Friday the 13th

 As they say, the best laid plans of mice and men ….. .

My plan today was to work through the morning and then do some networking/BD at the golf in the afternoon.

After a pleasant breakfast at the club lounge (very good croissant as befits a Hotel chain based in France), I tuned into work to find that the email (and associated  utilities) was not working. 

This was a matter of some concern - I was anticipating receipt of an updated report for further review before the weekend. I then received a call from a client who required urgent advice and was assured that the documents would be with me imminently.

Cue 2 hours of grappling with various alternative ways of transmitting large volume documents.

We eventually found a way to transmit and review the documents and albeit in a somewhat piece-meal fashion - not at all ideal.

I was eventually able to catch up on the golf and while some of the people I was chatting too suggested that the today’s date might have played a part in the debacle, the whole episode does highlight how dependant we are on a fully functioning email system.

After a very enjoyable afternoon in the sunshine at the 16th hole, I caught up with A at the Chinese restaurant at the Hotel. In all the years we have been visiting, this was our first visit and I must say we have been remiss - I had an excellent Peking Duck and we will be back again!

Warm welcome

 A and I are staying for a few days on our favourite Hotel on the Palm. 

We had visited regularly for “staycations” when the family were still living here and A and I had stayed at the beginning of the year just before A returned to UK after his New Year break. 

However, this was our first visit back after the excitement in February when the Fairmont Hotel  - just over the side of the Palm - had been targeted by Iran and judging by our welcome it is clear that the Hotel is keen to encourage visitors.

The service is usually excellent in any event which is the reason we keep coming back but we certainly felt very cosseted today - with personal greetings from various long time staff members and a cake on our departure from the lounge for Dinner (which we boxed up for later consumption).

The seafood restaurant was also having an all you can eat Moule frites evening (including a couple of glasses of wine) for AED175 so all in all we had a terrific evening!

Brief intermission

Moving away for the moment from my recap of the year, we are in the middle of one of the set piece professional service annual events where various of our competitor firms put on seminars and/or networking evenings, and various consultants and eminent practitioners descend on Dubai for a week of jollity and learning. 

Apart from our own session, I normally try to avoid getting too involved in the other events although I thought that I had signed up for this morning’s Sunrise bike ride which I anticipated would helpfully provide today’s 30 minutes of exercise as well as providing  good practice for next week’s third build up ride for the Spinneys race next year.

Sadly however on checking my records it appears that whilst I had carefully put the event in my Calendar, I had neglected to actually sign up for it (and it was now fully booked) so for the third day in a row I had to content myself with a 30 minutes walk around the block with A (although this was obviously very pleasant and a good chance for a chat).

I did however manage to participate in our own contribution to the week’s festivities which we held today at a swish Hotel in the heart of the financial district. We had a team of our juniors staging a very entertaining debate followed by a well judged speech from our guest speaker (freshly arrived from UK) followed by a panel session and Q&A moderated by your’s truly.

It is always quite difficult to gauge these kind if events - you want to have something that sets the topic apart from the myriad other events and presentations that are competing for the audience’s attention but at the same time not creating huge amounts of additional work (or giving away too many trade secrets). 

I think we managed to strike just about the right balance this year with a topical subject and some interesting presentations which kept the audience (which was pretty much a full house) sufficiently engaged to participate enthusiastically in the Panel session/Q&A at the end. Now have to start thinking up something for next year’s event.

A year in recap - Part 2

 Our Summer holiday was a river cruise - third year in a row and this time starting off in Amsterdam and hearing up the Rhine to Switzerland. 

The Summer had already been a hot one - my earlier visit to France for Golf and then back to the UK for a week had been characterised by beautiful sunshine and a noticeable lack of air-conditioning and this (the clear blue skies and scorching heat) continued on my return to Europe at the end of July.

Indeed, the only rain I saw throughout the month or so I was back (I WFH for the last couple of weeks in Kent) was on the first day of the cruise - I had travelled to Amsterdam from Dubai to meet Alex and E’s brother D the day before the cruise was due to start (E and V flew over the following day) and we had a day of browsing around the high-ways and by-ways of the Damm. 

The following day we joined the boat (a rowdier bunch of fellow passengers than previous years with plenty of Americans) and our first excursion was a graffiti art lesson at the modern art gallery followed by the opportunity to practice what we had learned on some nearby walls - as it turned out - in the pouring rain. It was actually great fun although V decided to spray her artwork (a fire breathing dragon) next to my bit of wall so my creation (a wall - it was intended to be ironic) suffered rather  by comparison…..

