Boomtown

This past week, CNN had an article on its website about urban sprawl - and how it's happening all around the globe.  The article has some great photos with it, including a photo of how Dubai has changed in the last 10 years.  Click on this link - and then drag the line in the center of the photo back and forth to see how the city grew from 200,000 to 1.2 million in 10 years.

[We live in the bottom right corner of the photo - there's a green strip just above the word "colour" that shows University City, where the American University of Sharjah is located].  This green strip is visible in both the 2000 and 2010 photos.

Re-Introduction to Cold Weather

by Cindy

On the advice of our friends who have been in the UAE for a long time, we try to to take a cold weather trip each year.  In the UAE the coldest it gets is 50's F and that's just in the pre-dawn mornings for a couple of weeks.  So, if you want real-deal cold weather, you have to leave town.  Last year Jeff and I headed to Prague for cold weather and this year we headed to Russia.  Mind you - Russia in the first week of April, not Russia in December.  We are not fools!  We enjoyed cold, gray mornings, cool crisp mornings and snowy mornings so we were thankful for the variations in weather in just our eight days in the country.  It is funny how quickly one forgets what cold weather is like. Here are some of my reminders:

• Shaving your legs in cold weather is futile.
• Layers are the key.
• Layers - be the death of me!
• One forgets that the long johns go on first, the socks last, over the long johns.
• Don't get dressed too quickly or too soon or else you start to sweat before you leave your room.
• You drink a lot less in cold weather because you don't want to peel all of the layers off and going to the bathroom means going inside where you will sweat because of so many clothes. 
• You cannot put on enough lotion in cold weather.  (One hotel did have some nice body butter but it was hardly enough!)
• There is no dignified way to wipe your runny nose.
• Snow really is magical.

We did have a wonderful time and I enjoyed getting out the winter clothes, even if for just a week.  I think at the end of the day, I'm a warm weather girl. 

Top MIS researcher

by Cindy

I'm a very proud wife these days.  Jeff has been named a top 100 MIS researcher in the world.  Or as they say it, "Individual productivity rankings also indicated that Baker and Al-Natour are among the top 100 most prolific researchers publishing in the top four journals."

Here is the article as published on our university website:  Top 100 Researcher

Jeff has worked hard over the past several years and plans to take a bit of a break from research this summer.  His new goal - single digit handicap.  We'll be in America all summer so if you golf, let him know, he'll need some play dates.