Berlin & the ECM

Last Wednesday, I headed to Berlin for the European Company Meeting. During the day, I had received a couple of emails about participating in the presentation for the ECM Award for best project for one of the projects I was on in France. It involved singing a song...
When I arrived at the hotel, the first people I bumped into were Jacques, Clement & Loic from the team. I was then roped into the rehearsal. The presentation was at the end of Thursday before dinner. I found out that of the other 2 projects that were competing for the award, I had also been on one of them - almost a no-lose situation. The presentation went as well as it could have and, apparently, there were only 8 votes between the first and third projects. The other project I was on won. The dinner on Thursday night was nice and it was really good to catch up with people I hadn't seen for ages.

On Friday morning, I set out with David in tow to see Berlin. We hit the tourist sites, passing by Potsdamer Platz, bits of the Wall, the Holocaust Memorial (a haunting set of grave-size concrete blocks and its underground museum), the Brandenburg Gate (very impressive), Unter den Linden with the Russian Embassy and other big buildings, stopped off at a Christmas Market for some potato pancakes & currywurst and made our way to Museum Island and the Pergamon Museum (aka the Pokemon Museum, according to David). As I had been to Pergamon on my tour of Turkey, I was particularly enthusiastic about seeing the Pergamon Altar, which was dug out of the ruins and shipped off the Germany in another of these supposed 'contracts' on antiquities from which European countries seemed to have done so well. It is an amazing piece of sculpture - the Greek Gods battling the Giants. It seems very clever of the archeologists to be able to work out who is who until you find out that each God's name is etched into the stone above their head. In some places, both the God and the name have survived, in other places, only one or the other and in still other spots, there is just a big blank space. After the museum, we wandered down to Checkpoint Charlie, stopping on the way to have some apple strudel drowned in vanilla sauce on Friedrichstrasse.
On Saturday, I headed out to Charlottenburg Palace, much of which was damaged by bombs during WWII and since refurbished. Many items of furniture, paintings and tapestries were brought over from the Berlin Palace, which was completely flattened during the war. The palace is not laid out well for a tourist. There are not enough signs to tell you where to go next, particularly if you have paid for all of the exhibits and want to get to the rest. In the afternoon, I went all the way from the West side over to the East side to the Stasimuseum. This creepy place was a recommendation from Christof, a former East Berliner. It took me ages to find the place as there were, again, no signs telling you where it was and the building had no sign at all. The Stasi, the secret police of GDR, spied on East Germans using all sorts of sophisticated gadgets that look like they come from James Bond. I particularly like the little camera that was hidden behind a big button on a coat. The most disturbing things were the glass jars with yellow cloth that held the scent and sweat of ordinary people who may or may not have been up to something. The museum is housed in the former HQ of the Stasi and you can see the offices and conference rooms as they were furnished back in the day. The 60s bleak decor, low levels of lighting and the lack of other visitors is really freaky especially for a person with an overactive imagination.
On Sunday I went to see the Reichstag, home of the Bundestag, the parliament. I also caught a couple of the buses that traversed the city. On the buses, I passed the Victory Column in the Tiergarten, the Fernsehturm (TV Tower) in Alexanderplatz and a bunch of other sites I had already visited. There was a tour group also on the buses so I got the benefit of their guide's commentary as well. I finished off my tour of Berlin in the Sony Centre in Potsdamer Platz and the Christmas Market and shopping centre opposite.

I am all Christmas Marketed out. There is only so much schmuck one can look at, especially when it isn't all that good quality.

After several weeks spent in the company of German colleagues and a weekend in Berlin, I have come to the conclusion that the German way of dealing with the war: the brainwashing of its schoolchildren into a mass responsibility culture, the putting up of numerous memorials that show its citizens in a poor light and the trampling of any even moderately right wing view is just as bad an extreme as the Japanese denial of any atrocities perpetrated by its people. There needs to be a balanced view. I am not sure that making your citizens utterly ashamed of their past will be any better at preventing history from repeating itself than them not knowing that any of it happened at all.

Photos in the usual place.

Chilled Monkey's Brains...

