Well we went to the Dubai World Cup on the weekend. And it was a complete and utter shambles. The day started to go to pieces when we hit traffic on the way to the races. Last year you were able to be dropped off at your entry gate to the races directly. But no, not this year. This year you had to drive all the way to a distant parking lot and be dropped off and then catch a shuttle bus to the gate. Well of course there were queues to get onto the shuttle buses. And then the shuttle [View Full Entry]

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Well today we continued our quest for the perfect spa. And by jove we may have found it. We went to the Amara Spa at the Park Hyatt on the Creek in Dubai. And it was amazing. From the moment that you first pull up outside you know that you are in for something pretty special. There is nothing assuming or fancy about the entrance. In fact it is positively understated in its elegance and I think that is part of the charm. The gentleman who was sitting behin the front desk was a picture of courtesy and showed me through [View Full Entry]

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There was a massive fire in Dubai the other day. It was just enormous. It turned out that somehow a fire started in a warehouse in one of the industrial areas of Dubai called Al Quoz and unfortunately this fire hit a warehouse that was illegally storing fireworks and crackers and there was apparently the most almighty explosion. It happened at about 7am in the morning, which luckily for me was just after I was driving past that part of town on the way to work. We could hear all the sirens going past from the office as our office is [View Full Entry]

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We actually did something cultural recently. Yesterday we went to Jumeira Mosque and learnt all about Islam. The Sheikh here runs a cultural understanding program and as part of that they offer tours through one of the mosques in Dubai. It is all about breaking down barriers and understanding what other people are thinking and what they are doing. It was actually very interesting. The tour took about two hours and the tour guide took us all through the different elements of Islam and what they actually do when they pray, what the five pillars of islam are, what the [View Full Entry]

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I had to go to Madrid recently for work. It was a totally fantastic city. I must admit that I had never thought that Madrid was anything special. I thought that it would be a pretty ho hum kind of space but I was so surprised by the city itself that it isn't funny. It was a wonderful place. We ( my work colleague Craig and myself) arrived really rather late at night on the Sunday. Just in time for our workshop to start on the Monday. We had two days in Madrid at this workshop (which actually turned out very [View Full Entry]

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Well we have been having a lot of very heavy fog recently. I had to drive up to Abu Dhabi on Sunday and had to drive through this fog and it was actually quite scary. I even thought about stopping and turning back as the fog was so thick that the fog lights did nothing and you couldn't see anything 5 metres ahead of you. Well today everything went very wrong for people in Dubai and there was a major crash on Sheikh Zayed Road on the boundary of Dubai and Abu Dhabi. Apparently over 200 cars were involved and about [View Full Entry]

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We had the pleasure today of spending a lovely afternoon with some wonderful people, eating, drinking and generally being merry! The usual crowd (Jess, Rod, Leanne and Steve) were in attendance, along with some newbies (Sascha, Stewart, Shaun and Collette) Yes that is correct. We went to yet another brunch. However this time we branched out a little bit and tried a different location. One that was not a Jumeirah brunch. And unfortunately that may have been a wee mistake. We went to the Emirates Hills Golf Course for brunch and while it was lovely it just couldn't quite meet the [View Full Entry]

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We were due to fly back to Dubai in the afternoon so we planned our morning very carefully to try and see as much as possible. High on our list of things to do was to try and pick up some presents for people. So we therefore decided to head to the local flea markets, which apparently have an astonishing amount of stuff on sale. The markets were located very close to the hotel where we were staying, but unfortunately not close enough to walk, and not on the same metro line as our hotel. We therefore decided to catch the [View Full Entry]

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We woke up in the morning after my first evening in Moscow to find that it had snowed over night and that there was now a light dusting of new snow all about on the ground. Which was very cool - literally! We decided to spend the day retracing our steps back to Red Square to see all the things in the daylight as well as exploring some things that we hadn’t gotten to see yet. So we headed out of the hotel off to the metro station that was luckily just across the road. Our first stop of the day [View Full Entry]

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Well the day finally arrived and I was picked up in my nice and shiney Emirates limosuine and taken to the airport for my flight to Moscow. I had decided that since I had been working so hard recently that I deserved a little treat so thanks to the helpful and priceless nature (and I can assure you that business class flights to Moscow do come at a price) of mastercard I was soon winging my way up to another land. The trip was amazing. It was so weird to be flying over land the whole time. I am used to [View Full Entry]

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