I'm so hungry I could eat a...

Now, I know most of you think I'm living in a barbaric third-world country. I bet some of you even suspected that the refreshments at the Dubai World Cup would simply consist of the losing horses set out on steaming platters with giant mugs of mead.

Well, that's just not the case, though once Liz and I, after seeing a bullfight in southern France, stumbled on the bull's severed head out in front of the town's butcher shop. Such a barbarous country, France.

In fact, the food at the Dubai World Cup was top-notch. I was so impressed, in fact – my normal diet consists of falafel and chicken pita sandwiches – that I transcribed the labels along the buffet. In this, I met some resistance from the chef, but intrepid reporters can't back down from this sort of fearless coverage. The readers of elktown deserve to know what was served, and here it is:

• Beef carpaccio with rocket leaves and parmesan shavings
  
• Grilled medallion of venison with shallots and fresh chanterelles
  
• Paupiette of sole fillet poached in a chardonnay broth, flavoured with fennel and coriander
  
• Pan-roasted of Guinea – Fowl, sautéed foie gras and stuffed red cabbage with oven- dried figs
  
• Lamb Noisette a la tapenade, with cassoulet of summer beans and pommes Parisian
  
• Salmon Galantine rolled with julienne vegetables and anis
  (I skipped this one.)
  
• Prime rib of beef with Yorkshire pudding
  
• Roasted smoked chicken breast with pine nut and wheat salad
  
• Grilled salmon fillet with champagne sabayon lump eggs
  
• Roast leg of veal with roasted figues (Is this different than a regular fig? I don't know.)

I sampled most of these and found them satisfactory.

I didn't write down all the desserts. They were all variations on this theme:

• Carmelized hazelnut and chocolate mille feuille

I also was convinced to bet on a horse, though a few of you know that I normally prefer to throw away my money at poker. And wouldn't you know it – my horse, an American of course – won! I won the amazing sum of 22 dirhams!

In American dollars, that converts to the tidy sum of… let's see… six bucks.

Horse wear

As I said Monday, the horses at the Dubai World Cup didn't interest me so much. Here are some more photos of people – and their hats – watching the races.











I did watch the horses for a few seconds.

Go Seabiscuit!


But back to the real action.






Even some of the men were hatted to the nines…

That guy in the hat… that's a dude!!

For God's sake, pull the plug!

Congress convened late last night to pass an emergency law, which the president then ran to the Oval Office in the nude to sign. I heard.

The law says that every last freaking writer in America must offer his two cents about Terri what's-her-name down in Florida. My God, can't anybody think of something different to write about? The Internet has become as screechy and single-minded about this topic as a crazy streetcorner bum talking to himself. Please, please, change the subject! There's a perfectly interesting celebrity child molestation case going on in California, can't we talk about that? And has anybody checked in on Elian Gonzalez recently?

But elktown will comply with the law. So here is my opinion on Terri: She should be allowed to die in peace, OK? And I'm going to take this opportunity to tell all my loved ones, my friends, and George W. and Jeb Bush -- the entire Bush family, for that matter, including all possible future presidents -- that should I ever find myself in Terri's sad situation, and you are tempted to save me in the name of God and Republicanism, please refrain. Pull the plug!

This is my living will, witnessed by all of you out there in blog land. If I am nonresponsive or comatose... permanently...
pull the plug!

If I am dependent on a feeding tube, breathing tube -- honestly, I'm talking about any sort of permanent tubing here -- pull it!

If I am vegetative, jello-brained, or really, if any part of my body has morphed into anything that can be legitimately compared to food... pull the plug!

If I'm alive and conscious, but have grown bitter or unamusing...
pull the plug!

And if I ever turn evil -- even if I'm perfect health --
pull that plug, baby!

Thank you for your attention. If any notaries are reading this, could you leave a comment below making this official?

Off to the races

We have one day off per week – Friday – and that gives Saturday morning the feel of a particularly nasty Monday. I woke up this Saturday morning totally unready to start a new week.

But things improved when I got to work and saw that my afternoon schedule was cleared. I finished at 3pm and immediately headed off for a shisha. Just as the buzz was settling in, my phone rang, and it was my boss. This is almost never a good thing. The buzz started to evaporate.

But my streak of Saturday luck was actually just getting started. The boss offered me – for no apparent reason – a free ticket to the Dubai World Cup, the world's richest horse race.

Liz, I should have paid more attention when you tried to teach me about horse racing, that time we watched the Kentucky Derby a couple of years ago. I was seated at an extremely fancy table with a bunch of advertising execs/horse racing gurus, and I dared not open my mouth, except to sip the free champagne.

