Turned up at the hotel in Dubai at 3:30am. No booking under my name. This is the first time in 10 years like this something has gone wrong...
Checked myself in and promptly fell asleep into a moody nightmare of dusky skyscrapers and wrong venues and (for some inexplicable reason) hookers, sharks in the swimming pool and (even more dangerous!) ex-girlfriends...
Freud, front and centre please!
Maybe someone from the company will find me today. (I hope not, I still have the presentation to write.)
E@L
[Addendum I: Toaster Wars Strikes Back - at breakfast just then, two dudes each stole one of my twice-run through pieces of toast from the tray in the nano-second I moved away to get a plate. ToFos! Is this is the first time these people have ever eaten out? One was a swarthy type, the other a lanky, old American. So, yes probably. I got my toast back from the Yank - at least he was civilized enough to use the tongs to have picked it up. The other guy I let go with some abstruse mumbled abuse behind his back - who knows which hand he used...
Addendum II: Booking problem solved. It was a name SNAFU at the time of reservation. They had not booked me under my name, nor that of my company, but under one of their local company representatives in order to facilitate the credit card deposit. No-one had told me, I had had no Booking Confirmation number sent to me, so there was no way I could have found it anyway.
Addendum III: I was right. There IS no agenda for the training - as yet! Training starts tomrrow, therefore I have most of the day to put 20 slides or so together. I will need to do some surreptitious competition research but the Internet here is $55 per day! Alas, the swimming pool beckons out my window, down a few floors. Alack, it is freaking chilly here, only 15 degrees oustide currently.]
Happy Charliemas
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6 comments:
Maybe you don't really have to give a presentation...maybe this is the dream, and the other the reality?
That's pretty much what I am hoping...
I understand Dubers may be experiencing something of an economic downturn. Any obvious signs? Ex-billionaires with begging bowls, that kind of thing.
Sadly the recession has cut my travel to zero, including teaching. Damned shame because I actually enjoyed it when I had a good slide deck to improvise from. Looks like I'm going from Star Alliance Gold to zero in one year.
Doesn't the company have any competitive repository you can borrow from? Failing that, since there's no agenda I'd ask what they want to learn and go from there. You'll find your voice and hit your stride I'm sure.
DH: The Dubai tower stands 3/4 completed at only 800m high and people ares till working up there now at 10pm so... The queues at immigration were jam-packed with children of the ex-colonial nations (except Australia) vying for viable arbeit mact frei visas... So, no, other than my hotel has empty rooms.
DB: Talking of slides jamming the projector, of course the video projector jammed when I plugged my laptop in - all had to be rebooted to makes the silicon synergy happen. Naturally I winged it through three 30 minute talks (one about active listening[!] and open questions[!] during the sales process - WTF do I know about this?) and had them laying in the aisles, which is pretty frightening when you consider this is a good muslim nation and chickens are illegal here...
I knew you'd knock 'em dead. I enjoyed Dubai when I was there a few years back but Jordan has prettier birds. There was nothing else quite like sitting out at the terrace bar at the Marriott, downwind from a hookah whilst scratching my ornithological itch. Pretty birds indeed though a mate kept reminding me that they all probably have a brother who doesn't have a sense of humor and does have a big scimitar.
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