Data Dump

Hey y’all!

Dubai, right now.

It’s 5:30 AM in Dubai and I’ve been up for an hour despite the fact that I took a heavy-duty ultra-profesh sleeping pill around 9 PM last night in the hopes of dealing a death knell to my jet lag… ‘twas not to be, apparently.

Well, as my mom says, “if wishes were horses then beggars would ride,” (hmm - that seemed more relevant in my head) so since I am up and on my second cup of coffee, let me give you a mega-epic data-dump update on my last two weeks, because - as my #1 blog fan J.Wo recently admonished me - “Facebook stati do not count as blog posts.”

So yeah, I did a little America road show for work over the past couple weeks. The trip started inauspiciously, when I arrived in the Atlanta airport after my 16-hour flight from Dubai with just one thing on my mind: waffle fries.

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

After swearing to the gods of fast food that I would pay someone, anyone a hundred bucks to come open up the Chik and make me a meal, I had a Toto-we’re-not-in-the-Middle-East-anymore moment and realized that all the Dubai-style problem-solving skills in the world would not budge the nation’s collective Chick-Fil-A employees from the depths of their church pews. So I had a sausage biscuit from McDonald’s instead.

[Sausage biscuit huffily not pictured.]

After I arrived in DC and checked into my hotel, I hit the Potomac trails that were my stomping grounds during college and for several years thereafter - the place where I trained for my first marathon, ran with my first boyfriend [Ed. note for Alex: he was asthmatic and only made it about a half mile, so be nice], and contemplated quitting my first job.

I never get it when people say they don’t like DC… how? Why?

Since Washington is a place I’ll forever associate with being an earnest 22 year-old, I took a jaunt down to the monuments to remind myself that freedom isn’t free.

(“It costs a buck oh five.”)

And of course, I had to route myself through the ol’ alma mater…

… where I raided the bookstore and bought a host of age-inappropriate campus wear, which I would then spend the rest of my business trip wishing I could wear to meetings.

My Lebanese boss was not amused when I told him I thought the opening cocktail reception at our hotel that night should be “sweatpants casual.”

The next week in DC was spent in meetings, meetings, meetings with my counterparts from all over the company, so we’ll skip that part other than to quote my Pakistani colleague from Dubai, who took me aside the first day and murmured, “Watch out, Jessie - there are other blonde American girls here!” - a fact which had already struck terror in my heart because, oh my gosh, what an rare and unnerving peer group to deal with!

After DC, I headed down to TN to enjoy a weekend with my family, where I spent two days hanging out with my parents [not pictured… whoops], shopping, getting various spa treatments, and, uh, gratuitously trying on engagement rings at Nashville’s poshest jewelry stores:

(Don’t worry, Amy, you’re still the captain of that ship when the time comes.)

Then Sam helped me pack for Nebraska…

(I know the beach hat and the many boxes of fondue mix are hard to put into context, but there’s not a US trip that goes by where I don’t find some utterly random crap that I absolutely have to bring back to Dubai.)

And with that I was OMA-bound!

Oh yeah, forgot to tell you that I upped my suitcase game while I was in TN… don’t hate just ‘cause you can’t keep up with the eye-popping cray that is my luggage collection. (Although my mom worries that I’m diluting my personal brand by straying from the Pink Princess… it’s a valid concern.)

Nebraska was a productive but loooooooooooooooong week, one highlight of which was watching chunks of ice float down the Missouri River during the occasional breaks in our 12-hour training days:

PS - that’s Iowa across the water! Who knew?!

I also seized the opportunity to eat gross-yet-wonderfully-All-American meals from the office cafeteria:

Tater tots, bacon mac ‘n’ cheese, and a cheeseburger in one meal? Yes please! My only guilt was at fulfilling the stereotypes that the foreigners in my training group had about American “cuisine”… ah well, probably too late for that one.

And - posted for my mom because she likes to style me - I had some fun apparently pushing the limits of “business casual”… since when does biz caj mean suits, oh my Type-A colleagues? Whatever, overachievers gonna overachieve…

Go ahead, take a moment to luxuriate in the plush environs of the Homewood Suites Omaha that surround me here.

All jokes and snark aside though, the trip was a great learning experience and I feel really privileged to be working for a company that’s investing so heavily in my development… and yes, that’s kind of a caveat in case anyone from new job stumbles across my blog, but it’s also a genuine statement because, dare I say it, I really like this gig so far.

Okay, sorry for the data dump. This is now a blog about Dubai again… at least until I have to go back to Nebraska at the end of next month. Onward!

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cupofchi said: Funny that I’m reading this while up at 4 am in the States. I hate you, time change.
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dubaiandi said: It is an undeniable truth that cravings for Chik-fil-A increase one million percent on Sundays. Glad you had a nice trip and like the new gig! :)
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