The Daily Cow

So I'm on my way back to Muscat for a week before school begins, stopping at Amsterdam and Dubai along the trip, and I've made a few observations about the trip, which I'm going to type out now as I wait for the gate in Dubai to open.

• The Dubai airport has toilets with sinks that have Chinese labels on them. The faucet has the pictorial representation of washing hands, and above it is Chinese for what can only be 'Auto'. (I know because there are other toilets that have English labels on them.) This is weird, considering the Middle East does not have a significant East Asian contingent. I can only assume it's because they were made in China? This should get the Chinophiles pleased.
• The customs at the San Francisco airport is annoying and thoroughly rushed. Loads of people bearing down on a few security machines does not bode well for the passengers. And I wasn't allowed three carry-ons, just two, so I had to hurriedly repack, sort, and throw away. Ironically, no one detected anything wrong with me, nor did anyone ask to see my rucksack.

  In Amsterdam, however, with the same amount of people, the crowd was much less rushed and the security check much more dignified and thorough. The security detected a pair of scissors in a box in my rucksack (which I had no idea was there, since I had only touched that box at the very beginning of Fall 2007) and confiscated them politely.

  This struck me as very odd; in a country, where the security level is orange, the security checks are rushed and discomfiting, and potentially un-secure items not found. In a country where there is no such up-amped terror level, the security checks are polite, and detected a pair of scissors. And in Dubai, the security checks found a screwdriver (which, in my defense, I didn't know was there either). I would imagine terrorists would have far less success in the Netherlands than they would in the US, but I haven't heard of a terror attack on Netherlands yet.

• Airports are not the best places to try and take a nap, and neither are airplanes. You tend to just sit there and gape out into the wide abyss. It's weird doing it; it's scarier seeing other people do it.
• The Dubai airport has a UFO. Never figured out why.
• The Amsterdam airport has liquor stores and gambling places, and an aqua-massage facility. And there's a museum. And a picture of a fly in the bathroom stalls to help men aim properly. No, really.