Bonny Scotland

Sadly, I have no video for you this week.  Unfortunately this is just because I do not have enough footage to make a video!  The last little while I have just been cracking down on work.  The Hyatt are keeping us busy with a project on corporate synergy and the weekends and evenings I am spending doing some work for SnuggleMuffin.  Busy busy busy!

I have been round many departments over the last little while including Front desk, guest services, reservations, revenue and housekeeping.  It is difficult to imagine what a huge operation this is until you see it for yourself.  With 674 rooms, 186 apartments, 14 restaurants and 1087 employees, there is a lot going on and the structure and organization has to be flawless to make sure it all runs smoothly.  

But in this blog I’d like to talk about how different life is for a hospitality employee over here in Dubai. The scary part about it is that every aspect of your life in Dubai seems to be subject to your employer. For example, a waiter working in the Grand Hyatt Dubai lives in accommodation owned by Hyatt, takes transport run by Hyatt, gets every meal in the Hyatt cafeteria, buys his groceries in the shop in the accommodation, has his bed linen and uniform cleaned and ironed by Hyatt.  If this waiter wants to go home to visit he has to have this approved by three people in the hotel, then Hyatt will book his flight, and he has to fill out several forms in order to get his passport back which is kept in a locked safe by Hyatt. In order to get the passport he has to have a guarantor who will pay money if the person does not return to work.   If this waiter wishes to purchase a phone or an internet modem, he has to have a signed permission slip and deposit from his employer, and the national identity cards issued to everybody here are directly linked to the employer.  It is so scary how at home, work is just another part of our lives, but here your employer IS your life and controls everything in it. 

It has its positive sides too.  For example, the fact that all the employees, including the executive committee all live in the same accommodation (although there are different ‘levels’ of apartments) creates a kind of sense of community.  When you see your manager getting the same bus as you to work in the morning it makes you feel like you are in it together.   It is just all very interesting to think about.

As for Claire’s blog topic of the week, with only nine days to go I have been reflecting a lot on what this experience has brought me.  The past seven weeks have been a rollercoaster with good and bad experiences.  I was skeptical about coming to Dubai, knowing it would be a complete culture shock but I am so glad I came to experience it (although I probably won’t be returning to Dubai in a hurry!)   It has been fascinating seeing a part of the world which is so divorced from what we are used to in everyday life back home.  The internship itself has exposed me to departments I had never even thought about before and let me see how things run on such a large scale.  Dubai is such a multicultural city and I have been working for the past seven weeks with people from all over the world, it has taught me a lot not only about different cultures but also about how to work with different personalities, I feel my interpersonal skills have greatly improved through this exposure. 

The most challenging thing for me, I honestly have to say, is missing home.  I have lived away from Scotland for long periods of time before, but never in a country which is such a dramatic contrast to it.  It makes me really appreciate Scotland, and Glasgow in particular.  I am sad that the internship is ending and I’m sure you all are too – but here are some of the things I am really looking forward to get you geared up for going home!

-          This is the biggie – fresh air, I can’t wait to step off the plane and breathe that crisp Scottish air

-          Walking outside without thinking I have walked into an oven

-          Brushing my teeth with cold water

-          Not waking up every night at 4:30am to the call to prayer

-          Seeing those green living objects outside… what are they called again?

-          Selecting my shoes in the morning without having to consider whether they will melt

-          Walking places (nobody walks in Dubai – anywhere)

-          BACON

-          The good old Scottish accent

-          The delicious tap water

-          The pound coins (they are so much nicer than other currencies)

-          The sound of buskers as I walk down Buchanan street

And many, many more things.  The funny thing is, I have never been very patriotic. In fact it has always been my dream to live anywhere but Scotland, but it’s not until you have an experience like this that you realize what a great little country we have. 

I’m sure that everyone has had life changing experiences this summer; I know I certainly will never forget this trip, but it is important to remember that the past eight weeks are only part of our Saltire commitment.  The next part is dedication back to our homeland, to help it continue to thrive and make it a better place. 

Scotland – I missed you. Only nine more days!

Sandboarding to Snowboarding in 24 hours!

