"Out of Office"

A beautiful mosque in the mountains.

Last week brought some welcome diversions from my desk, both work-related and ‘extracurricular’. Mid-week, I accompanied the director of our Middle East office and some visitors on a tour of some of the off-site service facilities that handle all the laundry and sterilization systems for Dubai’s hospitals. A major operation that is integral to patient care that certainly doesn’t get a lot of air time... interesting to follow the system from the plant processing to delivery at the patient’s bedside in the Trauma Centre. Lots of opportunities for Six Sigma projects and ‘crashing’ of network diagrams there... my operations class started flooding back to me! The tour also brought back strong memories of my visits to textile factories and breweries in Tanzania when I was showcasing the local infrastructure capacity to a representative from Danone and the Grameen Bank. It’s always astounding to see the scale of the work done in these facilities, certainly making me much more appreciative of the final products produced for my consumption.

Kelly and I at Chi, a new Dubai 'hot spot'.

I spent all of Thursday afternoon at the Trauma Centre, where I was afforded a private audience with the Canadian Hospital Director, who has an incredibly impressive C.V. with management experience across Canada and the Middle East. We discussed some of the challenges currently being addressed at the hospital related to quality management, personnel, change management, and implementation of the hospital’s strategic plan. An incredibly interesting discussion that was peppered with input from the company’s HR manager; the discussion eventually turned to challenges unique to management in the Middle East, which I’ll save for its own blog entry.

Off-roading!

My weekend plans to off-road and camp with the teachers across the border in Oman were thwarted by H1N1, or at least a closely related sister virus... thankfully, I wasn’t the victim of the flu, but the South African Tarzan/G.I. Joe/man-of-off-roading-legend who had taken responsibility for planning the camping trip (i.e. planning a packed itinerary of hiking and wadi swimming, plotting the non-marked roads that would lead us to the best viewpoints etc.) came down with a horrible flu and the trip was nearly cancelled.

Fujairah's local wildlife...

Thankfully, another couple stepped up at the last minute to spearhead an abbreviated version of the camping trip, so I set off as one of a group of eight Canadians (a bit of a fluke that it was such a homogenous group) driving up to the Emirate of Fujairah to camp in the mountains. We drove out of town, watching out the windows as construction sites melted into untamed sand dunes, patrolled by wild camels. Eventually, the landscape started growing vertically into rugged mountain ranges, which we promptly pulled the 4x4s into to start off-roading.

Sharon, dwarfed against the mountains.

After a couple hours spent bumping over boulders (everyone in two newly purchased Jeeps and one new Durango), we arrived at an isolated pitch of land surrounded by the hills. Not a ton of wildlife to contend with in the desert, save a few hundred flies who found us as soon as we turned off the main road, a couple hawks, and one lonely donkey who I found munching on leftovers off our dinner table when I woke up in the morning. All in all, a very welcome respite from the city with a great group of Canucks... complete with campfires, barbeques, and summery night skies. Not bad for the last days of October!

Megan, Sharon and I.

Halfway there...

The view from my desk on the 19th floor on a relatively clear day, looking out to the Gulf over a big construction site... those wispy lines on the horizon are the edges of "The World" islands.

These late October days seem to be slipping through my fingers... already halfway through my residency here, it’ll be Christmas before I know it!

A nighttime view of the Etisalat Tower (Etisalat is a major UAE telecommunications firm). In the background, the 'small' yellow-lit building is Dubai's World Trade Centre. The WTC was built in 1978, and was the highest building in Dubai and the UAE at the time, and the first high-rise tower on Sheikh Zayed Road.

Last week’s accomplishments:

- Completed two feasibility proposals for new healthcare facilities: one in the Gulf region, one in the Caribbean. Fingers are crossed for a business trip to the islands!

- Had successful fact-finding meetings with medical equipment specialists and an ‘inside source’ with expert insight into the medical insurance landscape of the emirate, who we met in the corner of a restaurant outside of working hours and who spoke to us only when we guaranteed anonymity. Let me tell you, reputable information is not at all easy to come across in this city! Everyone keeps reminding me how much I will appreciate the ease of access to data and proper research tools when I return home to Canada. Though it may be an uphill struggle at times, each piece of the puzzle brings me one step closer to understanding the Dubai healthcare market.

