Admittedly, when it comes to music, I'm somewhat of a late starter. After dabbling in it as a young lad, I only really began spending time and energy on it since moving to Dubai. Since then I've been very fortunate to have played with and listened to some very talented musicians. Got to learn to play a little guitar...mind you not nearly well enough to play on stage...at least not yet. Managed to learn a bit about songwriting, production and singing. It's been a blast. …

Last month I was slated to attend the annual general meeting of the World Travel & Tourism Council...an organization dedicated to supporting the ongoing success of our industry.

The event was held in Dallas, Texas. As it was a three day meeting that ended on the weekend, I thought it wise to take advantage of being over on that side of…

Late last year, after completing, launching and promoting Mileage 51’s “Stone Unturned” CD, I thought about setting new musical goals for 2016. The first was completing my next CD project with Monks on the Moon “When Worlds Collide” which has just wrapped recording and is in post (editing/mixing..more on that in a future post). The other goal was satisfying a long-time desire to do serious live gigs in good venues.

For the purposes of this blog I want to focus on the latter. First I…

Music plays an important role in bringing up fond memories of the past. It’s a way to milestone our lives…at least I have always believed that to be the case. Just for fun I thought it would be interesting to create a short list of favourite 70s tunes and link them to memories from my younger days.

Fool for the City – Foghat…

Stone Unturned

After 18 months, hundreds of joyful hours of writing, rehearsing, recording and producing, Mileage 51's debut album "Stone Unturned" is set to launch.

I know I have reported on this periodically over the course of…

I recently had the great pleasure of attending a wedding in northern Spain, in Basque country...actually just on the border to be precise. Two long-time friends Tony and Chen had finally decided to tie the knot and, given their proclivity for great food and wine, opted to hold the ceremony and celebration in a small town called El Ciego in the heart of Rioja.

I…

It’s impossible to relay a life time of memories in a blog. Harder still to write about them on the heels of the untimely and painful loss of a life-long friend. But I owe it to my friend Alain “Boo” Bouillon to try.

I first met Boo in elementary school. My early memories were of a highly energetic, physically strong and precocious young man. He was shaving…

As an expat, vacations usually mean going home and trying to jam…

Ok this is long overdue and is likely to be short. So apologies in advance. Earlier this year I had to travel to London on business for an array of media and conference work. I love going to London for any reason, including business. But as it turned out, my daughter Bianca was able to book time off and join me.

It worked out extremely well...although I was working for a number days while she was there, she had friends who lived in the city (school mates from our days in Germany and…

I have the great fortune of being a member of the Advisor's Circle for the World Travel & Tourism Council, a global organisation which advocates the significant social and economic contributions of the sector and presses for changes needed to make travel and tourism accessible, easier and sustainable. Every year WTTC holds an annual general meeting which I have attended for the past several years. This year's event was held in Madrid, Spain. 

The business schedule was intense and…

For the first time in my career I was invited to speak at a conference, in this case "Global PR Trends" held at the Intercontinental Hotel in Cairo, Egypt. The presentation went swimmingly as I talked about Dubai Airports' communication strategy and how it delivered value to the business. If anything I could have shortened it a bit, but I digress. Over dinner that night the conference organizer, Kosta Petrov who hails from Macedonia, insisted I take full advantage of a very rare opportunity…

I wanted to take a few minutes to share a Kamazooie moment from the weekend that involved the bass player from my second band The Tundra Rick March. Rick is a seasoned musician who plays with a couple of bands in Dubai as well.

During a mid-week email conversation he shared a couple of songs that he, and a former band member Paul Stanton, wrote in 1992. They were very catchy and on Saturday we decided to give one of them a go. The song, Talk Too Much, is quite catchy and we stayed…

As I mentioned last week, I wanted to post some updated photos to chronicle the recording of Mileage 51's upcoming CD as well as provide some shots of the jam with my second band The Tundra. On Friday/Saturday Mileage 51 gathered at Roy's apartment aka studio to lay down some instrumentation and vocal call backs as we start to complete and refine songs bound for the CD. Roy has a great…

It has been far too long. Sadly with work, vacation, travel and other commitments my blogs have fallen by the wayside. Accordingly, I feel compelled to provide an update on what has become a recurrent theme...music.

Let's be clear, there are other things that go on in my life...it just seems that Kamazooie has become the vehicle for sharing my hobby. Mileage 51…

Every year, if it is at all possible, my good friend Simon Ralph and I find a way to connect. I came to know Simon during my almost 5 year tenure at IATA in Geneva and he has become a close and life-long friend.

Largely, we have managed to find a way to do this...either Simon will visit Dubai or I will visit Switzerland. This year it was the latter, as I had a…