Day D0: Remade

July 17, 2024

If I could describe how I feel right now in Dubai it would be one word: remade. This is obviously my first time to the United Arab Emirates and I had pretty minimal expectations, if any. It isn't that I didn't know already that Dubai is a liberal Islamic mecca with a glut of oil money and low taxes. Everyone knows that. But experiencing this for the first time just blew my mind.

Taking that plane ride from San Francisco was like the elephant kicking away the restraints and freeing himself from the captive bondage of learned helplnessness. I believe that what I just accomplished with that flight was the pivotal piece of action. This was the linchpin of the trip. Where the white elephant goes from here, we're all about to find out.

As the famous quote from the Matrix goes, Morpheus says "Have you ever had a dream, Neo, that you were so sure was real? What if you were unable to wake from that dream? How would you know the difference between the dream world and the real world?" He further gives Neo two options and we all know how it goes.

As Wikipedia explains, "The red and blue pill are metaphorical terms representing a choice between learning an unsettling or life-changing truth by taking the "red pill" or remaining in the contented experience of ordinary reality with the "blue pill".

Sigma males take the red pill. The question is would I have the courage, the guts, and the balls to do so also?

Thanks to the alcohol, I was out solid for the first half of the flight and woke up over the north pole. The flight was not full which was to be expected since it is not peak season in Dubai, unlike the places I had just come from. This meant I could sprawl out over the middle seat. Once the flight crossed the polar region, it was then I realized: this was the polar opposite (pardon the pun) of the Shanghai lockdown and all those years of suffering with the covid policies and their aftermath.

Once on the other side of the world, the plane started entering Russian airspace and with that some violent turbulence. All of a sudden the captain put the plane in a sharp descent and threw the seatbelt sign on. The plane was shaken violently, lurching back and forth and I started to silently freak out. The captain said very urgently, "Everyone back to your seats with the seatbelts. Do not stand!!!"

Thankfully this didn't last long and it was back to a smooth ride. The meals they served on board were amazing, some of the best I had on flights, and the calories just enough to tide me over. Emirates did not disappoint.

As we cruised through Russian airspace, I shared in detail with my mentor friend just how monumental this flight was and what it meant for, well, basically everything. The plane kept on going through Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, and finally Iran before coming for a landing in Dubai. Finally, after 15 hours, it was time to disembark. When I did so, it was entering a whole new world.

Approach spotted. That is an entire compound by the way.

Dangerous. But this wasn't even a fraction of the duty free story.

The airport was the most modern I had ever seen. Thanks to posting on social media, another friend said I absolutely had to check out the duty free for some wicked deals. Before that happened, I breezed through immigration and told the officer it was my first trip to Dubai. He smiled and said, "Good" then gave me a free SIM card.

Unreal. If you enter the USA they grill you like you're a criminal. When you enter the UAE you get a free SIM card

There was more smiles and service on the other side while I changed some Japanese money, picked up all my bags (including the bike), and went for the duty free. I bought insanely cheap alcohol, just like my friend had said was available. She just gave me very dangerous advice. If not for her, I would have skipped it.

I was already loving this place so much and hadn't even left the airport. Everything so far was so easy. It wasn't crowded either, mind you San Francisco airport was also blisssfully chill. Once in a taxi for a very reasonable price, he dropped me off to the Airbnb and I couldn't believe my eyes what I was seeing. There was so much wealth in this place. All these new and modern businesses flanking the roadsides. There was a total absence of graffiti or a sense of old grimy buildings that had been very prevalent in US and Canadian cities. I didn't see any homeless people either.

It was a little tricky finding the Airbnb but we did, and then my host Alison welcomed me in. At point I realized it was 45 degrees outside, and stifling hot even at this hour. This was no doubt going to suck, but Alison had AC in her place. I was exhausted but thought it best to stop for a chat first while she showed me around. She asked the magic words, "Do you drink?" That's like asking if the sky is blue. We had two, three, maybe four sangrias and you can pretty much guess what happened. She told me her life story. Unfortunately I was so exhausted I couldn't keep up the details as she would bounce very quickly from one topic to the next. But the gist of it was that she used to work for Emirates as a flight attendant and now has free business class for life. She lives in a massive villa with multiple maids and servants, and is always traveling the world from this place to that.

As she began to go about all the places she goes and people who come here, I started to realize something obvious: Dubai is literally in the center of the world. No wonder she can pull this off. Well duh, I suppose, that is why they call it the Middle East. You can more or less take a direct flight to, well, anywhere. Where I just came from was probably the upper limit of where you could go direct. But certainly, from Dubai you could reach both Sao Paolo or Beijing with direct flights, whereas those two end cities are literally on opposite ends of the world.

The dots were starting to connect in a way that I couldn't even begin to imagine. She started to realize that I was tired obviously. Then she gave me the tour, showed the basics, then eventually I crashed. Over the next week or so, I am going to explore the fuck out of this city and start to get my bearings and get oriented for what's coming up next.

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