I'm going to write this blog backwards as this weekend has been one of the most incredible weekends of my life.

On Thursday we went up the Burj Khalifa, the tallest building in the world.  It is very impressive to look at from the outside but I have to say that the amazing height of all the buildings around it kind of reduces the impact of the view from the top!  Nevertheless it is something I have crossed off my bucket list and was a cool experience to have had. 

Friday however was the real highlight of the trip so far.  I went with the Aggreko team on a Desert Safari.  This involved a range of activities including:

Dune Bashing

Sandboarding

Camel Riding (personal goal #1 - CHECK)

Dinner and a belly dancer show

There were also a range of other things to entertain us and the 50 or so other people at the Desert Camp.  However, at 10pm everyone else went home and we were taken to another camp where we would spend the night sleeping in the desert!  The Aggreko team were a bit skeptical about doing this but I persuaded them to spend the night so it was on my head if they did not enjoy it/couldn't sleep/were eaten by wild desert animals.  Luckily, everyone seemed to have a good time and woke up to the once in a lifetime experience of watching the sunrise in complete isolation in the desert while someone prepared our breakfast.  Words cannot possibly describe what this was like, to try and help show you how amazing it was I filmed as much as I could for this week's video (see below).  It is certainly an experience I will remember for the rest of my life.

So we woke up in the desert and discussed what we wanted to do that day once returned to the city and went with the obvious choice - snowboarding.  After going home and de-sanding ourselves we met at 'Ski Dubai' at the Mall of Emirates for an afternoon of skiing and snowboarding.  It was quite surrel since it was about 45 degrees outside and we had been sandboarding in the desert just 20 hours previously!

On Sunday I worked in the Pastry Kitchen here at the Grand Hyatt.  This was SO much fun.  For those of you who don't know I run a small cake company back home, SnuggleMuffin, so it was of particular interest to me to see how they run an operation of this scale and manage to make all the lovely and intricate cakes for the entire hotel.  I can't believe how much I learned in one day, i was pretty sad when the day was over.

On Sunday night I was working in the Euro Tent again for the final.  It was interesting as my fellow interns were all attending as guests so they got a kick out of the fact that I was serving them beer all night!  It was hard work but a lot of fun.  I was definitely ready for my bed that night though as I had been up for work since 5am in the pastry kitchen and got back from the eurotent at 2am, ready to get up for work the next day at 7am!

So in one weekend I was a camel jockey, a snowboarder, a pastry chef and a footballer!  Can't say I'm not making the most of my time here!

But it's not all play!  We have also been busy going round our different departments at work.  This week I spent time in Security, Engingeering and Procurment.  I learned more than I expected to through these departmetns about hwo the hotel operates and how all the departments have to come together to make everything run smoothly. 

That's all for now.  Enjoy the week 3 video!

Get Undressed and Stand Like a Duck

So as promised, here is my second blog this week to talk about my goals for the summer.

It seems very appropriate to do it today as Duncan and I sat in yesterday on a training session which was all about the importance of setting goals!  So here is what i want to achieve by the end of the summer.

Professional Goals

• establish a network of contacts within the Grand Hyatt Dubai
• leave with a good understanding of how a hotel of this size operates and what makes it so successful
• earn how the grand hyatt dubai train and motivate their staff to give such excellent service and compare to training at home to establish what scottish hotels could do differently to improve their customer service standard.  

Personal Goals

• RIDE A CAMEL!
• be a good tourist and see as much of what this city has to offer as possible
• fight against the two evils mentioned in my previous blog and try not to come home fat and penniless

While I’m blogging I might as well fill you in on what has been going on the last couple of days.

