a night out in Dubai

I had a meeting in Dubai yesterday with some customers from Pakistan. Because they flew in to see us, we took them out for iftar.

My colleague, AH, made reservations at the Palmyra restaurant in the Atlantis hotel. I was looking forward to the experience as I've never been to iftar before. I wasn't disappointed. However, our dinner almost got canceled because some idiot in my company started to worry the dinner could be seen as a bribe. We were like dude, they already bought stuff from us. And it's really, really rude to not take a customer out for dinner when they've flown to see you on their own dime. But, the lawyers at my company have to justify their existence I guess.

The restaurant is in a hotel owned by the Jumeirah group. They built the first 7 star hotel, the burj al arab, which is on the same property as the Palmyra. The iftar consisted of 6 food stations, sort of buffet style, with all kinds of middle eastern food. For drinks I had what was described to me as "rose juice" (roses squished into water...it was interesting) and "fruit juice" (juice of local emirate fruits, each country has their own special juice they serve at iftar and everyone is supposed to drink that juice to break their fast). One of my customers tried to talk me into drinking this purplish pink concoction (milk with roses in it) but luckily I'm allergic to milk.

I had the best hummus ever, a dish that consisted of pumpkin and chick peas all squished together like hummus but it was orange and tasted like pumpkin. Dr. T said I had to eat at least one unhealthy thing (a lot of food for iftar is fried) so I had this pastry with a sweetened cheese in it. I was a little worried about eating it because I brought it back to the table and everyone was like "ooh, what's that thing?" but it was good. I could go on and on about the food (we were there for almost 4 hours eating) but I will spare you. Except to mention that I also ate a bunch of dates, and I always thought I didn't like them, but they are actually quite good so I'm going to buy some next time I go food shopping.

Then AH and I left our customers (they were headed to the airport with Dr. T - in fact, they had so much fun at our iftar they almost missed their flight home) and he took me to the Burj Al Arab. It's funny, when that place first opened I told a bunch of people I worked with on TRAILBLAZER that I was going to go there some day. Finally made it...

We went to the Skyview Bar. AH goes there all the time and was able to get us a reservation on an hour's notice (impossible for the mere mortal). He then yelled at me for trying to order the house wine (there was a $75 per person cover just to get in) and had his waiter bring me some wines to sample (go me, I picked the most expensive one, $200 for one glass, Jeffy, see how you've spoiled me). We got the best table, with a view of the city, and they brought us snacks like these little cheese quiches, cucumbers and olives, and this sushi thing which was smoked salmon wrapped in tamago, with caviar on top.

A long conversation ensued on a number of topics. I found out AH's family is very famous in Pakistan (they are like the bin Laden's of Pakistan) and that's why he has so much pull in the UAE. We both love to talk about architecture frameworks so that was a couple hour conversation. Then we came up with this little side work project that, if we can pull it off, is going to be a huge deal in the middle east. My favorite story that AH told was about his crap work issued laptop (he uses a mac). He said that the only reason he still has his work laptop is that when his 1 year old son cries, if he puts him in front of the laptop, he'll start banging the keys and forget about crying. Well, the story is funny if you could see him acting that out, and if you knew what our work laptops were like (pieces just randomly fall off of mine, and in the past 6 months I've replaced the keyboard, memory, and the mouse, which I actually had to replace twice).

Finally AH's wife called and said she was heading back home from her mom's, so we headed home as well. We got this poor cab driver who was not happy about taking us to Abu Dhabi (it's an almost 2 hour trip, and it was in the wee hours of the morning by this point in the story). AH asked him if it was his last trip of the shift and the cabbie said yes. We were like uh oh. The cabbie fell asleep 3 times that I saw, and then we almost ran out of gas.

The cabbie of course waited until we were in desperate straits to look for a gas station. Here's a description of the road between Dubai and Abu Dhabi: sand, construction, more sand, unfinished overpasses, sand, more sand, some road work, construction. We took this little, I wouldn't even call it an exit as much as a random turn-off that just happened to connect to the highway. We drove around this weird installation that had all these armed guards. I was getting a little worried. Then we finally found a gas station and the cabbie's credit card didn't work. I was exhausted and hot by then (running around in a suit and real shoes, the first time I've not worn flip flops since arriving here) so I was like just give him some money for the gas. But AH said we shouldn't, and miraculously, after about 10 minutes of arguing, the cabbie's card started working again.

As we pulled into Abu Dhabi we were almost in a major accident because the cabbie was speeding like crazy and the police, for what ever idiot reason, decided to set up a blockade around a blind corner to make sure everyone had on their seat belt. Our cabbie didn't, but the cops didn't notice, probably because we almost hit them swerving to avoid hitting the stopped cars in front of us. I think AH was saying some really bad words in Urdu, but every word in Urdu kind of sounds like a bad word to me.

The best part of the story is Dr. T called us when we got into the cab and said the pakis want both of us to work on their project in Islamabad. I was worried they wouldn't like me because I'm american and a woman, but they were incredibly nice. In fact, one of the guys, who is a general in the paki army, told me "you should come to Islamabad because it's not as dangerous as everyone says". I suppose, being under the protection of a general, that's probably true.

Then he said "We are a civilized society. You will not see our women covered up." That was an insult to all the emiratis in the room, since here all the local women must wear a burqa that even covers their face (though some don't cover their eyes). This area of the world never fails to confuse and amuse me. The stereotypes of most people in the middle east are totally true, but then not true at all.