Saturday morning saw us at Abu Dhabi airport for the final flight back to Manchester. Luckily we’ve acquired gold and silver Etihad status in the past 12 months so we didn’t have to suffer the indignity of having to pay for excess luggage as I did on the way to Abu Dhabi! As the plane took off, leaving Abu Dhabi behind the tears started to fall and the stewardesses were most concerned at my fear of flying. It seemed a bit wet having to tell them that it was relief at the end of a very difficult adventure and happiness at starting the next chapter. I was also a bit overcome by John turning and thanking me for helping to make it all possible and being strong and supportive – there were so many times when I didn’t feel I had been as helpful as I could have been.
It was certainly an adventure and I wouldn’t have missed the Abu Dhabi experience for the world. I feel like I achieved something I didn’t know I could do – making a life in a new country and a very different culture, creating a home, making friends and finding a job. It has brought J and me so close, having this shared experience with all its ups and downs. However, I am also very glad to be moving on to new things and to start the next stage of the journey.
This new stage is going to need a completely new blog so it’s time to draw this one to a close. I hope you’ll carry on reading about our adventures and our travels at http://jennyandjohnsadultgap.blogspot.com/
It’s been an amazing year – thank you for sharing it.
Friday 30 July 2010
Last few tasks
Closing the bank accounts was a funny experience as you’re not allowed to have one if you don’t have a visa. The guy at Abu Dhabi Commercial Bank closed it down then and there and chopped up our cards and check books in front of us which was a bit nerve racking! HSBC tried to give me the balance of the account despite the fact that it was needed to pay off the credit card. Amazingly we were waiting in the queue behind a man who appeared to be withdrawing several hundreds of millions of dirhams in cash. I have never seen so many notes in my life. The best moment came when he asked them for a bag to put it in to take it away with him (he obviously hadn’t brought his own or an armed guard!) and was given a branded HSBC carrier bag. I can’t think of another place in the world where you could walk out of a bank, which a huge amount of money in cash actually in an HSBC bag!
Etisalat were true to form right till the last. When we went to cancel our internet, land line and J’s mobile they insisted on us paying all the connection and usage charges that we’d been given free at the beginning because we were cancelling inside the 12 month contract! The reason it was less than 12 months was due to the fact that it took them 3 months to install it in the first place. So their ongoing inefficiency even cost us money in the long run – but then would all the residents of Abu Dhabi be without their Etisalat stories! I was reading a consumer problem page in the paper where people wrote in with problems and the newspaper tried to sort them out. One was someone moaning about an Etisalat problem and at the end of their letter, instead of the usual outcome of how good old Gulf News had helped to fix the problem it just said ‘despite repeated attempts to contact the company, Etisalat failed to respond to our request’. But then powerful state owned monopolies can presumably take that attitude – like being only one of four countries in the world to ban Skype, but unlike North Korea, this is for more commercial reasons!
Everything else went very smoothly and seems to be mostly sorted out. We were told we didn’t pay a deposit on the apartment (I’d dispute this but as it went through J’s salary it’s hard to be sure). However we are mysteriously owed AED 2500 by the landlord which just might be 50% of the deposit we ‘didn’t pay’! It was sad saying goodbye to the car but the hand over of the registration went very smoothly and we found ourselves outside the vehicle registration with Helen clutching a new registration card within about 10 minutes. We were all convinced we must have done something wrong. The trip to Dubai to get the scratch fixed was well worth it and we enjoyed the Hilton Jumeirah as an expensive but fun break.
The Shangri La was as wonderful as ever, though the weather was so hot and humid it was impossible to stand outside even for a moment without becoming covered in a film of sweat so we didn’t really fancy the pool. We enjoyed Bord Eau for a last dinner and the seafood brunch at Pearls and Caviar.
Etisalat were true to form right till the last. When we went to cancel our internet, land line and J’s mobile they insisted on us paying all the connection and usage charges that we’d been given free at the beginning because we were cancelling inside the 12 month contract! The reason it was less than 12 months was due to the fact that it took them 3 months to install it in the first place. So their ongoing inefficiency even cost us money in the long run – but then would all the residents of Abu Dhabi be without their Etisalat stories! I was reading a consumer problem page in the paper where people wrote in with problems and the newspaper tried to sort them out. One was someone moaning about an Etisalat problem and at the end of their letter, instead of the usual outcome of how good old Gulf News had helped to fix the problem it just said ‘despite repeated attempts to contact the company, Etisalat failed to respond to our request’. But then powerful state owned monopolies can presumably take that attitude – like being only one of four countries in the world to ban Skype, but unlike North Korea, this is for more commercial reasons!
Everything else went very smoothly and seems to be mostly sorted out. We were told we didn’t pay a deposit on the apartment (I’d dispute this but as it went through J’s salary it’s hard to be sure). However we are mysteriously owed AED 2500 by the landlord which just might be 50% of the deposit we ‘didn’t pay’! It was sad saying goodbye to the car but the hand over of the registration went very smoothly and we found ourselves outside the vehicle registration with Helen clutching a new registration card within about 10 minutes. We were all convinced we must have done something wrong. The trip to Dubai to get the scratch fixed was well worth it and we enjoyed the Hilton Jumeirah as an expensive but fun break.
The Shangri La was as wonderful as ever, though the weather was so hot and humid it was impossible to stand outside even for a moment without becoming covered in a film of sweat so we didn’t really fancy the pool. We enjoyed Bord Eau for a last dinner and the seafood brunch at Pearls and Caviar.
Goodbye Arab Bank Building
Tying up the apartment got sorted pretty much at the last minute (why would it be different?). It turned out that my friend Liz had just moved to a new place so she took our bed, the office furniture and the water cooler and was very glad of the contents of my store cupboard. I thought the guy who bought the lounge furniture was not going to come back to collect the last settee and make the final payment and cursed that I hadn’t taken all the money off him at the time. However a ‘disappointed’ email soon sorted that out. In the end we were left with the brand new and expensive spare room furniture and the white furniture from our bedroom – we got offered AED 200 for it when it cost nearly AED 7000 so I decided to ship it to Manchester and sort out the problem of having rather a lot of furniture afterwards! The packers from Crown Relocations were brilliant and managed to pack all the extra stuff into the 8 cubic metres we’d already paid for and they were so quick and thorough I was bowled over. It more than made up for having to argue with the office about the value of our stuff and then having to itemise huge amounts of it in order not to pay to insure a ridiculous value!
With everything packed up, sold or on its way to Manchester we decamped to the Shangri La for the last few days whilst we got everything else finished off and to allow for hiccups.
With everything packed up, sold or on its way to Manchester we decamped to the Shangri La for the last few days whilst we got everything else finished off and to allow for hiccups.
Goodbye to work
So having made the decision to leave, the last few days were quite a rush, with lots of things to get finished off and everything left tidy. John finished almost at once but I still had to do another week in order to leave things in the best possible state as I didn’t really have anyone to hand over to. Poor Fatima was very upset at the news as we both enjoyed working together and as this was her very first job she had presumably hoped to learn more from me. However, she knows much better than me, how to make things happen in this different culture and she is much more confident about expecting people to do things for her. I suspect that many of the things of a more strategic nature, that I tried very hard to do, will be left undone as not being as important as corporate gifts and basic Power Point slides! We spent quite a bit of that last week looking at pictures of gold and silver plated falcon’s heads which the boss wanted to buy as VIP gifts. What surprised me was that I engaged in several meetings about these items and only stopped to think that it might be funny when I was telling John about it later! I also got a lashing from the boss because some Power Point slides he wanted were not available because the companies concerned had refused to tell me anything about themselves! So secret they didn’t even want to tell me what they did so the chances of being able to put briefing slides together was pretty remote but it didn’t stop him questioning the point of having a marketing department. It all helped me to feel quite sure that the decision to leave them to it was the right one – especially in the final days when he suddenly asked me to present something with 20 minutes notice on Emirates Skills. A project I’d worked on weeks before but assumed had gone the way of the Institutes of Technology work and hadn’t bothered to put the final presentation together. Still Fatima and I did manage to get something quite creditable together within the hour but by that time he’d lost interest
It was sad saying goodbye to Fatima and to several other colleagues from the subsidiaries, especially Al Shaheen and their new partner Dascam. I collected some very nice emails and promises to stay in touch including from Ali and Ibrahim, impressive young Emiratis who I hope will be able to realize their potential in an organisation where there is so little delegation to the younger generation.
It was sad saying goodbye to Fatima and to several other colleagues from the subsidiaries, especially Al Shaheen and their new partner Dascam. I collected some very nice emails and promises to stay in touch including from Ali and Ibrahim, impressive young Emiratis who I hope will be able to realize their potential in an organisation where there is so little delegation to the younger generation.
Thursday 15 July 2010
Signing out from the Abu Dhabi experience
As they say all things come to an end and John and I have decided to leave Abu Dhabi. It's been an interesting year and a life experience that I wouldn't have swapped for the world but we both feel that the time has come to move on and take the next step in this fascinating adventure they call life!
We decided this when we returned from another fabulous trip to the UK and it has all happened very quickly (as things have a habit of doing round here once they're agreed!) We are due to fly back on the 24th July so that didn't give us much time to get things packed, tidied up and generally finished up. Of course we've acquired an apartment full of furniture which just won't fit in the rather smaller apartment in Manchester so that has had to be sold and what an experience that has been! I posted photos and listings on dubizzle and within seconds of hitting 'send' on the final posting the phone started to ring and people descended on us. Clearly we underpriced certain items, judging by the speed with which they were sold. I could have sold the sofas and chairs about 6 times over and of course everybody wanted everything immediately. We had to beg the guy who bought the living room stuff to leave us a sofa to sit on for a couple of weeks and the lady who bought the washing machine keeps calling to see if she can have it sooner. As for the TV I had to take down the posting within the hour and turn off the phone as I was so fed up with getting calls. However, we've so far failed to sell two of the bedroom sets and the desk and are having to resort to a second hand furniture dealer who will no doubt not give us much. It's a shame watching so many beautiful things going for less than we paid for them but at the end of the day it's only furniture. Within a couple of days the apartment looked very empty and we have to eat our meals at the patio set but I'm glad that nothing has been wasted. It started to feel like living in a shop as people wandered round asking for the smaller items. I think in the end I sold a couple of IKEA chairs and table lamps for more than it would have cost to go to IKEA and buy the same items brand new!
The smaller bits and pieces and our prize (and very large) mirror are being shipped back to Manchester. I just hope the mirror will fit in the lift. Somehow organising the shipping seems to have been much more complicated than it was at the other end, despite it being the same company but then why should I be surprised by that!
We sold the car to Helen and John next door so I'm glad to think of it staying with people we know and since Helen works at the same place as me it'll know the way. We're taking it to Dubai at the weekend to get the scratch fixed where I managed to misjudge the entrance to our car park slightly. I would have loved to have brought the Jeep back with me as I adore it but the steering wheel on the wrong side would have been a bit inconvenient.
I'm gradually getting all the other bits and pieces sorted out. I don't know whether disconnecting the phone and the internet will be as traumatic as getting it installed but I daren't let them know too soon in case we find ourselves disconnected before we're ready. We also have to close our bank accounts as you aren't allowed to have an account here if you don't have a visa. I am really fretting about this one as we still have bills to pay and money to move about. Again I don't like to raise it too early just in case but it's something of a worry. We plan to complete the circle by moving to the Shangri La for the last 3 days since that was our first experience of Abu Dhabi and where John stayed when he first came out here. I'm looking forward to everything being done and spending Thursday and Friday in their beautifully chilled pool.
So what next? Well we can't go back to the UK immediately unless we want to be faced with a sizeable tax bill so we're busy planning some pretty extensive travel and enjoying our tax exile status as much as possible before coming back in the Spring. It'll be amazing to have time for trips which have never been possible in the 2 week space allotted when working. August should see us jump in the car and head for France to wander about as the fancy takes us. Autumn will probably be Europe, finishing off with a return visit to Abu Dhabi when Rachel and the family were due to come and stay so we'll all visit together. After that we might take a look at the Far East before returning to the UK in December for an extended Christmas break. Jan to March are earmarked for the Southern Hemisphere. The outline plan is Australia, New Zealand, Tahiti, Santiago, Buenos Aires and Rio though we've yet to work out the practicalities. It's all very exciting and a whole new chapter for both of us. It's also going to be wonderful to be able to spend so much time together since John came to Abu Dhabi so soon after we were married that we've been rather preoccupied since.
We decided this when we returned from another fabulous trip to the UK and it has all happened very quickly (as things have a habit of doing round here once they're agreed!) We are due to fly back on the 24th July so that didn't give us much time to get things packed, tidied up and generally finished up. Of course we've acquired an apartment full of furniture which just won't fit in the rather smaller apartment in Manchester so that has had to be sold and what an experience that has been! I posted photos and listings on dubizzle and within seconds of hitting 'send' on the final posting the phone started to ring and people descended on us. Clearly we underpriced certain items, judging by the speed with which they were sold. I could have sold the sofas and chairs about 6 times over and of course everybody wanted everything immediately. We had to beg the guy who bought the living room stuff to leave us a sofa to sit on for a couple of weeks and the lady who bought the washing machine keeps calling to see if she can have it sooner. As for the TV I had to take down the posting within the hour and turn off the phone as I was so fed up with getting calls. However, we've so far failed to sell two of the bedroom sets and the desk and are having to resort to a second hand furniture dealer who will no doubt not give us much. It's a shame watching so many beautiful things going for less than we paid for them but at the end of the day it's only furniture. Within a couple of days the apartment looked very empty and we have to eat our meals at the patio set but I'm glad that nothing has been wasted. It started to feel like living in a shop as people wandered round asking for the smaller items. I think in the end I sold a couple of IKEA chairs and table lamps for more than it would have cost to go to IKEA and buy the same items brand new!
The smaller bits and pieces and our prize (and very large) mirror are being shipped back to Manchester. I just hope the mirror will fit in the lift. Somehow organising the shipping seems to have been much more complicated than it was at the other end, despite it being the same company but then why should I be surprised by that!
We sold the car to Helen and John next door so I'm glad to think of it staying with people we know and since Helen works at the same place as me it'll know the way. We're taking it to Dubai at the weekend to get the scratch fixed where I managed to misjudge the entrance to our car park slightly. I would have loved to have brought the Jeep back with me as I adore it but the steering wheel on the wrong side would have been a bit inconvenient.
