T-O-K-Y-O

here we are in the big city.

i know i already mentioned going fishing, but here are some photos.

here is the crew


happy birthday majid
the mast fisher at work.
the catch. headed for the imperial palace.

after nagoya, we spent two nights in osaka. on friday we went to nara to visit shrines and temples. after having a rather lavish lunch (2.5k per plate) we went to one of the temples. it surrounded by tamed deer, which loved to be fed with crackers.


once we were in the shrine, some local schoolgirls wanted to have a photoshoot with us

one of my favorite parts of the temples are the statues. this one was one of two guardians placed near the entrance

and below you can see us in front of one of the oldest buildings in japan. this pagoda is over 1000 years old. many of the shrines and temples that we visit have been reconstructed time and time again because fires are so common here.

then on saturday we went to the island of miyajima for the morning and then to the peace memorials & museum at hiroshima. it was strange to be at hiroshima as an american. there were a lot of japanese there, a lot of europeans, and a lot of american soldiers (in civilian clothing). there is a marine post not so far away from the memorial, as i understand it.

on saturday night we ran away from our tour guides and snuck into an italian restaurant. we were able to successfully order pizza and cokes without any hired help!

sunday morning we woke up early to take the shinkansen (bullet train) to tokyo. it goes as fast as 300km/hr i believe, and it still was a 3 hour trip. my friend megumi's mom (peggy) was waiting for us at the station. she joined us for lunch and the first part of our tokyo tour. she is an american who has lived in japan for 30 years and studies its history. she is also a loud and direct and smart person. so when she joined our tour she really joined it, and put the other tour guides to shame (she knew more about the city and the country than they did). she taught us cultural lessons at lunch (reasons behind taking off shoes, how to place our chopsticks when they are not in use - if you stick them straight into the rice it means you are at someone's funeral) and then she took us to a museum of the city's history and guided us through it. i was extremely grateful to have a new person take direction of the group/tour. it was much needed breath of fresh air.

here we are all the museum togetherrrrr.
then we checked into the hotel and went back out to meet up with some mac kids.
i worked as a mentor with both shoko and jun, and jun was haider's mentor. they are both japanese and currently working in japan, so we got in touch and went out for dinner. they brought another friend who is a student at stanford and working at IBM this summer and we all went out for indian food. it was really exciting to see shoko again because she graduated 2 years before me and it was great to see jun as well. it is cool to know that through the mentor program, i can go pretty much anywhere in the world and find someone i know.

we also spent a bit of time shopping and i did find some transformers, including a soundwave figure who actually plays music!!! so of course i bought it.

i think i'll still use my ipod most of the time .... but it's a fun toy to have.

time to run to the imperial palace now ... sayonara

toyota city

here we are in nagoya, a city of 2 million people. just outside is 'toyota city', home to toyota global HQ. we have spent the last 2 days meeting with toyota's UAE team & touring various facilities. we've been to 3 or maybe 4 museums/commemorative halls/exhibition halls to learn about the toyoda family and the transition of the company from an automatic looming company to an automotive one. it was actually more interesting that i thought that it would be, the first time. after that it was terribly repetitive.

we also went to a car factory. i think dad took us to a GM factory before we got our suburban. it's no wonder that toyota dominating the world auto scence, none of their employees were asleep on the floor (sorry GM janesville ...).

last night we did the ukai fishing. i think i mentioned it a few days ago ... the fisher holds 12 birds on a rope around their necks and lets them catch the fish. once they have one he pulls them into the boat and collects the fish. we went out and had dinner on our boat, and then watched them go fishing some more. they were collecting fish for the imperial palace. it was majid's birthday yesterday, so there was cake. we got him a collection of crazy japanese things that you can find in a japanese convenience store, including tiny underwear and cartoon pornography. i think he appreciated the gesture (who wouldn't)? but he's not very emotive.

let's see ... it's early thr morning here, we have to spend abouut 7 hrs of our day today traveling,
first to another car factory (to put it bluntly, they're the worst. not interesting in the least). and then we check out of the hotel tonight and go back to osaka. which reminds me, right now i am checked into 3 different hotel rooms: nagoya, osaka, and dubai. crazyyy shit, huh?

okay i have to run and catch a train. more pics coming soon.

feed the animals

first up, new music. my sister indirectly reminded me that girl talk released his latest album (it's pay as you please, so check the link). i've listened once or twice - doesn't have the shock value of night ripper, the songs are prolly less classic, but it's still pretty good. it doesn't have the same gestalt value as the first one, but it took me a few listens on night ripper to learn to listen, so maybe this will also grow with time.

