Thank You Chicago

On my way back to Trinidad (for Carnival), I took a detour through Chicago to visit my best friend and matron of honour, Kelley (so what if I forgot my winter coat in the mad rush to the airport and it's February?).

I decided I'd take a full day to sleep in and recover from my awesomely-bad jet-lag as Kelley and her husband went to work/school. I peeked outside my cozy bedroom window the morning after I landed and saw a thick blanket of snow covering the park, the trees wrapped in ice, and the balcony furniture, cars and park benches now plump white figures covered in fresh powder.
Good morning sleepy Illinois, it's 5am.
Somehow I had forgotten that jet-lag from East to West meant that I wake up at 4-5am on the US/Caribbean side of the planet; thank God they had great TV and a cute little pug named Stella that has personality for days and loves to cuddle.

Snow
Ice
Howling wind
Bundled up neighbors shuffling down the road walking their dogs
The morning papers abandoned on icy steps......

"Morning Shan! Here's a coat you can borrow incase you want to go for a walk later, okay? I'll be home around 7, call me if you need anything."

"Okay! Thanks Kell! Have a great day!" ....'Go for a walk?!'


On my second day I decided to see what Chicago's Art Institute had to offer. Kells and Jono only mentioned it half a dozen times since I've been threatening to visit them, perhaps it was something worth seeing.



Modern - Post-Modern Art Heaven





How had I forgotten that the short-list of paintings that I had not seen in my travels were all housed in this place?
Chicago was always one of those obscure cities my post-modern art professor brought up often that I never figured I'd find myself going to on an art-pilgrimage... not like my Venice Biennale art-Olympics, London and New York art crawls, and trips to France to see Monet's Giverny 'water-gardens'. Chicago was that place on that TV series that I stopped watching a few seasons ago and the city where Bill and Guiliana from E! lived part-time and filmed their reality show.

The Art Institute of Chicago is, hands down, the best modern / post-modern art museum I have ever visited, and the art snob that I am, I am not used to being blown away by a museums collection. It was a truly awe-inspiring seven hours, yes, seven hours.

Cassatt, Van Gogh, Cezanne, Pissarro, Gaugain, Touluse Lautrec, Seurat, Manet,

The best Claude Monet collection outside of Musee d'Orsay in Paris,

Rushca, Dumas, Le Witt, Nauman, Richter, Bourgeois, Flavin, Fischli, Weiss, Whistler, Sargent, Inness, Homer, Tanner, O'Keeffe, Hopper's "Night Hawks", Wood, Carrra, Albright, Munch, Pollock, Dekooning, Newman, Brown, Guston, Hesse, Serra, Stella, Hamilton, Rauschenberg, Lichtenstein, Resenquist, Bacon, Gorky,

Who knew I could like Hockney?,

Matta, Leger, Arp, Miro, Dubuffet, Giacometti, Ernst, Ray, Magritte, DeChirico, ...

I spent the day clicking away at the audio guide trying to soak up every art-history anecdote it had to offer. I didn't make it through the whole gallery and after many hours I was asked to leave, the gallery was closed.. it had closed a while ago...

Amazing.

Amazing collection.

That night I had my first, authentic, Chicago pizza and I passed out around 8. I endured a good teasing as I crept up the stairs to bed and flaked out.

Sunday morning we had brunch at The James, went shopping with Kells and had a nice dinner at a beautiful French-Vietnamese restaurant. My time flew by thanks to my wonderful hosts.








It was home time already... but no big goodbyes as I'd be seeing Kells and Jono in a few days to party in the streets of Trinidad for Carnivallllllll !

Web - Censorship

They block websites that contain unsavory content here.

I say 'They' in my art-school proverbial-status-quo decision-making-powers-that-be kind of way. The 'they' we used to use in our academic writing in University that started with a capital " T ", as we penned our left-wing papers on advertising, education, subject matter in art, propaganda, and political decision-making.

One service provider in Qatar has "a clear policy that aims to prevent damage to the values of the community from harmful material on websites" that they claim is backed strongly by the locals.  

