Jarvis Harrison Lander. 23-03-10

I was beginning to think it was all a hoax. Family, friends and even clients were calling me up asking if I was a father yet. But no signs of an impending kid aside from a big belly, so I kept thinking of those bad comedies where someone fakes a pregnancy as if she could possibly pull it off. At one week overdue Sarah and I decided to stop putting our lives on hold and to resume some normality. At 10 days late, I went for a morning run with my mate Mike and agreed to meet up the following morning for a bike ride around Marina.

Perhaps it was that planning (the cigarette-bus theory of cause and effect), perhaps it was the home remedy we tried to get labour started, or perhaps it was just the right time. But I came back from my run to find Sarah experiencing contractions every now and again. I decided it would be prudent to work from home. Sarah and her mum carried on as normally as possible.

Around 4:00pm, Sarah's mum went to the pool, so Sarah and I squeezed in another home remedy. And about that, if you want to induce labour, forget all the old wives' tales. Rasberry leaf tea: doesn't work. Pressure points in the hand: nothing. Foot massage: load of bollocks. Hot food: nada. Hot bath: big deal. So what works? Well, I don't like to kiss and tell so you'll have to ask your doctor.

So there we are at 5:00pm and Sarah's in active labour. She was about to go to the shops to get the dinner but decided that contractions at five minutes apart would have made it a hell of a long walk. Before we knew it, she was at three minutes apart and around 7:00pm I bundled her into the car for the drive to American Hospital.

Through peak hour traffic. Awesome.

But we arrived and Sarah was 3cm dilated. A few hours later she was at 6cm. I had to field calls from Glenn telling me to tell her to push as his wife, Tina, wanted baby's birthday to match hers and there were only 30 minutes to go.

And then things went slow. From about 1:00am until 7:00am, no progress was made and there was talk of breaking waters. Now guys, you may not be aware, but there seems to be a whole culture with pregnant women whereby any kind of intervention is seen as the first step that leads inevitably to a caesarian section. Some women even seem to think they've failed in some way unless they have a completely natural, non-interfered-with birth. (That probably helps explain the popularity of home births.) I'm not saying Sarah's one of these women, but the thought was there, (thanks I think to the pre-natal class), that breaking water would lead to further intervention.

Men, on the other hand, being somewhat disconnected from the birthing experience, tend to see things in terms of risks and benefits and what's the best way to get the job done with the minimum of fuss. Like cleaning the gutters. If something isn't going right, we want to know how best to fix it, and to hell with what "feelings" that may give rise to. Medical practice is there to help us, and any advance on how things were done in prehistory is exactly that: an advance. Bring it on! If men gave birth (and had the bits to do so), the c-section rate would be about 100%. I mean, it's a safe, straightforward procedure. It's quick and efficient. It leaves you with a scar. Gadgets are involved. What's not to like?

Anyway, Sarah's waters were broken, and still baby's head was high and not moving. At the 20h mark an epidural was introduced, as was a load of oxytocin. The former relaxed her, the latter increased the strength of the contractions and BAM! In 2 or 3 hours she was fully dilated, the head was down and she was starting to push.

Now at this point I'd like to say that my plan had always been to stay above the elbow. I didn't want to see anything gruesome, or anything that would put me off sex for 5 months as it did to my (other) friend Mike. Now, I don't know how long I thought Sarah was, but "above the elbow" isn't actually that far from the action. And because she had a tube sticking out of her spine, she had to push lying on her back with her knees drawn in. Without getting graphic, this meant my vantage point above the elbow was within reach, and certainly within sight, of what I was trying to avoid.

And like anything you try not to look at, I look.

And I'm glad I do. Seeing your child being born is simply incredible. One minute there are six people in the room (Sarah, me, the doula, the doctor, the mid wife, and the other mid wife who just seems to have popped her head in as she didn't have anything else to do), and the next minute there are seven. Another person, arriving, but not through the door. Then he's placed on Sarah's chest, and she smiles so wide I think her face is going to split. "He's so beautiful. Can we call him Jarvis? He's so beautiful."

We had agreed a shortlist of names and Jarvis was the top one. We'd also agreed to look at the baby first and decide which name suited him best. So when Sarah asks to name him Jarvis, I decide not to point out she hadn't actually seen him yet - she is clearly emotional and I'm not about to correct her on anything. Besides, it's an awesome name, so I say of course we can.

