Ok, I know I haven't written in a dog's age, and I know everyone is suffering Odum withdrawals. However, know that there is "busy" and there is "just started a new job, had to buy all new stuff to outfit a new apartment and just moved to the middle east and have no idea how anything works busy." So I miss and love you all and cut me some slack.
So we leave Houston on August 3rd and arrive in Abu Dhabi some 16 hours later. The flight was uneventful. Read a book, watched "Fast Five" basically ennui in a can. Once we got to Abu Dhabi we were met at the airport by representatives from Nirvana travel who would be coordinating all of our plane tickets, visa applications, orientations and apartment placements. We got through customs no problem, no strip searches or anything. We did have an unusual situation involving getting an eye scan. Once we got through customs we were taken into a room where five or six Emirati guys were sitting around drinking tea watching a six or seventh Emirati guy scan people's retinas with a very expensive, Blade Runner looking machine. There were a least four other machines in the room unused and at least two hundred expats waiting to be told if they were a replicant or not. This definitely set the stage for how most administrative matters are handled here. A large amount of expensive equipment is manned by a large number of locals who choose to ignore most of the equipment and operate at about twenty five percent efficiency. It's frustrating but if you have the mindset that allows for you to just flow with it it's tolerable. I usually spend these times reading, playing on the iPad or making up "backstories" for the people around me.
Once we get out of the airport we are taken to our hotel. They've put us at the Yas hotel, a five star, super luxury hotel about forty minutes out of Abu Dhabi. As you can tell from the picture above the place is pretty awesome looking. It has a steel shell covering the two wings of the hotel that forma vague Y shape. This shell is covered in lights that change colors periodically. The interior is designed in a sort of Star Trek/ Hospital/ Law firm lobby look, and the staff all wear jump suits straight from your most coherent retro-futro dreamscapes. It is all a VERY Albert Speer on psychedelics kind of vibe. The room is very nice, the staff is very accommodating, everyone goes to their rooms and passes out. Or do they? It being about 2 am in Abu Dhabi that makes it about 5 pm Austin time. So i am wide awake all night and essentially sleep all day. This goes on for about a week after which I finally start to get my head straight.
But, you ask, what of all the activities and preparations that you have to take care of when you get there? You know, for school? Or your visas? Or you and Vico's apartment. Yeah, there was none of that. We were just left alone for days until somebody sent a message to our television telling us about an orientation we had to attend and that we had to BRING COPIES AND HE ORIGINAL OF OUR PASSPORTS
Anyway, I have to grade now. Enjoy the cold weather I am horribly envious. Next time...
YAS continued, orientation, the police and health checks and tooling around Abu Dhabi during Ramadan.