we also happened to go to tower records tonight (we were going to not-so-ironically watch 'the last samurai', but that fell thru). there, they had an ed banger recs display (because vol 3 is out now). i didn't get vol 3 (uffie: yes. justice: yes. dj mehdi: yes please! but mr oizo, so me, krazy baldhead ... mmm not for my $bank$). but i did find a black ghosts album and mixtape with some songs on it that i like. i also saw a cut copy album, listened to a few tracks (the word for track in french is 'piste'. isn't that nifty?*) and bought it too. i've listened to them now and they were gooood picks. i desperately needed new music and it will be good to have with my 4+ hours of travel time tomorrow (i didn't go for tha carter III because i have already listened to 'lollipop' hundreds of times and have had the rest of the leak for months.)

the travel time tomorrow is so much because we are going to 2 diff. panasonic factories. one is the matsushita eco-technology centre (METEC). from what i have heard it does some serrrious recycling, maybe i will throw some digits at ya after tomorrow. later in the day we are going to have our last dinner with miyazaki-san (he is a panasonic rep who has been one of our many tour guides over the last few days) and then meet up with another mac student after dinner. jun was a mentor with me my 2nd year and she was haider's mentor as well. she is from kyoto, but couldn't meet us on friday. she'll be in osaka tomorrow so we are gonna meet up for mentor fun!

speaking of kyoto and being there on friday, that's where we were on friday. we aren't the only ones who think it's a good idea to visit kyoto in japan, evidently 70 million tourists go every year. crazzzy. we started with a boat ride down the hozugawa river. ayumi was our tour guide, and provided me with the above fact, and generally kept us well informed throughout the rest of the day. the boat ride brought us down a river that crept between misty mountains covered in heavy forests. it wasn't a sunny day, but it was beautiful. we saw turtles, herons, and cormorants, and went down a few little rapids. above is a picture of the boat we went on and below is a picture of a train line that followed most of the river from the mountain side. it's an old line, used for only for the 'romantic line' these days, a sightseeing ride.
at the end of the ride, a little motor boat pulled up alongside of us and tied itself to us. they sold drinks and snacks. the guys got some kettlefish and i tried some dumplings, it was a nifty little schooner and the people on it were nice!

with the rest of our time in kyoto we went to some temples and a castle.
one of the temples we visited is the rokuon-ji temple, home to the golden pavilion (see below). i don't remember everything that ayumi taught us, but i believe the temple was built by a shogun, who built the pavilion in three layers. the bottom layer represents the aristocratic class, the middle layer the samurai (not sure on this one???) and the top layer the monks. the top of the pavilion is graced by a phoenix. the phoenix means 'uniting people' and its presence on top of the 3 layers was meant as a symbol of his ability to preside over all 3 different classes ... it's a pretty building. we weren't allowed inside, but they did tell us that george w. was when he visited ... which doesn't seem quite right because wasn't there a certain kyoto protocol that he opted out of ??
i'm having trouble remembering the name of the other temple that we went to, but it was also fun building to visit. i like seeing the different style of architecture. check my fbook for some more pix of that one. finallllly, we went to the NIjo-jo castle and walked around. the floors were built to be squeaky in case of ninjas, and they were noisily effective. everyone kept laughing when i told them that i wanted to live in a castle, when i grow up, but i still want to do it. miyazaki-san said that i would have to either win the lottery or marry the daughter of a duke of japan. for the record, i am willing to do either of those 2 things to live in a castle. anyway, here's a picture of me and haider in front of my future house?
once we got home from kyoto we all collapsed before going back out again. i am actually experiencing the worst jet lag of my life right now (the rest of the group is also suffering), i think it's because i have little control over when i do things (very tight itinerary) like sleep or how much i am eating (miyazaki-san always orders way too much and i eat a lot of food that i don't like to be polite). when we went back out we went to karaoke, without any tour guides. maybe we could have used them this time, because the people there spoke zero english. but, we made it to a room, and then had some fun.



















sometimes certain people (the writers of 'lost in translation' and even me) have been known to highlight the japanese difficulty pronouncing 'r's and 'l's in a comedic fashion. i don't know how culturally insensitive the practice it is, but fooooo real it's not culturally inaccurate. please see this karaoke listing for the FUGEES:
that amused me to no end, but i was pretty much the only one in the room who cared.

on saturday, we went to universal studios japan, which was ... universal studios. the only noteworthy thing there was that panasonic supplied us with some special bracelets that allowed us to cut to the front of any line for a ride, which we definitely took advantage of. the jurassic park ride was wayyy more fun than i remembered (basically just the big dive and splash at the end). but never ever ever go to see backdraft, under any circumstances. oh yeah, all of the movies and presentations were in japanese, which was prettttty annoying by the end of the day. once we came back from the studios, we crashed again. or in my case once we got in the car to come back from the studios.

