Really Really Big Industries, Inc.

Well, not completely indoors, but the KEW Royal Botanical Gardens does have several large glass green houses (actually one of the largest all glass houses in the world.) The scene here in London is sad…windy/rainy/cold. One of those days straight of a movie where every one is fighting against the wind with their brolly (that’s umbrella to you kids back in the states.) and then WHOOSH it turns inside-out.

With my new found sense of direction I figured it couldn’t hurt to venture out a bit beyond our normal zones and pubs. Took the Tube about 10km outside of London (12 or 13 stops on the District Line from the center of London) and then walked a bit along the south bank of the Thames river to get to 300 acres of botanical gardens. Even with the blustery weather, I couldn’t have picked a better place to be.

The whole gardens is strewn with massive Henry Moore sculptures! I think 30 of them. I’ve always liked his work, I think it may go back to when my sister attended Trinity University and I got to see several of his larger works (at least I think it was him…Susan will have to confirm.) Anyway, he does this ongoing series of pieces that are all about negative space and separate but connected forms and I really like them. Every time I see one I just want to climb it. 30 of them in one location was a true test of will power…but honestly since it was raining I think that climbing would have been more about sliding. (It would have been a ton of fun though!)

This is the aptly named “Large Reclining Figure”

And this one is “Draped Reclining Mother and Baby”

So, I stayed out in the wind and rain for as long as I could stand it. Managed to get a couple of shots off before the rain really started coming down…after that I just wandered with the camera safely inside my bag and enjoyed the wide open space filled with nature.

If you want an idea of how cold it was, this little tyke is dressed just right…don’t you wish they made those bunny suits for adults?

The daffodils are in bloom, Kew’s Narcissus, so we’ll call this pic “hope of future spring…” I’m hoping that by the time Mark and I get back to Chicago, the winter will be a distant memory…

This is the small side of the Palm house, which, oddly enough, is indeed full of tropical rain forest environment and palm trees. Once my glasses stopped fogging up I really enjoyed it. No pics from inside, my poor camera was pleading to be left alone away from all that condensation.

The Kew is huge. 13 buildings and 300 acres of plantings and research. It’s a bit of a schlep from the city, but if you are here and have the time I highly recommend it. Perhaps a bit further into the spring season though..

Anyway, the weather man swears that tomorrow the sun will come out and trusty assistant/fixer Lauren and I will be able to take the two cars, 5 models and untold number of props to the Isle of White for our photo shoot. Keep your finger’s crossed for us!

Excellent day Thursday! Our local JCI host Josy met us in his Honda CR-V (all these guys have production-friendly vehicles….fabulous!). Met some very nice guys who are channel partners of our client, and afterwards they took us to a scrumptious lunch of traditional Iranian food. Lots and lots of it. Our main host kept prodding Ryan to eat more (have more lamb! have more prawns! eat the bread before it gets cold!). Oh, the bread! Made in a very very hot clay pit thing, it was delicious. As was the mint tea at the end of the meal. After our shoot we chilled for a bit then strolled out in Doha in search of dinner. While Bobbi’s navigational skills enhance in London, mine decline in Doha. After heading the wrong way on Suhim bin Hamad St., Ryan spun us around and got us to Al Miroab street…kind of a 53rd street of the area. Lots of shops and restaurants. We checked one place out, decided against it, and as we walked out a local guy walked out behind us and in nicely-accented English we hear, “This is the best arabic food in Doha.” We chatted and joked for a sec, then decided—with an endorsement like that, how could we say no? So up we went into the 2nd floor dining room of the Al Sultan Restaurant, and he was right. Awesome hummos, awesome matoubal, incredible yogurt-with-cukes, terrific falafal…best I’ve ever had….with very subtle, delicious tahini sauce. Judith, you would love this place! After that we walked it off back to the hotel. Now it’s Friday, for many the only day off of the week (some get saturday off as well), and I’ve had another nice breakfast at the Hyde Park Coffee Shop here in the hotel (yes, seriously), now Ryan and I prepare to head to the Corniche area of the city to enjoy the souks, watch the parade of dhows and perhaps the racing boats, and like that.

So, I know this will surprise all of you…but the weather here in London is rainy and gray. I know! Who would have thought?! : )

Ok, so we knew this was a great possibility, but we still have good hope for the weekend shooting scheduled for the Isle of White.

Since shooting in gray rainy weather is pure rubbish and produces crap photos I put my camera back in it’s safe case and took myself out into the weather (which is warm, but yucky) to go grab a bit of culture.

Those of you who know me will be astonished to hear that I’ve actually managed to get my bearings here in London (it only took about a dozen visits) so today was all about walking. I believe I covered about 10 miles square worth of the city and including taking the tube to meet up with our great friend Mike for a really tasty Turkish dinner I didn’t get lost or turned around once. Spooky eh?

So, I have a smattering of odd photos from the Victoria and Albert Museum and the city itself:

Ever wonder how those Tupperware containers your mom used were made? You can learn all about it at the Science Museum next to the Victoria and Albert. It’s pretty kooky actually this is the same company that made gas masks in world war II… got to love chemical engineering.

So, going with the plastics theme (a whole section of the Science Museum was dedicated to it) this is a fairly large chandelier made out of Bic pens. I can’t for the life of me explain why… I suppose this falls to the “because they could” category

At the Victoria and Albert Museum (a dizzingly laid out building meant to confuse your sense of direction at every turn) tucked in amongst the antiquities, the 16th century sculptures, the ancient china textiles and the art of the masters are strange and wonderful three dimensional displays hanging in the little nooks and corners and over the head of people on the floors below. This is a set of real instruments that have been crushed flat and hung from thin wires so that they move around with the air flow…it’s much larger than it appears in this iPhone pic. I liked that people were walking below it being very serious as they “admired” really really hard to interpret paintings from many decades ago.

