Bai Bai Dubai

Last day in Dubai today, and it was amazing. First part was essentially a scavanger hunt; traveling around the city to grab images of as many customer buildings as possible…which is quite a task, as the city is quite spread out. So we saw a lot (from the car, anyway), and the scale of everything is unreal…or so I thought. Because in the afternoon we traveled south towards abouut 20 minutes to another part of Dubai---passing the Burj Al Arab (the giant 7-star hotel that looks like a sail), which is so huge and stands out in a way that I’ve never seen captured on the TV shows that have shown it---and we got to an area called Dubai Marina. It’s like being in a New Building dealership. Well over a thousand brand new buildings, no two alike (many in the final stages of construction), each at least 30 stories high. The American University is out there, as is one of the two Palm Islands developments (The Palm-Jumeirah). These are the island arangements created through reclaimation, formed in the shape of a palm tree. It is just massive, containing business buildings, hotels, condos and homes for 300,000 people. The customer we visited provides the district cooling for a large part of the development (this is when very cold water is pumped thru underground pipes to converters that turn it into cold air), and from their 36th floor offices on the mainland we could just barely make out the shape of the palm tree. As the sun was setting we wrapped it up and made for Abu Dhabi, about 100 km away. Mostly we had deset on either side of us, and it took about 2 hours (Farhan said we could have driven through the desert, but that would have taken about 6 hours). Now it’s morning and the sun is just barely illuminating the beach below my hotel room window. I’m tired, but excitied, in that “New Emirate Experience” way!