- Officially presented my market research, gap analysis, project proposal and strategy to the clients. We presented on Saturday morning (the equivalent of Sunday morning in Canada), which meant that I lost most of my weekend to work... but it was worth it to have positive feedback from the client and my manager. It’s an interesting position to find oneself in - essentially ‘telling’ Emirati nationals, who have lived here all their lives, what’s REALLY happening to their city’s healthcare system.

Hobies on the beaches at Al Hamra.

- Finally made some headway on a volunteer project for Opportunity International, a microfinance organization that I became involved with earlier this year. My promise to them to keep up my efforts during my term in the UAE has been harder to keep than I thought, due to my lack of internet connectivity outside of the office.

- For my brothers, the Canadian National Frisbee finalists (from your very proud sister): re-learned how to properly throw my backhand in Frisbee, thanks to a patient teammate. I’ve been overthinking it for two years and have been relying heavily on my flick (forehand)... officially back in the game.

A night on the beach at Barasti... myself &the nurses: Kelly, Courtney, & Jodie.

I salvaged a bit of the weekend by checking out Barasti (a beach resto/bar & notorious ex-pat haunt) with some of the trauma centre nurses, where I spent the evening listening to them one-up each other with gruesome emergency room cases. As I’ve mentioned before, the Trauma Centre staff always report that the injuries they see here are more extreme than any they’ve experienced elsewhere... so they had a lot of material to pull from! After spending a day at my computer working on last-minute changes to the client presentation, I met the teachers for Indian food and travelled on to a proper surprise birthday party for one of their co-workers... complete with party hats, ice-cream cake, exploding confetti, and a true hide-in-the-dark-jump-out-and-shock-the-birthday-girl moment of surprise.

Kelly, Dan, Duncan, Jodie and Courtney at Barasti... shisha and a backdrop of construction. How very "Dubai".

In exciting news, the weather is continuing to cool off here, which is making for some absolutely glorious summery evenings. The humidity seems to be lifting, and I’m told it will continue to get better as December approaches. Since I was dreading the heat of the city, this is a welcome change! This coming weekend, I will be spending Halloween in the mountains of Oman (our neighbouring country) on a dune-bashing/wadi-swimming camping weekend with the teachers. I’m very excited to get out of the city for a short while and am sure I will have lots of exciting stories to relate upon my return back to Dubai. Additionally, I have officially extended my layover en route to Toronto so that I can spend a couple days in Istanbul... trying my best to make the most of the travel opportunities in the region!

It's a Small World...

A very uneventful week at work last week, but the business case draft has come together (for the most part). We’ve yet to present to the client, and I’ve yet to get heavy feedback from my boss, but I think we’re headed in the right direction. I had a couple more meetings with hospital directors as well... it’s been very convenient to ‘pose’ as a student (not a huge stretch for me) in order to get the inside track on what’s really going on in Dubai healthcare. It’s so interesting to be here on the ground as all the systems become established in this city... though it sometimes seems as though I’m witnessing many of the initial stumbles (i.e. the mandatory health insurance scheme that was to be rolled out in the beginning of 2009, but has been postponed indefinitely so as not to give struggling employers any more reasons to lay off their expat workers), but I’m sure the system will come together more and more over the next few years.

Skyscrapers on Sheikh Zayed Road, as seen from the front doors of my office tower.

Fairly quiet weeknights as well last week… a handful of Frisbee injuries at our game on Monday (I managed to get away with only a goose egg and a huge bruise to follow… others were bleeding & dislocated), and a Thai dinner to celebrate the birthday of one of the nurses.

The historically restored neighbourhood of Bastikiya, close to the Dubai Creek.

