Decided to try a public blog today. Of course, I have to tell people about it before anyone knows it’s here. I was trying to come up with a name for the blog that WordPress would like and happened to see the book I’m currently reading, The Relief of Imperfection by Joan C. Webb. I decided that described how I was going to treat this blog, I don’t have to post every day or even every month, I don’t have to have wise and pithy things to say before I create an entry, and all of that is a great relief. (Many thanks to my coach, Janet Caffray, for recommending this book!)
A highlight of what I’ve been doing lately. I am 3/4 of the way through my EMBA program at Queens University in Charlotte. Last year we went to Shanghai, Hong Kong, and Vietnam for an International Trip. This year I opted to do another trip. We went to Dubai in the United Arab Emirates, and Cairo, Egypt. I’ve posted my photos at Anthony’s mac gallery, broken into albums based on where we were: Click HERE to see the photos.
The trip was very interesting. Dubai seems very modern in many ways – lots of high rises and cars and cranes putting up even more high rises. We got to drive out onto the trunk part of the original Palm being built off the coast. We met with a few of the free zone cities that they have created in Dubai to encourage businesses to open up shop.
Then we went to Cairo, which does not seem very modern or new. We heard from someone from the Ministry of Finance talk about how much the Egyptian economy is subsidized, then we went to the Institute of Directors in the Ministry of Investment to talk about governance. That was interesting. Not surprising, they are having better luck educating corporations about governance than educating investors about due diligence.
Some of the things we ran into – men always got served first. Two of our group went into a store to buy water and had to wait for the men in the store to be served first, even those who came in after them. We had some great guys in our group of 33 who always made sure the women in the group weren’t traveling anywhere alone. And Bush is not popular over there, given the people we ran into. Cab drivers and even our tour guide in Egypt felt the need to let us know they didn’t like Bush. Some of our group seemed to enjoy that, but some of us don’t care for people in other countries bashing our President.
We got back home on Memorial Day. Took a week or so to catch up on sleep and get over jet-lag. It’s a 14 hour flight from Atlanta to Dubai so we spent a fair amount of time in airports and airplanes over the week we were gone.
Now it’s onto preparing for the Entrepreneurial project for 4th quarter and getting ready to home school Connor next year.
Oh yeah, for those who didn’t know, my nephew Connor moved in with us January and spent the last half of the school year going to Bailey Middle School near us. He finishes 7th grade this week. Then he’ll go home for the summer and return in August. After an enlightening conversation with a friend at church I decided to try home schooling him for 8th grade to see if that environment works better. Given the time and effort spent working through his homework and then trying to figure out if he actually handed in the homework, I am not sure home schooling will be that much more effort. I think the primary issue will be time to get him to/from the extra-curricular activities I find for him. The first half of the year, while I finish my EMBA will be the hardest.
That’s enough for my first blog entry. Talk to you soon!
