Welcome to the City of Gold

I am fortunate, very fortunate to be able to travel the globe and almost everywhere I go I know someone or someone knows me from my newsletters. It’s an amazing thing to be able to learn about a new culture and to experience our changing world first hand.

My Journey to Dubai began in Abu Dhabi last week. I was asked to speak at a conference of Sovereign Wealth Funds regarding commodities prices , mainly energy. I then had a few private meetings with some of them. While I cannot discuss the conversations I will say I was impressed.

Needless to say the 15 hour flight from New York got me into Abu Dhabi in the early morning around 7am.

As I cleared customs and headed outside my driver greeted me and as the doors to the outside opened it felt like when you open the oven door and are checking on your food. A sudden a searing heat hit me. I am not a big fan of heat, I mean you will never see me living in Arizona.

Anyway, as my driver escorted me to the waiting BMW I was happy to sit down and crank the A/C. Well what did you expect Kevin? It’s a desert.

So my time in Abu Dhabi was very interesting and the conference was very well done. I wandered around Abu Dhabi at night and during the day when I had time, you can tell it is growing and changing, yet is far behind it’s neighbor Dubai. Still you can see the Western influence creeping in, form Pizza Hut to Gloria Jeans Coffee. Still the fact that this is a Muslim country is clear, as evidenced by the Mosque underneath my hotel room at the Millenium Hotel which broadcast a call to prayer 5 times a day (even at 3:30am I think)

If you would like to experience this amazing Adhan call to prayer, click below…(Just not at 3:30am)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UlLaUCAQlQQ

Anyway as the conference wrapped up my good friend and fellow editor Joel “Aussie” Bowman showed up and watched me speak, we agreed to meet in Dubai the next day.

So I was off the the City of Gold and to see what all the fuss is about, and if it was really “all that”

We’re Not in Kansas Anymore To To

As I left the Millenium my driver took my bags and said it will be about 1 hour and a half to Dubai. As we drove along I saw an amazing Mosque and then not much, then suddenly a long strip of houses, like town houses being developed, but none finished…it seemed to go on for miles and miles and miles.

As we drove past these developments I couldn’t help but think as I sipped on my bottle of water, where will all these homes get water, electricity and Air Conditioning from?

So we drove on and on and as I started to listen to my i-pod in the distance I could see what appeared to be fog, and then ever so faintly I saw a thin grey/black line in the fog, reaching into the sky… Couldn’t make it out. After all on either side of me and in back of me was all sand and barren desert as far as the eye could see. Suddenly it was like the scene in the Wizard of Oz where Dorothy wakes up in Oz after the tornado. Black and white went to color and suddenly I realized I was in another world completely.

More on all that I saw and did in Dubai in Part II and III over the weekend, please check back Sunday for part II.

I am off to the Brooklyn Botanical Garden with my family to celebrate Mother’s day, we wish you all a happy Mother’s Day indeed.

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This entry was posted on Friday, May 9th, 2008 at 3:51 pm and is filed under Maniac Trader Rants and Raves, gold. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.