I'm gradually getting all the other bits and pieces sorted out. I don't know whether disconnecting the phone and the internet will be as traumatic as getting it installed but I daren't let them know too soon in case we find ourselves disconnected before we're ready. We also have to close our bank accounts as you aren't allowed to have an account here if you don't have a visa. I am really fretting about this one as we still have bills to pay and money to move about. Again I don't like to raise it too early just in case but it's something of a worry. We plan to complete the circle by moving to the Shangri La for the last 3 days since that was our first experience of Abu Dhabi and where John stayed when he first came out here. I'm looking forward to everything being done and spending Thursday and Friday in their beautifully chilled pool.
So what next? Well we can't go back to the UK immediately unless we want to be faced with a sizeable tax bill so we're busy planning some pretty extensive travel and enjoying our tax exile status as much as possible before coming back in the Spring. It'll be amazing to have time for trips which have never been possible in the 2 week space allotted when working. August should see us jump in the car and head for France to wander about as the fancy takes us. Autumn will probably be Europe, finishing off with a return visit to Abu Dhabi when Rachel and the family were due to come and stay so we'll all visit together. After that we might take a look at the Far East before returning to the UK in December for an extended Christmas break. Jan to March are earmarked for the Southern Hemisphere. The outline plan is Australia, New Zealand, Tahiti, Santiago, Buenos Aires and Rio though we've yet to work out the practicalities. It's all very exciting and a whole new chapter for both of us. It's also going to be wonderful to be able to spend so much time together since John came to Abu Dhabi so soon after we were married that we've been rather preoccupied since.
Tuesday 22 June 2010
Beach life
I think I spend far too much time on this blog moaning about work and not enough extolling the virtues of permanent sunshine and proximity to the sea! Just to redress the balance here are some pictures of us enjoying expat life at the Kempinski in Ajman, the Hiltonia Beach Club and the Shangri La. Not that we want to make you jealous of course when it's only 16 degrees in London in June. 50 degrees can be equally unpleasant.
Sunday 20 June 2010
More interesting takes on working life
The end of last week was full of still more bemusing experiences and this morning an Emirati colleague actually told me that you really must learn to expect things to happen the wrong way round from how they would normally be! Such a perceptive young man - so at least I'm not alone in finding things upside down a lot of the time.
Last week I was accused of writing content for a brochure using English that was 'too advanced'! So if you recruit an English Marketing and Comms manager who has a degree in English you do wonder what people were expecting. Fatima has been teaching me how to speak English to people who don't have much grasp - you have to repeat the key words and be careful not to use any linking words or politeness! We had some fun trying to rewrite some of the brochure content in this way 'CONSULTANTS, CONSULTANTS, VERY CLEVER PEOPLE, GOOD PEOPLE, WORK WITH GOOD PEOPLE'but we haven't submitted it to the subsidiary concerned. We also went to a meeting with the same people to talk about their web site. They spent an hour and a half arguing about whether the content or the design should come first - we tried in vain to tell them that the structure and the site map should come first, even waving examples at them but it fell on deaf ears. In the end we left them to the argument and hoped they won't come back and need anything from us - well there's no point in my writing advanced English for it and we can't brief a designer without a structure can we?!
Working with Fatima is a joy - she is so incisive and is teaching me so much about Emirati life but at the same time she also thinks everyone is completely crazy so I don't feel so alone! In fact the young generation of recent graduates seem to be a fabulous group of young people, ready to take on the 21st century yet still celebrate their historical culture and so well educated and with excellent English. Fatima is fortunate in that her young husband seems to share a more open approach to her life as well as his and they seem to be a very close family unit - unbelievably she has twin babies although she is only 22 and a graduate. I do worry for this generation though as the older generation seems to very unwilling to delegate responsibility or allow them the freedom to come up with new ideas so it will be difficult for them to gain the important learning experiences in order to grow and develop. Making mistakes is also not seen as an acceptable learning tool! Our boss told us that he wants new, creative ideas but we haven't yet worked out what he really means by this (he's very impressed by a calendar with his name on every page but Scott had one of those ages ago in the UK!) One of our Emirati male colleagues has been chosen for the world motorised parachute championships - in Montauban in France of all places - which looks like something pretty different and exciting so we're hoping to persuade him that the sponsorship opportunities might be something a bit new and different! Well I've never seen motorised parachutes negotiating an obstacle course a few feet of the ground so that's pretty new and impressive!
My IAT strategy now has to reduce to 3 Power Point slides so I'm fighting against this final indignity - to reduce a month of work to 3 slides makes you wonder if I shouldn't have just made it all up off the top of my head?! However, actually managing to produce a useful recommendation in that constricted a format could make me very clever indeed - perhaps I will give it some thought after all!
Last week I was accused of writing content for a brochure using English that was 'too advanced'! So if you recruit an English Marketing and Comms manager who has a degree in English you do wonder what people were expecting. Fatima has been teaching me how to speak English to people who don't have much grasp - you have to repeat the key words and be careful not to use any linking words or politeness! We had some fun trying to rewrite some of the brochure content in this way 'CONSULTANTS, CONSULTANTS, VERY CLEVER PEOPLE, GOOD PEOPLE, WORK WITH GOOD PEOPLE'but we haven't submitted it to the subsidiary concerned. We also went to a meeting with the same people to talk about their web site. They spent an hour and a half arguing about whether the content or the design should come first - we tried in vain to tell them that the structure and the site map should come first, even waving examples at them but it fell on deaf ears. In the end we left them to the argument and hoped they won't come back and need anything from us - well there's no point in my writing advanced English for it and we can't brief a designer without a structure can we?!
Working with Fatima is a joy - she is so incisive and is teaching me so much about Emirati life but at the same time she also thinks everyone is completely crazy so I don't feel so alone! In fact the young generation of recent graduates seem to be a fabulous group of young people, ready to take on the 21st century yet still celebrate their historical culture and so well educated and with excellent English. Fatima is fortunate in that her young husband seems to share a more open approach to her life as well as his and they seem to be a very close family unit - unbelievably she has twin babies although she is only 22 and a graduate. I do worry for this generation though as the older generation seems to very unwilling to delegate responsibility or allow them the freedom to come up with new ideas so it will be difficult for them to gain the important learning experiences in order to grow and develop. Making mistakes is also not seen as an acceptable learning tool! Our boss told us that he wants new, creative ideas but we haven't yet worked out what he really means by this (he's very impressed by a calendar with his name on every page but Scott had one of those ages ago in the UK!) One of our Emirati male colleagues has been chosen for the world motorised parachute championships - in Montauban in France of all places - which looks like something pretty different and exciting so we're hoping to persuade him that the sponsorship opportunities might be something a bit new and different! Well I've never seen motorised parachutes negotiating an obstacle course a few feet of the ground so that's pretty new and impressive!
My IAT strategy now has to reduce to 3 Power Point slides so I'm fighting against this final indignity - to reduce a month of work to 3 slides makes you wonder if I shouldn't have just made it all up off the top of my head?! However, actually managing to produce a useful recommendation in that constricted a format could make me very clever indeed - perhaps I will give it some thought after all!
Relaxing at the Shangri La
It's nearly time for our UK trip and I am praying that volcanic ash or some other travel disruption doesn't get in the way of our plans because we are really looking forward to it. 13 weeks without a day off is really a bit too long in this new culture and I think we're both more than ready for a break.
However, we did indulge in one of our 'mini holidays' this weekend, though we didn't travel far to do it. We took advantage of the summer offers at the Shangri La and spent the weekend in Abu Dhabi but in 5 star luxury! It was as fabulous as ever. It is so hot now that a day at the beach club is too long, so by staying in a hotel we can enjoy the pool, get some exercise and never be too far away from the air conditioning. We needed it as it was over 50 degrees when we picked the car up to come back home. The pool at the Shangri La is beautifully chilled and although it was a popular spot this weekend we still really enjoyed ourselves.
We were lucky enough to be well looked after by our friends at the Shangri La, who managed to get us a suite - I am going to be completely spoiled for ever more after such an amazing room. It had a guest cloakroom, a full lounge and dining room, two balconies, two TVs, a dressing room and bathroom with separate bath and walk in shower and a delicious plate of fruit, pastries and dates to welcome us.
We had dinner at the French restaurant, Bord Eau and used one of our Entertainer vouchers to get a free main course. The food was fabulous as ever and the cheese was brilliant. On Friday we did the new Brunch at Pearls and Caviar which is a great way to spend a Friday afternoon. We took the champagne package thinking it would be a bottle to share but it just kept coming! We ate so much - sushi, prawns, a grilled platter of meat and seafood, cheese and pudding (J had two helpings of pudding but I just couldn't fit any more in!) So with the champagne as well we had to spend the rest of the day recovering and couldn't manage dinner as well.
Breakfast was also included in the deal so a great deal of eating went on so it was lucky that we managed plenty of swimming as well. Sadly it was soon time to head back and think about the working week again. It's really difficult to go from total holiday mode to work in the space of a few hours.
However, our neighbours Pat and Jude invited us round for supper so we had a very pleasant evening with them which helped to alleviate the Saturday night back to work low! They will be away when we come back so it's likely to be a while before we see them again so it was great to spend such a convivial evening together.
However, we did indulge in one of our 'mini holidays' this weekend, though we didn't travel far to do it. We took advantage of the summer offers at the Shangri La and spent the weekend in Abu Dhabi but in 5 star luxury! It was as fabulous as ever. It is so hot now that a day at the beach club is too long, so by staying in a hotel we can enjoy the pool, get some exercise and never be too far away from the air conditioning. We needed it as it was over 50 degrees when we picked the car up to come back home. The pool at the Shangri La is beautifully chilled and although it was a popular spot this weekend we still really enjoyed ourselves.
We were lucky enough to be well looked after by our friends at the Shangri La, who managed to get us a suite - I am going to be completely spoiled for ever more after such an amazing room. It had a guest cloakroom, a full lounge and dining room, two balconies, two TVs, a dressing room and bathroom with separate bath and walk in shower and a delicious plate of fruit, pastries and dates to welcome us.
We had dinner at the French restaurant, Bord Eau and used one of our Entertainer vouchers to get a free main course. The food was fabulous as ever and the cheese was brilliant. On Friday we did the new Brunch at Pearls and Caviar which is a great way to spend a Friday afternoon. We took the champagne package thinking it would be a bottle to share but it just kept coming! We ate so much - sushi, prawns, a grilled platter of meat and seafood, cheese and pudding (J had two helpings of pudding but I just couldn't fit any more in!) So with the champagne as well we had to spend the rest of the day recovering and couldn't manage dinner as well.
Breakfast was also included in the deal so a great deal of eating went on so it was lucky that we managed plenty of swimming as well. Sadly it was soon time to head back and think about the working week again. It's really difficult to go from total holiday mode to work in the space of a few hours.
However, our neighbours Pat and Jude invited us round for supper so we had a very pleasant evening with them which helped to alleviate the Saturday night back to work low! They will be away when we come back so it's likely to be a while before we see them again so it was great to spend such a convivial evening together.
Tuesday 15 June 2010
Jenny Through the Looking Glass
I had hoped that arriving at the understanding that not only will nothing happen as you think it will but it could actually be the complete opposite of what you expected would be a great coping strategy but I'm afraid it doesn't always work. What may seem like a funny story afterwards can be pretty upsetting at the time! I mentioned last time about trying to get ahead of the game by ordering stands and flags which were not signed off due to a lack of any immediate need. What I didn't know was that my much missed colleague had gone one step further and actually ordered them. So sitting quietly lamenting the unsigned purchase order on my desk, one day a guy arrived with 26 of the most impressive pull up stands and 26 flags. My immediate problem was where to put them as we have no storage. This was easily solved, as our office was originally designed as a bedroom and therefore has a pallatial ensuite bathroom complete with bath and shower. Since I wasn't planning to take a bath during office hours any time soon (though on some days with the temperature over 40 and lots of running around it wouldn't be a bad idea!)the bath now holds most of the pull up stands and it makes a very good store. Even if someone inadvertently turned on a tap they are in waterproof coats so I think we'll be OK. Paying for them is going to be a bit more of a challenge so I'm going to have to start selling them off to the subsidiaries on a piece meal basis and persuade the supplier to hold the invoices till this happens. So if you know anyone who'd like a bath full of stands you know who to call.
We are the proud owners of a state of the art Mac with 27 inch screen and wireless keyboard as well as a matching laptop ready for when our new Graphic Designer joins though Fatima is a dab hand with the machine as well. Macs are really cool and we are the first people to get one so people actually pass by our office especially to see it - they totally ignore us so we are thinking of opening an outlook diary for it for viewing appointments. Because we are so ahead on this one IT have no idea what to do with a Mac so we can't link it to a printer or email just yet but it looks nice!
The Request for Proposal exercise has been an interesting one. I am clearly pathologically not suited to how things work here with my orderly British planning mind. Only two companies actually followed the instructions and filled in the pricing tables, several sent creative work even though I'd expressly asked them not too as I can't release SOC material until the contract is signed, one even completed the prices in US Dollars - the words 'all prices must be quoted in UAE Dirhams' must have passed them by so it was a nightmare to try and analyse and create a spreadsheet. We have always fought really hard not to include creative work with a tender as you don't have a proper brief and can't present it in person but that didn't stop companies trying to guess what Special Opps did, making up new logos and plastering pictures of planes across the ads! I've come up with a recommendation but whether anyone takes any notice of it I can't be sure or even whether a decision gets made at all. For now we seem to be producing ads and just about everything else ourselves which adds to the stresses of life.
We tested our two Graphic Design trainees and Fatima, Sumaya and I were all in agreement which was good. HR continue to look for more candidates to replace Nidal but I don't think they've understood the brief (or maybe they have different instructions from on high?!) Mostly they don't send anyone with much of a marketing background and today I got a Geologist who works in a Materials Science lab which is completely random. I think I might suggest we interview her just to hear what HR question her about!
The lunch for 700 never happened as the two merging companies couldn't agree on its importance. Hopefully they are better at working together in other areas! I also hardly dare hope that the 4 month saga over whether we should pay one of the subsidiaries major advertising agencies just might get resolved. I've been working away resolutely on this, providing analysis of other companies prices, talking to legal and generally trying to get the situation sorted without bloodshed. At time of writing it looks promising but I'm not holding my breath!
