Chazd's (Charles Dowdell's) News Burps

After Germany, Switzerland and Netherlands for work I took a few days vacation. Fate would have it that the setting was in the Middle East. I flew through Doha, Qatar to Dubai, UAE. Dubai in many senses is the most extreme city in the world. The unparallelled vision and speculation of investment, business, tourism, multi-culturism and infra-structure is making (and has made) Dubai a window of the World's future. From the world's tallest building, indoor snow-skiing facility, outrageous architecture, huge man-made islands, and the world's best hotels are sure to keep Dubai as a target of attention for quite awhile. It is clearly a place of best, biggest, fastest and most outrageous. It is not a city looking backwards, but one of moving forward at astonishing speed. Swimming in the Persian Gulf was a treat. It is the saltiest place I have ever swam. The Burj Khalifa is the tallest building in the world and really dwarfs all other tall buildings at 828 Meters (2707 feet). The...

I have been in Germany for a week or so. I have had many productive meetings in many different cities in Bavaria. The weekend I am in Bamberg. Monday I will be in the Netherlands.

Things are great! We had a lot of rain in Atlanta. It felt like a monsoon or something. It was relentless for days and days. I had a very old friend show up in Atlanta for a conference. I don't think we have seen each other in 13 years. We had some outrageous laughs over a Peruvian meal. Peruvian cuisine is unique; if you haven't had it before check it out. I have some interesting travel coming up, as well as some intense business challenges, as usual. This was a quick snapshot of my bird feeder. I will be taking hi res photos soon. The variety of birds is astonishing. We had a community work day on the clubhouse and surrounding areas. We did it in the rain.