Term 2- Distance Weeks & Grades

Julie,

Wow, Well needless to say this term was CRAZY! Crazy classes, adjusting to a new born, adjusting to a 2 year old that was adjusting to a new born, preparing for a career changing proposal, the holidays, etc.

Luckily it all came to pass. We are now into Term 3 and I was able to get through both decision models and economics. I squeaked by in decision models with a "P", but I was quite grateful to have it and then I was able to get an HP in economics.

This post is short, but I just wanted to summarize how crazy Term 2 was.

I love you!

Brock

Dubai- Day 9- The Last Hurrah

SKIING and WATER PARK in ONE DAY,

All in a day's work!

Julie,

Well right now I’m on my last leg of my flight from Atlanta to Las Vegas. Wow what a trip this has all been. I felt like it has been so long since I’ve been home and I definitely was able to get everything done that I wanted to. This last day was one of the most interesting.

First was the dynamic I mentioned earlier about being finished and having the whole day to wait until my flight flew out. I slept in a little and had my wake up call around 9am. I got up, checked email, got ready, and headed down to breakfast. I knew I would be out all day so I was sure to take my time and have a good breakfast. I sat and talked with a few other Duke students and then I went back to my room to finish packing.

I checked out around 11:30am. The hotel was cool to hold my bags for the day, so David Taylor and I headed out with two tasks on our minds. First, we headed to the Mall of the Emirates to do what everyone HAS to do when you go to Dubai—ski. It is so crazy, you enter the mall and are walking through what is kind of like a food court in the mall and there are some big glass windows looking into a “winter wonderland.”

Inside Look from the Mall to the Ski Slope

We headed into “Ski Dubai.” They give you boots, skis, poles, snow pants, and a coat to use. If you want a beanie or gloves you have to purchase that additionally. We checked in and headed into the slopes. Wow! I was so surprised at how cold it was in there, seriously it was REALLY cold. Skiing was AWESOME! It was just a bunny hill, but it was really fun to 1. Be able to ski and 2. To experience indoor skiing in Dubai. We spent about an hour an half of the 2 hours you get when you pay. Half way through my hands were REALLY cold, but then I must have just gotten use to it cause I don’t remember them being very cold after that. We got some good pictures and videos and then called it a day for skiing… it was time to head to the water park!

Mall entrance to Ski Dubai

Snow Park and entrance to the ski lift

Ski Lift looking back at the Mall

We jumped in a cab and rode over to the man made palm island that Dubai is so famous for. At the very top of that palm is the Atlantis Resort where the water park is located. It is crazy to think while you are out there that everywhere you are walking use to be the middle of the Persian Gulf until someone came up with the idea of making an island. The whole resort is AMAZING and really nice. We got to the water park about 2:45pm which meant we had about 3 hours to experience the water park. That actually ended up being a perfect amount of time. Pat, from my team, ended up joining us so we just went around the entire park trying to experience everything we could before it closed. First we went to the leap of faith slide which is the slide that was featured on “Amazing Race”. It is comparable to the freefall at Seven Peaks and was definitely a fun slide. It wasn’t big enough to give me butterflies, but I did get a rush and had a lot of fun. However, if that lady from Amazing Race knew what it was that scared her out of a million dollars she would be SO MAD at herself.

Atlantis Resort

Anyway, we did Leap of Faith first and then we picked up some tubes and went to the top to go down a tube ride called the Plunge. From there every tube slide feeds into the lazy river (which is HUGE). The other cool thing about the tube slides is that most of them have part of the slide that goes UP, not just down. They will shoot you down the slide and then the slide turns upward and there is a blast of water that propels you up the hill. Not only does it shoot you up, but the blast of water spins your tube so I usually ended up doing the rest of the slide backward, which makes it that much more fun.

