Nic's Abu Dhabi Adventure

2009-06-04T23:40:00.009+04:00

Alright then. The end of the trip. Last weekend, I went to ski Dubai, spent the evening at my bosses house with good food and new friends, went to the Grand Mosque, and spent another day at the Hiltonia beach.

Me, Gorka, and Christian at Ski Dubai

The Coffee shop in Ski Dubai. We stopped for Hot Chocolate.

Just Boarding!

Lamest Ski Video ever....

The group at Marks house. Everyone was so happy I was leaving, they through me a party. ha!

The Mosque is truly beautiful. The pictures do not give the sense of awe that being there did.

Saying good bye to my new friend Gorka. What an emotional moment!

Last club with Gorka, and his friend Margaret.

This is the very ornate Welcome Home sign my kids made. Wow, it is truly great to be home.

I had a real great time on this trip. I can't believe that two months have come and gone. So, I'm being replaced by Whitney Morris from San Francisco and Elizabeth Peters from New York. I hope they have as nice a time as I did. It will be hot...and I mean hot.

Thank you to all those who followed this blog. I hope you enjoyed reading along. Feel free to drop me a line:

nicolasr001@hotmail.com

nicoals.rodrigues@de-simone.com

Good Bye!

2009-05-24T19:40:00.008+04:00

Thursday night started innocently enough with drinks with a client, and ended at a dance club at 2:30AM, with me getting sick somewhere in between. I haven't done that in a while! What was in that tiki drink? All three of them tasted good though.

Friday....recovery day.... Played xbox and watched movies in the evening.

Saturday, got up early and went jet-skiing. There were four of us at 200 AED ($54) each for one hour. Not a bad price. Here are some photos...

Mark and past-DeSimone employee Nick Rowntree. Nick has lived in Abu Dhabi for 2 years and has stayed friends with Mark.

We were going to go to Ski Dubai after, but Gorka got sick after our lunch at Lebanese Flower. The rest of us, luckily, didn't get sick.

So it's Memorial day weekend in the states. Obviously that holiday would not be celebrated here. In fact, there is one more national holiday in the UAE than in the US. But, since those UAE holidays do not fall on any of the days that I am here, Mark authorized me to take the day off on Sunday. So I too, got a three day weekend. Yea!

The question was, what was I going to do. I've heard that you can go to any of these fancy hotels and get a day-pass to use their outdoor facilities. So I tried it. Wow...turned out to be a great day. The day pass was only 125 UAE ($34) and but a short taxi ride away. Hiltonia is part of the Hilton Hotel complex and includes beach property. So I spent the afternoon floating in the Persian Gulf (again), swimming around, reading a new book (Angles and Demons by Dan Brown), and listening to my iPod. When I got tired of the beach, I had a reasonably priced lunch, and then spent the rest of the afternoon poolside. Watching the little kids play made me miss my kiddos, especially since there was a small waterslide and a small water park which they would have both loved. Overall, a very relaxing and rejuvenating day.

Only 10 days left. Next weekend, we may go to another waterpark in Dubai called Wild Wadi, but I really hope we make at least make it to Ski Dubai. Ski Dubai costs only 180 AED for 2 hours, and that includes all the gear...even disposable socks.

Also, I still want to go to the Grand Mosque. Also, people have told me about these Safaris you can take out to the dessert which includes 4-wheel driving on the dunes and a camel ride. So much left to do, and only one weekend left. Well, maybe I'll just have to come back....

2009-05-24T18:42:00.003+04:00

Wednesday last week, Gorka an I went to the self-proclamied 7-star hotel called the Emirates Palace. It is certainly worth that level of recognition. However, when I read a bit about what sets a 7-star apart from a 5-star, I found out that it is only 2-stars more in title. Actually, 7-star is just a marketing ploy, and it is really a high ranked 5-star hotel, on the common 5-star rating system. I was a bit disappointed too.....

Here are my pics.... and if it looks like gold, it probably is....

The VIP entrance building. I think this is reserved for major dignitaries.