Some of these websites include social-networking sites, celebrity gossip sites, video streaming, and then of course some of the more obvious offenders like those with pornographic content. 

Here's the cute pink page that comes up with these goofy little guys telling you that the content is prohibited. 

Good Morning Vietnam

Posing for the camera

Another cozy flight. Another adventure.


We landed in Ho Chi Minh Airport in the early evening. I walked down the long empty corridors of the arrival terminal into the immigration hall. Next in line. My immigration officer looked more like an army officer in green coveralls and a cap.. actually he had the look of an Eastern version of Castro. He click, click, clicked through his computer for what felt like an hour. He told me nothing and sat rigid in his chair.. Click. Click. Click. Click..  What's the problem? Is it my hand-written visa from the embassy in Doha? Have I been air marked? Am I on the next Locked Up Abroad? Oh God. Am I sweating?! 
Click. Click... "OK."
"OK?"
"OK."
"OK!" I smile at the officer hardly able to contain myself as I try not to skip and jump past him to collect my baggage. Five minutes suspended in front of a Vietnamese immigration officer is long enough. There is something nerve wracking about a new place with a totalitarian government, a language barrier, and notorious jails, even if all I had to declare is that I packed too much clothes for my two-day stay.


I met up with the Captains wife and we chatted about where to shop while we waited for the crew. One hour later we were at our palatial hotel and off to grab a bite on Pham Ngu Lao St., a bustling strip filled with restaurants, coffee shops, boutiques, and still decorated with red flags and lights for the Chinese New Year days before. 

The food in Vietnam is delicious, spicy, sweet, complexed, with ginger, garlic, chili, odd shaped mushrooms, bok choy, baby corn, pork, calamari, fresh fruit juices, iced green tea,  gỏi cuốn (spring/summer rolls) and bánh mì (French baguettes!.. a culinary remnant of the French colonial rule which ended in 1954). 




We woke up early the following morning and perused the streets lined with stores selling copies of books, dvds, paintings, designer t's, copper buddhas, chop sticks, woven bags, silk, jade bracelets, all at the fraction of the price we're used to in the West. For $100US you'll get $2,000,000 Vietnamese Dong. After the initial sticker shock with items priced in the hundreds of thousands you realize that picking up a handful of things (t'shirts, shorts, shell covered boxes, and bracelets), each with six figure price tags, you get to the cash and realize you've just spent $5US for the ten items in your hands. Dinner? $11US for us both, including alcohol, and that was on the expensive night.




Vietnam... crazy, traffic, smells, dust, markets, narrow streets, bicycles with heavy loads, cool, hot, tangled power lines, red bunting, fruit vendors, crowded markets, chickens, motorbikes, slippers, socks with toes, mani/pedis for $3us, rooms for rent, backpackers, vespas, rickshaws, drugs, cheap designer bags, cheap t's, cheap shorts, cheap food, cheap beer..

Every now and then you visit a place where you can see the cultural stains of war. This usually translates into beautiful and sometimes political story-telling artwork, frescoes, or influences seen in architecture. During this visit we saw national pride, red flags, 'war remnants' museums, and the Thalidomide-like disfigurement of those physically affected by Agent Orange-- second generation war victims born after the end of the Vietnam War. We visited the War Remnants Museum. It was originally opened as "The House for Displaying the War Crimes of American Imperialism" and later renamed as the "Museum of American War Crimes"the name was changed again after the normalization of US relations. Its exhibits included a yard filled with military equipment, tanks, a UH-1 Huey, A-1 Skyraider (my husband told me not to call it a 'bomber' so -- 'Skyrader'... insert eye-rolling smiley here), an F-5A fighter and unexploded ordnance in the corner (!). Inside, the museums rooms were filled with propaganda posters, gory exhibits of graphic photographs of the guerrilla warfare, sadistic acts of violence, and the use and effects of the napalm and phosphorous bombs and Agent Orange. There were visitors crying, others watching in fascination, disbelief, and abject horror, and a very large American woman dressed in a black tracksuit with "making the world a fitter place" written on the back just to lighten the mood.










What makes Vietnam Vietnam are the people. Their warmth and hospitality made every hustle-and-bustle-filled day feel like a fun-filled, hot, sticky adventure.