Big break from blogging so to bring you up to date, 2 entries. Entry #1 is on a 5 week stint in Linz, Austria. Highlights & lowlights (you decide which is which):
- Nicknaming the 2 Denises Große Denis and Kleine Denis (Big Denis and Little Denis)
- Watching Christof, our youngest team member, react to English jokes told by our British colleagues – listening, listening, pause, thinking ‘this must be the end of the joke’, thinking ‘I don’t get it’, thinking ‘It is polite to laugh when people tell jokes’ & then laughing. You could actually see this all on his face. It was heaps funnier than the actual jokes.
- Finding out all sorts of disgusting things about guys that they discuss with each other when there are no girls around. Consultants are even more disgusting than Cat guys!
- Working a median of 13 hours a day and not being able to try the steak in the hotel that the guys kept recommending as we were eating dinner at ~9.30-10pm each night. I eventually got to try it and it came well done when I asked for medium (still very nice).
- Being the mantelpiece for Steve to rest his elbow, my shoulder being at exactly the right height for him (he is 14 inches taller than I am! Not as tall as Marcelo but still very tall!)
- Meeting a fascinating Austrian man who talks non-stop and has travelled to China extensively. His best 2 anecdotes were:
o One time when he was due to travel to China, he had terrible back pain. He went anyway and was in such pain that he could barely get off the plane. His Chinese colleague suggested an old man could help him and this guy would not charge any money if it didn’t work. So, the old man came and put his hands above his back (chi gong) and determined that he had ‘blockages’. He then proceeded to stick him full of needles (he says that anyone who tells you that acupuncture doesn’t hurt is lying!) The whole time, he had the same thing running through his mind – this isn’t going to work, this isn’t going to work…When the old man had finished, he told him to lie on the bed until the next morning, at which time he would return and would either: 1) get paid for work well done, 2) do it all again (!) or 3) leave without pay. The next morning, he gingerly got up and didn’t feel any pain. He has not felt any back pain since!
o This second anecdote is PG rated. Another time he was in China he was taken to a restaurant where they had little holes in the middle of the tables. A live monkey was brought out and shoved into the hole so that only its head was above the table top. The waiter brought out a big knife and thwuck! He sliced off the top of the monkey’s head. The people then proceeded to eat the monkey’s brain while the monkey was still alive. Urgh! He felt obligated to try some as he was the guest and almost threw up. Urban legends abound but this is the first time I have met anyone who has actually done it.
- Watching our boss take down the entire team in arm wrestling, even the young guys who thought they were pretty buff.
- Taking 2 team mates home after they threw up in the restaurant from too many schnapps. The whole of the next morning, the project room stank of alcohol exuding from everyone’s pores.
- Going to my first Christmas Market, a little one in Linz, and trying gleuwein (just a small sip – it’s yuck) and kinder punsch (non-alcoholic!)
Some photos of the team are in the usual place.

I also caught up with Jenny (Harry wasn’t able to make it) in London. We visited the Portrait Gallery, which still hasn’t grown on me yet and she recommended the Wallace Collection to me. I went there the following weekend and found that it is another of London’s free museums. It was the private collection of a rich family who, over about 5 generations, collected an amazing amount of art, including pieces from Catherine the Great’s most famous dinner set, furniture & ceramics from the French Royal family (they have 6 of 36 ladies’ chairs that were commissioned just before the French Revolution and so were never used) and paintings by artists such as Rembrandt, Rubens & Gainsborough. The family died out at the turn of the century and they gifted their mansion & its contents to the nation. They managed to collect such pieces because of their wealth and also due to timing – they bought French Royal family pieces at around the Revolution in a fire-sale when such things were not fashionable to own.

In other news, my gold Corolla is no more. Ma was sideswiped by a semitrailer and then crashed into a truck. No injuries but no more car either.
I also hear that Ye Ye is ill. At 89, he has done very well so far with little health issues. Wishing him all the best.

The Lion King, Curse of the Golden Flower & Quantum of Solace

3 weeks ago, Eppie & Taffy's Bak Leung came to stay and has been spoiling me since. I have been taken to yum cha a couple of times, which I haven't had since I came back. She has also bought me a bunch of char siu charn baus, bor lor baus and roast duck.
We went to see The Lion King with her nephew. It was an amazing spectacular of colour and sound. The actors use the aisles of the stalls quite a lot to enter and exit the stage so you get a really good look at the costumes, which are beautifully designed. The children were weak singers but made up for it with lots of energy. The best performances were the ones that had to act as well as manipulate their puppets. My favourites were Timon, Zazu & Scar.
Bak Leung also brought a DVD of Curse of the Golden Flower from HK. It is one of the latest from Zhang Yimou, who has literally completely lost the plot. He is the director who was responsible for the Opening Ceremony of the Beijing Olympics. That is all he is good for these days. Style has triumphed over substance. His other recent movies include House of Flying Daggers and Hero, both with extraordinarily stunning visuals and both with tremendously stupid plots. Curse of the Golden Flower is even worse. I don't understand what actors of the calibre & reputation of Chow Yun Fat and Gong Li were thinking when they signed up for this rubbish. Zhang Yimou has run towards the arms of the Chinese government and away from his awesomely challenging films of the past, including Raise the Red Lantern, The Story of Qiu Ju & Not One Less.
I watched Quantum of Solace, the latest James Bond movie, last week, before it has been released in Australia. It is not as good as Casino Royale but is in the same vein of being very dark. There are none of the wisecracks that Sean Connery and then Roger Moore spouted after every death. Daniel Craig's James Bond just killed a person and moved onto the next one. [Spoiler Alert! Don't read on if you don't want to know the end.] It was quite incredible for the Bond girl to simply walk off into the distance at the end of this film. He gave her a kiss and dropped her off at the station! I must say that if Daniel Craig had black hair, he would be almost exactly as the books describe Bond. The book Bond is an incredibly hard man and that is how Craig plays him. I also loved the Bond/M relationship. Judi Dench is great.

