Treinta

I’m headed to Zihuatanejo, Mexico tonight at midnight to celebrate my 30th birthday! We (six of us) are staying at this gorgeous condo complex. I plan on reading, taking photos, drinking margaritas, laying in the sun and sleeping.

Nordic European Study Tour!

My study tour proposal to Sweden and Finland was accepted for Spring Break 2011! For those of you who don’t know what a “study tour” is… Students in the MBA program organize two-week long trips to far off places for 25 or so students. The trips are meant to introduce students to the culture and business practices in that country. You might remember that I went on the study tour to the Middle East this year. This is exactly the same program, but for next Spring Break. There were a whopping 12 proposals this year. Mine was one of the 4 selected. The other countries for 2011 include India, Korea and Peru.

I really shouldn’t say that this was my proposal, because I put it together with two other study tour leaders, Rob and Lacey! The story goes like this… At the beginning of the year, there was the possibility that Scott and I would move to Sweden after the MBA program. (This has changed with Scott’s new job.) So, being interested in the area, I put the call out to my classmates about putting together a tour to Scandinavia. Rob responded. He lived in Sweden for a year during his undergrad years and had been thinking of organizing a tour there as well. Another person in our program also joined us early on, but later decided that it was going to be too much work. (And it is going to be way too much work, by the way!) We spent a good amount of time throughout the school year thinking about themes for the tour and cataloging our contacts in the area. After I went on the study tour to the Middle East, it was clear just how much work it was going to be for two leaders. Lacey was on the trip with me and was truly the “camp counselor” of our group. She had everyone singing in the the bus and doing a special trip handshake. She also has some hard core large-scale event planning experience, including taking groups of people abroad for events. After a quick email exchange with Rob, Lacey was recruited to the team!

We spent a lot of time this quarter meeting and writing the 15-page proposal. I think we put together a really unique trip! The highlight is definitely going to be a trip to Lapland in Northern Sweden, where we will visit the Ice Hotel, commune with real huskies and hopefully see the Northern Lights. I’m also really excited to market the proposal to my classmates over the next year… We have envisioned Viking drinking songs at TGs, wearing our Viking hats (procured from Archie McPhees) on random occasions, and taking a group of people to the pancake breakfast at the Swedish Cultural Center in town.

By the way, a quick fun fact for you. Finland isn’t Scandinavian. I didn’t know this until we were well into writing the proposal. It is Nordic, however. And Sweden is Nordic. All Nordic countries have the Nordic cross in their flag, share a similar history and co-operate politically and economically under the Nordic Council.

I have embedded our proposal below. Or you can see it by going here.

The World’s Biggest Dubai

There definitely wasn’t enough time to explore Dubai casually. We managed to squeeze a bunch in though! We ended up seeing a lot of things that were claimed to be “The World’s Biggest…” or “The World’s Tallest…” or “The World’s Only…”.

Most notably we were able to visit the Burj Kalifa, which is the tallest building in the world right now. By far, apparently. It is definitely huge and daunting. Unfortunately, it’s not open to the public yet. (The world financial crisis has put a stopper on their operations.)

The Dubai Mall is at the foot of the Burj Kalifa, where they have the world’s biggest water fountain show. And after dinner I went to the world’s most expensive and fancy bar on the 63rd floor of the building across  from the Burj Kalifa. I sipped a $20 margarita for about an hour there.

Believe me that there were many other “world’s largest” landmarks in the UAE. I’ll leave you with my most favorite… This is the world’s largest billboard honoring Sheikh Zayed, the founding father of the UAE.

UAE Company Visits

The Dubai portion of our trip wrapped up yesterday… I realize I haven’t updated since Tuesday. Our schedule has been non-stop all week. Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday we travelled to Abu Dhabi to visit with various government agencies and companies. The government agencies in particular talked a lot about Abu Dhabi’s 2030 Vision, which details their strategic plan in terms of development. It’s pretty much the guiding principles for how they plan to both spend their oil wealth, and plan for a time when they have no income from oil. We got a lot of canned answers, but the agencies were much more transparent than I originally thought they would be. (By the way, Dubai also has a 2030 Vision… I’m planning on coming back to this area for my 50th birthday to see how it has all panned out!)

