TL;DR: I made a playlist of videos here. I also made a map of the 4WD trip we did on the second day here.

BEER

I HAD BEER. Enough said! Never thought I would like Fosters. Turns out 3 months of beer deprivation will make me love dishwater.

BURJ KHALIFA

Tallest building: tick. This is about 800m high. It is underwhelming when viewed from a distance at night. I was expeciting something that glistened like the Petronas Towers with all of their stainless steel. The Burj Khalifa is very staid and unimposing at night, whispering up into the dark in a long thin strand with occasional tiers of dim lights. I think this was probably a smart choice in the long run, its being twice the height of the next tallest building around means it would dominate things very easily with lighting more striking. It is connected to the general complex of the Dubai Mall, one of the biggest I've ever been to. Similar to the Petronas Towers, there is a beautiful large pond with a fountain show every 20 minutes that is coordinated with some lovely classical music. It would be interesting to know how standard it is around the world to combine a large scale display of control of water with an imposing building. I guess it's easier to create something using water than gas or fire... Nothing beats the 3m jets of fire emitted every 45 minutes or so from the Crown Casino on the south bank of the Yarra in Melbourne!

MUSIC

I have some new music, 5 CDs(!) from the Virgin Megastore in Dubai Mall (gotta start somewhere):

1. Nu Breed of the Middle East - a mix of different artists that the music dude said was very experimental. It's not (it makes cute tracks like Disclosure by Latch from Triple J's Hottest 100 seem positively abstract) and it's pretty average music but hey I am for supporting artists from around here so I was happy to listen to it.

2. Behold the Locus (seems this is both the album and band name) - fairly harmless love songs like Unchanged with lyrics like "I just want to hear you every day". I am surprised at how everything I have listened to is in English. I asked the people for Middle East bands but this doesn't mean they're going to be in Arabic it seems.

3. Nostalgic Vibes and Wired Virtues by Free Fall - a Kuwaiti band! Not bad, they have a bit of a metal sound every now and again but nothing like double kick drums and maniacal screeching that people usually associate with metal. I was happy to find a Kuwait artist being sold at Virgin. In Dubai. To me that says there is a music scene here, although I've also been told that government crackdowns in recent months have reduced the (alternative) cultural scene here and recording studios are having less business. 

4. Ancient Hope - The Hourglass. Great stuff. Some good growling and a certain mythic menace. Cello adds a certain class which makes metal more acceptable to sensitive folks like me. Some weird mumbling in the last track about some spiritual sounding mumbo jumbo didn't help though. I guess there are people who are into that and it adds a certain mystique to the music. To me it is the most solid record of the bunch. 

5. resolve - Absolace. Cute grammar. This is a Dubai metal outfit. Not being a HUGE metal fan (although I LOVE DC3X by Grinspoon!), I can't really pass any useful kind of judgement as I don't have a great knowledge of other songs or bands to compare them to. I did go to Soundwave this year in Brisbane though and there were many old metal acts like A Perfect Circle and Metallica so I don't mind getting into it if it's on offer. This album sounded like legit metal to me though with the usual mayhem there if you want to crank it up loud. 

I feel kind of cool having some local metal in my possession. Metal has always been a bit of a 'bad' type of music when I was growing up and seems like a particularly brave or committed display on the part of the artists coming from this more conservative part of the world. I remember watching a BBC report about metal groups in Saudi Arabia (or was it Iran?) and their music was more what I was after when I went into Virgin asking for local metal. I guess this process of finding the most underground of underground bands has only started ;-)

6. Fractals - Absolace. Listening to I Am, So I Will presently. Whilst I was told that this was a metal album to be honest it's pretty mild. I am used to more hardcore metal I think. It has the sound of pop songs that use metal sounds if that makes sense. There isn't any menace. 

I was also looking for Nervecell and got a t-shirt of theirs but they didn't have any of their music unfortunately. This is supposed to be a popular metal band in Dubai so that was disappointing but I'll keep a look out. The next time I go to Dubai I'll hopefully be able to schedule in seeing a show. 

Since writing these reviews I've been directed to some other, better metal from here. For example, Merciless Times by Myrath and Let the Truce be Known by Orphaned Land.
 
BUSINESS

Dubai is business. I've been wanting to visit, maybe even work, in the place for almost a decade now. It was good to finally go and see what it was all about. Yes, frankly I came away feeling like I wanted to move there but mainly because the lifestyle available was a closer match to what I'm used to. I doubt the excellent job I have here in Kuwait would be on offer there. I was very privileged even to meet a friend of Jim B who is running an equipment hire company in Dubai. He rents out small plant equipment such as generators, drills, compactors, jack hammers etc. He has run the business for 10 years and it is expanding, they will be moving to a new location soon so they have room to store more equipment. 

He was nice enough to take us around Dubai for a bit, dropping us off at Dubai Mall so we could do some shopping (groan) and see the Burj Khalifa. The most interesting bit though was being in the car with him as he took call after call from customers placing orders. We also visited a couple of clients of his. It was inspiring to see him doing so well and handling all of the clients so skillfully. Not to mention he's done well enough to be buying the latest model Beemer 5 series :-) Now of course that got me inspired!!! I was reminded of the excitement I felt when I participated in the Startup Kuwait networking events when I first came here. There were many young enthusiastic entrepreneurs that I met. They were having meetups at Global Tower every month but I haven't heard anything for a while. Interestingly, one of the organisors has recently moved to Dubai and is blogging about the experience of taking his FishFishMe startup to the next level there.

I would like to participate in a business start up. It would be good to do it with some associates though, and if I were to do it in Kuwait they would need to be locals. I'd like to do it using my mapping skills and passion... which leads me to the next topic.

KUWAIT MAPPING MEETUP

Looks like I'm finally going to do something about this. Following the suggestion of a colleague, I rode my bike up the street to Coffee Bean in Mahboula. This looks like a good popular venue to have our first meetup. I think the first one doesn't need to be anything particularly ambitious, just a gathering of like minded people to see what we could potentially do. Perhaps it can just stay casual, as a meetup every now and again over coffee. Perhaps it won't even progress beyond the first meetup, maybe no one will attend! Or it might become something like Brisbane GeoRabble with 100 attendees every 3 months (doubtful given the small population of this country) or perhaps something like the Phnom Penh Mapping Meetup with about 20 attendees every month and a few presentations about interesting mapping things going on. 

I feel somewhat hesitant sometimes about the idea of running the meetup, particularly when I've had a bad day at work disagreeing over something with a contractor, or when I've made a mistake. Sometimes it seems terribly audacious to want to run a meetup as a new person to the industry here. But then, I did the same in Cambodia and it went well despite all of this. I am enthusiastic about the idea because veterans of the industry have said it has never been done before and it sounds like an interesting concept to them. I like meeting new people and it's a great way to make connections when things are casual and the atmosphere is relaxed rather than professional and business negotiations are going on. Not that I'd mind if they ended up going on because of such an event...