Eight Hours East: Pop Commentary - 4.29.11

I plan to take advantage of this pulpit periodically to get my pop culture opinions in front of an audience. A series of unrelated commentaries that have taken place in my head since arriving in Abu Dhabi:

2011 Music - TV On The Radio's Nine Types Of Light currently sits as my favorite album so far in 2011. From the first time I heard Wolf Like Me, I have consistently found most of their song compositions to be interesting, Rain Machine's voice to be compelling and their baselines to be air guitar-y. The newest release is another winner.

The No. 2 slot currently goes to The Strokes' Angles, but there are tons of albums I'm interested in coming out in the next several months.

Here are my Top 5 songs of 2011 so far:
1) Machu Picchu - The Strokes
2) Baltimore - Tennis
3) You - TV On The Radio
4) Still Sound - Toro y Moi
5) Royal Blue - Cold War Kids

NHL TV Deal With NBC/Versus - Certainly the NHL occupies a much better spot in the collective conscious of the sports-loving population than it did a few year ago (after the 2005 lockout). The rule changes helped make the game more exciting, especially getting rid of the two-line pass, and the league has more stars now. Now, the type of person who watches some sports is much more likely to be tuning into the NHL playoffs now than in 2007.

I'm sure this positive trend is a major reason why the NHL chose to re-up with NBC/Versus. ESPN made what was reported very close to a matching bid. It wouldn't shock me if there was more to the details than just the NHL picking NBC over ESPN's equal bid, but the NHL is framing it as their choice to continue with a partner they like.

I generally enjoy the Versus/NBC coverage - for me it's nowhere near as distractingly awful as most sports-broadcasting efforts. But I really feel like the exposure ESPN would provide, as compared to any other channels, is just too big to pass up. The NHL currently has two stars that have broken into the sports consciousness - Ovi and Crosby. A ton more should be there.

My uncle Steve is probably a 75-percentile fan in terms of the amount of attention he gives to sports in his life. I don't believe he could tell you much about Jonathan Toews or Steven Stamkos, and I think there are many knowledgeable-to-very-knowledgeable fans just like him.

That's what happens when ESPN nearly ignores you these days - that's the level of control they have. I have a very strong dislike for ESPN in the 21st century, because I think they have shat on their original brand (and core sports fans, in the process) in their endless, mind-numbing attempts to reach new audiences and create star personalities. They have no tact anymore. Still, I'd prefer to see daily NHL highlights on Sportscenter and have 21st-century weasel Matthew Berry running through his favored fantasy hockey players.

Without a presence on ESPN, it's damn difficult for hockey to be much of a water cooler topic. I think the NHL really underestimated how much that's worth by re-upping with NBC.

World War Z - On my 12-hour plane ride to move to Abu Dhabi, I read the last 2/3s of Max Brook's World War Z. It's a zombie post-apocalypse book that doesn't break entirely new ground, but I think most people who enjoy AMC's The Walking Dead would find it interesting (although I don't have any clue how the movie they're making it into will work, because it's like 100 short stories). For me, the "suddenly redefining your entire existence" angle felt personally relevant. My situation made me enjoy the book a lot more, and I have a feeling I will probably always remember that I read this book on that flight, just as I vividly recall starting Glamorama while taking off for Vegas for the first time.

Muscat Love and Road-Tripping Lessons Gleaned in Oman

At least where I'm from, the word "touristy" carries negative connotations. If you take a "touristy" trip, you opted for a psychologically comfortable experience, rather than immersing yourself in the local scene and taking on whatever that entails.

Our trip to Oman this past weekend was a great example of the precarious balance between chasing satisfying stimuli in a foreign place and amassing excessive stress in an unfamiliar environment. We saw interesting things, met great people and shared adventures and laughs. But some of the high points took a high level of stress to reach, while my favorite moments were those that felt exotic yet relaxed.

On Thursday night after Leslie got home from work, we took the 45-minute flight from Abu Dhabi to Muscat, the capital of Oman, population just over a million in the metro area. We had just over two days to absorb whatever we could from the country, with an early-morning flight home Sunday.