So, you ask yourself; what’s it like doing business in the Middle East? I’ll tell you two interesting stories.

1. Remember that company in Abu Dhabi I blogged about that runs the District Cooling plants? They supply cold cold water to a number of buildings in an area, then each building basically converts that cold water into air conditioning. If the water ain’t cold, neither is the air. In the summer it gets very very hot here. One time, the district cooling plant supplying the military hospital had some problems, and the air started to not be cool. The guy in charge of the plant gets a call from the man in charge of the hospital; fix this problem in 24 hours, or my next call is to the Emir.

2. Here in Doha, a contractor installed an A/C system incorrectly. They contractor placed the blame on the A/C equipment company; our client. Shortly after, our client got a call about it; the problem home in question happens to be the palace of the princess, and if it doesn’t get fixed soon, for free, His Highness will throw them out of the country.

So…nothing like a little Royal pressure to place one on pins and needles….eh?

Man—ok, so, if Dubai is amazing, Abu Dhabi is TRULY amazing. The growth here has been unreal. Check the pic of the little seaside village….that was Abu Dhabi in the mid-1960s. Now, there are well over something like 5000 towers (and our client’s stuff is in, like, 65% of them). But whereas Dubai is huge, spread out, wide streets choked with traffic and very car-oriented, Abu Dhabi is much more of a pedestrian-oriented city, and it’s generally cleaner and more laid back (and less hazy; Abu Dhabi the city is on an island and so the sea keeps the air much cleaner). And more wealthy…MUCH more wealthy. All the local guys we met with said it’s more relaxed here because Abu Dhabi has the oil, so they have the money and they are more easy-going/less concerned with puffing themselves up by being The Biggest—-because they are The Baddest. But there’s not enough hustle and bustle here for Farhan; he prefers Dubai. Hey, whaddya gonna do?

Day 1 we were inside one of the District Cooling plants, repleat with our client’s gigantor chillers, then we were off to see the places to which they furnish chilled goodness, so we got a nice tour of the city, had a great seafood lunch with the help of food-picker-outer Mini (note to those who will host Farhan someday: crabs, and possibly scallops, do not agree with him). We didn’t get inside the Emirates Palace Hotel, but one of our awesome JCI dudes Anil promises to take us there next time (apparently there’s so much 24k gold in the place it’s even on the washroom fixtures).

Day 2 was busy busy busy, interviewing some customers (though, not as many as we thought. We got to one customer location and they had to cancel on us on the spot. They told us that Sheik Sultan showed up unannounced—he’s the brother of the President of the UAE—and everyone had to scramble. Boy, if I had a dirham for every time I’ve heard THAT one….) and some employees—fascinating people, really. Lots of them are from India, however we spent some time with Taher, Palestinian by birth, carrying a Jordanian passport, who cannot go back to his native Jerusalem to do anything about their three homes there; Yasser, a Syrian by birth who grew up in Germany, and so many others….all very cool, very friendly people from far and near.

In fact, note to all my American pals who will read this: you gotta come here and visit (maybe not in the summer). The UAE is so nice, so clean, SO safe (when we went inside the Sheik Zayed Mosque—third largest in the world, THE largest in the world to allow non-Muslims to visit without some pre-arranged invitation,—we could bring still cameras, but not video. So I left my video camera on the floor of the car, and I think Taher only locked the doors so we’d feel better, because there is virtually no crime at all here..and I felt totally secure about it). I mean, not once did I feel anything but welcome here. English is very widely spoken, and…you see people who look very different than you, people who look like all the bad guys we see on our evening news at home, but they are just—people. Very proud, very successful, with wonderful, and deep traditions.

So, the Sheik Zayed Mosque. He was the founder of the UAE, very much beloved by his people (he’s the guy at the top of this blog entry, and his picture is everywhere we went), and he’s buried there. Anyway, it is more beautiful than it is huge. Chandeliers unlike any I’ve seen, and semiprecious stone inlays everywhere; on the pillars, on the floor of the massive courtyard, amazing. And of course, there was a surreal moment… We take off our shoes and walk in the door (Farhan tells us to roll up our pants a little, then they will think we are true Muslims), and as we step in two guys–light-skinned like me and Ryan–in traditional attire walk past, and one they look over as one says “hey guys, what’s up?” in a clear, southern california voice. Then they stand there just a little behind us, complaining about the attention to detail inside! “Dude, did you see all the gaps between the marble and the stones? Man, they gotta kick it up a notch and deal with that soon. Not cool.” At first we thought they were joking, but nope–they had issues! It took all we had not to explode in laughter at them. Anyway, we got a great look around, Farhan and also Taher explained the significance of some of the details we saw, and how the prayer service works….and it was fascinating, but it was also clear that these guys really enjoy their faith, they gain a lot from it, and it shows in how they live their lives.

Anyway, it was a great day, and the visit to the Mosque was an ultrahighlight (thanks in no small part to Farhan’s wonderful explanation of what we were seeing), and I hope you enjoy the pics.

I have to give a very special shout-out to Farhan Qureshy, an absolutely delightful, professional, wonderfully insightful and knowledgeable gent who steered us through all that the UAE had to offer us. Great working with you Farhan, very much looking forward to seeing you in Chicago in August!

Our nighttime flight to Doha brings us to another country, another culture, another set of adventures, and after our shoot today I think there is a Qatar Cultural Festival that begins tonight we might have to go and check out.