Carlos' blog...

02 March, 2008 | 13:03

Hey everyone, It’s me again, blogging from Dubai now.

I’m here with Andy, Miles Maclagan and Matt Little (fitness guru). We took a seven hour flight from London on Thursday and got here pretty late that night.

First funny moment of the trip was when we were exchanging passports at the boarding gate to check out our passport pictures. Turns out Matt has one of the funniest pictures I’ve ever seen…

To be fair we all have terrible pictures in our passports, although I do remember Rob complementing me on mine the day before we left to Dubai.

Luckily for Matt, and all those women out there who are dying to meet him, he now looks like, unbelievable. Great physique, good personality and apparently a pretty good dancer…

We got to the hotel at about 12am. It’s a big place, very nice and really close to the airport and the tennis club. We all struggled a bit with the jet-lag the next couple of days.

Especially Andy I think, who woke up the next day pretty annoyed with me - he said I was snoring for the last couple of hours of our sleep.

I’ve only been accused of snoring twice before, both times by Andy. I’m pretty sure I wasn’t and It was probably Andy having a bad dream. This is the room we are sharing…

Usually the amount of clothes lying on the floor increases day by day…

Andy had an early practice with Stan Wawrinka on Saturday. He’s probably one of the players Andy gets along best with on tour. They had a nice 1.5hr practice session on center court…

Apparently Andy and Stan were talking about the line-up for the tournament and Andy said he had a feeling he was going to draw Federer. By now you all probably now he is in fact going to play Federer in the first round. Pretty tough draw for Roger…

The weather here is really nice; it’s hot but not extremely hot. Speaking of the heat I’m a bit worried that Rob has to go to Bikram Yoga on his own this week. I had to carry him out of the studio a couple of times. That’s what friends are for. (Ed: you can’t even carry off your haircut).

Saturday at 6:30pm, Andy practiced with Janko Tipsarevic. He is also a very cool guy. I didn’t watch that much of the practice as I went to see some of the women’s final. I got back to the courts an hour later just to see Andy finish their practice set 7-5. We played a quick match of tennis/football and then we headed back to the hotel.

Dubai is a very special tournament, mainly because of its impeccable organization and because Andy is apparently very popular in Dubai; they have appointed a hostess to help him with everything he needs. The funny thing is - and I don’t really know why - only four players have a hostess for the tournament. Those players are, Federer, Nadal, Roddick and Andy.

Helene is Andy’s hostess for the week and she’s probably the nicest lady ever. She’s Australian and she describes herself as “very efficient at her job.” She certainly is.

Helene is taking care of every single thing, from buying cereal bars, to booking courts, getting towels, balls,etc. Here they are…