The grand entrance.... actually you park your car up above and then have to walk down here to take this picture.

Helicopter parking anyone....

This huge construction site dominates the view from the grand entrance.

Fountains spring forth as if from no where.

The dome....

Ornate sitting area. Most of the others were occupied, and taking pictures of the local people is discouraged without first asking. I obviously did not ask.

Gorka and I posin' beneath the dome.

We walked down some obscure hallway and sat for a minute. The table was decorated with this beautiful Orchid.

High-end shopping.... Sorry sweetheart.... but no. hehe... I probably should though!

The meeting room of that big meeting I described on my last blog. Imagine His Highness at one end, and a DeSimone Principal at the other....no pressure!

Someone Rolls in the self-parking lot. Nice. Even with all that money, won't spring for valet.

2009-05-17T18:52:00.007+04:00

Beach....again! I went with a couple, so I was able to be on the family side. Next time I'm going to try to rent a Jet Ski.

A lot of activity at work. For the last week or two, our New York office was doing an evaluation/peer review of a building which is already partly under construction in Dubai. We were asked to look at the building by a large group consulting which we are partnering with. We found a major detrimental design flaw, a couple of instances of un-buildable details, and many areas which were significantly over-designed. Last Monday night, we were asked to attend a meeting to present our findings.

All day Sunday and Monday we tailored our presentation for a lay audience as we were going to be meeting with the owners, the project managers, and maybe, the consultant. So we had a pre-meeting with our partner group and one of the three owners which asked us to do the review. The owner is an Emirate, in natural dress, and he spoke very frankly with us. He said that he was unhappy with the current consultant, and that he has the power to replace them. He informed us that we were going to go directly to the Emirates Palace to meet the design and construction team, and that he fully expects us to have to fight for our position and defend ourselves well.

We arrived at the business center at the Emirates Palace to find over 20 people in the room. Later we find out that everyone in the room had just driven from Dubai (1.5 hrs away) and had no idea what we the meeting was for. So the owner had orchestrated an ambush. There were three empty chairs at the head of this large square shaped table. We had plugged in the laptop and were ready to go. Then the three Emirate owners walked into the room and were introduced to us. One of the three is the son of H.H. Sheikh Hamdan Bin Zayed Al Nahyan. (I think the H.H. stands for His Highness.) H.H. Sheikh Hamdan Bin Zayed Al Nahyan currently holds the position of Deputy Prime Minister of the U.A.E. I'm not sure exactly where this position falls in their government structure, but it sounds pretty high up to me.

So Mark gave the presentation we prepared, and nailed it. The engineering consultant was caught completely unprepared, and only got off a mediocre defense of his design. At one point, he admitted that the design could be further optimized. The owner then jumped down his throat and said, 'I have been a good client, I always pay my bills on time, and for that reason, I expect to get your best design the first time."

The whole thing felt a bit unfair, but we didn't know that the consultant was unprepared, and we didn't know he didn't know we were doing a review. The meeting concluded with an invitation for our team to visit the construction site the next day. We are waiting to hear if our group was hired, and if the job will be to work with the current consultant to fix the design, or if we will be asked to finish the project ourselves.

Shearwall detail.

12 layers of overlapping hoops.

184 verticals at 4.4% reinforcing. The construction manager told us that this column would not be able to accept a splice and that the next floor of construction would not be buildable. This just happened to be one of the comments in our presentation.

Foundations for 50+ story building.

Foundation for 20+ story Building

View from the parking lot. This project is directly on the water in the very lucrative Dubai Marina area.

Over this last weekend, I went to the beach, slept a bunch, and played video games on a new XBox Elite 360. I also stayed out again till 2 AM on Friday night. At one point we were at a dance club with a live band which turned out to be more than just a dance club. since this is a family blog, that is all I'm going to say about that. I also went to a Flamenco dance show. This is a traditional Spanish dance, and it was beautiful to watch.

Just about two weeks to go now.