Then it's time to relax a bit and marvel at what we've done. Some skin-to-skin cuddling, then he's weighed (3.986kg), measured (55cm on the tape, but 51cm 2 days later on the measuring table) and dressed. Sarah's mum arrives in no time, phone calls are made, text messages sent and photos emailed from my phone. Before we know it, another six hours have passed and we're back in the room that's our home for the next two nights. Jarvis is in the cot, Sarah in the hospital bed. I hit the couch and ... collapse.

Now it's been three and a half weeks since the big day. Jarvis looks like he's going to be tall and lean. A witch doctor that Sarah saw said he'll be good at ball sports - if so he won't be getting that from me! He is very well behaved, though: sleeping a lot, eating well, spewing it back up over his dad's newly washed shirts, and pooing over his mum. I still look at him and am amazed. He is a gorgeous boy and I think I am a very lucky fellow indeed.

More images at http://picasaweb.google.com/Jarvis#

2010

Well, it's a new year (5 weeks ago) and lots has happened.

Did I mention that back in March my entire team at work was sacked without any speaking to me about it? The way that whole episode was handled got my back up a little bit, I have to admit. So I did what any thinking man would do: looked for a new job myself.

That took approximately half an hour, when I rang up a guy I met at a conference in Venice and asked if he needed any building physics expertise.

"No, we have a team in house for that, so we won't sub out to Atkins."

"Actually, I meant in house."

"Shit! I've been wanting to head hunt you for 6 months."

Always nice to know someone loves you!! Anyway, long story short, I agreed to help some guys establish an office of a new firm focussed on specialist building services. Then it was just a matter of timing: did I resign from Atkins and walk out with my head held high? Or did I wait around to get made redundant and walk out with my bank balance topped up?

I chose the pragmatic route and a few months later moved into a new pad on the proceeds. See here:

http://picasaweb.google.com/njlander/Accommodation#

But all that is secondary. You see, Sarah got pregnant. If you're wondering when that happened, let me out it this way: I'm thinking of calling our first born Jebel Akhtar. That would make me Abu Jebel, or Father of the Mountains, which is a pretty awesome moniker for someone who loves the hills as much as I do.

Anyway, she is due any day now. And by any day I mean I had my weekend leave pass cancelled, and I'm not allowed to drink so I can drive her to the hospital. (The zero tolerance policy here means I really can't drink.) Her mum arrived yesterday to support us through these interesting times, so now it's just a matter of time.

We changed doctors half way through the pregnancy. The first one came highly regarded, much like my evil endodonist when I was 14. Let's just say that her personality and mine didn't exactly meld, so we transferred to a guy who is so laid back, if we here any more relaxed he'd be dead.

Well, Sarah has blogged about her pregnancy for 9 months, so I won't go into too much detail. My life has barely been disrupted - I've had to absorb a few mood swings along the way and, now she's not working, some more costs - but I still go to work every day. All in, it's been pretty easy for me! Of course, that means I haven't had the opportunity to adjust in the same way as Sarah has. One mate told me it took him about 9 months to come to terms with fatherhood once his first was born. He also told me he made the mistake of checking out the business end during the delivery, and it was 5 months before he wanted sex again.

Soon enough I'll be writing about the fun of fatherhood. I'm hoping I can get back to my style of seeing the humour in the little day events, but for now, I'm signing off.

Ray Bans

A quick and unscientific poll in Williamsburg, NY, has revealed a new craze in the Big Apple that will surely hit the rest of the world soon, if it hasn’t already. And that’s Ray Bans. But not any old Ray Bans, but the clunky old Roy Orbison Ray Bans from the 50s, or something. (More strictly, Wayfarers and Wayfarers II.) The only thing is, they’ve been jazzed with new patterns and primary colours. And they’re no longer just sunglasses, but regular spectacles, too, for hip young folk who want to be original and ironic by wearing the same daggy glasses as one in every four people.

That’s right, my poll, conducted while sitting in the sun outside a "New York Muffins" shop, revealed that 23 out of 100 pairs of eyewear, including both sunnies and specs, were Roy O Ray Bans (or $10 copies thereof). Of course, that was in Williamsburg, the hip part of Brooklyn, other parts of NYC had lower densities, but they are still everywhere.

I wish I could work out how to repackage something pretty average (at best) from the past so everyone wants to buy it and make me rich...

