January 2013 – Doha, Qatar

Doha. An exact replica of the lost city of Atlantis.

When I moved to Australia in 1997, I suddenly found myself isolated from friends and family by a

number of significant factors such as time zone, distance and outrageously inflated telephone

charges. Although this was initially an issue, I soon discovered it could be sort of overcome by taking

advantage of then-burgeoning e-mail technology to write group letters to everyone back home. The

general idea was that if I couldn’t remain a part of everyone else’s everyday lives, I could

nonetheless sort of bridge the distance a little by just keeping everyone abreast of mine. Over time I

found that not only did I really enjoy writing these updates, people even suspectly professed to

enjoying reading them and they soon grew from letters to Journals to ridiculously long-winded, War

& Peace sized compositions. This went on. But then, as it usually does, life sort of got in the way:

technology advances and proximity to home improved to the stage where writing Journals was less

of a necessity. I had also settled down in Ireland ,which made writing about day to day life a lot less

interesting and the zany, far flung stories of drunken motorbike holidays in Tasmania or dancing on

Pagan temples in Burma became a bit more "boy oh boy, ten jam tarts for a fiver at Tesco!".

Following the relocation to Qatar, things are shiny & new again and therefore provide more of a

reason to bang on a bit so I’ve found myself slowly reverting to form. It also helps that technology

has progressed to the stage where work PCs have been replaced by portable tablets and group

emails have been superseded by social networking, so writing updates have become less arduous to

create and a hell of a lot easier to distribute (i.e. posting a PDF to Facebook instead of cutting and

pasting loads of email addresses into multiple emails feels like you’re getting something for free and

being able to idly type thoughts into your Ipad whilst lying in a hammock or whatever, instead of

staying at work late to write at your office PC, feels like the very definition of freedom itself).

Whoever it was who said you had to suffer to write sure didn’t come of age in the twenty-first

century. And if they did, they clearly weren’t doing it right.

Whist the purpose of these Journals has always been about keeping in touch with people, I’ve

recently discovered that what I’ve also unknowingly been doing along the way is etching these

memories in a sort of permanence which, over time, might actually be considered the greater

reward. Whilst photos are great to look at and remember how we looked and maybe even felt, they

aren’t really a mechanism for remembering the way we were. Writing manages to do that a little bit

though and it’s honestly just as much fun trying to chronicle these events at the time as it is reading

them back years later when they’ve long since been forgotten. I’m also pretty sure that when I’m old

and grey and nodding off in my rocker in front of the ballgame that I would welcome the

opportunity to remember what it was like to once look out at the world through 40-year-old eyes

and maybe get a taste of what that might have felt like.

At any rate and whether that happens or not, I’ve started writing again and the following is a

summarized account of observations and occasions experienced over here during the month of

January 2013. So read on at your own risk you old codger. And quit flirting with the nurses.

The Recovery: After an excruciatingly long time at the end of last month spent mostly just

shivering and shitting, my January began by thankfully managing to obtain a mostly clean bill of

health. It wasn’t easy though. As it turns out, the syphilis that I had contracted just before New

Year’s Eve, was diagnosed as amoebic dysentery. I always thought that dysentery was what you

got when you drank the water in dodgy areas: ‘Delhi belly or ‘Montezuma’s Revenge’ or

whatever. But I can tell you now, from firsthand experience, that amoebic dysentery is really

just the clinical term for what happens in the movie ‘Alien’. Parasites in your stomach and all

that. Fortunately it was caught by the hospital before it progressed too far so there will

thankfully not be any sequels to this little motion picture in the near future.

An artist rendering of amoebic dysentery.

I am crediting my survival during this time to all the years spent exercising my digestion system

with Skyline 3-ways. My stomach probably just thought I was home for spring break from

college and soldiered through it like it was 1992 all over again. I’m also pretty certain that the

two courses of antibiotics I was pumped with (one when they thought it was just plain old

syphilis; the second when they detected the presence of an ‘other’) will have now made me

bulletproof enough to be able to bong an entire gallon of curry made from Ganges River water

without so much as a nervous fart.

But, seriously, all’s well that ends well here…..or everything has started ending well again at the

very least.

Driving: Sometimes when describing things I find that I tend to over-emphasize them through

the use of outlandish qualifiers. I get annoyed at myself whenever I do this as it always seems to

me to be completely obvious whenever I see someone else doing it and it usually defeats the

purpose in whatever is being described. A rock concert that is expressed simply as ‘painfully

loud’ is much more effective in conveying the actual meaning as opposed to hearing it described

as ‘so loud that the blood disgorged from the ears of the audience was splattered as far as 2km

away by the sheer force of the volume’.