then we had a dinner with someone important from panasonic. the restaurant was on a converted estate that had been owned by a duke, and was really impressive. it had a waterfall and a garden (with fireflies) that surrounded the estate. plus there was a rolllls parked out front (but no bentley). we ate more saga beef and i had lobster (for the first time in my life i think). the lobster was pretty good, but they cut them in half and then cooked them on an open stove while they were still alive. right in front of us. that was definitely disturbing (tho evidently not disturbing enough to prevent me from chowing down).

after dinner i am pretty sure we slept some more, and then haider and i tried to go gambling at an arcade. i say tried because we couldnt figure out the yen to token converter, and then we couldnt figure out how to get the tokens into the slots for about a half an hour. after finally asking for help (with hands, because no one spoke english) and being directed by staff to another floor of the casino, we spent 100 yen (about one dollar) losing at slots. we settled on some basketball, air hockey, and the drum game again before calling it quits.

today we finallly got the chance to sleep in, and did so until about 3 pm. we had lunch at 4 and then went to visit some multi-brand electronics retailers (one of the stores was 10 stories tall).
these visits had something to do with our internship, because the japanese electronical market is perhaps the most mature in the world and therefore can serve as a role model for al-futtaim group electronics retailing (which is also multi-brand) ... but i think i'll save that discussion for my presentation in a couple of weeks (have to talk to omar when we get back from japan, 100 milesperhour)

this weekend is the first time that i have started to feel homesick (for macalester, for madison).
i have plenty of things to do, and they are mostly fun. i get along well with all of the people, but
it's hard to tell them exactly what i want to say because they are all new people to me (you could say that this problem is killing me softry). plus i don't have a working phone here, so it's been harder to have realtime conversations with people from back home. not that i was able to all of the time in UAE, but i could more regularly.

speaking of home, where will home be next & when will i arrive there?
right now i am planning to come back and get a place in madison this fall, and spend some time visiting twin cities, oberline (mik is going), ples elsewhere. casey and i talked and she might take over a lease from me in jan. so i can scoot out somewhere (?) again. hm. i'll find out soon enough i guess.

time to think a bit about total quality management (tqm) as its my focus for our presentation (110 milesperhour) and we are going to the factories tomorrow.

night.













*base taught me that

crunky in osaka (then kyoto)

at the local convenience store we found crunky bars, which always help get the party started.


we came in to osaka thru kansai last night. the flight was verrrry comfortable and we all slept most of the way. haider & i are sharing a room and majid & haider have one. we have 2 different helpers staying in the same hotel. one is a panasonic rep. and the other is a language facilitator and tour guide.

we slept early at 10 (after eating an amazing japanese dinner; mostly of fish and chicken). hamad and majid called at 4 am ... i had been up at 3. we got some room service, learned some essential japanese vocab words, and then went sightseeing at 5 am. we found a mcdonald's, a convenience store, a photobooth (we took pics, but no digital copy) and a shrine.



someone was kind enough to take our pic, then we returned to the hotel to eat breakfast and start our day.


we spent the morning learning about the matsushita business philosophy. matsushita is an electronics production company that owns panasonic. the presentation was really interesting. i was especially surprised by their commitment to the environment. they plan to reduce C02 emissions by 300k tons next year (altho of how many total?)

for lunch we had italian ... which was raw snapper followed by an unknown soup and then pasta with dried fish and then veal. not exactly the italian cuisine with which i am familiar

we spent the afternoon at the house of history where we learned a little too much about konosuke matshushita, the founder of the company.
we all fell asleep on the car ride home and then took a nap until it was dinner time.

for dinner we went to a traditional sukiyaki (cook as you like) house. we ate saga beef, which is finely marbled meet. it is cooked in sugar and soy sauce and then dipped into raw eggs before eating. the food tasted wayyy better than i expected- it was probably actually the best meal that i have had all summer. i'm also getting pretty good with chopsticks, i could handle the beef and noodles and onions, but i crushed the tofu while trying to pick it up ... 2 more weeks to practice

after dinner we walked back to the hotel through a shopping arcade. there was a light rain, which helped cool us off in the warm evening. we got back too early to sleep, so we went out again to look for ??? anything. we found convenience shops open, but the mall was all closed by 11pm. even at the cinema, the last showing was at 840 or 910. sooo we started to head back, but then we stumbled into an arcade. it was surprisingly occupied, mostly by chain-smoking, aging men. we drove taxis around, raced each other, and then had a drum-off (think drumline; here's the best scene of the movie, but if you haven't seen the whole thing you should probably go rent it right now.)