Part of the Lazy River

“Leap of Faith”

Kids water park (Mason would love this)

View of some of the “branches” of the palm islands

View of the Dubai skyline

Sunset over the waterpark

When you get to the bottom of the slide the water flows down a small “canyon” and feeds into the lazy river. You then can take offshoots that lead to different conveyer belts that haul you back up to the top of different slides. It was so fun to be able to just float around on the tube and then let it haul us back to the top. If you paddled with your hands a little bit, you literally didn’t even have to get out of your tube :).

After we did all the slides we went to the attached beach that is on the Persian Gulf. That water is SO salty, so salty in fact that it made my face burn where I shave. It was crazy. But the beach was really nice and the water is really warm.

After the beach, we took pictures, and then headed to grab a cab back to our hotel. At the hotel, I was already checked out of my room so I headed back to the gym where they have a shower and a steam room. I showered and changed to get ready for my flight. When I got back out to the lobby there were about 7 or 8 other Duke students there and they wanted to go out for dinner. They took us to a place called “Al Mallah” to have schwarma. It was great! It just a little street vendor with some tables and chairs outside. We ate and chatted and then headed back to the hotel again to get our bags.

Al Mallah street vendor

From there it was time to head to the airport. There were 8 or 9 of us on the same flight so we caught a couple of cabs to the airport. Once we got through security we headed to the gate and still had about 2 hours before the flight left. I ended up getting a blizzard at Dairy Queen (ha ha in Dubai, can you believe that?) and then we sat and that is when I was able to get on the internet for a little bit and email you. From there it was time to board the flight and now 20+ hours later, here I am, dying to get home and see you.

It was quite the day being able to ski, go to the water park, and go to dinner on the streets of Dubai, all in one day.

I love you so much and now that we are through 2 of the 5 international residencies, I want you to know I am so grateful for your support. We knew coming into this that it wasn’t going to be easy. Working, MBA school, plus having a 2 year old and a new baby all at the same time is a lot for our little family to handle, but I knew we would be able to do it because you were so supportive of me and my career goals. You are an amazing woman and I am always amazed at how much you are able to do all by yourself, especially now with two kids. You are so talented and beautiful and could do anything you wanted to professionally. How grateful am I that you choose to be a mother and share all your talents with our boys.

Now here comes the rest of Term 2.

Love ya,

Brock

Dubai- Day 7 & 8

Julie,

Well the last two day have been really good and quite the way to end the Term 2 Residency.

Friday was all morning in class and most of the afternoon. We also had a speaker and we finished about 4:30pm. After we got out of class we had about 30 minutes to get dressed and ready to go to the desert. When we got down to the lobby in the hotel there were about 12-15 SUVs waiting for us to take us out. It was really cool and was about a 45 minute drive to get out of the city. Once out of the city and into the desert we had to park and get out so they could let the air out of the tires till they had really low air pressure.

Sunset skyline on the way to the desert

Look as far back as you can on this picture, notice how many cranes there are?

And all of them are idle, it is crazy.

Line up of our SUVs as they are letting the air pressure out.

After we got back in it was about another 10 minute drive to the place where we had dinner. Our driver was AWESOME. His name was Tariq and he was from Bangladesh. As soon as we hit sand he definitely wanted to make it entertaining for us. The whole time he would rev the engine, drive up on the side of hills, and fish tail all over the place. It was an interesting driving sensation, kind of like driving in snow, but thicker I guess.

When we got to our place we got out and the had tiki torches leading into the camp and camels parked outside. The set up for the camp was really nice. They had tents and carts covered with food and they had a bar. There was more food than you could ever imagine. There was like 5 different kinds of meat, potatoes, the whole works.

At dinner, we sat on pillows on the ground that were all covering the sand with giant carpets. It was fun to sit and chat with other Duke students. After dinner though I got pretty bored and I was ready to go. They brought out a belly dancer, people were drinking, and they were smoking huka. It wasn't as fun as I think it could have been since a lot of the class didn't come. They had gone to a similar one right before the residency started so they didn't want to do it again. Once the belly dancer came out, we sat and watched for a while and then I wandered around and then thankfully it was time to go back. Overall it was a really good experience, I'm glad we went out.

Our Dinner set up. It was really good food.

