Chapter Four

I’m doin’ it! I’m feelin’ it an’ I’m doin’ it. Here’s the opening trip story, at least as far as Dubai, for now, we’ll see how much I feel like writing.

Those who received my very first e-mail are aware already that I missed my scheduled flight. I arrived at Tom Bradley International Terminal as the flight was leaving, walked up to the front desk of Emirates STRESSING; on the edge of tears really. But the guy was great to me, gave me a coupon for a discounted night’s stay which, despite being in El Segundo, was kindof ok, and confirmed me on the next day’s flight instead of leaving me on standby, which was incredibly kind of him.

So I went wandering up Sepulveda to find a RadioShack, the last act of my trusty Blackberry before relegation to the position of fallback camera after I packed the charger chord for my parents’ camera but forgot the camera itself, and ran across a great little ghetto fabulous sports bar with low light and red crushed velvet wallpaper (the ribs were amazing, by the way, kind of a honey sesame seasoning) and watched game 3 of the NBA finals. It would be weeks until I got word that it had gone seven games and the Lakers had won. I got none of the details.

But I took good advantage of the hotel’s free WiFi (another ‘last’) to download four solid articles of East African history, which I printed up in the management office in the morning, great thanks to the staff of La Hacienda for that. Then I took a soak in the hot tub and my last morning newspaper in English and some Mexican food, which I rightly expected I’d not find much of here. I got to the airport before the desk even opened and was through security with about three hours to kill, which I believe I spent on a final proofreading of my term paper (which I’ve gotten an ‘A’ on, by the way, simplifying my life considerably).

It’s difficult to condense a sixteen hour plane ride into an appropriately engaging half page, but that is somewhat simplified by the fact that I spent the whole thing reading and annotating the first two articles, sleeping for a few hours, and then writing up the first of two ‘historiographical summaries’ still due before my quarter was truly over. This was aided considerably by the fact that Emirates furnishes their long-haul planes with two power outlets for every three-seat row, but hindered by the fact that they also provide individual screens for every seat, a couple-hundred-video library and video games to boot. Those amenities, added to the leggy blonde Australian flight attendant, who flirted quite pleasantly throughout most of the flight (being the first passenger checked in, by about twenty hours, I got a bulkhead seat, so her fold-up was right across from me) and the really sexy uniforms they wear, including a red hat with a scarf pinned at the temple which hangs down and then wraps around the collar (the only time they have to wear it over their nose and mouth is if they get off the plane in Saudi Arabia: I asked) makes Emirates, hands down, the best airline in the world. I’m not a terribly experienced international traveler, but first hand I can say its better than British Airways, KLM or Lufthansa, and I have agreement for others who’ve flown with more.

Ok, enough with the Emirates ad. We landed in Dubai in the most opulent airport EVER, went through customs pretty quickly, although I ran into some trouble at the declarations post after two guards carrying M4s (I can’t tell you how strange it is to walk by police and even private security toting serious firepower: Beretta, Kalashnikov, serious shotguns held so frankly you’d almost…almost…think they were toys. But you get used to it) noticed me taking pictures of the fuckin’ marble-columned, literally acres-wide baggage claim area. They waved me on when I was a little too willing to open my bag for them (“No, no, no, tell me if you’re carrying anything to declare.” Tourist.).

So, you walk out of the air conditioned arrivals terminal and the heat hits you like a sledge. Luckily its early evening and the desert gets steadily cooler but never so far as cold, or even really cool. They take you to in a bus to the Millennium Airport Hotel, which is as opulent as everything in Dubai, even though the rooms in the ‘Emirates Wing,’ which are compped, including dinner, anytime snack and breakfast for passengers with overnight layovers, like me, are quite modest.

I had a bit of an embarrassing episode when I first got into the room. None of the lights would turn on. The TV turned on, and I even went so far as to check the circuit board before calling the front desk in confusion.

*Sigh* “Sir, you must put you key card in the slot by the door.”

