...there was this poster on a building beside our San Francisco Hotel.
J has already left earlier this morning to continue her way back to Dubai through Boston, Washington, New York, UK, Berlin, Utrecht and Paris, while M flies in the opposite direction through NZ and Singapore.
So yes, M will be in NZ by morning - albeit having missed a whole Tuesday while crossing the International Dateline!
See you on the other side!
... Robert De Niro Snr. (1922-1993) that is, and some of his paintings hang in a trendy NYC restaurant - co-owned by his son, Robert De Niro Jnr.
The Tribeca Grill is down on the lower west side of Manhattan in what was the meat packing district of NYC. Now, it's a trendy part of town where people go to be noticed.
J and I went there to have dinner with an industry colleague, and we were not disappointed.
From our delightful Peruvian waiter, to the gorgeous Californian red wine; the beautiful surroundings and the magnificent food, the whole evening was sublime.
On the walls hang artworks painted by De Niro Snr, such as this huge piece which was above us.
Venturing down the stairwell to the restrooms is a march through the history of the restaurant with awards and writeups adorning every available wallspace, as well as posters of De Niro Jnr movies.
If you go there, it pays to reserve a table!
The main reason for our NY trip was to attend the launch event for Quark XPress 7 – the long awaited update to one of the world’s most popular graphics design and desktop publishing software.
Together with Quark, our company announced a major partnership and integration between our 2 software offerings – one that will give design teams the power of the new QXP7 features with the benefit of streamlining the workflow and management of the files.
It was an amazing day and Quark certainly spared no expense. We received a lot of interest for our integration.
We’re really excited about the future!
We’ve been in New York since Tuesday afternoon, and in between working hard with partner and press meetings as well as handling the normal pressures of emails and routine tasks, we’ve also taken time out to do some personal things.
We’ve already managed to see 2 movies.
MI3 was predictably forgettable. How many times must we endure Tom staring cross-eyed and unfocussed into the camera, thinking that all he has to do to act is smile. That worked in Cocktail buddy, but no more! Of his more recent movies, the only one that I liked was The Last Samurai in which he couldn’t smile – but then maybe I like it because it was filmed in NZ!
We haven’t yet managed to see Da Vinci Code. Friday was opening night and every screening was sold out. We’ll wait until we get to San Francisco to try again.
The other movie we saw was hilarious. Called Over the Hedge, it’s a cartoon movie for kids, but with some seriously funny adult storylines which are always built into cartoon movies.
We’ve also managed to do a fair amount of walking which NYC is all about.
The following posts are what we call our New York Minutes from this week! You can click on the images to enlarge them in your browser.
We love New York parks, and of course the Big Momma in the Big Apple is Central Park. Wednesday was beautiful, and we took the op to walk up Madison and into the park from the East side.
Sitting in the sun listening to these 4 guys play and sing jazz and ragtime was magical – and they were great. We even bought a CD of their music to remind us of a cruisy NY afternoon.
Sometimes visible from our hotel depending on which room we get to stay in, is the Empire State Building.
Once again the tallest building in Manhattan after 9/11, the grand old lady recently turned 75.
Nowadays, most of the offices are empty. The queues of visitors, wanting to get up onto the outside observation deck, take up lots of space as they snake their way through the building’s interior before finally managing the final elevator ride to the top.
Incredibly, it only took 13 months to complete the construction of the Empire State.
Sort of puts the Dubai construction deadlines into perspective doesn’t it? I doubt that there would be any buildings being constructed in Dubai that would go up in 13 months and be expected to last over 75 years!
This is our favourite NYC park for a number of reasons:
- Free internet
- The Bryant Park Grill restaurant – yummy food and excellent service
- Heaps of tables and chairs to sit at and enjoy the sunshine
- People-watching is fantastic
- Being in midtown makes it an easy place to get to
It’s a great walk from the Jolly Madison Hotel where we usually stay, and close to the lights of Broadway, 42nd Street and Times Square.
...on Broadway.
Walking around just on dusk and into the evening is an awesome experience – especially around Times Square, 42nd Street and Broadway.
As daylight gives way to neon light, the atmosphere on the streets turns from business to party time.
We never get bored walking around here!
As we were walking to the nearest Starbucks for J’s latte and my hot chocolate, I glanced up to see this stuck on a street sign.
This week has seen “new” video released of the plane going into the Pentagon. It’s inconclusive, and shows nothing but a big explosion.
Next door to our mid-town hotel on Madison is the recently re-opened and refurbished Pierpont Morgan Library. If you have to see one library or museum in NY, this would be our pick.
The building is a beautiful blend of old and new, incorporating Morgan’s original library and study with a new glass and steel atrium which brings the old and new galleries in the museum under the one roof.