Kind of like comb-overs: rather than emphasizing the point through decoration, I think

statements like that tend to just make people skeptical.

I sincerely hope that this observational qualifier will therefore allow me to skip any sort of

needless emphasis and simply state that Qatar drivers are almost completely and without

exception 100% fucked in the head. Absolutely mental. Either that or the Emir decided at some

point that driving laws were anti-Islamic and abolished them entirely. Whatever the reason,

turning on to a busy road here is like entering the mine car chase scene at the end of the Temple

of Doom; there's danger coming at you from all directions and its full speed ahead whether you

like it or not. Before encountering Doha, my personal belief was that no driving experience in

the world could come close to Cambodia (the potholes have to be seen to be believed) or

Manila (for the combination chaos/congestion) in terms of 'life-threateningness' but this place

absolutely leaves them for dead. Even driving on a supercharged go-kart track with a bunch of

pissed up chavs on a stag night in Galway wouldn’t compare to this.

These are the things I've learned on the Doha roads so far:

1. Do not use your turn signal under any circumstance. This will allow other drivers to know

what you intend to do which puts you at a very distinct disadvantage. Better to leave them

guessing. Indicating will cause an otherwise routine lane change to instead result in the car

in the next lane (that was maybe a couple of car lengths behind you when you indicated) all

but rear ending the car in front of it in order to keep you from moving over. To prevent this

from happening, never touch your indicator, make any turn you feel like at any time and just

feel free to be as dickheadish as you like.

This actually may be best illustrated by an example. On the first day of work after I moved

into my apartment, my director (who lives in the next tower building) was kind enough to

offer to lead me into work the following morning in order to show me the route to the

office. Despite having no idea where I was going and having to somehow follow along

behind him for 15 miles through countless turns and roundabouts in rush hour traffic in an

unfamiliar city full of maniac drivers, he NEVER EVEN INDICATED ONCE. That’s a true story.

2. Roundabout lanes are only painted there for decoration. If you're in the inner lane and

realise that you were meant to take the first exit, no worries. Forget all about executing that

awkward complete-revolution maneuver and just breeze through two or more lanes of

traffic to the exit of your choice.

If you're in the outer lane and decide you want to carry on all the way round the roundabout

and back the direction you came from, that one's easy too. Remain in the outside lane all

the way around and herd other traffic in front of you like startled cattle.

3. Accelerate as fast as you can into red lights. Failure to do so could potentially see another

vehicle rocket around your car which might possibly delay your journey by a fraction of a

second. Even worse, it would allow someone else to get that bit ahead of you in life. That

won't do. Besides, going from 0 to 60mph in 3 seconds isn't nearly as impressive as doing it

in reverse.

4. Horn honking is not only prevalent, it’s actively encouraged. Unfortunately the frequency of

the honking renders the interpretation of the honk ambiguous to the point that it is difficult

to actually differentiate between honk types. It therefore becomes impossible to discern a

'you effing IDIOT!' honk from a 'the light's changed, please move along' honk, for example. It

is also difficult to actually HEAR the honk over all the other honking going on.

5. One way signs in multi-story car parks can be completely ignored. Just work away there.

The strangely ironic (and truly terrible) thing I've discovered is that once I managed to acclimate

to this style of driving, I actually found that I didn’t mind it so much. The reason is this: in the

real world (i.e. US/UK/Ireland/Australia), a satisfactory driving experience is dependent upon

good etiquette. If the driver in the next lane doesn't let you in when you indicate, you

immediately feel like cursing at the idiot whom, at the end of the day, really had no obligation to

let you in at all. If someone swerves around and cuts in front you, it is interpreted as a direct

assault on your masculine dignity and it suddenly becomes crucially important that you're in

front of that car before one of you turns off. If someone commits the unpardonable sin of

honking their horn at you, it's pistols at dawn. Tapping breaks at someone following too close,

flashing brights at undipped beams, middle finger salutes for near misses…….the list goes on.

But here, in a world completely devoid of good driving etiquette, everyone is on the same page

and expecting the worse at every turn makes actually encountering the worse a non-event. It

even somehow manages to diffuse animosity to the point that successfully navigating a

roundabout feels like a small accomplishment, not an expectation, and you actually sort of

develop a begrudging admiration for the driver who manages to squeeze his Landcruiser into a

gap the size of a shoebox.

On a more primitive level, it's also like getting to drive pretend race cars in your big boy pants.