This week we were sent to have a medical check up so that the company could process our employment visas.  Every employee that comes into the country must go through this process (and considering only 2% of Dubai’s population are actually natives, that is pretty much everybody).  The process was extremely strange to us.  First of all we were driven forty minutes out of the city to a medical centre which was pretty much in the middle of the desert.  When we stepped inside it was just chaotic, people everywhere walking about like headless chickens because they had no idea what they were doing or where they were meant to go - there was no order whatsoever!  The first stage was a blood test, everyone has to do this to test for HIV and Hepatitis B, if either of these test come back positive the person would be deported immediately.   Once we figured out how to get there we were rushed out into the corridor again where we wandered about until we were eventually herded into an X-Ray room where we were asked to undress and stand like a duck so they could X-ray our chests to check for diseases. (No picture will be uploaded of that unfortunately!) Then we were driven (yes, driven - nobody walks here) to the other side of the building where we had very thorough fingerprints and handprints taken.  Once all the test results are back the company will be able to process our visas - yay. 

Tonight will be a lot of fun.  I am about to go to work, once that is done I am going to rush into town to meet the other interns so we can go up the Burj Khalifa.  If you don’t know, the Burj Khalifa is the tallest building in the world so it will definitely be an experience.  After that I am rushing back to work to work in the ‘Eurotent’ - a marquee set up at the hotel with a massive projector screen that has been screening the eurocup games.  So going up the tallest building in the world and serving beer to excited Germans all in one night - bring it on!

Dubai: Welcome to the Dark Side/Beware of the Green Beans

Week two has come and gone very quickly here in Dubai.  Shereen and I had the pleasure of witnessing a Ladies Wedding on Thursday.  Arabic Weddings are like nothing you have ever seen before.  As far as I understand they last for four days, one of which is the ‘ladies wedding’ which is basically a big dinner and reception for only women.  The guests and workers must only be female and if a man were to enter the room at all he would be sent to prison and then deported!   The room is set up with a big catwalk in the middle with a couch at the end of the stage where the bride enters towards the end of the night and sits while her guests enjoy the meal.  Everyone is dressed to impress in the most sparkly and dazzling dresses I have ever seen.   Of course we didn’t take any pictures as it would be very unprofessional but to give you an idea of the extravagance the average Ladies Wedding costs about AED 300,000 (£52,000) just for this one night of the wedding celebration!

Today we all split up and went to different departments. I was in HR whith the HR Manager, Sean Royal.  I have to say it has definitely been the most beneficial day of the internship so far.  Sean answered an abundance of questions while I scribbled down pages and pages of notes.  It was really interesting learning about how the very different labour laws of Dubai affect the a Human Resources team.  Another aspect of a Dubai based hotel is that it is very much a city where people come for a few year and then leave, the staff turnover is a lot higher than most places.  Sean discussed with me the various retention strategies they have to try and keep the employees for longer and make sure staff feel appreciated and well looked after.  Many of the employees have come over from countries such as India and are sending their pay home to their families every month - it’s reassuring to know that there is someone like Sean there to make sure they are taken care of, as there are virtually no laws in Dubai to protect employees.  I do know now that I could never work in HR - it would break my heart.  Every time I heard a story about how someone couldn’t afford a flight home or needed time off to visit their sister in hospital, I would crumble!  So probably not the job for me!  Very interesting to observe though.  I also spent some time today going through the exit interview data of everyone who left Grand Hyatt Dubai within the last eighteen months to identify their main reasons for leaving.  I can’t specify the reasons but it was a fascinating project and I hope the team will use my findings to review some things!

 some things!

Outside of work we have all been galavanting around Dubai doing all the touristy stuff!  (See video below).  At the beginning of the week Shereen met up with some family that live out here.  We went to an Iranian restaurant in Jumeirah - the food was beautiful... for the first two minutes until I bit into what I thought was a green bean but actually turned out to be some crazy chili.  Now I love spicy food, but this was something else.  Luckily, Iranians apparently like to drink what I can only describe as Salad Dressing with their meal, so I had a quick gulp of that to stop myself from yelping at the table.  Once the intense burning subsided, all I had was a sort of numbness similar to that you get when you go to the dentist and they anaesthetise your mouth.  So, sadly, I tasted nothing for the rest of the meal.

I share this story only to warn you all to beware of the green beans!  In fact - be suspicious of long green vegetables, it’s not worth it!

Claire asked that this blog mention our goals for the summer.  I am going to upload these in a separate blog in the next few days as this is already essay length and I want the goals to be the focus of the blog they are in.  So watch out for that very soon!