For US$12, it’s a goosebump ride into the past: at least, that was what we experienced. The thrill of seeing Morgan’s library with so many valuable books; his study holding so many treasures, and the galleries filled with unbelievable artworks, left us weak at the knees and short of breath.
The pen, pastel and ink drawings were incredible. Famous painters’ pieces lined the walls: Da Vinci, Raphael, Michelangelo, Matisse, Rembrandt, Picasso, Gauguin, Cézanne, Constable, Blake, and Pollock to name a few.
The next gallery was full of handmade books including a few Persian examples. Exquisite jewelled, metal and leather covers enveloped fragile vellum with script in languages from all over the world.
Just as we thought that we had seen everything, the next gallery blew us away! In glass cabinets, sat original manuscripts and letters from the who’s who of the literary and musical worlds. Composers included Beethoven, Verdi, Richard Strauss, Mozart, Bach, Brahms, Mahler, Schubert, Wagner, Schumann and more recent George Crumb, John Cage and Henri Duparc. Also on display is a piece of paper recording Galileo’s observations of the moons of Jupiter in Jan/Feb 1611. Authors and writers included Beatrix Potter, the Brontës, Charles Dickens, Thoreau, Jean de Brunhoff, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Benjamin Franklin, Alexander Pope, Edgar Allen Poe, John Milton, Jane Austen, Robert Burns and Jonathan Swift. The lyrics to It ain’t me, Babe were scribbled by Bob Dylan onto hotel stationery from the Mayfair Hotel in London. It was mind-boggling!
Unfortunately, no photographs were allowed to be taken in the galleries, but M amused herself in the atrium!
Go see this museum if you’re ever in NY – it’s at 255 Madison between 36th and 37th Streets.
After 4 nights in a midtown hotel, on Saturday we shifted south to be closer to the work action for next week. Travelling down Park and then onto Broadway in the cab took us from the refined avenues of the well-heeled to the working class bustle that is Soho and Tribeca. What a contrast, and what fun it is to be in this area! Our hotel, the Millenium Hilton, is smack next door to what used to be the WTC towers and is now a gaping hole in the ground which was quickly dubbed to be Ground Zero on the morning of 9/11/2001. Our 54th floor hotel room gives us an eagle’s perspective of the site.
It’s incredible to know that the buildings surrounding the site escaped relatively unscathed as the 2 100+ storey towers pancaked down in clouds of dust. The Hilton’s windows were blown out and everything was covered in powder, but that was it. M still shakes her head over the fact that on the Saturday before 9/11/01, she and 2 friends were standing on the observation deck of the WTC and looking out over New York – among the last 3 days of viewers to stand on the platform.
Our room also looks down onto the Hudson River which is always awash with vessels of all kinds, including barges, yachts, ferries, pleasure boats and cruise ships. Beyond is the Jersey shore, and as well as the sightseeing helicopters and light aircraft that skid past our window, we can see bigger planes landing and taking off at Newark.
It’s a stunning view – we’re happy!
We took advantage of the sunny weather to walk back up Broadway from the Hilton through Tribeca and Soho. The streets were alive with shoppers enjoying the bargains. The Dubai hawkers touting handbags, glasses and watches could learn a few things here! Street stalls were always crowded with people willing to hand over their money in exchange for items that they want, and would never need.
A bonus was that we located the venue for the product launch events that we’re taking part in on Monday and Tuesday. As well, all our meetings planned for next week are in this part of town.
We love walking in New York.
We’re now set for another good few days before we leave on Wednesday for San Francisco.
Interesting to read an article which quotes a representative of the World Bank as he advises GCC countries to stop building big projects that are borderline sustainable, and instead look at investing oil money into creating industrial projects that provide opportunities for longterm growth and returns.
“There is enough construction," Hossein Razavi, director of the World Bank's private sector finance and infrastructure department in the Middle East and North Africa, told Reuters in an interview. "(Gulf states should) develop export-oriented industries because that is the source of long-term sustainable growth for the region and I think that is the one area that should have the highest priority.”
He goes on to add that the building of roads, tourist resorts and similar projects were only feeding domestic demand and driving up inflation, and concludes by calling for more fiscal responsibility by the GCC governments.
Fellow blogger Emirati has been a strong advocate of this thinking for quite some time. In his Monday October 17th 2005 post titled: EIS1: Utilization of Natural Resources, he discusses some options that are available to the UAE through use of petroleum for making plastics and silica for glass, ceramics and semi-conductors. In his Monday 13th October 2005 post titled: Going International, he states that: “Industrialization would have great benefits to the UAE. It would once more help the internal industrial base, help secure additional exports, and save more money from going outside the country. It would help with internal maintenance, help develop internal technical capabilities and lessen dependence on other countries. A first world and developed country should not depend on services and the sale of raw materials only for its income and depend on the Importation of everything. The best time for the Industrialization here is sooner, not later.”