Plus you get one kick ass cardio workout without having to go near a treadmill or change

clothes.

Looks are deceiving. The nutters in this photo are actually travelling at 55mph. Note the random lane changes

The Cars: Due to the climate in Doha, there is a definite distinctness to the appearance of cars

on the roads.

The first is that the majority of them are white or light coloured. This I am pretty sure is to

minimise the heat absorption from the sun during the hot months. It also provides a perfect

camouflage for white robed sheiks (although I'm not exactly certain as to what this might be

good for).

The second is that they're typically big. Soccer mom style Range Rovers the size of small Army

tanks that all say stay the hell out of my way and don't look at my penis. These babies are

particularly useful in roundabouts as they prevent potential lane-changing incidents by

occupying all lanes at the same time.

The third is that they're expensive. I imagine this is because they're cheap: typically about 1/3 of

the price as the US and 1/2 of the price as Ireland. But also because petrol is for absolutely

nothing here: a little less than 20 cents per litre! I'm not sure what that amounts to in dollars per

gallon but I filled up the tank in my rental Puegoet yesterday for about 8 bucks. Amazingly, this

renders gas cheaper than bottled water.

The fourth is that they're clean. Although they can get a little dusty or sandy, it hasn't rained

since I got here and there is a complete absence of mud. Combine this aspect with the big and

inexpensiveness of the vehicles and you've got roads that are motorway versions of fashion

show catwalks.

The fifth is that they're mostly automatics. I don't have a clue as to why automatics are

prevalent in the US and the Middle East whilst manuals are all the rage in Europe. Does it have

something to do with gas consumption?

You have to be aware that I am definitely not a petrol head and freely admit to not being able to

tell the difference between an Audi and an asshole (sometimes even going so far so as to

suggest there really isn't one) so unfortunately I cannot elaborate further on the superficial

observations above with more technical things like torque and horsepower and V8s and stuff.

But in a place where petrol is cheaper than bottled water, people freely drive like maniacs and

there's desert roads that go on for days in all directions, it is probably safe to assume they have

all that shit and that it’s cranked up higher than the Marshall stacks at Van Halen concerts.

The Pearl: Without any doubt whatsoever, the biggest news for me this month is that I've

managed to find and move into an apartment. One of the reasons this is such big news is that,

given the population explosion that is currently occurring in Doha, available apartments are

difficult to find. Although all the pretty new buildings are in the process of being designed and

built, there's not really much in the way of current housing available to house the people who

have come here to do the designing and building, hence the supply/demand curve is shifted

radically towards demand. There also seems to be a distinct hole in the market for one bedroom

apartments which just makes the search that more difficult. However, for some unknown but

undeniably wonderful reason, I am charmed beyond all measure when it comes to securing

accommodation in foreign countries and I managed to keep the streak alive here.

This time I had help though. After returning from the Xmas holidays, one of the directors of my

company took me on a little tour of Doha one morning and part of this tour included visiting the

island on which he lived (yes that's right...island). I'll get into the particulars of this place in a

minute but the pertinent details for now are that (1) it is highly exclusive (2) accommodation

there is in outrageously high demand and (3) it is not a place you would think would normally

cater to or even choose to be associated with a person such as myself. However, at Martin's

suggestion we stopped into the management building located just on the other side of the

causeway that connects The Pearl to the mainland.

The management building is shaped like an oyster (which somehow successfully manages to

marry ritzy with tacky) and has an enormous scale model of the entire development on display

inside. Martin had a brief chat with an agent for the development who looked me up and down

(thankfully I was dressed in a suit) before saying that it must be my lucky day because they had a

one bedroom apartment available for rent in the high rise building right next to my director's!!!

He arranged for access and we actually managed to get in and view it straightaway.

The viewing experience was directly comparable to the day I viewed the cottage I bought in

Ireland. I knew from the minute I walked in and looked out that oh yes this will be mine. The

only downside was that I had to contain myself because I didn’t want the managing agent/seller

to see how exuberantly keen I was for fear of him jacking up the sale/rental price. It also was a

bit awkward saying things like 'the floor in the bathroom needs buffed' or 'the hinge on the

wardrobe sure is creaky' when your director, who lives in the penthouse of the next building, is

blatantly voicing his overwhelming approval. In the end though, I signed on the dotted line and

have since become a true blue resident of the Pearl.