So, instead of floundering in the horse-related aspects of the evening, I focused on something I found much more interesting: the beautiful, freakish hats the women wore. As some of you may know, I'm not exactly in the polo set. So the subculture of rich people and their spectacular hatwear meant nothing more to me than a scene I vaguely remembered from Pretty Woman.
But this hat thing is real, people.


This is Nicole, owner of the evening's most beautiful hat. I was watching her for a while, then suddenly she came and sat down at my table. I told her how much I liked her hat, and in her response, she turned out to have the evening's most beautiful accent, too. "Well, aren't you raaahhther chaaahhming," she said. Her voice was the balancing point between pretentious upper-crust and Cockney. South of England, she said.

Here's a different version of the same hat. It's less successful, in my opinion:

I call her Dangly Sue.


This is the Cat in the Hat. She practically begged to pose for a photograph.


This is Jumeirah Jane, one of Dubai's most famous archetypes. Jumeirah is a neighborhood – Dubai's "good neighborhood" – a beachfront paradise of palm trees and fabulous villas. Every western expat except me lives there.

Jumeirah Jane is the rich, bored, western housewife whose husband works 130 hours a week at the bank or the oil company or wherever. She fills her days with shopping and grooming and Danielle Steele novels. It's a joke that everybody here understands, and that's why I was so surprised and excited to actually see Jumeirah Jane entering the racetrack. Look at her shopping bags, her antler-esque hat, the way she is thrusting her ticket at the lowly ticket boy. Snapping this photo was like catching a glimpse of the Loch Ness Monster.

That is not meant as a put down of either Jumeirah Jane or the Loch Ness Monster.

Sad news with a silver lining

I don't know if it was news in the U.S., but several days ago an Egyptian, possibly tied to Al Qaeda but probably not, blew up a car bomb in Doha, Qatar. One man died and twelve were injured. This was important to me for a couple of reasons.

First, I was in Doha about three weeks ago. The suicide bomber attacked a theatre where Shakespeare's Twelfth Night was showing to a packed house.

Second, the man who was killed, Jonathan Adams of Britain, was the director of the play and an expat living in Doha. He was a teacher at an English school in Doha, and only a few years ago he taught at a similar school in Dubai. In fact, one of my current students actually knew him, took a drama class from him.

I'm a teacher; I've directed plays. I feel like I understand this guy. He was watching the play he directed, sitting next to his wife, and when he heard a noise backstage, he went to check it out. Then a suicide bomber blew him up.

This is a very ugly story, but there is a silver lining. The next day, Qataris turned out in large numbers -- thousands, maybe -- near the site of the bombing to protest terrorism. According to the British Globe and Mail newspaper, banners at the demonstration read "Western expatriates we love you. Your security is our concern."

"'We love all Westerners and we don't want this to happen again in our country,' said Khalifa al-Tamimi, an employee of state-owned Qatar Petroleum. 'Whoever did this is illiterate and uncivilized. Surely this is not the work of Qatari people.'"

This rally was organized by the government, for the purpose of reassuring western wallets that they will continue to be safe in the Gulf region. Dubai's rulers would have done the same. But the sentiment among the people was genuine, I'm sure of it. Dubai reminds me of New York in the way that people have generally come to accept -- even value -- the almost radical diversity of the place. Westerners, even Americans, feel welcome here, at least so it seems to me. This is the sort of mindset that will need to become dominant in the Middle East if we're going to win the "War on Terror." But maybe it will, in the long run... I was really encouraged to read about the big rally in Doha.

Congratulations on your new job, Kelly Anne!

Don't be alarmed. I'm pretty sure the dust is harmless.

You can find other 'good luck' images here.

Dubai will buy and sell you

But first, they've bought London's famous wax museum, mentioned on this site a month ago as the home of the unfortunate "Brad and Jen" sculpture that had to be brutally chopped apart.

Well, now Dubai owns Brad and Jen and everybody else, and I think it's quite clear why. Imagine Dubai's leaders: a bunch of old men, filthy rich and terribly repressed sexually. Now read this sentence: "[The wax museum] hit the headlines in 2003 after unveiling a new model of Britney Spears, equipped with heaving breasts that beat in time to music."

That sentence -- and much more! -- available on the Internet. This information arrived via an anonymous tip to elktown. Thank you Deep Throat.

News roundup

Headlines from the Middle East and around the world

And here are today's top stories. First, of particular interest to Kansans:

• UAE to negotiate free trade deal with Oz.*
  
  
• Bible Bashers arrested in Dubai for passing out Bibles. Actually, I think this is a mix-up. These people -- jailed here for 12 days -- were passing out the Bible because they love the Bible, not because they want to Bash it. I think the correct terminology here is "Bible Thumpers."
  