We stayed the first night in a Muscat Radison and then set off for less populated areas in our rental car Friday morning. The decision was to follow the path of some of Leslie's co-workers who had already visited, centering their trips around a circular route that begins in Muscat, goes approximately 200 kilometers south along the Gulf Of Oman to Sur, Oman, and then loops back north from a road about 20 miles inland. This slice of the country probably encompasses 1/20th of it total.

The co-workers came back with tales of wading in Wadis (dried up or semi-dried up river beds that tend to make interesting scenery/topography), cliff diving and camping - an outdoorsmen's adventure tale. This is what we were attempting to emulate, but the wild times during our Omani roadtrip related mostly to the roads and road stress, rather than leaping into water.

We had some handicaps:

1) We pre-ordered an SUV to rent, because we knew the terrain on this route necessitates it. However upon arrival in Muscat, we found out that all the SUVs are manual transmission, which neither myself nor Leslie can drive. After momentarily considering trying to learn stick on the fly, we settled on just taking a Camry.

2) As you can see from the images, this region of Oman is mountainous, with the hills beautifully rolling right into the sea. Unfortunately, Leslie is bothered by heights, and some of the wadis are back within the mountain range. So to try to get to them, we had to go up and down some slopy, windy roads that reminded me of going from Denver to Winter Park (minus the snow or greenery). Furthermore our Camry had weak breaks.

3) After this trip, I feel motivated to investigate the psychology behind road signs and directions in Oman and to write an essay about my findings. I'm convinced there's something fascinating behind the horrible assistance we received from signs, maps and locals. It's a very warm country - the people were tremendously kind to us. I highly doubt they're trying to dissuade visitors. But almost every instruction or label was blatantly wrong, misleading or vague. It was almost like everyone was unfamiliar with the concept of finding places while driving.

4) Acceptable dress in the Middle East is very different from the U.S., with women wearing garments covering them nearly from head to toe and men at least wearing long pants if not dishdashas. In many places, dressing in tank tops or shorts would be quite offensive to locals, if not downright illegal. But in Abu Dhabi or Dubai or Muscat, western dress has become commonplace by the many visitors and expats. During travel, figuring out when its culturally sensitive to "cover up" is difficult.

So the result of all this was that we spent far more time stressed out on the road and less time enjoying the sites in between our Muscat lodging stops. The main roads of the loop were no trouble, but once we exited them to find something, it usually involved tons of turning around, never actually getting there, going over rock-and-sand terrain that made us worry about getting stuck or a flat, etc.

On Friday, we left Muscat around 11:30 am, and we finally arrived in Sur around 6, only succeeding in finding one stop on our list during that time. That was the very pleasant Wadi Ash Shab, opening up to the sea on one side and winding up into the mountains on the other. Here we took a short wooden boat ride, and Leslie spoke Arabic to our congenial guides, who were surprised and tickled. It was nice, but the stress of being lost and the car-sick feeling that comes from constantly making u-turns hampered my ability to enjoy it.

We spent Friday night at a seaside motel in Sur cut form a similar mold as cheap-but-serviceable Atlantic coast beach motels from decades ago. The rooms were sufficient and overlooking the water, so it was a tranquil ending to a turbulent day.

On Saturday, we didn't allow ourselves to get into as many stressful situations, but things didn't start off smoothly, either.

The first development came a few miles south of Sur (the very bottom of our loop before we started heading west and north), when we tried to stop in a small-village quasi-strip mall to restock supplies like water (we went through tons of it, despite spending most of our time in a cool car) and gas.

This was the first place we visited where the locals' looks turned disdainful, because our westerner warm-weather clothes were revealing way too much skin. When Leslie bought water in a tank top at a small-town grocery mart, the clerk actually threw the changes back to her, an exaggerated display of his desire not to make contact. Of course with Leslie's familiarity with the Middle East, she has "covered up" many times in the past, and we both would have done so if we knew we were going to offend. Just a few miles before in Sur, there were plenty of people walking along the beach and town in various forms of t-shirts and shorts, and we didn't anticipate this reaction. Assuming that you left a "damn thoughtless Americans" impression on such people is a buzzkill.

