When author Steve Burton heard the plan for transforming a relatively untouched bird sanctuary in the Middle Eastern emirate of Abu Dhabi into a complex, global entertainment and premier yachting destination within thirty months, he thought the idea wa

Staying Afloat

Three Years in Abu DhabiBy Steve Burton

iUniverse, Inc.

Copyright © 2012 Steve Burton
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4759-3651-3

Contents

Preface....................................................................ixAcknowledgments............................................................xiiiPart One The Right Place at the Right Time.................................1Prelude....................................................................3Dateline: California, April 2007...........................................6Verdict....................................................................14Part Two Very Bare Essential History.......................................31United Arab Emirates.......................................................33Emirate of Abu Dhabi.......................................................34Part Three Dateline: Abu Dhabi, June 2007..................................37Touchdown or Fumble........................................................39Tough It Out...............................................................41Department of Higher Complexity............................................42Home Sweet Home............................................................49Part Four "Heigh-ho! Heigh-ho! It's off to work we go".....................55If You've Got It, Flaunt It................................................57Fearless and Innovative....................................................59Baling Wire and Duct Tape..................................................60Momentous Yas Island Project...............................................66Part Five Red Flag.........................................................69Class-Based Society........................................................71Part Six Cultural Immersion—Vignettes................................79Brits and Webster..........................................................81Crescent Moon..............................................................84Melodic Call to Prayer.....................................................88Purity and Discipline......................................................89Clean and Cleaner..........................................................95Passions and Pastimes......................................................98Part Seven Meanwhile, Back on Yas Island...................................105Think Big..................................................................108Beacons of Eminence........................................................116Ticktock, Ticktock.........................................................120Just Do It.................................................................121Jump First, Look Later.....................................................123More and More..............................................................127Part Eight Onward and Sideways—Vignettes.............................129Spice and Life.............................................................132Survival of the Fittest....................................................140Why Make It Simple When Complexity Works Just Fine?........................145Rules of Engagement........................................................147Part Nine Checkered Flag...................................................155Part Ten "The sky's falling! The sky's falling!"...........................165Who's Holding the Old Maid?................................................167Pleasure Boating?..........................................................171Part Eleven Entrepreneurial Nomads.........................................177References.................................................................187About the Author...........................................................193

Chapter One

Part One

The Right Place at the Right Time

Prelude

The global economy was in the fast lane from late 2005 through mid-2008, immediately prior to the bankruptcy declaration by Lehman Brothers, the largest bankruptcy filing in US history. The economy in Abu Dhabi and Dubai redefined robust. Money from oil-thirsty countries was propelling this land from third-world to future-world status without a stopover in between. Visionaries and highly skilled individuals were in demand. My wife, Pamela, and I believed we were both. It was early 2007, presumably an opportune time to visit the country and observe firsthand what the media hype was all about.

We both held stable and initially challenging jobs in Northern California, but they had begun to lose their glamour. We'd been accused of being a go-for-it couple, and we were impatient to see what further chapters lay unread. Apprehension had never been much of a roadblock. The halfway point in our lives had been well exceeded, as documented in medical journals and mailers soliciting cemetery plots. As best friends, we had taught ourselves to view as many of life's experiences as possible with an air of lightness, particularly during moments requiring patience to retain sanity. We would soon relearn the value of that virtue—in a big way.

Moving to a sandbox in a Middle Eastern desert was not in the top one hundred on my want-to-do list. Make that the top two hundred. My soles had accumulated a fair number of travel miles during twenty years of marriage, but never had I envisioned that we would pick up and move halfway around the globe, from California to Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates. And certainly I had never imagined that I would soon become an integral player on a team tasked by the highest level in the government to undertake one of the most ambitious construction projects in the twenty-first century, which included a luxury yacht marina—in the desert.

What seemed to be an impulsive decision to relocate to the Middle East was, in fact, just that. The decision was not made without careful analysis, facilitated by a notebook of lined paper and a pencil. The line items consisted of an abbreviated list of our life's immediate priorities followed by brief justifications. This approach made it difficult to elaborate on pesky details that might spoil the party—quite scientific. Listening to our souls and following our intuition, the pencil moved with surprising ease. At that moment, we could not envision the extraordinary rewards that an odyssey to this land of superlatives would offer. Picture a child's first step into Toys "R" Us.