2009-05-11T21:49:00.002+04:00

Some observations Christine said may be interesting:

- Sometimes, when two male Arabs meet, they will rub noses to say hello instead of a handshake.

- Many upper and middle class Arab families I have seen in public are accompanied by Filipino nannies. Most often I see them caring for the children, or carrying the groceries. There were many advertisements in the classifieds for full-time, live-in nannies.

- Also in the classifieds, I noticed pages of advertisements for marriage. My son age whatever, career whatever is now accepting applications for marriage. I'm going to have to ask around about this one.

That’s it….

2009-05-10T17:32:00.010+04:00

The Emirates Palace Hotel. Can anyone say 7-star hotel? I will be visiting here before I leave.

So the company’s Marketing Director, Kyle Fisher, asked my permission to publish the URL to this blog in DeSimone's company newsletter. I’m not exactly sure why she asked, but it may have something to do with trying to convince my co-workers to come to Abu Dhabi. Have I made it sound fun here? I do think I need to go back and remove anything which may be slightly controversial or not politically correct since the whole of my company may now read this. But instead, I'll just give the following disclaimer; if I've written anything that offends you.....STOP READING AND GO AWAY! Ha! ;-)

So, the president of the company, Stephen DeSimone, was here this week. What a long week! He got here on Monday, and stayed till Thursday night. We worked 10 hrs/day to start and then I went out to dinner with clients two out of the four nights he was here. I didn't mind too much, we start off going to drinks after work, then to a multi-coarse meal at four and five star restaurants. It isn't all easy-going though, you do have to be "on" when dinning with clients. You kinda feel like your on a first date. You have to tell stories, listen intently, and seem interested. It's kinda exhausting. I have to hand it to Stephen and Mark, they did this four nights in a row.

We had a buisness lunch at this resturant. This is the Yaught Club and turns into a pretty well attended dance club in the evenings. This was my first visit here during the day. Third visit, overall.

So as I mentioned in my last blog, Stephen stayed in the second bedroom upstairs here at the office. He likes to work out, so he actually emailed me the week before to ask me if we we're going to work out when he was here. I had said sure, as I have been trying to workout, and I thought this would be good motivation. Anyway, the first night we were out till 1 AM with clients, and I thought, "no way he wants to get up," only to later find out he was up at 6AM wondering where I was. When I came downstairs fully dressed for work, I felt shameful... :( The second day, I got up a little earlier, but he was working on a presentation with Gorka, and looked like he already worked out. So, here I was on the third and final morning, thinking, "if i don't get up this morning, I'm going to be fired...j/k" and jumped out of bed at 6 AM. I look over at his room and the door is closed, and I'm like, shit....the one day I get up....and he's asleep...snoring away. So I lay down on my bed, in my work-out clothes, and leave my door open, thinking he will see me and say let’s go.... No sooner did I fall back asleep did I hear his shower go on. So I missed it again. I guess it just wasn't meant to be. Now the boss knows first hand how lazy I am. Greeeaaat…..!

So the weekend was nice. Thursday I had a drink at Ocean’s but was in by 11. Friday, I stayed in all day and did nothing. It was great. I slept till 12 noon, and then watched the last four episodes of Heros – the best show ever. I downloaded the episodes from free download sites because streaming video from NBC is blocked here. The company’s IT manager, Shani, hooked me up with some codecs needed to run the videos. Shani has been real nice, doing his best to make me feel at home here….thanks Shani. Then I took a nap from 4 till 6:30. Then at night I went to a BBQ at a Mark’s friend’s house. I helped worked the grill for a bit and we ate lamb, sausage, and chicken burritos. It was a great time. Honestly!

Enjoying a drink at the BBQ. Is my stomach getting bigger? hmmm...

Gorka and Mark hanging out at the BBQ.

Sunday, I slept till noon….again. Very nice. Then went to the beach and swam in the Persian Gulf again. When I got tired of that, I took a little nap on the grass under a palm tree. Spent the rest of the day chillin’ and relaxing in my room.

A whole parade of these sail boats went by when I was at the beach. some sort of race, I think.