The Pearl is more than just an island; it is actually a chain of manmade islands that were built

out in the Persian Gulf, just to the north of the city centre. They were built with reclaimed land

on the site of an old pearl diving area and were shaped so as to resemble a chain of pearls (note:

this is Qatar's response to Dubai's famous Jumeriah Palm island; I would have absolutely LOVED

to have been at the client presentation when the developer confirmed that ‘yes that’s right,

we've decided to go with the pearl necklace’). On this island chain, they are in the process of

constructing what will eventually become a self-contained city for the super rich consisting of

tower high rises and villas, high end retail shops, restaurants, cafes, beaches, marinas and even

a Venetian carousel or two. Although only about 60 – 70% completed, the elegance of the

development cannot be understated and whilst distinctly Middle Eastern in appearance, the

residential towers still manage to have a Miami-esque feel and are grouped in a circular

configuration around a central marina bordered by a palm tree-lined, boardwalk-style corniche.

The shops along the boardwalk are Rodeo Drive caliber, the restaurants are four-star quality and

the most of the yachts docked in the marinas are larger than my house in Ireland. The

development is billed as 'the most glamorous address in the Middle East' and apart from maybe

a few sultan's palaces, it isn't hard to see why.

Aerial view of The Pearl

My apartment is located in a prime location on this ritzy Middle Eastern Riviera. It is situated on

the 10th floor of a high rise building called the Burj Elegante, a tower building which sits on one

side of the opening to the marina. The apartment itself is a one bedroom with two bathrooms,

separate kitchen, lounge room and dining room areas. Similar to most of the grander

architecture here, it has a stone floor with decorative pillars and marblesque countertops, with

everything white or off-white in colour. The building has a large outdoor mezzanine level with

swimming pool / Jacuzzis / BBQ / lounging areas as well as separate cardio and weight training

gyms. Along with the adjoining tower building, it also has its own private beach which directly

overlooks the city skyline on the other side of the bay.

However, by far the best feature of the apartment is its balcony. Due to being situated in a freak

location in the building created by an architectural feature, my apartment has a large open

verandah that is roughly the same size of my front deck in Ireland. It boasts a 180-degree view

that encompasses the beach, the city skyline which seemingly rises out of the sea, the entrance

to the marina and over about half of the marina itself. In the distance, you can see the National

Stadium lit up at night and on clear days you can see all the way to the airport with departing

aircraft taking off over the bay and flying directly overhead.

OK. Up until this point, I've tried to just relate the unbiased facts without embellishment and

have done my best to keep an emotion that wildly oscillates between overwhelming awe and

sheer disbelief bottled up inside. But now I'm going to level with you.....

This place is fuck off posh. I mean ridiculous. Even those fantasy daydreams I used to have in

engineering classes in college (where I tried to justify all the hell I was putting myself through

with deluded visions of the penthouse apartment on the sea and the yacht that were surely

waiting for me after graduation) weren't even of this caliber. In my past lives, I've been lucky

enough to live in an apartment in Manhattan, a tropical bungalow in Singapore, a listed flat in

London and a cottage on the sea in Ireland so please know that I do not make these statements

lightly. This is some rare real estate air for young Brian indeed.

Night time on The Pearl

Daytime on The Pearl. Arrows in Burj Elegante photo point to the verandah of my dee-lux apartment in the sky-hi-hi.

The only difference is that all of my places in the past have managed to feel....well....homey and

like I belonged there. This place makes me feel more like the proverbial gypsy in the palace or

sort of like I've just moved to Bel Air from west Philly. Although not unpleasant by any means, it

feels well weird and I've had many of those Julia-Roberts-negotiating-the-hotel-lobby-in Pretty-

Woman moments (note: most of these involving incidental, awkward things like not being sure

who to tip for what and how much, but by far the best one was me nabbing the luggage trolley

and wheeling it up to the car park to wheelbarrow my groceries in with....I did that on two

occasions before I was rather discreetly but kindly told that the concierge was supposed to take

care of all that for me). When going for walks on the corniche, it sort of feels like I'm a visitor

that has been granted entry to a posh museum where even the people are part of the display

exhibits.

And whenever I walk out onto the verandah at night and stand there looking out over that

shimmering tapestry of lights and water, it never fails to absolutely exhilarate and I always get

the distinct feeling that Princess Jasmine could drift down at any second on a flying carpet,

eyelashes fluttering and dark Technicolor cleavage heaving in the humid air.

Balcony view at dusk…

…and dark.

I hate to say it but I probably have single handedly reduced property prices on The Pearl by at

least 15% just by moving in.