Dinner in the desert camp

Saturday was our last day of classes. We luckily got to start an hour later than usual so we were able to sleep in a little more. Class passed by without anything extraordinary. By the last class after lunch, it was obvious that everyone had checked out mentally and we were just grinding along minute by minute, dying for it to end. Thankfully it came. One really funny thing that happened near the last of the class was when one of the students, Wasim, went out in the foyer to get some more coffee. This won't sound as funny as it was, but I guess he had offered to get coffee for a couple other guys and so when he was out there he was trying to balance three cups of coffee on his folder. As a sidenote the wait staff around here is unreal. They are all over the place. As an example, there is a person who stands outside our classroom and her sole job is to hold the door open when we come out and to open the door for us when we go in. Crazy huh? Back to the story, one of the staff members told Wasim they would take care of it and bring in the coffee. So imagine this scene. We are on our last hour of a week of classes, everyone is zoning out or falling asleep and just staring at the projector screen. Then in walks Wasim. Normally this wouldn't be a big deal cause people get up and go to the bathroom all the time, but Wasim sits on the far side of the classroom and right behind Wasim is a waiter with a tray and three cups of coffee. It was so funny to watch the whole class turn their eyes to Wasim and watch him dumbstruck as he walked to his seat. Even funnier was when he sat down he ushered the waiter over and pointed to the three spots for the guys who wanted to coffee. The professor even stopped his class and we waited, watched, and laughed while the waiter delivered each cup of coffee. It probably wasn't that funny of an incident, but after a long week of classes it was hilarious!

Sunset behind the Burj Al Arab

When our last class ended, we headed up to our rooms, changed clothes, and headed to the beach. It was nice to get out a relax and watch the sunset. We then went and swam in the pool for a while and then came back to the hotel. This is going to be weird ending to the residency. Last time we finished classes, had the last night party, and the next morning packed up and headed for the airport. This time we have the last night party, and now I have ALL of tomorrow to wait until my flight leaves. Hopefully we will have a good time and be able to see some sights, but I sure will be ready to get on that plane and head back to you guys!

Well its been a good residency and I think with all that is going on with the holidays and work and school that everything is going to go REALLY fast.

Thanks for all your love and support. I would never be able to do anything like this without you. You are the best thing that ever happened to me. I love you!

Love,

Brock

Dubai- Day 6

Prayer Tower

(I have some cool video with the prayer chant)

Julie,

Today was an awesome day! Our morning not so much since we started out an hour earlier than usual. We had class all morning and then lunch and another speaker. This speaker was Sheikh Sultan Al Qassemi and he was great. He was really entertaining and he was also real about Dubai meaning, he was realistic on what is happening in Dubai right now. One of the most surprising things about this region is their reality avoidance. Every speaker we have had and everyone we talk to from the area are very upbeat about Dubai. They say, "look we have the tallest building in the world, look at our palm islands, look how fast we are growing," but when you say "What about the 50+ billion dollars of debt that is coming due over the next few years" they just totally ignore it. It is very interesting. Definitely a different way of doing business.

After the speaker we started our "culture dash". They took us on busses to the Dubai Museum which is right next to the textile souk (market). We spent the next two hours roaming through the spice market, textile market, and the gold market. Mixed in with all of those are toys, clothes, watches, hats, bags, etc.

My teammate Matthew haggling for spices

The Souks

Me on the boats you take from the textile souk to the spice souk.

Boat Trip costs $0.30

It was really interesting. On the street would be lines of stores to buy at but also while you are walking down the street there will be guys that walk up to you and say "you wanna buy rolex, gucci, shirts lacoste, polo?" There would be a new guy asking us every two feet. We decided to see what they have and boy was that an experience. When you agree to go they escort you down a side alley and into a stairwell. You go up like 3 or 4 flights and then they get to a metal door and knock. A guard guy then opens the door and you walk into what is probably normally an apartment building and there is all sorts of knock off stuff. It was pretty funny to see. The first one we went into was CRAZY. When they opened the door there were 3 tv screens showing security camera angles of the hallway we approached in. There were like 10 guys sitting around in the room. It was kind of nerve-racking, but funny at the same time.