Back to work today. Tonight I was talking to Brielle who asked me, “if I had a Starbucks in the city that I am at right now” When I told her it was downstairs she got all excited and laughed. She thought it was so funny. I miss her so much.

Today is Mother’s day in the U.S. So I want to tell Christine that I think you are doing a wonderful job taking care of the kiddos. While I know it must be tiring and frustrating at times, there is no one I know who could do a better job, or who is a good a mom as you are! You are my everything, and I can’t wait to see you.

Last thing, I got my return plane ticket today. I'm flying out at 8:45 AM on Wed. June 3rd and landing at 1:45 PM or so at SFO. It was like a 26 hour flight coming here, but only a 5 hr flight going home. Wouldn't it be great if the flight was really that short.

2009-05-03T18:32:00.006+04:00

I believe this is the second largest mosque in the world called the Grand Mosque, Abu Dhabi . Time permitting, I will be going for a visit.

Out for a night stroll on the Corniche.

When you take your kids to the park, be sure to adhere to all posted signage.

So my birthday was on Thursday the 30th. I made Guacamole for my coworkers and held the first ever happy hour in the office. It went over very well. After that, Gorka, Mararet, Patrica, Christian, and I went to a late dinner at Vasco's. This was an outdoor, beachside resturant....very nice.

Here I am blowing out some candles set on a fancy dessert tray.

Once the wine started kicking in, I thought it would be fun to dance a bit at the table. Nice moves....huh? (Seriously...not sure what I was thinking.)

After that we went to another hotel/bar and hung out. Unexpectedly, we ran into Mark, our Managing Principal, his wife and his friends. We joined them and chatted till 3 AM...again. (My neighbor Jacob is now calling me Mr. 3 AM....I wonder why.)

The next day we had planned to go play paintball at a field just North of Dubai, but no one woke up in time to go. I slept till noon and then took it easy on Friday. Later, Gorka and I went and saw the new Xman movie. It was pretty good. Great special effects.

Saturday, Christian and Patrica graciously invited us to their home and offered to cook paella for my birthday. We had a wonderful time. I feel so lucky to have found such good people to hang out with here. And wow....what great food!

Paella.... mmmmmm!

From left to right: Cristoff from Poland, Karl from Malta, Gabrielle from Malta, Sally from the U.K., Christian from Malta, Patricia from Spain, Gorka from Spain, and me.

Overall, a great birthday. I'm 32 now by the way.

I did get to talk to my kiddos and Christine a couple of times over the last couple days. They seem to be doing ok. I think Brielle is really missing me. She does not quite know what to make of all this. She has asked if she can come for a visit, and asked if I can come home to see them. It makes me a bit sad. Even though I'm living it up, I miss them all so much and can't wait to get home.

I got my Visa extended today, and I have to leave by June 5th. So I plan to leave sometime that week. I haven't booked a flight yet, because I am looking into possibly stopping over somewhere on my way home. I may not have another chance to be overseas for some time, so i thought hey...check it out. It will probably be too expensive, but I am looking into it.

Anyway, the President of our company, Stephen DeSimone, gets here tomorrow. He will be staying in the second room here in the office. We will be roomies. Stay tuned, and I'll let you know how that goes...

2009-04-27T09:28:00.022+04:00

So the rest of Cityscape was very interesting. What a whirlwind of a week. Everyday I started at 8AM and ended each day at the exhibition at about 8PM. Below is a picture of the booth with the entire DeSimone crew here in Abu Dhabi.

From left to right: Me, Ahmed, Mark, Kyle, Vince, and Gorka.

We had an excellent showing at Cityscape. Vince, Mark, and Ahmed spent many hours walking around visiting many Architects and Developers. In general, the entire show did not do well, as many people did come to Cityscape. However, for us, that was good as some of the top people in these companies were accessible and willing to speak to us. Gorka and I also walked around meeting various architects and product suppliers. Some exhibitors had small booths like us, other companies built elaborate displays with city models, building models, and some of the booths were built with meeting rooms on a second floor. Vince went back to Miami on Thursday morning, and Kyle went back to New York on Friday Morning. I enjoyed the time spent with Vince (always entertaining, and a great learning experience.) Gorka and I spent some time out on the town showing Kyle around. Kyle is the Marketing Director, and her take on the company was interesting. I enjoyed meeting Kyle.

