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.

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!

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!

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!

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.

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.