December 8th, 2003

Day 2 in Dubai

»

Jetlagged, I woke up in the middle of the night and couldn’t sleep. So I went down to the seminar room to use the wireless and catching up with my blogroll. By the time people comes walking into the room, I am already worned out which is kind of bad since I have to a morning presentation. I hope I didn’t do too badly and I am glad a handful here have expressed interest to assist on the IDN-OSS project. Thank you! :-)

After lunch, I went to catch a quick nap to recoup but that does not seem to help much. By nightfall, I was worned out again which is kind of a pity. You see, dinner was hosted by Etisalat on a crusis on the gulf and I spend half of the time on the deck sleeping :PStill, I managed to get a glimsip of Dubai and the city around it. It is totally incredible and you won’t believe that this whole city is a dessert just barely 30 years ago. Every brand, every hotel, every MNC you can think of is now located in this city. As I remarked to Philip Smith, of all the cities we being together, nothing is like Dubai.

I guess this has to do with the UAE government. UAE is one of the most stable country in the middle-east, the people are happy, the economy is booming, the country is pretty open (by middle-east standard) due to its history as a trading port, etc. And since middle-east as an economy is not something any MNC can ignore, when they expand to this region, dubai become an obvious choice for many.

There is a lesson here…

Comments are closed.