John and I have been trying to chill out as much as possible outside of work. We've got a bit anti social, preferring each others company to anyone else after the strains of work. But then we enjoy being with each other so why not? We've been trying to use our 'buy one meal get one free' from The Entertainer Guide (it's such a responsibility having a whole book full of money off coupons, I don't know how my father would ever have coped!) So we've had some lovely meals out at Indigo, the Indian at the Beach Rotana and our old favourite Vascos at The Hilton. We also went to Oceans at the Royal Meridien which had some great seafood though a noisy group of Masdar City folk. Finally, The Ghost, arrived in Abu Dhabi. We've both read the book recently and I'm always keen to see Ewan McGregor in anything. I was afraid it was going to pass us by but it was on in the VIP cinema at the Khalidya Mall. It cost about four times the regular price but we did get waiter service for the ice cream and fully reclinable airline seats for that! It doesn't make it any warmer though so I had my usual cinema kit of wrap, jumper and socks which were envied by one of the other cinema goers who thought they were part of the VIP offer! They love it really cold here. I know it's unbearably hot outside but that doesn't really mean I should have to bring a cardigan to work in order not to freeze inside. The car has decided to cope with the heat by not doing 'four' on the temperature gauge so once it gets over 40 degrees it goes back to 31. This way it can fool itself and me that it isn't so hot really.
We decided it's getting too hot for the beach - strange to have to come out of the sea after half an hour's swim because you're in danger of getting overheated rather than blue with cold! However, for the first time since we came here I have managed a bit of tan from our weekend beach jaunts which is going to fade. This weekend we've managed to take advantage of some great summer rates to return to the Shangri La where they chill the pool to a lovely cool temperature - imagine chilling a swimming pool not heating it.
I told you it was like Alice Though the Looking Glass with everything backwards to what you'd expect!
We are the proud owners of a state of the art Mac with 27 inch screen and wireless keyboard as well as a matching laptop ready for when our new Graphic Designer joins though Fatima is a dab hand with the machine as well. Macs are really cool and we are the first people to get one so people actually pass by our office especially to see it - they totally ignore us so we are thinking of opening an outlook diary for it for viewing appointments. Because we are so ahead on this one IT have no idea what to do with a Mac so we can't link it to a printer or email just yet but it looks nice!
The Request for Proposal exercise has been an interesting one. I am clearly pathologically not suited to how things work here with my orderly British planning mind. Only two companies actually followed the instructions and filled in the pricing tables, several sent creative work even though I'd expressly asked them not too as I can't release SOC material until the contract is signed, one even completed the prices in US Dollars - the words 'all prices must be quoted in UAE Dirhams' must have passed them by so it was a nightmare to try and analyse and create a spreadsheet. We have always fought really hard not to include creative work with a tender as you don't have a proper brief and can't present it in person but that didn't stop companies trying to guess what Special Opps did, making up new logos and plastering pictures of planes across the ads! I've come up with a recommendation but whether anyone takes any notice of it I can't be sure or even whether a decision gets made at all. For now we seem to be producing ads and just about everything else ourselves which adds to the stresses of life.
We tested our two Graphic Design trainees and Fatima, Sumaya and I were all in agreement which was good. HR continue to look for more candidates to replace Nidal but I don't think they've understood the brief (or maybe they have different instructions from on high?!) Mostly they don't send anyone with much of a marketing background and today I got a Geologist who works in a Materials Science lab which is completely random. I think I might suggest we interview her just to hear what HR question her about!
The lunch for 700 never happened as the two merging companies couldn't agree on its importance. Hopefully they are better at working together in other areas! I also hardly dare hope that the 4 month saga over whether we should pay one of the subsidiaries major advertising agencies just might get resolved. I've been working away resolutely on this, providing analysis of other companies prices, talking to legal and generally trying to get the situation sorted without bloodshed. At time of writing it looks promising but I'm not holding my breath!
John and I have been trying to chill out as much as possible outside of work. We've got a bit anti social, preferring each others company to anyone else after the strains of work. But then we enjoy being with each other so why not? We've been trying to use our 'buy one meal get one free' from The Entertainer Guide (it's such a responsibility having a whole book full of money off coupons, I don't know how my father would ever have coped!) So we've had some lovely meals out at Indigo, the Indian at the Beach Rotana and our old favourite Vascos at The Hilton. We also went to Oceans at the Royal Meridien which had some great seafood though a noisy group of Masdar City folk. Finally, The Ghost, arrived in Abu Dhabi. We've both read the book recently and I'm always keen to see Ewan McGregor in anything. I was afraid it was going to pass us by but it was on in the VIP cinema at the Khalidya Mall. It cost about four times the regular price but we did get waiter service for the ice cream and fully reclinable airline seats for that! It doesn't make it any warmer though so I had my usual cinema kit of wrap, jumper and socks which were envied by one of the other cinema goers who thought they were part of the VIP offer! They love it really cold here. I know it's unbearably hot outside but that doesn't really mean I should have to bring a cardigan to work in order not to freeze inside. The car has decided to cope with the heat by not doing 'four' on the temperature gauge so once it gets over 40 degrees it goes back to 31. This way it can fool itself and me that it isn't so hot really.
We decided it's getting too hot for the beach - strange to have to come out of the sea after half an hour's swim because you're in danger of getting overheated rather than blue with cold! However, for the first time since we came here I have managed a bit of tan from our weekend beach jaunts which is going to fade. This weekend we've managed to take advantage of some great summer rates to return to the Shangri La where they chill the pool to a lovely cool temperature - imagine chilling a swimming pool not heating it.
I told you it was like Alice Though the Looking Glass with everything backwards to what you'd expect!
Sunday 6 June 2010
More fun in and outside work as it hots up!
We've been trying to make the most of living at the seaside before it gets too hot to go to the beach. For a couple of weeks we went to the Hiltonia Beach Club on a Saturday which was very pleasant, especially as you can have a nice lunch with the appropriate cooling beverage without having to stray too far from a sunbed. I do find working on Sunday after being 'on holiday' on Saturday a bit of a come down! This weekend we treated ourselves to a weekend break at the Kempinski in Ajman which was a great escape. The threatened cyclone, which did some damage to Oman, didn't make it to the UAE so we spent two lovely days on the beautiful beach and although the sea was a bit on the warm side there was a nice breeze and it was very relaxing. The hotel itself was packed - no doubt due to the great deal we enjoyed which included complimentary apertifs and a fantastic breakfast (including egg and bacon, a rare treat). We got lost in Sharjah so it took a bit longer than the 2 hours to drive up the coast but it wasn't too fraught and we enjoyed Chinese on one night and Indian on the other. The biggest problem was that it just wasn't long enough. I was disappointed to be missing the annual family trip to Bramrigg, a cottage near Grasmere, which has become something of a fixture so the mini beach holiday was a welcome lift. The Chambers/Claringbold party had a slightly more traumatic trip than usual as Marion fell and broke her arm and a deranged gun man went on the loose in Cumbria, killing 12 people, seeminly at random. Luckily, as news from the UK is quite hard to come by here, I didn't find out about it till Rachel emailed me so I knew that our family at least were safe. I guess its to do with not being accused of being UK centric, but both the English language paper and BBC World, seem to delight in telling you what's going on everywhere in the world but the UK!
Back to work today and on with the usual round of weird and wonderful requests and happenings with no warning as to what the next hurdle may be! Last week they decided to get rid of Nidal, not sure why though we've both known this might happen for a while. A personality clash with one of the senior team before I joined is the likely cause but it all seems so long ago now it took me by surprise. She has been planning for it for a while but it means I have lost my 'fixer' who could always make things happen in no time at all and new so much more than me about how to get things done. The worst was that no-one told me until she did so I feel even less like I'm in the loop and of course, we have to absorb her workload as well.
I presented the IAT marketing strategy, which has been a great project to work on though very time consuming as I did about 40 interviews and focus groups single handed in order to gather the information necessary to come up with the plan and recommendations as well as writing up the full report and designing the plan. I went out to Al Ain one day to carry out interviews there which was really interesting. All in all the students are fantastic, so positive and enthusiastic about technology and engineering and with a great standard of English and much higher confidence levels than you usually see anywhere with this age group. The report seemed to go down well with their Director General and we now have to present a very short version to my CEO who is Chair of their board. It's been hard condensing so much work into 7 power point slides but no doubt good experience.
One of our subsidiaries had a corporate event for staff and clients last week which as amazing - I don't think a lot of the content would have worked in the UK, especially swearing an oath of allegiance to the company but it was fascinating to watch! I wrote speeches for their CEO and visiting dignitary client but in the end neither could attend so they were redundant. Whilst all this was going on we also printed the necessary 10 business cards and arranged a couple of exhibitions and a range of collateral so it's non stop all the way.
On Thursday I got an email asking me to organize a lunch event for nearly 700 people - THIS WEDNESDAY! Once upon a time I would have thought that was impossible but despite butterflies in the stomach I think it can be done. It looks like it might be put off till next week so actually masses of time in the end - ha ha! Problem is they haven't agreed what gifts they want and who's signing for it so it could still end up proving difficult.
I did think I might try to get ahead by ordering pull up stands, flags and other display material for all our companies to keep in the store but I can't get them signed off since I don't actually need them for a least 2 weeks! So much for thinking I could be prepared.
I also had fun being on the other side of the fence as I had to put together two Request for Proposals, one for the Special Opps Recruitment Marketing campaign and one for our agency contract. It was really funny trying to make them into sensible documents - I've spent so many years filling them in, it was really hard trying to write one that wouldn't be too tortuous. The people at my end were really impressed which is so odd as usually no-one is ever impressed by anything I do.
J struggles on too, trying to do the best he can in difficult circumstances. It must be much harder for him as I'm a bit more used to having off the wall clients bombarding me with strange requests who never listen to advice!
Back to work today and on with the usual round of weird and wonderful requests and happenings with no warning as to what the next hurdle may be! Last week they decided to get rid of Nidal, not sure why though we've both known this might happen for a while. A personality clash with one of the senior team before I joined is the likely cause but it all seems so long ago now it took me by surprise. She has been planning for it for a while but it means I have lost my 'fixer' who could always make things happen in no time at all and new so much more than me about how to get things done. The worst was that no-one told me until she did so I feel even less like I'm in the loop and of course, we have to absorb her workload as well.
I presented the IAT marketing strategy, which has been a great project to work on though very time consuming as I did about 40 interviews and focus groups single handed in order to gather the information necessary to come up with the plan and recommendations as well as writing up the full report and designing the plan. I went out to Al Ain one day to carry out interviews there which was really interesting. All in all the students are fantastic, so positive and enthusiastic about technology and engineering and with a great standard of English and much higher confidence levels than you usually see anywhere with this age group. The report seemed to go down well with their Director General and we now have to present a very short version to my CEO who is Chair of their board. It's been hard condensing so much work into 7 power point slides but no doubt good experience.
One of our subsidiaries had a corporate event for staff and clients last week which as amazing - I don't think a lot of the content would have worked in the UK, especially swearing an oath of allegiance to the company but it was fascinating to watch! I wrote speeches for their CEO and visiting dignitary client but in the end neither could attend so they were redundant. Whilst all this was going on we also printed the necessary 10 business cards and arranged a couple of exhibitions and a range of collateral so it's non stop all the way.
On Thursday I got an email asking me to organize a lunch event for nearly 700 people - THIS WEDNESDAY! Once upon a time I would have thought that was impossible but despite butterflies in the stomach I think it can be done. It looks like it might be put off till next week so actually masses of time in the end - ha ha! Problem is they haven't agreed what gifts they want and who's signing for it so it could still end up proving difficult.
I did think I might try to get ahead by ordering pull up stands, flags and other display material for all our companies to keep in the store but I can't get them signed off since I don't actually need them for a least 2 weeks! So much for thinking I could be prepared.
I also had fun being on the other side of the fence as I had to put together two Request for Proposals, one for the Special Opps Recruitment Marketing campaign and one for our agency contract. It was really funny trying to make them into sensible documents - I've spent so many years filling them in, it was really hard trying to write one that wouldn't be too tortuous. The people at my end were really impressed which is so odd as usually no-one is ever impressed by anything I do.
J struggles on too, trying to do the best he can in difficult circumstances. It must be much harder for him as I'm a bit more used to having off the wall clients bombarding me with strange requests who never listen to advice!
Sunday 30 May 2010
Why have one job when you could have more fun doing 3?
The last couple of weeks have been pretty manic, without even time for blog posting which is always a shame. The main reason being that I acquired a couple of other jobs as well as the day job for EAI. Our CEO is also Chair of the Board of the Institutes of Applied Technology, a unique organization which provides technological education in a variety of different ways. The IAT schools in Abu Dhabi, Al Ain, Ras Al Khaimah and Fujairah take students at Year 10 and teach them in 'clusters' which focus on science, engineering and ICT alongside the normal high school subjects. It's a novel approach which encourages early specialization in these important areas and they teach in English which fits students better for higher education. They also have a mandatory community programme and every student has a Mac laptop and an on line education system. Under the umbrella are two specialist academies in Aviation and Logistics, which offer tertiary education, an HE nursing college and a boarding school for boys interesting in vocational subjects who struggle with conventional education. IAT were keen to develop a cohesive strategy to marketing and had approached a number of professional consultancies in this area. Our CEO discovered my education marketing background and offered my services to develop this project on a pro bono basis - several of the EAI professionals offer this kind of support to IAT and other Not for Profit organizations which the CEO is involved with. It's a great opportunity and my kind of thing - it's certainly made a change from careers fairs, gifts and business cards. The biggest difficulty is that I still need to do everything else as well so it's been hard to squash it all in. In the meantime the CEO lined me up for another freebie for Emirates Skills, again right up my street but we are running out of hours in the day!
Meanwhile we won a contract as an organization to recruit soldiers and technicians for SOC, the special ops for the UAE military and yet another organization to provide a marketing plan and talent acquisition strategy for! I took a brief about 3ish on a Sunday, having already worked up a plan but the plan was of no use as they'd decided to attend a recruitment event the following Sunday so, from a standing start we had to produce a pop up stand, a brochure and 700 gift items by Thursday. Unsurprisingly it did all get done - I wrote copy for a brochure which we translated into Arabic and we managed to sort out a stand and 700 credit card USBs with their logo on. In the real world this might be cause for celebration but here I am still struggling to get the supplier order signed off for the USBs (fortunate that he and I went ahead without one!) because I don't have a piece of paper with the SOC logo on signed by them to say I can use it, even though they gave it to me in the first place and I have emails from the Colonel, no less, approving the designs! We also got into trouble because we didn't actually go to all the exhibitions and 'pop up' the stand for them. Since we weren't given the information about when and where the exhibitions were it would have been tricky but I expect we just weren't making enough of an effort. I also got called to a meeting by the CEO in order for a large number of us to work up the overall recruitment, assessment and training plan for this project - seemed a bit late in the day to me since we not only had a plan ready, but also gifts, stands and brochures but there we are. There were at least 20 people in this room, some of whom were not altogether sure why they were there and I was the only non Emirati present although not the only woman. Once we'd had the briefing from the CEO no further action appeared to be taken, no minutes were taken and there has been no follow up. I assume once we'd had this meeting we all go off and do our separate things and never see each other again! Still there were a lot of very nice dates and I felt very honored to be included in such an august gathering, even if I didn't feel it would be appropriate for me to contribute.