The second issue was that we never made our one highlighted destination, Wadi Bani Khalid, because it involved that steep mountain pass. Leslie was driving, as she was the only person on the rental car agreement, but we actually got to a point where the vertigo was too much. We basically did a "Chinese Fire Drill" on an extreme downhill gradient, and then I nine-point-turned us back up the hill and eventually back to the highway to Muscat.

So Friday and Saturday were mostly just a pure-driving road trip. We got to see really interesting topography, from the mountains down to the sea around to the dessert and prairie-like areas and back to the mountains. We took pictures of roaming goats, sheep, donkeys and camels. These would be mental images I should remember vividly telling youngens about Oman 30 years from now (knock on wood).

But I also have a smattering of treasured funny memories from Mr. Kucharek's 11th grade Spanish class. Does that mean it was a good experience, despite all the time I was miserable?

The good news is the trip finished up marvelously, as our final evening in Muscat was delightful. We stayed at a four-story bed and breakfast, one street back from the beach and the sea, with more mountains just a couple of miles behind us. It was picturesque internally and externally. At around 6:30 pm, we sat on the fourth-floor deck and watched the sunset.

Then we went out to a Persian restaurant, Shiraz, and had a delicious outdoor dinner right on the water and overlooking the city. It was located in the Crowne Plaza Hotel...probably not a locals' spot...probably pretty touristy. It was perfect though.

The trip ended on a real high note - the last half day in Muscat was interesting, satisfying and memorable. I definitely would like to get back there while living in the Middle East, and I would still hope to visit more countries and regions that were never on my mind a few months ago.

I'd even like to take some more off-the-beaten-path journeys, but I really want to plan those carefully to minimize stress headaches.

Dabbling With The Wax And Hairspray Look

Tuesday was a momentous day in the gradual breakthrough from visitor to resident - I got my first Abu Dhabi haircut. Mostly girls and metrosexuals are protective about how their hair is shaped, and by whom, but...

1) I have damn thick hair, cowlick and (most likely) a denty head. I've had many haircuts over the years that I would rate as underwhelming, including the period I lived in Alexandria and had to visit barber shops and all cuts I received from age 6 to 19.

2) The Abu Dhabi service industry is generally far behind my expectations based on 32 years in the U.S. From the apartment facility managers to waiters to cab drivers, communication breakdowns are common, and you're often left not getting what you wanted, or wondering why it took so long to get.

So basically, I feel like I need a slightly-more-complicated-than-you'd-expect haircut to not look like an ass, and I wasn't confident I'd be likely to find a stylist in Abu Dhabi could give it to me.

Long story short, I was very pleased with the cut the gentleman (I think he said his name was Ahmad, but unsurprisingly, I couldn't really understand him) gave me at The lounge. Tight on the side and textured enough on the top to hide my cowlicks.

However, at the end, the male-haircut question came about whether I wanted product in my hair. I usually do a mild form of purposefully messy, so I said yes as I always do. Well not only did he give me the stiff wax, he then topped it off with hairspray. I call it the Romanian soccer player look, and though I could have brushed it down with my hands right away, I wanted to take it home to show Leslie.

The picture above is from my 1 hour walk to and from the haircut. I try to avoid taking cabs whenever possible, both because I have the time to wander, and because there's a decent chance a cab won't be able to get me where I'm going. It doesn't help that there are (literally) no street addresses, they just give you cross streets, and you have to play detectic on the gigantic AD blocks.

In fact, after an hour of trying to locate The Lounge and getting dangerously close to missing my appointment, I did hail a cab. I called the salon, had them give the directions to my driver in Arabic, he drove approximately 75 feet, turned right, and dropped me off by the side of a resident building.

My first reaction was embarrassment that I had made him drive me such a short distance, so I gave him 5 Dirham (about $1.50 US) even though the meter hadn't rang up a charge yet. But of course he dropped me off in the completely wrong place (those of you who thought, when reading point 2 above, that I was being ethnocentric expecting people to be able to communicate in English with me, Arabic-to-Arabic conversations don't seem to achieve better results). I was initially about 100 feet away from my destination, but he took me in the wrong direction.

