I sit here now with a fever, chills and night sweats... Eerily similar to the crap I had in Brazil after spending 30hours travelling to get there...coincidence, I think not. No worries, I believe this could have killed lessor men, so I'm good. Plus, I have plenty of time to get ready for AZ still. I'm home, comfortable again and in my own element. All good things when you are battling an illness. I had a ride today that I was supposed to do some IM Race Pace intervals that I was looking forward to, but not going to risk it. I may run later or swim depending on what the thermometer says next time. It's either 101 or 95...
Now on to Abu Dhabi... 9.5 hours to Frankfurt and 7 to Abu Dhabi with a quick stop in Bahrain. Since AD 12 ahead of us this made crazy jetlag. I got in @ 1am AD time, interviews started @ 10am...yikes. No worries I fell asleep just fine. The bank (Abu Dhabi Commercial Bank) sent a car that morning. I meet several people that I would work with, plus their boss. I probably could have known more about the bank itself, but its hard to info on them. That afternoon I totally crashed. I felt as if I had been up for more than 24 hours...3 in the afternoon was 3am my time, etc, etc. By dinner I was in a serious hole. Not to mention my new shoes were developing blisters the size of quarters. We went to the mall, which could have been any mall in America (aside from the local dress and stores I don't reconize) to get a new tie. I was only planning on 1 day of interviews, not two. I had a minor meltdown after dinner and kinda freaked Jennifer (she's the one who is hiring me, we worked together at InFocus) out a little. Why did I freak out? Shear tiredness was most of it. I also completely forgot about the opportunity this job, the bank, and the country has going for it. I was fixated on the fact that all the photos and things I read about AD were not what I was seeing. The Corniche is very nice and there are a lot of very nice buildings, but Abu Dhabi and the UAE is still an emerging country, 3rd world almost. I knew all the those photos weren't the real Abu Dhabi. Anyway, I awoke the next morning feeling much better and looking forward to meeting the CEO in waiting, Jennifer's boss' boss.
I have never meet anyone that has a presence as this man did. He had his white dishdashah on and everything. He was very passionate about ADCB and the wealth management group (Excellency) is his baby, he started it 4 years ago. It was a very inspirational interview and I did well. I am now very excited about this opportunity. I meet a couple other people int he group that day as well as one guy that will be my data junkie for mining the BI tools the banks use.
Here are some random photos, I didn't take very many... The first photo is looking towards Abu Dhabi Mall and the Rotunda. The start of the Corniche. #2 is the bank.
Here is the Corniche. This is the nice part of the city, the parts you see in the photos. It's very cool looking at night when everything is lit up. The next photo is looking the other direction along the Corniche. 
And last, but not least, gotta love Krispy Kreme in Arabic...
No comments:
Post a Comment