  
• Name of Dubai's ruling sheikh misspelled on a prominent sign inside Dubai's World Trade Center. No word yet on how dead is the guy who screwed that up.
  
  
• Camel milk chocolate on the way to market. I've had camel milk, people. If you own stock in camel milk chocolate: sell.

And finally, from the homeland:

• Satan possesses turtle, burns down pet shop. So things are exciting as always in Indiana. Ironically, the demonic turtle's name was Lucky. Lucky was unscathed by the fire, perhaps because he is evil incarnate and is thus impervious to flame. This theory is bolstered by the article's chilling conclusion: "Turtles can hold their breath quite awhile," Dora said. "He may have taken one breath just before and held it through the fire. Except that the fire went on and on for hours."
  
  Thank you Tim for forwarding this. For you skeptics, here is the irrefutable evidence:
  

* This is real. Check it out for yourself.

More adventures with the Chechen

M usually takes the initiative in our class from the moment I walk in the door. Most days he's burning to grill me on some point of language -- God, I love this kid -- and such days always begin with, "Eric, may I say you question?"

My favorite was this one: "Eric, what does it mean, 'Fire in... the hole'?"

My first thought, for the fleetest of seconds, was that 15-year-old M was somehow a veteran of some monstrous streetfight in Grozny before he escaped, hurling Molotov cocktails at Russian tanks before diving into a sewer pipe, or something.

The truth, of course, is that M loves video games -- lives for them, really. His desire to explain to me the fine points of WarHammer 40,000 and Half-Life 2: Counter-strike form the basis of our study of English, in fact, and I'm not sure how I would fill ten hours a week without such halting (but fascinating) conversation.

(Once we were reading a book and a character appeared named Roger. "Eric, may I say you question? What does it mean, 'Roger that?' What does it mean, 'affirmative?'" The old cliche is that a generation of kids learned English watching John Wayne movies. I think we may have stumbled on the new cliche.)

So, evidently the digital soldiers of Half-Life 2: Counter-strike yell "Fire in the hole!" before launching their proton grenades and laser boomerangs and so forth. Now, let's be honest: I'm a nerd about both video games and the history of language. So I spent ten minutes explaining (with illustrations, of course) the origin of "Fire in the hole" -- my understanding is that it was a term miners used to warn each other, before evolving into a generalized warning of impending explosion. M seemed to agree that his video game pals usually used the phrase just prior to something blowing up. Learning the shop talk seemed really to thrill him.

The funny part was his original interpretation of "Fire in the hole." In the Chechen language, the words "fire in the hole" apparently sound like "garlic on your belt." When the little soldiers shouted that at each other, M thought the garlic might be some strange American weapon, like it was in the "Blade" vampire movies.*

* And don't tell me it's farfetched. You know Batman had shit like that on his belt.

Gary Porter and the Chechen Boy

My favorite student is a Russian-speaking Chechen boy whom I tutor for two hours every day in English. I absolutely love this kid. These two hours are the highlight of my day, every day.

The British textbook we use is lame, so we have to improvise. We're supposed to say things to each other like:

"How much is a hamburger and chips?"
"It's 3 pounds 50p. Would you like some tea?"
"Cheers."

Well, I'll be damned if I'm going to let him talk like that. So instead we make up characters to sit at all the empty desks and ask each other questions about these imaginary friends. Personal details are heavily influenced by the student's (call him "M") favorite hobby.

Eric: Who's that over there? (points at empty chair)
M: Bob.
Eric: What's Bob's last name?
M: Half-Life 2: Counter Strike.

So today, in addition to Bob Half-Life 2: Counter Strike, we were joined by Jim ("Jeem"), an out-of-work Spanish teacher living in L.A., and Tim ("Teem") a plastic surgeon from Las Vegas who plays with his sons in his spare time.

In the fourth chair sat "Gary."

Eric: What's Gary's last name?
M: Him last name "Porter."
Eric: "His"
M: His name Gary Porter.
Eric: "is"
M: Him name is Gary Porter.

And so on.

Eric: What's Gary's job?
M: Magic man.
Eric: Interesting.
M: Yes.
Eric: What languages does he speak?
M: He speak English only. But -- (mimes tapping wand against head) -- plink, now Franch. Now Germany.
Eric: Nice.

Eric: Where does Gary live?
M: He live London, but school in magic world house, something.
Eric:
M: Him train, palace.
Eric: Hmmmm.


