Why Can't I Quit You?

I'm normally adverse to discussing my relationship issues on my blog. There's either too much drama or too little. Plus talking about my dating life can get tricky; people's feelings get hurt. Some day I will write my memoirs on the topic elsewhere. It'll be called "Sitting to the Left of Awkward." I have a knack for getting myself into awkward situations when it comes to dating. I've come to the conclusion that such situations should be embraced.

However, there's one relationship that I feel I need to be discussed openly, mostly because until recently it has never gotten awkward.

This isn't a relationship with a girl. No. This is a much more constant companion. One that gives it all and never takes anything. One that never complains or cancels. One that doesn't fade out when you try and push things to a new level nor freak out when you don't. One that looks good in the morning and great in the evening, with no need of makeup or touching up. One that supports me in my late nights and stands by me when the rest of the world is laughing. I'm speaking, of course, of the Real Thing: Coca-cola.

Good ole Coke has been with me through thick and thin and never failed to come through when it counted. I have savored it, cherished it, and loved it with all my heart. It has picked me up when I felt down and loved me when I felt lonely. As the following collection shows, it has been with me in literally every corner of the globe.

I should be a model for Coke. And no, in no way do I find it pathetic that in all of these pictures it's me and Coke, and not me and "some hot girl with whom I am in a relationship." This is a true love affair that has transcended time and place.

Not that I was addicted. I have taken breaks from Coke and had no noticeable impact on my body. I once stopped drinking soda altogether for 2 months, and kept a six pack of Vanilla Coke under my desk just to prove that I could do it even when it was staring me in the face. I proved two points by doing that: the first being that I could go without, and the second being that the only thing better than an ice cold Coke is an ice cold Coke when you haven't had one in two months.

However, recently I have had to grips with the fact that this is, literally, an incredibly unhealthy relationship. As I get older my metabolism is slowly turning the dial down. This became painfully obvious about ten months ago when I started receiving a strange question, one that I haven't ever heard in my entire life.

"Curtis, have you gained weight?"

The first three times it was sort of humiliating because it was a question that came from attractive females. Nevertheless I sort of found it a little flattering that they would notice. Then, however, I started having other people ask. Fat people. A real wake up call came when a very large Saudi man with whom I had been working said to me after not seeing me for a week, "Curtis, you are looking fat. You've been in Saudi Arabia too long."

All of this was shocking in that I didn't think such comments and questions were allowed. I NEVER ask people if they've put on weight. Taboo. Still, I had to reckon with the fact that it was true. I had in fact put on about 25 pounds in 4 months since I started visiting Saudi Arabia.

This caused a bit of an existential crisis. How could I leave my beloved Coke without betraying all that I stood for? I might as well renounce my citizenship. It would be like cheating on an old lover. Nevertheless, I had to face the music. I had to confront the fact that with all of these pictures of myself drinking Coke, I might indeed become a Coke advertisement, but not of the kind I had originally wanted to be:

So I switched. On April 19, 2010 I became a Diet Coke person.

It was traumatic. I couldn't believe it the first time I heard myself order one. People told me condescendingly that things would work out. "Give it a few weeks, Curtis, and you won't ever want to go back to regular Coke." Sort of like when you go through a break up and people spill out cliches about how there's "someone special out there for you" and other fishes in sea (why would I want a fish anyway?). However, they were wrong. I still maintain that the only thing better than a Coke is a Coke when you've been awhile without.

Now perhaps after 6 months it is premature to pass judgment. They say that the time it takes to get over a relationship is half the time that the relationship lasted, which means I won't be able to truly distance myself from Coke until the year 2024. Still, after 6 months I can only say that I have grown accustomed to the Diet drinks, but it is a cold dispassionate relationship in which there is no love. We stay together because I like the cold fizzy feeling it creates in my mouth, but I feel no loyalty, no passion, no excitement in my stomach when I see the logo. I don't even care which Diet drink it is. To me they're all kind of the same.

I mean, they're ok. The one upside is that they are all equally unsatisfying. Diet Coke, Coke Lite, Coke Zero, even Diet Pepsi (I won't touch the regular stuff). But it's like making out with someone you don't care about in an attempt to mend your broken heart. It's sort of fun while it lasts but ultimately leaves you feeling empty with a funky aftertaste in your mouth.