That's my number one complaint about Abu Dhabi so far. But at least I've found my stylist! Maybe next time I'll go all out and ask for the Rinaldo-hawk, which is very popular amongst the popped-collar sect around here.

Texas Chicken Massacre

It says a lot about myself that I'm about to write about fast food again, but it does tend to play a significant role in Abu Dhabi life. The line for McDonalds is always long and packed with Arabs, every gigantic AD block has some type of cheap carryout option, and you often have to go to extra trouble to get any meal without french fries. Some of the Americans seem to hate and/or shake their head at these facts, but I'm obviously tickled pink by it.

Today's fast food excursion was at a place a gigantic AD half-block away called Texas Chicken. This experience brought me more big smiles than expected.

I have no idea if I visited the only Texas Chicken in the world, or if it's a chain based out of Russia or Montana or even Texas (putting "Texas" in the name of things in Texas is just smart business). I also had no concept of a style of fried chicken associated with Texas, but I was enticed by the idea of this place in the Middle East.

There was nothing special about the building itself - it sat in the middle of a block between two cheaper-looking Arab restaurant. And although it isn't the Short Pump Arby's, the space inhabited by Texas Chicken was new and tile-y and smelled fine and it had a TV. It wasn't decrepit, like most Church's Chickens I patronized in Alabama.

Upon entering, the first thing that made me internally giggle was two Texas Chicken employees eating contentedly in the middle of a section that looked like about 25 customers had been beamed elsewhere, or disintegrated. No sign of them, but their trays and trash were everywhere. This is one thing I'm starting to get annoyed with - that a lot of people in Abu Dhabi feel no responsibility to ever clean up after themselves, looking at it is the low laborer's job. But with so much trash everywhere, and these two employees just silently eating away, I was pretty amused, imagining opening-scene-from-Children In The Corn-like scenarios for what caused The Texas Chicken Massacre. Of course it was the type of thing that would cause 60% of male Americans and 98.5% of female Americans to turn around and never come back to Texas Chicken.

But I stayed, which allowed me to see two menu items that cranked up my giddiness level to a 9.2. The most eye-catching option was The Mexicana, which was basically a chicken sandwich with lettuce and the entire ingredients of Taco Bell's Nachos Supreme (minus the "taco meat filling") on top of it. Yes, that includes the nacho chips themselves. This was something that I definitely would have (and will, at some point) ordered. It has moved up above the Hardees Chili Lava Burger on my "new fast food to try" list. But I forgot my camera, and I definitely want a picture when I take the plunge.

While I was standing there waiting for my now-boring-seeming order of a 4-piece fried chicken, I noticed a less conspicuous but potentially more sinister sandwich option. This one was called the purple supreme, and what its picture revealed was most likely a chicken sandwich with lettuce, onions and purple on it. What is the purple, I wondered? Is it grapes? Is it jam or jelly? Did they stick pine sap and two of Grimace's toes in a blender, and spread that on the sandwich? None of the options sounded enticing edible. In fact it now tops my list for least enticing fast food in a promotional picture, knocking Krystals out of a spot held since Mardi Gras 2001.

So next time I go to Texas Chicken, which will likely be soon, I will bring my camera, I will order The Mexicana, I will take a picture of it and I will eat it. Then when I'm finished, I will order a Purple Supreme, I will take a picture of it and I will most likely not eat it.

Postscript: After writing this, I went ahead and looked up some Texas Chicken details. It seems as if it was closely related to Church's at one point, but now only exists internationally? The Mexicana is available in other places like Singapore, but the Purple Supreme seems to be unique to the UAE.

Championship Soccer In AD or Live Football Brought To You By Hillshire Farms

After last week's first outside-our-apartment-window soccer-viewing experience, yesterday I attended my first live match in AD, thanks to a tip-off from my soccer-scient cousin, Nate. It was the big Al Wahda/Al Jazira crosstown-rivalry match-up, this time with the President's Cup on the line. Of course, none of those terms meant anything to me two weeks ago, and while I write this, I am sifting through research to unearth what the game actually meant.