New York

We went to New York the other day. Sarah first spent 10 days in the UK for a wedding (that's one day, but why would you want to spend another nine there?) and we met up at JFK airport. Not before I was robbed, though.

That's right, robbed. You've got to love airline rules. I was getting on the plane in Dubai, one of those departure points that lets you use metal cutlery for your meals, and was asked if I had any liquids. Stupidly, I said toothpaste, and had it confiscated because the half used container was more than 100mL.

Less than 100mL of fluid - surely that's the key thing. Even with James Bond Licence To Kill exploding toothpaste, you can't do a lot of damage with half a tube.

But I digress.

Last time I was in New York I was 18 years old and with my parents so the experience this time around was a bit different. There was alcohol, going out, and not being dragged around a whole lot of women's clothing and shoe shops. (Sarah tried, but felt guilty because I wasn't really enjoying it. It cut both ways, though - I didn't want to bore her by spending too long in a climbing store and so walked out empty handed. Besides, there was too much to do.)

We checked off the big ticket items: Empire State on a perfect, cloudless day; Statue of Liberty; MoMA; New York Philharmonic in Central Park (unfortunately rained out halfway through); live jazz (and in a smoke-free venue. Yay to Michael Bloomberg!); as well as some not so big ticket things: boutique beers on the waterfront; cool cafes in Williamsburg; catching up with an old college friend, Jon; staying with Sarah's ex housemate, Sanne and his wife Sarah.

Oh, and there was Broadway. We went and saw Avenue Q on our last night. It's a very funny play with... let’s say “adult muppets”. They do a great song Everyone’s a Little Bit Racist (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xbwNSNLPIfw&feature=related) among many others. If you get a chance, and especially if you ever saw Sesame Street, check it out.

The other big highlight was Bear Mountain. On the Saturday we piled into Sanne's 1990-something Ford Thunderbird, (a monster vehicle of over 5 metres but with only two doors and vaguely sports styling that, according to Sanne, handles like a boat, despite it's awesome name), and drove to Bear Mountain national park where we hiked around for several hours in the sun and fresh air on the Appalachian Trail.

We came across a few crusty hikers who were walking serious lengths of the trail (it runs over 2,000 miles from Georgia to Maine) but hardly anyone else. Most of the day-trippers stayed by a small, artificial lake by the carpark and barbecued stuff. Walking back at the end of the day, we could smell the barbecue accelerant several minutes before we could smell any food. The crowds by the lake, sandwiched between the highway, too, were a bit much, and we got back into the car as fast as we could.

So New York is a fine place. Not sure I'd want to live there, though, as it's a bit full-on for my liking.

Goatmobile

Here's something I never thought I'd say:

"My car was goated".

Yes, it turns out that goats are not as dumb as they look and if you park under a tree in goat country, they will use your vehicle as a stand from which to reach the leaves. If your car is a beat up Pajero, as Mike's is, no big deal. If it's a Mercedes CLK, then it's a little more frustrating to find scuff marks on every panel, including the doors.

Before

Luckily, Pete referred me to the grand master of car polishing and after Dh800, including interior and engine detailing, it came back looking like new. Amazingly, goat hooves don't seem to scratch that deeply.

After

*

Not that that seemed to make too much difference after a couple of weeks of parking outside back in Dubai. I left my job of 3 years at Atkins (a record time for me) and as such lost my underground carpark near my home. With only one car space in our building, and what with me being a gentlemen and letting Sarah continue to use it, I've been parking on the street and it's been getting filthy. The big mistake though was letting some car cleaner at the supermarket clean it - I think he scratched the hood more than the goats did.

(Just on that job thing: I was about to resign as I had another offer when Atkins thoughtfully made me redundant with a big fat pay cheque. So now I'm helping start up a new firm, still in Dubai for now, but maybe we'll move east in a few years.)

The Offender?

Snake Gorge

Well, after planning to get out to Snake Gorge since last summer, it finally happened. May is not too hot, the water is still clean(ish) in the gorge, and nor is it too cold. In fact, even though it was 40-something degrees outside, the gorge was about 10° cooler.

So the fun kicked off on Thursday. I had planned to skip off work early, but a 4:30 meeting kyboshed that idea. Not that it mattered as Zoi got caught in traffic on the way back from Abu Dhabi, so we didn't leave finally until almost 9:00pm. Hit the border in Al Ain at midnight, got a little lost and drove straight past the turn off at Al Hamra, and finally made camp at about 4:00am.

