I failed to mention in my previous post that Snoop Dogg is from Long Beach, California, as am I. But, then, Long Beach doesn’t come up much in local conversation.

So what were the odds of consecutive days with Long Beach-oriented news making its way over here?

Long.

Today’s news? UAE officials were in Long Beach to pick up a C-17 cargo/transport plane from the Boeing plant there in town.

When it comes to Long Beach and the UAE, I can assure you of this:

No one here has heard of Long Beach.

Sure, a city of 500,000 or so … shouldn’t people be aware of it?

Not really. You might be surprised by how many cities of 1 million people in the world are almost completely unknown in the U.S.

India, for example, has 43 cities with at least 1 million people. Check the list. How many of them could you name? How many did you even recognize?

I have mentioned before on this blog that many of the residents here have only a vague idea where California is. “Los Angeles” is a concept that means nothing to more than half the people in the UAE, if I were to guess. “Hollywood” has a meaning in the “movies” sense, but to place it on a map? Probably not.

So, no. I don’t even bring up Long Beach when I’m asked where I’m from. I go with California, then Los Angeles … and sometimes one of those registers … and then eventually I just default to “America” — which is something everyone knows about.

So, good news to see that Long Beach is still rolling out some C-17s. When I was a kid, the airline industry was huge, in Long Beach, and generated thousands of well-paying jobs. The withering of the industry (and it may disappear entirely when the final C-17 is produced) has been a big factor in the city’s decline, and the city’s decline is a big reason I am in the UAE.