So here is a bit of competitive context:

-Centralized Abu Dhabi has been described to me as roughly the size of Manhattan, and it's a safe bet that the distance between Al Wahda's stadium (right outside my window) and Al Jazira's home are within 10 gigantic Abu Dhabi blocks of each other. While this isn't a stage like the Yankees/Mets compete on, it is clearly a rivalry of extreme proximity.

-Like many things here, I feel the Presidents Cup could benefit from a more descript/memorable name (is Ernie Els involved?), but it's is one of the three important competitions UAE teams can win in a given season. There's the long seasonal race of the Etisalat Pro-League (the UAE's version of The Barclay's Premier League), The President's Cup and the AFC Champions League. So the President's Cup championship game is a pretty big deal.

-Al Jazira is going to win the Etisalat Pro-League fairly easily and Al Wahda (my home squadron) is in eighth place out of 12 teams, so this match was Al Wahda's last real chance to win a title and make for a successful season.

So basically, it was a locally meaningful sporting event that Tim (Leslie's co-worker's boyfriend) and I were cutting our teeth on. A most excellent bro-date amongst expats.

In the end, I found the atmosphere to be more interesting than the game itself (and I think The National agrees with me), which Al Jazira took 4-0. Once again, I don't want to overemphasize the strange factor, because I was never uncomfortable. Neither my weirded-out or fight-or-flight mechanism were ever ratcheted up, but there were things I found unusual and amusing:

1) This was easily the most "Arab" experience I have had since I arrived in AD - which is to say the percentages of westerners, far-east Asians, etc. was very low. More than half of all attendees were dressed in the white dishdasha customary of Arabian Peninsula men, and many of the others were Arabs in street clothes. A few donned the American fratboy costume of 2003, the florescent polo with popped collar and hair spiked in the middle from both direction. That look slayed me back then, and I'm happy to be in a place where someone finds it cool enough to wear again!

I had no idea what the demographic breakdown would be beforehand, and when I saw it was mostly Emirati, I wasn't sure if we would be seen as unwelcome or special guests. The answer: neither.

2) Even less present than westerners were women, which I found far more unnerving. We only saw 2 females (girls with fathers) in the entire crowd.

As I have aged, I have developed a theory that it's very difficult for men in groups to come off as non-douchey, and the higher the man-to-woman ratio, the worse it tends to get. A large pool of unchecked testosterone leads to behavior that would make us individually wince, sometimes in terms of aggressiveness but most commonly in the form of unfunny sex humor. So once I saw the breakdown, I wasn't a little displeased, and I was hyper-prepared to experience UAE-brand douchiness. In the end, it actually wasn't too bad - monumentally better than if there was ever a 99.9% male crowd at the Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum - but I still would prefer the soccer experience at UAE to have women around to ground us.

3) I knew going in that soccer was the biggest sport here - but I didn't know how strong the allegiances would be to the local teams. Premier League and UEFA seem to get the most news coverage, and I thought there was a good chance that the fans would be "just there to see professional soccer," (which I assume is the atmosphere at WNBA games) rather than being informed and impassioned followers of Al Wahda or Al Jazira.

I was wrong, as allegiances were clearely delineated. In fact, they had security men lining the grounds, because they were apparently worried about a ruckus between fan bases. We didn't see anything like that, but I tend to feed off the passions of others, so I enjoyed the partisanship, the musical chanting and the Arabic cursing at mindless throughball attempts.

4) The match was held at Zayed Sports City Football Stadium, which is part of a giant sports complex probably 10 miles away from us. If I can get involved in adult-league sports, I believe the games would likely be played on the Sports City grounds, be it soccer, American football, basketball or whatever. The pictures make it look nice, but this stadium seemed fairly antiquated to me in terms of the quality of seating, a total lack of scoreboards and replay-capable jumbotrons and other facilities. If this is one of the best The Gulf has to offer, I can't imagine the work that Qatar will need to do to have proper stadiums by the 2022 World Cup.

5) Admission was free! Great for our wallets, but it sure seems like bad business. I'm sure the team owners are flush, but I also think that based on the interest level, people would have paid a little to get in. If you don't charge anything for a championship game, you're developing expectations that everything should be free. Considering the mediocre quality of the grounds and the less-than-mediocre level of play - I would think more cashflow could be put to good use.

