Worth the wait, Part II?

Major shame on me for not writing. Major. I don’t have internet in my apartment—make that my whole building. It’s so “new” that the wires haven’t been fitted yet. Every time I call or ask my doorman downstairs when it will be ready, I get different answers: next week, mid-May, early June…you get the idea. So, I’m just going to have to keep my fingers crossed that it gets done before I go crazy. It’s amazing, you don’t realize how much you constantly use the internet until you don’t have it at your fingertips (literally).

Nonetheless, things have been going well. I am on the brink of getting my lease car instead of driving around in this little Mitsubishi Lancer (I swear every time I make a turn I feel like I’m going to flip the car over). The reason why I don’t have it already is because another GE employee ran a red light. Now the traffic/police department in Sharjah (the emirate just north of Dubai) says the fine needs to be paid for running the red light and the guy’s car will be impounded for 3 days. So, he needs to get it to the Sharjah police—except, oh wait, he went traveling. He won’t be back until Monday. So now, not a single new GE employee in Dubai can get their car because the Road & Transportation Authority won’t grant any more company car registrations until the fine is paid. Seriously? Seriously. Awesome.

Now, all I have to do besides that is get my alcohol license—aka, a piece of paper that says since I am not Muslim, I can buy a certain amount of alcohol, based on my monthly income—totally serious. You need permission to do almost everything here.

In other news, my birthday in Dubai was really fun. First, to an outdoor bar, since the weather is still quite nice here in the evenings—around 75 degrees on the beach—and then to a dance club later on. Too bad none of the huge champagne bottles being carried around were for me (pictures below). Nonetheless, I had a great time.

I don’t have a great time when I go grocery shopping, however. Food here is expensive—and that is an understatement. Here goes my Mastercard commercial reenactment:

1 box of Kashi cereal: $10

1 jar of honey: $8

1 vanilla yogurt: $5

Knowing you’re eating better than the workers slaving away on all the Dubai skyscrapers: priceless.

Speaking of which, I have been trying to get some photos of the workers and their work conditions—more on that soon. Apparently, the only thing they are fed is ground-up maize, in like a kind of mushy oatmeal, while they sleep in these barracks-type warehouses. Here is a video from Youtube about their mistreatment—I will try to get some firsthand photos as well. There is currently a mall being built just on the next block down from my apartment, and I swear, they finished an entire wall of it in like a week--see below--that wall was done--in a week!