Update

Sorry for the lack of posts lately. I shall grant Undercover Dragon's request (vaguely) by saying that I have moved back to the U.S. for now. I am living on the West Coast, but have traveled across country a few times in the past months. I'll be working in the States for a while, but I'm already looking at potential plans to Oman, or at least the region in the not-too-distant future. In the meantime, it looks like I may be taking a business trip to the other side of Asia before long, but unfortunately I don't think I'm going to be able to get out of the U.S. for an adventure around Christmas time as I'd hoped.

Of note, while running today, I was listening to an al-Jazeera podcast of the Itijah al-Muakas show from July 29th about the Gulf Arab identity. I'll try to get some notes blogged about it before long, but it was a very interesting back and forth between two Arab intellectuals about whether the Gulf Arab identity is dying, or whether it is simply progressing in a world of globalization. If you understand Arabic and are interested in the Gulf, I recommend you take a listen. Some of the commentary was very interesting and the one gentleman's counterpoint to the "Gulf identity is dying" argument was excellent. He pointed out that, if you go to almost any major city in the world today, people are wearing the same kind of clothes, eating at the same restaurants, ila akheerihi (etc.). It isn't that the Gulf identity is dying (well, I guess it is in a way, but in this it is no different than any other identity), but it is that the Gulf identity lives on, subsumed into a more globalized milieu. If you look at it this way, I guess you could say that, far from being a dying culture, the Gulf is holding on to core cultural markers more tightly than most. The problem is, people in other regions seem to be more comfortable with the direction their culture is taking. In the Gulf, identity and culture is a constant topic of acrimonious debate.