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The weekend arrived, and I set out to sample the newest thing in Dubai transportation – the Metro (the subway… but above ground on raised tracks). The Metro opened the day before my arrival – 09/09/09 – and has created quite a stir in the city. I travelled all the way out to the Mall of the Emirates to meet up with the teachers, saving myself a bundle in taxi fares and feeling quite triumphant about conquering a new part of Dubai (although, truth be told, I arrived 45 minutes late… but that was the partly the fault of taxi traffic en route to the Metro station!). I took the Metro again later in the weekend (two times, officially an expert) and had to laugh at the fact that 50% of the passengers were taking photos and videoing the entirety of their public transit trip out the window, even though it was dark outside.

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Sneaky picture taken on the Metro...

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I spent Thursday night with Sharon and the teachers at a ‘building party’ where I was introduced as an MBA student from McMaster, and found that I shared a handful of close mutual friends with another party attendee… when we relocated to a nearby hotel to enjoy some expat-friendly live music, I ran into an old classmate from my undergraduate at Western. It’s a very small world!

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Enjoying live music with two "friends of friends"... Britt and Sharon.

'The Lost Chambers' at the Atlantis resort on the Palm Jumeirah.

I tagged along with the teachers once again on Saturday on a day trip to the Atlantis resort at the tip of the Palm Jumeirah (http://www.palmjumeirah.ae/), where we spent the day in the sun at the “Aquaventure” water park. The park itself is beautiful and huge, which seems to be the status quo for any Dubai project… it includes slides that zip through shark tank aquariums, a tidal wave section of the lazy river, and the “Leap of Faith” slide (pictured below), which also goes through the aquarium at about 100km an hour – not exactly the ideal speed for checking out the fish! Thankfully, these lovely teachers have shared their “Entertainer” discount books with me, which entitles the bearer to a 2-for-1 deal on almost everything in this city. It certainly makes the city a little more accessible for a student like me!

The "Leap of Faith" at Aquaventure, at the Atlantis on the Palm Jumeirah. This (doctored) photo has been borrowed from a promotional website... I don't remember the sharks looking quite so large...

Started another new week at the office yesterday… excited to have a couple new projects on my plate, details to follow.

A couple ‘Dubai-isms’ to sign off with:

- On the way back from Abu Dhabi a couple weeks ago, I glanced at the speedometer and saw that we were cruising along at a comfortable 160 km/h. Every minute or so, we had to move out of the passing lane to let other cars get past us – they must have been going upwards of 180 km/hr. The WHO recently released a report stating that UAE road users are seven times more likely to be killed than those in the UK. I’m not surprised. Combine the speed with the fact that many drivers don’t wear seat belts – believing that if it’s their time to go, God will take them… it’s out of their hands.

- On the same note, taxi drivers are maniacs here. Seriously. Though they have a built in sensor on the meter which informs them that they are speeding, they seem to pay it no mind. Sometimes I try to explain to them the logic of going the speed limit to yield a higher fare at the end of the trip… most of the time I just buckle up and focus on the money I’m saving.

- When I arrived, there was a bottle of shampoo in my apartment designed to “prevent Hairfall”. I didn’t know what “Hairfall” was. Now I do. I’m losing fistfuls of hair every day due to the hard water here… so along with my greying locks, I may come home balding as well.

- A good segueway into the great water debate… I’m hugely anti-bottled water/pro-tap water by nature, and have brought that mentality here as well. I don’t like the concept of paying hefty bills for drinking water, and I just have a ton of confidence in water treatment systems. Apparently that may be a mistake. I’ve been warned that the excessive amount of construction, combined with uncleaned holding tanks and sketchy quality standards means that I may be slowly killing myself by drinking from the tap… at best, that kidney stones will soon be a part of my life. I’m almost halfway through my residency here and I haven’t died yet… so I find myself politely ignoring everyone’s kind advice (but please provide more if you have better insight into the situation than I do!). Please send flowers if this kidney stone issue ends up as my reality.

Until next week…

Starting a new week at a movie under the stars - with Kelly and my roommate, Margaret.

My one-month anniversary with Dubai

This weekend, I celebrated my one-month anniversary with Dubai... hard to believe that I’m already a third of the way through this residency. I’m sure it will be December before I know it!

