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I am sitting here watching the Academy Awards and they just rolled the part where they remember all those who’ve died this past year. “In Memoriam.” I always liked that term, the way it sounds and looks in print. You almost never hear it spoken. That’s probably as it should be.

I’m glad to see 2011 go away and I am waiting for it to fade. I’m sorry to see all those people gone, but I don’t miss the year. It was the worst year of my life.

Now, you say a thing like that and everyone wants to know lots of details. And I’m not giving them up. This isn’t the spot for that and it’s not really what you want. But it was my worst year.
Ever.

I bring it up because everyone always tells me what a great job I have. And I DO have a great job. I work really hard at it and I’m part of a tremendous team. But there are times when it is excruciatingly sad.

Following me, you know I bounce around a lot. My passport is a rainbow of stamps and visas. I love it. It is a prized possession. But a lot of those stamps represent dark images that I know won’t ever leave me. But maybe, like 2011, they’ll eventually fade. Maybe.

India is an amazing place. We had the chance to roll out of the teeming cities and into the rugged countryside. I sat in the sun and ate delicious samosas that were handmade by the grandmother of Priyanka Rani Pandey, a student we were following. Her family is from this tiny spot on the map. The story was about how she was awarded a Schoenl grant through the Honors College to have some water pumps and purification gear installed. They’re making people healthier in a place where the water can kill you. It was good news and people around us were smiling. A woman nearby was holding a cute little baby girl, all wrapped in colorful cloth.
“What’s her name?”
“She doesn’t have one,” came the answer.
“Why not?”
“She’s only a few months old. We don’t name our children until they are at least three or four. Because they don’t always live that long.”
It was said so matter-of-factly that I almost missed it.

It was a few months earlier and I was in Cambodia. It was a trip where we followed Greg Jones, a college junior who was also awarded a Schoenl Grant, is raising money for a rough village in very rural Cambodia. Everyone knows Greg. The work he’s doing and the money he is raising is building a school, a health center and a water purification system. I’m sure I can’t spell the word for saint in Cambodian, but I heard it.

We stayed in a very nice hotel in Phnom Penh because there was no way to charge our batteries and keep all our gear safe in the villages where we had to work. Each day we’d get up and drive the long, bumpy roads to the village. I’d been enjoying the trip and the company of the people we were with. One morning we stopped to drive back into the ferry that took our truck across the river. People were crowded on the docks with hands full of stuff. Food, candy, CDs and DVDs…and on and on. They were hoping we’d buy something. We didn’t. But it was a festive scene and relaxing, just sitting in the truck, looking at the river.

Then I saw a very small girl leading an older man very gently by the hand. He was disheveled and his open eyes were clearly damaged. I heard her talk through a nearby open car window, “This is my father. He’s no see. But he sing.” And with that the man started a tune, softly at first then growing. I watched as the window powered up and shut him out. The little girl pulled his hand and they walked slowly to another car. Where she began to speak the same lines again. I pushed a button and my window closed. I closed my eyes and thought of my children.
We rolled into the village that day with the radio on. Our driver was from the area and loved old American pop music. I remember riding over dirt roads, between thatched huts and half-starved looking kids and “We Are the World” spilled out of the speakers. Are we the world? Does it matter?

I’m looking at my passport. It’s a tangible reminder that evokes wispy memories I adore and sometimes don’t want to remember. But that’s the deal. Memories are with you until they’re not. And you can’t hit “delete” or choose not to remember. Instead, they do the choosing. And they hit you when you aren’t expecting it.

It has been while since I posted anything here. I’ve been busy. I’ve been sick. I’ve been distracted. All true. But mostly I just haven’t been able to find the words. There has been a long stretch where I just haven’t known what to say. I’m a journalist, and here, I write about what I see and live. And a lot of that just hasn’t been something I wanted to write about.

Around the holidays I was sitting in my house, in front of the fire. I was staring into the flames with a drink in my hand. My dad was visiting and we were just sitting quietly together. His phone started to buzz. He reached into his pocket and got his reading glasses, then dug out his phone. “Oh, my God. I think Bob just killed himself.”
It was how my year ended. This was a man who taught me a lot about life and a lot about writing and news. He was one of the first people I called when I was looking at journalism schools. An award winning, veteran reporter, he reviewed my early work and helped me find my voice in telling stories about other people. But Bob got to a place where he couldn’t find the use in any more words. He couldn’t find the way through this life that he needed to spend another day living it.