on our way back to the hotel, we ran into some b-girls practicing their routine. they were pretty good and we tried to offer our services to improve the performance- but they were so focused that they didn't really notice our efforts. maybe it is we who need more practice.

tomorrow we wake up earrrrrrly (6 hrs from now) to go to kyoto to visit a palace and raft along a river. i'm sure there will be more pictures & stories soon (universal studios on sat!!!!)

sayonara

"i don't know if you'll be going to hong kong tho"

[<-Haider and I at the Intercon hotel last week. kool & the gang hung out in these same chairs in January]

this afternoon we were at the training centre (our HQ @ al-futtaim) talking about our upcoming trip to japan. we were talking with one of our bosses about which brands/companies we were going to visit, especially those that are partners w. al-futtaim. "yeah, " he said, "and the biggest toys-r-us in the world is there. i don't know if you'll be going to hong kong tho."

we've spent the last days working at plug-ins, (they don't do online sales tho!) the UAE's best stab at best buy. every day we hear about how they sell electronix- so that part isn't fascinating. it is interesting to hear about the structure of the company, the way the people/functions flow together. the bigger picture of the al-futtaim group is starting to become clear, now that we are on our 3rd or 4th stop. today someone was talking to us about prepping for bizniz presentations, and told us with a straight face: "if i know myself and i know my enemy, i can fight 100 battles without losing." no way! i can't believe they take themselves so seriously.

morale is generally low here: we are struggling to sort out how we'll get our paychex, the hotel & company are still mis communicating about the room service charges (i think we have run up a bill > $ 1 k already), our driver forgot what time to show up this morning, and ... the list goes on.

we look forward to japan as a beacon on our horizon. we went to YO! Sushi for lunch yesterday and it was delicious! it was my first time ever at a sushi bar, it was a fun way to get my food, and i am starting to eat the raw fish/crab/etc & like it well enough. at dinner last night i had to choose a starter and couldn't pick one. so i got something called tarrine(?) which consisted of cold pork, goose, and rabbit (the goose tasted like tuna). i much preferred the raw fish covered in wasabi.

back to our work, here is a little photo tour of our past 2 days:








here we are experiencing the home theatre at plug-ins







and enjoying the biggest display of panel tvs in the world











then we rolled up our sleeves for an afternoon in the toyota workshop.
they service over 500 cars per day here, building the brand one customer at a time.
majid has come here in his free time for years, to learn how the cars work & even fix them himself... but today he was just directing us (practice as CEO?)



and then we finished the day with a treat! dome cheesecake, amazing. the guys had bluebuerry, but i insisted on cherry.

tomorrow we wrap up at plug ins, & then we have some time to pack our bags until we catch the 2:30 AM flight direct to Osaka. wonder what it's gonna be like once we get there???
i guess that depends whether or not we make it to hong kong ...

happy graduation

today is michael's graduation from high school. great job! back in the day, that would have meant playing 'pomp & circumstance' on my viola for 4 hours at the kohl center. but things change.

the presentations to the automotive directors well went. majid came into work late, which was frustrating. i think we are gonna talk some this weekend about the goals for the summer and work on giving each other critical feedback. hopefully that will be a fruitful conversation.
haider is still not back at city centre. his flight was supposed to come in an hour ago, but it was delayed. he seriously has the worst luck with travel.
yesterday i went out to dinner with soham's (one of my old mentees) parents. they took me out to an indian restaurant, where the food was delicious (chicken, lamb, tofu-looking cottage cheese, and prawn). they were great company, and we plan to meet up again once haider is back & once we return from japan. i just found out today that osaka will be our base of operations in japan. we will be staying at the swissotel. here is a picture of the pool:
what else what else? today i slept in. kept reading revolutionary road - the main lesson i am learning from that book is not to take a dull job for the purpose of making $bank$. it was an option on the table for me (and it might come up again at the end of this internship) so it is good to be reminded ... then i went shopping for a bit. later, majid, ali, sarah, eva and i went out to see 'kung fu panda'. i told michael that i was going to see the movie and he said to me, "even your little brothers don't wanna see that movie". i pretty much agreed and i thought we had lucked out when we got to the crowded theatre & there were no tix left for the movie. so, we when to see marky mark in 'the happening' m night shyamalan's latest mistake. the writing reminded me of 'HOOOKIN' UP!!!' by ron greenberg.
chchchcheck it.

crunch time

i have to be at work in 8 hours. that's no good.
didn't get to sleep much last night because we were at the yacht late and then had a project to work on.

