I wish I
were a better blogger. I apologize for
the lapse between posts but to be brutally honest blogging is not my job and
finding the time is often difficult for me.
My job is
servicing my clients and while I do enjoy the idea of helping others, sharing
my experiences and being a part of the internet marketing community, my clients
have to come first and that limits the time I can devote to blogging.
Especially
when I am on the road involving myself in life-changing opportunities.
Life-changing Opportunities
Kathi and I
left for our office in Ahmedabad, India and arrived, (after a grueling 30 hour
flight with an 11 hour layover in Heathrow), on January 1. Already coming back
to Ahmedabad feels a little like coming home. Isn’t that weird? What a killer
way to start ‘08
We are here
for a 2 month stay this time and with a great deal of effort we finally located
a short term rental on an apartment. We got moved into our apartment, scheduled
a few staff meetings and then on the 5th of January, we flew to Dubai to meet
our friend and partner Adil, (whom a few of you met at the Edinburgh SEO
Roadshow). We have just gotten back to our office in India. Sorry L
I’m still
reeling a little from the experience. Dubai is absolutely incredible and in
spite of my doing quite a bit of research on the place before I went, I was
still totally unprepared for a town that is so over the top it makes Las Vegas
look like a government housing project.
It’s like Beverly Hillbillies kind of
money
Imagine what
you would want your town to look like if you owned it,(United Arab Emirates is
not a democracy. It is basically a benevolent dictatorship ruled completely and
entirely by the royal family), and you had the revenue from selling 1 billion
barrels of oil a day at $100 a pop. If you drew just 5% interest on that much money,
you’d be pulling down some 5 billion a day in interest alone!!! Give or take
600 million or so. I don’t know about you but I can’t even relate to numbers
like that. It’s like Beverly Hillbillies kind of money.
It was
undoubtedly the cleanest place on earth. It’s almost like little elves would
just come out of the mist and clean if someone dropped some paper. No graffiti.
No homeless people. No “will work for food” guys at every intersection. But
that is just for starters!
No crime, no
public disturbances or protests, no cheap rent ANYWHERE and here’s the real
kicker. No taxes. No income tax, no sales tax and no property tax. I don’t know
about you but I can’t even relate to a concept like that. Did I mention it’s
like Beverly Hillbillies kind of money?
The whole
place is like a huge experiment in social engineering with the resources to
actually fund something like that. They are building little cities with a city.
Of course when I say little cities, I’m talking about a 400 billion dollar
development within a much, MUCH larger development. I was told that one third
of the world’s inventory of lifting cranes was operating in Dubai at this very
moment. I have no idea how many cranes that is or who took the time to look it
up but I can tell you this, CRANES ARE EVERYWHERE! Hundreds of them and
construction in Dubai is a 24 hour a
day, seven day a week affair. Try to imagine 1000 cranes all running 24 hours a
day building skyscrapers and infrastructure at a pace that exceeds anything
ever imagined by man in the history of the human race.
While I
wanted very much to visit Dubailand, Health City, Sports City and Knowledge
City, all my time was spent in Media City and Internet City which conveniently
border each other. That was handy because the one complaint I had was traffic
is a bitch.
You would
not believe what lengths the government is willing to go to seduce foreign
investment. My favorite of course was the free trade zones. I’d tell you more
but to be honest I haven’t had the time to go through all the documentation yet
and my head is still a little full just trying to absorb the whole experience.
I’ll post more about it as I learn more as I have a vested interest now in
devoting the time to understand the process and the paperwork.
myU.ae
I was able
to make a deal and we’ll be setting up an office there soon. In the meantime we
got the go-ahead to start developing a portal and search engine for Dubai and
UAE. The domain is http://www.myu.ae. I doubt the domain is coming up yet as we just made
the deal a couple of days ago, but I’m VERY happy to be able to have my people
provide the design and search software for the site.
I was hoping
to get some good video to show you but I was with partners and clients almost
the entire time and I just never had a good opportunity to shoot any. Kathi and
I did get some time to check out the Mall of the Emirates, (you know, the mall
with the world’s only indoor ski slope and ski lift in the desert, http://www.malloftheemirates.com/), but I ran off and forgot the
camera.
BUT, I
really did want to show you at least SOMETHING of the city so we decided to
take a real magic carpet ride. It’s expensive but Dubai is one of the only
places in the world where you can get that kind of thing so we decided to go
for it. I could only afford a 3 minute ride but I talked them into shooting a
video record of the trip for an extra 100,000 dirhams http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Arab_Emirates_dirham
It shows VERY little of what I wanted to shoot but at least
you can get a feel for the incredible creativity and innovations in the architecture.
I hope you enjoy.
Magic Carpet Ride
Peace Y’all
G
When I was growing up, the neighbor
kid had a sandbox but his folks tore it down because every time he would go
play in it, our cat kept trying to bury him.