The Journey Begins: Dubai

I was hoping to write in here every day while in Dubai, but that was a little ambitious. Really ambitious. We were so busy every day! So instead I'll just gradually write a recap of the past week, which was incredible, and hopefully I'll have better luck with this live blog thing while in Istanbul! :)

So the trip went something like this...

Day 1: Friday, 1/7/11
I met up with the 20 or so other students at the SFO airport for our 16 hour flight to Dubai. The flight was looooong, but there were a million free movies and an open bar to pass the time. Emirates Air is amazing! The plane was huge - 3-4-3 seating layout and business class had seats that completly fold down into little cots. Unfortunately we weren't in those seats. After a few glasses of wine, The Social Network and what felt like 20 Friends episodes, I realized we were flying over the North Pole. Pretty exciting until you realize it's just pitch black and there's not a whole lot going on. And that was only about six hours into the flight. That's when I decided the flight was truly painful and I might not survive, especially with a full bladder, a window seat and the two men next to me passed out and snoring, eye masks on and all :/ At one point I actually had to climb over the man in the middle seat to go to the bathroom! Lol. The Emirates bathrooms were so nice unlike most airplane bathrooms. It wasn't teeny-tiny and there was scented lotion and cologne in there. They really thought of everything.

So strange/funny thing happened during the flight...I had picked up a newspaper when getting on the plane, sat down, put it in the seat pocket in front of me. Then the Indian man I'd been talking to in the seat next to me just reached over, took it out and started reading it. Really?! I just stared at him, bug eyed, kind of humored, kind of wondering what else we would "share" during the flight. So, cultural lesson #1: personal space and belongings are different in other cultures. Lol

Day 2: Saturday, 1/8/11
We got into Dubai on Saturday night, and were picked up at the plane by a luxury shuttle. Not at at the airport...we were literally picked up just outside of the plane and taken to the Emirates VIP lounge where we were served fresh juices, fruits and Middle Eastern snacks. I felt like royalty! And although I was severly jet lagged and missed a night's sleep to the point where I may not have been thinking clearly, I'm pretty sure I ate the best pineapple I'd ever had. From there we were shuttled to the Renaissance Marriott, unpacked, ate a quick dinner at the hotel (Arabic Shwarma), and passed out.

Day 3: Sunday, 1/9/11
Dubai works a Sunday - Thursday week, so Sunday was our first day in Dubai and also our first day packed with company meetings. I woke up around 7am, which was 7pm at home. Very strange but I wasn't as tired as I thought. The hotel had this unbelievable continental breakfast buffet - fresh fruits, juices, pastries, veggies, cheeses, hummus, babaghanoush, cereal, dried fruits and nuts, made-to-order omelettes, random hot food that I didn't even try like baked beans, sausages, steamed tomatoes and other unappealing English-like breakfasts. Oh, and did I mention NUTELLA?? Yum! I somehow started a trend with everyone to take a banana and single serving package of Nutella each morning, and that would be our afternoon snack on the road. I didn't use mine every day though and ended up with a stockpile of like 10 packages. Definitely taking them home since I can't trust myself to have a jar of Nutella in the house. I'd eat it with anything - most likely a spoon - and it would be gone in a few days. The individual serving packages are much better for someone like me with no portion control when it comes to sweets!

Anyway, so we were picked up at our hotel by our tour guide, Muhommad Ali, and off to our first meeting at Price Waterhouse Coopers.  We drove past a million skyscrapers, half of them unfinished with cranes everywhere. The streets seemed really quiet without a lot of foot traffic like I'm used to seeing in San Francisco. We had a really interesting meeting and learned about PWC as well as the Gulf region in terms of business, culture and politics. It was a great introduction to the region. Then we stopped at the Dubai mall for lunch before our next meeting. At first I was thinking, what? I'm in the Middle East and I'm going to eat at the mall food court?!? But this place was incredible. Not incredible like I'd want to shop there, but like everything in Dubai: bigger and better and completely and ridiculously over the top. So we walked into the mall and what do we see? A three story aquarium with a tunnel so you can pay 20 dirham and walk through the aquarium. Unbelievable! There was also a sign for an Underwater Zoo on a different floor, but I don't even know what it was since we didn't have time to go there as well. So we grabbed some delicious Greek food and then were on our way to Jones Lang la Salle where we learned about real estate in the Middle East. They had a very optimistic view that Dubai has already bounced back from the 2008 crash, but from the looks of the land with unfinished buildings and construction sites that are incomplete and idle, I'm not so sure. Either way, it was really interesting to hear what they had to say, and we learned again about the culture and politics of the region which was very interesting.

After an exhausting day, I mustered up the energy to go to the hotel gym. It's crazy how we just sat all day from the bus to the board room to lunch to the bus to the board room. I miss city life. Dubai just isn't built up enough yet to be able to walk everywhere like you can in most big cities. There's a metro but unless you're in a very small area of Dubai, it's hard to walk places. So I had to work out just to get as much exercise as I'd normally get in San Francisco just from walking to and from my apartment and work on a non-gym day! I got on the treadmill, all set to run at my usual 6.5 MPH pace, and I realize it feels like I'm running really slow. At first I think the treadmill is broken, and then I realize it's in kilometers and I have absolutely no idea how fast, or slow, I'm really running. Rather than doing the math in my head, I increased the speed to what kind of felt like my pace, and decided I'd just run 5k since that's the only conversion I know at 3.1 miles. Lol.

The activity for the night was our first group dinner. We went to an amazing Lebanese restaurant in a little shopping area on the river. The meal started with "mezas" which are like tapas: hummus, pita, babaghanoush, tabouleh, cucumber salad, eggplant salad (like heaven in a bowl) fried cheese, fried balls of meaty goodness with the most amazing spices. There was so much that I can't even remember it all. I remember being surprised there wasn't any falafel though. We ate our way through tons of these mezas and then the waiter comes out and says it's time for the main course. Um, really?! More amazing food?? So then we were served lamb and chicken and meat kabobs, french fries which are apparently a global side dish, some Middle Eastern quesadilla. Everything was phenomenal! I know I'm forgetting some stuff but you get the point...I was in food heaven with samples of all things wonderful! We sat outside underneath an Arabic looking overhang, overlooking the creek and lit-up buildings. It felt like Vegas, which was a common feeling from everyone throughout the trip, like we could've just been hanging out at a Lebanese restaurant in a big Vegas hotel. Regardless, it was a fantastic dinner and a lot of fun just to hang out with the group all together to kick off the trip.



Day 3 will come eventually...off to dinner in  Istanbul! Oh and I'll upload pictures once I'm back in the states. To my readers (or should I say, to my two followers? lol), I hope you enjoy this and I'm sorry for taking so long to update you! :)