Redeeming Las Vegas

I just attended at seminar in Nevada’s sparkling jewel, Las Vegas. For a lot of reasons, I was really nervous about going there. For all the crazy-fool things I’ve done, going to Las Vegas shouldn't've been a big deal. I suppose I was nervous about presenting my thesis to people who actually know something about science and technology and I suppose I was nervous about going to Vegas itself.

Vegas isn’t a place I’d ever had on my “must see” list”. From its reputation alone, I thought Vegas embodied all of the things I thought were negative about the US, such as rampant and vapid consumerism. All of that is still true, but there were a few pleasant surprises.

The first happened on the shuttle bus to the hotel. I got talking with a guy who was in town for another convention. We had a short, pleasant exchange before we went our separate ways. Then the next day, I headed to the hotel restaurant for breakfast. People took pity on me since I showed up alone and with a book. It was palpable how pathetic they thought I was for coming to breakfast, let alone Vegas, solo. The staff piled extra hash on my plate and gave me healthy doses of “More coffee, kid?” and “Everything OK, hon?” It was a small mercy, but I appreciated it more than I can explain. I know the Germans in particular think that our small talk is fake and superficial. They loathe the question “How ya doin’ today?” and they scoff at “You have a nice day, now”. Silly Germans. They ought to check their nihilism at the border so that they, too, can "take 'em easy".

The scale of Vegas is off the hook. I was totally unprepared for the sheer size of the hotels on the Strip. Hotels like the Mandalay, Paris and Wynn play tricks with perspective and they never seem that far away because they don't ever look small or distant. We must've walked miles up and down the Strip, in and out of the hotel casinos and shops. The company of a narcissistic Swede, a functioning autistic and several academics-in-training certainly made the journey up and down the Strip more hilarious. All the same, anything goes in Vegas, so a wandering group of nerds didn't raise any eyebrows.

And finally, I got lot of positive feedback about my paper and my research. After two years of battling ignorance, politics and prejudice regarding Islamic history and cultures, it was FANTASTIC that the scholars welcomed my research without questioning the validity of it. The negativity regarding all things ‘Islam’ in Norway permeates every strata of society, as I found out on my flight from Oslo to Newark. (I severely aggravated a prominent lawyer and the leader of the UN KFOR Veteran’s Association while discussing the status of non-Western immigrants in Norway.) I had to travel to Nevada to meet potential and welcoming colleagues in Trondheim and Oslo. Ironic to be sure, though it was worth every penny.