Sorouh is a large developer. Their display was nicely done and very detailed.

After the long week, we decided to live it up a little, and visit Dubai. Dubai is only about one hour north along the U.A.E. coast. We decided to go to a water park on the Palm Jumeirah at the Atlantis hotel.
The Atlantis Hotel is at the crescent of the Palm. We met some other people Gorka and I know from Abu Dhabi. We actually had quite the crew. Carl and Chris from Malta, Cristoff from Poland, Patricia from Spain, and Margaret from the US, as well as Gorka and I. The water park was amazing fun. One slide actually had jets which pushed you up the slide (very weird) and another had you do, practically, a freefall for 28 meters. Almost all of the slides ended at the never-ending river, which in places, produced large waves with the power to knock you off your tube. Check out the below video of me on the 28 meter "Leap of Faith" slide.

Atlantis Hotel, Palm Jumeirah, Dubai

Hey Josh, you would have had fun on this play structure! I wish you had been here!

I did miss my kiddos a lot while at the park. They would have had so much fun. I will be taking them to the water park this summer when I get home.

It was surreal to be standing on the Palm (some have called it the 8th wonder of the world). From the top of one of the slides, I could see some of the prongs of the Palm. Much of the land on the palm is developed with Villas (or big two story houses) most with beach front property. The water was beautiful and full of little fish. What an amazing place.

We checked into an amazing Hotel with a very comfortable room at the Grosvenor House Hotel. Gorka and I split the cost. Close by was a Spanish restaurant at the Al Qasr hotel, which means "the castle" in Arabic. We met the entire group from the water park and had sangria, tapas, and paella while overlooking the famous Burj Al Arab Tower.

Lobby of the Grosvenor House Hotel

The Burj Al Arab from a club where we had drinks and Shisha after dinner. In the forground is the Al Qasr Hotel.

Burj Al Arab

After dinner we went to a club and I had to try Shisha. Look closeley, that is an apple at the top of the apparatus, but the flavor was grape. I think you are smoking fruit flavored tabacco, and it is a tradition in the area. Sometimes it is shared in a group or couple, and sometimes you smoke your own. An interesting experience, but I didn't particularly enjoy it.

So I think that is all for this blog. I did one other thing, but it's no big deal. Scroll down if you are really interested.....

hmmm..... so you want to know. Well, like I said it's no big deal. Well, it's kinda big....like the worlds tallest building big!!!!! Check out my pictures standing next to the Burj Dubai. The feeling standing next to it was amazing. On one hand it makes me proud to be a tall building designer, on the other hand, I think, wow...who do we think we are? There is no way buildings should be this tall. Unreal!

2009-04-19T22:30:00.009+04:00

So I've not been blogging much. Hmmm, well I’ve been busy. Let me see if I can catch up a little.

Last Thursday (the last day of the work week here) I went to a different Emirate of the U.A.E called Al Ain, approximately 1.5 hours East of Abu Dhabi near the border of the country Oman. DeSimone is working on a big project in Al Ain, the expansion of their zoo. When complete, the zoo will be the largest zoo in the world. Gorka and I ventured into this city to meet with local contractors where we learned a bit more about local construction techniques. We also attempted to meet with the Al Ain government officials in charge of project approvals, but didn't find the right department. We were advised that we would need to find people more familiar with the city's government to help navigate the bureaucracy. So we will likely return there soon. While travelling in the city, we passed a truck hauling camels. I wasn't fast enough with my camera, but yep...camels!