Truth is, I'm still in love with Coke. Every now and then I go back and pay it a visit. And it's SOOOO good.

The other night, while up late working, I discovered at the restaurant in my compound in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, tha tthey serve Coke floats. I had to have one. And yes, ironically, that is a really really fat man in the background of this picture:

And so I struggle to redefine this new relationship. We can't go back to just being friends. We've progressed way beyond that. And even though I have started a new open relationship with its ugly cousins, my heart still lies with regular Coke. So I must declare it publicly.

"Coke, I love you. Even though we are sort of divorced, you will always have my heart."

Cooling Off, Dubai Style (Part 2)

Oftentimes the best way to escape the heat in Dubai is to just leave. Most people get out of "Dodgebai" (ok it's a stretch but I make it a habit to play with my city's name as much as possible) for at least part of the hot summer, which lasts from end of April to around the middle of October. Usually that means heading to Europe or the States to really actually get out.

Counterintuitively, you can also head south, to southern Oman. There is a slice of the Arabian peninsula which actually gets part of the southwest monsoon which gets India. This creates a rainy season which lasts about 2 months from July to September, which turns everything lush and green. Of course, 30 kilometers inland the rain peters out and it is desert like the rest of the Arabian peninsula. But for the lucky peeps living by the sea, it's the best time of year. We were there in late July, which is fairly early in the green season. By end of August and early September it's probably amazing.

For those of you who are Mormon or into Mormon things, you'll also be interested to know that Book of Mormon scholars reckon this might be the "Land of Bountiful" spoken of in 1 Nephi 17. For those of you who aren't Mormon or into Mormon things, there is a story in the beginning of the Book of Mormon about a man named Lehi and his family who leave Jerusalem, travel through the desert for 8 years, then come to a Land of Bountiful on the coast, where they build a boat and sail to a distant "promised land." It was called the Land of Bountiful because it had much fruit. We enjoyed this fruit.

Here is a sheltered inlet fom the ocean where one scholar speculated that Father Lehi's ship might have set sail from. I don't know how accurate this is and am generally skeptical of such claims to places being "The Place" where something happened. It was 2600 years ago! But it was still a cool place and a good opportunity for some spiritual reflection.

We also found some old forts which, according to our guidebook, have no particular signifance. Tim, for some reason, decided that Oman would be a good place to don his green shoes (see my post about Dubai fashion); in combination with his red beard he looked like a giant Aussie leprechaun.

In any case, what's actually more interesting is what is happening here today. You know there's something wrong when you get excited about going someplace that's damp, rainy, and 40 degrees cooler than your current location. But I was absolutely thrilled to get out of Dubai for the weekend. And I'm not the only one who relished the rain. Despite the fact that it was a misty rain the entire time I was there, everybody seemed to be out. Picknickers everywhere, on the side of the road, on the beach, up the mountains. Just out in their lawn chairs hanging out... in the rain. Unfortunately I didn't get any pictures of the picnics.

We did, however, stumble across what turned out to be the party of the year in Oman. It was the 40th anniversary of Sultan Qaboos (the ruler of Oman) to the throne. We noticed they were blocking off the streets so we got out to check out what was going on, next thing we know there's just masses of people marching in a huge parade, waving Omani flags and pictures of the Sultan.

Men waving swords, chanting and dancing.

The women were out in droves too, mostly covered up by the niqab but still singing as cheerily as everyone else.

One cute part of the parade was a pack of younger girls dressed in red, green, and white (the colors of the flag). Behind them you can see one interesting sign was one with large pink Arabic script that said, "Thank you dear Sultan for your support for the Omani woman and her improvement."

It was fun, and we could have made it look quite scary:

Fortunately Omanis are super nice and down to earth and a lot of fun to hang out with in the rain. This turned out to be a great day, and we even got some great pictures of ourselves. See if you can play a little "Where's Curtis" in this picture...

Tim the giant leprechaun stood out from the crowd a little more.

Below was the best shot of the day I think. You have the two Pakistani men in the foreground holding hands (public displays of affection between men are quite common in this region and are not an indicator of sexual orientation). Then you have the marching Omani patriots and then in the corner, our favorite Australian leprechaun, trying to blend in.

We also made it up into the mountains, where we found some "sink holes," which are deep canyons where sometimes the water will create rivers and waterfalls. Again, we were a bit early in the year for the waterfalls, but was still pretty spectacular.

