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.