“Bob was a man who took big steps.” Those words came from another dear friend who was very close to Bob. Another of the “uncles” who helped raise the restless boy I was. Bob did take big steps, but he was happy to have you walking next to him. And, as a little kid, I appreciated how he shortened his stride so I could match his pace. In some ways I have tried to match the pace he set in my work. To tell a good story and to always tell it true.
It’s not possible to tell a happy story without some sadness. Shakespeare said something about needing to make people laugh before you can make them cry. Just as there is no courage without fear, there is no good story without some rough parts.

Sitting here on my couch watching the names and faces of those who passed away reminds me of those I miss. That list gets longer and longer. Tonight the world remembers Whitney Houston and Elizabeth Taylor. I keep thinking about Bob. A man who took giant steps. A man who would always wait for me. I wish he had waited just a little longer. I wish I could have told him one more story.
And I wish I could have told him good-bye.

January 11, 2010

6:37p

Blantyre, Malawi

You might think you’re ready, but you’re not.

I am still not in my own pants, but I’m not thinking about it as much as I was yesterday. Yesterday I hadn’t been to the hospital.

Last night we did what all people do for dinner when in Malawi; we went out for Italian food.! Al got the ravioli with mushrooms, I had spaghetti with Brie and bacon. It was excellent and getting to know the students was terrific. It seems like a good group.

This morning we’re headed to Queen Elizabeth Central Hospital in Blantyre with Dr. Terri Taylor. I slept terribly, when I slept. There was only instant coffee this morning so I went with tea. I am dying for a strong cup of coffee to help chase away the cobwebs.

We chat a bit in Terrie’s office and then go out into the hospital and the wards where the students are working with patients. Immediately we’re surrounded by a stifillingly hot mass of the sick and their family members. Everywhere I look there are worn looking people with heads hanging. Coughing, passed out on floors. Limping, being carried along in wheel chairs, on gurneys. Asleep on benches or staring vacantly at us as we walk through the long, warm hallways with our camera gear.

“Hospitals in the US smell, but they don’t smell like this.” Reid Andress is a medical student from the UP. “Usually it’s chlorine or something and then you pass one room where you smell something like this. Here the whole place smells like that.” It’s his first trip to Africa. “You prepare logically for this before you come, but you’re not ready viscerally for what it’s like.”

It is not like hospitals in America. Malawi just doesn’t have the resources we have in the US. It’s not as clean. Not remotely. There are people packed in everywhere. Sleeping on floors. Waiting in doorways. Deaths happen everyday, many times.

“In the US if there’s a death overnight it’s something everyone talks about. Here, every morning we hear how many people died overnight. It’s always like three, four, five.” Reid tells me.

And people are dying around us. We watch as a small child is resuscitated and then hear that another has died a few moments later.

Dr. Taylor is here six months out of the year. She’s working on ground breaking malaria research and seeing patients who are in various stages of the disease. She also shepherds this small, hand-selected group of medical students from MSU’s College of Osteopathic Medicine and College Of Human Medicine. For six weeks these eight young students will work different rotations around this hospital. They say they are learning important things that they’ll carry with them for the rest of their careers.

I’m seeing things that will stay with me. It’s cliché to say, “We just don’t know how good we have it in the States.” But when you see what we’re seeing you realize what hard lives people are living in other places. Sure we’ve taken some long plane rides getting here, but it seems like it’s still not far enough away to be this different.

Tonight we’re going to have dinner with Terrie and the students again. And then Al and I are going to come back and knock out a video piece for the MSU YouTube site about this trip. It’s amazing how the technology lets us get these stories out to everyone from a small room in Malawi, Africa.

We still haven’t gotten our bags. We went to the airport and the guy told us, “Maybe tomorrow.” I was disappointed but after a day seeing what we’ve seen, not having my clothes doesn’t seem quite so important.

