Betsy Devine: Funny ha-ha and/or funny peculiar

“The big thing is to combine punctuality, efficiency, good nature, obedience, intelligence, and concentration with an unawareness of what is going to happen next, thus keeping yourself available for excitement.”

Sir John Gielgud, whose birthday is April 14

Women in Riyadh wear long black abeyas and cover their heads. Some women–fewer than half–also cover their faces. Mia brought glamorous abeyas for both of us from Cairo. I’m sorry this photo doesn’t show the opulent gold-patterned sleeve and scarf-ends on mine, but generalize from her fuchsia band and you get the idea.

Many indoor spaces, including our hotel, were abaya-optional zones–full of dynamic, well-educated Saudi women, some of them wearing head-scarves and some of them not.

Outdoors, their black color makes them hot when the sun comes pouring down. I predict that the inventive Saudis will soon invent a new, improved tradition of wearing white abeyas in summer.

Now it’s Frank’s turn with our ethernet cable!

When I saw this sentimental Victorian painting, years ago, I was startled to recognize two modern little girls in the very front row–Margaret and Ruth, the daughters of friends of ours. It was even in character (then) that Ruth was dipping a few extra flowers out of her sister’s basket.

Now, 25 years later, and in Riyadh, grown-up Margaret and Ruth turn up again, still looking just the same, having acquired gravitas and major scholarly credentials while still looking just the same–at least to me.

No wonder Alma Tadema could paint them both for Queen Victoria…

This morning, we visited the Riyadh suq, an outdoor market with many different displays of sandalwood, buckets of antique jewelry, and enough inlaid daggers to set off ten kinds of alarms at airport security.

The King Faisal Foundation is taking wonderful care of all their winners–and I’m loving our rooms in the Al-Faisaliyah Hotel, whose luxuries range from fresh fruit and flowers (including floating pink rose petals) to ultramodern touchpads at each bedside that let you open or close three levels of curtains.

But even outside this VIP coccoon, I’ve found Saudi Arabia more welcoming than I expected. In Dammam airport, as Frank and I tried to find our way to our next airplane–picking up somebody else’s suitcase by mistake, and leaving one of our own suitcases behind–the many Saudis we spoke with went out of their way to help us. I’m told that hospitality to guests is one of the first social skills a Saudi child learns–I can well believe it. Even our suitcase gaffe was met with great tact.

Living in any country on this divided planet, it’s easy to pick up some caricature ideas of any other country you can mention. This eloquent statement by Saudi foreign minister HRH Prince Saud Al-Faisal addresses a lot of western caricatures of this part of the world.

Another perspective comes from British scholar Carole Hillenbrand, who just won a King Faisal International Prize for her book on the Crusades as seen by Islamic eyes. By the way, Carole would like to make it clear that she is not “fluent” in 11 languages other than English–11 is merely the number of languages she’s studied.

Such modesty is admirable, but…I clearly remember once trying to play a dictionary game in a group that included Carole. We had to give up because none of us could find, in the big dictionary, even one English word Carole didn’t know…

We got to the Al-Faisaliah Hotel about midnight last night — it’s a striking sight against the Riyadh skyline, somehow more welcoming than the Kingdom Tower.

We’re here because the King Faisal Foundation very kindly awarded Frank a King Faisal International Prize in Science.

Other prizewinners got here several days ago–we missed camel rides and a picnic in the desert–but Frank had a previous promise to Delft that could not be broken. The KFF was understanding about our delay, and gave us a royal welcome even at midnight.

After meeting a number of charming dignitaries, drinking watermelon juice, eating cotton candy with salted almonds (and not eating even more tempting things we were offered), and then unpacking, we finally got to bed around 2 a.m.

Then we got up at 7 for today’s very full schedule. So if I’m incoherent, that’s my excuse!

Schiphol, pronounced “S*%@*ip – hol”, is my favorite world airport, and would be my favorite world airport even if it weren’t next to Amsterdam, one of my very favorite world cities. And now Schiphol has a new feature in its favor–besides cleanliness, access to fast trains, and sensible shops including a supermarket. That new feature is happy memories of meeting the famous Niek of Shutterclog.

