Lotusblog

Phew.

What a couple of days.
I am now on the Stansted Express heading from the airport back to London. I just had a couple of days in Glasgow. Got up stupidly early on Friday morning (almost didn’t even wake up) and found my way to the airport. Arrived at Glasgow around 11am, to rain, mist and biting cold. Met Gillian for lunch in The Lighthouse (where I had a meeting later on) and ate a pretty tasty burger made from Italian sausage:

Lunch at Glasgow's "The Lighthouse"

The food wasn’t the only great thing at The Lighthouse. The view from the top was also pretty fine, and quite unbelievably the sun suddenly started shining! And continued to do so for 2 hours!

Sunny Glasgow

And the sun just kept shining

Spent the rest of the afternoon working before meeting up with Andrew and Gillian again later that evening for an after-work drink. Managed to get the Christmas feeling thanks to this:

The Princes Centre Christmas Tree

and this:

And more Christmas decorations

After our sundowner, we all headed back to their place for a wonderfully relaxing and filling dinner of Fajitas. We all crashed pretty much soon after that, woke up this morning and had the best breakfast of 2004 (as chosen by Food Critic magazine). We then got into the car and toured some of the local sites including a pretty amazing automated canal lock.

…I will post the pics later when I have a chance…

I am on a train again- this time heading back to London. Just finished my meetings in Cardiff. Cardiff was a curious place. I would like to get back and check it out a bit more.

I am looking out my window now at a massive sprawling housing estate. The suburbs always upset me for some reason. I don’t know it is about them, but they just seem so oppressive. Actually, they are oppressive. I guess I don’t like being oppressed.

My new phone is going well. I bought a Sony Ericsson T68i a couple of months ago (through eBay) expressly for the purpose of this trip (and all subsequent trips). The main reason I chose it was the design and the Bluetooth support (it was a vanguard phone when it was released a couple of years ago) and so far it has been great. Syncing it with my Mac- and getting all my contacts onto it- was a cinch. And the great thing is that when I go to Thailand, or when I go to Australia, I will be able to use it there too. I haven’t had a chance to test out the GPRS, and to be honest I don’t even know if O2 offers GPRS or not, but it’s nice to know that I can dial up to the net using this phone as a Bluetooth modem on either GSM or GPRS. At the moment that isn’t necessary as some fool called Dan has set up an open wireless network near my office- so I use that to connect to the net. I sort of feel sorry for him- he is running all the Windows services like file and printer sharing. If I were malevolent (or perhaps just if I had more time) I could really have fun there.

On the way to a big meeting

Greetings all.
It is now Wednesday morning, I am a diesel train speeding towards Wales to Cardiff. I have a meeting there and then I then have to be back in London by 17:00 for another meeting. Busy busy busy, but everything is going well so far.

I am going to be here for a few more days- more meetings tomorrow and then on Friday morning I am off to Glasgow. Come back from Glasgow on Saturday night. Then on Sunday I fly to Bangkok, have another meeting there and then 2 days at a beach to unwind.
Then back to the grind in Osaka.

I am now in London. Arrived a couple of hours ago. It’s grey and cold. Just what I expected.

I leave for London tomorrow. Will be away for about 10 days. (notice to thieves: there is a vicious dog in my house, so, err, don’t break in while I am gone. Or you’ll regret it)

Anyway, the pre-trip preparation doesn’t consist of making sure I have 6 pairs each of socks and undies, clean T-shirts etc, this time my pre-trip preparation is more like this:

Have I synced my Bluetooth phone with my address book? Do I have my iBook data mirrored on my Desktop? Is iBlog set to work from my iBook? Is my Clie up to date and ready to go? Do I have all my relevant sim cards, Bluetooth adapters, rechargers, power-cables? Is my London number working properly? Is it diverting calls to voice-mail? Do I have my firewire cable ready in case our office doesn’t have a router and I have to do IP over firewire?

When did all this happen? Travel didn’t used to be like this.

Keep watching this space for “London Aeroplane Series”. It’s amazing what a fertile imagination, some bad weather and a child’s toy can do.

The Lotusblogger, Mr. TM (background) and a plastic 747

Boy, oh boy. Did I miss this blog.

I got back from Bangkok on Friday morning (Oct 1) where I spent a couple of days on my way home from London.
This trip was one of those times where mind-blogging would have been just the ticket. But alas, the technology just isn’t there yet. But I guess I should do the next best thing and get my moblogging situation setup. Or perhaps I should go back to web-based blogging.
So many decisions to be made.

So let me give you a brief rundown of my time away.

Mon Sept 20: Left Kansai at midnight. Arrived in Bangkok at 5:30 in the morning. Had a massage and settled in for our 7 hour wait for our connecting flight.
Tues Sept 21: Arrived in London in the evening. Made our way to our office where we had dinner and then collapsed from exhaustion.
Wed Sept 22: Went to our storage place to pick up furniture which we took to our showroom in Bermondsey, near the Tower Bridge. Spent the rest of the day until early evening setting up, making calls, planning the week.
Thursday Sept 23: Press, buyers and designers started coming to visit us. The response was hardly overwhelming, but the ones who did make the journey seemed impressed. Went to 100% design in the evening, after which I sent my colleagues home and went out with I, a friend from Japan whom I hadn’t seen for about 5 years.
Friday Sept 24: More of the same. A long lunch. A longer dinner.
Saturday Sept 25: Ditto
Sunday Sept 26: A lazy day- no interviews with the press were scheduled, so I met some aunts and uncles who had driven down to the London for the day. Enjoyed a Sunday roast lamb dinner in a pub by the Thames, it was a beautiful, sunny day. My first time to really relax in a week, and of course it was great to catch up with the Forbes and the Franklands. Went to visit C, another friend (whom I hadn’t seen for more than 7 years) and had an evening well-lubricated with vodka tonics, laughter and stories of getting mugged.
Monday Sept 27: Bagels again for breakfast, and our last full day in London. Stuff had to be packed and carted across the city back to our storage facility. Dinner at the office and then said my goodbyes to friends.
Tuesday Sept 28: (Scott’s birthday) Got up early, packed and headed to Paddington Station. Checked in our luggage, got our seats to Bangkok sorted out and then headed to the airport. Got on a jetplane. Left on a jetplane.

And that was London.

Impressions:

London is exciting. London is dangerous. London is expensive, yet bagels only cost 15p at the Brick Lane “beigel shop”. It’s also incredibly dirty- my shirt collars were black when I took off my shirts at the end of the day. Seriously. It has great galleries and amazing architecture.
I want to live there. Kind of.

Tomorrow night I leave for London.

I will be there for 100% Design- one of the premier international design events to try to drum up business for the company I work for. It should be a blast. But getting to London is the easy part- before tomorrow night I have several mountains to cross. Lots of loose ends to tie up. And a shitload of work to do.

So heads down.