed. The UAE, besides being number one in the world in per capita carbon footprint, is also number one in crashes per capita. The Emiratis, bless their souls, are just really crazy drivers. I heard this morning, and I find this to be completely believeable, that last year when they had a big rain there were 6500 wrecks in one morning in Abu Dhabi. Yikes. Now, I don't really think the numbers make any sense, but the Emiratis do drive like bats out of hell so anything is possible. There was a story in the paper recently wherein the government came to realize that their yearly amnesty of traffic tickets was actually a bad idea because the drivers knew that there was going to be an amnesty so they just drove all the faster. You rarely see police cars here, although heaven help you if you get pulled over, especially if you've been drinking. The Emirati authorities are not amused by drinking and driving and you will end up in jail immediately, which I actually support. Every infraction here is captured electronically and you don't find out about your tickets until you come in to renew your tags, and there are all sorts of stories about drivers who come in and discover that they owe thousands of dollars in fines. So, the adventure begins. The UAE will be the fourth foreign country where I've driven, following Canada, Oman and South Africa, and the first where I've acquired a new driver's license.

Rain, Sort Of

Last night, 20 January, it sprinkled. I suppose that's not that big a deal, but it's the first rain, even a timid, unsure one, since I arrived in Abu Dhabi on 1 September. It's truly silly how happy I was to see it. It's no wonder the students will sometimes go outside and play in the rain. The UAE is one of the driest places on earth, and they champion, for the most part quite rightly, their efforts at water conservation and increasing efforts at ecological conservation. As most Emiratis, with a pained expression, can tell you, the UAE is the only country in the world that that is ahead of the US in regards to their per capita carbon footprint. They are starting to work on carbon neutral buildings and cities. That said, they also have several lush golf courses, including the Abu Dhabi course where Tiger Woods will be playing next week, which seem like a really bad idea considering that we are in the desert. I tweaked my students about it last week, and they responded that the golf courses will designed and built for westerners so it's not their fault, which is probably a good point. However, if you're turning yourself into a vacation destination then I guess you're stuck with providing what the vacationers want.

Lucky Dogs

Recently I was sitting around watching college football with my great friend Mike Lange. Actually, we were sitting around wasting an entire New Year's Eve watching around ten hours of college football. I've never been a big New Year's Eve person so I was happy to do so. Plus, it was during the brief golden age of my college football pool dominance, before it all ended in tears. Anyway, being guys, we were generally talking nonsense. At one point Mike asked me where I would like to spend my time in the Witness Protection Program doing and where would I like to spend it. What a great question, and one that made me hold my questioning manhood cheap (to paraphrase Shakespeare). I'm normally the one who prides himself on asking questions like that, so I was shocked that I didn't think of it. My answer was easy and obvious (at least to anyone who knows me): selling Lucky Dogs in the French Quarter in New Orleans. This has been my retirement goal for some time now. Now, in the end we decided that this was not a good answer to this particular question because too many organized crime types pass through the French Quarter so I would be too easily discovered, and I had to move on to working at a video store in the Dakotas. Still, it didn't change my desire to spend my declining years (which actually began when I was around 27) selling Lucky Dogs. The obvious question is: why? First off, I love New Orleans and the French Quarter. Secondly, I love Lucky Dogs. Thirdly, I am more than a little bit like Ignatius O'Reilly from A Confederacy of Dunces. Finally, however, maybe I'm just tired (or it might be better to say, exhausted nye on to death) of making decisions. A life devoid of administrative, faculty and student tomfoolery - and where my biggest challenge in the course of a day related to breaking a $100 bill - sounds better and better. Here's a picture of a Luck Dogs salesman, snapped during the epic journey to Nawlins over last summer with Andy Burkhardt and Steve Wehmeyer. I have seen my future and it is one of bliss.

Hagia Sophia

Like most men, I suppose, I rank things, which is different than making lists. Women make lists - men construct Top 10 lists. It probably relates to our fascination with sports, especially baseball, which are driven by standings. Following this logic, then, as participatory sports became more popular among young girls then women should have started constructing top 10 lists as well (but maybe this is actually all genetic). So ask any man a question like "What are you top five cars?" they would not hesitate for a moment, and could give you the list, and, more importantly, in order. It could be top five or ten cars in the world or that they had personally owned, but they would have a numerical list. It doesn't matter whether it is favorite professional athletes or teams or classes or best kisses, but they would have a list ready. Now, why am I starting a posting about Hagia Sophia with this odd preamble? As I walked into the Hagia Sophia in Istanbul I had one of those moments when you find yourself sitting there like a dope with your mouth hanging open - and this must have lasted around five minutes. I came back to the real world as if from a dream, and I also was delighted/horrified to discover that I was fighting back tears. The experience was that overwhelming. Now, it relates to the initial point because I had one of those realizations that I've been so remarkably fortunate to have seen so much of the world and to have had other moment like that. Then, of course, being a guy, I ruined it by thinking that I should really construct a list of the Top 10 most amazing, jaw-dropping, tears-inducing places I had ever visited.