Niek has been charming blogreaders for quite a few years now, so I was honored that he left his home on the beach to come visit with us. And how did he ever find chocolate bars named “Divine”?

One couldn’t imagine a better companion for tiptoeing through the tulips…

“Much of the social history of the Western world over the past three decades has involved replacing what worked with what sounded good.”

Thomas Sowell, via Niek Hockx

I’m off to the airport, where Frank and I will meet the famous Niek, and then get on a plane for Saudi Arabia. I told Niek to keep his eye open for somebody wearing solid black from neckline to ankle and wrist. Not sure if I’ll be able to blog from Riyadh, but la vida es una buena aventura, and this certainly will be a big adventure.

Our hotel is an old Delft canal house, and our sunny room overlooks an old Delft canal, appropriately called the Oude Delft Canal. I strolled to the big town square called the Markt today, while Frank tried to replace some jet-lagged sleep. No actual rain fell on my mithril raincoat, but cloudy skies and a wet breeze made me glad I’d brought warm clothing for these few days. It is a lovely, classical Dutch civic space, with fake wooden shoes now on sale from every ground floor. Then, after seeing your dad off to his conference, I hopped on a train to Den Haag, to revisit the lovely Vermeers in the Mauritshuis (most notably Girl with Pearl Earring and View of Delft.)

To my delight, they also had Vermeer’s most ambitious painting on temporary loan from Vienna — “Allegory of Painting”, which he had on display in his own studio until his death. Allegedly, the chair in the foreground invites you to sit down in the artist’s studio so that Vermeer himself can (metaphorically) pull the curtain aside to reveal to you more of his art. Quite aside from the complex story the painting supposedly tells, it’s pretty spectacular in the sheer scope of what it imitates (glass, fabric, skin, wood, ripples of shadow, rays and twinkles of light, etc.) The museum was uncrowded except for a couple of surges of Japanese tourists, who seemed to be running some kind of endurance race. 30 tourists crowd together in front of one painting, 30 tourists listen to 2-minute spiel in Japanese, 30 tourists snap flash pictures of the painting, 30 tourists hasten away to another painting. Of course, much of the fun was also riding Dutch trains and trams again, not to mention wandering cheerfully over the bricks and cobbles of many small side streets. Also ordering a lunch of mixed appetizers and being very surprised that it included bits of raw hamburg(?)–which I did not eat, by the way. Now I’ll take a much-needed nap, but not before forcing this email into double duty as a traveler’s blogpost.

Love you a lot and xxx to all,
Mom

On page 32 of his new book,
Happiness: Lessons from a New Science, Richard Layard charts happiness versus per capita income of various countries. The country with the highest percent who are “Happy” or “Satisfied”?

The Netherlands, by a good bit.

Why? Dutch bicycles, if you want my opinion.

Holland has no monopoly on Layard’s big seven — family relationships, financial situation, work, community and friends, health, personal freedom, and personal values — factors he claims can account for much of happiness.

Here’s why the Dutch norm of bicycling everywhere creates more happiness:

• Exercise makes people’s bodies feel good.
• Exercise lifts people’s spirits.
• Bikers are not anonymous the way drivers are; hence their traffic interactions are much more civil.
• Riding a bike instead of a Hummer to work is just one example of the general Dutch aversion to flaunting wealth–the struggle to keep up with (or better) your neighbors creates much unhappiness in many cultures.
• Almost running over clueless American tourists who will go home and blog about you gets your pulses racing.

In that last area, Dutch bicycles have just made me happy as well.

Here’s my email-to-Kiruna version of the story:

Calling all Rymdgymnasiet aliens and their mentors!

The MIT news office wrote up the story of the DNA auction and posted it this morning. http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2005/wilczek.html

Now somebody else has already picked up the story: http://www.physorg.com/news3595.html

I’m sending you this email from Boston’s airport (I love wifi!) where we’re en route to the annual meeting of the Dutch Physical Society. They say it’s springtime there–I can hardly wait. Our own garden’s snow covering just barely melted and not even one crocus or daffodil has replaced it.

Best regards to all, and I hope you enjoy this story as much as I did,
Betsy