And hey! Michael Jackson as a neighbor!
bleh.
Anon

...that's...that's...

*Beautiful*.

I mean, wow. That's tacky to the point of becoming art. I want to go there and revel in the unbelieveableness of it all!

ahhh, those crazy a-rabs.

Especially in Dubai.

If you ever want to see a case of dollars without sense, go there.

Last time I was in Dubai I was working for an oil shipping company, and was needed to install a new network for our field office there, and do some repair work for on of the Sultan's son's networks. (total brother-in-law deal with our CEO, let me tell you)

Anyway, I get our network built in a couple of days, then I get told that I'm going to have to ride one of our tankers back because it's having some issues with the on-board computers and blah blah blah, but its not going to be close enough to Dubai for another 10 days.

Well hell.

Course, I hadn't been to the hotel yet, as I knew nothing about Dubai and assumed it was like going to Saudi or Indonesia as an American engineer. i.e. Lots of sneaking around, lots of being under guard, and lots of staying in cheap crappy hotels where the prostitutes knock on your door and say "housekeeping" and if you let them in, they refuse to leave unless you pay them.

Nuts to all of that, I'd rather sleep in the server room.

But hell, I'd be here for 10 days. I had this kid's network to work on, I might as well check in to the hotel, get some real sleep, and a shower.

Oh. Your. God.

I got to the hotel, and it was like stepping in to the middle of a movie about fancy hotels. Well, except all the men were wearing those specific head coverings, and all the women were foreigners. A nice German lady checked me in to the room, a cheerful African man took my bags and engaged me in conversation all the way up the elevator, and in to my room, and for another 5 minutes or so as he talked about "The New of Yolk Yanquis". Then he turned some lights on, and started putting away my clothes. Then, as I went to tip him, he said "Oh no siah! Hahahaha, nooooo, you have not been in Dubai long. It is alright siah. You have my gratitude for making the gesture. Please, if you need anything *wink* please please call and ask for Alhoon."

The room was palatial. The bed was an acre of Irish linen and down comforter. The mattress was most likely stuffed with angel feathers and dreams about clouds. The bathroom was like my own private grotto in some forgotten rain forest in Pelucidar. In a country where water is the greatest commodity, I was surrounded by it. There must have been a gallon of the stuff suspended in the air. Now, a word on that. I was born and grew up on an island. I don't deal well with dry. Hot? Sure. Dry? Hell no.

--continued in the next comment--

I can just see the head of the planning committee spreading out his blueprints.

"So! Here's a list of the features I want. Please pay special attention to the Aegean villas, the Hanging Gardens, and the Eiffel Tower. Oh, and also it should look like a falcon."

Dubai is dry, as I suspect you know. For me, it was like pre-heating an oven to 500 degrees, then letting it sit for an hour, opening it, sticking my head in and taking a deep breath. I was seriously contemplating moving the bed in to the bathroom, but the desire for a shower and some sleep nixed that whole plan, and I proceeded to do what I outlined above.

The next day, I called the field office, and let them know I was checked in and ready to work on the SK's (Sultan's Kid) network.

"He will be sending a car around."

"Oh great" I thought, "I bet this is going to be an hour and a half of sheer third world driving hell, stuck in the back of a converted livestock truck, careening around blind corners while some workmen with excruciating body odor yammer in my ear and trying to steal my wallet. Oh, and someone is going to bring a durian on the bus. Someone ALWAYS brings a durian on the bus."

Right, so, after breakfast, a nice young man in driver's livery comes in to the hotel and gets directed to me, and says that he's here to drive me to the kid's house. (for the record, his name was Abd al'Allah, but I always refer to him as "The Kid") In a small Mercedes limo. And he apologies that he's had to bring such a dirty and outdated car.

The ride was, of course, the finest in German engineering.

The Kid's "house" was like nothing I had ever seen. It was a compound in the middle of the desert, about 30 minutes from the city. Passing the field-stone wall, it was like driving in to another world. There was lush, tropical greenery EVERYWHERE. Mixed in here and there were date palms and little micro-desert oasis looking things, and up near the house, there was a strip of desert that led out to another gate, and I swear there was a freaking line of camels wallowing in the dust.

I get let out of the car and gaze up the steps to the entrance of the palace, and the doors open, and two cliches walk out to greet me. Big men, and I mean BIG MEN, in white poofy pants, turbans, swords and enough body hair to choke a mule come down the steps and roughly pat me down. Then, they inspect my tools and question the driver for a few minutes. One of them pulls a radio out of.. hell, I have no idea where, and says something.