The National, the main English newspaper for Abu Dhabi is very keen to talk about us (nice things, you don't get too much nasty stuff in the press round here). This is another source of amusement and frustration for me as we have a very definite 'no comment' approach. This can be partly explained by the defence nature of much of our work and partly the natural reticence of our senior managers, but even when things are in the public domain they refuse to say anything. The media were invited to the recruitment events so they were very keen to run a story about the SOC campaign - I've spent most of my career begging media to run stories relating to recruitment and now I'm having to fight them off! Despite the fact that we were actually exhibiting I was told that it was far too early to run a story in the media! This week the National ran a story about local companies working with the defence sector - and yes there are others - of course we got a large mention via our partners Raytheon, EADS and Thales but my carefully constructed words, aimed at telling people about the breadth of our work and our ambitions were given the red light. It'll be funny to go back to the opposite and remember how easy it would have been to get coverage if only I'd been allowed to!
Meanwhile we won a contract as an organization to recruit soldiers and technicians for SOC, the special ops for the UAE military and yet another organization to provide a marketing plan and talent acquisition strategy for! I took a brief about 3ish on a Sunday, having already worked up a plan but the plan was of no use as they'd decided to attend a recruitment event the following Sunday so, from a standing start we had to produce a pop up stand, a brochure and 700 gift items by Thursday. Unsurprisingly it did all get done - I wrote copy for a brochure which we translated into Arabic and we managed to sort out a stand and 700 credit card USBs with their logo on. In the real world this might be cause for celebration but here I am still struggling to get the supplier order signed off for the USBs (fortunate that he and I went ahead without one!) because I don't have a piece of paper with the SOC logo on signed by them to say I can use it, even though they gave it to me in the first place and I have emails from the Colonel, no less, approving the designs! We also got into trouble because we didn't actually go to all the exhibitions and 'pop up' the stand for them. Since we weren't given the information about when and where the exhibitions were it would have been tricky but I expect we just weren't making enough of an effort. I also got called to a meeting by the CEO in order for a large number of us to work up the overall recruitment, assessment and training plan for this project - seemed a bit late in the day to me since we not only had a plan ready, but also gifts, stands and brochures but there we are. There were at least 20 people in this room, some of whom were not altogether sure why they were there and I was the only non Emirati present although not the only woman. Once we'd had the briefing from the CEO no further action appeared to be taken, no minutes were taken and there has been no follow up. I assume once we'd had this meeting we all go off and do our separate things and never see each other again! Still there were a lot of very nice dates and I felt very honored to be included in such an august gathering, even if I didn't feel it would be appropriate for me to contribute.
The National, the main English newspaper for Abu Dhabi is very keen to talk about us (nice things, you don't get too much nasty stuff in the press round here). This is another source of amusement and frustration for me as we have a very definite 'no comment' approach. This can be partly explained by the defence nature of much of our work and partly the natural reticence of our senior managers, but even when things are in the public domain they refuse to say anything. The media were invited to the recruitment events so they were very keen to run a story about the SOC campaign - I've spent most of my career begging media to run stories relating to recruitment and now I'm having to fight them off! Despite the fact that we were actually exhibiting I was told that it was far too early to run a story in the media! This week the National ran a story about local companies working with the defence sector - and yes there are others - of course we got a large mention via our partners Raytheon, EADS and Thales but my carefully constructed words, aimed at telling people about the breadth of our work and our ambitions were given the red light. It'll be funny to go back to the opposite and remember how easy it would have been to get coverage if only I'd been allowed to!
Thursday 13 May 2010
Masdar Institute - a green university is born
These pictures show the amazing building which is soon, hopefully, going to be the home of the Masdar Institute. An incredible piece of architecture (Norman Foster) and a world first in terms of sustainability and renewable energy. All being well (Insha'Allah) it will be ready when the second year of students arrive in the Autumn. What an achievement.
Tuesday 11 May 2010
Al Ain Careers Fair
I hope you're suitably impressed by these pictures of our spectacular booth - round here they do the best exhibtion stands I've ever seen and ours, of course, has to be the very best, thanks to Nidal with a little help from me. At 9.30 pm the night before we still had a long way to go but you can see that it all got completed in time. We even got a vist from the Sheikh who spoke to our HR Director Mr. Mubarak and he was also interviewed by the TV on the stand. Hopefully we managed to recruit some people as well but from a marketing perspective it was a triumph!
100 posts and still going!
So can you believe that I've now made 100 postings to this blog? Bless you if anyone has actually read all 100. I enjoy writing about what's happening out here and even if no-one reads it I find it very therapeutic. However, it's about time there were some more pictures so here are some lovely ones of our trip to the desert, a happy foursome enjoying a glass of fizzy water (well!) on the Shuja Yacht and a view of the Arab Bank Building taking centre stage, viewed from the water which is not something I've seen before. It looks like an impressive address from most angles, but particularly from this one.
Sunday 9 May 2010
Ensuring a work/life balance
Despite the hectic schedule in the working environment we do try very hard to make sure we always have some personal life to remember about our time here.
We had planned a trip to Qasr Al Sarab to take Mum and Jo to the desert so John and I went on our own and it was as lovely as ever though it's getting pretty hot now for desert trips. I do think that the rooms there are the very best I've ever stayed in - they all have fantastic views over the desert landscape and the Wadi (a dry valley where the migrating Oryx are supposed to come and drink at the watering hole though both times we've been there I guess it wasn't a migratory time of year for Oryx!) But the rooms themselves, in terms of lovely comfy beds and amazing bathrooms with walk in showers and baths the size of swimming pools just have to be experienced. The first night we ate in the buffet restaurant, which was disappointing compared with some of the buffets in Abu Dhabi but we had lunch in the little restaurant by the pool and dinner at the rooftop Suhail which are both fabulous. Due to the heat we mainly lazed in and around the huge pool which certainly beats working. If I wasn't such a workaholic with a burning desire to contribute financially and intellectually I could spend lots of days lazing by pools but it just wouldn't feel right! We went back via Liwa and Madinat Zayed and John drove to I got to see a lot more of the country though there were hardly any camels on this particular route.
Last weekend we had plenty of jobs to do in Abu Dhabi so we found ourselves at the Mall and rushing around stocking up and generally ticking off a large number of items on the 'to do' list. However, we managed to enjoy lunch on Saturday at the Japanese restaurant at the Royal Meridien with some great sushi and we tried the Italian at the Millennium on Saturday night which was great once we'd persuaded them that we'd come for Italian a la carte and not the barbecue buffet! We were finally able to use one of 'buy one main course, get one free' from the Entertainer guide that Isobel bought us for Christmas. It's a tremendous idea this book, stuffed full of these vouchers and should save loads of money. However, I manage to find it a huge responsibility and never remember to take the vouchers with me or go to restaurants which aren't included so we've now got to May and haven't saved nearly enough money yet!
This weekend we had a short break in Abu Dhabi and went to the Fairmont on Friday afternoon through till Saturday afternoon. We've eaten here before but never stayed over as they have a Marco Pierre White Steakhouse and a Frankie's Italian. John is a regular visitor to the buffet restaurant Elements and waxes lyrical so I was keen to try it. We had a lovely break - the hotel is a wonder of modern architecture and sculpture with amazing water features. The room overlooked the creek with floor to ceiling windows and a 'wet room' with huge bathtub and shower in the middle of the room as well as separate loo and washing area. After dinner on Friday at Frankie's where the food is suberb, we enjoyed Saturday morning by the pool - huge and beautifully chilled and the staff were constantly bringing cold towels, fruit juice and fruit kebabs. It was like the nicest kind of holiday hotel though really strange to look out and see GHQ and the Armed Forces Officers Club - both places I have to visit for work. Out of the other window you could see the Petroleum Institute, where John works. It feels odd to be in a holiday location with holiday weather next door to your working environment - I can't imagine ever taking a weekend break in Hale or Solihull! After this I was able to sample the Elements buffet myself and John was absolutely right about it - great sushi, prawns and crab's legs followed by curry and an array of desert. He reckons it's even better in the week when it's less crowded but I thought it was great. We headed home after this and tried to catch up on the rest of our weekend jobs but it made a great break in our own city. Essential to try these places out so we can recommend them to work visitors or for corporate events. The Fairmont is rightly popular with expats, visitors and with Emiratis as well. So we do manage to keep sampling the best of what the city has to offer, crammed in between the endless tussle with an alien working culture.
We also discovered that on this unusual general election our time zone was best placed to watch the excitement as the results came in. By getting up at 6.30am (3.30am in the UK) and with it being Friday which is a day off for us we watched the BBC all the way through. It was also a great treat to get proper BBC talking about what was happening in the UK. BBC World tries very hard to cater for a global population by not giving precedence to UK news but I wonder just how much of its audience is expats like us who hunger for news from home. However, they broadcast election special in full which was great. We'd managed to arrange for a proxy vote and my Aunty Brenda nobly fronted up in central Manchester to cast our votes (and had to queue for half an hour which is not something I've ever had to do - how amazing in the UK). I really needn't have worried as our labour man had a majority of nearly 11,000 so I suppose a couple more or less wouldn't have worried him too much. Disppointing overall for the labour party and the lib dems but encouraging to know that despite everything, the economy, Iraq and expenses scandal the Tories still couldn't command a decisive majority. We watch with interest from our expat distance which, in my case anyway, leaves me just as interested in UK politics as ever.
We had planned a trip to Qasr Al Sarab to take Mum and Jo to the desert so John and I went on our own and it was as lovely as ever though it's getting pretty hot now for desert trips. I do think that the rooms there are the very best I've ever stayed in - they all have fantastic views over the desert landscape and the Wadi (a dry valley where the migrating Oryx are supposed to come and drink at the watering hole though both times we've been there I guess it wasn't a migratory time of year for Oryx!) But the rooms themselves, in terms of lovely comfy beds and amazing bathrooms with walk in showers and baths the size of swimming pools just have to be experienced. The first night we ate in the buffet restaurant, which was disappointing compared with some of the buffets in Abu Dhabi but we had lunch in the little restaurant by the pool and dinner at the rooftop Suhail which are both fabulous. Due to the heat we mainly lazed in and around the huge pool which certainly beats working. If I wasn't such a workaholic with a burning desire to contribute financially and intellectually I could spend lots of days lazing by pools but it just wouldn't feel right! We went back via Liwa and Madinat Zayed and John drove to I got to see a lot more of the country though there were hardly any camels on this particular route.
Last weekend we had plenty of jobs to do in Abu Dhabi so we found ourselves at the Mall and rushing around stocking up and generally ticking off a large number of items on the 'to do' list. However, we managed to enjoy lunch on Saturday at the Japanese restaurant at the Royal Meridien with some great sushi and we tried the Italian at the Millennium on Saturday night which was great once we'd persuaded them that we'd come for Italian a la carte and not the barbecue buffet! We were finally able to use one of 'buy one main course, get one free' from the Entertainer guide that Isobel bought us for Christmas. It's a tremendous idea this book, stuffed full of these vouchers and should save loads of money. However, I manage to find it a huge responsibility and never remember to take the vouchers with me or go to restaurants which aren't included so we've now got to May and haven't saved nearly enough money yet!
This weekend we had a short break in Abu Dhabi and went to the Fairmont on Friday afternoon through till Saturday afternoon. We've eaten here before but never stayed over as they have a Marco Pierre White Steakhouse and a Frankie's Italian. John is a regular visitor to the buffet restaurant Elements and waxes lyrical so I was keen to try it. We had a lovely break - the hotel is a wonder of modern architecture and sculpture with amazing water features. The room overlooked the creek with floor to ceiling windows and a 'wet room' with huge bathtub and shower in the middle of the room as well as separate loo and washing area. After dinner on Friday at Frankie's where the food is suberb, we enjoyed Saturday morning by the pool - huge and beautifully chilled and the staff were constantly bringing cold towels, fruit juice and fruit kebabs. It was like the nicest kind of holiday hotel though really strange to look out and see GHQ and the Armed Forces Officers Club - both places I have to visit for work. Out of the other window you could see the Petroleum Institute, where John works. It feels odd to be in a holiday location with holiday weather next door to your working environment - I can't imagine ever taking a weekend break in Hale or Solihull! After this I was able to sample the Elements buffet myself and John was absolutely right about it - great sushi, prawns and crab's legs followed by curry and an array of desert. He reckons it's even better in the week when it's less crowded but I thought it was great. We headed home after this and tried to catch up on the rest of our weekend jobs but it made a great break in our own city. Essential to try these places out so we can recommend them to work visitors or for corporate events. The Fairmont is rightly popular with expats, visitors and with Emiratis as well. So we do manage to keep sampling the best of what the city has to offer, crammed in between the endless tussle with an alien working culture.
We also discovered that on this unusual general election our time zone was best placed to watch the excitement as the results came in. By getting up at 6.30am (3.30am in the UK) and with it being Friday which is a day off for us we watched the BBC all the way through. It was also a great treat to get proper BBC talking about what was happening in the UK. BBC World tries very hard to cater for a global population by not giving precedence to UK news but I wonder just how much of its audience is expats like us who hunger for news from home. However, they broadcast election special in full which was great. We'd managed to arrange for a proxy vote and my Aunty Brenda nobly fronted up in central Manchester to cast our votes (and had to queue for half an hour which is not something I've ever had to do - how amazing in the UK). I really needn't have worried as our labour man had a majority of nearly 11,000 so I suppose a couple more or less wouldn't have worried him too much. Disppointing overall for the labour party and the lib dems but encouraging to know that despite everything, the economy, Iraq and expenses scandal the Tories still couldn't command a decisive majority. We watch with interest from our expat distance which, in my case anyway, leaves me just as interested in UK politics as ever.
Tuesday 4 May 2010
More stories from the parallel universe
Another interesting couple of weeks here in the alternative reality - once again on the face of things it all seems to get more familiar and pretty enjoyable. I am running around all the time with not enough hours in the day, people want things and quickly and we all try to accommodate them and generally get there but somehow you're never sure if what you are doing is the righ thing!
