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!