Then, from the area of the door, I hear "AMERICAN! AHHH! WELCOME! YOU HAVE COME TO FIX ABDDY'S COMPUTERS!"

Indeed, I HAD come to fix "ABDDY'S" computers. What I wasn't expecting was the freaking Arab equivalent of Dane Cook to come skipping down the steps, grab my shoulders, fake kiss me on either cheek, then pound me on the back like we were old drinking buddies about to score with some bar skanks.

He couldn't wait to show me off to his friends, cronies, whores, pals, associates, boot-lickers, servants, brown-nosers, harem, staff, and good-time girls.

So, between getting shown to all of his toys as well as his people, I get to work on his network. The problem I found was that his network was designed with a single switch controlling everything. So, single point of failure, and it failed, and everything came crashing down. All it needed was a new power supply, and I suggested rearranging things so the network was more robust and fault tolerant.

$200 in parts, and a few hours of my time, and the job would have been done.

Oh no. Noooooo. Things were broken. The SK couldn't have broken things in his house. Nope. The whole network had to be replaced and rebuilt to my specifications.

At this point, I roll my eyes and try to explain to him that I've got a ship to catch. I can't hang around waiting for parts and cabling and ect. This was the exact wrong thing to say. I insulted.. I dunno, everything apparently.

I could, in fact, wait around for parts and cables because the SK said so. It didn't matter that I had a ship to catch, because his father blah blah blah, so I'd better call whoever needed to be called and let them know I wasn't going to be able to do whatever until I rebuilt the SK's network.



--continued in the next comment--

So I call my field office. They patch me to my boss, who gets his boss on conference, who gets the CEO out of bed, and he gets on the call. I say about three words before I get a 5 minute speech about the importance of customer service and manners and saving for retirement (not sure on that last one, I zoned out a bit), and was told that arrangements would be made when I was done. Don't worry about the ship.

Right. Well then. I'm trapped in some palace in the middle of the desert in Dubai. Cool. I get to mark that off my life list.

I take a few minutes to gather myself, then tell the SK "Ok, I spoke to my superiors. You have my services for as long as you need them."

Suddenly, we're all buddies again.

"Wonderful!" he says "You shall stay in my home and share my meals! Just give a list of the equipment and tools you need to my staff, and I shall see to it that you have all you need."

And then everyone disappeared.

So, I'm standing in .. jeez, I dunno.. the living room? By myself, confused, bewildered, hot, and trapped. A few minutes goes by, and a small man scuttles around a corner in time-space and taps me on the lower back. He motions, says a few words in some language I can't even place, then motions some more. I move in the direction indicated, and he scuttles in front of me. We get to a door and he motions me inside. Its a room. My room apparently. Its nice, and by nice I mean "HOLY SQUID OF MADRID THIS PLACE IS HUUUUUUUUUGE". It has a balcony! Its like a suite! Oh heeeey, a TV!

The little man leaves, and I'm here alone. I try to watch a bit of TV, but I can't understand anything. I freshen up a bit, then lay out on the bed, and there is a knock on my door. Its my luggage. About now, the cold sense of dread sets in as I ponder if this room is going to become a bit too familiar.

I waste time for another couple of hours, and I'm fetched again. This time, its a woman in a full body covering and another little scurrying man. She speaks English, and is supposed to take my orders for the network equipment. The little scurrying man is there to lead us around, and ensure I don't suddenly rape the woman, or something. Fortunately for me, it was a pretty simple set up, and I had the list of stuff I needed in about an hour. I worked out a network drawing in visio on my laptop, and blah blah blah, equipment list submitted.

By now, its dark, and I get fetched for dinner.

By now, this story is getting really long, so I'll just hit the high points.

Excellent food. Wine in a Muslim country. Come oogle the SK's toys and play with them. Here's my harem, have some sex! I didn't visit the harem. A week goes by. More playing with toys. Come shoot some guns. HOLY CRAP YOU OWN A TANK? Hooka break. Seriously, visit the harem. I don't visit the harem. The equipment will be here tomorrow. Tomorrow rolls around with no equipment. "I'm going in to town to stay at my city house for a few days. My home is your home. I expect things to be working when I return." Boredom. Food somehow got better. Swimming pool in the desert? Harem visits me. Guilt. Equipment arrives. Network done. Harem visits again in the night. Additional guilt. SK comes home to a working network, insists I say for a LAN party with his friends. Friends arrive, and we're playing 32 player "Battlefield 1942" with the Desert Combat mod. Everyone seems to want to be on the American team, not the Iraqi team. I somehow always end up on the Iraqi team. Driven to airport. No ticket, no idea what airline I'm taking home. Don't actually go to terminal, go to FBO. Get on private jet. Flown to airport 5 minutes from my house, which is great since my car was at the airport 2 hours from my house. Walk home with luggage. So incredibly glad to be back in my tiny house, tiny bed, and tiny tv. Kinda miss the harem.