Yesterday I heard that I'd passed my probabation and had to sign the form today - all fine with fours or fives in every area but no discussion or chance to ask questions. Whilst I don't disagree, you wonder if only a four for 'knowledge of job' means that the boss genuinely thinks that after 25 years you don't fully understand the 'four P's' of marketing or whether (quite understandably) you can't argue with a booth builder in Arabic about the problems with an exhibition stand, or how to persuade HR to sign off on the staff newsletter (in which case I'd struggle to give myself a 1). As for a four for 'Results focused' I'm totally lost. I know that this is my main raison d'etre but I'm still trying to work out what the goals are so maybe that's a conversation we should try to have at some stage.
The last couple of days have involved a trip to Al Ain for a careers event - all very exciting with a new stand builder and for once the knowledge that sorting out the gift packs, 12kg of branded chocolates and floral arrangements would be key to success! It looks great though at 9.30 at night sitting patiently whilst Nidal argued with the booth builder in Arabic about what needed doing made me wonder what value I was adding and whether I could ever manage without her is a worry. Al Ain reminded me of Milton Keynes with endless roundabouts and shopping malls though it is the heart of historic Abu Dhabi. The fort was so small I missed it on several drive bys and the famous mountain is mainly famous because everywhere close by is flat! As I watched these groups of very glamourous Emirati girls wandering around with their gold plated blackberries and Gucci handbags I was stuggling to understand their motivation for working but I guess I'll get there.
I've had two fun experiences with going to meetings at military sites and on both occasions they did let me in but not without a body search and removal of blackberry, mobile and cameras. For both meetings, when I finally got in the meetings were conducted in Arabic so I did wonder why I was there but I had Nidal for one and Fatima for the other so I guess I was just a 'presence' though not much else.
I am trying to learn some Arabic and have picked up the pleasantries from Nidal 'kifack hebibby' 'janny' etc but when I try to sue them I'm told I'm using a Lebanese version so not very impressive! There are lot of words in English so I try to work out what's going on. At today's meeting it was clear that they were talking about the best ways to talk to 16 - 18 year old boys about careers - something I do know about even here, but when I discussed this with Fatima she assured me that it was gender, not language that stopped us from contributing to the conversation.
Last night we went to the dinner for the 'Women in Science' conference which was organized by Amahl. John's amazing female Emirati Professor. The guest speaker was Sheikha Aluman, another inspirational Emirati woman, who is Minister for Foreign Trade. She spoke passionately about the role of women in this society and there is no question that talented women are in abundance. Hopefully the culture will be able to change fast enough to make the most of this talent.
I was also lucky enough to be involved with the Emirates Skills competition, which we have been sponsoring and is organized by the Institutes of Applied Technology, whic our Chairman is also Chairman of. Especially as I was involved with the London bid to host the 2011 World Skills Competition with Investors in People. Another great example of last minute. The day before I heard that I had to be there at 10am and to write some words for the boss to say. It turned out to be 5pm and when I got there they needed a pull up stand as well. But Nidal had heard this an hour before and turned up at 4.55pm complete with a pull up that had been dried with a hair dryer and produced in less than 2 hours - only in the UAE. We did manage one overnight for the Now People pitch but that was a once off! When I arrived I discovered that we were signing an Memorandum of Understanding for an AED 1 million sponsorship deal in front of assorted press! However it all seemed to go fine - the boss read my words (translated in Arabic) verbatim and the pull up didn't stick to anyone's clothes! John was able to come along which I think was good for both os us as he met my Chairman and chatted to the Khalifa University boss and a few others. The best thing was the look on the winners faces as they won their medals.
It warms your heart to be involved in all of this but there's just always this worry that somehow you're not doing something that might be even more important! However, as I always say to John, it's got to be a lifetime of interesting stories!
Yesterday I heard that I'd passed my probabation and had to sign the form today - all fine with fours or fives in every area but no discussion or chance to ask questions. Whilst I don't disagree, you wonder if only a four for 'knowledge of job' means that the boss genuinely thinks that after 25 years you don't fully understand the 'four P's' of marketing or whether (quite understandably) you can't argue with a booth builder in Arabic about the problems with an exhibition stand, or how to persuade HR to sign off on the staff newsletter (in which case I'd struggle to give myself a 1). As for a four for 'Results focused' I'm totally lost. I know that this is my main raison d'etre but I'm still trying to work out what the goals are so maybe that's a conversation we should try to have at some stage.
The last couple of days have involved a trip to Al Ain for a careers event - all very exciting with a new stand builder and for once the knowledge that sorting out the gift packs, 12kg of branded chocolates and floral arrangements would be key to success! It looks great though at 9.30 at night sitting patiently whilst Nidal argued with the booth builder in Arabic about what needed doing made me wonder what value I was adding and whether I could ever manage without her is a worry. Al Ain reminded me of Milton Keynes with endless roundabouts and shopping malls though it is the heart of historic Abu Dhabi. The fort was so small I missed it on several drive bys and the famous mountain is mainly famous because everywhere close by is flat! As I watched these groups of very glamourous Emirati girls wandering around with their gold plated blackberries and Gucci handbags I was stuggling to understand their motivation for working but I guess I'll get there.
I've had two fun experiences with going to meetings at military sites and on both occasions they did let me in but not without a body search and removal of blackberry, mobile and cameras. For both meetings, when I finally got in the meetings were conducted in Arabic so I did wonder why I was there but I had Nidal for one and Fatima for the other so I guess I was just a 'presence' though not much else.
I am trying to learn some Arabic and have picked up the pleasantries from Nidal 'kifack hebibby' 'janny' etc but when I try to sue them I'm told I'm using a Lebanese version so not very impressive! There are lot of words in English so I try to work out what's going on. At today's meeting it was clear that they were talking about the best ways to talk to 16 - 18 year old boys about careers - something I do know about even here, but when I discussed this with Fatima she assured me that it was gender, not language that stopped us from contributing to the conversation.
Last night we went to the dinner for the 'Women in Science' conference which was organized by Amahl. John's amazing female Emirati Professor. The guest speaker was Sheikha Aluman, another inspirational Emirati woman, who is Minister for Foreign Trade. She spoke passionately about the role of women in this society and there is no question that talented women are in abundance. Hopefully the culture will be able to change fast enough to make the most of this talent.
I was also lucky enough to be involved with the Emirates Skills competition, which we have been sponsoring and is organized by the Institutes of Applied Technology, whic our Chairman is also Chairman of. Especially as I was involved with the London bid to host the 2011 World Skills Competition with Investors in People. Another great example of last minute. The day before I heard that I had to be there at 10am and to write some words for the boss to say. It turned out to be 5pm and when I got there they needed a pull up stand as well. But Nidal had heard this an hour before and turned up at 4.55pm complete with a pull up that had been dried with a hair dryer and produced in less than 2 hours - only in the UAE. We did manage one overnight for the Now People pitch but that was a once off! When I arrived I discovered that we were signing an Memorandum of Understanding for an AED 1 million sponsorship deal in front of assorted press! However it all seemed to go fine - the boss read my words (translated in Arabic) verbatim and the pull up didn't stick to anyone's clothes! John was able to come along which I think was good for both os us as he met my Chairman and chatted to the Khalifa University boss and a few others. The best thing was the look on the winners faces as they won their medals.
It warms your heart to be involved in all of this but there's just always this worry that somehow you're not doing something that might be even more important! However, as I always say to John, it's got to be a lifetime of interesting stories!
Sunday 25 April 2010
It's a mad world and somehow I'm living in it!
On the surface of things my life has been recreated much as it was in Manchester. Everyday I get up at 6.30am, put on a business suit, drink a cup of tea and drive to the office listening to radio 2. On arrival I buzz in using my security pass, boot up my computer and check my outlook for new email and the day's activities. I meet with colleagues and subsidiary companies (who are much like clients) and rush around the city in the car attending meetings and then flying back to the office to write things up and organize activity. At the end of the day I drive home, cook supper, J prepares his signature G&T and we eat and watch TV.
But somehow I can't help feeling we're living in a parallel universe which has a semblance of normal life but where, in actual fact, anything could happen and usually does! Take the security pass as an example, on the face of it, it lets me into the office, just like the work one. But in reality it's linked to a database which is monitoring my every move, checking that I do turn up on time and don't head for home too early. I'm surprised I haven't crashed the system since I spend my entire day running between the four villas which make up head office, the design studio and our subsidiaries, who are scattered across the city. I wonder if anyone ever looks at the information but just knowing they could is a little scary!
The concept of planning no longer exists in this new world, one day I think I'm organizing collateral, gifts and presentations for a university employer day in mid May, only to find that HR have booked a further 3 events, the first of which starts in a week's time and I am suddenly expected to produce 1500 corporate, branded gift packs of varying complexity, pop up stands, full build exhibition stands, brochures, business cards, order 15kg of branded chocolates and colour themed flower arrangements and book hotels for the team! Whilst this would give any sane person heart failure, it is actually perfectly possible to achieve this because the suppliers are used to this kind of last minute request and pull out all the stops. There is also the mystery of the signing hierarchy, which suddenly changed last week and the threshold for signing by the COO or CEO was reduced from AED 100,000 to AED 30,000 - just after I'd given the supplier the go ahead for two orders worth AED 37,000 and AED 99,000 (thought I'd bucked the system there didn't I!) I had a worrying time when the purchase requests came back unsigned but with the necessary grovelling I did get the right signature before I found myself on the next flight home.
Then there's the decision making process which is completely and utterly beyond my comprehension (except that I do know now that any decision taken which is likely to have a direct bearing on my work will most definitely be taken without my involvement so that's one valuable lesson learnt!) At one of the subsidiary board meetings it was decided in the company of our senior management that the ad agency contract should be cancelled with immediate effect and that each piece of work should be put out to three agencies for quotations and design proposals. A great idea perhaps but completely unworkable from any practical perspective. I have pointed out that I currently have no fewer than 14 work in progress projects with the agency (who are a design outfit rather than a full service provider) and if every single one was quoted and delivered separately it would cost significantly more than the current arrangement and take six times as long but whether anyone listens seems unlikely. What do I know? I'm just the man running the machine and why would anyone consult him?
Last week I also found myself being given as a 'gift' to the Institute of Applied Technology by our Chairman, who is also their Chairman. They need help with their marketing and don't have the budget for an external consultant so I've been offered to them instead. Now this one I really don't mind as they actually appear to be looking for a strategic communications plan (there's that word again which I guess doesn't translate into Arabic!) and I have been able to dust off all the lovely methodology and processes that Derek and I created at work. They are also providing technological education to a new generation of Emiratis and want to build their brand and raise their profile so it's very much my kind of project. Whilst I'm really excited about working with them I would love to be given a little more time to work on it.
However, I do have a lovely new member of the team - Fatima is an Emirati lady who has managed to achieve a degree and two children at the tender age of 22 and is a real asset to the team. She works really hard and speaks great English as well as native Arabic and understands so much better than me how things work around here. So with Nidal who totally gets the whole how things work situation and knows so much more than me about corporate identity and exhibition design it's amazing quite how much we get done in this crazy alternative reality.
As long as try to see it this way I might manage to survive and possibly even achieve something (though that might be going a bit far!) However, I do wonder if my skill set isn't completely alien to this working culture. I wouldn't mind the way things seem not to happen for ages if they didn't keep popping back up again, just when you thought they'd gone away and need doing and delivering by someone in marketing by TOMORROW! Somehow the concept of Insha'Allah doesn't apply to us and I don't know why but maybe I'll find out one day and if I do I'll be sure to let you know!
But somehow I can't help feeling we're living in a parallel universe which has a semblance of normal life but where, in actual fact, anything could happen and usually does! Take the security pass as an example, on the face of it, it lets me into the office, just like the work one. But in reality it's linked to a database which is monitoring my every move, checking that I do turn up on time and don't head for home too early. I'm surprised I haven't crashed the system since I spend my entire day running between the four villas which make up head office, the design studio and our subsidiaries, who are scattered across the city. I wonder if anyone ever looks at the information but just knowing they could is a little scary!
The concept of planning no longer exists in this new world, one day I think I'm organizing collateral, gifts and presentations for a university employer day in mid May, only to find that HR have booked a further 3 events, the first of which starts in a week's time and I am suddenly expected to produce 1500 corporate, branded gift packs of varying complexity, pop up stands, full build exhibition stands, brochures, business cards, order 15kg of branded chocolates and colour themed flower arrangements and book hotels for the team! Whilst this would give any sane person heart failure, it is actually perfectly possible to achieve this because the suppliers are used to this kind of last minute request and pull out all the stops. There is also the mystery of the signing hierarchy, which suddenly changed last week and the threshold for signing by the COO or CEO was reduced from AED 100,000 to AED 30,000 - just after I'd given the supplier the go ahead for two orders worth AED 37,000 and AED 99,000 (thought I'd bucked the system there didn't I!) I had a worrying time when the purchase requests came back unsigned but with the necessary grovelling I did get the right signature before I found myself on the next flight home.
Then there's the decision making process which is completely and utterly beyond my comprehension (except that I do know now that any decision taken which is likely to have a direct bearing on my work will most definitely be taken without my involvement so that's one valuable lesson learnt!) At one of the subsidiary board meetings it was decided in the company of our senior management that the ad agency contract should be cancelled with immediate effect and that each piece of work should be put out to three agencies for quotations and design proposals. A great idea perhaps but completely unworkable from any practical perspective. I have pointed out that I currently have no fewer than 14 work in progress projects with the agency (who are a design outfit rather than a full service provider) and if every single one was quoted and delivered separately it would cost significantly more than the current arrangement and take six times as long but whether anyone listens seems unlikely. What do I know? I'm just the man running the machine and why would anyone consult him?
Last week I also found myself being given as a 'gift' to the Institute of Applied Technology by our Chairman, who is also their Chairman. They need help with their marketing and don't have the budget for an external consultant so I've been offered to them instead. Now this one I really don't mind as they actually appear to be looking for a strategic communications plan (there's that word again which I guess doesn't translate into Arabic!) and I have been able to dust off all the lovely methodology and processes that Derek and I created at work. They are also providing technological education to a new generation of Emiratis and want to build their brand and raise their profile so it's very much my kind of project. Whilst I'm really excited about working with them I would love to be given a little more time to work on it.
However, I do have a lovely new member of the team - Fatima is an Emirati lady who has managed to achieve a degree and two children at the tender age of 22 and is a real asset to the team. She works really hard and speaks great English as well as native Arabic and understands so much better than me how things work around here. So with Nidal who totally gets the whole how things work situation and knows so much more than me about corporate identity and exhibition design it's amazing quite how much we get done in this crazy alternative reality.
