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Thursday, November 11, 2010

Chasing my Tail

As noted in yesterday’s post, things have been particularly hectic this week. I was making a presentation at one of our major marketing events earlier in the week and was pre-occupied with getting to grips with the subject matter - there is nothing worse than speaking to a roomful of industry contemporaries and having difficult questions lobbed at you without having it least some idea of what the answer may be. However, the main issue pre-occupying me was trying to locate reasonably priced tickets for the F1 this weekend.

I have to say at the outset that I am not a “petrol head” and sitting next to a race track with the scream of high powered engines in my ear for a couple of hours is not at the top of my list of “must dos”. However needs must etc. and as a result of a work commitment, I had to try to source some “reasonably” priced tickets. I only needed one set for the Sunday. However, the tickets were sold as passes for the whole 4 days. There was also a bewildering aray of seating available in various different stands (it would seem that yachts were also available as a viewing base) and the prices from the official suppliers were eye-watering expensive. I therefore adopted plan B which was to see what was available on the “grey” market through Dubizzle and Souq.com. Again the prices were high but there did seem to be pretty good availability although my early enquiries drew a blank in getting tickets for the Sunday only. Having assured various people that the F1 plans were well in train yesterday’s all day meeting prevented finalising arrangements and I had a rather anxious night’s sleep as today was likely to be my last chance to get the tickets organised (the racing starts today). As luck would have it prices were starting to move in the right direction when I logged on to Dubizzle this morning, and I was eventually able to secure front row tickets at cost price from a chap based down in Burjaman who was involved in supplying some of the equipment to the race track – a quick taxi ride and the deal was done (he even provided a receipt and asked for my card!). Hopefully the logistics of actually getting there and sorting out some suitable client hospitality will be as straight-forward and that will be my task going forward.

Having now obtained the tickets and notwithstanding my previous comments, I am now rather looking forward to the event so will keep you posted about how it goes. I did however se anews report earlier today suggesting that there might be "heavy rain" on Sunday - given that we have had (literally) a coupld of drops of rain asince around MArch this would be the hieght of irony - Abu Dhabi apparently usually averages .2mm of rain for the whole of November so I guess it might all fall at once.

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