Friday morning was pretty rough, but once we'd eaten a bit, loaded up on coffee (even I had coffee!) we were ok, and once we saw the gorge for the first time, all tiredness evaporated. Snake Gorge, (or Canyon, depending who you talk to), is a long, deep and narrow cut through some of the most spectacular mountains in the world. There is water running at the bottom year round, and this weekend the water was clean (mostly), cool and refreshing. And the gorge was simply spectacular.

The day involved a combination of jumping into water, abseiling, scrambling over rocks, helping each other up rock faces and generally having a blast. In fact, in terms of all time greatest sporting days in my life, this is up there with getting virgin tracks through sweet, sweet powder on the Volcano run at Las Lenas in 2004 (which, before I got married, I had listed as the happiest day of my life!)

Snake Gorge was that good.

see http://picasaweb.google.com/njlander  and follow the link.

India - Part III

Oops, forgot something. It's election time in India at the moment, which means every vertical surface has an election poster glued to it, from walls, to rocks, to old ladies too slow to get out of the way. Maybe because there is not a lot of TV coverage, election news is broadcast by cars with loudspeakers. The posters, meanwhile, just have mugshots of smiling politicians, smiling the smile of men thinking about how much loot they will embezzle once elected. ALL the photos are either mugshots or full body shot of the guy walking or, occasionally, shots of the politicians AND their cronies. So lots of pics of Sonya Ghandi and VJ Singh in the background...

And it's funny, but I think the policy of saturating the populace with photos of politicians backfires as you get sick to death of seeing their stupid faces. For example, as we left Munnar there were two guys running localls: Congress and the Commies. Now, the Commie looked right dodgy and the Congress guy looked like a kind and benevelont uncle. But after an hour and about 4,000 posters, you start to notice the beadiness of the eyes, the shifty look, and the hint of evil. And pretty soon, you hate the guy from Congress (and the Commie, who is still right dodgy, but now also a child molester), and you know that if you saw him, you'd get out of the car and punch him in his stupid smiling face.

But then you cross an electoral border and the posters change, and finally you're looking at a Communist who has the look of a guy who tortures kittens, a Congress guy who looks a little gay, and photos EVERYWHERE of Raul F-ing Ghandi, one of the million or so Ghandis (some free, some in jail but still running) that seem to dominate Indian politics.

Would you trust this man?

Or this one?

And what the hell? Communists? Didn't India learn anything from 1991?

India - Part II

Trivandrum.

So next up we went down to Trivandrum, the capital of Kerala. You can tell it's a proper city because some streets have raised sidewalks. The roads are the same as the villages, though: single laned and patchy.

Actually, driving (or being driven) in India has opened my eyes to driving in Dubai. I thought I understood after going to Mumbai, but doing real driving in Kerala is something else. For starters, everything is single lane - but in the Indian sense, which means that if a car is overtaking an auto-rickshaw, and a bus is overtaking that, and you're going faster, then it's ok to overtake the bus, car and auto-rickshaw. And if the same thing's happening on the other side, that's ok too - everyone slows down and starts driving on the (dirt) sidewalk. Sometimes, though, it gets too crowded and someone needs to stop and wait, usually honking at someone to get out of the way first.

"Keep Left" is more a concept than a rule

In fact, honking, as alluded to in my Mumbai post a while back, is a key part of driving in India. Sometimes it means "Hello there, I am approaching from behind, so don't be frightened"; sometimes it means "I say, can you please move over so I can pass"; or perhaps "Hey! Dickhead! Hurry the hell up and get out of my way!"


Anyway, We had a look around Trivandrum with a guide, which was excellent. He really knew his stuff and spent a lot of time explaining about Hinduism and the gods and their stories in the museum. He also took us to a famous handicrafts store where I picked up a great (stone) chess set for about US$40 and some paintings for about the same.

Trivandrum from the Taj Hotel

We took a day trip to Kanyakumari, the southernmost tip of India. Just of the coast is the shrine on a rock where some great Indian thinker meditated for a few days some years back, and now it's a big tourist attraction. And while it's not a total Dog on the Tuckerbox, to be honest it's not far off.

We were meant to be able to see the three sees from this vantage point (ie, Arabian Sea, Indian Ocean, Bay of Bengal). I guess we technically could see them as this was the point they all met, but it was difficult to make out the different colours as we'd been assured. It's pretty crazy to think, though, that if you headed out from there, the next landfall would be Antarctica.

