family reunion

• current

packing for france! trying to do laundry and take care of my travels docs before i leave for the airport at 10. also i wanted to post here and send out some emails, i won't be on the internet much while in paris.

• news

still no working laptop. and since i lost my ipod, now i am using one of the shuffles. it's actually pretty convenient. the price for the nano isn't that much more, but you can't beat the minimal design of the shuffle.

this week we worked at ACE and one day with Marks and Spencers. At Ace we didn't have that much to do, but it was fun to see. We were hosted by a great guy from South Africa, who is currently the retail operations manager but before used to be the personal chef to the president of South Africa. intresting, huh? While at Ace we also went out to the Jebel Ali Free Zone and saw some of the logistics and SCM that Al Futtaim outsources. The company we met was by far the scariest of the summer. They are a huuuuge global solutions provider. They will transport anything for you, at a price. Their rep. was telling us about the live sharks, fish, WHALES, tigers, and lions that they are currently transporting into Dubai. Next up are penguins and polar bears. But shhhhh! don't tell everyone because a lot of the environmental people don't like that kind of thing. Other than animal transport, they mentioned they sub-contract to some other companies when they need *other* flexible transport solutions, especially ones that cross international borders. the nice aspect was that when we went to lunch, we did get to meet the group president. who woulda thunk it?

what else? I'm trying to coordinate with my cousin Maria to go visit her in Jordan in early August. She's actually in Wisconsin right now, visiting the rest of the family, but she will be back soon. Working on finding a place to live in Madison for the fall, the tricky part is that I only want to live on the East Side and require a pretty flexible lease. Any takers out there?

Last night we went out with another friend from Mac, Proma - Iwas her mentor this past year- and some of her friends from work (French folks). We were of different ages, so we had some trouble getting into the venues, but one place finally let us in and we found out it was one of the top 10 bars in the world! we had a littttttle bit of trouble finding out way around new dubai but it was fun to meet up with old friends and make new ones. also got the chance to bust out some French before I arrive there tomorrow.

Hmm Haider and I had a funny thing happen yesterday, as we were leaving our hotel room we ran into one of the AF group directors (soon to be chairman of Robinsons in Singapore, which AF just bought) in the hallway. turns out he is staying across the hallway from us!!! Butttt he didn't have his glasses on and it took him some time to recognize us, so it ended up as a pretty awkward moment.

Thenn today I woke up (relatively) early to drive 1.5 hrs (with ram, always an adventure) to Abu Dhabi to meet a friend of a family friend. He's Lebanese, but spent a lot of time in Cali, worked as an MD with our friend Mark, and just came over here to UAE last fall. We went for a lunch at the Emirates Palace and just talked. It was a lot of fun because we share so much and yet are so different. He's a competitive Bio grad from UC Irvine (neuro hotspot) who then went to grad school at USC. Now he's a divorced father of 5 (4 girls and 1 boy). So we talked about families, school & careers, and coming over to the UAE from the states. If I have the time to meet him again after France I certainly will. He hasn't made it down to Dubai yet, so I'll have to bring him down here (but I won't know where to take him other than the malls...)

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short and sweet today. no pics and no cpu to put them up with anyway. i'm cerrrtain i'll snap some en paris. so stay tuned for updatesss

molson golden