My favorite company visit was for Etihad Airlines. Their specialty is regional travel to very upscale clientele. (Which makes sense given Dubai’s demographics.) Their marketing director spoke with us about how their brand was developed and how they integrate it into their services. Then we went on a tour of their training facilities, where we saw some attendants in training jumping out of a fake, full sized airplane.

I was also really interested in our visit to Masdar City, which is a development funded by the Abu Dhabi government. The purpose of the development is to create a sustainable city. There will be a combination of research, residential and business in the 2.5 km2 piece of land. It’s pretty fascinating that Dubai and Abu Dhabi had nothing developed 30 years ago so they have the opportunity to build their city however they want to now. This is a really unique thing for the government to sponsor which is in part to both hedge against the end of oil and leverage their existing position in the world energy market for the future. (I just used two awesome b-school terms. Our professor on the tour would be proud.) It makes sense. And even if they don’t achieve their exact goals, with the amount of government funding available, Masdar will probably do amazing things.

Dubai: Grandiose, vacant, mostly under construction.

Oh my! I’m exhausted after a 12-hour long day in Abu Dhabi!! I’m behind in writing about this trip though, so I’ll start at the beginning.

For those of you who haven’t been followingqa along (ahem, Christine), I’m in Dubai right now on a Spring Break study tour put on by the Foster School of Business. We are here to learn about the business environment in this region. We will be meeting with numerous business executives, and hopefully throwing in some fun and cultural events along the way. Yes! This is what MBAs do for fun over their Spring Break.

Our tour started with a very long flight from San Francisco to Dubai. We got in on Sunday evening and were greeted by this amazing airport terminal. Of course, it was empty. Grandiose and vacant seems to be the theme of Dubai, actually. So it was a good introduction.

The next day we started our company visits with Ten Sports. Ten Sports is a media company that produces and broadcasts sports television across the Middle East. The most popular games here are cricket and soccer. (And actually the person who started Ten Sports is also a cricket promoter. He started the company in order to broadcast his own events, instead of relying on existing networks. His venture was successful and he recently sold it to an Indian company.) Our host was an expat who had also lived in Russia and India, so the discussion centered around business in emerging markets.

Next up was Dubai Sports City… Dubai is a really strange place in that it gives developers land in exchange for the developer building the infrastructure and handling the services for that land. So these “master developers” are kind of like municipalities and landlords at the same time. Dubai also has multiple places that are named “Fill In the Blank City”… Sports City, Internet City, Knowledge City, Media City. Many of them also operate as free trade zones for a particular type of business. Dubai Sports City is obviously focused on sports. Their master plan includes a mix of sports stadiums, residential housing, office buildings and retail. It’s maybe 15% complete, with many, many buildings under construction, or half constructed and waiting for the economy to recover before restarting operations. (That’s another theme of Dubai. So my summation is evolving: grandiose, vacant, mostly under construction.)

Our group had dinner at the mall next door to our building. The mall houses Ski Dubai, and we were able to watch people going down the slope. After dinner, most of our group spent the rest of the night on the rooftop bar, smoking shisha and watching the lights change on the Burj al Arab hotel (on the left in the photo below).

Just a note on the time zone adjustment. Dubai is 11 hours ahead of Seattle, so the morning/night schedule is almost exactly flipped. I’m mostly adjusted in terms of sleep, but my head still feels fuzzy!

Flight to Dubai

I’m about an hour away from Dubai, after a very long flight. I slept most of the time, which is very typical for me. I came prepared with my travel pillow, blanket and iPhone. Scott’s noise cancelling earphones with Tosca got me through the kids crying. In my few waking hours I got to level 5 in “Plants versus Zombies” (a game) and listened to a few chapters of a book. Can wait to get there! Check out the star lights on the Emirates flight.

Google Earth – Dubai Hotel

Oh yes, this is where I will be staying during my time in Dubai next week! See that little red dot to the left? That’s the Holiday Inn. See that big building next to it? That’s the indoor ski resort. The shot on the bottom is another angle… We’re close to one of the two Palms! I’m in serious count down mode.