I will however share with you the two dark evils of Dubai that I have experienced in the last two weeks.  First of all, I should mention that shopping here is a part of daily routine, like eating and sleeping.  There is every kind of shop you can imagine inviting you in - it doesn’t help that I still seem to think the currency is monopoly money and therefore much easier to part with than ‘real’ money...  so I have been buying a lot of clothes.  The other problem is that the local cuisine here is like having a takeout for breakfast lunch and dinner.  The staff canteen serves curry at every meal with fatty croissants for dessert.  It’s delicious but extremely oily (factoid: Dubai has the highest concentration of people with type 2 diabetes!) and I will probably never eat another curry again once I go home.  Anyway, by the end of this trip it looks like I will be broke from buying a whole load of clothes that I can no longer fit into because of all the curry - it’s not a great outcome really is it?  So clearly the obvious solution is to make sure I preemptively spend all my money on BIGGER clothes ;)  y’see, always one step ahead of the game!  

Enjoy the video!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wANivKpfup8&feature=player_embedded

Saltire to the Rescue

Click here to view 'Saltire to the Rescue'

Orange Eggs and Cow Bacon

click here to view Dubai - Blog 1 'Orange Eggs and Cow Bacon'

Leadership Day - 1 week to go!

In preparation for our departure, the 2012 scholars benefitted from the first ever Saltire Foundation Leadership Day which took place today.  The day was focussed on getting us thinking about what makes a great leader, how to get the most from our scholarship and how to use what we learn on our scholarship to come back and effectively lead others to self improvement and success.  

While listening to all the stories and advice given to us throughout the day, I couldn’t help but think about how lucky we were to be in this situation and having these brilliant people share their valuable experience with us.  I am a firm believer that the there is always something to be learned from hearing other people’s experiences; what they did, how they handled the challenges and how they got the most out of it.  I took a lot from today and am now even more excited not just for my internship, but also to get started on some projects when I get home.  One of the workshops was a discussion on how we as Saltire Alumni will be able to use our knowledge and experience to inspire and lead others - there were many great suggestions which I hope will be coming to life after this summer and I can’t wait to get on board. 

Another observation I made today was that I had never before been in such a concentrated group of such genuine, nice people.  I don’t know if it’s to do with the sort of people that apply or whether it’s just that the ladies involved in running the Saltire Foundation are so lovely that they’ve managed to select such a group of pleasant and wonderful scholars.  Everyone seems so warm and welcoming and i’ve never felt such caring and compassion from a group of nearly strangers before.  Before I even set off on my internship, i am already feeling the benefits of the Saltire community.  I feel I have a big new group of friends that will be there to help me out in the future.  So, already, thank you Saltire Foundation for introducing me to this group of wonderful people and accepting me into the Saltire family.  

On that note, it’s only a week to go until I embark on the summer of a lifetime with the two other scholars, Duncan and Shereen.  The three of us will be interning at the Grand Hyatt in Dubai - an ideal opportunity for me as I am hoping to build my career in the hospitality industry.  As far as I am aware we are going to be moving around different departments of the hotel to see how each area operates and what makes an organisation like Hyatt so successful.  I am very excited about everything we will learn this summer and how I can apply it to my own work.  

With only six short days left, it’s time to get all the last minute things organized.  I would have thought that I would be all packed and ready to go by now - but packing for this trip has proved a little more difficult than your general journey abroad.  For starters, it’s difficult to know what kind of clothes to pack.  We have been asked to bring smart casual clothes for our first four days of training before we are issued a uniform.  According to the world of google, smart casual means something different in Dubai than it does here - except I can’t seem to find a general opinion on what exactly it does mean.  Clothing for spare time is also problematic, although not a legal requirement as the other Emirate States, conservative dressing is required out of respect as it is a Muslim country.  This means being covered from shoulders to knees at all times when in public.  With that kind of heat, this means a very thorough wardrobe re-think!   So I would say that is a valid excuse as to why my suitcase is still lying on my bedroom floor - nearly empty.  

Well I have already rambled on longer than I intended to for a first blog so I will leave it there for now.  But I will be back very shortly to share the experience of my first few days in Dubai!