My favourite part of the whole experience of living here though is the water colour. I have never

encountered this particular shade of sea water before. Although I would struggle to put a name

to it, it would probably best be described as a vividly pale aqua. It is almost the exact same

colour as the Kings Island log flume ride circa 1983 and it is absolutely stunning, especially the

way it enhances the elegance of the development by making it look like it’s framed with liquid

emerald. You fully expect that if you reached in and pulled some out in cupped hands that it

would glow like in Tron. I haven't been in yet....I've been using the excuse that my swim suit is

currently on a ship between Cork and Qatar but the real reason is that the water temperature is

only 70 degrees at the moment and I have no impending desire to freeze my nips off.

Unfortunately I think the vividly pale water colour is a byproduct of its high salinity content and

therefore clarity, so I probably won't be hurrying to scuba dive here either but I do have my eye

on paddle boarding once the water warms up a bit (in between Pimms and lemonades on the

verandah dahlings).

Tron water.

There ARE a few downsides to living here, however.

One is that apparently a relative of the Emir (a niece I've been told but reports vary) got very

publicly drunk on The Pearl at one of the restaurant bars and an alcohol ban was immediately

placed on the whole island chain. Although this only applies to bars/restaurants and not home

consumption, it IS having a dramatic local economic impact. The corniche bar has been shut

down and a number of restaurants have gone out of business due to the lack of being able to

serve wine or beer. This has had a knock on effect on the various towers and amenity buildings

as it has caused some investors to put the various constructions on hold. Most notably, the

developers of the Nikki Beach Club (which have a chain of similar clubs in Cabo, Koh Samui,

Miami and St. Barths and are most famous for their ‘white parties’). Like the others, this one will

have a beach tiki bar, open air nightclub, errrrrm pink hotel, boutique and a swingin' hot spot.

As a resident of the Burj Elegante, I get free membership to this baby when it opens so change

best get a move on. However, everyone seems to agree that there is no question that the ban

will ultimately have to be lifted at some stage and it will be fun once it does to see the rest of

the place shoot up around me.

The second is that it takes me 45 minutes to drive into work and about 30 minutes to drive

home which isn't a whole lot of fun in Doha traffic. However, when my office moves into the

West Bay (city centre) as we're planning on doing in May, this will be significantly reduced to 15

- 20 minutes then and I could even take a water taxi and completely avoid the madness if I so

chose.

The third is that I don't yet own a yacht. Which is handy because if it had to carry around all the

pretentiousness that last sentence contained, it would probably sink.

Despite this sort of quasi-Robin Leach lifestyle, I am happy to report that I am still and expect to

remain very much a low-key shiplap cottage sort of guy but it has been sort of fun masquerading

as royalty for awhile. And after years of humping bags of groceries along the cliff in the pissing

rain, I must admit that taking an air conditioned lift whist the concierge wheels up your produce

is pretty fucking fabulous indeed.

The Work: Unfortunately I won't be able to write about this as much as I thought. Although

acoustical engineering is by no means a difficult field to work in, it CAN nonetheless be a high

end field in terms of the types of projects and clients you become involved with (i.e. given that

the acoustic design of a project is generally a specialized or even a luxury aspect, it is typically

more of a consideration in high end projects or ones where privacy is a critical issue). My

company has therefore made me sign an agreement stating that I won't disclose specific details

of project work on social media, which basically means I can't really write too much about it

here.

I understand the reason for this but I don't think any harm would be done if I mentioned some

projects in general terms. With that in mind, I’ll go ahead and reveal a little but if you happen to

bump into anybody dressed in any form of robed clothing at any point in the near future, please

do not mention the following:

A Palace - yes, a palace. And in the truest sense of the word. The 'receiving room' is a massive

space with two throne style seats at one end and the rest of the room's perimeter is lined with

plush purple couches and ornate tables. It also has a side 'green room' that the Grand Poobah

can retreat to if he wearies of making the talk-talk with the plebs. On this job, I also got to sit at

the table where the treaty that formed the United Arab Emirates was signed which was pretty

shit hot indeed.

A Corporation HQ Building - a US$1 billion dollar project that will be comprised of 9 towers (i.e.

9 skyscrapers!) along with a huge common podium level that has an integral performance

auditorium. The sheer extent of this building will increase the size of its city by over 10%.

Belinda Carlisle…..brilliant

A World Cup Stadium - Qatar hosts the World Cup in 2020 and this is the first of the eight

stadiums that will be built for the games. FIFA require that these stadiums are completed a year

ahead of time so they've got to all be designed and built in 6 years. The more daunting task will

be for the engineers who have to somehow find a way to incorporate the bionic air conditioning

systems that will be required to properly cool a stadium full of 80,000 people in a 120 degree

environment.