It had looked like a light switch, but it had no moving parts.

Tourist.

So I grab a cab downtown with the doctor and lawyer twins who’d sat next to me on the plane, but we got dropped off in the wrong place and by the time we’ve walked almost the whole ‘round it looking for the entrance, the gates are closed and we miss our chance to go to the top of whatever-it’s-called tower, currently the tallest in the world or something, I think. Shit, saved me some money, though. Turns out its quite expensive for some vertigo and a few photographs.

So we took a few pictures from the base, wandered around Dubai Mall, which is like Mall of America type of huge, then headed off to this bar the Sheila had told us about. I will say about the tower that it’s a pretty impressive building that won’t fit in the camera frame, or even the field of human vision, whole. You look at the base and start looking up and up from about fifty yards away and by the time you get about halfway up, the lights at the bottom have already disappeared from even your peripheral vision.

The bar was also impressive. Four patios on two levels, two rooms indoors, live music, covers of John Mayer unfortunately, three bars and beach access with some impressive yachts at anchor in the bay. The Sheraton Hotel was next door. The place had taken advantage of the transit crowd, like us, by building a big white dome, air-conditioned and with its own bar and a big screen TV feed. It was the night of the opening ceremony and it was kind of crowded when we first got there, but it soon emptied out and we hung out on one of the patios, near a fountain with a broad pool that must have been quite expensive to feed with clear blue water in the desert air during the day.

We met up with a couple of guys we’d eaten dinner with at the hotel who had made it to the top of the tower, saw their photos and had some weak, overpriced drinks. Whatever, I figured I was lucky to find a wet bar at all in a Muslim country. The one guy was a kind-of douchie if gregarious thirty-something bartender from San Diego (“Don’t say I’m from L.A.!” Wah.) and the other his lapdog friend, so I went home with the twins. I had another summary to write, after all, and I surprised myself by mustering the motivation to read a page or two before going to bed.

Last word on Dubai is to repeat what I told the twins, slightly buzzed at a price that should have gotten me plastered, in the cab on the ultra-modern ten-lane main freeway on the way back to the hotel. It’s a place that feels so foreign to me that I can’t really be sure, but I think, with a few more weeks in town that it’s a place I’d really enjoy.

The trip to Nairobi was a six hour version of the same flight from L.A. but a less luxurious plane and a flight attendant team made up of the most incredible variety of gorgeous women you can imagine from the senior attendant, a gorgeous Nilotic black woman, maybe Sudanese, but with an unfortunate angry demeanor, to a buxom blonde Dutch, a dark haired beauty and the new girl they were training, a perfect-featured Spanish girl who I swear would have been putty for me if she hadn’t been training and I hadn’t had to write.

I still had a page or two to write when I got off the plane. Had to find an ATM, then bought a Nigerian team jersey to get change for the bills it gave me, The jersey cost five times as much as the visa it facilitated and I still haven’t worn it since I didn’t make the game. Now it’s basically useless since the damn team’s banned from playing internationally for two years. Fuck. Oh well, at least it saved me thirty or more dollars on the Zimbabwean visa.

I found a café on the airport campus that let me plug in, but I didn’t finish the paper (so vague and distracted because of the noise that I’m frankly surprised I did well enough on it to pull the full ‘A’ in the class) until the seventieth minute, so I missed the South Africa goal and only barely caught Mexico’s equalizer after dashing off an e-mail and attachments at a badly virus infected internet café next door that’s almost sunk my last flashdrive and I barely kept off my mom’s computer. I did keep it clean, Ma, I swear, but we really should get a Norton subscription on this thing. I’m finally sold on the two hundred dollars a year for it.

Took a couple of pics of the café where I caught the end of the game to commemorate the end of my term and the belated beginning of my summer trip. (But it looks like I've lost these pictures, at least until I get a new Blackberry and can upload the backup of the main memory drive onto it from the old one)

2/7/10-3/7/10