I thought a lot about what we were going to see when we got here. But just like the students, and even after living the life of a somewhat jaded reporter, I wasn’t ready either.

More tomorrow.

7:02p

7:35a.m. July 10, 2009: Bangkok to Khon Kaen
My eyes are burning as we load the van in Bangkok. We’ve got about a 6 hour drive ahead of us. Thankfully my eyes are only burning from the fumes in the air, not from the severe lack of sleep that’s stinging Al.

Jet lag is an interesting thing. Yesterday I was in a travel-induced fugue state after planes, connections, crossing date lines and a sleepless night. Today it’s poor Al who was up most of the night and slept through his alarm. I’d attach a picture, but viewing his grim visage might be too disturbing to for some of the younger members of our audience.

It’s a bright, hot, blindingly sunny day. We’re blasting north along the highway toward Khon Kaen where we’ll be seeing some of the areas where the carbon offsets are in action.

The whole idea of carbon offsets is complicated and I keep trying to come up with a way to simplify it. So, very basically, farmers are payed for planting trees and plants and managing the land to help make up for carbon that’s been emitted and is being released.

I want to point out that the above sentence was crafted after literally an hour and a half of discussing just the right way to sum up the idea of carbon credits in a simple sentence. Jay Samek of the MSU Forestry Department is terrific at explaining the intricacies of how carbon markets work, but let’s face it, this is a blog. You’re probably not here for a detailed analysis of carbon offsets and the implications for Annex 1 and Annex 2 countries as determined by the Kyoto Protocols.

Or am I wrong?

I’m surprised by how good the highway is out here. The streets of Bangkok are an exhaust choked maze. This road is wide open and fast. A nice change.

Journalist Jamie DePolo and I are the only ones awake as we cruise along.

Well, the driver’s awake. I hope. I noticed he’s using the MSU key chain I gave him. Good to spread the word and the Spartan spirit.

9:30a.m.

Ah, the magic of a truckstop.

We’re stopped for gas and everyone, except the slack-jawed and snoozing Al, piled out of the barely air conditioned van and into the Thai truckstop. “Jiffy Stop,” technically.

 

I love truckstops. A couple of weeks ago I bought two breakfast burritos at a spot just of I-80, deep in Wyoming. Leaning heavily on guidance from knowledgeable denizens of such environs, “Yup. I’d go with the steak and taters or that there eggie kinda porky thing if’n yer hungry,” I found myself with some heartstoppingly good roadfood in the cradle of the interstate at 2:00a.m.

But this is Thailand and there’s no “porky thing” in site. There are, however, fresh dim sum and the ever-present rolling hotdog cooker with frighteningly pale tubes flecked with Thai.

It is absolutely pouring where I’m sitting, looking out at the Mekong River. It’s going to be another long day, but right now it’s peaceful and calm. And the coffee is strong.

We are in Laos to see the work MSU is doing with jatropha and carbon credits. But, unlike Thailand, in Laos the effort is raw and new. They’ve been growing jatropha, but the idea of refining it efficiently is just taking hold. The notion of carbon sequestration as a commodity is really still in the brainchild stage.

But it’s all coming and we are here to take a look.

 

 

We headed out from the capitol city of Vientiane early yesterday and hit the road to some very rural areas in Laos. “Hitting” the road can be a quite literal thing as many are shredded and more pothole than asphalt..”

Jamie DePolo who’s here covering this trip for MSU News calls the driving “freeform.” I think that covers it pretty well. The lanes seem to be suggestions rather than mandates. And after spending some time among the manic drivers I can only imagine the rule book from the Lao DMV is slim.

But it works.

 

 

 

 

We careened at breakneck speed along winding roads, missing all the hazards except the aforementioned potholes. Poor Al was stuck in the backseat, holding the camera in his lap where lens met head more than once.

Dr. Sithong Thongmanivong is with the Faculty of Forestry of the National University of Laos. He’s been working with Jay Samek and Dave Skole for years. And drove us expertly through the maze of bikes, scooters, goats, cattle and the occasional water buffalo.

 

 

 

“The people here know something is different with the climate,” he told me. “They see the floods and too much water and wonder why.”

