But confusing things further, we are twelve hours ahead of Los Angeles. So we woke up Sunday morning, Craig got ready for work, and we had pictures of all our friends and family heading out to trick-or-treat for Halloween. It's disconcerting, to say the least.
Craig set out to meet the team to walk to work and I headed for the "lap pool" in our building. The changing room had lockers, so I asked the person working in the gym where I found the key. He told me that I got the key to the locker outside, from the guy working at the pool. I went outside to be told that I got the locker key inside. I gave up on that as a lost cause and decided to keep my clothes with me at the pool. I went back inside to get towels. When I set those towels with my clothes on a chair, the pool guy came over and took those towels away. He did, at least, give me different towels.
I showered, put in my ear plugs, tucked my hair up in my swim cap, and put on my goggles. I got into the pool and started swimming toward the other end. Mind you, this is a small lap pool to begin with, perhaps half the length of a standard lap. Halfway to the other end, I saw that it got shallower. Then my hand hit the bottom. Before I could take another stroke, my elbow was nearly touching the bottom. I turned over and sat up, looking back at the length of the pool.
The pool guy came over and started talking. I had to roll up my swim cap and take out my ear plug to hear him. I think he told me that I didn't want to swim here. I should try the hotel pool.
The problem with this is that to walk over to the hotel pool, I would have to get completely dressed. It's not really acceptable to walk around in public in a swimsuit, even in a one-piece. I decided I would stay the course and try the hotel pool the following day. I switched to swimming the width of the pool, which was about four strokes and turn. That didn't last terribly long before I was incredibly bored. I did some exercises in the pool and went in to the locker room.
I actually enjoyed the shower in the locker room, because I could stand up completely and not worry about hitting my head. The shower in our apartment leaves something to be desired. I got dressed and headed back to our apartment.
I started laundry - sure to be an adventure with the tiny machine that poses as both washing machine and dryer. And I continued unpacking, using the hangers that had been delivered the previous day. I found I needed more hangers, so I called housekeeping for more hangers and for extra towels. I hate not being able to change towels when I want. I asked for five more hangers and two more pant hangers.
Some time later, a man showed up at the door with three pant hangers. He asked what size towels I wanted and I told him I wanted bath towels. I asked him about getting another chair for our dining room table - the one they found for us had a single chair. He asked if it was alright if he came back at 1 or 2. I agreed, as much because I didn't know what time it was as because I didn't have any plans for the day.
Just after he left, I got a call from housekeeping asking if I had gotten the hangers and towels. He was back with the towels while I was still on the phone. This was around 11 o'clock in the morning.
I continued unpacking and settling into the apartment. I sorted out where I wanted to sew, at least to start. I picked the corner of the bedroom with the best light and moved another light into the space. Here's a picture of the space, including the box for my machine and the suitcase full of my sewing supplies:
By this point, I was too groggy to try using an unfamiliar sewing machine. All I wanted to do was go to sleep, but I was determined to stay awake. I managed to stay awake, but I can't say that I did much more that was productive.
I ran the washing machine several more times, attempting to get it to dry our clothes. It refused, regardless of the cycle I selected. Even "intense drying" didn't actually dry the clothes. So I hung everything up around the bathtub.
Housecleaning showed up and asked if they could clean the room. I agreed and two men set about cleaning the room. Just after they left, the phone rang. The lady who had called earlier to check on the hangers and towels called again to ask me if housekeeping had come and if everything was satisfactory. I said that it was.
A few minutes later, the guy who had brought the hangers came back and asked if he could look at the wallpaper. Ordinarily, I would have trouble recognizing someone I had seen just once before, but he had introduced himself. The way he said his name didn't connect with the letters on his name tag in any way, so I had looked at him more than I might usually, trying to figure out where he was from. Dubai is incredibly diverse.
For whatever reason, he walked through the apartment with a clipboard. He did, as far as I could tell, look at the wallpaper and record the patched spots. I'm less clear about why they would choose now to do this sort of inspection. But he left and I got another call asking if someone had "checked the wallpaper".
Some time later, I was lounging on the sofa reading Buzzfeed and Slate and trying to stay awake when I heard water dripping. I wandered around in search of this water before I found it coming from a panel just inside the front door. I called housekeeping again.
Shortly thereafter, a man came up with a ladder and poked about in the ceiling. He concluded that it was condensation from the air conditioning unit. At least, he told me, "It's okay. Water from the AC condensing up there and falling down here." He had barely left when the phone rang. Now the lady wanted to know if the leak had been fixed. I told her that someone came up, looked at it, and decided it was condensation.
A bit after that, a man came up with the addition chair for the dining room table. As I was coming to expect, just after the door closed behind him the phone rang. I'm not sure if it's standard practice to call every time someone is sent to a room. Maybe it's because I'm in the room? Surely they wouldn't call every time the cleaning crew goes into a room. Maybe it's because I'm a woman alone in the room? It seems very strange. I'm not sure what they are checking up on or why.
I passed the rest of the afternoon playing Sims. I was too tired to do anything productive, but determined to stay awake. Craig was scheduled to have a business dinner, but that ended up just being a meeting. He was home in time to have dinner together. We decided to just walk to the hotel, because it doesn't involve crossing that crazy street like going to the mall would. Craig picked the Lebanese restaurant.
It was just after 7 p.m. and the place was completely empty. They assured us that they were open, it was just early for dinner. The live entertainment starts at 11:30, so that's when people come to have dinner. We ordered a chef's selection, which was an enormous amount of food. Dinner started with all this:
And this was the main course - there is chicken, steak, and lamb under the slices that look like pizza:
And it finished with this enormous fruit platter:
Needless to say, we didn't eat everything we were served. Just tasting everything left me nearly full. But the papaya in the fruit platter was amazing! I've never really liked papaya, but this was so good. I can almost understand why people eat it now.
After dinner, we returned to our apartment to try to stay awake until 10 p.m. Just as we are crashing from a long first day of the work week, our family and friends were waking up to their Sunday morning. Such a very strange Sunday.
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