My background includes twenty years in the real estate development and construction industries in Northern California, followed by eight years in the maritime industry, my passion, in the San Francisco Bay Area—dissimilar careers.

My wife's background is equally diverse. Following a career as a real estate broker for fifteen years in Northern California, she pursued her passion and began her current career as a freelance photojournalist in the equestrian world. She was invited to cover both national and international horse racing events beginning in 1997. Her comprehensive coverage proved to be a fast-track route to international recognition, and many of those invitations were to the United Arab Emirates. Horse racing and breeding are passions of the Emiratis, and Arabian horses are their heritage.

After making a dozen solo trips to Abu Dhabi and Dubai over ten years, Pamela succeeded in making a convincing case that I should ignore my list of the top one hundred places I'd prefer to see and accompany her on the next trip. I acquiesced—a sign of an exemplary husband. The one-week venture would quickly make my list obsolete.

In preparation for the trip, I Googled several notable real estate development projects in Dubai and researched the greater Middle Eastern territory in Cliff Notes style. Dubai appeared to be the celebrity, with its palm-tree- and world-continent-shaped islands; the world's tallest building under construction, soon to reach 830 meters (2,720 feet, or a half mile) high; the world's only seven-star hotel; and a long list of other awe-inspiring visual statements prefaced by "the world's." The United Arab Emirates, also called the Emirates or UAE, and in which Dubai is located, is situated on the Arabian Peninsula and surrounded by larger neighbors—Oman on the south, Saudi Arabia on the west, Qatar on the north, and Iran to the north and east across the Arabian Gulf. Iranians call it the Persian Gulf because they are Persians, not Arabs.

Although I am a relatively open-minded native of Berkeley, California, who was educated at the University of California and whose political convictions earn a wide array of labels, I questioned with tongue in cheek which DuPont Kevlar vest model I should purchase to wear in that volatile area of the world. I presumed that an American may not be particularly welcome. Pamela looked at me like I was anything but college educated.

"Have you ever seen me pack a Kevlar vest in the past twelve years?" she asked.

"Noooo," I replied, struggling to keep a straight face.

"Ignore the tweaked, sensationalistic reporting."

I had prided myself in being able to read between the lines of press reports. Heck, I am married to a journalist. Pretending to tuck a tail between my legs, I jumped back into the research. No vest, I figured, would eliminate needless shopping time that could be better spent in a boat showroom. My story begins.

Dateline: California, April 2007

Passengers with window seats were treated to a spectacular light show as the jet glided into Dubai International Airport at 0100. Strobe lights mounted on the tops of hundreds of towering construction cranes lit up the evening sky. It has been rumored that Dubai is home to 20 percent of the world's construction cranes, and the blinking lights appeared to confirm that rumor. We landed in this land of enchantment in April 2007, following seventeen air hours that ushered us across 8,838 miles—San Francisco to Amsterdam to Dubai. I vividly recall entering the terminal and walking into the biggest jumble of cultures, languages, religions, dress styles, and general chaos that I had ever witnessed. The United Arab Emirates is home to expatriates, or "expats," from an estimated 103 of the world's 196 countries, and it was obvious in the terminal. I visualized a United Nations convention hall at recess. The flight boards displayed connections to every major city on the globe. As an American, I sensed an aura of warmth and collective acceptance among all ethnic groups in spite of the pandemonium. What a far cry from the perceptible racial inequality I recalled as a child in parts of the United States prior to the "I Have a Dream" speech delivered by Martin Luther King Jr. in 1963.

Pamela's Dubai hosts provided a chauffeured drive from the airport to a four-star hotel. Although worn out from sitting in economy class for the better part of a day, my exhaustion was replaced by sheer fear. The kamikaze driver broke most every rule in the California Department of Motor Vehicles' paperback handout. I mentally ran through the fine print of our life and medical insurance policies while observing that the operators of almost every vehicle were apparently former race-car drivers. I had never before passed another vehicle at 160 kilometers per hour (96 miles per hour) on the left shoulder. There were obviously unique rules of engagement. Nevertheless, we made it to the hotel, and it quickly became clear why Pamela had displayed annoyance in past travels when I had opted for a lesser-star hotel, like a two.