Getting to the villages means a severe change in landscape. Vientiane is a bustling city, no doubt, but it has a lot of rustic roads. Jay laughs, “I mean, come on. How many capitol cities do you know with dirt roads?!”

 

 

 

From the exhaust choked streets that make you pray for carbon sequestration, we head out to a beat up highway that’s under construction. The workers are sweating in the fierce heat trying to get the road done for the upcoming SEA Games. SEA standing for South East Asia, the games are a sort of mini-Olympics that’ll take place late this year.

We’re trying to make our way quickly so we don’t really take any time for lunch. We’re traveling with some of the officials from the National University of Laos and some others interested in our project. They grab some slippery-looking stuff to go, Al and I go with Cokes and Pringles.

Okay, so I need to put in a quick word about the potato chips here. They are AMAZING! It’s not the chips; they’re the same. It’s the flavors. Why do Lays and Pringles kick out such wonderful chip coatings here and not in the States? I dined on Lime Basil Lays and consumed truly embarrassing amounts of Garlic Basil Pringles. I’m telling you, nirvana. They might not get the cheeseburgers right in this country, but the chips rock. And, since I am being totally honest, I declined some pretty intriguing versions. I let Spicy Squid Pringles stay where they were and managed to turn down offerings of Tangy Urchin Mango Snail Lays.

All right, so I made that last one up. But it was something like that.

Pringles, Lays…bring us the flavor!

And now back to carbon and jatropha.

We’re standing in Ban Lao, a small village where the streets are muddy and rutted. Sithong translates for me as I talk with some of the villagers about the idea of climate change. A woman named Yang, surrounded my small children, tells me she’s seen the weather change. She says there’s no rain and then too much.

“Can you imagine that engines and machines could change the weather?”

Her eyebrows go up a bit as she thinks.

“No.”

Sithong says the people here live their entire lives in this village and don’t get much news from outside. “We need to explain how carbon and all that effects climate.”

Like I said, the effort here is new. In Thailand they’ve been working on it for a while. Government officials there tell me that it’s critical for the local farmers to learn about climate change, greenhouse gasses, agriculture and how it’s all related. In Thailand they send people into the field, into the villages to talk about this face-to-face. Here in Laos, it’s not that far along.

“We are working on that,” Sithong says.

There is jatropha grown here. It’s integrated; planted among pineapple and other cash crops. We get some shots after changing into shorts and wading a flooded stream up to our waists.

Deep in the muck, slogging through the water carrying the camera high, Al gives me a smile and that “I can’t believe what we’re doing” look.

This is why we’re here. It might not feel like research, but it is.

“This is the lab, “ Jay tells me. “This is where it’s happening.”

I ask Yang how it’s going with the jatropha.

“I don’t know. The government tells us to grow it. We grow it. We pick it. We save it. But no one has come to buy it. So we wait.”

Walking back to the truck, Sithong tells me one of the first things he’s going to do is find a buyer for these jatropha seeds.

“Like I said, this is new. But it’s good.”

I said at the beginning of this that yesterday was a long day. It was another in a string of long days. But it doesn’t matter. 14 hours of driving and banging our heads, of wading through streams and eating Pringles seems worth it. Standing in a tiny village where people’s entire lives are lived and listening to their stories is worth it. Seeing what places like this with your own eyes really is priceless.

It’s very basic. Dirt streets, livestock wandering around, children playing with sticks in the heat. These people rely on the crops and the land. They are going to be some of the first hit by any changes in the climate. And they are some of the first to start making a difference with what they’re learning from people like Sithong and our MSU team. Standing here, it’s a lot easier to “get it.” It’s a lot easier to understand why Dave Skole calls climate change “the greatest threat to peace and prosperity in the world.”

So, yeah, it’s worth it.

And so I sit with another coffee, staring at the rain pounding the Mekong River.

I’m dry and I’m comfortable.

I’m writing this blog.

But I’m thinking about Ban Lao.

6:53a.m. July 15, 2009: Sakon Nakhon, Thailand
I am sitting with some coffee in the lobby restaurant of the Majestic Hotel. Sakon Nakhon is a town I bet no one reading this has heard of. I don’t know exactly how big it is but it’s big enough for a few pretty big hotels, markets and even a pizza place(!).