The trip was through one of many Arabian deserts. We traveled through areas where we were completely surrounded by sand dunes. It was quite a site! Many trees are planted next to the highway in an attempt to keep the sand from blowing across and covering the highway. However, this only partially works and we passed crews of highway workers clearing sand from the highway. The temperature was upwards of 100 degrees (37 C – I’m still trying to get used to talking in Celsius) and I felt bad for the crews. I couldn’t help but think of those who crossed this desert on foot or camel in the past. A couple months from now, temperatures will reach close to 115 F (46 C) and feel even hotter with the humidity. I hope no once has to be out clearing sand then…

Thursday night I went to a social meeting of a group called the American Business Group (http://www.abgabudhabi.org/). I met many people and one potential DeSimone client. Kinda stuffy in the room (both heat and the people), but the boss picked up a round of drinks, so it made it bearable… Later I went to another hotel/bar, and then finally to one last hotel bar/dance club. I found out that Abu Dhabi does not close bars at 2 am (although at my age, I was kinda hoping they would have) and I finally made it home at 3:30 or so.

We think of the US and California as a melting pot of people, but Abu Dhabi is a true melting pot. In this one night, I was introduced and talked to people from Spain, Armenia, Malta (a small independent country in the Mediterranean just South of Sicilia…I had to look it up), Russia, Vietnam, Iran, and a covert communication specialist from Tennessee (I think he was some kind of spy...but i'm not sure..). Everyone is in this country for work and mostly here alone. So by necessity, everyone is very friendly and very open to conversation. It is a very interesting place, and I’m learning so much about the different people of the world.

Friday was another trip to the beach. I’m usually not much of a beach person, but the Red Bull Air Race was here (www.redbullairrace.com). Don’t worry, I didn’t know what this was either. This is a race where each propeller driven acrobatic plane must navigate a predetermined course. The pilot with the least time, wins. The course is set out using large air gates which look like giant traffic cones. A helicopter was flying overhead the entire day, likely filming the action.

Sorry for this horible picture. I'm not mad, really!

Starting Friday night (the middle of my weekend) we began preparing for Cityscape Abu Dhabi (http://www.cityscapeabudhabi.com/). Friday night, Gorka and I picked up DeSimone's marketing director from the airport and did our best to get her settled into her hotel without any hiccups. Saturday morning we went to the exhibition hall and set up our booth. Cityscape is a large exhibition where real estate developers set up extravagant booths to display and unveil different development plans. Many of the booths are two stories with meeting rooms, others are built with fountains, and still others are built with entire miniature displays of entire city areas. Very impressive! Architects, Engineers, and other consultants also set up smaller booths to help with business development. Our founder, Vince DeSimone, also flew in to attend. Sunday, we spent the day manning the booth talking to potential clients and, basically, did our best to promote our companies name. We had a great first day exhibiting, and hope that the next three days go equally well. Pictures are not allowed to be taken of the exhibits, but I should be able to at least take a picture of our booth. Stay tuned.

I don't think that my email is anywhere in the blog, but feel free to either comment or drop me an email at nicolas.rodrigues@de-simone.com. Thank you for those who have put in comments, it is nice to hear from you all.

2009-04-15T21:05:00.006+04:00

So there are a couple of topics which I have been meaning to talk about. I'd like to give a few examples of some of the cultural differences I've been learning about. Also, I'd like to talk about being away from my family.

There is a class structure here that I will describe. There are three groups, Emirates (or native peoples), Expats (usually well paid visitors from western countries), and then a much lower level group of laborers (from other countries who are paid little and usually do not speak English). I will refrain from passing judgment on this system, but it is definitely different enough to mention here.

In the parking lot of my building, there is a group of laborers who spend the day washing cars, and accept a tip when you arrive back to your car. You can ask them to wash your car, but sometimes they just wash them with the hope of getting a tip. I have been shopping for groceries at the supermarket directly below my apartment in my building (sweet location) and there are laborers who help when you arrive at the check stand. They load your groceries onto the belt, and then rush ahead of you to do the bagging. Then they will follow you out to the car and load your bags into your trunk. Since I live right above the market, the guy will take my bags all the way up to my apartment. It’s a nice service but feels a little unfair. But this is standard operating procedure here.

