Saturday Update

Heading Home

Well the weather is much better. It has cooled off quite a bit and it nice. Never really a blue sky in this town, always white. Clouds are also not very common. At least the walk from the Mall where I park to work does not mean you start the day off breaking a sweat walking into you office.

Note to Nick, you were right about Death Magnetic. It is a classic Metallica album in their standard format in terms of song construction and the order in which they are configured. The forth track is another heavy rock ballad then ends in a furious melodic solo. There is an instrumental only song. The first song sets the tone and the second song which is usually the title track is not the case here but the title is a theme that runs throughout the entire album. It ends with a short angry song, Most tracks are near 7 minutes. None of which are radio friendly, (I miss KNAC) except maybe track 4 on MTV but that is a reach. (I saw the video in Yourtube, it is badass) As usual there is not a single song about chicks or getting laid. It is the music for the oppressed and about overcoming obstacles and dealing with hard times and fighting back. Lots of metaphors around life and death. Similar in may ways to 20 years ago and the Justice album. Hard to believe it was that long ago.

BrotherJoe gets it right and calls the movie Stripes as where the quote comes from under the Ferrari post. Well done.

Another fabulous weekend approaches in North America as we await some more great NCAA football match ups. Devils travel to SC to get a beat down and LSU rolls into the swamp for a matchup of the last two national champions. Something that rarely happens, A number of things need to line up and take place for such a match up to unfold.

Now believe it or not Trojan fans when ASU joined the Pac-10 we had a winning record against you over our first 10 matchups. Then I decided to attend ASU and things took a huge turn for the worse and SC has been dominating the rivalry winning like 90% of the time. With Carpenter not under center thing look bleak. Sanchez seems to be healthy enough to play for SC. Playing in the Coliseum against LA's pro franchise, winning is hard to do. They have a balanced offence, they are bigger and faster. What can I say? Devils go behind early and will be lucky to score a few touchdowns. I don’t want to make a prediction, the W goes to the men of Troy.

Gator host the LSU Tigers and this is good TV. The stadium should be in near riot status at kick off. LSU travels well and both team get each other every year, this is their selected match up across the East and West of the SEC so it is not a surprise that they play, you choose to go to each school to play in this game.

I think speed will cancel itself out in this match up, but with that said, the Gators need a big play to carry them over the top. They have a number of players who just need to ball in their hands and some open space. Pure athleticism is everywhere in this game and if the coaches can just get the play makers some room to do so, it should happen. Also I think when the game is over, the loser will look back and point to a costly mistake, such as one holding penalty or red zone fumble to have maybe been the difference. Don’t ignore special teams, in a game like this execution is key, I know both coaches want to call one trick play at the right time to not only score but to pull momentum their way and give the “kids” on the team the sense that luck is on their side. When you believe you can win in college, you literally can. This is not the pros.

Gator 19
Bayou Bengals 18

Life is back to normal over here in regards to schedule. Cityscape was in town, which is a huge regional real estate convention. Town was full of people who were here on business, and a number of them made the critical mistake of renting a car and driving themselves to where they needed to go. If you are going to do that in this town, show up a day early and do some trial runs. Miss a turn off or off ramp in Dubai and you could find yourself miles off course before you are given a chance to correct your mistake and by that time you are exponentially getting more and more lost. I have been there.

I heard the booths were over the top. Huge and revolving. Let alone what they were displaying. To my surprise I heard there were a number of super short mini skirt wearing girls with stripper heals in the boths. I find this a problem. This is an Islamic countyr and you should know better. A complete disconnect and lakc of respect to the hos culture and country. This is Dubai, but this is also the Middle East. Leave the slutty eye candy at home.

Liquidity is not an issue right now in the UAE and plans for more outrageous projects are plentiful. Nahkeel is a developer and they want to build a kilometer talk tower in Jebel Ali which is on the south end of town. It is really a whole city with the tower in the middle. It will have it's own lake. Anyway the pictures are crazy, they are all drawings so it looks space age and cool. We will see. 12 years to complete. Try 15 if we are lucky.

Entire neighbor hoods have been purchased. They were one and two story villas and apartments to be replaced with 60 and 40 story towers. Dubailand is insane. An indoor theme park for example. I saw a schematic of the Mall of Arabia. The new biggest mall ever built. This thing is wild. It looks like a wheel with spokes. Two stores with shops in every direction. On top are grass and water features for the 5 star hotel connected to it. It is part of a sub project called the City of Arabia in Dubailand. They are many sub projects in that area. Sports arenas are going up. The Arabian Ranches round about is now this enormous over and underpass system of freeways that rivals any interchange in the states.

Abu Dhabi is building a Formula One track. They host a race next year. Sorry Canada. Connected to it will be a Ferrari theme park! It is this huge thing that will have the Ferrari insignia on top so big that you can see it from space. I can go on. Nothing is out of reach.

Dad, I am not kidding, you and Jim and Ken Haas need to get on a plane and come over here and bring your check book. Places to live are in very high demand. The Burj Views are going up next to me. They are killer. This Old Town area I live in is the bomb and is getting cooler all the time. When the Dubai Mall opens I will be able to walk to (at present) the biggest mall in the world. Everything you can dream of is in there. All the owners that you rent from seem to be just normal people. I rent from an Egyptian who works here in Dubai for Microsoft. He is an engineer. Landlords are all over Europe and often not in town. They just get two checks a year for 15 to 20 grand each.

BrotherBill