I rented a car and began to familiarize myself with Dubai during the week that my wife was covering the annual President's Cup endurance race somewhere out in the vast desert sand dunes between Dubai and Abu Dhabi. I visited many of the architectural and engineering marvels that I had researched prior to departing the States. I was intrigued—strike that—blown away by the scale and scope of the development projects. Is this for real? I wondered. I slapped my face to double-check that I was seeing what I thought I was seeing. It is for real. Never before had I seen such frenetic growth in one place.

Dubai was a construction zone on steroids; a beehive of activity; an endless convoy of thousands of twenty-two-wheeled trucks, called lorries, heading in every which direction; a forest of tower cranes; and heavy equipment, scaffolding, and literally hundreds of thousands of laborers. Gigantic dredging equipment, ships, and laborers worked off the coast, reclaiming sand to form immense, man-made islands.

Tanker trucks hauling potable water, wastewater, gasoline, and diesel fuel crisscrossed the land. A flotilla of supply lorries carried concrete, steel, rock, glass, marble, transformers, and air conditioners to thousands of construction sites, and packed containers were being unloaded from container ships as fast as port machinery would allow. Roadways, freeways, overpasses, tunnels, waterways, and deep excavations for high-rise buildings and underground infrastructure created a maze of detours, while hotels, restaurants, palaces, mosques, private villas, enormous shopping malls, and world-class sports and entertainment facilities were sprouting like springtime weeds in California. A cloud of construction dust hung over the expanding city. Exclusive of Fridays, the Muslim holy day, disorder reigned.

Viewing what were promoted as the biggest, highest, most ostentatious, and farthest-outside-the-box architectural and engineering projects on the planet, beginning at the Dubai International Airport, exceeded my wildest expectations. Buildings with unique geometric shapes—round, obelisk, sail-shaped—and cloaked in gold, silver, green, blue, and magenta reflective glass looked like ornaments on a Christmas tree. I was apprehensive to venture a guess at the money required to pull off this pageant. The LED screen on most pocket calculators is not wide enough to display the number of zeros.

Mental fatigue set in near the end of that first day of jet lag from viewing what could easily have been labeled "March of Chaos." The shutter on my Canon begged for a shot of 3-in-One oil. Pamela thought I was a babbling fool when we reunited for dinner, especially after I told her that the country's national bird was the construction crane. I calculated that I had another two long days of touring to take in more of Dubai's offerings. Heck, I had not yet hit the Black Diamond slope at Ski Dubai, which cantilevers over the momentous Mall of the Emirates.

Ski Dubai—ah, an amazing piece of pizzazz. It is the last thing I had ever expected to see in a desert. The indoor ski slope, open year-round and temperature controlled at -1°C (28°F), was another of Sheikh Mohammed's creations intended to expand Dubai's diversity. The four-hundred-meter (quarter mile) slope with a sixty-meter (two-hundred-foot) vertical drop includes a quarter pipe for snowboarders. The forty-two-dollar lift ticket, good for four hours of skiing, provides a unique shopping break for a family or ski bum. (The cost of a lift ticket escalated to $58.08 in 2012.) Complete ski apparel and skis and a snowboard are included in the price of a lift ticket, but ski instruction is extra. A quad chairlift whisks skiers to the top of a slope that doglegs out of sight somewhere above Giorgio Armani and Yves Saint Laurent. I viewed the desert ski action through two-story sheets of rigid, clear plastic while seated in front of the gas-fired fireplace at the St. Moritz Cafe.

A dumbfounded American couple seated at an adjacent table shook their heads back and forth while watching two teenagers catch air off a mogul midway down the slope. I could not resist eavesdropping.

"The energy required to power Ski Dubai for a single day is enough to power a midsize Midwestern city for a week!"