Good morning Vietnam. See you again soon.

Meet the Burkini

Meet the burkini... freedom, flexibility, confidence..

Flying & The Saudi Businessman

"Dad, I have a jumpseat request, I'm going back to Doha and I see you're operating the JFK flight, can I get the jumpseat to New York pretty please?"

"That seat is already taken."

"Don't f around."

"Hahah, just kidding, the jumpseat is yours."

There is nothing like the kind of flying I do now compared to what I used to do. "Chalk and cheese" said the Saudi businessman sitting next to me. I never quite saw it that way, but he was right.

"Winged Victory"/ "Nike of Samothrace" 200-190 BC. Lourve, Paris

I used to sit in the front of the plane where the view and all the buttons and levers are. Every day I had to sit next to a disgruntled Captain and play glorified-bus-driver for 9+ hours. They bad-mouthed me for speaking well, for being too feminine, too outspoken, for expecting too much, for having a good posture, and reading the check-list in a female voice. I was told I was "too proper" and "so much of a woman that I was gay to fly with;" no, I'm not talking about the Middle East, they treat women better than that out here, I'm talking about my old airline job.

The kind of flying I do now involves champagne and seats that fold out into beds large enough to accommodate a camel. I can't count the number of times I've been asked if I miss flying, nor the amount of times I've said "no". It's not rocket science (no pun intended to the guys that still fly the Dash-8 like it's the space shuttle), what was there for me to miss? The taking off or the landing bit? Showing a man that I can do what he did at work in a "mans world" isn't a good idea I found out (I got that line on my flight test... from my check-airman). My ancestry didn't help much either, one Manager told me "you white people ran this place for years, it's we turn now" (hey, I didn't say they had the best grammar, did I?). And 3,000 landings and take-offs later I can safely say I've "been there, done that."

I suppose growing up riding shot-gun on my way to Europe with my captain-dad didn't really prepare me for the reality of the aviation world twenty years later, well after the era of the Sky-Gods. The price I paid for being a young, educated, white woman with a voice in this place? I never got to fly with my dad... but boy did I get a good life handed to me.
And ... I still get to travel with daddy, just like old times.



The Saudi Businessman 



After the initial embarrassment of having a Saudi man try to make small talk as he sat next to me in first class, I realized he was talking to me because he recognized that I am a western woman (that might sound daft, but most people here think I am arab because I dress so conservatively and it is rude for a man to approach an arab woman). I had never chatted with a Saudi man before because of the cultural lines drawn here. He was cool and laid back. We chatted about different cultures, traveling, politics, children, education... I asked him about the way people dress in the Middle East, the difference between the mens white ghutra and the red checkered ghutra (no difference,  but Saudi men do not starch their head-dress where Qatari men do), why some women wore abbayahs while others only wore hijabs (personal preference), what the solid-gold beak-like things the older women wore across their faces were (an old bedouin tradition). I told him that my husband said that if I was naughty that he'd make me wear a face-cage. He laughed and said "yes" and I laughed thinking "the guys at my old job might agree."

Kuala Lumpur to meet the Best-Man and how to Avoid Prison

So, I had yet to meet our best-man until a few fine days ago.

To back-pedal a bit, as I speak about my husband and my upcoming wedding at the same time...


Not auditioning for Locked Up Abroad: M.E.

I had decided to move to Qatar before our big June '11 wedding and did not want to stand the chance of being on an episode of "Locked up Abroad: Middle East" for living "immorally".

Visiting my fiance meant getting a nice hotel to apply for my single-woman-visa for me, they copy my passport and monitor my stay. The last time I went they thought I was a working-girl as I checked into my five-star digs (a visa requirement) and hardly spent any time there.

Heading out to the Middle East to visit, far less live with a single man is illegal, so to get the months-long permanent resident process started so that I could live with my fiance, we'd have to get married sooner..  so marry we did in a lovely and intimate civil ceremony that my dad graciously hosted for us, with only four days notice. Thanks dad.