It’s good logic. For a start, it would see the UAE compete with other parts of the world in the exporting of manufactured goods. It provides employment in a sector that the UAE has not openly embraced. It gives growth to the UAE which in time will see diminishing returns as its natural petroleum resources start to dwindle.
Most importantly, as Emirati lucidly points out, if the UAE wants to be considered as a first world and developed country, then this is an area into which they must expand and develop.
What are the criteria for being a First World Country? On the surface, it appears that the requirements are pretty simple. According to the One World – Nations Online website:
The term "First World" refers to so called developed, capitalist, industrial countries, roughly, a bloc of countries aligned with the United States after World War II, with more or less common political and economic interests: North America, Western Europe, Japan and Australia.
In terms of industrialisation, I think that there’s a long way to go before the UAE will be seen on that list of countries, especially taking into consideration the other listed criteria such as Human Development and Freedom of the Press. As well, the recent DP World saga caused damage to the “common political and economic interests” which still has some healing to do.
To be taken seriously, the UAE needs to be coming up with more credible, realistic, sustainable, financial and believeable projects than those with names like Beautyland, that in the world outside the UAE and in the minds of some UAE residents, only reinforce the opinion that this country is not for real.
A serious commitment to industrialisation and the formulation of a 15-20+ year schedule to develop the UAE industrial plan would be a good start. After all, this is the model that India has been following for many years (planned in the early 90s), and is about to come to good fruition for a country which put aside political differences to adhere to a series of 5 year plans to develop their industrial growth. You'll notice on their 1991 Statement of Industrial Policy, that development of Hotels and Tourism-related industries is in last place at #34 on the list for industies granted automatic approval of foreign technology agreements and for 51% foreign equity approvals. Obviously, tourism is not a high priority for development in India!
As always, the key for the UAE is to define the goal and by when: with commitment, planning and continual updating of the plans to change with the economic and social environments. Plan according to the needs within shorter 5 year periods, and take into consideration the return on investment (ROI) and opportunities for growth.
It's a bit like running a business, really!
Ah - Berlin in the Springtime!
The sun is shining, the trees are in bloom, and a gentle breeze is blowing. Yup – blowing all the pollen into our sinuses so that all of us are suffering from some form of hayfever!
Still, it’s nice to have the sun, and not the cold, wet and sometimes snow that I’ve had on my other visits here.
Yesterday was beautiful. After breakfast down the road at a local café where we sat outside and ate delicious plates of breakfast things, we came home to sit in the garden and commune with nature – pollen, Mata Hari the cat and Ginger the squirrel.
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Late afternoon, and we were in the car for my first tour of Berlin, other than what I have seen from the car travelling between the office and J’s house!
It truly is a beautiful city with lots of statues on all the old buildings. It’s quite incredible to see pre-war buildings standing side-by-side with more recent buildings that were constructed on bombsites after WWII.
Observations from being here:
- church bells sound as regularly as the call to prayer in Dubai
- shopping here is great – so much variety and clothes are inexpensive
- living in the middle of a city can be quiet
- there is hardly any traffic
- the pollen is driving us crazy
- everything runs on time
I finally got to go on a river cruise. After seeing these boats travelling past our Berlin office on the River Spree each day, I was actually on one! We motored mainly through the government section, past the house of parliament, the chancellor’s monstrosity down to the new railway station which will soon open to accept long distance trains. The cruise lasted an hour and was only €5.
I won’t be posting regularly for the next few weeks as we’re about to get really busy with product launches, trainings, meetings and travel. See you on the other side!
Inspired by MamaDuck on toot! via Keefie’s blog, and Dengrous Boy's prozac inspiration, I toss my hat into the ring.
Let the Haiku wars begin!
As I’m about to head off to the airport – here are a few spur of the moment ones.
Heading out the door
Got to go to d x b
Aussie friend to meet
************
Down Sheikh Zayed Road
To the airport I’m going
Pray that I am safe
***********
On the Dubai roads
Moryarti sees morons
Pictures he will take
************
Summer surprises
Modhesh in yellow glory
Terrifies the kids
************
This is fun, but I really gotta go!
OK - now I'm back, and while waiting at the airport for T to appear, I thought of a few more!
************
Keefieboy is sad
Samosas past use-by date
toot's top 10 not made
************
Two Sunshine sisters
Abu Dhabi and Dubai
Blogs of note they write
************
Patagonia
Stolen slippers fund the trip
SD returns rich
************
and so to bed!