Ok, some backfill. Honestly, I didn’t know this was that interesting, as I figured I had started babbling rather than actually imparting information.

Annnyway, its dinner on my first night at Casa Del Desert, and the meal was many notches above sumptuous. I think this one was 8 courses, and it was all in the French style. Lots of rich sauces, savory soups, and some sort of dessert that was like a party in my mouth, and everyone was eating a really good dessert. Now, I mentioned wine. We had wine with dinner. A LOT of wine. Last I heard, Dubai was a very very Muslim country, and drinking is frowned upon.. no.. glowered at, usually with guns and eternal damnation to hell and 72 Waffle House waitresses for eternity. But here it was, French, vintage (’72 being the oldest bottle I saw), and flowing like.. well.. wine. I staggered from the dining room, drunk, full, and feeling like I had just consumed a small European nation’s yearly output of butter. I made several wrong turns on the way to my room, still a rather large man took me by the shoulders and led me to the right door. I got a lecture about drunkenness as we were walking, and an admonishment about the detrimental effects of alcohol on one’s system and soul. Then… “American, you must drink much water tonight before you sleep. Tomorrow, you will be very ill otherwise.”

Yeah. The next day, I was fine.

The guard that helped me out was a pretty nice guy. I couldn’t get his name right, so I just called him Hassan. He was fine with this. If I needed and escort, he was the guy what did it. We talked a lot, and he asked me a lot of questions about America. Mostly daily life stuff and political stuff, like “How is it that you have a President that changes?” and “Why do all Americans live in New York City.” Fun stuff.

Anyway, the next day I get breakfast brought to my room, and the SK is up and moving about at the bright and early hour of 10 am. He has me follow him around as he points out his various electronic toys, video games, huge TVs, ATVs, cars, guns, his harem… oh hey, lets go out in to the desert and shoot guns! Wooo! Oh, but first, lunch. Bratwurst. Sauerkraut.. what? I’m eating German food… in Dubai, before going out in to the hot hot desert to shoot guns. I’m thinking this plan hasn’t been fully thought out, but there isn’t much I can do. We eat up and head out. I get handed a length of white cloth and get shown how to make a head covering, which I highly advise having if you ever go to the Sahara.

Abddy has done this before, because after a 20 minute drive, we’re at some sort of small compound. There are some open air pistol ranges, a few small buildings, and a berm set up for rifles. Abddy gets out and walks around a bit, then some guys in some odd uniforms come running out to talk to him. He gives a few instructions and motions me over to the rifle range. In a few minutes, there is a table set up with The Punisher’s own wet dream of weapons; rifles, assault rifles, submachine guns, machine guns, machine pistols, and something that looked suspiciously like a grenade launcher. There was no preface, there was no safety lecture, there wasn’t even a “Hey, I’m about to shoot.” The SK picked up some random gun, slotted the clip and started firing. I scrambled around and found some ear protectors, then stood by and watched. He looked over and frowned, then pointed at an AKMS and made some sort of hurry up motion. Casual as I could, I picked up the rifle, loaded it, worked the bolt, and discovered that the safety wasn’t on. Hooooboy. 30 rounds down the range later, I’ve got some sort of testosterone high like God must feel when he’s shooting guns. The next while was a bit of a blur of grinning, kid-in-a-candy-store like giddiness with the machinegun being particularly fun. I think it was a PKMS, but I can’t remember exactly, as all I remember thinking was “HOLY CRAP MACHINE GUN!”

--continued in the next comment--

--The Tank—

Abddy says to me “American, you want to be really impressed?”

He walks over to one of the buildings and goes inside. 10 minutes later, I hear some doors opening and a sound like a jet engine off in the distance. Then some rattling. Then some squealing. Then some rumbling. Then I see a freaking M1A1 tank nosing around the corner of the building, Abddy ridding high in the command copula, grinning and waving. I’m having serious problems believing this is happening. I was sure for a moment there that I had died on the plane ride over, or the German food was drugged, or something.. anything but a damn tank rolling towards me with this crazy trust-fund baby sitting in the command position, beaming like a 4 year old with a new tricycle.
“Come up here!” he shouts.
I just gaped.
“Come on American! Its fun! Come up!”
“How!” I yelled back.
“Climb!”

