Work. Week 1.

Ok ok, the next retrospective post begins now...

The busyness of the weekend continued on Sunday morning, with the hotel reception telling me that waiting for a cab out the front would take half an hour, calling one would take 45 mins, but that going down to the main road would get me a cab within 5 mins! So, walking down to Bank St was obviously the best option. Once down there, I saw maybe 5 or 10 other people waiting for cabs, and then I watched maybe 20 cabs go by, all already full of people. I waited for about 15 or 20 mins and seeing no one get a cab, decided that this just wasn't going to work. I returned to the hotel, asked the guy to call me a cab. After a few minutes on the phone, I was told a cab was on its way. And 5 minutes later, it arrived.

After the hectic morning, my arrival at the office was a calm and surprisingly simple exercise. I met the people I needed to meet, was given a desk and the masterplan document of the project I'm to be working on. The project is called Al Kaheel, and is an equestrian theme park, hotel and residential development. Yes, an equestrian theme park. The project has a website which runs through pretty much everything.
www.alkaheel.com
After a day or so of settling in to the office, I was finally told exactly what I would be doing on the project, they seemed to think it would be a good idea for me to 'look after' the theme park portion, in 'sort of a' project leader role. I have no idea what the value of the overall project is, but apparently the theme park bit alone is worth somewhere around the A$100 m mark! The rest of the working week consisted mainly of becoming familiar with the project, attending meetings and such.

During this first week, I was staying in a hotel, in what was basically a serviced apartment. It had some quirks, things like notes reminding guests to clean their dishes, but then not providing any means to do so. Other oddities included a washing machine, but nothing to hang wet clothes on and no dryer, a microwave but no microwaveable dishes. They seemed to have thought about some things, but not thought them all the way through... On the last day of the working week, Thursday, I checked out of the hotel and took all my stuff with me to work, in preparation for the move into..... the apartment.

The apartment is in The Residences, part of the Burj Dubai development, which includes what is soon to be the world's tallest building. This building is currently at 122 stories tall, and considering it was at 120 when I arrived, is growing almost daily! My apartment is in tower W1, on the 8th floor. The Residences comprise of 6 towers in all, two of which are 25 stories tall (including W1), another two are 30-35 stories tall, and the final two are 38 stories tall. So basically imagine the Santos building, copied six times and put about 50m apart. Currently they basically stand in a massive construction site, but when finished will be just a tiny part of the development. Nearby another development called Business Bay (there's no bay or water there, they're building that at the moment) is building about 15 towers, all of which must be at least 50 stories tall, and are collectively known as "The Executive Towers". Basically they're the residential component of another huge development. The apartment is lovely and almost brand new, so I'm having a great time playing with all the gadgets, like the dishwasher and halogen cooktop!

Sorry I didn't get the photos I promised up for this post. The camera I bought has performed far less well than I would have liked, and as such is being returned, and so the photos you've all been waiting for will have to be waited for a little longer!