today we kept mystery shopping. the salespeople in UAE are much less friendly than in US. i found myself putting out effort to maintain the conversations in the showroom. it was bizarre. i almost missed the sharks from back home. tomorrow we have to create, administer, and analyze a focus group, and then add what we find to our mystery presentation. we are presenting to the head auto honchos and word is they don't take kindly to criticism, constructive or otherwise.
we have to show up early to get all of this stuff done, so by presentation time i will be running on empty.

then after work, i am going over to a mentee's house for dinner. soham isn't actually here in dubai right now, but his parents are, so i am going to dine with them. i look forward to the dinner very much, but i am worried that i will have 0 energy left to be social. majid might come, but in any case it should be good.
affffter dinner we are then gonna go back to the boat, or i will meet up with them. we are plan to sleep over there (hopefully we will take it out too? although it may be too late) and it is aziz's last wknd in dubai so we will have some people over. should be fun, we were jet skiing at night yesterday, which was really cool (and prolly super safe too).

today aziz, ali, majid, and i went to the mall. majid wanted to get some louis vitton sandals, but they didn't have the right kind in stock. so he bought a couple $k's worth of camera gear instead. he is actually a really good photographer, he has been taking pics over the week & i am trying to get them from him to put up here.
after the mall, we went back to majid's house for dinner. we ate with hamad and omar, and omar gave us some more pointer's on the biz. that guy seems to be working 24-7- seriously intense. then we tried to work on our presentation for tomorrow, but instead we just swapped stories about paris and majid filled me in on the politicks of the al futtaim group. word is that the brits are out and aussies are in. but is there a future for americans?
okk i'm gonna call my bros to wish them a happy graduation ( i am missing mik's high school graduation, grady's 8th grade, and liam's 5th grade, plus the MEGA-doyleson gazebopalooza, quel dommage!!) and then crash.

reality bites (and then there was one)

so ram picked me up from work today and brought me home. he is a sweet guy & asked very politely if he could have friday off. he also asked if i could give my recommendation to majid & hospitality director at the end of the summer. of course i told him that we would help him out. ram is from nepal, he is married and has 3 kids. he has been working here in dubai for 4 years and gets to go home for 30 days each year. although he doesn't go home, because his family now lives in india. we talked some more about his family. his oldest daughter is in 9th grade and she hopes to study at a university in the US.
he asked me to talk to her and talk to her about direction, future studies, and university in the states. so ... he texted me her email and i sent her a note. i told her a bit about mac plus i told her about the UWC schools. i don't really know what sort of help i can offer her, but i am willing to try ... and curious to see what she has to say.
the reason ram picked only me up is because head office told us that haider had to go home to get his visa for japan. so - they rushed him back to pakistan to take care of that. majid has been out for the last 2 days on a dental absence. so i spend the afternoon alone at Gulf Market Research, getting ready to be a **sEcRet** shopper!!!!1!!! which is my activity for the day tomorrow (and majid's, if he comes). on one hand i am kind of excited for time at GMR because it will probably be the stop that comes the closest to the work i did at mac, on the other hand, it's mostly about car sales....
just got word from haider, he is safe in pakistan. hopefully he will be back soon.

the girl effect.

so i look at this website a lot: coolhunting.com. everyday it just posts a couple of things (products, ideas, people, etc) that its editors think are cool. sounds like it would suck, but i like a lot of the things i see there. recently they posted about a website called the girl effect.
the site is interesting. it suggests that to save the world, we invest (time/money/energy/efforts) in young girls from developing countries. statistically they are more likely to reinvest back into their family and community (than boys), so helping them would presumably help the girls/women & consequently everyone else more than current forms of aid. look at the site, it has a great intro, read it over and think about it. does it make sense to you?

today we finished with DFC and AFGRE. we toured the intercon (hotel side) and the festival centre. there was a guy from jordan, a guy from australia, a woman from dubai, a woman from slovakia, and a guy from detroit. he had actually worked/lived in milwaukee and was responsible for east towne and hilldale for a few years. weird huh? he was very nice- today saw the nicest and most natural people. at the same time he was kind of a tool because he said "making the most money possible" at least 5x over the course of the morning. according to him, the 3 goals of his dept are to: 1. make the most money possible 2. enhance the guest (read: people who come to the mall) experience 3. protect the brand, so yah ... kind of zzzzzz

lunch (at the bistro) was more interesting. the slovakian woman (never quite caught her name) was talking about how she was going to have a xmas party soon, because she hadn't taken down her tree yet, so she thought "what the hell, let's do xmas again", which was a refreshing example of personality and normal behavior that had so far been lacking from the people on the trip... also, this diverse group (all different ages too) were evidently partying together last wknd, because one woman (35yrs old) said to a guy (50-60 yrs) "we had another round after you left and then we went back to my place and watched some movies, we were up til like 4 in the morning" it was cool to hear that they are coworkers, but also a group of friends.