After a couple hours on the markets, we went through the Dubai Museum. The museum was just okay, but the really cool part was as I was walking through I heard a lot of Russian spoken. There was a native Arab guide that was speaking Russian like a native Russian. When I walked past him and caught that he was speaking I decided to hang around for a few minutes and then all I could keep saying was "that's so cool." I felt like it has been so long since I heard Russian on the street. It was great!

Dubai Historical Museum

After the Museum, we head to Dubai Mall--The largest mall in the world! And it was AMAZING! We were there for about an hour and half and we walked all over the place and I would guess even with that we only saw about 20% of the entire thing. They have a really cool water fountain that does show every 20 minutes like at the Bellagio in Vegas. We also saw a full hockey rink that would normally look huge, but looked tiny in this massive mall. Lastly, there was a GIANT aquarium. So big that you can pay to be lowered down in a cage and let the fish and sharks swim all around you. It is UNREAL!

Waterfall inside the Dubai Mall

Cool color floor in the mall

Ice Skating rink in the mall

I wish Mason could have seen these lego figures

This picture doesn't do the tank justice. It is HUGE! Its like

30 to 40 yards long, seriously!

As you can see from all the pictures we had a really good day and it was so fun to experience this part of Dubai. The things I wish I could show you were some videos I took. There was a video of the prayer tower and prayer chat for the Muslims. It is really cool to hear the chant going on while the world still goes on about its way. Another video is riding the boat between markets, and another video is of the guys leading us up the stairway to the "secret" rooms at the top. The last video is of the water show outside the mall. Unfortunately I can't upload any of them because of the internet here, so I will have to show them to you when I get home.

I love you so much and can't wait to see you in a few days.

Love ya,

Brock

Dubai- Day 5

Julie,

Well today was our corporate visit day. In the morning we had both classes and then lunch was "box" lunches so we could take 30 minutes to get ready for the corporate tours. There were three options and obviously because of my career interest I chose to go to Dubai Healthcare City.

DHCC has been declared a "freezone" in the United Arab Emirates and so those of us attending had a lot of questions about what that meant. My major interest was to see what DHCC had to offer and to see what type of business model innovations they had to offer in healthcare.

From my understanding... none. Pretty much DHCC is an opportunity for providers (doctors) to establish private practices in Dubai and still own 100% of their practices and operate pretty much as they would in any capitalistic society. It is really an area that is made to cater to the high income people in this area and they still handle insurance and payments the same as they are done now. This was pretty disappointing. I was hoping they would be showing us how innovative they could be by building a healthcare sector and start new ideas from the ground up. Really the area to me just screams of the UAE government (the royal family) as segmenting healthcare, enticing high quality physicians through profits of ownership, and then profiting off of them being clustered in one area and located in Dubai. That may not make a whole lot of sense, but essentially I didn't see anything special going on here. I think they could have used the same profits enticements for physicians, but also been innovated in the way they handled payments, billing, insurance coverage, or other things. Those innovations would have really put them on the map.

Harvard Medical Center DC (Dubai City)

(I think this is suppose to be done around the first of the year)

They have definitely done really good marketing as there are people all over the world who have heard about Dubai Health Care City, yet I was really surprised to see the lack of activity in the area. It was almost like they were still in the planning phases or as another Duke student put it "If you build it, they will come." It was definitely worth going to see and learn about, but was not the cutting edge or innovative facility that I was expecting.

This is the master plan of DHCC.

(I'm pretty sure this model costs more than our house... by a long shot.)

This evening has been really low key. I've got a small paper I have to write tonight, but no other real homework. I am hoping to get to bed early though because tomorrow we have a 7am start and without some extra sleep that could be really rough!

I wanted to add on really quickly that I miss you so much! I sit here in this luxury hotel on the other side of the world and can only imagine how fun it would be to have you here with me. One day when we are rolling it in, we'll have to make Dubai a place to visit, just the two of us.

