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After that brief trip to Oman, it's back to Zanzibar. Here's a picture of the corner of my little villa at the Dolphin Bay Resort. From the beginning I thought they looked suspiciously like evil eye symbols designed to keep away dark forces (such as the popobowa, but that's another post). A couple different times I asked folks in the restaurant or the front desk what the circles were, but they claimed to have no idea. Well, actually, they initially didn't claim to see what I was talking about, which led to me making them stand by the table while I walked the fifty yards back to my villa to touch the dots with my hand, and then tramping back to quiz them further. One of my favorite answers, given with complete sincerity, was that they were windows. After pressing them further they suggested that maybe they were "fake windows." Obviously, this is not something that they wanted to discuss. So, as is always my approach in cases like this, I went to my excellent friends Kerry Noonan and Steve Wehmeyer so that I could tap into their big UCLA brains. Kerry responded that they looked very much like the eyes/circles on boat prows. She then pointed out that even if they were now truly considered "fake windows", they still probably began as evil eyes; just as blue doors initially were designed to ward off evil spirits, but then just became an aesthetic choice (which I did not know). Anyway, it is very cool, and makes me miss Zanzibar - and Kerry and Steve - all the more.