anyways, the slovakian continues to tell us that she is going on vacation soon to slovakia and then hungary and austria. she starts talking about austria and about some city where she is going ... she says that the beer is cheap and the women are beautiful. as if on cue, the american starts to pay attn to her and asks, "what's the name of that place? i wanna write it down." ha.ha. so she tells him and then she starts talking about vienna with respect to the women from the other city. i am half listening to her, but mostly i am paying attention to my lunch plate. i ordered the chicken, which turned out to be an entire chicken. it proved nearly impossible to cut into the chicken with just my fork and table knife as the bird kept rolling around the plate before i could pin it down to really dive in. so she goes on while i struggle "but their sisters in vienna aren't so lucky. they were bred with horses. all of the people in vienna marry in their own familes, because they all live in hamlets." i did all i could to not burst into laughter... but everyone else let it pass, so i think it looked like i was laughing at my own chicken. once we got back to the car i asked haider if he heard what i did and he confirmed it. then the jordanian guy with us says, "what does this word mean, bred?" ummmmmm
so. exhausted after work today, i took a nap. then played squash vs haider. he routinely mopped the floor with me (like nadal vs federer today). then we went to the nicer restaurant the hotel has: the ambiance was excellent, food delicious, and i had the chocolate beignet for dessert, with "sparkling fruit salad" which was basically fruit salad with pop rocks on top! (what are pop rocks and how do they work? ) now we're just hanging out (actually he's asleep now), before we go to work again in a few hours.

goooooooood night dubai! (good morning vietnam was on TV the other day ... i know, kind of a stretch)

saturday > friday

FRIDAY
wasn't so hot. we slept in, went shopping, couldn't get a hold of majid, then we tried to go out to dinner at a place i found in the lonely planet for dubai, called the olive house.

to the left <- is a picture of the famous clock tower that we passed, it is one of the oldest landmarks in dubai.
so ram took us onto sheik zayed road (it is a famous one with lots of skyscrapers, including the tallest building in the world) but he had a little bit of trouble getting off of the main way to the restaurant. haider and i were frustrated because we had made a reservation ... and then we get to the place and the building is kind of falling apart, the food is so so, and the service is the worst. still we cant find majid (nobody has voicemail here) so we come back to city centre and go to the cinema. the ac is broken *** news flash we are watching some sort of MTV award show and they are giving and award to adam sandler and the tv here just censored tom cruise when he said the word "hanukkah" crazzzzzzzzy*** so the only movie still showing was prom night, which was the worst horror movie i've ever seen. the only plus side was that two of the detectives from the movie were stringer bell and ziggy from the WIRE.

SATURDAY
we were supposed to wake up at 7 am to go yachting with the al futtaim's - we got no call, so we slept in and then got some room service. we're starting to run out of groceries ... hopefully we get another infusion soon ... i was reading my book revolutionary road "an evocative portrayal of the opulent desolation of the American suburbs. Frank and April Wheeler, a bright, beautiful, and talented couple who have lived on the assumption that greatness is only just around the corner" when finally majid calls to go out to the yacht. so he picks us up in his tricked out lexus (the al futtaims take brand loyalty seriously ... what would the consumer think if the CEO didn't use his own product?) and we go out to an isolated yacht club and drive down a gravel road to small marina.

let me take you on a brief tour of the THUNDER





all aboard!














maybe you want a snack? how about some turkish delight?