We then set off up the Rhine stopping off at Dussledorf where D and I explored the city by bike. However, this was as far as we managed to get in our original boat. The glorious Summer (and accompanying drought) had reduced water levels so much that the Rhine gorges were not passable so we had to change boats - taking a coach to Koblenz (scene of a famous camping stop by me and my mate J during our interrailing holiday some 40 years ago…..) and after exploring the old town another transfer to Kehl to pick up a new boat on the other side of the low water levels (E and V and had gone directly to the boat and so we caught up with them in the evening).

In Kehl we had a coach trip to Heidleberg - another stopping off place for my interrailing adventure and  - unsurprisingly - just as beautiful as I remembered it. We took a trip up to the  Castle and had a wine tasting before exploring the Old town. 

The following day we travelled to Strasbourg where we celebrated V’s birthday in style with a tour of the city - it is absolutely beautiful - I had been expecting something quite modern but the Cathedral and Petite France was lovely -  a most unexpected pleasure.

A year in recap - Part 1

 As previously noted, there has been no shortage of excitement this year. It got off to a relatively straightforward start as A and I travelled back early from Christmas in the UK - me to prepare for the last build up ride before the Spinneys 92 km race and A to see in the New Year with his Dubai based friends.

Unfortunately my bike ride was cancelled due to fog but otherwise January passed without further incident and in  early February I had a few days in Riyadh for work before E and my Cousin K and his wife A came out for a holiday - K and A as part of a cruise that took in a large chunk of the Gulf including Qatar.

During their stay, I did the Spinney’s Cycle challenge and  we also had a couple of days at a nice hotel in Fujairah - one of the Northern Emirates  whose shoreline faces towards Iran, 30 miles across the Gulf of Oman/Straits of Hormuz to the North. 

Fortunately, the the three of them had headed back home by the time everything started kicking off at the end of February but the next couple of months was certainly an interesting experience with plenty of bangs and crashes overhead as the Iranians put the UAE’s air defence systems to the test.

Whilst certainly not something I would want to repeat, there was never a permanent sense of jeopardy although there were some uncomfortable nights particularly with the regular missile alerts and unsurprisingly the family suggested that rather than they coming to see me for Easter as originally planned, I should go to them in the UK so I headed back at the end of March for a bit of R&R.

By the time I returned in mid-April things were much more settled although my travel around the region was limited until a visit to KSA in July. I did however manage a trip back to Europe in May for some Golf in France (and catching up with the family again in UK) as well as some work related travel to London in June and to South Korea in July. Stay tuned for further updates.

Golfing Sunday

Taking advantage of A’s presence in Dubai, we also decided to take advantage of the cooler weather (and, killing two birds with one stone, also ticked off today’s 30 minutes of exercise) with a round of golf at Meydan’s The Track.

In a city that is well served by golf courses, this is probably the closest to where I live and so when planning a round, this is usually the most attractive option. It also has the advantage of being floodlit so an evening round is also possible (today we started at 5:30pm and so had around 45 minutes of daylight before enjoying views back towards the Burg Khalifa as the sun set).

Night golf is all very well unless, like me, you are a little wayward when it comes to ball direction. Sadly, I very much lived up to my somewhat erratic approach to the game today, and managed to lose around 5 or 6 balls. On one occasion, my ball ended up stuck in some particularly malodorous mud (think the bog of eternal stench in  Labyrinth). Having (very) carefully extracted it from that hazard, I then managed to slice it miles off course into some dense undergrowth where no amount of thrashing about was able to reveal its location.

In any event, I am always a little wary about scrabbling around too much in the dark undergrowth (the floodlights only really cover the fairways) given the number of snakes and spiders reputed to reside therein. We were, however, accompanied by more visible examples of the local wildlife during the round in the form of oryx (in various shapes and sizes) and a desert fox.

All in all, a very enjoyable round and will try to post some of the wildlife photos in later instalments.

BBQ Saturday

 Lovely day to today weather-wise and food-wise.The recent slightly cooler temperatures continued and we were able to have BBQ in the back garden for the first time for many months. 

Our Landlord had recently decided to give up on maintaining the grass in the lawn and had gone full artificial - it looked like someone had laid a vivid green carpet outside our back window and so we had the ideal opportunity to test it out.

To be honest, I suspect that it will take me a while to get used to the change - it certainly looks neat and tidy but I think that I preferred the more natural look even if it was mostly moss!

It did not however, detract from our enjoyment of the BBQ. We started with lobster tail - an old favourite from our days at 10B Street - and some giant prawns which we marinated in a combination of paprika, garlic powder, lemon juice, pepper and olive oil. We then had a huge ribeye steak with some garlic butter sauce with buratta and onion washed down with some Chapel Down sparkling wine.

A great culinary start to the weekend but a high bar has been set!