A month and a half later, I finally have something that resembles internet access. What can happen in six-ish weeks?

A lot, and not much. 

We moved into the villas. Sans furniture.
We each had a bed and flat sheets to go on it. No comforter or blanket of any type, no dresser, no nothing. It stayed that way for nearly two weeks, and finally, little by little the furniture people started to show up with our stuff. 

As of this very moment, the Villas still don't have internet either. My personal hunch is we will never get internet out there.

This, like many other frustrations, springs from "enshallah".

Enshallah means "If allah (god) wills". When discussing our furniture situation:
Us:"You were supposed to deliver the furniture last week, we have people living here with no furniture, where the hell is it?!"
Them:"It is located in our warehouse many kilometer away, we will deliver it tomorrow, enshallah"
Us (10 days later):"WTF is our furniture!?"
Them:"Today perhaps, enshallah"

Basically, no one is really motivated to do anything right now, and the minute you hear enshallah, you might as well give up on it being any time in your life.

Regarding the villa situation, I did in fact get the top most floor. After a few weeks though, some other...issues.. forced me to move into the villa next door. I am on the second floor now, but all things considered I am a lot happier.

We began construction on a wall of beer. Turns out that the semi- hush-hush liquor store we found has a deal on Guinness, Buy a case, get a four pack free. Buy six cases, get a 7th free. We bought 18.

 

I got a Nikon D80, and it's fairly fantastic. Problem is, the more advanced stuff is kicking my ass. I can't seem to find the easy way to bracket my shots on the Nikon, which annoys me because I was able to do it easily on my Minolta film SLR. Otherwise, I am satisfied with the purchase, and I will be a lot happier when I find a place around here that sells UV filters for my lense.

Regarding work, there isn't a whole lot I can say. There are some really good people here, and there are some people that provide a daily challenge to work with. It's starting to warm up, and I frankly dread the thought of the summer. 

The upshot to all of this is I will be spending the first two weeks of May in Barcelona with Madeline, and this thought (and this thought alone) has kept me from going insane. Some days it feels pretty unbearable, but I've made a committment, I need to do my best to see it through. 

We have internet access at the office, but it's heavily restricted. As in everything is routed through a proxy and the only ports available are 80 and 443. It's also still subject to the countries firewall, so I am pretty much shafted on anything not available via web-browser and deemed "acceptable".

With some luck, I will be able to go into town in the next day or so and upload some new photos to flickr.

Against my better judgement, I went to see "Alpha Dog" the other night. Predictably enough, I wanted to stab my own eyes out. The movie is horrible, with absolutely no redeeming quality. The only thing that kept me from suicide was the fact that Arabic movie theatres are very similar to southern movie theatres.

Every jerkwad on the planet talks through the movie, often on their cell phones. Frankly, if you want a good crash course on the UAE culture, I suggest going to a movie theatre. Everyone is concerned only with them selves, and they have a sense of righteous indignation if you so much as suggest they adhere to the rules. Speed limits, check out lines, talking on phones in the movie, etc. None of these rules apply to them, for they are emirate.

 

Before this turns into a long diatribe, I shall simply call it a day. Perhaps next time I can touch on some of the more interesting (and less annoying) cultural differences.