As long as try to see it this way I might manage to survive and possibly even achieve something (though that might be going a bit far!) However, I do wonder if my skill set isn't completely alien to this working culture. I wouldn't mind the way things seem not to happen for ages if they didn't keep popping back up again, just when you thought they'd gone away and need doing and delivering by someone in marketing by TOMORROW! Somehow the concept of Insha'Allah doesn't apply to us and I don't know why but maybe I'll find out one day and if I do I'll be sure to let you know!
Sunday 18 April 2010
Volcanic ash puts paid to long awaited visit
I guess if you're reading this you'll know that a volcano erupted in Iceland putting paid to travel plans for millions. That included Mum and her friend Jo finally coming to stay with us in Abu Dhabi. We were all looking forward to this so much and we'd got two guest bedrooms and bathrooms completed kitted out and a whole range of activites line up. It was hard not to shed a few tears and for the various preparations in the apartment not to lear at me every time I walked past. Still it was pretty unprecedented and we can't be the people most put out. One of my friends has her son back from boarding school for the Easter holidays and he needs to get back to the UK for his GCSE exams and can't get back. Our business development team is trapped in Paris (it's and ill wind!) and the Babcock team couldn't get back to Abu Dhabi for their meeting so all in all we have to accept that God and nature will always be in charge!
We had booked the Shuja Yacht brunch cruise for Saturday for Mum and Jo so our neighbours, Pat and Judy, nobly took their places and we did all have a lovely time. We cruised for a couple of hours off the Corniche whilst drinking Californian bubbly and eating a seafood buffet and sublime deserts.
J and I tried to go to the beach on Friday to find most of it shut off in preparation for the Womad festival - we had a quick swim on the main beach but it was so crowded we didn't stay long. The weather has been very changeable over the last few days - a bit like April in the UK, just add 15 or 20 degrees, but we've had rain, cloud, strong wind and a drop or rise from 23 to 36 degrees and varying humidity.
April may be 'the cruellest month' anywhere in the world but they won't be 'breeding lilacs out of the dead land' around here I don't think!
Now I just have to work out what to do about the Qasr Al Sarab hotel booking for next weekend. But is anyone can get here and fancies a trip we have two perfect guest rooms and bathrooms just crying out for occupants.
We had booked the Shuja Yacht brunch cruise for Saturday for Mum and Jo so our neighbours, Pat and Judy, nobly took their places and we did all have a lovely time. We cruised for a couple of hours off the Corniche whilst drinking Californian bubbly and eating a seafood buffet and sublime deserts.
J and I tried to go to the beach on Friday to find most of it shut off in preparation for the Womad festival - we had a quick swim on the main beach but it was so crowded we didn't stay long. The weather has been very changeable over the last few days - a bit like April in the UK, just add 15 or 20 degrees, but we've had rain, cloud, strong wind and a drop or rise from 23 to 36 degrees and varying humidity.
April may be 'the cruellest month' anywhere in the world but they won't be 'breeding lilacs out of the dead land' around here I don't think!
Now I just have to work out what to do about the Qasr Al Sarab hotel booking for next weekend. But is anyone can get here and fancies a trip we have two perfect guest rooms and bathrooms just crying out for occupants.
Perfect wedding anniversary at the Shangri La
The 14th April saw our first wedding anniversary. Considering everything that has happened since it seems like more than a year! This year has been a challenge and no mistake but being married to John has not been one of them!
We wanted to celebrate on the actual day which was probably a mistake as J had a big Exec Committee meeting on Sunday so he was naturally stressed and distracted by the preparation for such an important meeting. John had chosen the Shangri La Bord Eau French restaurant as it is pretty amazing and a special treat place and I thought we might stay over, since we stayed at the Shangri La on our very first visit and J lived in their residences for the first two months, whilst I was still in Manchester, so it always feels a bit like coming home, whenever I go there.
J was worried about getting me a card and at one stage suggested I might have to drive him to the Mall to buy one but being the star he is, he solved it without the need for the wife/driver! The day itself was pretty stressful for both of us at work so we didn't make it to the Shangri La in time to enjoy the beach, the pool or the spa. However it didn't matter, since the moment we walked in the door we were made to feel special and the relaxation began. We were met at reception with red roses and shown to a beautiful room. No sooner had we got unpacked than a guy arrived with an incredible chocolate mousse cake with Happy Anniversary iced on it. We went for dinner and were met with a complimentary kir then enjoyed a fantastic dinner - quail salad and chicken for me, lobster and wagyu beef for J washed down with a bottle of the jeffreys (Gevrais Chambertin for any readers outside the Chambers family). We ordered some home made ice cream which was delicious but a mistake as we were presented with another sumptuous cake after this. With two cakes the Masdar Institute and EAI teams enjoyed cake the next day so our popularity ratings have to have been increased!
It was a fantastic evening and my only regret was doing it on a work day as we had to get up early and miss out on the lovely breakfast buffet and the pool. Looking out from the balcony I felt like I was on holiday but had to ask the valet parking guys to bring my car and head to the office. It was just perfect. J and I spent a relaxing evening together in what has to be the loveliest hotel in Abu Dhabi in a fabulous room with all the trimmings.
I don't think any day could really beat 14th April 2009 when J and I got married with all of our close family and friends around us, it was the most wonderful day, but the Shangri La had a pretty good go at making our first anniversary a close second.
We wanted to celebrate on the actual day which was probably a mistake as J had a big Exec Committee meeting on Sunday so he was naturally stressed and distracted by the preparation for such an important meeting. John had chosen the Shangri La Bord Eau French restaurant as it is pretty amazing and a special treat place and I thought we might stay over, since we stayed at the Shangri La on our very first visit and J lived in their residences for the first two months, whilst I was still in Manchester, so it always feels a bit like coming home, whenever I go there.
J was worried about getting me a card and at one stage suggested I might have to drive him to the Mall to buy one but being the star he is, he solved it without the need for the wife/driver! The day itself was pretty stressful for both of us at work so we didn't make it to the Shangri La in time to enjoy the beach, the pool or the spa. However it didn't matter, since the moment we walked in the door we were made to feel special and the relaxation began. We were met at reception with red roses and shown to a beautiful room. No sooner had we got unpacked than a guy arrived with an incredible chocolate mousse cake with Happy Anniversary iced on it. We went for dinner and were met with a complimentary kir then enjoyed a fantastic dinner - quail salad and chicken for me, lobster and wagyu beef for J washed down with a bottle of the jeffreys (Gevrais Chambertin for any readers outside the Chambers family). We ordered some home made ice cream which was delicious but a mistake as we were presented with another sumptuous cake after this. With two cakes the Masdar Institute and EAI teams enjoyed cake the next day so our popularity ratings have to have been increased!
It was a fantastic evening and my only regret was doing it on a work day as we had to get up early and miss out on the lovely breakfast buffet and the pool. Looking out from the balcony I felt like I was on holiday but had to ask the valet parking guys to bring my car and head to the office. It was just perfect. J and I spent a relaxing evening together in what has to be the loveliest hotel in Abu Dhabi in a fabulous room with all the trimmings.
I don't think any day could really beat 14th April 2009 when J and I got married with all of our close family and friends around us, it was the most wonderful day, but the Shangri La had a pretty good go at making our first anniversary a close second.
Sunday 11 April 2010
Back in Abu Dhabi and back to work
So back to Abu Dhabi and back to work after a lovely break. Plenty of interesting things to do at work though the pile of 'work in progress' sitting on my desk gets bigger and bigger with so little of it signed off or completed that it does tend to get rather frustrating! I still have to work out just how to get things done though I'm not sure there's an easy answer. However, when something really does need to be done it's always in a panic and a terrible rush with lots of shouting and everyone screaming so you know then that it needs doing.
I had to supply some logos for the an event that our Chairman had decided to sponsor - a simple enough task you might think, but one was for an external organization and the other two needed to be in a very specific format. The organizers didn't respond to my requests for information on file size, deadline or destinations so I was slowly dealing with the task along with other things when all hell broke loose with people screaming for these logos from all directions! I couldn't get them on the email so in the end in desperation I jumped in the car and went and fetched them on a disc - mainly just to get away from people shouting for them by phone and email. It was all very exciting! This is the same with everything where no-one gives any feedback on anything until it is needed NOW!
However, I did have a really good time the week before last where I ran a marketing planning workshop with the senior management team from one of the subsidiaries (I know it's only taken 3 months to do one of the things which I thought was crucial to the job description!)It seemed to go well and I think people were pleased with the outcomes report though we still don't have a date for the follow up operational planning meeting (hopefully not another 3 months!) I have also been working on a sales presentation for one of our joint ventures - with the UK Facilities Management company Babcock, which has been a pleasure.
I have so many projects 'on hold' for HR comms that I risk being buried should the files ever fall over. I had to contact all the venues who had provided proposals for our senior team event and staff family day to put the dates on hold, as I couldn't ask them to hold 50 rooms indefinitely. It clearly happens all the time since no-one seemed remotely upset even though I felt like a real heel.
I think I made some progress with the advertising agency contract for one of our subsidiaries - the agency had been working for them since September without being paid due to a major discrepancy on the contract, what a nightmare! However, I am assured that some initial invoices have been passed for payment and that all parties are happy with the new contract which I've designed even though nothing has been signed and no money has changed hands!
I actually met our elusive chairman last week which has been a long time coming. He is certainly as charismatic and impressive as everyone says and he makes you feel as though he's genuinely interested in what you have to say. I managed nearly an hour, which is pretty amazing. However, he did spend a lot of time talking about what he thought John should do - he is a trustee of Khalifa University, an Engineer and Chair of the IAT (Institute of Applied Technologies) so he has a keen interest in scientific and technical education. I'm delighted that he has linked the two of us and clearly marketing to young people about education and careers is also my bag but with no time to prepare I'm not sure that I managed to get the right things across. Still it was wonderful to meet him at last - even if it did result in a day of logo wild goose chase!
I had to supply some logos for the an event that our Chairman had decided to sponsor - a simple enough task you might think, but one was for an external organization and the other two needed to be in a very specific format. The organizers didn't respond to my requests for information on file size, deadline or destinations so I was slowly dealing with the task along with other things when all hell broke loose with people screaming for these logos from all directions! I couldn't get them on the email so in the end in desperation I jumped in the car and went and fetched them on a disc - mainly just to get away from people shouting for them by phone and email. It was all very exciting! This is the same with everything where no-one gives any feedback on anything until it is needed NOW!
However, I did have a really good time the week before last where I ran a marketing planning workshop with the senior management team from one of the subsidiaries (I know it's only taken 3 months to do one of the things which I thought was crucial to the job description!)It seemed to go well and I think people were pleased with the outcomes report though we still don't have a date for the follow up operational planning meeting (hopefully not another 3 months!) I have also been working on a sales presentation for one of our joint ventures - with the UK Facilities Management company Babcock, which has been a pleasure.
I have so many projects 'on hold' for HR comms that I risk being buried should the files ever fall over. I had to contact all the venues who had provided proposals for our senior team event and staff family day to put the dates on hold, as I couldn't ask them to hold 50 rooms indefinitely. It clearly happens all the time since no-one seemed remotely upset even though I felt like a real heel.
I think I made some progress with the advertising agency contract for one of our subsidiaries - the agency had been working for them since September without being paid due to a major discrepancy on the contract, what a nightmare! However, I am assured that some initial invoices have been passed for payment and that all parties are happy with the new contract which I've designed even though nothing has been signed and no money has changed hands!
I actually met our elusive chairman last week which has been a long time coming. He is certainly as charismatic and impressive as everyone says and he makes you feel as though he's genuinely interested in what you have to say. I managed nearly an hour, which is pretty amazing. However, he did spend a lot of time talking about what he thought John should do - he is a trustee of Khalifa University, an Engineer and Chair of the IAT (Institute of Applied Technologies) so he has a keen interest in scientific and technical education. I'm delighted that he has linked the two of us and clearly marketing to young people about education and careers is also my bag but with no time to prepare I'm not sure that I managed to get the right things across. Still it was wonderful to meet him at last - even if it did result in a day of logo wild goose chase!
Wednesday 7 April 2010
The rest of the UK trip
After all the excitement of John's party and the relief that it had gone well I was able to fully relax and enjoy the rest of our trip to the UK. On Tuesday I had to go to the final Investors in People board meeting since, now that it is being taken over by the UK Council for Education and Skills it will no longer be a Non Departmental Public Body which means it has no need of Board Members like myself. It was really sad to say goodbye to fellow board members and IIP staff who I have been working with for over 4 years. Many staff are not transferring to UKCES though some have taken the opportunity to go and do something completely different - Gary is going to do a Masters and train to be a social worker so I can't think of a more worthwhile thing to do in a redundancy situation. I'm sure the standard will live on, it is the only public sector super brand after all, but it won't feel the same without its own special company and a group of people who were so very passionate about it. Some of the board members still have a lot of work to do to ensure that everything gets transferred properly but I haven't been involved in this with being so far away so it was the last time for me. I hope I will have the chance to make a similar contribution in the future though whilst I'm in Abu Dhabi I'm not really in the best position to offer my skills right now.
John also spent time carrying out his 'civic' duties by chairing and attending meetings at the Royal Academy of Engineering and the Institute of Chemical Engineers so we made the best contributions we could to the UK in the short time we were there.
I was able to call in at the London office of Wordsearch and thank the team personally who had made such a lovely job of designing and producing John's book.
We treated ourselves to a lovely dinner at the OXO tower before leaving London and enjoyed a fabulous meal with the great view of the London skyline. The only beef I have with this place is the tables are just a little bit close together so you tend to find out rather more about your neighbours than you really want to! We had an air stewardess on a first date and a couple who preferred to go home rather than spend the night together because they couldn't sleep. Pretty intimate stuff which made me very cautious about what we were talking about!
We headed to Manchester on the Wednesday where we managed to get various crucial jobs done and visited my aunty Brenda and persuaded her to act as our proxy vote for the upcoming general election. We bought a super new HP notebook to replace the Dell, killed by a virus so we have all the necessary connections at home and I can hopefully start loading some new tracks onto the iPod again. We enjoyed several wonderful meals out - lunch at The Bull near Skipton with Mum, Selfridges and Cafe Rouge on top of the two Pizza Expresses last week so we fitted in all the old favourites. It's one of the thing we miss in Abu Dhabi is being able to wander out for a relatively inexpensive lunch with a nice glass of wine! We also went back to Rosso (I know it's the wrong team but as an Italian restaurant it's lovely!) When someone from Man City opens a restaurant in town I promise to go there as well. We walked in and found half of the old recruitment advertising sorority having dinner so it was good to say hello - though John pointed out that none of us could really be described as 'girls' any more. But then I've know Michelle, Nicola and some of the others for at least 20 years so we were girls once!
