every martyr in this jungle

Had a little extra time at work last night and caught up on as much Tumblr as anyone can (do any of you keep totally up to date on your friendslists? Because I follow 67(!?) blogs and am never better than half caught up.) But I had to stop when I got to Monday because the hugely talented reapersun spawned Red Pants Monday, devoted to art of John's red Y-fronts, and this past couple weeks have been particularly racy. (And an angsty bonus with accompanying new Mumford&Sons single that only made the post-Reichenbach feels worse.)

In returning to the US news, it's going to be monstrously expensive to export our cats from the UAE. The American veterinary clinic quoted us almost $3,000 - we'll see if the Brits can do better. But for serious, their rabies shots are current, we already bought travel crates; all they need is some paperwork, a health certificate and a ticket for a cargo ride (airlines don't allow any animals except falcons in the cabin in the Middle East). Yeesh.

Since the worst of summer's blazing heat and stifling humidity seem to have broken, our coworkers have begun fattening up the office for the coming winter, I guess, because today's food treats were doughnuts from not one but TWO establishments: Krispy Kreme, and only marginally healthier baked doughnuts from a new shop. I had a hole from the former and half of a sugary doughnut from other and pretended that didn't add up to enough calories to make a difference in the universe. Shhhh.

Two videos making me smile: Gangnam Style, a kicky bit of K-pop that is surprisingly subversive, and absolutedestiny's Ballroom Blitz songvid to the original Ghostbusters movie. The bridge you guys, Ray's little face.

( Day 5: View from the hallway in front of our room at Le Méridien. )

There are nice bits: discovering things you don't remember owning, the satisfaction of filling garbage bags with stuff to donate, the even deeper satisfaction of shredding papers. But there are things I don't quite know what to do with, like our kitchen utensils, and getting boxes won't be as simple as going down to our local liquor store (pro tip: liquor bottle boxes are small and study, making them excellent for hauling books.)

It's also more than a little bit tedious, and we may have come here with four suitcases and two carry-ons but that's certainly not how we're leaving. So, it's been half and half between doing legit moving preparation and laying on the sofa with a cat sleeping on me, rereading the sensation of falling as you just hit sleep, the post-Reichenbach story of my HEART.

And now, your daily dose of the 'Dhab.

( Day 2: Our office for the first month (January 2008). )

I have a new buddy in the Arabian sandbox, khaleesian, who quotes everyone from Tennyson to Tupac and has Russian talent, whatever that might entail, at her disposal. Scary and smart! And excited about things like driving a car and living in more than 850 square feet after several years in London, so I really ought to stop harshing her buzz. It'll be all mint lime juices and balmy summer nights from here on out, promise.

We met up to see This Means War last weekend, and honestly I think the movie would have a higher rating on Rotten Tomatoes (26%) if it had been marketed to the right audience. Which as far as I can tell are ( slash fans and social anthropologists. )

Basically, we spent the film alternating between:


and


Ah, Benedict Cumberbatch. Truly a man for all seasons.

Day 6: Whatever tickles your fancy I really should have read this list before committing to it. Um, we're on Season Nine of another rewatching of SG1, so Daniel and Vala are always good for making me feel fuzzy inside. Our kittens, Barry and Sam, who greet us at the door and sleep at the foot of our bed and enjoy just lounging around the house as much as we do. Lindt chocolate truffles. The rare beer or glass of wine, since I have neither a car nor an alcohol license. Shopping in Dubai. The cool weather right now that makes the city a little less oppressively stagnant and eases the reek of rotting garbage. The 'Smores Pop Tarts that come in my in-laws' care packages. My awesome purple rock star handbag bought at a total bargain at Debenham's. The Norlander bread from Spinneys, dense and earthy and perfect with butter. My "I walk the line" playlist that gets me to work every day. Successfully healing a hard fight in Warcraft. Brandon's bad puns.

Since moving to Abu Dhabi, I take more pleasure in small things, because the big ones are so far away. More than anything, living here has made me better at internalizing my happiness in accomplishments, rather than going out to seek it. Because besides being far from home, working at a newspaper can be incredibly depressing - people dying of exposure from India to the UK, food aid stopped to Somalia, 45,000 Americans dying prematurely because they don't have health insurance and can't afford treatment. And here, in a completely incomparable but still significant act, the security guards who patrol (and smoke in front of) our office all day didn't tell anyone about a box of four newborn kittens, so young their eyes weren't even open yet, abandoned in the front courtyard. It's been cold enough for a jacket, and they were meowing constantly when one of the designers found them on his way out. Why not say something? Call someone? Maybe the security people couldn't do anything, but all us expatriates inside known to take in strays sure could. In this case, the best thing we could do was take them to the British Veterinary Clinic, where they were put down - still a far more dignified end than dying of exposure or starvation.