Right. Climb a tank. Ok. Sure. No problem. I make a complete fat ass fool of myself climbing up this tank. I’m trying to throw my legs over things and get purchase with my feet on the road wheels. The metal was heating up from being in the sun, and I was pouring sweat, but I managed to make it up. Then I noticed the crew ladder in the back.

The SK drops down in the copula and I climb up the ladder on the turret and shimmy my way in. It’s a tight fit, but I make it, and suddenly I’m in a god damn tank. There was a big plate on one of the walls that said “US M1A1 Abrams Main Battle Tank, Export” along with a list of something in Arabic. One of the strange uniformed guys I saw earlier is sitting in the gunner’s seat, looking all serious, like this is something more than 50 tons of armored joy-ride. The SK yells in to a radio box up near the commander’s station, and off we lurch, off in to the desert. In a tank.

Did you know? M1’s have air conditioning? Its not all that effective, but the inside of the tank was around 90 degrees but the air was still and stifling. I got shown the loader’s hatch, and popped my head out of that, only to have my face filled with sand, but hey, at least the breeze was nice. So, those were my two options on our 15 drive, and I alternated between them.

Once we got to wherever it was we were going, the SK got REALLY excited. He was jabbering to the gunner and then pointed to me, and pointed to the loader’s hatch. I stuck my head out, and saw an old burnt out truck or something off in the distance. Then the turret rotated and we were pointing right at the thing. My guts lurched. I opened my mouth as I remember reading somewhere you should open your mouth if you expect an explosion. It reduces the pressure on your ears or something. A few heart pounding moments go by, then BOOOOOOOM! My ears are ringing, my legs went to jelly, and my chest is being assaulted by the combined pressure wave and steel lip of the turret. A few seconds later, there is a sad little crack as the burnt out truck met Mr. High Explosive Anti-Tank round at a very terminal velocity in his career. That was pretty much it for me for the day. I never thought I could get my fill of guns, but I was proved wrong. Like Barney Fife, the SK only had a single bullet for his tank, so we whipped it around and headed back for the firing range. My head hurt, and more than anything I wanted to be on the plane home. I was kind of quiet and withdrawn, so the SK kept punching my shoulder and telling me of all the fun things we’d get up to the next day.

Great.

--continued in the next comment--

The next couple of days were very similar. Here is the SK’s toy. Try it out. Isn’t that fun? Here is another toy, try this out? Isn’t that fun? Ahh, I’m going to visit my girls. I’ll send you a couple to your room. “Uh, not right now. I’m feeling a bit sick”

And really, I was. Every afternoon, the hooka got broken out, and it was my honor to take the first drag. The tobacco in those things really isn’t all that strong, as its mostly candied fruits and such, but still, I’m not a smoker, so any amount of nicotine goes right to my head and then to my belly. Blarg.

6 days of this are really wearing on me. He has his friends and good-time girls over for a dance in his own private discothèque. The music is god-awful and loud, and I’m dancing with Russian whores and middle-eastern girls who can’t understand that asking me to do a line of coke off their breasts isn’t a standard pick-up line in the US. It is suggested that I am gay. I must now prove my manhood by taking one of the party-girls up to my room and satisfying her. Here’s where I get lucky. Not in the traditional sense, but in the sense that this girl is 7 sheets to the wind, high as a kite, and barely sensate. A few rubs in a few key places and she’s passed out. I roll over and go to sleep, my head pounding, and my level of disgust with this lifestyle sitting on 11.

Morning rears its ugly head. The sweet and gentle flower that is Fatima(not her real name) has vomited all over her self, the bed, and the floor. I can only imagine that secret squid powers kept me from being covered in the night, so I thank my lucky tentacles and go to brush my teeth.
I get back to my little desert rose trying to work her clothes back on to her uncooperative body. I’m a softie. I help her get her “clothes” back on the right way, and for my trouble, I’m rewarded with an awkward kiss and painful grope. I brushed my teeth again.
She says to me “You were amazing last night.”
“Thanks.”
“Are all American men as good as you?”
“No one is as good as me.”
“You sound like a movie star.”
“…”
“I’ll come back and see you tomorrow. There is a party and I want to show my new American boyfriend to my friends.”
“yeah.”

