Category: En route

North Point!

That would be Hong Kong and at the City Garden Hotel.  Just arrived this afternoon.  Surprising the trip from the airport to here took 1.5 hours by their shuttle bus.  There were 4 people ahead of me, me being the last stop but still… I think that was a bit long.  Anyways, didn’t matter, it was a nice sunny day and I felt I was doing the Gray Line city tour thing.  No hurries.

Tired from all the work and more work next week and traveling to Singapore. 

Came in early to get away from it all in a nice comfortable environment.  Hotel isn’t bad, but going through some renovations.  They apparently “lost” my reservation at the desk and took a little longer to check in.  Room is a bit small as compared to the Hotel Excelsior and the price not as cheap as was originally reserved for.  Will have to let my HK office sort that one out when I get back.

Going to meet up with an BLS Alum here for dinner in an hour.  Then tomorrow, brunch and then a wedding ceremony HK style for one of the IT staff guys and then the dinner reception after that.

I’ll enjoy while I can… it’s going to be a lot of work!

All the best FC.

On and off

It’s been a whirlwind tour of Asia-Pac via Cathay Pacific.  Last Thursday and Friday was in HongKong.  Seeing the office move to North Point while also in for some key meetings with my direct report.

Then came back Saturday evening, then Sunday evening fly to Sydney for a Regional meeting.  It’s been great so far with BAT.  Learning lots, excellent and smart people, and having a great time on the company expenses.  I flew business class on Cathay and I do believe I will have hit my AA Gold/Plat Challenge with this trip… and I’ve got 2, maybe there more trips left next month to Singapore, Kuala Lumpur and HK again.  It’s quite nice.

Interesting thing at the airport though… waking up at 3:30am for a 6:25am flight and luckily I did because I found out that Australia requires US citizens to apply for visas to enter!!! So why are the Americans requiring Aussies to get visas?  So much for being friends and part of the “coalition of the willing”.  Crazy I tell you.  :O.  At least they make it easy and there’s an electronic visa application.  Cathay did it for me at the check-in counter and got it sorted out in 20 mins.  Whew.

I never thought that I’d be back here in Sydney again since after 1994 I was here with my buddy Coops….. and here I am.  Just had dinner at Biondi beach at a place called Nicks.  Fantastic.  The BAT Aussie guys really taking care of us.

So for now, enjoying it after a couple of lean years…. Life is an adventure. God is certainly giving me this.

 

All Olympics, All the Time

Ok, it’s bad enough that I’m a major insomniac and that I blog at strange hours.  But, it’s almost funny – I just let the tv on NBC and let the Olympics go.  On and on and on.  Imagine if I had cable – it’d be seriously non-stop Olympics with the networks of NBC (although, arguably, I’d then have some live coverage of something if I had cable).

I still wish NBC would show Olympics in a a straightforward fashion, rather than this “hold your suspense, let’s show this other event…” piecemeal fashion.  But, you have to admit, watching this Olympics … man.  Plenty of thrills and spills.  Arielists are crazy – that is dangerous – a cross between gymnastics and skiing – you have to land – or break a limb (literally).  Ugh.  Painful to watch!

I was never particularly fond of ice dancing (at one point, it seemed more like faux sex on ice, with those extremely arty Russian skaters, or it seemed just not very athletic), but this time – all these falls.  I came out of it feeling a bit more respect for this sport.  And, of course, watching Belbin and Agosto – the pair for whom Congress had to change Immigration law to let Belbin skate as an American.  And, they got a silver for their efforts, the first time in a long time that Americans medaled in ice dancing.  Kudos.

U.S.’ Sasha Cohen’s coming out of the short program of the women’s figure skating as  No. 1.  The Japanese skaters Arakawa and Suguri were quite good.  Emily Hughes and Kimmie Meissner were also very good.  Hmm.  And, of course, the perennial hopeful Irina Slutskaya, was very good.  So, this is going to be tough.