odd times

It has been a funny month.

For three weeks I've been stuck in a windowless room in one of the most opulent hotels in the world, exploring the massive gap between alternate realities - whether it be between the experience of the tourist to the hotel as compared to our experience eating in the staff canteen and living the life of the average worker, or trying to navigate the minefield that is the gap between the hyperbole that the client wishes to spout, and the reality of the project.

There were a lot of good moments - it was a music festival after all. Each and ever act - except the excreble ildivo - had distinct merits. My favourite moment had to be the new orleans jazz trumpeter wynton marsalis inviting iraqi oud player naseer shamma to join him jamming on stage during his set - having met the night before. It almost lived up to the hyperbole. Almost.

Unfortunately, certain individuals - well, individual really - made the whole experience much less bearable than it should have been. But we live and learn, what doesn't kill you makes you stronger yaddah yaddah etc whatever....

So once the three weeks of hell in the windowless room was done, we proceeded to get very pissed, and the next morning I hot-footed it to the other side of the country for a weekend break with the girls. Lovely, but I ended up only having 24hrs as I had to be back in the dabby for the ultimate fighting championships - utterly random. I had dire expectations, but it was much better than I'd expected. The atmosphere did a lot to mitigate the fact that essentially, there were two people beating the shit out of each other with very few rules governing what they could and couldn't do.Quite odd to realize that what shocked me most was the founder saying 'fuck' in the press conference afterwards, completely disregarding all messages and basically holding forth on hoe disgraceful he thought the title fight had been. He was right, it had, but in this part of the world you don't hear honesty like that in a press conf, and you certainly don't advise it in my job.

So it has been a funny month, all in all. Looking forward to moving back to dubai and starting a proper corp role again. Mark those words - I may eat them soon.