6) As for the game itself, my feeling is that MLS teams could beat these teams pretty handily. Many soccer fans and soccer haters alike enjoy badmouthing the MLS, but I think it's worth appreciating that we can put forth a professional league of that quality when soccer garners the 5th or 6th highest interest at most among pro sports. There are plenty of countries like the UAE who don't have that level of product, even though soccer ranks No. 1. So I advocate appreciating MLS for what it is, rather than incorrectly labeling it as less or unrealistically expecting it to be more.

In this game, I actually thought Al Wahda stood out as the more skilled, but they weren't creative enough in the attacking third and they missed a few finishing chance. On the other side, Al Jazira had an oafy Brazilian named Bare who had a real villainous Cobra Kai look to him, and his style of play fit. Mostly you could find him arriving late to the ball and challenging like a reckless thug, just plowing through guys. While he received one yellow card, I feel strongly he deserved to be tossed early, which makes me considering trying to become a big-time UAE soccer ref.

Unfortunately, Bare also somehow scored 2 goals on a header and an individual slalom through the Al Wahda defense, and he assisted with a nifty cross on another, despite looking pretty unskilled most of the time. I'm guessing this jerk somehow was able to keneticize the douchey energy supplied by the all-male crowd. Furthermore, Al Wahda has now surrendered seven goals and scored zero since I became aware of their existence, so I'm worried I brought bad joojoo to my new home team.

Observations From A Deflating Wednesday

Yesterday (Wednesday) was mostly a bummer, as my first job interview in UAE ended up getting canceled at the last minute. Furthermore, it was in Dubai (for a company called H2O New Media), so in the end I paid $50 to rent a car and drove 1.5 hours there and 2.5 back (due to rush hour traffic and getting somewhat lost) to see a movie (Limitless, starring Bradley Cooper!). That, my friends, is deflating, and I think I get more quickly deflated by negative job-search developments than most.

On the other hand, I found Limitless to be a fun little drug-science-fiction movie with excellent cinematography - glad I got to see it in theaters. If you're wondering, it was in English but had Arabic and French sub-titles.

I also 1) Survived my first driving experience in UAE and my first inter-city driving experience in UAE without acquiring any new scratches on my rental Honda Civic, which apparently is not a small feat 2) Spent some quality time in the Mall Of The Emirates, where my interview was going to take place, and got my first glimpse of the not-too-shabby Ski Dubai indoor slope 3) Got to eat a wonderful steak dinner with Leslie and her company at Emirates Place (in Abu Dhabi). One of my goals in the early going is not to let my anxiety over things like foreign bewilderment or lack of income prevent my appreciation for the multitude of breath-taking edifices and landscapes I'm getting exposed to.

A few more observations from my day, some of which could become larger entries at some point in time:

• It's a straight shot 120 km/75 mile drive from Abu Dhabi to Dubai, and my wild westerner fears about it being a Nevada-like dangerous barren desert drive. where any stop is a potential calamity, we're completely off-base. It was a nice four-lane highway drive - the only issue is that some drivers go well over 130 mph, and the rental cars start beeping at you (funny) once you get to the speed limit of 120 kph. This meant that lane changes required vigilant monitoring of the rear view mirror, because people were blowing past me like the wind constantly.
• The mall next to our apartment suddenly seems pretty meh after being at The Mall Of The Emirates, which I think should be renamed The Time Square Mall to give it an exotic allure. It has a Time Square vibe in terms of shops, restaurants and especially people types with a more upscale and subdued environment (which makes it not very Time Square-like, but the Venetian hotel isn't really like Venice, right?). I liked it very much, and now I'm even more excited to visit The Dubai Mall at some point, the creme de la creme of malls (sorry, Minneapolis). I definitely can't wait to write more about mall culture in UAE, as I get giddy thinking through the elaborate metaphor I'm working on.
• When you get a rental car in the US and go over the flaws with a representative just before taking it over, do you take a close look? I've usually found the cars to be in great condition back in the States, and just take a cursory look. My little Civic yesterday...12 different problems to note before I stepped foot in it. The little diagram of the car on the rental sheet looked like an ink stain..."I see you noted this scratch and this gash on the drivers-side door, but I can't tell, do you have the dent right below it?"..."oh, yes sir, right there." To the credit of my Indian buddy, he noted everything, but I was still prepared for a bullshit accusation when I returned it. Didn't happen, and in general, returning the rental car led to a massive sigh of relief.
• The movie theater had assigned seating - allowing you to pick your (fantastic) recliner from those still available when you buy your ticket. That seems like a civilized solution to the Seinfeldian seat-saving madness that goes on in American theaters, I think. Let's adopt it.
• Bradley Cooper is a leading man, folks. The women love him, The Leslie loves him enough to make me consider hating him every time she says "I LOVE Bradley Cooper" (but I ultimately decide against it), and guys want to roll in his posse. I think debates about whether he can carry a movie, financially or critically, can be put to bed.