Atrium decor at the BurJuman Centre mall.

Work continues to be busy. Last week was spent working with Suman to madly scrape together our research into a workable presentation for management to prove to them that our data collection was coming together to form a logical argument... we spent most of the week working and re-working the numbers to ensure that they looked right and had a successful presentation on Thursday. It’s almost time to start writing... I will be happy to see this business case start to take shape as the pieces come together. Many of the assumptions that the team made at the beginning of the project regarding the healthcare gaps that needed filling were off the mark (surprise, surprise)... it has been an interesting exercise in learning what the real drivers of demand are in Dubai’s currently unpredictable market.

Hello lovers.. (window shopping at the Gold Souk)

I started off the week with Sharon and her teaching friends... a relaxing evening spent at “Films Under the Stars”, a free event at the Wafi Centre (a mall nearby my apartment, located next to the pyramid-shaped Raffles Dubai, with an entrance that “looks like Egypt” complete with 50ft tall Pharaoh statues). Attendees show up to the rooftop terrace that hosts a quasi-drive-in... instead of cars, you sit on bean-bag chairs that look like M&Ms and order your theatre snacks from wait staff who circulate during the double feature. A lovely way to spend an evening now that the weather is starting to cool down after the intense heat of the summer.

The following evening was less tranquil... my debut game with the Flying Carpets ultimate Frisbee team. Work had been insane that day and I didn’t get a chance to have a proper dinner beforehand – huge mistake, when combined with the heat, humidity, and one especially long point, I was nearly the unconscious new girl in the middle of the field. I managed to rally back and hope that I can put out a better effort this week. The team is made up of many very kind expats... as predicted, a good way to meet more new faces.

View of the Burj Dubai, now set to open on December 2, 2009 (UAE National Day).

Mid-week, I was informed by my boss that I would be accompanying the management team to Abu Dhabi (UAE capital city, to the south of us) for their final presentation of a hospital development business case to a client. Everyone wants to build a hospital in this country! I saw this as a good opportunity to get an idea of what my finished product should look like, and I think management saw this as a good opportunity to impress the clients with a new Western team member… specifically, “Meaghan, a consultant from the Toronto office” (“Not true! I’m a student!” I think to myself…). All in all, a good day and a great chance for me to see where the bar for project output has been set, along with a new city! I will need to get back to Abu Dhabi to take a proper photo of the Sheikh Zayed mosque, which is nothing short of spectacular…

The dancing fountains (again!)... view from Karma Kafe.

After a long week in the office, I was pleased to see that after a month, I had graduated to ‘local’ status (by Dubai standards) as I was asked by Hillary to HOST a blind date (as I’ve come to call these funny meetings with strangers/friends of friends over dinner) with her friend Alexa, who was coming through Dubai en route to travel Africa. I brought along another newbie, a Canadian nurse named Kelly, and the three of us swapped travel stories on the outside terrace of Karma Kafe by the dancing fountains (very unimaginative of me… I returned to the site of my very first Dubai blind date with Hillary!). We later met Hillary and her hedge fund friends at their work event, held at Zuma (modelled after the one in London… similar to Ki in TO).

Dubai newbies on a blind date... from left: me (1 month in Dubai), Kelly (1 week in Dubai), Alexa (1 day in Dubai)

‘Thanksgiving dinner’ this year was held on Saturday night, complete with a bottle of red & ordered-in thin crust pizza… toasting to family, friends, health, and happiness with Kelly the Canadian and Margaret, my Scottish roomie. Thinking of all of you at home who I am so very thankful to have in my life… already looking forward to reuniting in December. Until next week…

Evening view of the pool from my bedroom balcony.




My second-rate attempt at arts & crafts with Canadian fall leaves mailed from home (thanks, Mom!)

Dubai - The City

A stuffed camel in the Dubai Museum.

I must admit that I knew very little about this city before signing on to this internship, aside from a vague idea that it was the “Vegas of the Middle East”. That’s partly true, but there’s quite a lot of history and culture here that make its present day state even more intriguing.

Studying the Quran - a display in the Dubai Museum.

