Traveling and a Note

My impression of Dubai is that I could totally live here, I’ll grant you I was visiting in the middle of their winter and everyone that I talked to assured me that the summers made you wish you were in hell. My reasons for being in Dubai were purely for business. We needed to meet with a supplier about the forecasting for the next year and the marketing schemes needed to be set as well. The meeting was super super long. As in it started at 9 am and went till 4 with no breaks, and no lunch. No fun times for Jo. Also information overloads may have been involved.  It struck me at one point that was my first business trip. What struck me immediately after that was that I had forgotten my shoes. I kid you not I had to go to a negotiation in my sneakers.

Also an interesting tidbit was the meeting about the marketing schemes. We were tossing around commercial ideas and that was when I realized that yet again I was the only woman in the room. For people that want to focus on the buying power of women they are remarkably sexist. They need more women in the advertising agencies in this part of the world.

At any rate, this is going up a bit early because I am heading home for Christmas! Over the moon about it really and I am so glad that I decided to go ahead and do it. Plane tickets round trip from Iraq? $1,200  Not bad. Not bad at all.

In many ways Dubai felt like a better taken care of and more modern Amman.  I found all the spices I was missing and was in shock to see just about every single major brand in America (no exaggeration) was represented in the seemingly endless malls here. There doesn’t seem to be much of anything else to do except shop, but they do shopping very well.

I think the highlight of the trip was when we went to the fountains outside the tallest building in the world to watch the water shows. They are stunningly beautiful and set to epic Arabic music-scapes. The water is forced up so high that it sounds like gunshots when it falls back to the pool.

My company evidently maintains an apartment in Dubai. As well as a driver and car. Could have knocked me over with a feather when I discovered that but then again it was about 2 am when we landed so it wouldn’t have taken much to surprise me. This practice has some distinct advantages as this way we could make our own breakfasts and live in a place fully equipped to be actually lived in. A nice alternative to the generic hotel room scenario. Plus our Dubai office is in the building right next door. Commutes don’t get  much shorter them that.