Sunday we had to head back to Abu Dhabi and I'm afraid it was with a bit of heavy heart as we'd had such a lovely time in the UK. The Manchester apartment is pretty small compared with Abu Dhabi but it's still lovely and the weather wasn't too cold. Whilst we are there spring arrived and the flowers on the Princess Parkway changed from crocuses to daffodils in less than a week.
I know they say that absence makes the heart grow fonder but I think I was always pretty fond of Manchester and loved living in our apartment in the city. However, we enjoyed a lovely business class flight back with all the trimmings so it gave us a suitable send off for the end of the holiday and once back we soon got into the swing of things. For a little while we have to get used to living in two places at once and feeling torn between two lives and they do say that things get easier as you get used to it!
John also spent time carrying out his 'civic' duties by chairing and attending meetings at the Royal Academy of Engineering and the Institute of Chemical Engineers so we made the best contributions we could to the UK in the short time we were there.
I was able to call in at the London office of Wordsearch and thank the team personally who had made such a lovely job of designing and producing John's book.
We treated ourselves to a lovely dinner at the OXO tower before leaving London and enjoyed a fabulous meal with the great view of the London skyline. The only beef I have with this place is the tables are just a little bit close together so you tend to find out rather more about your neighbours than you really want to! We had an air stewardess on a first date and a couple who preferred to go home rather than spend the night together because they couldn't sleep. Pretty intimate stuff which made me very cautious about what we were talking about!
We headed to Manchester on the Wednesday where we managed to get various crucial jobs done and visited my aunty Brenda and persuaded her to act as our proxy vote for the upcoming general election. We bought a super new HP notebook to replace the Dell, killed by a virus so we have all the necessary connections at home and I can hopefully start loading some new tracks onto the iPod again. We enjoyed several wonderful meals out - lunch at The Bull near Skipton with Mum, Selfridges and Cafe Rouge on top of the two Pizza Expresses last week so we fitted in all the old favourites. It's one of the thing we miss in Abu Dhabi is being able to wander out for a relatively inexpensive lunch with a nice glass of wine! We also went back to Rosso (I know it's the wrong team but as an Italian restaurant it's lovely!) When someone from Man City opens a restaurant in town I promise to go there as well. We walked in and found half of the old recruitment advertising sorority having dinner so it was good to say hello - though John pointed out that none of us could really be described as 'girls' any more. But then I've know Michelle, Nicola and some of the others for at least 20 years so we were girls once!
Sunday we had to head back to Abu Dhabi and I'm afraid it was with a bit of heavy heart as we'd had such a lovely time in the UK. The Manchester apartment is pretty small compared with Abu Dhabi but it's still lovely and the weather wasn't too cold. Whilst we are there spring arrived and the flowers on the Princess Parkway changed from crocuses to daffodils in less than a week.
I know they say that absence makes the heart grow fonder but I think I was always pretty fond of Manchester and loved living in our apartment in the city. However, we enjoyed a lovely business class flight back with all the trimmings so it gave us a suitable send off for the end of the holiday and once back we soon got into the swing of things. For a little while we have to get used to living in two places at once and feeling torn between two lives and they do say that things get easier as you get used to it!
Thursday 1 April 2010
John's surprise party
Proof in pictures of my ability to get a group of Chemical Engineers together in one place! I think the look on John's face adequately demonstrates quite how big a surprise it all was! My skills didn't run to a panoramic group shot but I got everyone into two! Liz and Keith look through the book with John and everyone seems to be having a good time.
Wednesday 31 March 2010
John's surprise party
The main event for John's birthday was a surprise party which I'd been arranging by email for months! This has taken up a good deal of time and energy and lots of great support from our friend Alison Clarke and John's Manchester PA, Sue Neesham, who helped me to find a venue, create a guest list and track down endless email addresses and contacts. Readers of the blog will be unaware of all the preparation as, since John also reads the blog, I've been unable to talk about it!
We held the event at Imperial College, London and about 30 of John's former colleagues and friends were able to join us for canapes, drinks and speeches from David Bogle, one of John's early PhD students, Stratos, a long standing colleague and friend from Imperial and Lord Ron Oxburgh, former Rector at Imperial. Those who couldn't attend were able to send John messages, as, with a great deal of help from my good friends at Wordsearch (huge thanks to Katie, Kelly and Sandra) I managed to create a book, full of lovely words about John over the years, coupled with some compromisingly photos of his life!
We managed to keep the whole event a surprise. John thought we were going for dinner with Alison and David and that David had to drop some papers off at Imperial. I was sure he'd got wind of it but he claims he had no idea until he actually walked into the room and found it full of so many people he knew! It was a great event and a fairly august gathering with several Sirs, a Lord and the government's chief scientific advisor. I hope it made John feel special and realise how highly he is regarded by so many great people. I think it can be very hard in a new place, having to build a reputation from scratch after so many years - I know I feel like that myself. Anyway we had a great time and a lovely dinner afterwards with Alison and David, Liz and Keith Guy and Phil and Jane Ruffles and I was so relieved to have pulled it off and kept the surprise going for all that time!
We held the event at Imperial College, London and about 30 of John's former colleagues and friends were able to join us for canapes, drinks and speeches from David Bogle, one of John's early PhD students, Stratos, a long standing colleague and friend from Imperial and Lord Ron Oxburgh, former Rector at Imperial. Those who couldn't attend were able to send John messages, as, with a great deal of help from my good friends at Wordsearch (huge thanks to Katie, Kelly and Sandra) I managed to create a book, full of lovely words about John over the years, coupled with some compromisingly photos of his life!
We managed to keep the whole event a surprise. John thought we were going for dinner with Alison and David and that David had to drop some papers off at Imperial. I was sure he'd got wind of it but he claims he had no idea until he actually walked into the room and found it full of so many people he knew! It was a great event and a fairly august gathering with several Sirs, a Lord and the government's chief scientific advisor. I hope it made John feel special and realise how highly he is regarded by so many great people. I think it can be very hard in a new place, having to build a reputation from scratch after so many years - I know I feel like that myself. Anyway we had a great time and a lovely dinner afterwards with Alison and David, Liz and Keith Guy and Phil and Jane Ruffles and I was so relieved to have pulled it off and kept the surprise going for all that time!
Celebrations for John's 60th
We spent John's actual birthday back at Luton Hoo, where we had our wedding. I think it has to be one of my most favourite places in the whole world and naturally it has such happy and romantic associations that I can't help but love being there. They made a tremendous fuss of us, Marje, the wedding organizer came out to great us and they brought us champagne to have with our sandwiches when we arrived and upgraded our room. Everyone kept wishing us a happy anniversary so we gave up explaining that it was still a month away and this was actually John's birthday. We stayed in a room we'd been in before, when we were organizing the wedding which has a beautiful view of the formal garden and a bathroom bigger than most people's living rooms. After a wonderful birthday supper, a good night's rest and a session in the pool and spa we headed to Rachel and Andrew's to be reunited with my side of the family and enjoy a curry and a catch up. We also had to admire Kirsty, who had been subjected to a professional grooming session from a lady who made her stand in a cage in the kitchen. Mum had been holding her nose to ensure there were no stray nips when combing the tricky bits and she looked very fetching!
Saturday morning we set off for Leysdown where we picked up Isobel and then made for the Hotel du Vin in Tunbridge Wells where mum joined us for another birthday celebration. Hotel du Vin is always a bit quirky but fun too and the food is great so we all had a nice dinner, a huge breakfast and a few celebratory glasses. Our trips to the UK always seem to involve huge amounts of delicious food and drink and I return to Abu Dhabi with a distinctly tight feeling in the clothing department and need to go back to the cereal bar and fruit regime to ensure that I don't have to repair too many zips and replace too many buttons!
Saturday morning we set off for Leysdown where we picked up Isobel and then made for the Hotel du Vin in Tunbridge Wells where mum joined us for another birthday celebration. Hotel du Vin is always a bit quirky but fun too and the food is great so we all had a nice dinner, a huge breakfast and a few celebratory glasses. Our trips to the UK always seem to involve huge amounts of delicious food and drink and I return to Abu Dhabi with a distinctly tight feeling in the clothing department and need to go back to the cereal bar and fruit regime to ensure that I don't have to repair too many zips and replace too many buttons!
Tooth ache and preparation for UK trip
The last weekend before our UK trip should have been a nice wind down with J back from his overseas trips and everything coming together. We had a lovely evening on the Friday when Helen and John came round for a meal and I was able to return some of their hospitality. Then on Saturday we had a lovely trip to the beach, had lunch watching the end of the Abu Dhabi Triathlon and a good swim - all strange to think that we would soon be back in the UK in March and not the kind of weather for beaches or sea swimming. However, during the course of the day my mouth started to hurt and by Sunday morning my face had swelled up and I was in serious agony.
You've got to hand it to the health service round here - I got a Dr's appointment for lunchtime and once she'd decided it was definitely tooth related she sent me straight down to see a dentist in the same hospital who I was able to see with just 20 minutes waiting. The dentist sent me straight for a pain killing injection (in a slightly embarassing place but it was well worth the indigity) and gave me a presciption for two kinds of anitbiotics and an appointment to return the next morning. X-rays were done in the same hospital on the spot and linked back to the dentist surgery via computer. Surprisingly the dentists were most complimentary of the UK dentist's root canal work and could find no reason for the huge abscess which had formed deep in the root so decided to do nothing but let the anti biotics deal with the infection. So far it has fixed it so I'm keeping everything crossed that I don't have to go back for a replacement root canal but I know I'll be in good hands if I do have to. This was all covered, bar 20%, by our health insurance which was even better. The main downside was a pretty severe reaction to one set of anti biotics which left me suffering a bit for several days and an embarrassing throwing up episode outside the business class check in but great faith in the Abu Dhabi health system.
In the middle of all of this I was also trying to get everything tidied up in order to be away for a bit but fortunately I can rely on Nidal to pick things up and she took over my 'to do' list very efficiently. I spent the last day redoing one of the ad agency contracts for one of the subsidiaries and at last felt like I had been able to make a useful contribution.
We headed for Manchester on the flight which leaves Abu Dhabi in the wee small hours which is a little painful, but despite my infirmities I managed to force down the obligatory glass of pre take off champagne - purely medicinal of course!
You've got to hand it to the health service round here - I got a Dr's appointment for lunchtime and once she'd decided it was definitely tooth related she sent me straight down to see a dentist in the same hospital who I was able to see with just 20 minutes waiting. The dentist sent me straight for a pain killing injection (in a slightly embarassing place but it was well worth the indigity) and gave me a presciption for two kinds of anitbiotics and an appointment to return the next morning. X-rays were done in the same hospital on the spot and linked back to the dentist surgery via computer. Surprisingly the dentists were most complimentary of the UK dentist's root canal work and could find no reason for the huge abscess which had formed deep in the root so decided to do nothing but let the anti biotics deal with the infection. So far it has fixed it so I'm keeping everything crossed that I don't have to go back for a replacement root canal but I know I'll be in good hands if I do have to. This was all covered, bar 20%, by our health insurance which was even better. The main downside was a pretty severe reaction to one set of anti biotics which left me suffering a bit for several days and an embarrassing throwing up episode outside the business class check in but great faith in the Abu Dhabi health system.
In the middle of all of this I was also trying to get everything tidied up in order to be away for a bit but fortunately I can rely on Nidal to pick things up and she took over my 'to do' list very efficiently. I spent the last day redoing one of the ad agency contracts for one of the subsidiaries and at last felt like I had been able to make a useful contribution.
We headed for Manchester on the flight which leaves Abu Dhabi in the wee small hours which is a little painful, but despite my infirmities I managed to force down the obligatory glass of pre take off champagne - purely medicinal of course!
Thursday 11 March 2010
The ups and downs of life!
This week has been an interesting one with plenty of ups and plenty of matching downs! I just can't get the hang of how things get done around here and I think expecting people to be able to do things when you think they need doing is almost impossible and I should work much harder on achieving a zen like state. Me and zen are not things which go naturally together though as I tend to be more of a rushing around sort of a person.
Nidal has been off ill so I've really had to learn a bit more about getting the basic things done. John was less than impressed when a pop up exhibition stand arrived in our living room late last night and the two guys then proceeding to demonstrate to me how to erect it! However, they couldn't bring it to the college where we were exhibiting at any of the right times so it seemed like the only solution. John helped me to put it in the car and there were endless helpful guys at the other end who trundled it into position and helped me to put it up. It didn't help that in the rush last night one of the guys broke off a crucial plastic clip so I was forced to hold one of the panels on with a wodge of blu tack - I think it looked alright but it wasn't the best. I then had a hissy fit because the lady in HR had not sent the driver on time with the brochures though he did manage to arrive before the students started coming through. I was also able to admire the Masdar Institute stands and collateral that I helped to produce before Christmas when I was working with Wordsearch. I know I'm biased but I thought the looked great!
Excellent news in that I finally managed to find photos that my boss was happy with for his calendars and he's signed them off. OK so you might think March was a bit late for reprinting calendars but who am I to say! If anyone would like 500 2010 calendars I'd be willing to accept a fair price. He also liked the new format of my weekly report with a combination of Power Point and Excel so maybe I'm making progress.
I went down to the exhibition centre to talk to the people who organize the big defense show, IDEX. It's not taking place till next February but there already seems to be a lot of activity going on though I've no doubt that most of it will come together at the last minute as usual! We should have an amazing stand and we are presently talking about having a tank with scuba divers included and people abseiling down the new citygate tower next to the exhibition centre. It would be a great way of raising awareness for our training but perhaps a little on the ambitious side.
I've also been working on the design and venue for a possible management weekend conference and for once this resulted in a perk in that one of the hotels offered my a complimentary overnight stay. I thought that might give us a perfect little break if we went back out to Qasr Al Sarab on Friday night but as it turns out they are full this weekend so I'm going to use it when we go out there in April with Mum and Jo.
I also managed to scratch the car which I'm pretty fed up about. My own carelessness of not noticing that someone had knocked the metal stand at the entrance to our parking where you enter your card. Consequently I swung in at my usual angle and hit it. It's only a scratch but apparently before I can get a little guy to repaint it I still have to get a police report from a particular police station somewhere on the island. They must have a busy time with the amount of car scraping that goes on round here and my lovely Jeep is now less than perfect.
