Travel

Just got back from three weeks in Australia visiting family and friends. Countries: 3 (England, Singapore, Australia) Cities: 7 (Singapore, Brisbane, Hamilton Island, Perth, Broome, Kununurra, Darwin) Red rock formations: Too many to mention Best airport: Singapore - free gadget recharging points and Internet access Worst airport: LHR T4 - building site, long queues, surly staff Wildlife: Kangaroos, wallabies, crocodiles, spiders and, err, terrifying budgerigars States: 3 (QLD, WA, NT) Flights: 11 Airlines: 2 (Quantas, JetStar) Miles: 26,341 Music: ‘These wooden ideas’ - Idlewild Newspapers: Zero

This week, I have been working in Bergen, near Norway. Normally, I view my trips to major European cities simply as a means to end and after a while they all tend to blur into one unified major European city. Same hotel room, same office, different people, same problems, same computers, same restaurants with the same cashless transaction mechanism. Bergen, however, is different. The city is just beautiful. I love it....

Holidays are a time blissfully free of the modern distractions of computers, mobile phones, games consoles, televisions and a time for the family to spend some quality time together and eventually fall out. Inevitably, this leads to varied, interesting, thought provoking discussions. During the Brightside annual vacation in Venice, the following thorny questions were posed: If you immersed yourself in a foreign country, how long would it take for you to become proficient in the language ?...

On Friday I returned from a very enjoyable week in Brussels. Hard work, challenging customer and miscellaneous technical issues. However, unusually, I had the pleasure of the company of a few of colleagues so we were able to have a chat over a meal and share a few excellent beers together. Over the past five years, I have visited so many European airports, that they all tend to blur into one....

Spending a lot of time in airports is an occupational hazard in the glamorous and fast moving world of IT consultancy. Most of us are intimate with the various methods of tuning Oracle databases and Siebel CRM but here are some quick tips about optimizing the airport experience. Most airlines have succeeded in shifting the massive queues from the check-in desks to smaller queues at the self-service kiosks. The most obvious method to avoid this is to check-in online and print out your own boarding pass from the comfort of the office....

When I went to bed, I closed the curtains. Unfortunately even at full stretch, the curtains only spanned half the width of the window. This was excellent news as I was able to cancel my 07:30 wake-up call as the morning sun streaming into the room at 05:45 was just as effective. The shower worked although it was a little tardy to empty. So slow, I thought I was going to have a minor flood on my hands but fortunately the sill was pretty deep and disaster was narrowly avoided....

Arrived in Rotterdam and checked into the Grand Hotel which isn’t quite as grand as the inviting and expensive (but fully booked) Hilton across the road. The kind lady on reception welcomes me to Rotterdam, quickly locates my booking, gives me an electronic key and directs me to room 401. I take the lift to the fourth floor. There is no room 401 - just 403-417. I know because I walked all around the fourth floor with my bags....

I travel quite a lot. I usually stay in decent hotels. I am fairly easy to please. All I really need on my short visits is a clean bed and a shower. However, most of the hotels in Rotterdam (including the one I stayed in last week where I could stroll down to the client offices - my idea of nirvana) are fully booked for reasons that are unclear. I have a feeling that there may be a major tulip festival taking place....

Ten hours cooped up on a plane with facile excuses (‘just another 10 minutes’), no food and screaming babies for company. Love the cheerful musical score, the facial expressions and the way the video starts in daylight and ends in complete darkness.