The outpouring of joy and support for us was moving, Ryan was welcomed into my family with open arms and despite all the usual Trinidadian bacchanal, baby-on-the-way rumors at work, and family that were 'shocked' and 'aren't acknowledging the marriage for five years' (see you at the wedding folks), we had an absolutely wonderful day.

So, Off to KL to meet the Best-Man 

As I was saying,..
I had not met our best-man, Ry's childhood friend, and boarding-school partner-in-crime, Pete; so we hopped on a plane to Malaysia to meet my newest favorite person.

Pete is the COO of a leading PR Firm in Malaysia, and as as one would imagine of someone at the top of the PR food-chain, he is every bit the gregarious, confident, creative character, and then some.

We spent our two days in Kuala Lumpur at Pete's place. We went shopping, then out to a swank hotel for champagne, beer and lattes, met up with a few other friends, Ezra and Abbas Saad ("Malaysia's Beckham"), then to dinner at a great little dive that Ryan loves for their pork-something-or-other (it was delicious) before heading home for more drinks and old-talk and Sarah Brightman-singing 'till the wee hours of the morning. How Pete made it to work the next day was beyond me. Ryan and I woke up at noon.

We had lunch with Pete before his driver took us back to the hotel at the airport. It was home-time already.

See you in Trinidad in June for our (second) big day Pete !

Copenhagen for my Birthday

What Birthday is complete without going to a nice dinner with your better half? 


"Let's try that new restaurant in Denmark babe, I hear they have great steak." ... They also serve alcohol, not to mention pork -- we were on a plane before I could say "Pølsevogn" (sausage wagon).


We ate like kings for dinner the night we flew in, and went into town for lunch the next day. We walked along the beautiful, historic and very frozen, Nyhavn canal, where we saw remnants of their new years celebration a few days earlier (champagne bottles, streamers and a few chairs on the ice next to the centuries-old ships). 
Hans Christian Anderson lived here! 


It was bitterly cold, so we were happy to find a cozy little place for a bite. We were blown through the doors of the Hyttefadet pub (opened in 1734) and were greeted by the owner of the wood-paneled, cozy little restaurant full of candle-light and roses, and seated no more than twelve. The walls were full of whimsical and now patinaed paintings by Asger Jorn (1914). We shared a seafood platter, Ry had wine while I hugged my coffee mug to warm up. When we were leaving the owner gave us a special little gift (a fridge-magnet of his iconic restaurant), and told us that we must join his facebook page as we were the first Trinidadians to have a meal there. We left happy and warm with pink cheeks and full tummies. We walked downwind and hopped right back onto the subway back to our hotel. 



We picked up a few things for our Doha home in the uber-sleek, Danish-design home-ware-full mall and nipped back to the hotel next door to fight off the cold and nap for our flight home.


Beautiful Copenhagen, we will see more of you next time.

Sweet Maldives

Ryan took me to the Maldives a few days after Christmas; and no, it wasn't my Christmas present, I am spoiled; that and life is far too short not to enjoy it .. and by that I mean life is too short not to go to the Maldives as part of my (and your) life-long adventure. 

We flew into the Republic's capital city, Malé, and took a speed boat to the island of Kandooma, one of the 1,192 coral paradise islands of the Maldives. We sped past dolphins and beautiful water bungalows through the crystal waters of the Indian Ocean atolls. When we arrived we were greeted by our concierge who checked us in while we sipped a fruit cocktail in the lounge, he took us on a tour of the island and then to our bungalow where our bags awaited us. The beaches and water were breathtaking, and there was no end to pampering during our stay. Cocktails on the beach? Yes. Five star spread for dinner? You bet. Movies on the beach in comfy beanbags in the evenings? There's that too. 

A very Doha Christmas

Christmas came to us on Zamzam street as the Doha-family gathered around our table and shared a special lunch and afternoon at our Doha home.

Disney M.E.

The temperature here is Perfect (n.b. it is winter now, when summer rolls around and it's 50 degrees Celcius I'm sure I'll be dedicating an entire post to the temperature, or air conditioning..).