A talent search chap from an American company working out here called me, having found me on linked in, about a marketing role he's looking to fill and I've made it onto the shortlist. Whether it comes to anything or if I even think a move will be better I don't know but it's good for the confidence levels and general feeling good about myself which are pretty low at the moment.
Still it looks like I'm still quite marketable even after the struggle of trying to make some progress at EAI.
Nidal has been off ill so I've really had to learn a bit more about getting the basic things done. John was less than impressed when a pop up exhibition stand arrived in our living room late last night and the two guys then proceeding to demonstrate to me how to erect it! However, they couldn't bring it to the college where we were exhibiting at any of the right times so it seemed like the only solution. John helped me to put it in the car and there were endless helpful guys at the other end who trundled it into position and helped me to put it up. It didn't help that in the rush last night one of the guys broke off a crucial plastic clip so I was forced to hold one of the panels on with a wodge of blu tack - I think it looked alright but it wasn't the best. I then had a hissy fit because the lady in HR had not sent the driver on time with the brochures though he did manage to arrive before the students started coming through. I was also able to admire the Masdar Institute stands and collateral that I helped to produce before Christmas when I was working with Wordsearch. I know I'm biased but I thought the looked great!
Excellent news in that I finally managed to find photos that my boss was happy with for his calendars and he's signed them off. OK so you might think March was a bit late for reprinting calendars but who am I to say! If anyone would like 500 2010 calendars I'd be willing to accept a fair price. He also liked the new format of my weekly report with a combination of Power Point and Excel so maybe I'm making progress.
I went down to the exhibition centre to talk to the people who organize the big defense show, IDEX. It's not taking place till next February but there already seems to be a lot of activity going on though I've no doubt that most of it will come together at the last minute as usual! We should have an amazing stand and we are presently talking about having a tank with scuba divers included and people abseiling down the new citygate tower next to the exhibition centre. It would be a great way of raising awareness for our training but perhaps a little on the ambitious side.
I've also been working on the design and venue for a possible management weekend conference and for once this resulted in a perk in that one of the hotels offered my a complimentary overnight stay. I thought that might give us a perfect little break if we went back out to Qasr Al Sarab on Friday night but as it turns out they are full this weekend so I'm going to use it when we go out there in April with Mum and Jo.
I also managed to scratch the car which I'm pretty fed up about. My own carelessness of not noticing that someone had knocked the metal stand at the entrance to our parking where you enter your card. Consequently I swung in at my usual angle and hit it. It's only a scratch but apparently before I can get a little guy to repaint it I still have to get a police report from a particular police station somewhere on the island. They must have a busy time with the amount of car scraping that goes on round here and my lovely Jeep is now less than perfect.
A talent search chap from an American company working out here called me, having found me on linked in, about a marketing role he's looking to fill and I've made it onto the shortlist. Whether it comes to anything or if I even think a move will be better I don't know but it's good for the confidence levels and general feeling good about myself which are pretty low at the moment.
Still it looks like I'm still quite marketable even after the struggle of trying to make some progress at EAI.
Still plugging away
John came back from Korea on Saturday morning and we enjoyed a lazy day to help him recuperate before the trip to Dresden. That must have been quite a shock after Abu Dhabi as it was minus six and snowing but luckily he remembered to go back for his coat! They'd managed quite a punishing schedule crammed into one day with factory visits, workshops, dinner and even a trip to see 'The Magic Flute' at Dresden opera. He was also able to enjoy the Chateau Batailly and desert wine served in Etihad business class but it was still pretty tiring. I guess because everyone travels so much then no-one makes allowances and he came back to a huge Masdar Institute meeting (over 80 slides no less) and a very late finish and today involves a visit from the Australian ambassador and a Japanese delegation so no rest for the wicked!
I was well looked after once again by my lovely friends. On Sunday night I went to the races for a charity barbecue night with Angela and Kyeong which was super. As gambling is prohibited it did seem a bit strange watching the horses running round but without the shouting that comes with having a pound each way with the bookies! The food and company were great and I won a manicure in the raffle. A great prize as most of the others seem to involve waxing or other forms of hair removal! Monday night I was once again invited to Helen and John's next door and we enjoyed a meal together. They take great care of me. I went running with Helen at 6am on two mornings which was lovely. It's reasonably cool at that time and certainly sets you up for the day though actually getting out of bed at that time is painful. It spurred me on and I went out after work yesterday and I'm determined to keep it up this time.
John made it back from Dresden though he was pretty tired and with the traumas of yesterday we haven't yet had much time to talk about the usual ups and downs of my week but I am looking forward to a relaxing weekend in Abu Dhabi and the weather looks set fine for the beach which it certainly wasn't last weekend!
I was well looked after once again by my lovely friends. On Sunday night I went to the races for a charity barbecue night with Angela and Kyeong which was super. As gambling is prohibited it did seem a bit strange watching the horses running round but without the shouting that comes with having a pound each way with the bookies! The food and company were great and I won a manicure in the raffle. A great prize as most of the others seem to involve waxing or other forms of hair removal! Monday night I was once again invited to Helen and John's next door and we enjoyed a meal together. They take great care of me. I went running with Helen at 6am on two mornings which was lovely. It's reasonably cool at that time and certainly sets you up for the day though actually getting out of bed at that time is painful. It spurred me on and I went out after work yesterday and I'm determined to keep it up this time.
John made it back from Dresden though he was pretty tired and with the traumas of yesterday we haven't yet had much time to talk about the usual ups and downs of my week but I am looking forward to a relaxing weekend in Abu Dhabi and the weather looks set fine for the beach which it certainly wasn't last weekend!
Friday 5 March 2010
The Hajar Mountains
Up in the tallest mountains in the UAE on a road that will one day take tour buses but is still more challenging. Pretty brooding in this week's weather and definitely not to be messed with. Brian is working really hard to dissuade people in RAK from creating chemical snow for the top of the mountain!
Ras Al Khaimah - a whole new experience
On Tuesday night, after the photo shoot I drove up to Ras Al Khaimah, the most northerly of the Emirates and close to the border with Oman. Everyone was full of dire warnings about adverse weather but the rain had cleared and it was a beautiful evening, the forecast was good and anyway, I lived in Manchester so I'm used to rain! It was the after effects of the rain which caused the problem as the 311, the main motorway North was closed after Dubai due to flooding. They literally just closed the road and diverted all traffic off it. There were no diversion signs, I don't have a map or sat nav and I'd never been in this area before. I kept trying to tell myself what an adventure this was but all I really felt was panic and a strong desire to go home. I ploughed on, trying to head in the right direction following intermittent signs and the car's compass. I ended up in grid locked traffic on the Sharjah ring road, which was also seriously flooded, though luckily the Jeep is high enough to cope with it but there were flooded out cars all around. After 3 hours and a trip round an industrial estate I finally found myself back on the right road and heading for RAK at a good speed. However, when I got off the motorway at the right junction it was pitch dark and the road under the motorway was just a huge lake. I took a deep breath and headed through it safely. However, on the other side the sand and stones had washed across the road and you couldn't see what was road and what was desert! I pulled over and a good samaritan stopped to see if he could help. He looked at my map and then said to follow him. He drove all the way back down the hill till we got to the hotel so that he could be sure I knew where he was going. I wished I had more words in Arabic to express my thanks for such a kind hearted gesture. It had taken me 5 1/2 hours to do 230km.
The hotel was literally brand new and the staff, though inexperienced, were falling over themselves to look after me. What's more the hotel had a mini bar and I have never been so grateful for a G&T in my life, even without the Perkins hand to make it and no ice or lemon! There was no room service menu yet but a kind chap came up with one and took my order for a sandwich and I felt huge relief and, once it was all over, could enjoy my ability to fight against the odds and have an adventure!
In the morning I opened the curtains to find the hotel was in the middle of an industrial zone and, as it was cloudy and windy, with lots of sand in the air, it did resemble a Blade Runner type set. Since part of the reason for my visit was to discuss with Al Shaheen their invitation by RAK tourism to help promote the Emirate I wondered how easy that would be. But then years ago I had to promote Middlesbrough so I'm used to that kind of marketing challenge!
The Manager of the Acacia actually came and introduced himself at breakfast and asked after my stay so they certainly do hospitality very well in RAK.
Brian, the Director of Al Shaheen Adventure training came to pick me up and we went off to visit their facility. They provide outward bound/adventure training, primarily for the UAE military and are about to build a beautiful new facility which will allow them to promote their offer to a much broader clientele. As mentioned before they are also talking to RAK tourism about promoting the Emirate as a tourist destination for adventurous and outdoor pursuits as they are on the edge of the Hajar Mountains and have a beautiful Gulf Coast line and some pretty nice desert. All fascinating things from a marketing and communications perspective.
Brian showed me round and I met the team and watched some students experiencing diving for the first time and we talked about the future and the new centre. Then we headed off into the mountains to see a group doing some rock climbing. This group are from the Vocational Institute, which is basically where they send the real no hopers, people with learning difficulties or just plain naughty, who have not been able to cope with the conventional education system. It was wonderful to watch these kids, who've been told all their lives that they'd never amount to anything and that they didn't have much of a future, and see the smiles on their faces as they came off the rock face. We talked to them with the help of one of the interpreters and it was clear that for many of them it was just the best thing they'd ever done. Afew days with Al Shaheen, working in groups and learning to rock climb, dive, mountain bike and see how much they could actually do must be a life changing experience for some of them. I was awestruck.
Brian then decided to show me just how amazing the mountains are, and with another of his colleagues he headed up a road which is still under construction up the mountain. He clearly knew the road and how to handle his SUV but I must admit to being more than a little scared as we climbed higher and higher on a rough track and hair pin bends, especially with the visible signs of recent rock falls due to the weather! However the views were amazing and we survived the experience unscathed.
We headed back to town and had a good look round. There is lots of work going on to create hotels, beautiful residential developments and leisure facilities around the creek in the centre of town. They even had a brand new Mall with a very new Spinney's and a Cafe Nero (which sadly we don't seem to have in Abu Dhabi yet).
There is a lot to do - so many parts of town are not yet developed and the property collapse has even hit out in RAK. The original settlement of the most beautiful old cottages with original wind towers is crumbling away and you have to dodge the goats and chickens on the road, even in the middle of town but you can certainly see that it has potential.
I headed back to Abu Dhabi through some lovely desert countryside which had a green fuzz over it brought on by the rain which has brought the camels out to graze. It looked idyllic. Despite missing the alternative road which Brian had suggested and the traffic on the National Paints flyover (always mentioned on the traffic news on Radio 2 and now I know why!) I made it back to Abu Dhabi in under 3 hours and the worst of it was coming from the Sheikh Zayed bridge onto the Corniche as someone seemed to have been messing around with the traffic light phasing.
My trip to RAK was certainly an adventure but I am looking forward to going again though I will pay more attention to the weather forecase in future!
The hotel was literally brand new and the staff, though inexperienced, were falling over themselves to look after me. What's more the hotel had a mini bar and I have never been so grateful for a G&T in my life, even without the Perkins hand to make it and no ice or lemon! There was no room service menu yet but a kind chap came up with one and took my order for a sandwich and I felt huge relief and, once it was all over, could enjoy my ability to fight against the odds and have an adventure!
In the morning I opened the curtains to find the hotel was in the middle of an industrial zone and, as it was cloudy and windy, with lots of sand in the air, it did resemble a Blade Runner type set. Since part of the reason for my visit was to discuss with Al Shaheen their invitation by RAK tourism to help promote the Emirate I wondered how easy that would be. But then years ago I had to promote Middlesbrough so I'm used to that kind of marketing challenge!
The Manager of the Acacia actually came and introduced himself at breakfast and asked after my stay so they certainly do hospitality very well in RAK.
Brian, the Director of Al Shaheen Adventure training came to pick me up and we went off to visit their facility. They provide outward bound/adventure training, primarily for the UAE military and are about to build a beautiful new facility which will allow them to promote their offer to a much broader clientele. As mentioned before they are also talking to RAK tourism about promoting the Emirate as a tourist destination for adventurous and outdoor pursuits as they are on the edge of the Hajar Mountains and have a beautiful Gulf Coast line and some pretty nice desert. All fascinating things from a marketing and communications perspective.
Brian showed me round and I met the team and watched some students experiencing diving for the first time and we talked about the future and the new centre. Then we headed off into the mountains to see a group doing some rock climbing. This group are from the Vocational Institute, which is basically where they send the real no hopers, people with learning difficulties or just plain naughty, who have not been able to cope with the conventional education system. It was wonderful to watch these kids, who've been told all their lives that they'd never amount to anything and that they didn't have much of a future, and see the smiles on their faces as they came off the rock face. We talked to them with the help of one of the interpreters and it was clear that for many of them it was just the best thing they'd ever done. Afew days with Al Shaheen, working in groups and learning to rock climb, dive, mountain bike and see how much they could actually do must be a life changing experience for some of them. I was awestruck.
Brian then decided to show me just how amazing the mountains are, and with another of his colleagues he headed up a road which is still under construction up the mountain. He clearly knew the road and how to handle his SUV but I must admit to being more than a little scared as we climbed higher and higher on a rough track and hair pin bends, especially with the visible signs of recent rock falls due to the weather! However the views were amazing and we survived the experience unscathed.
We headed back to town and had a good look round. There is lots of work going on to create hotels, beautiful residential developments and leisure facilities around the creek in the centre of town. They even had a brand new Mall with a very new Spinney's and a Cafe Nero (which sadly we don't seem to have in Abu Dhabi yet).
There is a lot to do - so many parts of town are not yet developed and the property collapse has even hit out in RAK. The original settlement of the most beautiful old cottages with original wind towers is crumbling away and you have to dodge the goats and chickens on the road, even in the middle of town but you can certainly see that it has potential.
I headed back to Abu Dhabi through some lovely desert countryside which had a green fuzz over it brought on by the rain which has brought the camels out to graze. It looked idyllic. Despite missing the alternative road which Brian had suggested and the traffic on the National Paints flyover (always mentioned on the traffic news on Radio 2 and now I know why!) I made it back to Abu Dhabi in under 3 hours and the worst of it was coming from the Sheikh Zayed bridge onto the Corniche as someone seemed to have been messing around with the traffic light phasing.
My trip to RAK was certainly an adventure but I am looking forward to going again though I will pay more attention to the weather forecase in future!
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