vblog series: meet tahir

And, last but definitely not least, I come to our Canadian, Tahir.  This is a funny video because of the giant falcon mural behind Tahir in the hallway of the Municipality.  A great locale, because it nicely displays Tahir's sense of humor.  When we first arrived, Tahir was very serious, Mr. Get Down to Business.  He's a consultant by day and a Strategy Consultant at that, so he was well-acquainted with the methodology, topic and relevant frameworks for our CSR project.  There is no question that his background, along with Felipe's, were essential to getting our project off to a running start and kept us focused and efficient.  He's smart, worldly, extremely well-traveled and clearly great at what he does.

As time went on, Tahir started loosening up and (I think) having more fun.  In addition to being knowledgeable he's also intellectually curious, a powerful combination.  It turned out that he and I shared the same political perspectives, although I can say he was much more knowledgeable about current events worldwide than I ever could hope to be.  Tahir and I reacted in much the same way to the human rights and political issues we encountered in the UAE, which I think made us both grateful for our countries.  In our project, there could have been lots of opportunities for the 2 of us to clash but I think we had enough mutual respect that we were able to balance each other at the right points.  Tahir showed a new side the last weekend when we went dancing... he can rock!  Tahir's wife was also deployed on a CSC team in Tanzania while we were in the UAE, so his stories of her trials with tainted water, malaria, awful conditions and 10 hour trips to the client by bus kept us all thankful for the luxury our team enjoyed. 

Bonjour and hello, Tahir...  #ibmcsc uae