It feels a little like I'm in Disney; a Middle Eastern themed Disney park with Arabian characters (men in long white shirts, and white or red headdress with black cord, and women in long black abayas with veils covering their faces), falcons with their costumed falcon trainers, a genuine Souq (bedouin market) with costumed guards on white horses, perfect weather and no rain, huge elaborate facades and minarets and Islamic carvings on all of the buildings and mosques with a call-to-prayer sound-track, amazing shopping and expensive coffee... and Abracadabraaaa!!--- we're in Disney M.E.

How many times can you ride "it's a small world" in the Magic Kingdom? The grocery here is out of this world, they have anything I could dream of wanting in nine different varieties from twelve different countries (except ham and alcohol of course), and did I mention service? Yes, service in a grocery --with as many staff as there are customers. Want your pineapple peeled and fresh fish cleaned and de-boned? seasoned? want different icing on that cake? "Of course madam."

There is no Disney that comes without rules....

No pointing (fine).

No wasting drinking water (bigger fine).

No giving the finger (no fine-- you'll make a jail and then they'll deport you).

No wine with your fancy lunch or dinner.. unless you're in a hotel. Saying that, there is a nice array of fresh fruit faux-cocktails on the menu, the lemon-mint is delicious and refreshing and is a popular drink here.

If I want to cross the street I have to take a taxi (or answer to my husband); the driving here is That crazy.

Every now and then you'll see a Qatari man with a falcon on his arm; they are associated with nobility and wealth. There are falcon hospitals here, elite falcon associations, and an airline that allows up to 6 of these birds onboard ....as long as they have their own seats ... oh, and the aircraft also can't be dispatched unless there is a prayer mat (magic carpet) in the cockpit (it's in the MEL!).

The Souk guards are something to see in the old bedouin market -- immaculate white uniforms, white horses decorated with large red cord and tassels, huge guns slung over their shoulders, and a little man with an old wheelbarrow running behind them picking up after the horses with a shovel. It's a sight that could easily be straight out of a Sunday morning cartoon (or the Disney M.E parade).

The women wear beautiful abayas made of the finest silks and luxurious cotton, often jeweled at the sleeves, skirts and edges of their veils. The abayas are all made and often customized by the Western designers we know and love-- Gucci, Dior, Fendi, DKNY, Louis Vuitton and Versace, just to name a few. The women also all carry fabulous designer handbags and wear the latest Jackie-O-style shades.

The men wear white ankle-length robes that look like long shirts (really they're just long white dresses), called thobes. The head-dress is a large square-shaped cloth typically made of cotton called a ghutra. In Qatar (unlike Saudi) the men starch their headdresses so they are very stiff and stay folded back over the iqal (the black cord that holds the ghutra in place).

Family often ask me about my clothes as they are accustomed to seeing me wear sleeveless tops and skinny jeans in Trinidad. Unlike Saudi, Qatar is more liberal with the dress-code of their expat residents. I see many foreign wives in regular western clothes-- flip-flops, tank tops and shorts out and about at malls, doing groceries etc. Many guide books will advise foreigners to dress modestly out of respect, and to avoid stares I am far more conservative than most when it comes to dressing here. I wear my normal tops and jeans from home, yes, but always under a big shawl that covers my chest and arms. Just being female will get you attention (with the male to female ratio at 2:1), so dressing modestly is far more comfortable than a pair or shorts and a lot of unwanted attention, but hey, that's just me. So in the end I dress with my big shawl, bigger handbag and even bigger shades, am approached by other arab women thinking that I am one of them, I am ushered through immigration lines and security ... not a bad trade-off for the shorts.

The men will run over a woman if she does not get out of his way (chivalry was lost in the middle ages during the crusades here, don't believe me? look it up). I am usually careful but last week I was almost knocked over at one of the clinics because I didn't see him coming... from behind me. The cultural exchanges (always few and far between) certainly add to the charm of the place.. almost makes Disney M.E. feel more authentic.

My husband married a princess and I live in a sandcastle with a spa next-door.

Come visit us in the land where dreams are made. Aren't you excited?