When you are out walking along the Corniche or along some of the streets, you may see some Arab men holding hands. Gorka has told me that they are not gay, but simply expressing their friendship. I have not seen it yet, but sometimes they may actually nuzzle their noses together in a sort friend kiss. I Googled this to try to learn more, but I couldn’t find much.

Last thing, five times a day, a city wide sound can be heard reverberating through the streets. It sounds like a hymn. This is a call to prayer. Two of my co-workers are Muslim, and they will go upstairs and pray a couple of times a day. They don’t drop what they are doing and go, but when they have an opportunity, they go. Very few Muslims actually do the prayer five times a day, but I suppose some do.

I miss the kids already. Only been a week, but I miss them. Brielle’s smile, her curls in my face, her energy. Josh trying to scare me when I come home from work, his telling me about his day at school, and his hug goodnight. I also miss Christine….a lot. I’ve been away before for 5-6 days at a conference, but not on the other side of the world. The distance makes it much more real.

My company has been great by supplying a webcam system. Christine can just pick up a phone in our house and by dialing my work extension the webcam just starts automatically. It works amazingly well. So once and sometimes twice a day, we make a call with the webcam and I can talk to and see my family. Brielle likes to kiss and hug the computer monitor before we hang up.

A freak 10 minute rain storm. 10 minutes later, everything was dry agian.

Me, Gorka, and Abdullah checking out the freak rain storm. Gorka is my co-worker, a senior project engineer from Miami and Abdullah is our office assistant from India.

Not related to the rainstorm at our office, here are a few pictures of the tallest building in the world, the Burj Dubai, being hit my lightening. I'm not sure if I'd want to live in this building after seeing this. (Actually, tall buildings are specially designed with a grounding wire which takes any lightning strike safely through the building to the ground.)

2009-04-12T18:09:00.010+04:00

Nerdy engineer picture. Nice cantilever.

So I had my first weekend in Abu Dhabi. Thursday night, I stayed in and watched a movie...lame....wait, I make up for this! Friday, I walked along the Corniche for an hour, went to the largest mall I've ever seen, had a drink at a hotel, toured a couple gyms, and watched a movie in my room. Saturday, I treated myself to a fancy breakfast, read some engineering paper on tall buildings, went to the beach and swam in the Persian gulf, met Gorka and went to the mall again to buy furnishings for a second office apartment, bought liquor at a special non-Muslim store, went and worked out at a gym, and then partied till two in the morning (on a work night no less) at the La meridian Hotel (http://www.abudhabi.lemeridien.com/.)

So that's all. What do you want to hear about?

I forgot to charge my camera on Friday, so no pictures....sorry.

The mall was big, but similar to home. Many levels, three I think, but it went on and on. Oh, and it had a basement with an entire Super-WalMart like store called Carrefour. They seem to be putting on the finishing touches on an indoor snow ski world. Prices at the mall are comparable to the US, and perhaps a bit more. I bought a couple of DVD's, but that is all.

The Corniche is a long 6 km (3.7 miles....gotta love the metric system) blue tiled walkway/bike path which travels along the length of Abu Dhabi bordering the Persian Gulf. The length directly next to my building has a public beach. The beach is interesting as it is split into two sides. There is a family and ladies only side, and a single side. As a single man you are not allowed on the family side, but non-Muslim women do come to the single side. It costs 10 dirhams ($2.72) to enter the beach. There is an island directly across from the beach then the Persian Gulf on the other side of the island. I had a great time just floating and swimming in the beautiful blue waters. I took a lunch and a book and just hung out for about three hours. I did get sunburn, and it is hot (lows 90's), but it was nice.

The Corniche

You can buy liquor here but you need to be a resident and you can only buy about $300 worth per month. So Gorka and I went to a special store and bought some supplies for the office.

I went to the Sheraton hotel about a block away and tried out their gym. I can join for three months for 1200 dirhams ($326). It really isn't more than a couple of treadmills and some free weights, so I'm going to try out a few other places before joining somewhere.

