Dubai, Days Four And Five

Sunday was the first day of the reason I'm here, and it was the most boring day I've ever spent at a show (and I have been doing this for five years). I think I talked to a total of five people in the eight hours I spent in the booth. Just mind-numbing, but it wasn't like you could just go off somewhere and read (or nap, which is what I really wanted to do). I couldn't even figure out how to get online, so I lugged my computer around all day for no reason. Since the powers that be at the exposition company cancelled all the outdoors demos about a month ago (after our tickets were already bought) I don't even have the physical exertion of cutting things up to act as a diversion.

I did take some pictures of Sheikh Zayed road at dusk on the way home, but of course you can't see them because the nice people at Etisalat, who have seen fit to add flickr.com to the list of blocked websites. At this point, I'm even afraid to write anything bad about them, since I figure they're monitoring everything I do on the computer. I'm sure they're all smart guys who love their wives and dress well -- I just wish they'd let the Internets enter the country without plugging up half of the tubes.

Today my dad and I are splitting the day up -- Tom is at the booth now and I'm going to head over on a couple of hours. Ordinarily I would have taken this opportunity to spend the morning doing something interesting, but I woke up at 4:00 AM and was unable to get back to sleep, so I've pretty much spent the morning zombie-like, shuffling between the bed (where I'm unable to sleep) and the computer (where I'm trying to download the just-aired episode of Battlestar Galactica but am, I believe, being thwarted by those same fine gentlemen I talked about a second ago).

We also found out that our plan to rent a car on Wednesday is out, because the law recently changed and you are now required to have an international driver's license to rent a car here. That leaves us with pretty much nothing to do on Wednesday, though I did do some more research and found out there may be an "old" part of town on the other side of the creek that contains the gold souk, spice souk, and fabric souk. We'll check that out.

So yeah, my mood has been better. I really just want to get home to my pregnant wife and two-year-old daughter, but alas I have 50 hours to go before my flight!