Looking Down On Soccer

Without a doubt soccer is the dominant sport of interest around here. Cricket and rugby and golf and tennis all seem to draw more attention than my beloved Amercain team sports, which doesn't come as a major surprise. But soccer is by far dominant, from the sports section of The National to the plentiful and varied jerseys of the children and men walking around town.

Way down the list would be college basketball - none of the other Americans I've run into, including Leslie's work or my new penpal friend who blogs about American sports from Abu Dhabi, woke up to watch the Final Four. I was awake by 4:40 this morning, 45 minutes before tipoff of the National Championship game.

My game analysis: Not quite as fulfilling an affair as most of the tournament, but the complaining I read on Twitter got a little ridiculous. Butler played a very Butler-y 20 minutes and 30 seconds, building a 25-19 lead (despite shooting poorly) because of great team rebounding, help defense and control of the clock. Then poor shooting turned into a total offensive meltdown, largely because UConn's defense knocked them completely off kilter, something none of Butler's last 11 tourney opponents could accomplish. Basically, my feeling is that a) high-scoring basketball is overrated in terms of aesthetics and b) as well as Butler has played in the tourney, UConn deserves a ton of credit for stymying them (hat tip to Chris Simms on that verb).

But back to soccer and the picture at the top of this article - somehow, Leslie set us up in an apartment overlooking the Al Nahyan Stadium, which according to Wikipedia, holds 12,000. That's not that many - but from the moment I walked in here for the first time on Thursday, I was amazed by the way our apartment overlooks it.

Until tonight, I hadn't seen any action other than a few guys practicing, and my dream of exciting nightly soccer matches seemed to be in trouble. Well I guess they won't be nightly, but while I was sitting in our living room doing some job prep tonight, I suddenly heard the chanting of engaged club soccer fans. Sure enough, Al Wahda (my new favorite squadron!) was playing Al Ittihad of Saudia Arabia. There was even some jovial bagpipe playing among the fans carrying through the night air, even though the stands were less than half full.

Well I didn't get to see any of the goals, but that's fine, because I would have been so irate at the porous play of Al Wahda, letting the Saudis drub them 3-nil! I just acquired a new team and already they're kicking me in the jewels. Apparently this was an Asian Football Confederation Champions League game:

"Al Wahda Josef Hickersberger admits he will be happy to take second place behind Saudi Arabia’s Al Ittihad in Group C of the AFC Champions League as long as his side qualify for the next round of the competition."

I still have to study up on this AFC deal, but it was pretty damn cool to have this going on more or less directly below us.

Enjoying Baby Steps In AD, Basketball And Burgers From Home

If Jason Bourne were to think back about his existence between the beginning of The Bourne Identity and the end of The Bourne Ultimatum, I bet he'd reflect most fondly on the very beginning (except maybe for times where he achieved pure vengeance on hardhearted power mongers). Beginning with total bewilderment and slowly understanding your situation and your surroundings - it's a fun time.

72 hours AD, I'm enjoying many Bourne-like moments, learning and familiarizing myself with the new home during simple activities like a walk around our high-rise laiden part of the city or purchasing milk and hangers at Lulu grocery store.