We’re getting ready to head back down to Bangkok after four days up here in the northeast part of the country. It’s been a good productive shoot, but just very hot and humid. Yesterday was the first day we got a bit of a break. It was cloudy, rainy and only in the mid-80’s. Refreshing.

The work MSU is doing here is front-lines-in-the-war-on-climate-change stuff. This is where farmers are being paid to plant trees instead of things like rice and cassava. Communities in these rural areas work cooperatively to raise, harvest and sometimes process things like jatropha trees. The trees help get rid of the carbon instead of adding to the global problem like those other admittedly important crops.

Rice fields are great for growing rice, but many are here at the expense of

forests and trees. And they emit methane, one of the worst greenhouse gasses. One of the leading causes of global warming is deforestation for things like rice fields. But people need rice to eat and live. So they need something they can plant and harvest to take its place, or at least so they don’t plant any more..

That’s where Michigan State University comes in. We’ve been specifically looking at the work guys like Dave Skole and Jay Samek from MSU are doing with jatropha trees. These shrubby specimens produce nuts that can be squished for an oil that’s used as biofuel. People have been using these nuts for fuel for lanterns and things like that forever. MSU is working with local farmers, villages and cooperatives to help grow more trees and get the processing in place to make the oil production more efficient and useful to the people.

 

 

 

It’s interesting to me that the goal of this work is not directly aimed at helping local farmers and their communities, but does. The goal is to stop climate change and global warming. The goal is to help save the world. They’re trying to do it by cutting down on greenhouse gasses by things like growing more jatropha trees and getting more biofuels into the mix. A byproduct of that is giving farmers a way to make more money. Win win, win.

We’ve been out in the fields, sweating like crazy, trying to tell this story. I am not sure I have ever drank so much water in my life.

So now we’re headed back down to Bangkok by van and then on to Laos for more work with jatropha trees and to see how that country is battling greenhouse gas emissions and trying to get the local to take advantage of carbon credits. Along the way we’re going to stop at the oldest temple or wat in Thailand. It’s supposed to be pretty impressive and is a holy site to the Thai people.

I’m hoping this coffee kicks in soon. It’s gonna be a long hot day in the van, I can tell.

Sparty with kids from the Mae Oi area of the Inpang West Network in Sawang Daen Din in the Sakon Nakhon Province of Thailand.

I am sitting in a very sleek, modern hotel room in Bangkok, Thailand trying to find all the pieces to the alarm clock I just threw across the room. You do odd things when you’re a bit sleep deprived and, yes, a bit angry at an alarm you didn’t set.

While I’m not sure this is the right frame of mind to be writing, I wanted to give it a shot.

I’m in Thailand working on some stories for the MSUToday show. I’m here with our director and videographer Alberto Moreno, David Skole and Jay Samek who are the forestry experts from Michigan State University and Jamie DePolo who’s writing news stories about all of this for MSU News.

We’re here for two weeks of production that will take us around Thailand and into Laos. We’ll be checking out the work MSU is doing with biofuels, sustainability, carbon credits and lots of other things I’ll go into after I wake up all the way.

We got to Bangkok just before midnight. It was about 24 hours after leaving Detroit. While I don’t think two hours in Narita Airport qualifies for having “been to Japan,” it was cool to have my feet on the ground in Asia for the first time. Well, actually that’s not true. We were in Dubai on a shoot last fall, which is technically Asia, but doesn’t feel very Asian.

Anyway…So it was about a 12-hour flight from Detroit to Tokyo, then another six to Bangkok. A very hot, very humid cab ride to the hotel where I am.

After being perplexed by the light switches in the room and spending almost an hour on the phone with the “experts” from my wireless carrier (who shall remain nameless) trying (successfully!) to get my global BlackBerry to actually work globally, I collapsed into bed just after 3:00a.m.

I was looking forward to the fewer than four hours of sleep I had in store so you can imagine my horror at the 5:30a.m. alarm I did not set. And so maybe you can also understand why I felt compelled to make time literally fly a few minutes ago.

And you can probably understand why I am praying for coffee in Thailand.

8:05a.m.

