At in my new office now in Dubai. My desk has a view of the Persian Gulf.

I wasn't sure how many spaces to reserve for my going away party Friday at Abu el-Sid restaurant in Cairo. I figured my friends would come but I don't have any idea how much friends I made in my seven months in Cairo. So I said 12, and just invited pretty much everyone I knew. Eventually 12 people showed up but they weren't all there at one time.

Emirates is a truly excellent airline, with over 500 channels of TV shows and movies on demand. So excellent, in fact, that it makes you wonder why they have to take so of your movie-viewing time with passenger announcements (which stop the movie mid-action) explaing how stupendously excellent the airline is. So numerous are these promotional messages they I could barely finish "The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe" during the flight from Cairo, and did so only by when the plane had taxied to the gate.

I can offer no further reflections at the moment.