Early settlers in the region established themselves in fishing and pearling villages along the Dubai Creek, whose mouth opens into the Arabian Gulf. This ideal location and the friendly trading atmosphere of the city made Dubai the main trading port along the Gulf Coast in the 1800s, with dhows (sailboats) arriving from all over to trade in the souks (markets). By the mid-1900s, the fishing and pearling industries had died down, and the discovery of oil ramped up local development and set the stage for ‘today’s’ Dubai to emerge.

Window shopping for pearls in the Gold Souk.

To understand how Dubai established itself as a major entertainment destination, it’s important to understand its surroundings. To the south of Dubai lies Abu Dhabi, the capital of the United Arab Emirates. I’ve heard the city described as Dubai’s “older, richer cousin”, as a result of the massive wealth derived from the oil industry there. As progress started to be made in Dubai from the 1950s and onwards, local leadership (still under the framework of a constitutional monarchy) sought to set Dubai apart from its southern sibling by creating a city that would not rely so heavily on oil (Dubai’s reserves are already running out), but on a more sustainable economy – trade, manufacturing, financial services, and tourism. Trade has been promoted by the creation of several ‘free zones’, such as Dubai Healthcare City, where the taxation and regulatory rules are different and are more accommodating of foreign investment.

With a strategic plan in place, development marched on... rather, sprinted ahead. With a population of about 1.5 million (establishing an accurate current and projected population for Dubai is a major challenge... the bane of my existence in the office these days), less than 15% are actually Emirati. Over half of the population are South Asian labourers – the UAE is actually the top destination for Indian emigrants – and the remaining 35% come from other Arab countries, Asia and the West. Armed with the necessary manpower, the city is literally springing up from the sand – if you recall the photo of the fountains from my last post, which surround the base of the massive Burj Dubai... those fountains didn’t exist 6 months ago. I’ve heard that 25% of the world’s construction cranes are here in Dubai, and Google Maps can’t give you directions anywhere in this city because the roads change weekly to accommodate new buildings.

Construction... everywhere!

They really are striving to build the biggest and the best of everything in this city:

- The Burj Dubai, the world’s tallest building... the exterior construction is mostly done now but there are delays on completing the interior, so we’re not sure when it will open – home to an Armani Hotel, offices, and private apartments... an outdoor pool on the 78th floor, an observation deck on the 124th floor, and I’m sure there will be a swanky bar up near the top, as always...

- The World and Palm Islands – all artificial islands dredged up from the sea ... home to luxurious villas and hotels including the Atlantis Resort... rumoured to be sinking in places but at the moment still quite spectacular.

- The Burj Al Arab, home to a seven-star (!!) hotel where suites start from $1,500+ USD a night, but come with a Rolls Royce chauffer ‘shopping experience’, butler service, a pillow menu (so you can choose from 15 different pillows to sleep on)

- The Dubai Mall – bigger than the Mall of the Emirates, which was previously the biggest mall outside of North America ... they’re right down the road from each other...

The Burj Al Arab (view from 360).

Not to be outdone, Abu Dhabi is home to the Emirates Palace (“the most expensive resort ever built”... though I wonder if that hasn’t already been trumped by another development here), and the creation of man-made Saadiyat Island, which will host the Louvre Abu Dhabi and the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi (designed by Frank Gehry) alongside 8000 villas, 38,000 apartments, 29 hotels, 2 championship golf courses, 3 marinas... you get the picture.

There are drawbacks to all this glitz and glamour... the structural quality of these buildings has been called into question; for a time, there was no thought given to the environmental impact of these facilities that require enormous amounts of electricity to cool and maintain; and working safety conditions are not at all what they should be (the Trauma Centre staff claim to have never seen injuries like the ones that roll through their doors when workers fall massive heights from improper scaffolding). I am still forming my opinions about the sociocultural issues in the area, and will save that for another post.

I hope that this has painted a clearer picture of this new city of mine... I have appreciated the opportunity to learn more each day about the spectacle that is Dubai.

An atrium in the Mall of the Emirates.