Just back from the breakfast buffet . I am happy to report that not only do they have coffee, but that it is nice and strong. I’m not generally a big fan of the breakfast buffet, but when it includes both bacon AND dim sum…well…that’s pretty tough to beat.

So now it’s off to get some shots around town and try to get a feel for the place.

Dave Skole just told me that Thailand is the Land of Smiles.”You can pretty much get anything done if you smile enough.”

The people here do seem friendly, very courteous.

Of course, they haven’t seen what I did to the clock yet.

I’m starting to feel that the “real” Dubai is in the past. That the real heart of this place has been lost in the sands of time. Everywhere you go, everything is new. Breathtakingly new. It seems the past has been bulldozed.

When I get to a new place I like to try to get a feel for it. I like hearing about the history and going to the older parts of town. Everyone always wants to show off what’s new and shiny in a place. I always feel like they’re trying to keep me away from the real soul of a place when they do that.

So I have been looking for the “real” Dubai.

Videographer Alberto Moreno and I heard about the Gold Souk in the “old part of town.” A “souk” is basically a market. The Gold Souk is where you buy gold jewelry in Dubai. It’s a tradition that goes back “years and years,” according to our wonderful guide Donald.

We’re bouncing through the streets, I keep looking for something that looks old. Old like it looks in Spain. Old the way it looks in Rome. You know, “old!” So we get to the Gold Souk. It is old. The buildings go back 30 years! And I thought I felt old before I got here…

We get some video of people shopping and wander around looking at every kind of gold thing you can imagine. Gold watches, gold necklaces, small (and large) gold bulls. Anything you want in gold, it’s at the Gold Souk. And it does feel old. At least it feels older than the rest of the areas we’ve seen in Dubai. But it still doesn’t have the authentic thing I’m still looking for. That area you get to and go, “Oh yeah. Now THIS is Dubai!”

Men and women are dressed traditionally all around me. The men in their glowing, white Dishashas, the women in their perfectly black Abayas. They seem to clash with so much newness. Their older way of dressing in such contrast to the gleaming glass and steel.

We drive on.

We drive and drive a lot on these trips. I’ve worked all over the world making television shows. It’s always the same; get in a van, drive all over creation trying to get the shots you need to tell the story of the place. Whether it’s Dubai or Cuba or Los Angeles or even Yaak, Montana, it’s always the same. You’re trying to get the best possible shots of the most interesting places. And you don’t want to shoot everything at noon, or when the light is harsh or makes things look ugly. Or ugly-er. You’re always chasing the light to make sure it looks good on video.

So we’re chasing the light and banging around inside the van, the way we’ve banged around inside vans all over the world.

All around me are the clear signs of a place on the rise. I mean that literally as well as figuratively. The buildings are going up at an amazing pace, but it seems Dubai is rising as well. This is a place of business. I keep hearing over and over that trade is the main business. Dubai doesn’t have much oil and not many natural resources. But goods and supplies are moving through here fast. Basra was one of the main ports before 9/11 and the wars that followed. When that area got too hot for easy business, things moved to Dubai. So the ports are bustling and people are coming here from all over the world to do business. To “trade” one thing or another. Mostly what changes hands here is money.

Tom Miles, the MSU grad who runs Festival City, says this place feels a little like post-war America in the 1940’s. “It feels like a place where anything is possible,” he says. “And, really, it is.”

The Michigan State University campus fits right into that notion. People here have told me it makes perfect sense for MSU to open a campus here because the need is huge. One of the men who runs the educational system here told me it’s time to focus on the people of Dubai. He talked to me about how the making of money has long been the goal here, but that it’s not enough. He talked about how people need quality education. And no education is seen as more valuable than an American education here in Dubai, and around the world for that matter.

The fact that MSU Dubai is a non-profit makes a big difference. It means something to the parents who want to send their kids here. They know Michigan State is trying to provide the best learning experience and not line its pockets. We may be one of the few places here providing something you have to pay for, but can’t buy.

I am thinking about all of this as we careen through the streets of Dubai. We’ve just driven through a maze of construction. My head is spinning at the number of fantastic cars around here. It’s almost impossible to look around anywhere and not see Aston-Martins and Ferraris, Bentleys and Lamborghinis. This whole place seems like a sort of catwalk for car models.

