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Did you know that Milton S. Hershey, founder of the Hershey chocolate company, had 5 unsuccessful businesses before making his “World Famous Chocolate Bar”™?

Yeah me neither. I went out to Pennsylvania last weekend to enjoy my 4 day weekend (no classes on Friday and a holiday on monday) with Rachel. We spent a day and a half in Hershey to see the sights, as it were. Hershey sadly doesn’t boast much in the way of attractions and I was kind of disappointed by the lack of a real factory tour. You can take a tour, but it’s more of a ride, and includes animatronic cows that apparently provide the milk for Hershey’s milk chocolate. Suddenly that milk chocolate seems less appetizing….

Besides the scary thought of milk coming from robo-cows it was a fun trip. Rachel and I acted as restaurant critics for the evening on Saturday making point by point judgements of our experience at the Fire Ally. Unfortunately our review of it (2/5) hasn’t been moderated on Tripadvisor yet and is still pending.

I’m in Iowa again as of Monday despite some awful snowfall that night. I was driving at about 40mph and saw a fair number of less careful drivers in the ditch, including people I recognized passing me earlier.

Despite not posting anything over all of break I do have stuff to say (and a PoTW that will go up soon) about it. I’ve noticed this before but for some reason it seemed particularly acute this time around, the UAE is incredibly consumeristic, disgustingly so. It’s as if they took consumerism from the US, and kicked it up a few notches and when they ran out of room they added another notch and moved it there. This dial now goes go 11.

This trend is an increasing one as well. Since I was in Abu Dhabi last winter break two full size malls have opened (one while I was there this last time) and a huge addition has been made to one of the existing ones. Everyone has heard of the Dubai palms and judging by the cars parked outside some of the apartments there the grotesquely rich certainly have.

We talk about social stratification and exclusion of American emigrants to the United States but the UAE has taken that system to a whole new level as well. Hundreds of thousands (I say this conservatively since I don’t know the actual figure, it’s probably millions) of guest workers are employed in the UAE with few rights and no chance of becoming citizens. For the most part these people have the jobs that Emirates don’t want, you know construction, and taxi drivers, and grocery store clerks, fast food servers. Sound strange? Yeah, even Americans will work at McDonalds but don’t expect to see an Emiratie standing on the other side of the drive through window. In America we export our labor, in the UAE they import the people.

It’s enough to make you a little queasy really.

It has been months (over two) since I posted and I apologize for this. The end of the semester was a busy one and I focused on very little at all over winter break. But! Winter break is over and classes are back in session. My semester this year is looking pretty great. Except one I’m in classes that I chose almost purely out of interest (they are filling in some last remaining requirements but very broad ones) and I’m really looking forward to all but the one of them.

First off I’m in Music 304: History of Rock and Roll. This class is fabulous. I’m absolutely loving it. Every day I walk away with new understanding of rock music and it’s absolutely fantastic. Did you know the flute intro to Strawberry Fields isn’t actually flutes? Yup it played with an instrument called a mellotron

I’m also in Political Science 421: Constitutional Freedoms (Con law II). Anyone I’ve talked to about Con Law knows that I absolutely love this class, there isn’t much more to say here

I’m taking an interesting new course HDFS 493 which is about financial planning post-graduation. It’s a very down to earth practical knowledge course that should be at least helpful in the future. It only meets for two hours a week on Monday nights and Ian and I are taking it together.

My last two classes are Sociology 331: Social Class and Inequality and Political Science 301: Emperical research methods. I’m not sure what to think of these two yet. Topically the sociology class is interesting but the professor really seems like she has a bone to pick with the topic and I’m really beginning to think her very jaded personal views are heavily influencing her teaching of the course. PolS 301 is the required class I’m taking and although people talk about it like it’s the black death I really don’t think it’s going to be too bad. Very dry, but not bad. This is the only class in the department you’re required to take as a major (and most people take alternate routes to fulfill the requirement so it’s really not required).

The beginning of the semester has also brought hard times upon a dear old friend, my messenger bag. I took a spill on the ice last Tuesday and the strap of the bag broke. I’ve had this messenger bag for about 7 years now! I’m not sure I’m ready to give up on old Eddie yet (it’s an Eddie Bauer bag). I’m considering a strap transplant surgery for him but if it’s too pricy I’m afraid he’ll have to retire. More on that later.