I love you so much! Have a wonderful day!

Love ya,

Brock

Dubai- Day 4

Finally I can say,

Welcome to Dubai!

Julie,

Today was a WONDERFUL day! It actually started out not looking to be too promising. The good thing was they gave us an extra hour to sleep in and we didn't start until 9am as opposed to the usual 8am. I got up, had breakfast, and was down to class as usual.

The really good part started during our break in our Econ class. I overhead a couple other students talking about how cool the private beach was that the hotel owns and how they were considering going in the afternoon. I thought through the schedule and realized they were talking about going during our scheduled speaker which was about a 2 hour allotment of time. That would also be the last activity of the day before dinner so we would have somewhere around 3-4 hours to enjoy the time at the beach.

That got the wheels turning and during the rest of Econ I weighed my options. The reason it was a debate was because a couple days ago during one of our other speakers only about half of the class (including me) attended the scheduled speaker. We received a chastising announcement that speakers were required to attend. It is understandable especially because Duke wants to maintain good relations with the influential business people of the area and by having poor showings at the speaking engagements they arrange won't show very good on the school. The problem is, however, they have scheduled WAY TOO MANY speakers for this trip and did not schedule any free time. This is something we are working out with the program, but obviously that doesn't help us in the here and now.

I finally decided I just couldn't take it anymore. I had been one of the people that stayed for every speaker and I was going nuts being cooped up in the hotel everyday. The only problem with that decision was that for the rest of my classes today, all I could think about was going to the beach and getting out of the hotel. Finally, 3:15pm rolled around and it was time to go to the beach.

After changing we all met outside and caught 2 or 3 cabs for a 15 minute ride to the beach. When we got there, it was about a group of 10 people so we figured we would go find a place on the shoreline and hang out. Funny enough we ran into another group of Duke students that over doubled our size. 20 minutes later ANOTHER group of 5 to 7 students came. In all we had 27-30 Duke students living it up on the beach all afternoon long. The sand was white and clean and the water was pretty clear. It was so nice! (Sidenote: It did make me alertly aware of how out of shape I am).

The Line Up
(Duke Students working hard to advance their careers and get their MBAs :)

View from my Lounge Chair

Jumeriah Beach Hotel
(The Sister Hotel that owns the beach)

Me on the beach

After a little while on the beach, we ventured into the water and that was really nice too. The sand is nice and soft, the water is clear and quite warm, but the water is also REALLY salty. Actually it was so salty that when I first got in and dunked my head my face started burning. It burned for a while and then went away. We stayed in the water for probably an hour to an hour and a half, a lot of the time just discussing various topics about the program, life, etc. Finally a part of our group decided to head into the pool area because it was happy hour and they wanted to get drinks. Four or five of us stayed out for a little while longer and then headed in. It was so crazy--as we walked back, I was subconsciously rubbing my hands together and realized they felt really sticky. I couldn't figure out what it was until I realized it was just the high saturation of salt. It was so weird, I had never really experienced anything like that before.

When we got to the pool area, we went to the hot tub, which around this area is better called the luke warm tub (none of the hot tubs we've seen are very hot) and we sat and talked until it got dark. By this time it was a little after 6 and since dinner would be starting at 6:30pm we decided to head back.

Night View from the Hot Tub

The Mall that is attached to our hotel.
We had to go through here to get to our Lebanese dinner.

Dinners here have been really great. The hotel has multiple restaurants in and around it and so Duke arranged for us to go to a few different places. Tonight was at a Lebanese restaurant. I wasn't sure how it would be before we got there, but it ended up being really good food. They put us out on the patio, it was still a little warm outside, but I really liked the atmosphere.

Dinner at the hotel's Lebanese restaurant on the patio.

It was REALLY GOOD!

After dinner, it became a normal night again. My team met for a little bit to discuss a case for decision models and then it was time to call it a night.