or maybe a quick nap in one of the kids' bedrooms (2 and 3 beds each) or maybe this guest bedroom?
but why settle when you can crash in the master bedroom ...
check out my fbook for more pictures, but it's a pretty nice (88ft) air-conditioned yacht.
we didn't go out into the sea, we just stayed in the marina ... first things first we took out the racing jet skis. first i took a ride with majid and then i went for myself. these things moved fast and they were so easy to use, like no problem. after we played around on those for awhile (hamad sprayed me in the face pretty good) we went back to the boat. then we jumped off of the top deck into the marina, maybe 30-40 ft? everyone else took a turn, and i didn't want to be a wallflower so i leapt. the fall wasn't so bad, but as soon as my head went under hot, salty water rushed into my eyes, ears, nose, and mouth. it tasted like ... burning. i coughed my way back onto the boat and then we tied some of the inner tubes onto the jets. hamad took me out and spun me around for half an hour. he is a master rider and was spinning me in circles, bouncing me through his wake, and somehow slapping the rope into the water to splash onto me. i did my best and held on tight ... and he wasn't able to flip me for some time. once i got tired i yelled to him that enough is enough and told him to bring me back. "hamad" i yelled "don't flip me". thumbs up from him, so he revved the engine, took a sharp 90 degree turn and sent me flying out the the tube. water. burning. i popped back up to the surface (yes we were wearing life jackets) and he was saying "sorry" but couldn't stop smiling. he got me pretty good.
the boys kept tubing (haider couldn't get enough) and i read my book. once the sun set (it was a spectacular sight, as you might expect) we sat down and haider started to teach us bridge. it was just a beginner's version, but a lot of the rules were like euchre, so i caught on alright. it was me & majid playing against haider & cheeto (the head of the filipino crew that takes care of the boat). soo the yacht was amazing (flat screen tv, dvds, full fridge, at least half a dozen bathrooms, 4 bedrooms, jacuzzi, a mini crane for loading ski jets, tanning area, kitchen, plus a second set of everything for the crew's chambers). we are gonna try to go out again next weekend. majid says there is an island 1.5 hours away, and if we can we are gonna go on an overnight adventure!
tomorrow we are at DFC again, will be glad to have that done with. and then i think we move onto trading enterprises (jeep, volvo, honda, chrysler, dodge) for the rest of the week. cars? not my favorite, but i guess i'll have to wait and see what's in store for us.

ch-ch-ch-changes

so I found this host is linked to gmail, plus it's format is more convenient and more functional.
i think i will settle here.




this is a snapshot of me ... holding the ad campaign from creative design for the fj cruiser, while we are about to go into the dunes in our fj cruiser.

here is one of haider (in my sunglasses of course)
after we changed into some slightly better desert gear (it was still verrrry hot out there)

below are some pictures of DFC, which we went to today. it's funny to me to see these brands in arabic...

A picture of some of the DFC housing ... with style inspired by Yemen

hip to be a square

finally the weekend has come- i am exhausted.

this morning we started our first day at Al Futtaim Group Real Estate (AFGRE). we learned more about how they are developing dfc. it is truly a massive undertaking, you have to take a look at their site. they have schools, hundreds of shops, hotels, apartments, villas, hotels, marinas... the list goes on. now they have already started building another one in cairo and are close to starting one in qatar.

we toured some of the intercon residences and went back to the four seasons gulf course. the tour was better than the lecture about the sites in the morning. at least we got to walk around and interact a bit. in the afternoon we went back to the training center to debrief. we came back to the hotel, i went to the gym and haider went swimming. after that ram picked us up and took us to the creek and the gold souk. the souk was not a great combination of modern and old ... it was a much less glamorous side of the city. more normal people, more poor people. i did not see any of the traditional markets or buildings that i was expecting. the highlight of the souk maybe was when some guy at the jucie bar started chatting us up. we just ordered drinks but he was trying to sell us more. we were kind of ignoring him, but then we needed to ask him where to find the creek. so we turn to ask him where is the creek? he just nods yes. haider asks him in urdu and still he just nods. so i try one more time and i turn to him and ask, where is the water? he nods again and smiles this time. he leans in towards me and with a twinkle in his eye, points at the menu and says, "fish burger."

after that ram caught up with us and showed us to the creek, without any fish burgers. ram, by the way, is our driver, but he is actually from al futtaim security, so i prefer to think of him as our bodyguard. the creek was nicer. we spent some time next to it and then went to bur dubai and saw some historical parts of the city. we had dinner on the creek. it was good but it was soooo hot. it was 9, 930, dark and we could not stop sweating. usually the heat has a source, the sun, the radiator, the stove, something. here the heat comes from everywhere- sun shade it doesn't matter, it comes from the air around you. while we were eating our dinner some cats came out to spend time with us. there were three spotted cats that were playing under our table and just beside it ... i think they liked the smell of our kebab.

now we are back at sofitel. majid is at dinner with ahmed his brother and aziz his friend. we will go out with them tonight ... if we are still awake when they call. tomorrow we will do some shopping and then maybe go out into the city some more. then sometime this weekend we are supposed to go out with the al futtaim's on their boat, which should be splendid. if not that, we will find something else to occupy our leisure time.

that's it for now, i was listening to huey lewis earlier, hence the title. also we are pretty [] here in dubai, so ya know how that goes

Dune Bashing (walking the talk)

i think i mentioned last time that we are working with the marketing branch of al futtaim to put together a mock campaign launch for the fj cruiser (i wish this program had spell check ...). anyway so we collected information from the client (UAE toyota) and presented to khaled, the head of creative here. over the course of the day they put together some concepts that we could use to turn around and present to the client as part of the marketing campaign.