Finally we slow to a stop at Jumeirah Beach. It’s one of the first places where I can look in at least one direction and see no cranes, no scaffolding. It’s beautiful. We all pile out of the van and get the gear set up. The sunset should be awesome because there’s a bit of haze in the sky. Clear skies make for lousy sunsets. A little haze or smoke…perfect.

I’m just wandering along the beach and picking up seashells for my kids. I’m thinking about how this place can be so confusing. I guess I feel a little confused because I haven’t been able to get a handle on Dubai. Usually I’m pretty good at that in new country. But as I’m walking along the beach, dusting off shells and tucking them in my pockets, I start thinking about all the running around we’ve done trying to make sense of this place and tell its story for our show. It seems to me that Dubai is a place of motion, a place where things change rapidly. An area unveiled as “New Dubai” is old in a few years and replaced with a new “New Dubai.” But I think that’s the way it’s been out here forever. The shifting sands meant the people who lived in the desert moved around a lot. They moved to find water and food. They moved to trade with other nomadic people. So maybe the “real” Dubai that I’m looking for is all around me. Maybe the “real” Dubai is about change, constant change. Perhaps the true spirit of this place is in the people who live here and their customs. You see it in the way they dress. The long white robes for men, the black for women. They are Muslim and pray five times each day in a tradition that stretches far into the distances of history. Maybe the “real” Dubai is there, in things like traditions and customs. In religion and belief. The buildings come and go. They get torn down and newer ones sprout up. Roads are built, used, abandoned and new ones take their place. As I walk along the beach I’m thinking about how the people here seem to take the best of what’s new while trying to retain their sense of the old ways. I suppose this fits in with what MSU’s doing here and why Dubai welcomed the school with open arms. They want what’s best to be available for their people here. Whether that’s new buildings, fast cars or American education.

I don’t know. I’m just walking on the beach, picking up shells. I look up and the sun is just setting behind the Burj Al Arab, the iconic hotel of Dubai. The first seven-star hotel in the world. The one with rooms that come in at more than $25,000 per night. It’s the one you’ve seen. So I’m going to take some pictures and post them here. It’s a scene that’s both timeless and brand new. The old sea, our ancient sun and a stunning creation of man unbound.

So is this the “real” Dubai?

I’m not sure. I’m still trying to figure it out.

As we were being escorted out of the Queen concert I started to laugh. Things had been going so well, and now we were surrounded by giant security guards. They walked us all the way out of the arena, making sure our cameras were off and tucked away. It was a perfect night.

This whole trip to Dubai has been interesting. And interesting in a sort of upside down way. It started, as these trips do, with long flights and distant lay-overs that are now hazy memories for me. Then it was hit the ground running, making sure all the TV gear is working, suits, ties and craziness.

I’m here in Dubai with Alberto Moreno, our videographer for MSUToday. Our goal is to capture enough stuff for several segments for the show and also create a half-hour program on MSU Dubai for the Big Ten Network (BTN).

The first thing that hit me in Dubai was the heat. Just stepping out of the air-conditioned airport was startling. And that was at 2:00a. I must have mumbled something about the heat. The driver said, “Oh it is nice. Very cool,” with a broad smile. I suppose it is cool compared to the summer months when it climbs to over 125-degrees.

I grabbed a few hours of sleep at the hotel and then it was back into a van for a long ride to the MSU Dubai Campus. We drove and I was surrounded by cranes and construction. It’s like the whole place is a giant work zone. And unlike a lot of places in the States like Phoenix and Vegas, this growth isn’t on the edges. It’s all over, spread wide, growing skyward. The sky is an important place here. They’re building the world’s tallest building. I’d tell you how tall, but no one knows. The builders are cagey about the final height because they don’t want someone to find out and plop a big flag pole on top of the second tallest building and steal the title or something. What’s funny is that people are already living and working in the building as it’s going up. The bottom floors are occupied, the dizzying upper reaches are open steel and empty windows. It must be weird to wake up, step outside your apartment, look up and think, “Hmmm…I wonder how tall it’s gonna be today?”