Speaking of the office, I worked today (Easter Sunday) because the work week starts Sunday and Christian holidays are obviously not celebrated. I have still not meet my boss, Mark, as he has been on vacation. But he's scheduled to return tomorrow so I'm excited to speak with him and better understand what I'll be doing here. Gorka has been great. We are about the same age and we have similar interests. He has been here about 2.5 months and knows a lot about the City.

I'll drop a few pictures in now, but that is all for today. I'm hungry and I think I'm going to make dinner.

My building

View of the moon over the Emirates Palace Hotel, one of a very few 7-star hotels in the world.

2009-04-09T21:44:00.009+04:00

After much thought and consternation, I have decided to blog some of my experiences. Thank you to my wonderful wife for pushing me to start this. Typically blogging would not be my cup of tea, but not too long ago, I would have said the same thing about visting the Middle East. So, here we go.

So I've been in Abu Dhabi for about two days now. My flight left SFO on Monday and I arrived Tuesday night after a 15 hour non-stop flight to Dubai. The international terminal at SFO has an impressive roof structure. (Typical engineer - checking out the structure!) The plane had an entertainment center in each seat with many options such as on-demand movies, on-demand TV shows, and video games. I finally watched Slumdog Millionaire and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button - both very good. The entertainment center was also linked to cameras on the plane. I was able to watch the take off and landing as if I was sitting in the cockpit. The down camera allowed me to view Greenland as we passed over. I knew that some flights flew over (or near) the North Pole, but for some reason, I was really surprised when my plane headed North. My flight path included flying over Canada, Greenland, Sweeden, Finland, Russia, the Caspian Sea, and finally Iran.

I had a 1.5 hour taxi ride (in the dark) to Abu Dhabi from the airport in Dubai. The city of Dubai looks crazy (in the dark)! I passed the Burj Dubai (the tallest building in the world) but it was just a couple of lights very high in the air. I will have to go back on the weekend to explore the city more.

The AD office is small but very nice. I've attached a few pictures of the office. Gorka Garbayo is from Miami and has been here for about three months. He has been my guide so far, and I really appreciate it. The view from the office balcony includes the Corniche, which is the waters edge and runs the length of the Abu Dhabi. The Cornice is a road, but also a waterside walking and biking path. I have not yet walked along it, but plan to this weekend. I've attached a couple pictures of my room. It's very comfortable with it's leather couch and flat panel TV. The bathroom is private and attached to the room, but the kitchen is downstairs in the office. It feels a bit odd to be in the office in my PJ's making my breakfast before works starts, but, I suppose I will get used to it.

Hotels are where they serve alcohol to non-Muslims. So I guess you can say that I bar hopped last night as Gorka and I visited two or three hotels. Each location was very elegant and friendly. I spent a bit of money though! Cost for a night on the town is as much, if not more, than a night out in San Francisco. Taxi's are inexpensive and the main way to get around. Plus drinking and driving will get you imprisoned and then deported, so it seems like a good idea! I watched a football game (soccer) at one of the hotels and Chelsea beat Liverpool 1-3 (like I even care! ha!) It was fun though!

People here are "normal" enough. The national or traditional dress for men is the Dishdasha or Khandura, an ankle length shirt, typically white. Dishdashas are usually worn with a white or red-checkered head cloth known as a gutra and a twisted black rope-like coil, the agal. Under the headdress is a skull cap (gafia). National women wear a black abaya, a long, flowing black robe that covers their normal clothes, plus a head scarf, called a shayla. Many of the people here are not locals (or Expatriate) and dress like we do in the US, however, more conservatively. (http://www.zu.ac.ae/employment/html/histcult.html)

Today is my "Friday" because the weekend here is Friday and Saturday. The work week starts on Sunday. I'm not sure yet what I'm going to do this weekend, but I'm sure it will be an adventure!

(by the way...uploading photos to this site is very difficult. Maybe I should post pictures somewhere else.)