Three weeks in...

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Abras (water taxis) in the Dubai Creek.

Back to work this past week – a very busy one at the office. Our hospital development project is moving full steam ahead, and we have several important deadlines coming up. Market research continued this week in Old Dubai, giving me a good excuse to return to the abra stations along the creek, this time to poll people about their healthcare preferences. We brought along a couple of the guys who work in the office to have extra manpower, and to allow us to reach out to some of the Indian workers who we’d otherwise have a language hurdle to jump before interviewing them (my Tamil is about as good as their English...).

Creekside market research.

The biggest challenge for me in putting together this business case is the lack of quality statistics on everything from population to healthcare utilization to insurance... really something that needs to be improved in this city in the years to come. Trying to get an accurate idea of the population at the moment is an interesting/impossible challenge. The last census in Dubai was completed in 2005, and the government has produced projections based on that count. When the financial crisis hit last year, it had a major impact on the city, with many developments being postponed or abandoned completely. There are local rumours that in the mass exodus from the city, many people drove to the airport and abandoned their cars there in their haste to leave. Though we know that the population has changed dramatically as a result, the government publishes nothing but rosy predictions of future growth, in order to promote future investment and avoid shedding any bad light on the city. As a result, we have had to be very careful to build assumptions and sensitivity scenarios into our forecasting so that we don’t lead our clients astray.

I was disciplined at work this week...!! Apparently I have violated the dress code (which I carefully looked over several times before I finished packing), which states that women should not wear beach shoes or trainers, but rather quiet office shoes. I incorrectly interpreted this to mean simple, demure, professional shoes... but they literally meant “quiet” as in “non-clicking, silent” shoes. Who knew that this would be a concern in a professional, client-facing office... so although it was recommended to me that I just wear flip flops in the office (though I’m pretty sure that would violate the ‘beach shoes’ issue), I’ve gone out shopping to pick up a pair of rubber soled flats that should satisfy HR. Unfortunately, my suit pants were meant to be worn with heels... so I’m reversing the typical practice of wearing flats to work and changing into heels... I kick off my stilettos upon arrival and cuff up my pants so that I don’t trip over them as I move around the office. Goodness gracious. Hopefully this is the beginning and end of me getting in trouble at work...

Exciting news – there has been another new hire in the office, a business analyst named Suman who grew up in Dubai before going to the States to complete her undergraduate and masters degrees. She’s very bright and we are getting along and working together exceptionally well. I went out on Thursday night to celebrate her birthday at 360, a bar located at the Jumeirah Beach Hotel. The bar is located way out on a man-made peninsula that you must be golf-carted out to from the hotel, but it is well worth the trip. Sitting out on a circular terrace in the Gulf with incredible views of the wave-shaped Jumeirah Beach Hotel and the sail-shaped Burj Al Arab... a little piece of heaven! It was wonderful to meet some of her friends and family and celebrate her special day.

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The entrance of the Jumeirah Beach Hotel.

At Suman’s birthday party, I met another friend of a friend – Sharon, who is a childhood friend of my girlfriends Angela and Nandni. Sharon is teaching at an international school here in Dubai after a year spent teaching in Bangkok. I met some of her teaching colleagues on Thursday as well... a lovely bunch. I’m heading for dinner with her tonight to chat in a quieter setting.

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Sharon and I at 360.

View of the Jumeirah Beach Hotel from 360.

A final update on my ‘budding’ social life (which I really am so grateful to have after my lonely first week!)... a few weeks ago, I went for dinner with a girl named Hillary, a Canadian who has been working in finance here in Dubai for a year or so. I’m excited to report that I’ve joined an ultimate Frisbee league with Hillary, as part of a team that she’s been playing with for a while. Our team name is the Flying Carpets (!!), and we have our first league game on Monday night. I’m pretty rusty but hopefully I can persevere through the heat to contribute to the team.

Last but not least, click on this link

( http://dailynews.mcmaster.ca/story.cfm?id=6393 ) for a little profile of my experience here for the McMaster Daily News... journal updates for the online publication to be posted later in the fall.