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.

Highlights from PDX trip.

I forget how much I like Portland, how close it is, how easy it is to get there on the train, and how great it is for getting around on foot. I had a great time there this weekend with Scott. Some highlights:

Zwicklemania Beer Festival: An Oregon Brewer’s Association beer festival. Scott and I only made it to two of the pub open houses because we were distracted by Words with Friends. Portland is a fun city to wander though… lots of pubs within walking distance.

Wanderlust Circus: I keep saying that this show was kind of like Teatro Zinzanni. It was smaller scale though, with better food, and horrible service. Our drinks were comped, which made up for it. And the show was charming.

Japanese Garden: A reminder of how lush the Northwest is, and how close we are to Spring.

We also went to see Avatar on Sunday, along with everyone else who was inspired to see it on Valentine’s Day! The theatre and adjoining mall were packed! After the movie we hit up Ground Kontrol, a mini arcade in downtown Portland. It was full of single men on Valentine’s Day. I’m not sure what to make of that.

Overall, a great breather from the MBA madness!

Current: Flight to Seattle

I’m on a flight from Denver to Seattle right now, flying home from meeting Warren Buffett! I have a longer post in the works to tell you those details.

In the mean time, I had an idea for a blog series. I’m going to call it “Current”. The idea answers two problems I’ve been thinking about lately. First, I don’t blog as much as I used to because I’m busy with school. And second, I feel like there needs to be a middle ground between what I say on Twitter and what I blog. I’m going to use this “Current” category to write quick snippets about what I’m doing at that very moment in my life. They’ll include more context than Twitter. And since I’ll be writing most of them from my phone, I will try to include photos!

So, I’m currently sitting on a plane from Denver to Seattle. Our flight out of Omaha was cancelled last night, so we were up early to get from Ohama to Denver and then on to Seattle. Our connection was supposed to be at 12:30pm but a handful of us were able to RUN through the terminal to get on an earlier flight. We will be home by 11am!!

I’m starving now because I haven’t eaten all day, and will most likely buy a United snack pack to get me through. I’m planning on sharing a cab to Capitol Hill with Hisan (a 2nd year, evening student I met on the trip) once we are back. Hisan is also going on the Dubai trip over Sprig break, so I was excited to get to know her on this trip!

Mom and Dad’s Visit: Classic Seattle Touristing

My parents came to town last weekend for a visit and to drop off my cat, Luke!

Since they (my parents) have been to Seattle a few times, I was at a loss for fresh and exciting activities to do with them. It turned out my mom was interested in re-doing some of the classics: Pike Place Market and the Chittenden Fish Locks. We also visited the UW campus and took the ferry across the water to visit Bainbridge Island. It was nice to get my touristing on and rediscover some of Seattle’s gems. Love this city.

Australia Days 12/13: The journey home begins!

G’day Mates Pam & Val

We had a nice dinner with Pam and Val to wrap up our visit on Friday. They suggested a seafood restaurant on Moreton Bay called Morgan’s. We sat out on their covered and heated deck, which was pretty much like sitting inside. I had a local fish called barra. If I weren’t allergic to shell fish, I would have gone for another local catch they call “bugs”. Good food and two bottles of wine later, Val almost had to cart the rest of us out the door.

I’m really happy we had the chance to visit Pam and Val. Not only did we get a side trip to Australia out of it, but I was able to get to know my suegra (mother-in-law) and her husband a lot more. There’s nothing like being face-to-face with someone. We talked a lot. We looked at old photos. We compared notes on Photoshop techniques. It was a really good time.

Train Back to Sydney

We took a 12 hour train back to Sydney from Brisbane on Saturday. I originally booked the trip thinking it would be scenic. And it was. But there really isn’t any other advantage to taking the train than that. Looking back I would have preferred the 1.5 hour flight back down on Qantas. It’s the same cost as the train (if not cheaper). And, since our 14 hour flight to LA was the next morning, it would have been much less sitting.

Sleeping in the Sydney Airport

We got into Sydney around 10pm. Our flight was the next morning at 9:30am, so we decided to camp out in the airport. I’d never done this before, and was a little freaked out at first. I didn’t want a mean security guard waking me up and porting me off somewhere. (I’m pretty sure that would have happened if we were in Bolivia.)

Scott found a website that gives traveler accounts of sleeping in airports though, so we were somewhat prepared. Just as we’d read, all the “sleeping in the airport travelers” were ushered to one section that had bathrooms and a small amount of seating. I whipped out my sleeping bag and mat, and slept for a good 6 hours on the floor. Scott stayed up in an attempt to start fighting off the return jetlag, which was nice because he could watch our stuff too. It was great.

p.s. Sorry for no photos! I’ll post some as soon as I can find my card reader! Things are kind of a mess right now.