I lacked the courage to tell him that, from my biased California perspective, not as much goes on in a Midwestern city that requires a lot of power. Besides, did he seriously believe that a resident of Dubai would consider allowing snow conditions to deteriorate from packed powder to slush in order to conserve energy? Get real.

Regardless, sore thighs from skiing at Ski Dubai within the lavish Mall of the Emirates in the desert are forgotten as soon as the skier walks outdoors into a 42°C (107°F) furnace. Heart failure becomes the concern.

As a lifelong yachtsman, I was thrilled to see Dubai's white sand beaches and turquoise waters, purportedly home to an abundance of fish and underwater natural wonders. The coastal area appeared opportune for pleasure boating. I've come this far, I reasoned, and Pamela will be tied up with her horse racing gig for another five days. Why not check out the marine industry? I visited several dated marinas scattered along the Dubai coast and the Creek, a natural-seawater, navigable waterway that extends fourteen kilometers (8.4 miles) inland, dividing Dubai into two parts. The marinas appeared to be fully occupied—a good sign for marina operators but a bad sign for boat sales businesses that depend on a supply of available berths for customers to park new boats. There was evidently an immediate need for additional marinas.

I dropped by the sales office of Nakheel, Dubai's largest (at that time) and government-owned real estate development company. The elaborate models of the company's waterfront projects confirmed that multiple five-star marinas were on the drawing board or under construction. I was intrigued. Another spectator, a Brit named Edward, overheard the many questions I asked the Lebanese salesman. Edward introduced himself as an engineer who was also familiar with the immense projects. As our conversation progressed, he suggested that I visit neighboring, oil-rich Abu Dhabi, the largest of the seven emirates in the UAE, and check out a couple of its waterfront development projects. It was, after all, only an hour's drive, and I recalled the astonishing tales of Abu Dhabi that my wife had shared following each return from her prior visits. My new acquaintance called a colleague on my behalf and scheduled a meeting with him the following day in Abu Dhabi. There began a new chapter in my logbook.

Edward's colleague turned out to be a coastal hydraulic and marine engineer from Canada and a project director at the Al Raha Beach waterfront development. He showed me a scale replica of the project, its length spanning half the width of a high school gymnasium. At the touch of a button, miniature high- and low-rise buildings were illuminated. Scale villas, landscaped roadways, a light-rail train system, and meandering man-made waterways dotted with boats provided visual authenticity to the elevated display. The model represented ten kilometers (six miles) of shoreline, master planned to accommodate a future residential population of 120,000 and forecast to be built out in seven to fifteen years. The development was to become one of the largest construction projects in the world. Aha! Four marinas were depicted in the model, all of which appeared to be poorly designed.

My established baseline for fathoming the scope of a project the size represented by the table model was undergoing a sobering ascension. Coupled with Dubai, it appeared that another Roman Empire was in the making. Skeptical that what I was viewing was for real, I asked the engineer who the marina specialists were for this megaproject.

"Specialists? There aren't any," he replied.

"You've got to be kidding!" I exclaimed. "You work for a multibillion-dollar property development company that's building world-class waterfront developments, and there is no one on your team in charge of the basic requirements and needs of a marina?"

"You got it, mate."

Neon signs flashed on the second floor in my skull. I was confident that I knew the marina business from concept design through delivery and operations as well as, if not better than, most in the industry. I sensed that colossal maritime challenges were waiting to be addressed and that the developer, let alone the country, was screaming for expertise. Without hesitation and without regard for where the statement might lead, I volunteered with unwavering self-assurance, "You're looking at someone who knows a lot about marinas."

His expression looked like that of a forty-niner who had just struck gold in an ice-cold California river.

The balance of the day flew by as fast as a bullet train traveling from Paris to Lyon. It included introductions to other project directors—more Brits and a sprinkling of Lebanese, Jordanians, Kiwis, and Aussies, but no Americans—and ultimately to the CEO in the company's downtown corporate office. I was extended an offer of employment four days later, pending the company's receipt and approval of a glut of documentation. I felt like Rocky Balboa jogging at the top of the steps in front of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, DC, prior to his fight with Apollo Creed.

(Continues...)

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