That's enough about that. Nobody really wants to hear about work anyway and I've just

discovered that the last thing I want to do when I'm not actually doing it is to write about it.

The Champ: I’ve recently discovered that I work with a man named Muhammad Ali. Given that

the two individual names comprising his moniker are very typical throughout the Muslim world,

you would think this name might be a little bit more common (the Arabian equivalent of Brian

Johnson for example?) but it’s honestly the first time I’ve ever encountered it.

Muhammad’s about 5’-5”, weighs about a buck fifty, is extremely quiet and wears those nerdy

looking short sleeve dress shirts. He is really just a CAD operator who probably plays video

games on his lunch hour. I’m not sure if he’s kissed a girl yet but I would bet no if pushed. And

he definitely heads his meeting notes with the correct star date.

Every time I see the guy though, I find myself having to fight an irrational desire to punch him in

the jaw. He is usually just quietly boiling the kettle and making his tea or idly standing in the lift

and there I am leering at him with peripheral vision wondering if I can knock him down in one.

He’s probably thinking about the charity fund raiser he’s volunteering at over the weekend or

the window display on home safety he’s designing for his local library and I’m there next to him

debating whether a quick rabbit punch to the gut or a roundhouse to the temple would be a

better opening.

I don’t suppose anything will ever come of this little obsession but I guarantee you I could take

him inside of three rounds. Easy. And I even bet I could come up with better poetry.

I think it was Charlie Chaplain who once said that ‘imagination means nothing without doing”

but Charlie Chaplain was never stood in a lift next to Muhammad Ali. If so, he would have taken

a swing for sure.

The United Arab Emirates: Toward the end of the month, I had to travel over to the UAE for

work. Although very similar to Qatar in terms of geography (more palm trees and even more

sand), urbanity (both have new cities with soaring, angular skyscrapers) and economy (their

currency exchanges at about 1:1 and costs of seemingly everything is equivalent), the UAE is

miles ahead in terms of liberalism. There is not nearly the stigma associated with alcohol that

there is in Qatar and you don't operate under the impression that you might get deported if oh I

don't know you kiss someone in public or wear Speedos or jaywalk or something. To be honest, I

wasn't really conscious of feeling like that in Qatar but my short time in the UAE has made me

realise how conservative Qatar actually is. The common perception is that Qatar is really just

Dubai ten years ago and, given the enormous strides forward Dubai has made in the last decade,

you can't help but think (and hope) they'll learn from its example.

The other ENORMOUS difference is the driving experience which was actually the first thing I

noticed. In direct contrast to the conservatism observation in the last paragraph, whilst drivers

in Qatar feel free to go where they please as fast as they can, the majority of the traffic in the

UAE use turn signals, follow basic traffic etiquette and keep relatively close to the speed limit.

Whilst still a bit Wild West when compared with the real world, the roads are WAY more

civilized than Qatar. Plus they’re better signposted and much wider and it really doesn't feel too

much different from Florida at times to be perfectly honest.

I flew into Abu Dhabi for the first leg of the trip. Abu Dhabi is the largest and wealthiest of the

emirates in the UAE and is located in the southern portion of the country. The city itself looks

like any newer mid-sized US city and it even has wide, (imulti-laned) grid like streets and a

beautiful corniche that wraps itself like a coozy around the seafront of the city. This corniche

was absolutely stunning as it was lined with fountains and palm trees and other various

examples of gorgeous landscaping. Given a bizarre, hectic schedule that included a drive up to

Dubai and back in one day, all I really had time for apart from work in Abu Dhabi this time was

to take evening walks along this cornice. But this amounted to a holiday in itself and I took long,

rambling strolls watching the sun set over the water on one side and the city skyline slowly

blinking to life on the other.

A notable event that occurred whilst I was in Abu Dhabi was the occurrence of weird

intermittent fog conditions that were very similar to one I encountered in San Francisco in 2004.

Fog isn’t really the right word for it; it was more like ground level clouds that billowed in off the

pages of a Stephen King book. These conditions actually occurred throughout the UAE and were

reportedly due to the unusually low night-time land temperatures that they were currently

experiencing. It was a distinctly odd feeling to be walking down a street with about 3 feet

visibility and then suddenly emerge from a dark, dank, claustrophobic fog into a vivid, blue-sky,

sunshiny day.

