This week, my friends, I'm in the Middle East, in a far-away kingdom called Abu Dhabi. For those that don't know, Abu Dhabi (c'mon, you know you love saying the name) is part of the United Arab Emirates. The UAE is comprised of 7 different kingdoms, or emirates. The famous Dubai is included in this group. Abu Dhabi is the richest and largest of the bunch, and leads the rest of the nation.
From a geographical perspective, Abu Dhabi sits on the coast of the Persian Gulf. I'm only about 200 miles from Iran, just to make you nervous ; ) (see map above). However, it's very safe in the UAE, compared to several other places in the Middle East that have experienced recent unrest. I think it only has about a million people. About a quarter of the population are actual UAE nationals. The rest are ex-pats from countries all over the world. The nationals are quite wealthy, and this probably keeps things rather calm ; )
To reach Abu Dhabi, I had to take three different flights, resulting in a total air time of about 18 hours. The elapsed time from when I left the house in Austin, to when I arrived at the hotel here, was about 27 hours! I don't think I smell very good, after all of that...
The reason that I'm here in the UAE, is to make a presentation at a press conference for our company. The information that I - with my colleagues - will present, won't be seen in any publications for several weeks, to coincide with a product introduction. We try to give the press time to actually play with the product, so that when it's available to the public, there are plenty of reviews (hopefully good ones) to help guide consumers to embrace/buy the computers.
We're staying at the Yas Hotel, just outside the main city of Abu Dhabi. It's an amazing place:
Yeah, I don't think I could have taken the shot from this angle ; )
The entire island was built to host F1 (Formula One) races. These are the type of race cars that are used in the Indianapolis 500. It's a sport that is much more popular in Europe and the Middle East. There is an actual race course built under/around the hotel:
The view from my room shows the race track, as well as a marina. As you can imagine, there are a few inexpensive little boats sitting in the harbor:
A short video, showing the hotel, marina and racetrack together. The "stands" for viewing a race are scattered throughout the track:
The interior of the hotel is interesting. Although it's a "western" style hotel, the patterns on the walls are reminders of Arabic influence on design:
Just outside of the room that we're holding the press conference, they have a little reminder of how popular F1 is around here:
Just so you know, it's hot here ; ) The average temperature during the day this week is about 109 degrees F. At night, it doesn't get any cooler than about 85. My colleagues keep telling me that this would prepare me for the summer in Texas ; ) I thought I would take a stroll at about 7am, but it was still plenty hot. I've never appreciated air conditioning more...
That's it for now. The rest of today will be spent in set-up and rehearsal for the event tomorrow. I hope I'll have time to take pictures of the event. It's going to be a really busy day. I hope my presentation goes well ; )
2 comments:
I'm always amazed at some of the yachts--always blows my mind that people actually have that much money ; )
Good luck with your presentation.
Just picture everyone in their underwear. That wouldnt work for me, but maybe it will for you. :)
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