Everywhere is another sign that people don't care about each other, the environment, the greater world. Granted, the overwhelming majority have pressing problems of their own, but is there no drive in the average person to at least look around themselves and see a way to help?

As with all generalizations, the above wasn't fair to all the aid organizations, volunteers and good samaritans who DO notice the need around them. But when my distraught colleague called to tell me the above story, I was almost not surprised - and I that's not the opinion I want to have of people. I never want to live in a world where mewling kittens are ignored. Newspapers do help with that, but I don't feel like I'm doing enough. Can career ennui set in this early?

Lightning + the world's tallest building = Ooooh

I have ennui, as they say. It's a combination of seasonal affective disorder - summer is dragging endlessly - and stress from the new weekend edition job, which we've been telling people is about two weeks from launching but will take a minor miracle to actually happen. Which we're going to have to find some minor deity to produce, because the advertisers sure expect to see it on their doorstep come Nov. 15, but until then it's Nathan and I designing pages over and over again as various editors reject them.

But work stress is never new. The malaise comes mostly because my birthday kicks off my favorite time of year. I can drive with the convertible top down without getting sunstroke, and walk down the street without sweating after 20 seconds - yes, fall comes even to Florida. The weather starts getting brisk, bringing pretty scarves, gloves, sweaters and jackets into stores, which are laden with seasonal decorations for three months between Halloween, Thanksgiving and Christmas. Seasonal music is everywhere; municipalities wrap light poles and palm trees and fences and any other permanent structure in twinkling lights; the theme parks hold Halloween events. The bowl of mixed candy from Disney and leftover trick-or-treat bags that lasts into February, everything smelling faintly of pine, two months of holiday meals where all family members are obligated to be civil. Going to county fairs and driving around neighborhoods as the plastic reindeer and inflatable Santas come out.

Here, however, the calendar turned to October and no one toned down the sun (really, all this money and no one's figured out how to climate control the city yet?) The malls decorated for Valentine's Day, but Halloween is asking a bit much. There is plenty of cold weather gear making its way into stores, which is always good for a laugh but little else. A theme park, the yen for which is probably not something those who didn't grow up taking family AND school trips to Orlando can understand, is in the works but won't open for another few years. And our families, not to mention my mother's cooking, are three continents away until whenever we can wrestle some time off next year. I haven't seen a front lawn since Germany.

Surprisingly though, Christmas decorations are trickling into stores - as a matter of fact, this was the heartening sight in the international terminal of Abu Dhabi airport when we arrived last year:

( Didn't smell like pine though. )

And I was surprised to see a traditionally clothed Emirati couple with their two daughters dressed as a cat and a devil, of all things (with horns!) during dinner at Fuddrucker's on the 31st. Randomly, in front of Marina Mall a smattering of carnival rides has sprung up that we won't go near given the dubious nature of quality inspections in this region, but it's nice to drive past and see thobes billowing on the tilt-a-whirl. There's "season festival" tea at the supermarket that smells a lot like nutmeg and cinnamon. And as silly as it sounds, the holiday events in World of Warcraft (trick or treating! costumes! zombie invasion!) have helped me feel not so isolated. I think the key is to buy a little tree for home (Ikea already has ornaments), wrap my monitors in garland at work and put carols on my iPod. And Ned just gave me an idea - pie might be the answer to it all. There's got to be a can of pumpkin somewhere in this country.

The DubaiOne channel is running a mashup preview of its movies for this month set to Rihanna's Shut Up and Drive, featuring clips from Gone With the Wind, Scooby Doo 2 and Monster's Ball. It's like the most perverse fanvid ever conceived.

Here in Abu Dhabi, we send each other off on our two-week vacations home with this: "Hope you get some rain."

In that it hasn't collapsed around us yet. Found out tonight the real reason why the doors to the garbage chute have been locked on every floor since the week we moved in - not because of some lazy residents tried to put too large items in and blocked it entirely, oh no. It's because the chute ends in a 90-degree angle. But then, we shouldn't be too surprised with the results when you've got cheap, unskilled laborers constructing something they probably have not made acquaintance with in their lives.

'You must come with us' | The Guardian

It's interesting that the police chief would rather implicate himself as an anti-Semite and paranoid than own up to their real motivations - as a white-collar worker albeit in the capital, I can tell you that whatever the professor found in his interviews could not have been overwhelmingly positive.

But it doesn't even have to be overwhelmingly so - besides oil, all this country has is its image, which it works extremely hard to cultivate and tolerates no blemishes on. When we run an even mildly critical story, within the week if not the next day the sheikh outlaws it or the ministry concerned declares a crackdown or a study into the situation. They convene committees, pledge funds, tighten security and perform raids. Basically, they do everything one could expect of a perfect, responsive government - not that the Emiratis are worried, whatwith their spectacularly lavish welfare state. But whether any of their pretty promises will culminate in real change will make the paper a very interesting read in the next six months to a year.