Back in Paris

January 31, 2010

Posted by Stephen

Since January 15th I have been traveling. I got back to Paris yesterday, tired after a 9 hour flight and nursing a cold. The trip took me to Shanghai, Bangkok and New Delhi. While it was great to connect again with the teams in Asia I have worked with for the past 4 years, it is clear that I am now a visitor. I have been gone 8 months and they are functioning without me. This trip reminded me of what I did not like about Asia, distances are too long, time is too far..A new perspective is needed. Hopefully this was my last trip.

The picture below shows a session we had in Shanghai, (Note the traditional Chinese food lunch of KFC and Pizza Hut). The two westerners are now taking over some of my responsibilities, at least until we hire a replacement)

Bangkok was a short trip, Saturday to Tuesday.. but it was nice to have a Sunday to walk around in shorts and a t-shirt. I ended up this trip  in India for a series of meetings. On this portion of my travels there was some excitement, caused by fog. The morning of the day I was to leave Bangkok, I received an e-mail from our travel provider advising there were delays at the Delhi airport and  I should check with my airline. I then e-mailed the office in India and was told that it was not that bad and I would be "OK if my aircraft had a CAT 3 navigation system". Not sure what this meant, so I checked with Cathay Pacific and they said they were flying as usual, no delays. I had a scheduled 5:00 pm departure. We left Bangkok on time, but ended up having  to circle Delhi for 40 minutes. On the first approach we had an aborted landing attempt, ( the pilot came on casually after we had made what seemed like an abrupt power up as we were on final approach and stated the obvious "we had to abort our approach as there was another aircraft on the runway"). Seems like he made a good choice.  Anyway, it was only when we landed and exited the airport that I saw the fog.It was absolutely the worst I have ever seen, how we landed I do not know. The picture is of the front of the  terminal, I am one lane away from the entrance! It took us about an hour driving 20 mph with all blinkers on to get to the hotel.  Two other colleagues of mine coming to India from Shanghai direct took 28 hours to make the trip. They were diverted to Mumbai, sat on the tarmac for 10 hours, then allowed into a transit lounge, then re-boarded, then 2 more hours waiting, then the flight to Delhi and another 3 hour wait as the airport was overloaded with planes when the fog cleared.

Back in Paris....

Back in Paris I am getting back into my routines. I SKYPED people yesterday, read all the blogs I follow (I cannot get blogs while in China). One of my favourite routines is Sunday in the market and a home cooked dinner. (mostly home cooked) . The local open market is open Sundays and Thursdays.  I usually buy a  1/2 cooked chicken, or occasionally a whole chicken when Genya is here, veggies, fruit, bread, cheese eggs. The eggs I hard boil for eating during the week, they go well with baguette and cheese. For Christmas Santa brought me a silicone egg poacher. So I thought I would try it out today. As a typical male I had of course thrown the directions away, so I went on line to find some guidance. Luckily this seems to be a topic that has generated some web chat. Simple really, dab of butter, drop in the egg and cook with the lid closed. (for the picture I tool the lid off) . It was delicious.

It is good to be back in Paris.