Eric: Does Gary have family? (These are the standard questions.)
M: He have parents, but them dead. Them killed with... Bad... Magic Boy.

M is grinning. Something is itching at my brain here.

M: Eric, you know Gary! You heerd him.
Eric: I don't think so.
M: Magical man! (mimes making pen disappear, pulling coin out of ear)

Damn, is this a famous magician I haven't heard of? Let's see... there's Doug Henning... and that guy who lived in a cage above London... ah yes, must be that guy.

M: Eric, Gary Porter!

When the answer hit me, I was standing at the board. I laughed so hard I had to sit down. If it hasn't hit you yet, consider the fact that Russian speakers tend to get their "g's" and their "h's" mixed up...

Gulls Two

The trick to gull photography is going where there are hundreds of gulls flying around, pointing your camera in that general direction, and shooting photos until your index finger goes limp.

I don't want to be immodest here, but you should know the truth. About fifteen minutes into the photo shoot, I made an astonishing – perhaps revolutionary – breakthrough in the science of gull photography. More birds means more photos, I realized. I needed to steal the gulls away from the other, less Type-A tourists. The solution was popcorn, which I immediately purchased and started throwing. It worked – the gulls abandoned the others and swarmed me. Ah, sweet success.

But just like Da Vinci and Edison before me, I soon understood that such light-speed progress brings problems of its own. It's very difficult to throw popcorn and snap pictures at the same time, especially when the popcorn is sold in a conical container that narrows to a point at the bottom, and thus will not sit quietly on the railing.

Salvation came in the form of a Lebanese couple, both doctors, who saw me bumbling between my camera and the popcorn and took pity. Soon the doctors were enthusiastically lofting popcorn and I was snapping away. We continued that way for what might have been a half-hour.

An epochal length of time stretches between the twitch of your finger and the click of the shutter. A bird could fly the length of a school bus in that lazy moment. So there's no aiming for gulls. You shoot at the air, and the gulls swoop down and pose, or they don't. In about 80% of shots, they don't. These are the other 20%.















Enlarge this one. The gull on the far right is looking at me. He's on to me!












There's the popcorn.

Creek all week

A month or so ago, I took a stroll along Dubai's creek. It's a river-like piece of water, though it's really just a jutting inlet of the Persian Gulf. I got enough decent pictures to fill up a week on this website.

Each day I'll post some more. Because there are quite a few – I mean really, there are a lot – I'm going to set the main page to post only one day at a time. Otherwise it will load so slowly, it would be quicker for you to just fly here and see the Creek yourself. So if you haven't checked the site every day – and yes, you are forgiven for that – be sure to check out the list of posts on the right side of the screen.

Every picture here is clickable for a bigger view. Best thing to do is right-click the picture and select "Open in New Window." Some of these are, by far, my favorite photos I've taken since I got here.

Gulls One

The rest of my Creek pictures are of one subject: the lovely hovering gulls along the creekside.

First, let me pull back the curtain for one second. The selection of photographs on this website is heavily edited. For every picture I post here, there are about four or so that I trash – sometimes more. It's sort of sad when you think about it… such torrential editing should mean that the remaining photos are really something special, and this is plainly not the case. Oh well. As Scott so eloquently said, your alternative is the Burger King. That still cracks me up, Scott!

Anyway, usually I'm cutting photos left and right. So, you will soon be asking yourself, why the hell am I posting 25 photos on a single topic, each almost precisely like the last? Let's just answer that with total honesty: I love these pictures so much that I simply decided to temporarily abandon my function as editor. F*©& it, I said to myself. I'm posting themall.

I swear, I think I was a bird in a previous life. I can't watch most sports games on TV for more than thirty seconds without getting bored, but I could have watched these gulls fly all day long. All that swooping around... it just looks like so much fun!

No one ever loved life more than I do. But I could give it all up to be a bird again.

























Tomorrow… more cowbell. So to speak.

On the water

When it got dark, the Creekside emptied. I paid a boater a few bucks to boat me around for a while. He offered me some fried nuggets, then put his jacket over his head, like this:



What was in the nuggets? I do not know. They were spicy, very spicy nuggets.

This was our view as we pulled off the bank:



The water-level view gave a better perspective on some of the buildings, including the Pregnant Lady. Many of these pictures are blurry. Staying absolutely still is harder than you would think on a boat rocking greasily to and fro.











You have certain moments where it hits you all over again how far away you are. I started to feel that sense of surreality, giddy and strange, towards the end of the boat ride. These next photos – not the photos, but actually seeing these things – seemed especially otherworldly to me that evening: