Crime and Punishment

For some reason, even though I live in the Land of No Crime, it seems there has been a rash of news stories dealing with criminals lately. Or at least dealing with people who are being fined, sentenced (sometimes to life), or beheaded.

A week and a half ago, The National ran this story:

Lebanese man avoids execution for witchcraft

Riiiiiiight. I'm not even going near the word 'avoids' because it wouldn't surprise me if it were still going to happen. But this guy was picked up as soon as he hit the Saudi border during his Haj trip by the religious police because he had a television show where he made little predictions a la Miss Cleo. And now he's sitting around waiting to see (see?) if he'll be beheaded on the next National Beheading Day. Word of advice: don't get caught reading your horoscope in Saudi.

Today we find another exciting piece:

Mother of window fall boy gets two-year sentence for sex out of wedlock

Window Fall Boy? Well, I suppose that's what you call a boy who fell out of a window. Here's the brief version: Emirati divorceé leaves her three year old son with the maid during the night to go meet her lover. Kid falls from window. Result? Mother gets two years in prison for sex-out-of-wedlock and two months for negligence resulting in death of her son. Maid gets one month in prison followed by deportation. Lover gets two years in prison for sex-out-of-wedlock. I like these kinds of stories, because they shine a nice, bright light on where the priorities are in the system over here.

Also today, and also in The National, we read:

Pregnant trafficker is jailed for life

There have been so many drug-related stories lately that I expected another one about five kilos of heroin. But no, but no. This gal was trafficking valium. About US$80,000 worth. And as if life in prison isn't enough, she's also been fined 50,000 Dhs (US$13K). One has to wonder what the point of that is. But it gets even better: prosecutors are asking for the death penalty. The death penalty for trying to sell valium.

And finally:

Gynaecologist jailed after woman's death

The abject lack of details in this case just doesn't sit well with me. Maybe they're out there somewhere. Maybe they're not.

Newsflash: Public (in)decency in the UAE

Thanks to The Gulf News, we residents of the UAE now have a handy pictorial guide to being decent in the desert -- in other words, dressing and behaving in an 'acceptable' manner in terms of cultural stupidities sensibilities.

One of the captions (about that bastion of cultural freedom, Sharjah -- you know, the Emirate that has recently put a ban on the lungi) states:

'People are advised not to wear very short shorts or skirts above the knee.'

Another image from Mall of the Emirates in Dubai advises mallgoers to 'Please wear respectful clothing':

Whew! All I can say is 'thank you, Gulf News!' Now I know how to be a good UAE resident.

Except for this one tiny little problem...

A few days before this guide to non-offensiveness was published, the very same newspaper ran a series of photos from Dubai Fashion Week (whenever that was -- I happened to be conspicuously absent). My favourite is this:

Holy bodacious tatas, Batman! Do you see those puppies? I dare this gal (or anyone else) to walk into Mall of the Emirates wearing this thing. I think Julia Roberts had more on in the first scene of Pretty Woman.

Sex in the city

No, I'm not talking about the television show.

Just in the past week, I've read four separate articles about people going to jail over some sort of sex-related activity -- from texting, to kissing, to homosexual activity, to sex in a car:

From Gulf News, 12 March 2010:

Couple to Appeal Public Kissing Verdict in Dubai

From The National, 17 March 2010:

Airline Pair Jailed Over Sex Texting

From Gulf News, 18 March 2010:

Two Men Charged for Sex in a Cemetery

From Gulf News, 20 March 2010:

Ras Al Khaimah Sex-in-Car Duo to Serve Sentence

All of the offenders in these cases are facing varying amounts of jail time followed by deportation. Some of them were also fined for consuming alcohol (this one really gets my knickers in a twist -- anyone wanna guess how many bars there are in Dubai? Perhaps the idea is that it's ok for the bars to be there as long as no one actually drinks the product for sale). Some were married, some were not, some were married to other people.

Go ahead, say what you want about the immorality of extra-marital relations, homosexual activity, or public displays of affection. I'll listen patiently, but the fact is I don't really care. I don't find much offensive in this world (except maybe for Barack Obama and any sort of mashed legume dish). But of course people here have a different offense-threshold.

And the state sanctions this.

I mean, come ON folks -- does a couple of expats really deserve a month or two in jail because someone witnessed them kissing in a bar at zero dark-thirty? Are people able to sleep better now that they know the Emirates Airlines employees who (maybe) sent each other sexy text messages are going to rot in the slammer for a while?

Surely there must be more important things to worry about.

How to get into the British Club without really trying

...just waiting a long time.

Way before we moved here, we spent a couple of entertaining evenings at The (British) Club -- I still can't bring myself to call it "The Club" -- eating, drinking, and answering trivia questions during Quiz Night. It was fun enough (and cheap enough) that we decided to apply for membership as soon as we moved here, realising that we'd probably be on the bottom of an 8,000-name waiting list. And we pretty much were, until about 8,000 members chose not to renew their membership this past January. Who said economic crises didn't have their positive points?

So we got offered membership, and we took it, even though the British Club is far enough away that it might as well be in Dubai (which is not, contrary to what most of our friends think, the same as Abu Dhabi).

See what I mean? It really is out there in No Man's Land.

But I won't hold that against it. Clever old Sheikh Zayed was generous enough to give the expats a place to play and still keep them (and those nasty western habits like drinking and eating pig) at a distance. So The Club is nextdoor to the former animal market and across the water from a construction zone? Those little things matter a lot less when the beer costs 12 Dhs, the library has a decent stash of lit, and the hairdresser learned her trade in a country where women actually get their hair cut.

The beach is good (especially if you're into barge cranes like I am), the restaurants serve more-than-reasonable food at half the cost of a hotel eatery, kids need to be kept on a leash (ok, not really, but two-foot-tall people aren't allowed on the premises after 8:30 PM). There's a sailing club, a diving section, a drama group, and all sorts of other things to do.

And then there's the bar.

Actually, there are TWO bars -- the bar for expats, and the bar that is, as we were told on our orientation tour last summer, "preferred by some of our, um, local members." That's ClubSpeak for "The Wog Bar." Or maybe for "the bar where you are guaranteed to find an emirati sipping a beer at 11:00 in the morning."

This is the bar we generally like to visit, for a couple of reasons. One, there's a distinctive (and pleasant) lack of stupid music playing. Two, on any given night there will be a group of affable khandoura-clad men having a quiet drink, thus illuminating the ever-present hypocrisy I so enjoy pointing out.

Education in the desert, part five

I've had a bit of a crisis lately. It goes something like this:

What the f- am I doing here?

(-uck omitted so my mum doesn't get too upset and stop reading)

There have been some retarded things going on in the academic world over the past six months, but a recent occurrence takes the cake. As usual, I'm going to have to do a little eggshell-walking in relaying it to you, so bear with me.

I've heard that the home-schooling movement, particularly in the United States, grew from fundamentalist (in the religious sense) roots. While researching the issue many years ago, I came across a piece that talked about the great disdain these pioneering religious nutters literalists have for the words "jeez" and "gosh" and its role in the home-schooling movement. The reasoning must have gone something like this:

"Jeez" is an abbreviation of "Jesus Christ," and "gosh" is something like "God" in disguise. We don't like to say the words "Jesus Christ" or "God" unless we're praying, so we don't like to say "jeez" or "gosh" either. Not only do we not like to say them, we don't want to hear them or read them. But there are so many people in the world who use "jeez" and "gosh," and so many books that have those words written in them. What to do, what to do? Wait! I've got it! We'll remove our children from society and not give them anything to read except bible stories.

Well, take that wackiness and multiply it by about eight million. Then imagine a bunch of young adults who have been so brainwashed and sheltered that the mere sight of "jeez" or "gosh" in a piece of writing nearly brings them to tears. It offends them. It makes them sad. Their solution? Never, ever, read anything like that again. Maybe just never read at all. That would be safe.