I hate having to be like that.

Lunch time rolls around and the SK isn’t awake yet. I take my meal with Hassan in the staff kitchen and he cautions me about the various diseases and punishments I could be facing for being with Fatima (still not her real name).
“Nothing happened. She got to my room, passed out, puked all over the place, and I fell asleep.”
“You are wise. Had you taken advantage of one of my countries women, I would have to be very angry with you.”
“So, what if they take advantage of me?”
“HAHAHAHAHAHA! You are funny American.”

The SK makes it up around 3pm, and looks like he’s been run over by his own tank.

“I heard that you were a MAN last night American. I am glad. I will send some more girls to you tonight.”

Great.

--continued in the next comment--

Thought all of this, I’ve got this nagging little voice in my head. “You’re supposed to be at work.” It’s saying. To assuage this guilt, I make some calls to see if I can get tracking on the equipment I ordered. It’s in Dubai, but hung up in customs. I call the field office and try to find out if there need to be bribes or force or something applied. They’ll take care of it they say, but the voice is still there.

Hassan comes around sometime before dinner and asks me to help him with some electronics. The job is nothing more than hooking up a TV, but everyone in this place seems about as non-technical as a deep sea tube worm. Hassan takes this opportunity to talk to me at length about why exactly he disapproves of what goes on in this house, and how he should really say something, but the Sultan is his master, and the Sultan’s children are his charges, and he’d never speak out of turn to them. He doesn’t approve. No sir. Not one bit. I, however, am not part of the family and subject to his avuncular guilt trips.

At dinner, I’m eating with a pounding head and a heavy heart. I really want out of this place, but the equipment that was supposed to be here isn’t. The SK is eating light, but dressed up like a NYC hipster on his way to a club. He tells me before he leaves…

“I'm going in to town to stay at my city house for a few days. My home is your home. I expect things to be working when I return.”

As Kevin Nealon would say as Mr. Subliminal “Blah blah blah Veiled Threat blah blah.”

He takes off in a whirl of sand and god awful cologne and I’m glad to see him go. Thankfully, Fatima (I swear that’s not her real name) never made good on her promise.

I spent most of the rest of the night walking around the palace, trying to see how things were laid out, and taking good long looks at all the areas that I found to be relaxing and beautiful. The SK had horrible gaudy tastes, so it was easy to see which areas bore his special decoration attention. Fortunately, there were little spots that he had overlooked or found too boring. There was a small garden out the back of the house, under but cattycorner to the balcony of my room. It was peaceful as hell, so I spent several hours there just trying to get my brain around everything that had been happening. As it happens, this little area was the back part of the SK’s pool. Olympic sized, full of precious precious water, and unused.

I eventually got tired and made my way to my little chamber. I took a loooooong shower, slipped on some boxers and got in bed. I’m thinking it was a couple of hours later when the door opened. I came wide awake, and broke out in a cold sweat. This was it. My usefulness was at its end, and they were going to kill me. My knife and marlin spike were safely tucked away in my pants, more than a few strides away and in a wardrobe. My hand-to-hand skills… no, I’m pretty lousy at that stuff. Even after 4 years of ju jitsu and various attempts at kung-fu and tai kwon do as a kid, I’m still pretty inept. Ok, so that’s out. I’ll just lay here, and hope for the best. If I see an opening, I’ll take it. Maybe I can make it all the way over to where the tank is stored. Yea… that’s a good plan.

--continued in the next comment--

I jumped when her fingers touched my shoulder. She whispered soothing things in my ear but I couldn’t understand. She slid in next to me, wearing nothing, and just let her fingers work on my neck and ears. She pushed a bit, and I rolled over. Something happened, and her fingers were suddenly pure rays of sunshine warming my cold flesh and unknotting muscles clinched and shaking with fear. She pulled the sheet back and straddled the small of my back, fingers still working, moving up to my neck and down my arms to my hands. She worked her magic on my back, butt, thighs, calves, feet, hands, arms, and brain. While my surreal-o-meter was pegged in the red, my stress-o-meter gradually sank down in to the green. I didn’t even notice her turning me over, or working on the more sensitive parts on the front of my body. I did notice when she lowered herself on to them, and made like she was some sort of futuristic android set on “OH GOD YES YES GOD YES AHH AHHHH OHGOD OHGOD NYA.. ahhh.. AHHHHHHHHHH”.

