Alright then. The end of the trip. Last weekend, I went to ski Dubai, spent the evening at my bosses house with good food and new friends, went to the Grand Mosque, and spent another day at the Hiltonia beach.

Me, Gorka, and Christian at Ski Dubai

The Coffee shop in Ski Dubai. We stopped for Hot Chocolate.

Just Boarding!

Lamest Ski Video ever....

The group at Marks house. Everyone was so happy I was leaving, they through me a party. ha!

The Mosque is truly beautiful. The pictures do not give the sense of awe that being there did.

Saying good bye to my new friend Gorka. What an emotional moment!

Last club with Gorka, and his friend Margaret.

This is the very ornate Welcome Home sign my kids made. Wow, it is truly great to be home.

I had a real great time on this trip. I can't believe that two months have come and gone. So, I'm being replaced by Whitney Morris from San Francisco and Elizabeth Peters from New York. I hope they have as nice a time as I did. It will be hot...and I mean hot.

Thank you to all those who followed this blog. I hope you enjoyed reading along. Feel free to drop me a line:

nicolasr001@hotmail.com

nicoals.rodrigues@de-simone.com

Good Bye!

Thursday night started innocently enough with drinks with a client, and ended at a dance club at 2:30AM, with me getting sick somewhere in between. I haven't done that in a while! What was in that tiki drink? All three of them tasted good though.

Friday....recovery day.... Played xbox and watched movies in the evening.

Saturday, got up early and went jet-skiing. There were four of us at 200 AED ($54) each for one hour. Not a bad price. Here are some photos...

Mark and past-DeSimone employee Nick Rowntree. Nick has lived in Abu Dhabi for 2 years and has stayed friends with Mark.

We were going to go to Ski Dubai after, but Gorka got sick after our lunch at Lebanese Flower. The rest of us, luckily, didn't get sick.

So it's Memorial day weekend in the states. Obviously that holiday would not be celebrated here. In fact, there is one more national holiday in the UAE than in the US. But, since those UAE holidays do not fall on any of the days that I am here, Mark authorized me to take the day off on Sunday. So I too, got a three day weekend. Yea!

The question was, what was I going to do. I've heard that you can go to any of these fancy hotels and get a day-pass to use their outdoor facilities. So I tried it. Wow...turned out to be a great day. The day pass was only 125 UAE ($34) and but a short taxi ride away. Hiltonia is part of the Hilton Hotel complex and includes beach property. So I spent the afternoon floating in the Persian Gulf (again), swimming around, reading a new book (Angles and Demons by Dan Brown), and listening to my iPod. When I got tired of the beach, I had a reasonably priced lunch, and then spent the rest of the afternoon poolside. Watching the little kids play made me miss my kiddos, especially since there was a small waterslide and a small water park which they would have both loved. Overall, a very relaxing and rejuvenating day.

Only 10 days left. Next weekend, we may go to another waterpark in Dubai called Wild Wadi, but I really hope we make at least make it to Ski Dubai. Ski Dubai costs only 180 AED for 2 hours, and that includes all the gear...even disposable socks.

Also, I still want to go to the Grand Mosque. Also, people have told me about these Safaris you can take out to the dessert which includes 4-wheel driving on the dunes and a camel ride. So much left to do, and only one weekend left. Well, maybe I'll just have to come back....

Wednesday last week, Gorka an I went to the self-proclamied 7-star hotel called the Emirates Palace. It is certainly worth that level of recognition. However, when I read a bit about what sets a 7-star apart from a 5-star, I found out that it is only 2-stars more in title. Actually, 7-star is just a marketing ploy, and it is really a high ranked 5-star hotel, on the common 5-star rating system. I was a bit disappointed too.....

Here are my pics.... and if it looks like gold, it probably is....

The VIP entrance building. I think this is reserved for major dignitaries.

The grand entrance.... actually you park your car up above and then have to walk down here to take this picture.

Helicopter parking anyone....

This huge construction site dominates the view from the grand entrance.


Fountains spring forth as if from no where.




The dome....


Ornate sitting area. Most of the others were occupied, and taking pictures of the local people is discouraged without first asking. I obviously did not ask.

Gorka and I posin' beneath the dome.

We walked down some obscure hallway and sat for a minute. The table was decorated with this beautiful Orchid.


High-end shopping.... Sorry sweetheart.... but no. hehe... I probably should though!

The meeting room of that big meeting I described on my last blog. Imagine His Highness at one end, and a DeSimone Principal at the other....no pressure!

Someone Rolls in the self-parking lot. Nice. Even with all that money, won't spring for valet.

Beach....again! I went with a couple, so I was able to be on the family side. Next time I'm going to try to rent a Jet Ski.

A lot of activity at work. For the last week or two, our New York office was doing an evaluation/peer review of a building which is already partly under construction in Dubai. We were asked to look at the building by a large group consulting which we are partnering with. We found a major detrimental design flaw, a couple of instances of un-buildable details, and many areas which were significantly over-designed. Last Monday night, we were asked to attend a meeting to present our findings.

