Dubai

OK, I've made it back to Dubai. I'm sitting in my friend Yunsun "Sun" Chung-shin's office at Zayed University in between meetings, feeding off of the university's wifi. The trip down from Amman was uneventful, other than I'm utterly spoiled. Emirates Airlines is such a great airline - so much better than that dreadful flight I had over the Atlantic on Delta. The food last night was fantastic and the seats were confortable and every seat had it's own individual screen with a library of films to watch - sort of like British Airways, except with more comfortable seats. I watched an independent film I'd never seen before called My Blueberry Nights - I'm a sucker for independent films, but this was mindly entertaining at best. It starred Norah Jones (don't know how many movies she has done - she was OK, although the high point was her cover of Neil Young's "Harvest Moon" - didn't see that coming), Jude Law, Rachael Weitz and Natalie Portman. In the row next to me there was a woman, in very traditional Arabic garb, who had three seats to herself - and she was watching three different programs. I don't know what was more surprising - that John Carpenter's Big Trouble in Little China was in the film library, or that someone had actually chosen it to watch.

I stayed at a hotel called the Jumeira Rotana last night - although I didn't get in until around 10:30 p.m. and the driver from Zayed came at around 7:30 to pick me up. It wasn't much of a stay for a sizeable amount of money. If you factor in the cost of the room, the room tax, the ride in from the airport, and the breakfast, I'm sure it was around $200 for nine hours at the hotel - and I didn't even get to take advantage of the pool or exercise facility. However, that's practically slumming it in Dubai. It was the least expensive, logically convenient hotel that Zayed could find. And this is why I'm spending the rest of this trip and my time in Muscat, Oman sleeping on the couch in professors' houses (grin). On my two previous trips Zayed picked up the tab and I was staying at places that were normally around $300 a night (although I don't know what deal the school got). I wonder what Sudhir paid for that place he used to put us up in near to our old campus in Dubai - the one with all the Russian prostitutes in the bar?

Now I'm back visiting Zayed, trying to convince them to embed more GMs in their curriculum. They are a nice size for us, about 2000 students - 1000 here in Dubai and a 1000 in Abu Dhabi, where I'll be tomorrow. Again, a fascinating place - a sleek, ultra modern campus with great technological infrastructure - and all the students, it's an all-women's school, wearing head to toe traditonal black abayas. Still, they're very interested in the connecting to the rest of the world. I talked to the students in Sun's class today and they're great kids - very enthusiastic and friendly.