Work hard, Play hard
So far, that’s how I’ve been living my life in Dubai. It actually started when I was still in London (see my post “Enginn veit hvað átt hefur fyrr en misst hefur” below). This weekend was an example. It’s Easter, and I was hoping to take a couple of days off, or at least take a weekend. Instead, I worked hard every day - but only half the day...
Thursday night I went out with a few friends to one of Dubai’s amazing spots – a bar-restaurant built a few hundred yards into the sea and accessible via a walking bridge. Typically for Dubai, I found out that in our five-strong group, my friend Alex and I were the Dubai veterans, having started work one month and two days earlier. Stayed out moderately late, and had a great time.
Friday (first day of the weekend here, remember), I got up at seven, and worked very hard for six hours – at which point I hopped in my rental car with my new friend Tanya and took off to Abu Dhabi, which is just over an hour’s drive away, to watch the Red Bull Air Race. Don´t know if you´ve heard of it – it is absolutely insane. Sixteen pilots on small acrobatic planes compete in a race against time, hurtling two rounds through a 15-gate slalom course in a race against time and each other. The gates are marked with 18 meter tall inflatable columns, and the pilots lose points if they stray above the top of the gate. Eighteen metres – these are planes! These people seriously have no self-preservation instinct. But then, neither do the hundreds of thousands of people who show up to watch the race up close... ridiculously close... The happy Hungarian we were cheering for ended up winning, and we went home happy too. At that point I joined Alex and a collegue of mine for a Lebanese dinner until ten, and came home to work until 2am.
Saturday I got up at 7am to go Dune-buggying with Alex and a few collegues from both our companies. Dune buggies are light little off road racers designed for racing up and down sand dunes, swerving, surfing and jumping on the sand to the point where I’m still cleaning sand from my hair two days later. A lot of fun, and plenty of adrenaline. Afterwards, we went out of a couple of drinks, but I couldn’t stay past three in the afternoon because I still had quite a bit of work to do. Went back and worked for a few hours, but returned to join the group for the “Chill-Out Festival” at the Medinat Jumeirah – an incredibly beautiful hotel somewhere between Venice a 14th century Moroccan palace. Everyone was sitting around in the ampitheatre (which looks the way it sounds) on beanie bags and pillows, smoking sheesha pipes or having a drink or two, while an international lineup of DJs so good that the DJ from the Buddha Bar in Paris (which practically invented chill out music) was reduced to fourth billing. It was another long night.
Sunday comes along – Happy Easter. Woke up and worked again till one, at which point I had my rubber arms twisted into playing eighteen holes of golf for the first time in my life, at a golf course designed by Nick Faldo. Not too shabby. I came out of there exhausted (and pretty sure that I had pushed my luck with my Icelandic skin and Arabic sun), but determined not to leave Dubai for my next project without furniture, so I went out and spent an outrageous amount of money on a home shopping spree. I now have almost everything I need for my living room to go with my beautiful sofa, to be delivered in two weeks. Again, I am having great difficulty explaining how excited I am... I have stuff!
It's nearly two in the morning on a workday, and here I am writing. Yes, it's been crazy, and I haven't surfaced to breathe long enough to update my blog in more than two weeks. But I feel energetic, the way I have since those last six weeks in London.
Thursday night I went out with a few friends to one of Dubai’s amazing spots – a bar-restaurant built a few hundred yards into the sea and accessible via a walking bridge. Typically for Dubai, I found out that in our five-strong group, my friend Alex and I were the Dubai veterans, having started work one month and two days earlier. Stayed out moderately late, and had a great time.
Friday (first day of the weekend here, remember), I got up at seven, and worked very hard for six hours – at which point I hopped in my rental car with my new friend Tanya and took off to Abu Dhabi, which is just over an hour’s drive away, to watch the Red Bull Air Race. Don´t know if you´ve heard of it – it is absolutely insane. Sixteen pilots on small acrobatic planes compete in a race against time, hurtling two rounds through a 15-gate slalom course in a race against time and each other. The gates are marked with 18 meter tall inflatable columns, and the pilots lose points if they stray above the top of the gate. Eighteen metres – these are planes! These people seriously have no self-preservation instinct. But then, neither do the hundreds of thousands of people who show up to watch the race up close... ridiculously close... The happy Hungarian we were cheering for ended up winning, and we went home happy too. At that point I joined Alex and a collegue of mine for a Lebanese dinner until ten, and came home to work until 2am.
Saturday I got up at 7am to go Dune-buggying with Alex and a few collegues from both our companies. Dune buggies are light little off road racers designed for racing up and down sand dunes, swerving, surfing and jumping on the sand to the point where I’m still cleaning sand from my hair two days later. A lot of fun, and plenty of adrenaline. Afterwards, we went out of a couple of drinks, but I couldn’t stay past three in the afternoon because I still had quite a bit of work to do. Went back and worked for a few hours, but returned to join the group for the “Chill-Out Festival” at the Medinat Jumeirah – an incredibly beautiful hotel somewhere between Venice a 14th century Moroccan palace. Everyone was sitting around in the ampitheatre (which looks the way it sounds) on beanie bags and pillows, smoking sheesha pipes or having a drink or two, while an international lineup of DJs so good that the DJ from the Buddha Bar in Paris (which practically invented chill out music) was reduced to fourth billing. It was another long night.
Sunday comes along – Happy Easter. Woke up and worked again till one, at which point I had my rubber arms twisted into playing eighteen holes of golf for the first time in my life, at a golf course designed by Nick Faldo. Not too shabby. I came out of there exhausted (and pretty sure that I had pushed my luck with my Icelandic skin and Arabic sun), but determined not to leave Dubai for my next project without furniture, so I went out and spent an outrageous amount of money on a home shopping spree. I now have almost everything I need for my living room to go with my beautiful sofa, to be delivered in two weeks. Again, I am having great difficulty explaining how excited I am... I have stuff!
It's nearly two in the morning on a workday, and here I am writing. Yes, it's been crazy, and I haven't surfaced to breathe long enough to update my blog in more than two weeks. But I feel energetic, the way I have since those last six weeks in London.
posted by Magnus @ 11:09 PM
1 Comments:
At 10:08 AM,
Anonymous said…
Great work.
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