The MSU campus here in Dubai is pretty cool. It’s part of a cluster of buildings that make up the Dubai International Academic City or, DIAC. This complex sits out in what today looks like the middle of the desert, but Dubai is ever expanding. You can tell that, pretty soon, the campus is going to be have a lot of company.

I met people quickly and started getting shots of the campus. Everyone was very excited to have the ribbon-cutting and official dedication get underway. As the day rolled on and the heat rose, local dignitaries began to arrive. President Simon and some members of the Board of Trustees were swept along in a sea of local press photographers and flowing robes when it was time to cut the ribbon.

I, of course, was dutifully running around in the heat with my camera taking shots for…well…for this.

Later there were speeches full of gratitude and recognitions. Some of the local students stood up and sang “Shadows,” the MSU Alma Mater. I’ve never heard it sung with such a collection of accents. Very cool. It was a tremendous event and things lasted well into the dark night.

After that it’s been a blur of TV work and hot taxi rides and trying to tell the stories of MSU in Dubai. One of the guys I wanted to talk with was Tom Miles. He’s an alum who has worked here in Dubai for a few years. I had heard he worked at one of the big malls here or something. My information was a little sketchy.

Tom and I traded email and agreed to meet in the mall. He said he was involved with the Queen concert, but that we could come over and follow him around, ask him some questions. So we piled into a wee taxi with all our gear and headed out to Festival City. Now what I didn’t realize is that Festival City is a mall, but it’s an awfully nice mall with amazing stores. Dubai has become an international hub for shopping. There are no taxes here so truly expensive items come at a bit of a bargain. Festival City is a mall, but it’s also a huge complex with multi-star hotels, a vast selection of restaurants, a marina, heliports and several concert venues. And the other thing I didn’t realize is that Tom Miles pretty much runs the whole thing.

Tom met us at a coffee place (No, actually not a Starbuck’s) and started showing us around. I pointed out the strollers the mall provides, shaped like camels. “That was my idea,” he said with a smile. Turns out just about everything in there was his idea. He was the point man on getting this place together from the beginning. Everyone knows Tom here. He’s The Man. “You wanna go to the concert tonight? It’s supposed to be good.” “Can we get some shots of you in the venue and some shots of the band?” I asked. “Sure. Lemme make a call.” And he did. Pretty soon we had wrist bands and press passes and were being whisked into the outdoor arena. The day was warm but the night was perfect. We got some shots of Tom checking with security. Some shots of Tom shaking hands with about a million people. Shots of Tom in the VIP area. Tom had to go check in with some people and left us up in the rarified air of the high-rollers.

Al said, “Man, this is so cool. We’re at the Queen concert in Dubai!” I was feeling that too. It was surreal to be there.

“You can’t have that camera here!” It was a very upset man with a two-way and a British accent. “I’m sorry, what do you mean?” I asked. “You simply cannot have that camera anywhere in here. The band will go completely MAD!” He was now shouting. Before I realized it, six huge security guards in polo shirts that could barely contain them were around us. “YOU have to go. YOU HAVE TO GET THAT CAMERA OUT OF HERE!” He was screeching at us. Turns out there was a mis-communication between the band management and the folks at the arena. We, as press, were allowed, but video gear was absolutely forbidden.

So the six giant security guys flanked Al and me, two I front, two on the side, two in back, and walked us all the way through the crowds, through the concessions, past the lines of people waiting to get in, further and further from the happy VIPs, out into the street.

I was laughing about it when Tom showed up. “I leave you guys alone for five minutes…” He was laughing too.

So we dumped the gear in his office and headed back to the concert. He pulled some strings so we could catch the show, but no cameras.

Things get started late here in Dubai. It was after 10:00 when the band finally went on stage. We were pretty whipped from a long day of shooting in the heat, but it was pretty cool to hear the old songs. Paul Rodgers who used to be with Bad Company was handling the lead vocals for Freddy Mercury who sadly passed away years ago. It wasn’t quite the same, but Brian May can still amaze with the guitar and the songs sounded good. Even accompanied by thousands of singers with all sorts of accents.

They sounded especially good on a warm night in Dubai.