Kovalam Beach.
Final stop was the Leela Hotel, famous for being super luxurious, etc, yet bugger-all per night (around AED700 or so). And yes, it was nice, but it was a little bit colour-by-numbers. Maybe we've been spoilt by frequenting 5-Star hotels in Dubai so often, but the Leela seemed like just another super luxurious hotel that could have been anywhere on Earth. (Unlike the Coconut Lagoon which was definitely Indian and hence our favourite place.)

The Sky Bar, an alright spot for a drink

The Leela also nearly killed me. After surviving 10 days without illness, I was taken down either by cheesecake or lime juice on our last full night. The next day, our last, featured an all time record for me for bathroom trips (7 in 7 hours, 10 in 12h) which completely cleaned me out. So much so that I couldn't eat when taken out for dinner by the travel agent (and friend of Anand's) on the last night, nor could I eat last night at a friend's place here in Dubai!

So that's India. More photos, as always, at picasaweb.google.com/njlander. In summary, nice trip, great honeymoon, glad to be home.

India - Part I

Oh my god, I'm so slack - nothing since January. Apologies. Here is some news:

Munnar.

Munnar is tea country. It is where Sarah and I started our (overdue) honeymoon in Kerala, India. The town is high up in the mountains, about 3,000m above sea level, and the climate is cool despite the tropical latitude.

And there is tea: beautiful tea plantation on slopes of about 60°; a tea museum with working tea factory; whole leaf tea; dust tea; black, green, white and masala tea. We even stayed in a place called the Tea Country Hotel. Now, what type of tea do you reckon they served?

Tetleys.

(Tetleys, in fact, was served all over Kerala, and while way better than gut-rot Liptons, the standard hotel tea in Dubai, it is still really bad.)

Our time in Munnar also took in a trip to a dam which our driver, reluctant to carry on further, perhaps, or maybe eager to get back to hanging out with the other drivers, assured us was the same as Top Station. Now, I suspect that Top Station might have been near or at the top of the mountain and would have a killer view. The dam was picturesque, but the vista from a valley just isn't the same.

Kumarakom.

Four long hours after leaving Munnar we arrived at Kumarakom, just 175km away. We stayed at Coconut Lagoon, a very chilled resort on the backwaters where we could relax, get off Indian food for a bit (turns out Sarah doesn't like it) and get massaged.

Aruyvedic massage is a bit different to what I'm used to. For starters, the guy makes you strip, ties a cord around your waist, then tucks in a bit of material front and back for modesty, which he then takes off once you're face down on the table. The hard wooden table. With no hole for your face. Anyway, after some rubbing, he takes a small sack of herbs, heated to near the temperature of the sun, and tries to transfer the healing properties of thyme directly to your muscles by hitting you with the sack as hard and as often as he can. You basically come out of it smelling like a roast.

But it's good stuff: I had two in Coconut Lagoon, just focussing on my messed up, stressed out shoulders and back where the guy tried to squeeze the muscle knots into another dimension. God it hurt... But as I say, good stuff.

Back to Kumarakom, though, and Coconut Lagoon. This place rocks and would be perfect for a week long party. Anyone interested in a cheap holiday with a good crew: I want to recruit enough people to fill 50 rooms in around a year from now. There's a pool, you get there on a little boat, there's a great massage centre and free yoga every morning! Let me know.

Backwaters.

Coconut Lagoon is on the backwaters, a series of lakes and canals just back from the coast. Now, I didn't mean to rough it, I really didn't. I only wanted to spend an afternoon cruising the backwaters before heading back to the resort, but the agent suggested a houseboat, my friend Anand told me I should "rock the boat", it being our honeymooon and all, and there is something romantic about cruising around in a private boat being waited on hand and foot for a day and a night. But the truth is, after a couple of hours there's nothing new to see, and once it gets dark you realise that an afternoon cruise was certainly the best option.

Of course, I should have guessed that the water on the boat would not be from a tank of pristine, or even semi-clean water when I stepped aboard. And I was foolish not to twig when we washed our hands and they dried sticky. But it was only when I gave into the accumulated grime, sweat, suncream and mosquito repellent and stepped into the shower that I realised the taps drew directly from the fetid river that smelt of sewage (due, no doubt, to the high levels of sewage in the water).