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Starting today, I’m shopping only on the perimeter of the grocery store. The theory is this is where all the fresh and unprocessed food is. Along one wall is the fruits & vegetables, as well as the deli meat. The back wall has meat, as well as juice and milk in the corner. The other side has all your dairy products, as well as bread. This isn’t too much of a challenge, except for it makes snacks difficult. No chips or wheat thins. Instead of I’m going to go with mini-sandwiches, carrots and dip, yogurt, maybe even ants-on-a-log! My theory on good nutrition is pretty simple, lots of colors, minimal processed food, and avoid the silly levels of sodium you get in anything pre-made. Variety is key.

Lifehacker

Wednesday evening after work I did the Greenbelt Training Series race in Greenbelt Park, just down the street from campus. It’s a nice 1.4 mile loop, with a gradual climb on one side and a decent downhill on the other. I was fairly nervous, as (1) I barely rode at all during the month of June and (2) my last race, the UMD President’s Criterium, was a demonstration of a fast race where I was not fast enough. The weather was fine, and the race turned out well. I was able to keep up the whole race, staying in the front 1/3 of the pack most of it, and having the strength to catch up when others were dropping off. The I was counting the laps 1 by 1, with a goal of finishing 8 of the 18. The pack stayed together the whole race. One guy tried to go off the fronrt, but he broke the yellow line rule about 2 laps in, making everyone angry. They got back at him by letting him hang just about 30 meters off the front for a couple laps. It came together with a few laps to go, and on the final lap, everyone seemed afraid of starting their sprint to early; the finish was on the top of the climb.  I sprinted with the pack for 11th or 12th. It wasn’t a very aggressive race for me. I was probably never within 5 riders of the front. But I got through it, and it was a lot of fun. It’s been awhile since I’ve finished a race!

Last night my shifter cable broke (yes, the cable broke). I brought it in to the shop this morning. Hopefully I’ll get it back tomorrow, and be able tor race again Wednesday.

I spent most of June in Abu Dhabi, working at the Petroleum Institute (PI) with my advisor over there, Dr. Peter Rodgers.

It started off a little stressful. The night I was supposed to leave the internet was down and the weather was dreary. My cab (for my 6am flight) was 30 minutes late, and when I finally got to the airport, I had to wait in line for quite a while to check my bag, even though I checked in online. The flight was nice, I flew Etihad Airways, the local airline of Abu Dhabi. When I finally got to the Abu Dhabi airport, nobody was there to meet me. My friend Tayeb was supposed to, but he apparently missed the memo. And my bag didn’t show up. It would arrive the next day. I called Dr. Rodgers and he took care of me.

I arrived at the PI on Friday and got checked into my room and dropped my stuff off. It was kind of difficult figuring things out, because the weekend there is Friday and Saturday, so nobody was around.  I setup my laptop in what was to be my office (with 4 french students) and even managed to do some work. That evening I went to Ilforno’s in Abu Dhabi city with the other students, then played some pool.

Saturday I ended up going to the beach. The water was salty and warm, very warm. I liked it; there wasn’t that initial shock you get when you jump into a swimming pool.

Someone, because they didn’t meet me at the airport, I came into the country with a visitor’s visa, and not an employment visa. To sort this out, it was decied that the best thing to do was to drive me out to Oman on Sunday, and have me cross the border and come back. Two hours of driving later I was on the border, my driver had run off somewhere with my passport, and everyone was speaking Arabic. After about 20 minutes my driver came back and we got things sorted out, but it wasn’t a very comfortable experience.

Monday morning I had my health screening. They don’t want people with infectious diseases coming into the country and infecting the populace, so everyone working there needs to undergo a very thorough exam. They checked my eyes and ears, did x-rays, took blood, and did some intimidatig ekg thing where all sorts of electrodes were stuck over my body.

That night was the PI year end party, which was a rather silly affair. Business casual, lots of good food, door prizes. They did a bunch of riddles; they would put something up on the projector like “I can run but not walk. Wherever I go, thought follows close behind. What am I?” up on the screen, and whoever answered first (a nose) would get a prize. Then they spend awhile drawing names from a bin and giving out large prizes, from george foreman grills to portable hard drives, LCD tv’s, and a laptop computer (which my friend David won).

Tuesday I actually started to get some work done. I met with Dr. Rodgers and we sat down and talked for an hour and a half. We had these long discussions semi-regularly, which I thoroughly appreciated. He always had a complete understand of what I was doing, I got to question the motives behind the work we were doing, how things worked, and why it was important to look at my work in some new ways. These sessions helped me to be much more productive the rest of my time, and even motivated me to work longer hours. Tuesday night I went and played soccer with the locals. It wasn’t as terrible as I had imagined, but I was still the worst one out there.