Past the sink holes we got above the clouds and rain, where we both found the end of the greenery, and some pretty cool views. Maybe cliche, but I thought these were both some cool shots of some local tourist women. Our final spot on our little trip was the Mughsayl blow hole, where the waves come in and crash into the rocky shore, which is very porous and so you have these random holes where the water will come crashing in and shoot up, geyser like, with each crashing wave.

The biggest one shoots up to 100 feet in the air. I got a video of some of the smaller ones to give a better sense of how it works. The best geysers are at the end of the video...

Cooling Off, Dubai Style (Part 1)

So summer temperatures in the Persian/Arab Gulf region are regularly in mid-40s Celsius (~110 Fahrenheit), and sometimes jump up to the high forties (approaching 120). Back in June, after a visit to the US, I landed and the pilot announced that the outside temperature was 117 degrees Fahrenheit. It varies from place to place, but is usually inversely correlated to the humidity. Dubai is slightly cooler than inland Saudi Arabia, for example, but the humidity makes it worse. I have heard that southern Iraq and Kuwait are the worst because they're both humid and super hot.

The Gulf water itself reaches temperatures above 90 degrees so going to the beach and jumping in the water doesn't offer much relief. However, Dubai has in its ridiculous manner developed a solution: Snow. After all, snow can't heat up or it turns to water. So when things get too hot here, we just hit the ski slopes at the local Mall of the Emirates.

I recruited my friend Tim and we hit up the slopes so that I could fulfill my lifelong dream of learning to snowboard in July. (OK it's only been my dream for the last couple of months). It was strange putting on my running tights and long sleeved rowing shirt when it was 117 degrees outside! SkiDubai is, by actual ski slope standards, pretty small (think Chickadee at Snowbird then shrink it to a tenth of that size). However, it's indoors so it's an amazing hill. The entire thing is kept a few degrees below freezing all the time, and at night artificial snow is added to keep it snow friendly. Your lift ticket (around $50) includes the snowboard / ski rental, along with boots, snow pants, and parka. They also have a glove and hat store.

Now I've been skiing my entire life, and grew up in a house in Utah that was less than 30 minutes from about 7 different world class ski resorts, so even for the 2 hour ticket I was bound to get bored. However, in spite of always wanting to give it a try, I have never been snowboarding. Every time I've had the opportunity to try it in Utah I have always figured that I didn't want to waste a good ski day to learn to snowboard. So, ironically, I tried it out for the first time in the hot July desert heat.

Needless to say I thought this would be fairly easy. I have been wakeboarding before. I'm not used to feeling like I'm completely and utterly uncoordinated, but this was one case. The first attempt down the mountain was one constant FAIL, sometimes on my keyster and sometimes on my face. This, of course, was much to the amusement of the other 100 or so people in the facility. Unlike most ski resorts, where you can find someplace fairly isolated and away from the lift, at SkiDubai the whole hill is right under the lift, so you always have lots of witnesses to your falls to provide encouragement and / or mockery. At one point after a nice faceplant I looked up and saw between my snow-frosted eyelashes that the source of one particularly loud outburst of laughter was coming from four pre-teen Arab girls on the lift.

As if being a Utah boy learning to snowboard in Dubai wasn't ironic enough, being a Utah boy getting made fun of by some 12 year old girls in hijabs for not knowing how to snowboard took the irony to a whole new level. These girls weren't even there to ski OR snowboard! They were there to experience the novelty of snow, and never got off the lift!

I felt so good about myself.

We had part of this run on video but it was too large to upload. Thanks to Tim for taking the pictures and providing me with some good coaching. Each run I gradually improved, and by the end of my 2 hour session could actually make it down the mountain without falling, though that was if I stuck to a "falling leaf" pattern on the heelside of the board. Toeside was a different story, as it usually ended in a faceplant, but towards the end I made a couple of toeside turns before running out of time. All in all though, I claim victory.

Perhaps the best part about skiing in the mall is that you don't have to deal with ski traffic when you leave. In fact, you just return your rented gear and walk back out to the food court and get TGIF or Chilis or whatever other you might get a hankering for. We ate, then marched across the hall to the cinema to see Inception. I wonder if this entire place is just one big dream and Leonardo DiCaprio is using it to steal something from my mind...