2008 in Review: another point form summary of travels with promises of more thoughtful reflections to come.

My New year's resolution is to drink more water and by year's end to have books, films, music, recipes, and intriguing articles, websites or other tidbits to recommend in my 2009 review. For 2008, I have failed entirely at a balanced life and have mostly concentrated all my energy (and money!) on travel, travel, and escapism via travel.

I have been very fortunate to be able to travel so much this year, and with such good company -- I intend to do some justice to the people and places I have met along the way by dedicating more time to writing about them soon. Here is a brief summary of some of the highlights (in no particular order):



Lebanon - electric street life and urban renaissance in Beirut, and my first Muslim- and Lebanese- wedding in Tyre.



Oman - legitimate natural and cultural oasis, with authentic historical culture and remarkable old, decaying towns to set up camp in.



Yemen - one of the most extraordinary places I've been, with gingerbread-house-looking historical skyscrapers, beautiful landscapes, and a lot of able-bodied people chewing qat on the side of the road all day long.



Nepal - pagodas and dim sum, hinduism and curry, experiencing extremes of funky ex-pat communities in Kathmandu, and a weekend local-style in the village of my tea boy with his family.



India - an emerging economy with all the comforts associated with having a middle class. The legacy of thousands of years of progressive civilisation, and an overwhelming excitment for the future. I only scratched the surface of Delhi, Agra (the Taj Mahal), and Mumbai.



Sri Lanka - military offensives kept all the other tourists out, but there is just so much Sri Lanka has to offer. Preserved (and unexpectedly impressive) archaeological cities, stunning beauty, good food and crafts, and sacred buddhist sites.



Ethiopia - where to begin? Ethiopia has been secretly succeeding as a great empire out of reach at 2000 metres for thousands of years. It's the cradle of humanity, with many of the world's earliest hominids surfacing in the Great Rift Valley, it has been a 'civilised' Christian empire with a developed writing system hundreds of years before Christianity ever reached Europe, 11th Century churches carved out of bedrock (picture above), natural beauty, excellent food, the headquarters of the African Union, the only sub-Saharan African country to have never been colonised by imperial forces. The list continues.



Scotland - extended business trip to re-visit my first ex-pat home (Edinburgh) and finally give Glasgow the attention it deserves!



Belgium - cycling along canals to abbeys all over central Belgium, sampling the fruits of the monks' centuries of labour: Belgian Abbey Beers!



Germany - Christmas with my mother in Cologne, Bonn, the 'romantic Rhine', and Trier, just the two of us (literally -- all the shops were closed and the streets empty). Trier was a surprising highlight of our lovely, however frozen, German experience.



Paris - a romantic New Year in the most notoriously romantic city in the world.



The Netherlands - lots of laughs, meals, walks and wine, and a nine-hour long Christmas dinner in Dutch. I will have a lot more to say about NL in 2009.

Thankfully there's lots of water in Holland, which should help scratch off my first New Year's resolution!

The scale of authenticity.

Abu Dhabi's an excellent place to have young children, but for an imaginative 20-something, there's little to do except work. And I've been working 10-12 hour days for almost 2 months straight now. Though I really enjoy work right now.

A typical email from me these days reads "No, you have not been removed from 'the list' -- I've been working too much to write lengthy email updates these days." I think the reason my blog was so active while I was in Africa was because I had little else to do at work! But also, I had far more material to work with in Africa than I have here.

Abu Dhabi is a peaceful, island city where activities and places are controlled in order to maintain the peaceful status quo. There are no real spontaneous, organic, cool places to discover, no quirky cafes opening, or room for interpreting public space.

I went to Nepal for an extended long weekend in March, and we spent most of our time hanging out with the owners from our hotel -- an ultra-cool couple from Seattle -- and their ultra-cool friends. The couple met in Seattle and returned to the husband's homeland a few years ago to re-build his childhood home into a guesthouse, and they enjoy hosting their guests as if they are old friends at home, and they have all sorts of funky ex-pat friends who own restaurants and bars around Kathmandu. One evening, we were sitting around a fire at an open roof Korean resto-bar, having drinks with the American Embassy crew, talking about how much we appreciated having all these stylish and interesting places to go to in Kathmandu:

- Yah, but this is not the Kathmandu experience.
- I disagree. This is a Kathmandu experience, and something I have no guilt enjoying, because it's still something I cannot get in Abu Dhabi.
- Yah, but this is not the real Kathmandu.     Look around you -- we're all ex-pats.
- I totally get what you're saying, and if I hadn't just spent half the weekend staying with the family of our tea boy in his village, then I would probably walk away from this long weekend feeling rather empty about my experience in Nepal. But, on the scale of authenticity, sitting on this rooftop in Kathmandu, drinking Black Russians with a bunch of Americans, Koreans, and one Napalese person still ranks many notches higher than anything I've managed to find in inauthentic Abu Dhabi.

I think I spend very little time really "in" Abu Dhabi. It's not a bad place here, in fact, I think it would be heaven to raise small children here. And I hate it when people complain that there's nothing to do, because we have everything we need here, and people leave you in peace on the streets, and we're given space. But the truth is that Abu Dhabi is just too chill, with a focus on families. And 5 months of the year it's too hot to go outside.

Largely because of this simple climatic fact, much of life in Abu Dhabi feels very manufactured. Most urban activities were designed to avoid the reality of the outside world -- air conditioning runs all year round, and they even tore down the old central souk in order to build a 'modern' indoor one (ah, when you build a souk indoors, it's called a 'mall', and there are already plenty in Abu Dhabi!)

Mostly I lead a very domestic life. Topics of conversation revolve around work (almost my entire social circle are people I work with), buying furniture (I'm in the midst of my second move already, and there are always new people coming who inevitably talk about furniture), and cars (I just bought a pimped SUV – the most fuel-efficient SUV available in UAE, by the way). I lead more of a Burnaby life now than I ever lead in Burnaby!

The real world only bullies its way into one's life here when something goes wrong -- such as finding accomodation. My move has been filled with drama -- I was kicked out of my flat by building management because they want new tenants so that they can ask for more bribe money, then the roommate turned on me and displayed her un-humanly selfish and victimized attitude in its full glory, it took 2 months to find a new place to live (which we're paying $50,000 per year in rent for by the way -- Abu Dhabi is ridiculous for housing!!!), and now I'm homeless until the new pad is ready for moving in.

Even in family-oriented Abu Dhabi I seem to find some authentic drama to keep me entertained.