Fast forward a few days; Friday I went to Marina Mall, the big fancy mall in Abu Dhabi that (apparently) everyone from outside the country likes to go to. It was globalization at its best. I went there with one friend, Dave, and we met the others at Fudrucker’s, of all places. It rained inside, from little sprinklers in the ceiling. Fudruckers had awnings, and every couple hours thunder would come out over the speakers, and little drops of water would fall. That night we went to a german bar connected to a local hotel (as they all must be) to watch a futbol game. If you want to find people from outside the country, this is where to go. People from all over (but not so much the Middle East) were here.

Saturday I went to Dreamland, a waterpark not much different than something you would find in the US. The PI recreation committee organized trips like this every weekend, at very low cost to the students, and me. It was a fun time hanging out with friends, but nothing really special.

A common thing to do there was go bowling. I guess it’s not as common in Europe as it is in the US, so my friends were all very excited about it. I enjoyed it, because it was cheap and I was able to show my superiority (in most cases). I haven’t bowled much the past few years, but I really enjoy it as something to go do with friends.

The next Saturday we went to another water park, Wild Wadi. This is probably the one you think of when you think “Dubai”. Only a few attractions, but much more exciting. Uphill water slides that took you around the whole park in inner tubes, a 110 ft water slide where people supposedly reach 50 mph, a couple small flowboarding pools, and a solid wave pool. The more exciting flowboarding pool was closed, because they were doing a pro competition. Pretty fun to watch, and later I waited in line to try the tamer one.

The next week I visited Sheikh Zayed Mosque, the third largest mosque in the world. It also apparently has the world’s largest carpet, and chandelier. To put it in a single world, it was overpowering. It didn’t feel tacky, or excessive, it just kind of took ahold of you. I don’t care if your Christian, Muslim, Hindu, Jewish, or none of the above, this mosque is going to be a very spiritual experience.

I tried really (really) hard while I was there to get a bike and join a local group for a ride. That didn’t pan out, but I was able to rent a little touring bike on the Corniche (think Lake Shore Drive) and ride around a bit.

The last night I was there all the grad students got together and had a little grill party in somebody’s apartment. We used a George Foreman and cooked a lot of meat, bell peppers, and onions. My friend Nouraddine made us some Moroccan tea, and we closed it out with a little fruit tart. It was a fun little going away party, and we didn’t even set off the smoke detector!

Now I’m back in the US, moved into a new apartment, and hard at work on my research project. It was a good trip. I met a lot of great people and saw some new things. I wish it could have been a few weeks longer, but I’m glad it worked out and I was able to make it out there for the time I did.

Photos on Flickr

The senate today gave immunity to the telecoms for helping out Bush with domestic wiretapping, passing the overall Fisa amendments bill by a 69-28 vote. Dodd, Durbin, Feingold, and even HIllary (I don’t understand, given her past record) voted against it, Obama voted for it. Obama voted for the amendment to strip immunity from the bill (sponsored by Dodd) but that failed 32-66.

Roll call vote
NYT: Senate Backs Wiretap Bill

http://picasaweb.google.com/phatpat/AbuDhabiThusFar

Abu Dhabi is going well. I got a lot of work done this past week. Really, it's nothing I couldn't do from Maryland the I've been spending a lot of time discussing my work with my advisor here, which never would have worked back in America. We literally spend an hour or two every day just going through my results, looking at what they mean, and discussing what to do next. I've learned a lot.

On the fun side of things, so far it's been a lot of water and socer. I went to the beach with my friend David from Germany this week. Then we came back and watched a futbol game at Marwen's apartment. Last night I went down into the city with someone else to investigate renting a bike, and ended up watching the germany/portugal game.

I've tried to find a bike to ride while I'm here, but haven't had much luck. I got in touch with an english guy named Martyn who jumped through all sorts of hoops to try to find a bike I could borrow, just for a day or so. All his friends the country; one would have had a bike for me, but cracked the seat collar on his race bike tightening it down to hard, so he had to bring the cheap bike he was goign to lend with me to Europe with him. There's one road bike shop in Abu Dhabi; it's pretty tiny but they have nice bikes. Only for sale though. They directed me to the Corniche (aka lake shore drive), but there they were only renting hybrid bikes, by the hour, and you had to stay on the waterfront trail. I might end up doing that just to say I did. There's a big group ride that leaves Abu Dhabi city Friday mornings that I was hoping I could do, but I'm not optimistic that will happen. I only have one more Friday to try to make it happen.

This building is one of the smallest on campus, and will soon be demolished.
Despite that, it was a convenient place to get me and a PI logo in the same
shot.

I should probably take another similar shot without my NU hat to show off at
UMD functions later in the summer.