I won't bog this down with too many predictable fish-out-of-water details - shops sell plenty of items I've never seen before and I don't know the metric system yet, etc., but our Abu Dhabi life has enough in common with back home where I don't want to oversell the foreignness of it (I'm certainly not above doing a "Top 10 Products You Find In Abu Dhabi That You'd Never Find In America" post, but I'll give that list time to materialize). The process of getting acquianted just feels interesting, so far.

And I'm doing my best not be like J.W. Pepper from The Man With The Golden Gun.

Aside: The most surprising and amusing thing I've seen or heard so far has nothing to do with UAE - it was an American telling a story about participating in a Hollywood ideation sessions for future suspense-thriller movie plots, and thus, creating and acting out a faux terrorism plot on Pac Bell stadium. I had no idea Hollywood hosted these types of "drills." Apparently, Carl Weathers was even involved, and a little too enthusiastically.

It was a hilarious story, and one of two times during these early days that I wish my friend Matt was here to witness. The other involved my first trip Friday to the mall food court that is next door to our apartment building, and it includes McDonalds, Burger King, KFC, Baskin-Robbins, Dunkin Donuts, Popeyes, Charleys Subs, Cold Stone, Cosi, Star Bucks and Fuddruckers. The second time I thought of Matt was staring at the poster for the Hardees Chili Lava Burger, which I haven't tried yet but most undoubtedly will.

That has been the second story of my first few days - while getting adjusted, I've been pleasantly surprised with how comfortably in contact I am with the idea of home. For those who know me, living 400 paces from all my fast food treasures puts a big grin on my face. So did getting to watch the Final Four games Sunday morning (our time) from 2:30 to 7 am on my laptop through NCAA.org.

I went to bed at about 11 pm Saturday and woke up at 2:30 am, about halfway through the first half of the Butler/VCU game. The sun rose right outside our east-looking apartment during Kentucky's run in the second half to make things tight, and after UConn finally put them away, I slept another 3 hours. Of course, I don't know if I'll realistically be able to keep such hours for the entire NHL playoffs or every Monday night football game, especially if (knock on wood) I get a job. But it's nice to know the option is there.

So that's pretty much where I stand right now - doing my best to push myself to acquire new experiences and interactions in Abu Dhabi each day, while also appreciating the highly modern level of access to my favorite people, products and cultures from back in the States.

Flying Back Into Outsider Mode

"And then one day you find. Ten Years Have Got Behind You." -Pink Floyd, "Time"

That quote doesn't exactly reflect my mentality at the jumping-off point of this life-observation blog, or explain why I'm titling it "The Easy Outsider." But it has been 10 years since I wrote a short-lived column for The Michigan Daily called "The Outsider," and it is the song that played through my head when I decided to (kind of) rebirth it.

Ten years ago, I was a die-hard Penn State athletics (and mythos) fan writing a sports column for The University of Michigan student newspaper, a fairly unusual perspective for critiquing the mertis of Brian Ellerbe's basketball coaching. Today I'm an Americana-loving pop culture/social media semi-guru, and within a few hours I'll leave D.C. to take my talents to the United Arab Emirates indefinitely. Another odd place to be going, considering who I am.

I have no clue what I'm going to see, do or be in Abu Dhabi, but I'm excited to write from an outsider's perspective again. I have always been someone who cherishes all the little details that come with a comfortable, nesty home, but I also love the experience of exploring far away from it.

Roger Waters and Co. weren't cryptic, and "Time" is clearly about opportunities that slowly-but-quickly slipped away. That's not how I'm feeling at all - I don't have much to complain about my life's path, especially in the last 10 years. However, I did always love getting to write from a very personal, observational, opinionated perspective - I idolize Hunter S. Thompson as much as the next egotist. I also probably let plenty of opportunities pass by over the years to share that voice again. As I set off to be more of a stranger in a strange land than ever, I think it should be easy to fill this blog with some regular content.

Hopefully you'll like it, you won't mind the hard PG-13 or soft R tone I plan on taking, and you'll forgive any grammar, spelling or factual errors.