Every so often I will scan through the over 450 posts that make up this silly little blog, and it's funny how many times I will write "if you ever visit ________, and every one should visit ________, then you should . . ." OK, if you ever visit Istanbul, and every one should visit Istanbul, you have to make a pilgrimmage to Hagia Sophia. Or, more appropriately, if you ever go to see the Hagia Sophia, and every one should see the Hagia Sophia, then you should see the rest of Istanbul. It is staggering to think that the building itself dates back to the 300s, and it reached the form we recognize around fifteen centuries ago during the time of Justinian, the greatest Byzantine emperor. For over a thousand years the dome, which ascends more than 180 feet in the air, was the largest dome in the world. It was a church for a thousand years, and then a mosque for around five hundred years (after the conquest of Constantinople by Mehmet the Conqueror in 1453), and it has been a museum since 1935 (as part of the secular modernization that was so much a part of Ataturk's dream). I one time opined that you recognize true genius when two seemingly contradictory things happen at the same time - you become both bigger and smaller. You become bigger in that you share some profound truth that connects you to a larger intellectual or spiritual or creative universe - but you also become smaller in that you are dwarfed by the enormity of that vision/truth. Hagia Sophia was that - it lived up to its Greek name, "holy wisdom."

Self-Portrait

My favorite class to teach at Champlain is our Aesthetic Expression class that is in the second year. Like all Champlain classes it is interdisciplinary, and is a great fit for me because it focuses on art and literature and music, and is thus pretty clearly in my wheel house (or at least my perceived wheel house) - at the very least I really enjoy teaching it. The students are supposed to learn about the Western aesthetic, but also their own aesthetic. It is also designed to teach them how to interpret art. As Epictetus reminds us, "Making a statue requires skill, and viewing a statue aright requires skill also." A key component in the class is the creation of a student self-portrait. Some of my colleagues don't seem to like the project and complain that they get lousy results. I have been more fortunate, but that might relate to the fact that I really focus on it and encourage/prod/pound my students into giving me a quality product. My basic rule, which every one of my students can repeat (usually with a shutter) is "no collages" - well, actually, it is a little more graphic than that. The reason why I don't allow collages is that they're stupid, at least at any point past the 7th grade. More importantly, it is very difficult for them to convey any sense of uniqueness. OK, it is series of photo-shopped (or, old school, cut and pasted, and not computer cut and pasted) pictures of your mom and friends and hobbies. Well, I have a mom and friends (even me) and hobbies, so this tells me nothing. To simplify things I press them to think of the one thing that sets them apart from everyone who has ever existed, and it can be a painful process. Last summer a quarter of my students broke down in tears when presenting, which means they dug down a little more deeply than I was intending, but rather that than the alternative. Having said all this, the thing that I hope to do someday is take part in the experiment and create my own self-portrait. We look at a lot of famous and obscure self-portraits and take them apart, and I talk about what I would put in my own self-portrait, but I have never actually created my own. For some time I've been thinking about taking a drawing or painting class, not only for my own enjoyment/enrichment, but also so that I would know more to share with the students. Maybe this is a first step. Here's a picture I took of myself in a sultan's mausoleum next to the Hagia Sophia in Istanbul. You can just make me out. I was merrily snapping away at the beautiful tiles when I realized that I could see an outline of myself, and thus the experiment began. Maybe I like it because I am "lost" in the history, which probably speaks a lot about me. There is the old belief that psychologists go into their field to try and figure out why they're so crazy. In a similar way my friend Eric Usatch told me that people go into communication to figure out why they can't communicate. I've often thought that the reason why I like history so much is that it allows me to replace my own history with someone else's: a history more interesting or meaningful or important. So, I'm still there, you just have to work to find me. I've always been much more comfortable listening to other folks talk about themselves than talking about myself. Many people consider me to be a very good listener, and that may relate to the fact that I find other people's stories more interesting than my own - or it could just be a defense mechanism. Reveal more of your own history to me, while I hide my own.

Istanbul

I've just returned to Abu Dhabi after an exhausting 34 hour flight from Vermont. I love living there, but it is so out of the way it is always a challenge to get there in any graceful fashion. Typically, I left at 11:30 on Thursday 5 January, and then endured a five hour layover in JFK, then a ten hour flight to Istanbul, then an eleven hour layover at the Istanbul airport (and I was just too tired to venture out so I just curled up in the quietest corner I could find and slept), and then a five hour flight down to Abu Dhabi - arriving at 4:00 a.m. on Saturday 7 January. The last two days have been devoted to trying to beat down the jet lag, which I think I've managed to do. The other reason why I didn't take the opportunity to leave the airport is that I carved off three days for myself in Istanbul on the way to Burlington. My travel agent, the long-suffering Rochelle, found a relatively inexpensive flight on Turkish Air with the requisite layover in Istanbul, and since I had never been there - and always dreamed of going there - I had her arrange for a three day stay. I loved it, and will have a lot more to say about it. I'll start off with an odd sign that I saw in the palace.

Red Wolves

I am hesitant to include this post because it just calls down divine judgment, but if there has ever been a poster child for hubris it's me. In the face of all logic, if the Arkansas State Red Wolves (my all-time favorite college football team) wins the GoDaddy.com Bowl (my all-time favorite college bowl) then I will win the college football bowl pool. This illogical position has mainly been fueled by an inexplicable run of fifteen straight correct picks. The folks in the pool who actually know more about college football than me - and that is everyone but me - are stunned (as they should be). Go Red Wolves!!