Night out

That evening we are all taken out for dinner and join a large group from the same company at the typical round table.  5 of the people at the table I have never met before and don’t even speak English.  The drinking soon starts and they are regularly  “Gambei” each other (finishing off the drink). I wisely don’t take part.  The photo is of our table early in the evening.

The next morning in the meeting room, you can smell the booze coming out of their pores.  But they didn’t seem any worse for wear.

That evening we fly to Beijing on the first leg of our return flight.  When we land in Beijing, the air is unbelievably bad.  Over powering smell of sulfur and smog in the air.  I get 1.5 hrs sleep that night and I am very tired when I have to get up at 4:45am for the morning flight – I am starting to wonder why I put myself through this….

Off to China

How’s this for a travel day:  Get up at 4am (after being woken up at 2 am by mistaken wakeup call from hotel reception) for a flight at 5:45 am.  The first leg of my flight was from Surabaya to Jakarta, then catch a flight to Guangzhu China, then a third flight from there to Wuhan, China where I landed at 7 pm.  By the time I got to the hotel it was 8:30pm.  It was my first time to Guangzhu airport and I had to pass through immigration and then find the domestic flight to Wuhan.  They certainly could use some more signs to inform people where to go. I had to ask a number of people to find my way through an extremely large airport and I was given the wrong information three times before I found the right check in desk.   The business lounge I would rate at the low end of the scale for those who happen to find themselves passing through.  However the airport is very modern and very spacious (and huge).

The hotel is quite nice – with the painting below in the lobby (3 meters high) and the hotel room is excellent (even free internet).  In the morning, I can’t find the restaurant and have to ask again, only to be told it is on the 4^th floor.  I am later told by colleagues that the prostitutes are on the 5^th floor.  I am quite shocked that this is the norm in China for business men and that even top hotels organize this.

Trip to Tuscany

My wife and I took a short (?) drive down to Tuscany.  Weather was great and traffic minimal.  Only problem encountered was the very bright light that flashed at me for some reason on our return.  I am waiting to find out the exact speed that I should have been traveling vs. the speed I was going when this bright light hit.  The Swiss postal system will bring this news in the coming days.

The photo is of the area of Tuscany that we were in.  It is quite amazing how much time it takes to drive anywhere in the country side.  10 km ends up taking 30 minutes or much longer in our case when you take into account getting lost.

Back on the road - Jakarta and Mumbai

After a brief break, I am back on the road - well " in the air" actually.  I felt the kids were pushing me out the door this time, as they have given me their DVD wish list   It has been a while since I have been to Jakarta and they had compiled quite a list of DVD's for me to pick up.  For those not in the know, Jakarta is a good place to pick up inexpensive DVD's - about 60 cents each.  I don't think I can buy blank ones for this price.  There are about 10 of these "shops" in this mall I frequent, and the quality (so I hear) is quite poor for new releases, but improves as the movies get older.

For any FBI agents reading this blog, I can assure you that I spoke quite sternly to my children about copy right infringement and that I would not be a part of it.

As usual with my visits to these places, it was required to work the weekend.  We spent 8 hours working in a corner of the hotel lobby lounge as the office shuts off it's air conditioning on the weekend.  The lounge played the same music CD over and over again.  It became mildly bothersome after the forth time.

The flight to Singapore is always on the A380 and I find it cool that the entrances are on two levels. I have been meaning to show a photo of it for a while, and finally remembered this last trip.

My stop over in Mumbai was thankfully brief, and I got a room with the ocean view.  Normally I get the dirty view out the back looking at the slum.  In the morning I got up early and took this photo of the ocean with the shadow of the buildings on the water and a small fishing boat below.  The city across the bay is visable in the distance.

 

First class upgrade on Emirates

 A while back I had to fly Emirates Airline, which I hadn't done for quite some time. I had even lost my frequent flyer card, which created a bit of a fuss as I thought they could just find me in the system. But it turns out there are over 30 people with the same name as me in their system. However, the people at the desk were extremely helpful and eventually found me among the others. It had been so long since I had flown with them, that I had lost my Gold and Silver status and was right down at the bottom. I try to avoid flying Emirates because you have to stop in Dubai, which then breaks the flight up and you land in the middle of the night. The airport is usually packed with people, even at 5 am. And the lounge is also far too crowded. The one benefit is that they offer a free limo pick up and drop off. This means that a fancy Mercedes will pick you up at home and drive you to the airport and vice versa when you land. This is very nice. But it doesn't outweigh the crappy stopover in Dubai. The other nice thing is that on the return flight I got upgraded to first class. However, these Arabians
kind of over do it with all the gold trim, so it looks tacky.