April Tidbits

I've learned you don't read books with black covers at the pool when the weather heats up in Dubai unless you want blisters on your fingers. Summer arrived in Dubai today (April 27) as the mercury had climbed to 41C when I left work at 1pm (that's 106F for you folks in the mother country).

Bought some tickets online for the cricket match this week (Australia v. Pakistan). I think something was wrong with the website and I got away without paying a 'çonveinence charge.' Or could it be they don't use service charges here? Take that TicketMaster!

I had an interesting and expensive experience with the IRS this April 15th. I did wait til the last minute to file my taxes--had them all ready to go electronically. But when I went to hit 'send', I was rudely told that I can't file electronically from Dubai--has to be mailed. Well, this was a problem, since I also owed taxes. No Problem, I will just go to the IRS pay site and pay the tax and mail in the paper work. NOOOO...you must register first to use the IRS site and that takes 6-10 business days. But, I can use another site where they take credit cards and charge a 'convenience fee.' (I'm detecting a theme here). So anyway, cost me a little extra but at least I won't be apprehended at the border next time home.

Speaking of which, while I was waiting on my flight to London I availed myself of the Crown Room travel services and booked my trip for July (with a stop in Portugal-Spain...anyone up for a 8-9 day motorcylce tour?) on the way home. I had tried to book the passage on my laptop but Orbitz wasn't taking my payment. So I walked over to the desk and asked the receptionist if they could book the flights. And she did--and actually wound up a couple hundred dollars cheaper (though I do have to ride Air France for a couple legs...yuck). Of course, I was charged a $35 service charge for making the woman do her job. Since I had saved a little bit overall, I didn't gripe too much.

Met a lady named Yummy this week. She works at Dubai Duty Free at the airport. Also at the airport, I saw an Emerati woman in a full Abaya, face covered, typing on her laptop and wearing Chuck Taylor's...sometimes this place is a but surreal.

Dubai Cricket Stadium

After a few months of watching the occasional cricket match on TV and getting schooled by some of my co-workers on the rules and finer points of the game, I had a chance to go to my first live Cricket match. The match was held at the new Cricket Stadium in Dubai Sports City. I will say two good things about the evening:

1. The Cricket action was enjoyable to watch
2. There is not a bad seat in the stadium (unless you are being roasted by the afternoon sun, which was avoidable for most fans). But for veiwing the action--all good seats.

Now the not so good. Dubai Sports City consists of a cricket stadium and 20 square miles of construction. There are 3 ways into the place and they all merge into the same one lane road. It took about 45 mins to get to a parking 'space' once I arrived at the Cricket Stadium. That 'space'was in the middle of alot of sand and rocks. Now, there should have been shuttle buses to carry the fans from these remote desert, construction wastlands--I saw signs that said Shuttle Route--but I didn't see any buses. So I walked for about 20 mins until I finally came across a shuttle bus which carried me about 300 meters and then dropped us off another 300 meters from the stadium.

Everything around the stadium is unfinished--it's just a huge, dusty, gravel lot. They had security set up for screening the fans due to the fact the Pakistan Cricket team was fired upon last month in Pakistan (and also the reason why they were playing in the UAE). It was now close to start time and the line for the 'middle class seats' was stretched out two thousand people deep...with 2 screening positions. Same for the cheap seats. So I upgraded to a premium ticket which put me in a line about 20 deep, but still took 15 mins to get thru.

The short security line was the ONLY benefit of premium seats. You have the exact same view from the opposite side of the pitch as the Middle Class Seats. The stadium is spartan. Concessions were very limited: Popcorn or Nachos; Pepsi or 7UP. No Souvenier stands. You could have done better at any little league park in the USA. And you have to understand, a normal one day cricket match lasts 8 hours--people get hungry.

As for the cricket, it was enjoyable and the crowd was into it. Australia beat Pakistan (avenging a loss 2 nights earlier). The stadium was 90% full, with an announced crowd of about 24,000.

Afterwards, there was no shuttle bus. I walked 25 mins in the dark to my truck. Drove over an unfinished curb to get on a road and into the traffic jam. At one point the police directed us to use both lanes of a 2-way street--except they never stopped the opposite direction traffic which consisted mostly of construction vehicles. 45 mins to get to the highway--10 mins to get home.

At the time I swore I would wait til they finished construction before I went to another cricket match; but I have since been talked into going again. This time the shorter version (3-4 hrs) known as 20Twenty. Stay tuned.

Burj Dubai Fountains

Here is a clip I shot of the new Burj Dubai Fountains. They are about 50% larger than the Bellagio Fountains and capable of shooting 500 ft in the air, though about 300 ft is the most I've seen.

Dubai Comedy Convention

I went to the Dubai Comedy Convention last night. It was set on a lawn at Dubai Media City and it turned out to be a very nice evening. The Comedy Convention is really just a renamed and reworked comedy tour that didn't really go over well with the local authorities last year (I'm getting this from a friend who works at the paper, so you know it's true). Apparently, the Axis of Evil Tour was shut down last year due to some sensitive content.