All day Sunday and Monday we tailored our presentation for a lay audience as we were going to be meeting with the owners, the project managers, and maybe, the consultant. So we had a pre-meeting with our partner group and one of the three owners which asked us to do the review. The owner is an Emirate, in natural dress, and he spoke very frankly with us. He said that he was unhappy with the current consultant, and that he has the power to replace them. He informed us that we were going to go directly to the Emirates Palace to meet the design and construction team, and that he fully expects us to have to fight for our position and defend ourselves well.

We arrived at the business center at the Emirates Palace to find over 20 people in the room. Later we find out that everyone in the room had just driven from Dubai (1.5 hrs away) and had no idea what we the meeting was for. So the owner had orchestrated an ambush. There were three empty chairs at the head of this large square shaped table. We had plugged in the laptop and were ready to go. Then the three Emirate owners walked into the room and were introduced to us. One of the three is the son of H.H. Sheikh Hamdan Bin Zayed Al Nahyan. (I think the H.H. stands for His Highness.) H.H. Sheikh Hamdan Bin Zayed Al Nahyan currently holds the position of Deputy Prime Minister of the U.A.E. I'm not sure exactly where this position falls in their government structure, but it sounds pretty high up to me.

So Mark gave the presentation we prepared, and nailed it. The engineering consultant was caught completely unprepared, and only got off a mediocre defense of his design. At one point, he admitted that the design could be further optimized. The owner then jumped down his throat and said, 'I have been a good client, I always pay my bills on time, and for that reason, I expect to get your best design the first time."

The whole thing felt a bit unfair, but we didn't know that the consultant was unprepared, and we didn't know he didn't know we were doing a review. The meeting concluded with an invitation for our team to visit the construction site the next day. We are waiting to hear if our group was hired, and if the job will be to work with the current consultant to fix the design, or if we will be asked to finish the project ourselves.

Shearwall detail.


12 layers of overlapping hoops.



184 verticals at 4.4% reinforcing. The construction manager told us that this column would not be able to accept a splice and that the next floor of construction would not be buildable. This just happened to be one of the comments in our presentation.

Foundations for 50+ story building.

Foundation for 20+ story Building


View from the parking lot. This project is directly on the water in the very lucrative Dubai Marina area.

Over this last weekend, I went to the beach, slept a bunch, and played video games on a new XBox Elite 360. I also stayed out again till 2 AM on Friday night. At one point we were at a dance club with a live band which turned out to be more than just a dance club. since this is a family blog, that is all I'm going to say about that. I also went to a Flamenco dance show. This is a traditional Spanish dance, and it was beautiful to watch.

Just about two weeks to go now.

Some observations Christine said may be interesting:

- Sometimes, when two male Arabs meet, they will rub noses to say hello instead of a handshake.

- Many upper and middle class Arab families I have seen in public are accompanied by Filipino nannies. Most often I see them caring for the children, or carrying the groceries. There were many advertisements in the classifieds for full-time, live-in nannies.

- Also in the classifieds, I noticed pages of advertisements for marriage. My son age whatever, career whatever is now accepting applications for marriage. I'm going to have to ask around about this one.

That’s it….

The Emirates Palace Hotel. Can anyone say 7-star hotel? I will be visiting here before I leave.

So the company’s Marketing Director, Kyle Fisher, asked my permission to publish the URL to this blog in DeSimone's company newsletter. I’m not exactly sure why she asked, but it may have something to do with trying to convince my co-workers to come to Abu Dhabi. Have I made it sound fun here? I do think I need to go back and remove anything which may be slightly controversial or not politically correct since the whole of my company may now read this. But instead, I'll just give the following disclaimer; if I've written anything that offends you.....STOP READING AND GO AWAY! Ha! ;-)

So, the president of the company, Stephen DeSimone, was here this week. What a long week! He got here on Monday, and stayed till Thursday night. We worked 10 hrs/day to start and then I went out to dinner with clients two out of the four nights he was here. I didn't mind too much, we start off going to drinks after work, then to a multi-coarse meal at four and five star restaurants. It isn't all easy-going though, you do have to be "on" when dinning with clients. You kinda feel like your on a first date. You have to tell stories, listen intently, and seem interested. It's kinda exhausting. I have to hand it to Stephen and Mark, they did this four nights in a row.

We had a buisness lunch at this resturant. This is the Yaught Club and turns into a pretty well attended dance club in the evenings. This was my first visit here during the day. Third visit, overall.