I was really glad I was able to get this day in today. I was really starting to wear out of being in the hotel so many days so it was great to get a change of scenery. Tomorrow we have our corporate visits and I am going to Dubai Healthcare City. I am excited to see how this has developed and what it actually means by way of innovations in healthcare.

You're the best.

Love ya,

Brock

Dubai- Day 3

One of our speaker sessions

Julie,

Today was a LONG day. Classes as usual started at 8am and ran back to back until noon when lunch started. After lunch, we had one more class for a couple of hours and then immediately after that we had a speaker for an hour and a half. We then got a break for 45 minutes and then had a reception for 45 minutes, two more speakers for an hour and then dinner for an hour.

That really sums it up, so have a great day.

Love ya,

Ok, Ok so overall the day wasn't too exciting and was just kind of one of those middle of the road days, but did you really think I would finish my letter there? :)

Apparently, I missed out on quite a Halloween party last night. Most people didn't get to bed until around 3am or 4am and there was quite a bit of folklore about things that happened post party that involved drunkenness, nakedness, and room keys. I'm pretty sure that will go down in history with the class, I'll elaborate later.

What's funny is even with all the "memories" and everything that went on, I don't really regret that I didn't go. I've just never been much of a partier and that type of scene just doesn't appeal to me so I wasn't too disappointed I missed out. Funny to hear all the stories afterwards though.

Last night after I wrote the last update, we did have a really cool dinner out on the patio by the pool. It was quite a fancy set up. It was really awesome to be outside for one and two to be right in the middle of Dubai and seeing all the high rises yet still feel kind of isolated. This is definitely a beautiful hotel. Probably not as glamorous as the beach hotels by way of location, but VERY NICE indeed.

Well I find that the speakers who come to our Duke Residencies tend to be very interesting. Not for the fact of what they talk about, I usually find a portion of that very interesting, but more for the time idle time I have and where my mind ends up wandering to. I have had a lot of thoughts about where I stand currently personally, spiritually, physically, and career wise. My thoughts during these talks turned especially toward my career and my current physical and spiritual state.

I have been thinking a lot about where this MBA is taking me and what I want to accomplish. It keyed into what one speaker today mentioned as a theme in his talk. That was that in Dubai they took "Impossible" out of the dictionary and the sky has no limits. He used those cliques to describe how they have been able to build everything they have in Dubai in only 30 years. That is drastically faster than other large hubs of the world have developed. He mentioned that they never wanted their new ideas to be limited and so they always felt anything was possible. I reflected that to my career plan for practice management. It is interesting that in some respects my ideas have been shot down and thought of as "you can never do that with medical practices." These talks just gave me a reminder that if I know it is possible, it can happen.

That lead my thoughts to diving into the details of how I will present myself as a practice manager and the type of presentation I would do to convince a practice that this is the right path, it gets me really excited, nervous, anxious, and wondering... when will that day come?

My other thoughts through this week have been that I am unprepared. Not for school necessarily, but I am just generally unprepared and that leads back to my physical and spiritual preparation. I have done a better job at getting back on track with my daily prayers and scripture study which I am already finding is a great boost to me. It helps deliver some of the inner strength I feel like I have been missing. BUT I am WAY OFF COURSE when it comes to physical preparation. I need to really get myself back into shape and being aware of what I am eating and how I am fueling my body. I'm excited to start crossfit and look forward to changing the way I operate my everyday life when it comes to eating and working out like your Dad has been able to do so well with his program.

I am sure grateful for this opportunity. It definitely isn't easy, but I think that is what makes it beneficial. Even though its not comfortable, I want to be stretched and come out with new skills and abilities when it is all done. I think I am on my way.

Ok, so now to a couple cool pictures. After the speakers today we had our official Duke dinner with them and as always they went ALL OUT.

Can you believe this? A Fuqua School of Business ice sculpture!

WOW!

The Dessert table, only a small example of what they had available.

For a relatively "boring" day it was quite the day. Hope you like the letter.

I'm madly in love with you and I miss you like crazy too.

Love ya babe,

Brock