Sylvia's Journal

The flight from Atlanta to Dubai was once again endless even though I had many hours of sleep in my comfy B-class pod and, when not asleep, had innumerable things to keep me occupied and forget about time. Still, Dubai is far away from home – eight time zones; my sense of night and day is all messed up.

It took me from Boston to Atlanta and another hour into the next leg to unravel the cross stitches that I had spent several days on in Manchester and Vermont. If you are off by one thread at the start nothing can fix it other than starting over again. It’s the same with flying – if you are one degree off at the beginning of the journey and stay the course you may end up in Moscow rather than Dubai.

During our visit to Sita’s house I was reminded that her colors are not quite the pastel palette I had started with. The new start allowed me to use the proper palette this time: variations on red and pink. It will be a Quaker sampler with a Sita twist this time.

I am very happy with my netbook purchase. In order to leave Axel with my Kindle I downloaded a neat little program along with the Kindle software that turned my netbook into a Kindle, even letting me read the screen vertically – I hold the netbook like a book, it’s about the right size and weight. There is another piece of software that would even turn the screen into a Kindle look-alike, saving much battery power, but that requires more research.

Dubai is the best airport for single female travelers. Upon leaving the airport a row of pink taxis, with female drivers, also dressed in a pink outfit, a pink cap and a white veil are on standby to pick up people like me. All these female drivers appear to be Philippina. They chat in Tagalog with callers on their blue tooth cellphone, the blue light of their headset blinking through the white veil as if they are robots receiving instructions from outer space.

This time I picked a hotel in back of the Emirates Mall as part of my exploration of good deals among the thousands of hotels that dot the Dubai landscape. The hotel has the grandiose name of Grandeur Hotel. It is quite new and thus has some teething problems like not having a bottle opener for my Heineken or a scale to weigh my luggage. I learned that all loose things are stolen by clients. I had to leave an 80 dollar deposit for that reason I suspect.