It's now a 3 night stay in Dubai with a different lineup each night. It's a very diverse crowd and lineup, so it made for a fun, interesting night. Ahmed Ahmed was the host; Rob Magnotti, Kirk Fox, and headliner Omid Djilil. Lots of humor thrown at nationalities all over the world, but mostly the middle east. I'm also surprised how tuned in the rest of the world is to American culture. At first I thought Magnotti's Jersey schtick might flop, but everyone seemed tuned in. Same for the other American, Kirk Fox, though he was pretty much just whacked out funny.

Omid Djilil was very funny...an Iranian raised in England, and he was a big crowd favorite. The family next to me was Iranian and were loving it.

The evening was filled with alot of terrorist jokes (my favorite, was Fox's observation about why the shoe bomber couldn't have been a bra bomber--think about that next time you are going thru security at the airport). There was not alot of foul language or crude sexual references--which is not my appetite when it comes to comedy anyway. I prefer clever.

Overall, it was a very enjoyable evening. Whatever, they did wrong last year, they must have got right this year.

(Just a footnote...a friend who was at Wed nights show, also went to Friday nights show and said it was toned down considerably. Guess it hasn't quite passed the censors).

London

Stopped in London for a few days on the way home from the USA. My first visit to the UK. Did alot of walking around seeing all the sights in central London. I arrived on Easter Sunday, so I was lucky enough to stumble upon Easter Service's at St. Paul's Cathedral. It was also Master's Sunday, but I couldn't find it on the TV at any of the pubs I tried--soccer was the sport of choice. I finally found it on the TV in my hotel room...my very tiny hotel room..so tiny, my 15 inch screen looked like a big screen TV.

For all the weather problems we had in the states, I was blessed with very nice weather in London. I carried a light jacket around most of the time. Second night I walked past a small hole-in-the-wall bar that actually had baseball on TV--I had to stop in for a pint (or 4). Along with baseball, they also had a latin Rhumba band. It was called Belushi's just off the square in Covent Garden. The next night found me at an American themed bar called the Roadside (also in Covent Garden). Big soccer match that night between Liverpool and Chelsea drew a healthy crowd. They also had a good band and lots of friendly patrons.

As far as the sights, I enjoyed several of the museums and the halls of government. London does remind me very much of Washington DC. And I don't know why, but I was surprised that I heard alot of various languages and not much of the Queen's English as I wandered the streets. Like New York and DC, I hear more English walking around Dubai. Speaking of walking, I was happy to escape London without getting runover for looking the wrong way crossing streets. Thank you London for all the 'look left' and 'look right' signs painted on the street crossings. I imagine it's an adventure for any UK citizen (or Aussie, Bahamian, Jamaican) when they step off their islands.

I look forward to many return visits to London.

Spring Break '09...Winter's Discontent

Jumped on Delta 7 at the beginning of April and flew back to the mother country for a week of Spring Break with the kids. Weather was beautiful when we touched down in ATL early in the morning--and continued nice thru the weekend. Then it started to play havoc with our plans.

One of the first things I did upon arrival (after the requisite breakfast at Cracker Barrel) was to visit ATL Tower. It was nice to see alot of familiar faces, especially on a Friday. Guess they were all working OT. It was interesting to note the differences between ATL and DXB. First of all, aircraft taxi alot faster at ATL. I squirm when I have to cross a plane in a 4 mile gap at Dubai. It takes forever for these pilots to get spooled up and move--it seems they don't anticipate anything. I was always impressed with the clean, simplicity of the tower workspace in ATL (though they still have alot of misplaced equipment). At DXB, we just refurbished our tower and it was redesigned from scratch. Well, let's just say I don't think they took a step forward. It's full of contraptions (mechnical desk and strip boards raise and lower, touch screens for stopbars, lighting and communications, matchbox race tracks for sliding strips to different positions, and a small family of mice on each desk for 3-4 other displays). Being the new kid on the block, it's hard to pass judgement not knowing all the issues involved, but I did visit the tower before it was refurbished and I just don't see much difference. I think we missed an opportunity (as did ATL in some ways, despite a better overall result).

I picked up my kids the next morning and we were off for a weekend of socializing, first with their grandparents and aunt in Milledgeville, GA and then their Aunt, uncle and cousins in Charlotte, NC. A bonus was also seeing my sister-in-laws parents visiting from England.

Got a good deal on Priceline.com ($47/night at Crown Plaza Asheville, NC). Unfortunately, you can't cancel after you make a purchase on priceline, so despite a wintery forecast, we headed off to Asheville up in the Appalachian Mountains. We planned on visiting the Biltmore House, doing some hiking, checking out the galleries in AVL, and if the weather was nice, maybe go rafting. Well, the wind howled and it snowed off and on for 2 days. We did manage to do some exploring downtown and we spent a good part of one day at the Biltmore. The wind stilled and the sun came out for our nice hike on the Appalachian Trail on our last day.

Friday night was the Braves Home Opener. Showed up early to meet some friends for ribs across the street. (Bullpen has pretty good ribs). Game was going well, until the 3rd inning when the bottom fell out...rain, lightening, hail. We waited for about an hour and then retreated to our hotel room next door to the stadium. The game resumed around 11, finished just after 1am. I watched from a cozy bed with 2 snoozing kids.

I dropped the kids off the next day and then it was off to the airport. Stopped in London on the way home. I plan to do more of that in the future.