If you ever go to Dubai, enjoy lovely Jumeirah Beach. But don't have sex there.

If you must have sex there, don't have sex with someone you're not married to.

If you must have sex with someone you're not married to there, then when the police officer kindly lets you off with a warning, for God's sake STOP HAVING SEX.

Or if you can't do that, then at least when the police officer comes back to arrest you, don't throw a shoe at him and call him a "f****** Muslim ****" (Times of India).

This has been a public service announcement from qatar.livejournal.com. Thank you for your attention.

Acceptable activities on Jumeirah Beach include sunbathing, wading, building sandcastles, and NOT HAVING SEX.

I've just made an exploratory foray into uploading pictures to Flickr. As a result, our Dubai pictures (including some shamelessly stolen from friends) are here.

Well, that was fun! I never had much of an innate desire to see Dubai (i.e. "The Las Vegas of the Middle East"), but since that's where a bunch of our friends were going for midsemester break, we tagged along. It turned out to be immensely enjoyable -- especially the nice public beaches and the water park.

I imagine I'll post some pictures once we've sorted through ours and poached some from our friends. Meanwhile, here's one of Caryl's to tide you over:


Ryan, Tim, Andrew, me and Justin, in an abra on Dubai Creek

Update: More of Caryl's pictures, and a nice writeup of what we did in Dubai, can be found here.