Now, I’m not a guy who’s adverse to sex. Hell, one of my hobbies involves glorifying Japanese tentacle porn with a stuffed squid at anime conventions, so I would venture to say that I tend to celebrate sex. However… sex with complete strangers has always been one of those things that I’ve never understood. Aside from the horror of STDs and the incredible vulnerability to which you expose yourself, there is the whole lack of emotional connection and close intimacy that I find I enjoy as much as the physical act itself. I used to claim that I was unable to have sex without an emotional attachment, but boy did my penis prove me wrong that night. Like any expert craftsman, the quality of per product was far superior to anything I’d ever made myself.

Next morning, breakfast with the staff. The food is very different from the international rumpus room which I had become accustomed. This was simple food. Traditional food. The volksmuchen of a nomadic people, forced in to a rigid system of tyrannical rule and excessive resource mismanagement. Plus, it was full of dates.

The food was a real tonic for my soul. I felt better after that meal than I had at any time in the last few days. I even helped with the dishes, much to the amusement of just about everyone.

Just before lunch, there is a delivery, and I am fetched down to the garage. There is a stack of boxes with the all too familiar Cisco logo, and I am suddenly useful. I am a whirlwind of action. I have lunch brought to me in the network room. Hassan is amazed at my speed and agility when handling a punch tool. I am in my element, the strangeness of the situation lost in the subtle and complex rhythms of a task that is as natural to me as breathing. I boot a router and feel a surge of pure joy as the command line prompt comes to life.

Router>

Router> hostname Kashmir

Kashmir >
And suddenly, all is right with the world.


--continued in the next comment--

The downfall of being good and fast at your job is suddenly I had no more job to do. The network was up and running and I had built it such that several pieces could fail and the whole thing would be ok. I documented the hell out of it, and left notes for any future techs that might come along and judge my work. I am at peace. My function has been fulfilled, and I know I did it well.

This little bit of euphoria carries me though dinner and a pretty interesting walk around the grounds with Hassan. He is impressed with my technical skills and confides in me that he is intimidated by technology. His father was very traditional, he says, and lived the nomad’s life free of the sins that come with wealth and privilege. Part of his territory overlapped that of the Sultan and the two had struck a bargain. The nomad would send a son from every family in his tribe to serve the Sultan, and in return, the Sultan would allow them to live as they had done, and if need be, supply food and water to the tribe. As I understand it, this was all sealed with a handshake.

So, here is Hassan, thirty years in service to the Sultan, guarding his property, keeping his family safe, and utterly baffled by an iPod. He also spoke four languages fluently, could probably kill a man with a stick of gum, and once punched a camel in the face so hard, the camel exploded. Ok, so I made that last part up, but still. He was an interesting guy.

Bed that night, and I was falling asleep with a big smile on my face. I felt accomplished.

I woke up feeling breasts on my arms. Both of them.

The harem had come to call, and it was a pair of them by the feel of things. At this point, I sort of wanted their tender attentions. I did a good job, and damn but did I deserve some recreation. I was active. I was dynamic. They wore me the hell out. I still felt guilty, but it was the kind of guilt I could assuage by marking another thing off my life list. Neat.

The rest of the story is as I outlined in the short short verion in previous comments. There was a LAN party, but unknown to them, I was damn good at the game they were playing.

I got a ride home in a private jet, but it wasn’t chartered to me solely. I was sharing the ride with some executives, lesser nobles, a couple of high class whores, and two very twitchy, non-clichéd guards. Most of them got off in New York. The executives were in for the long haul to Houston with me. We didn’t talk much. Suits never have much to say to me unless there is a problem and I am the man-hours contracted as a technical resource to provide excellence to their paradigm.

The co-pilot came back and asked me which airport was closest to my house. Without thinking I said “EFD”, which is the closest airport to my house. I slept though the landing at IAH, where my car was parked, and had to be woken by the pilot as he was stepping out for some fresh air.

“Hey fella, we’re here.”

Fuck.

So, the end to my saga finds me walking the 5 miles home, dragging my suit case, lugging my laptop bag, and breathing in the hot wet air and scents of home.


-End-

Wall of text? But of course! ;)

And then, after single-handedly re-inventing both tastelessness and conspicuous consumption from first principles, the “villas” are the same crappy mcmansions we can see out the Interstate from any American city.

Okay, I can see Paris, the Luxor, and the Venetian; but Bellagio, Harrah's, and the Wynn are nowhere to be seen.

Let's just hope for their sake that the developers aren't set to recreate the Las Vegas housing market foreclosure crisis as well.