I spent the last two days on the road between Abu Dhabi and Dubai. Nasr closed a training engagement with a forward looking bank in Abu Dhabi and off we went to teach a treasury team. For an outsider, Abu Dhabi is a lovely city with tremendous potential. During our last two trips we had stuck to the Corniche and large ring roads to get to our client site and traffic wasn’t that bad. Then last night we took a wrong turn onto the main inner city and after trying for a couple of hours to get to our hotel, had a change of heart. Then this evening after finishing the first day of training we took Zayed road back to Dubai and I used the new Etisalat EVDO GSM modem for work, testing bandwidth all the way from Abu Dhabi Airport to Emirates Hill.
All I can say after spending 8 hours within the last 24 hours on the road is that the reports of Dubai’s death are greatly exaggerated. Even though the city isn’t home, there isn’t a city like this in this region.