So as I mentioned in my last blog, Stephen stayed in the second bedroom upstairs here at the office. He likes to work out, so he actually emailed me the week before to ask me if we we're going to work out when he was here. I had said sure, as I have been trying to workout, and I thought this would be good motivation. Anyway, the first night we were out till 1 AM with clients, and I thought, "no way he wants to get up," only to later find out he was up at 6AM wondering where I was. When I came downstairs fully dressed for work, I felt shameful... :( The second day, I got up a little earlier, but he was working on a presentation with Gorka, and looked like he already worked out. So, here I was on the third and final morning, thinking, "if i don't get up this morning, I'm going to be fired...j/k" and jumped out of bed at 6 AM. I look over at his room and the door is closed, and I'm like, shit....the one day I get up....and he's asleep...snoring away. So I lay down on my bed, in my work-out clothes, and leave my door open, thinking he will see me and say let’s go.... No sooner did I fall back asleep did I hear his shower go on. So I missed it again. I guess it just wasn't meant to be. Now the boss knows first hand how lazy I am. Greeeaaat…..!

So the weekend was nice. Thursday I had a drink at Ocean’s but was in by 11. Friday, I stayed in all day and did nothing. It was great. I slept till 12 noon, and then watched the last four episodes of Heros – the best show ever. I downloaded the episodes from free download sites because streaming video from NBC is blocked here. The company’s IT manager, Shani, hooked me up with some codecs needed to run the videos. Shani has been real nice, doing his best to make me feel at home here….thanks Shani. Then I took a nap from 4 till 6:30. Then at night I went to a BBQ at a Mark’s friend’s house. I helped worked the grill for a bit and we ate lamb, sausage, and chicken burritos. It was a great time. Honestly!

Enjoying a drink at the BBQ. Is my stomach getting bigger? hmmm...

Gorka and Mark hanging out at the BBQ.

Sunday, I slept till noon….again. Very nice. Then went to the beach and swam in the Persian Gulf again. When I got tired of that, I took a little nap on the grass under a palm tree. Spent the rest of the day chillin’ and relaxing in my room.

A whole parade of these sail boats went by when I was at the beach. some sort of race, I think.

Back to work today. Tonight I was talking to Brielle who asked me, “if I had a Starbucks in the city that I am at right now” When I told her it was downstairs she got all excited and laughed. She thought it was so funny. I miss her so much.

Today is Mother’s day in the U.S. So I want to tell Christine that I think you are doing a wonderful job taking care of the kiddos. While I know it must be tiring and frustrating at times, there is no one I know who could do a better job, or who is a good a mom as you are! You are my everything, and I can’t wait to see you.

Last thing, I got my return plane ticket today. I'm flying out at 8:45 AM on Wed. June 3rd and landing at 1:45 PM or so at SFO. It was like a 26 hour flight coming here, but only a 5 hr flight going home. Wouldn't it be great if the flight was really that short.

I believe this is the second largest mosque in the world called the Grand Mosque, Abu Dhabi . Time permitting, I will be going for a visit.

Out for a night stroll on the Corniche.

When you take your kids to the park, be sure to adhere to all posted signage.

So my birthday was on Thursday the 30th. I made Guacamole for my coworkers and held the first ever happy hour in the office. It went over very well. After that, Gorka, Mararet, Patrica, Christian, and I went to a late dinner at Vasco's. This was an outdoor, beachside resturant....very nice.

Here I am blowing out some candles set on a fancy dessert tray.

Once the wine started kicking in, I thought it would be fun to dance a bit at the table. Nice moves....huh? (Seriously...not sure what I was thinking.)

After that we went to another hotel/bar and hung out. Unexpectedly, we ran into Mark, our Managing Principal, his wife and his friends. We joined them and chatted till 3 AM...again. (My neighbor Jacob is now calling me Mr. 3 AM....I wonder why.)

The next day we had planned to go play paintball at a field just North of Dubai, but no one woke up in time to go. I slept till noon and then took it easy on Friday. Later, Gorka and I went and saw the new Xman movie. It was pretty good. Great special effects.

Saturday, Christian and Patrica graciously invited us to their home and offered to cook paella for my birthday. We had a wonderful time. I feel so lucky to have found such good people to hang out with here. And wow....what great food!

Paella.... mmmmmm!

From left to right: Cristoff from Poland, Karl from Malta, Gabrielle from Malta, Sally from the U.K., Christian from Malta, Patricia from Spain, Gorka from Spain, and me.

Overall, a great birthday. I'm 32 now by the way.

I did get to talk to my kiddos and Christine a couple of times over the last couple days. They seem to be doing ok. I think Brielle is really missing me. She does not quite know what to make of all this. She has asked if she can come for a visit, and asked if I can come home to see them. It makes me a bit sad. Even though I'm living it up, I miss them all so much and can't wait to get home.

I got my Visa extended today, and I have to leave by June 5th. So I plan to leave sometime that week. I haven't booked a flight yet, because I am looking into possibly stopping over somewhere on my way home. I may not have another chance to be overseas for some time, so i thought hey...check it out. It will probably be too expensive, but I am looking into it.

Anyway, the President of our company, Stephen DeSimone, gets here tomorrow. He will be staying in the second room here in the office. We will be roomies. Stay tuned, and I'll let you know how that goes...