The Abu Dhabi skyline and corniche

I'll likely be spending a lot of time in Abu Dhabi in the future so I won't go into too much detail

about it now but there is one disturbingly embarrassing thing I do have to mention. The

highlight of my time in Abu Dhabi wasn’t the magnificent corniche, nor the sunset walks, nor the

killer fogs. Nor even was it the wonder of seeing unfamiliar sites in an alien country. Without a

shadow of a doubt, the highlight of my time occurred after I had strolled along the magnificent

corniche, through the killer fog and past the vivid sunset, in an unfamiliar, alien country. It was

only then, when I had left all the natural wonders behind, that I spotted a Ponderosa restaurant

shimmering like some kind of prehistoric-gastronomic mirage on the city streets.

A Ponderosa! Are you kidding me? I thought they'd been extinct for years! And to discover one

years later in a desert on the other side of the world! Wow. I honestly was never really a big fan

but when I saw it glistening there across the road, it was suddenly 1981 in Xenia, Ohio and my

parents were splurging on a Ponderosa dinner after a shopping trip to Rinks. I was completely

inconsolable!

So of course I went straight in with the hope of maybe dining on a little nostalgia and was far

from disappointed. Chopped steak, which I think is only ever ordered at Ponderosa and even

then only by kids under the age of 12, was still on the menu and it tasted like it was tenderised

by a playground kickball, cooked on a pep rally bonfire and served on a bed of boyhood bliss.

And the Super Bar! Oh man. I rocked that Super Bar like I was Queen taking the stage at

Wembley during Live Aid. They even had a soft serve ice cream machine and I got it to coax out

the first pile of delicious-tasting chocolate dog poo I'd had in 30 years.

I know that people say you're supposed to always try the local fare when you're in a new place.

When in Rome, eat spaghetti or whatever. But whilst THOSE people are choking down kebabs

and other suspect meats, this mother trucker will be at the Ponderosa rapping to the beat. Da

ha, da ha........

The fog apocalypse and the heaven discovered afterwards.

After Abu Dhabi, the second leg of the trip was a two-hour drive back up to Dubai, the most high

profile of the emirates. From what I understand, it was rightly recognized, by the powers that be

in Dubai near the end of the 20th century, that oil doesn't last forever. The natural fear was that

when the wells went dry, that there would be very little to sustain an economy that had

boomed like it was driven by something more like nuclear fission rather than oil. The solution to

this problem, it was decided, was to turn Dubai into a world class business and tourist

destination by building an emerald city playground full of exclusive hotels, resorts, office

buildings and every single type of shop and shopping experience you could possibly imagine.

This turned out to be the Middle Eastern equivalent to plowing over your corn to build a

baseball field. People not only came, they came in droves. It has clearly succeeded and now

feels distinctively Singapore-like but with every single American restaurant chain represented

(right down to Hardees and Red Lobster for crying out loud) and more shops than in the rest of

the free world combined.

I hadn't been to Dubai in over a decade and upon driving into it, I found the Dubai of 2013

completely indistinguishable from the Dubai of 2001. In Ohio terms, it would be kind of like

returning to Cedarville and finding Cincinnati had been built over top of it. Not only a new city,

but a HUGE city and a very sexy one at that. However, its 'downtown' area is a bit scattered,

actually consisting of two or three separate areas. Whereas Doha is like Manhattan in that most

of its skyscrapers are confined to a concentrated area, Dubai's downtown area is spread out

more like Los Angeles. The main four-lane Abu Dhabi - Dubai highway runs right through the

middle of each of these areas and a ultra-modern elevated train system runs along one side with

futuristic-looking completely-glazed stations dotted along every so often. These areas reminded

me of New Chicago from the Buck Rogers TV show an iddy-biddy bit.

The New Chicago area of Dubai

You cannot bring up Dubai without mention of the Burj Khalifa though. Sleek, sexy and

outrageously intimidating / unassuming at the same time, the Burj Khalifa is the tallest building

in the world and by an outlandish margin. From a relative perspective, it is over twice the height

of the Empire State Building. It's like instead of doing the thing where you find a way to add

another story or two to make a building the tallest or maybe whacking an antennae or

something on the top to get you over the line, the architect of this baby just went "right, how

high can we go before oxygen becomes an issue?". You may remember it as the building that

Tom Cruise almost fell off in that excruciating scene in Mission Impossible 4, though I’m

convinced that the real inspiration for the design of this building came from the palace of the

childlike empress in The Neverending Story. The really weird thing about it though is that,

despite being the tallest building in the world by a ridiculously large margin and although it is

undeniably in-your-face sleek, it doesn't really stand out that way at all. I'm not sure if this is

because of the way it tapers at the top or maybe that the top is actually just lost in the lower

atmosphere but, either way, it impresses without appearing like it’s trying to do so which is

what I actually found most appealing about it.