some of the ideas they came up with seemed pretty good, here is one of the ads they put together for us based on our presentation

i thought that it was pretty good- the catchphrase of the campaign was that the fj cruiser is the "ultimate rugged off road performance vehicle". at the end of the day we (haider, majid, and myself) gave a presentation to the client to share with them the creative concepts from our firm. given that we had only 4 days on the job, and only 30 mins to put together the .ppt, i think that it went pretty well.

so since we had been talking about the FJ cruiser for 4 days straight and sellings its off road merits to our hypothetical clients all afternoon, we had to test it for ourselves. majid got his hands on a cruiser and we went with ali out into the desert to go dune bashing.

so this software kind of sucks... it just deleted 20 min worth of typing ***now 2x***. ok, recap the lost story: we drive out 30 minutes from dubai and go into the desert. it is unlike any other place i have been. there are red sand dunes with a surprising amount of greenery (mostly shrubs but some trees too). we go off the road and into the desert. majid is clearly an experienced driver, within no time we are flying through the sand, driving next to cliffs, and sliding down dunes. we make our way to the biggest dune in sight and start taking turns trying to go up. we go 2 at a time (because the car is lighter that way).

so ali and i were waiting for majid and haider to go up, they go over a hill and we wait 20 min for them to come, but there is no sign of them. eventually we get a phone call saying that they are stuck. in the sand. and we have to *walk* over to come help.

so ali and i start walking the distance it took them 20 min to drive and we start talking about his home in india, his family, and his work over here in dubai. he is 38 now and has been working in dubai since he was 19. his family still lives in india, with his current job, he is able to go home 2 mo every year to visit his wife and kids (6 and 2). so as we are hiking across the dunes as the sun is setting and ali mentions to me that this is the time of the day that the snakes come out. but only by the rocks. i look to our left and we are walking next to a rock-lined cliff.

so we make it to the beached car and manage to avoid any more trouble. when we arrive there are 2 other westerners (brits that were bashing as well) there to assist. we push the car out and then continue with our adventure. we drive to a more secluded dune and we get out to enjoy the night view. from the dune we can see all of dubai and sharjah (the 3rd biggest city in UAE). majid tells us that he came out to that very spot on new year's eve and he could see 8 different fireworks shows. we sat in the sand (it was still hot - burning hot once you dug your hand in once inch under the top) and looked at the stars in the clear sky.

the only drawback to the picture perfect setting was that there was litter all over the desert. it is a very popular destination for tourists and locals alike. they go out to barbeque and just use the desert as the trash can

__________________

tomorrow we start our first day at dubai festival city (dfc). omar built it, of course, and it is a city within dubai. it has the ikea, ace hardware, newest shopping mall, the four seasons and W are going up there, the intercon is already there and it's where we went for dinner (at the golf club) the previous night.

i'm not sure what out main agenda is, i guess we will find out tomorrow. i think we are supposed to take a helicopter tour of the city as a whole, but that may not be the case any more because the presidents brother (this only works as a link without the apostrophe, so bear with me) just died in a heli crash. of course i will bring my camera (and maybe parachute?) just in case we do go.

also today we rushed into the mall to get passport photos for our japanese business visas. we will be there in less than 2 weeks!!!! hard to believe.

already past midnight, have to wake up soon.

famous roommates (dinner with the C.E.O.)

t's the end our 3rd day in our summer internship, it's been a long day.

we are spending our time now googling our own names. it turns out we are famous, both haider and myself. he is a world famous bridge player, and i earned my name by doing psychology research at macalester.

today we spent the day gmasco, learning mostly about PR. it's a more complicated business than i originally imagined. the people are also nicer than i expected, but their business is sales so perhaps they are practiced at smiling. we spent the morning learning about PR and meeting the team, then we spent the afternoon preparing a mock brief for a toyota client. they were launching an fj cruiser (below) last year and we are making a brief to give to the creative team tomorrow.

the work is pretty straightforward and seems intuitive. the goal is to understand the demographics and psychographics of your target audience and position your product (thru media) to connect to the consumer. the phrases "shifting perception", "making the rational emotional", and "getting the guy to fall for it" were all used frequently today.

quick note - dubai is a diverse city. at lunch with the team yesterday we were eating with faycel (arab), geoffrey (african), anish (indian), piero (lebanese), as well as andy (danish?).

tonight we had dinner with omar (the CEO, majid's father). we weren't really planning to, we were going to visit some part of the city (either old or new) but majid called up and said the dinner was tonight. he took us to the 4 seasons golf club (which he owns, of course) there were lamborghinis parked out front and the building was ritzy to say the least. i can barely stay awake so i will have to update again tomorrow. to tell you a bit though, he is a very thoughtful and kind man. easy to have a conversation with and not (socially) intimidating