Now I'll tell you what offends me. I'll tell you what makes me sad. And I mean really sad. Sad with a capital S.

These kids weren't born this way. Someone intentionally did this to them.

If that isn't sad, I don't know what is.

Education in the desert, part four

And I might as well get on with part five as well, so look for it soon.

I need to tread lightly here, not because I'm concerned with offending anyone's sensibilities, but because I would strongly prefer not to be hauled out into the desert in the middle of the night and beaten to a pulp with a camel prod.

The thing is this: I really have serious doubts as to whether this nation will ever be able to stand on its own without the help of skilled workers from that terrible, corrupt, demon-ridden place called (gasp!) THE WEST. Here's why:

I've just heard about the academic results from, oh, let's just call it a past semester at some educational institution here in the UAE. And they're bad. I mean really bad. These numbers make my 3.2 GPA from a tier one university (ok, it was back when substance use was probably encouraged by the provost) look like a pretty satisfactory criterion for the Fields Medal. I can't give you the actual numbers, but I can give you a hint: 2.0 is to the right of the mean.

That's pretty bad in itself, but what's worse is the fact that the results differ dramatically when we compare demographic groups. What, you ask, do I mean by that?

I'll illustrate with an example:

Suppose we took a group of, oh, I don't know, cars, and divided it into two subgroups. One of those groups is, let's say, the set of all Maseratis, and the other is the set of non-Maseratis. Now we compare the engine size of the two sets. The Maserati engines average well under 2.0 litres; the non-Maserati average is more like 3.2 litres.

This disparity is pretty worrisome, particularly if you're a Maserati car manufacturer who's just invested a ton of money in a new factory. People just aren't going to want to buy that vehicle with a dinky little engine when they can get so much more for the same amount of money. As soon as those Car and Driver reviews hit the streets, Mr Maserati is going to be out of business, not to mention the fact that he's gonna lose some serious face on the automotive circuit.

Unless...

He lies about the engine size.

You know how all these cars advertise the engine capacity right on the back of the trunk? Well, one thing our car manufacturer could do is to just slap a little "3.0" where the "1.0" would normally go. Whaddaya think of that? After all, no one will really know about it until well after Mr M has sold a whole mess of under-performing vehicles, made a name for himself, and retired happily to the outskirts of Detroit. The autoworkers might know, but the problems of finding a job in the auto industry are well-known, and Mr. M is paying them far above the market rate. Trust me, most of them won't talk.

But enough about cars.

Education in the desert, part three

I like to wind up a course with a rap session amongst the students (and me) about what they expected a course to be like, what they would like to see more of, how they felt about the fact that someone with a submoronic IQ and a four-year-old's grasp of English is sitting next to them in class and will probably be sitting next to them next semester as well -- you know, that sort of thing.

One of the things they missed was literature. Ok, some of them missed literature, the other half wanted more grammar exercises and games (yes, you read that right). So we talked about what sort of cultural knowledge they thought they should have and how it would help them be better engineers and so forth. (I did have to point out to them that once they graduated from university they were unlikely to be locked in a room with a bunch of other people exactly like themselves.)

So we got onto the topic of the humanities in education -- art, literature, music, philosophy, and so forth -- and for some reason we paused on music. We paused because I asked them the following question:

How many of you have heard of Tchaikovsky?

One hand went up. One. Out of, oh, about 65. And that's only because the person that hand belonged to happened to be born in the same country as the above-mentioned composer. Well, perhaps Russian composers just aren't that popular in the mideast. So I tried again:

Mozart?

Beethoven?

Puccini?

Verdi?

Chopin?

No, no, no, no,and no. A few thought they'd heard of Puccini, but I suspect that may be due to the existence of some expensive handbag store that adopted the name to make it sound as if the Chinese rubbish for sale was made in Italy. The sad part is that all the bright students know that they don't know lots of things about the world.

The stupid ones just don't give a shit.