The Burj Khalifa. Too tall even for these photographs.

I took advantage of this trip to meet up over the weekend with Dominic (an ex-colleague from

England) and his wife Liz (a Galway girl) who now live in Dubai and whom I haven’t actually seen

since their wedding in Galway a couple of years ago. They live in a villa not too far away from

one of the downtown areas that had the most unbelievable desert oasis beverages imaginable

waiting for me in its back garden.

We meet again, you beauty.

After catching up on Thursday, we met up with a bunch of their friends and workmates at a bar

with an outdoor bit that sat next to a little gondola waterway that night. They were a really

enjoyable crowd and it was fun to just sit and be involved in a long conversation over drinks with

a group of people which, I suppose, is a luxury in short supply at the moment. A particularly

notable debate over the rugby was most memorable due to the fact that we are on the eve of

the Six Nations and five of the six nations were represented around the table (Scotland being

the lone absentee). Drinks turned into drunkeness and drunkeness turned into dancing at a

nearby nightclub.

The comedy part of the night (apart from the dancing) was being propositioned by an Indian

hooker on the way out. Her chat up line: "where you staying tonight". She obviously sensed the

yacht vibe I’m obviously rocking now. However, my response was "crashing on a friend's couch"

which was obviously not very yacht-like and definitely not what she was expecting because she

ricocheted away from that statement like a super ball off a tennis racquet.

On the Friday (after a very late start), we went down to the Deira area of Dubai to take an Abra

boat ride down the Dubai creek (more like a river) and wander through the Spice and Gold

Souqs. Some of the shops in these souqs are extremely impressive. The Spice Souq is most

notable for being able to view your spices in sheer bulk form. I'm used to seeing spices in tiny

little glass vials…..the spices in these shops are displayed in barrel sized containers where you

purchase them by weight.

On the Abra. The closest I’ll probably ever come to a yacht

Although not of particular benefit to my culinary skills, I now know where to go in the unlikely

event of a tarragon emergency. The gold souqs were equally as impressive and equally as

sizable. The best display was without question the one that showed off a number of solid gold

'breast plates'. I'm not sure what they're actually called but that's what they looked like: solid

gold chain mail. I actually had to queue up in order to get a photo due to the size of the crowds

that had gathered round it.

Spices and solid gold bibs

On Friday night, we met up again with Charis (she's an English teacher from Devon) and the four

of us had dinner in an open air balcony of an Italian restaurant overlooking the huge fountain

area next to the Burj Khalifa. The fountain display in this area is apparently a weekend ritual in

Dubai and visually it was absolutely spectacular. It was a lot like the fountain area in front of The

Bellagio in Vegas but on a bigger scale and incorporat edfire. It was impressive as it was

mesmerizing. So much so that as soon as I get my yacht, I'm going to look into installing

fountains next.

Fountain display at the base of the Burj Khalifa

Thanks again you guys for a memorable weekend and am already looking forward to the next

one.

The Weather: It simply won't do to use excessive, over descriptive adjectives to describe the hot

summertime weather without providing a clear picture of relative normality during the rest of

the year so I thought I’d try to write down a little subjective description of what the weather is

like every month. The intent of this will not only to be able to provide a robust snapshot (a 'year

in the life') of what the annual climate is like but it will also allow me to look back at what it was

like in January and February whilst I'm roasting away in the evil furnace of July and August and

remind myself that there will be a respite coming round at some stage.

At any rate, the weather in the Middle East in January is absolutely fabulous. Hot enough during

the days for shorts but not too hot for trousers if you're suited up for work or whatever. As far

as I know, it didn't rain at all in January and there was very little cloud cover throughout the

month. This is not surprisingly a big tourist season here as holiday makers are guaranteed

abundant sunshine. But although the sky is blue and relatively clear throughout the month,

there is a prevalent haziness that sort of pulses in intensity. I'm not sure if it’s due to the

dustiness of the air or if its moisture caused by high humidity/low temps like I saw in the UAE

but you are really only aware of it when looking out over long distances. It also dulls the

blueness in the sky somewhat but only on the lower half of the sky (i.e. the horizons).

The evenings are comfortable cool and I usually wear a sweatshirt and shorts when I go out

walking or running on the corniche. Lows during the night typically bottom out just above 10°C /

50°F and I have to say that sleeping underneath a duvet with the balcony windows open and the

wind blowing in off the Gulf is pure bliss. If you could add maybe five degrees to this weather

and provide it year round, you would probably have managed to create the most perfect climate

on Earth.

Nighty night everyone