KTMusings

Someone's SIM card for his phone wasn't working, so he and I took a little break and walked over to the nearby mall to get a new one. We took a bit of an accidental detour on the way over, but got a cool view of downtown and the Burj Dubai ( http://www.burjdubai.com ) - the tallest building in the world, and also some cool looking condos. Then we turned the corner and stumbled upon a Caribou Coffee! All the way from Minneapolis to the Middle East. Dad - photos for you: Caribou + Burj Dubai:

Despite the noise from the restaurant/club below my room, I slept great last night (maybe it paid off to have not slept much on the plane!). Got up and had a fantastic lunch buffet at 11:30. Some pictures below ... the view from my room (not much to see, but lots of cranes with all the construction going on around here), the newspaper here and front page story, and our "office space" for the day - we're all working from the Starbucks at the hotel because it's the only public place at the hotel we've found with outlets to plug in all our computers.

Oh yeah, and I had to quickly remember how everything in Arabic is read right to left ... when I finally found the link (in Arabic) to sign in to Blogger to update my blog, I was presented with this screen - took me a minute to realize that the login boxes are the opposite direction too:

Hard to believe it was just over 24 hours ago that I was home with my bags packed waiting for a cab to the airport: The flight time from Atlanta to Dubai was just under 14 hours. Which sounds long, but let me tell you ... it's LONG. I didn't sleep for more than an hour or so at a time (despite taking a sleeping pill), watched a few movies and tv shows, ate dinner twice (once shortly after taking off, and then since we were traveling west and saw the sun both rise and set on the flight, once again a couple hours before we landed), and drank several liters of water (and subsequently frequented the lovely onboard restrooms). I'm already dreading the return flight. Our route took us quite a bit north - I didn't see our inital progress, but when I checked at one point we were over Ireland, which surprised me. That meant we continued over Europe for a bit and then down over Iraq (right by Baghdad) and into the UAE. Once we got to the airport we quickly got through the Pas...

The team of us that's going to Dubai has been researching fun things to do while we're there and we settled on going "dune bashing" on Friday night. It's a tour through Desert Safari Tours ( http://www.desertsafaridubai.com/desert-safari-dubai.html ) that takes us through the sand dunes in the desert with stops to see camels and the sunset over the desert. Then we get to camp for dinner, a belly dancing show, sand skiing, etc before returning to the hotel. I just booked the tour and am looking forward to getting some good pictures out in the desert!

Check out the new business card I got today:

Yes! I leave for the United Arab Emirates on Sunday 11/9 for almost 2 weeks on a work trip. I'm sure we will be working hard on this trip, but we'll make time in the evenings and weekends to do plenty of sight-seeing. I've been busy preparing for the trip ... holding my mail, calling credit card companies to let them know I'll be using my card over there, reading up on what to expect in the UAE, getting prescriptions written out from my doctor (they are extremely strict about medications over there - check out this website: http://abudhabi.usembassy.gov/restricted_medication_.html - and you need an Rx to carry any medications into the country (even over-the-counter meds) - needless to say, I'm bringing only the necessities!), etc. We're staying at a Swiss hotel chain (Movenpick) over there. It looks pretty cool on the website: Some cool videos if you want to learn more about Dubai: http://60minutes.yahoo.com/segment/101/dubai We have a 14 hour direct flight fro...