Doha Living

The compound we are in is lovely. It's huge, with over 1,100 townhouses and apartments, though it does not feel like the cramped, over-crowded town-living of Trinidad, where neighbors can see inside each others houses or hear through the walls. The townhouses and apartment blocks look like perfect little sandcastles with moulding, and islamic filigree framing the windows and doors.

Our street is quiet and very private. There are many large playgrounds for kids, a nursery, dry-cleaning, a grocery that delivers, our very own mosque, a restaurant, cafe, huge heated pools and lounge areas, beautiful spa and two massive recreation buildings that include squash courts, tennis courts, billiards rooms, sauna, and a five star gym with state-of-the-art equipment and personal trainers. There is no getting bored while Ry is away on a flight; I have wonderful friends on the compound, and a spa and gym when I am not keeping myself busy painting.

And did I mention that the Villagio is right around the corner?

I can live with that. You ?

Permanent Resident Hoop-Jumping

I spent most of my first few days organizing my permanent residence here in Qatar,.. that and getting over my jet-lag, which involved sleeping until noon and feeling drunk with tiredness when awake.

There is a medical one must pass for the permanent resident status that includes a chest x-ray and blood work (fail this medical and they deport you). My good friend Danila took me to the clinic (the morning after I got in, ie. the morning after our girls-night drink-up). We drove through the entrance to the medical center in Dani's tank and were directed toward the female parking. There is a different entrance for women on the side of the building.

This was an interesting cultural exchange, and the first of many.

The medical unit is known to some as the "concentration camp", mostly because you stand in a line half dressed waiting for a medical something to happen and you're not sure what it is because of the language barrier.. laughable now, but it was the longest hour of my life; just me, my beautiful Italian friend holding my handbag and fifty Philipinas (all nannies to the Qatari and expat kids, and pets -- yes, lucky pets get a nanny too).

Everyone is given a handful of pamphlets there, these include:

"The Oneness of Allah"

"Messengers in Islam" (includes Moses, Noah, and Jesus)

"Islam and Civilization"

"Rights of Mankind in Islam"

"Religious Tolerance in Islam"

and

"Health and Nutrition in Islam"

I was curious so I kept them, .. that'll be another blog entry.

The following day I was off to get my fingerprints done at the 'Criminal Evidence and Information' government building. It looks like a huge white palace and is next to an even bigger, scary-looking jail. The kind of jail that no one ever wants to go to, or be close to for that matter. Anyhow, by my second day I was happy that there was a 'women only' section in each government building with its own entrance. No hassle, no lines, no one staring, and the women are lovely. It made the bureaucratic red-tape hoop-jumping permanent resident status-getting process quite bearable. And the fingerprinting took no time at all, so off I went to the Villagio (a super-sized posh mall version of the Las Vegas Bellagio) to reward my efforts. =)

Leaving home - Coming home

I left Trinidad on the 17th of December. My dad dropped me to the airport, and by 'dropped me to the airport' I mean he flew me to JFK to pick up my connecting flight to Doha on our national carrier, and the airline I left behind for my adventure.

Happy and excited, I waited patiently in the terminal for ten long hours before my first-class flight to my new life in Doha, Qatar.

All I remember of my thirteen hour flight was the five-star four-course meal and wine list, the first few minutes of a new movie and a cabin attendant asking me if he can make my bed after dinner, if I wanted any warm cookies or fine chocolates, and not to forget the blanket folded by my feet next to my pyjamas. I woke up nine hours later.

Ryan, my husband, was in Hong Kong. Feeling badly about not being there to meet me at the end of my thirty hour trip he arranged a meet-and-greet through Al Maha, a royal-treatment service that fast-tracks you through passport control and baggage claim. As I sat in the VIP lounge waiting for my personal agent who met me at the aircraft to organize my passport and bags, I watched the 300 people from my flight scurry into the already hundreds-long immigration line of other passengers that had no doubt also travelled all day and were just as tired as I was.

My agent walked me and my porter out of the terminal. I was thrilled to see two familiar faces smiling and waving. Dani and Sabine -- what a welcome party. And who needed sleep..? I had left home from one lovely au revoir tea party with close friends and arrived to a drinks-night with my Doha girls.

Sleep is for the dead they say..

I felt like death for the next ten days.