Toilet Humour

I don't normally talk about work but due to the good reception to the following story, here goes...

I had to do a DILO (Day In the Life Of) 2 weeks ago on a lady who works in a call centre. A DILO is basically a day where you follow someone around and note down everything they do and how long they take to do it and see how much time they spend doing non-value added work. It is something we do as part of finding out what opportunities there are to improve processes. You are supposed to stick to the person like glue, go to the loo when they do, eat when they do and not wander off while they are working.

Anyway, her day was supposed to start at 8am so I arrived at 7.40 to get ready. The security in the building is insane. Anyone would think that people are not to be trusted. There are secure doors to the toilet area such that you need an electronic pass to get in there after hours (the normal day starts at 8.30 and ends at 5.30). I couldn't get in to go to the loo before starting. I go over to her work area and she's already started work at 7.45. So, I think, I will go when she goes...

The hours tick by...

As you may know, I have a pretty small bladder and I drink lots to avoid getting dehydration-related migraines and throwing up. So, at about 10am I'm starting to get rather itchy. Still no movement to take a break.

Another hour ticks by...

I'm finding it really hard to concentrate. It has now been 4 1/2 hours since I last went. Really busting, have to go. I excuse myself and nip off to the loo, only to bump into my boss on the way there. 'What are you doing?', he asks. 'I'm busting!', I mutter as I rush past.

Lunchtime comes. Still no movement. She takes out a box of sandwiches. She usually works through lunch and I've been forewarned as I had brought some food. I go get it from the room where my 2 bosses are sitting. They have a go at me about not sticking to the DILOee. I explain that even though they may have massive bladders that can handle 5 hours without going to the loo, I don't.

Lunchtime passes. She still hasn't moved out of her work area.

Another couple of hours tick by...

I need to go again. Another hurried trip to the loo...

Still no movement from her side. More time passes...

By this time, I think that the woman is a freak of nature. Finally, at 4.45pm!!!!, she goes. > 9 hours!!! What a machine!!!

At this point, you are thinking, well, she probably hadn't drunken anything all day. Wrong! 5 cups of tea!!!!

She finishes up at 5.30pm, by which time, I need to go again. By this time, it has become a big joke with my bosses and they ask as I come back to the room to drop off my stuff - 'Need to go to the loo?' Well, of course I do!

So ended my rather trying day bodily-functionwise. It has become the running joke in the office.

Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo

9 months ago, when I attended my first ballet, a couple of images popped into my head from Trockadero, the all-male cross-dressing ballet troupe. A few Fridays ago, as I was lugging my bags back to my apartment through the London underground, I saw an ad for their show. I had reservations as to whether they could sustain the performance over 2 hours (many other acts that I've seen clips of have let me down as they could not keep it going for a full length show.) Let me say right off, I was not disappointed by them in the slightest!!
They were the perfect combination of great technique and comedy. Their comedic performances were so funny that I was left with tears streaming down my face. Their famous pas de quatre from Swan Lake and Saint Saens' Dying Swan pieces were even more hysterical live. During ballet corps dances one person would be out of time or out of place and go scurrying across the stage in a mad panic. In other dances, they combined the largest guy playing the female role with the smallest one playing the male role. They alternated the camp with serious technical performances. Their pointe work was far superior to the ballerinas in the English National Ballet.
In my tradition of over-analysing everything, I have a theory as to why they are so good. They are able to inject humour into the performance as people do not expect cross-dressing ballet dancers to be completely serious. However, as classically trained dancers they are also superior than women in women's roles as they are stronger and (mostly) light enough to maintain their form en pointe. The only thing that shows them up is when they perform solos in male roles. This is when they are at their weakest as they are most likely weaker male dancers who, through being too short, too tall or not powerful enough, ended up in this troupe.
Overall, it was fantastic and I recommend it as a must-see if it ever comes to your city.

Ireland is full of Irish people

I had been in Ireland for only a couple of days when I made a statement that sounds absolutely ridiculous when said out loud - Ireland is full of Irish people. Amazingly, after I had said it, other people agreed with me and a week later, a colleague who hadn't been there when I first blurted it out said the same thing. Ireland is indeed full of Irish people. Everyone is called Sean, Paddy, Gerry, Colm, Eamon, Siobhan & Aiofe (pronounced Eefer) and has surnames like O'Mahony, Noonan, O'Brien, Moran, Reidy & O'Toole. It's like stepping into a stereotype. The country is remarkably racially uniform. I am not sure what I expected it to be but I guess I was thinking of something more like the diversity of London. Makes our team look bizarre to say the least - a couple of Englishmen, an American living in The Netherlands, a Dutch guy, a Ugandan Londoner, a German, a South African and me.
I attended a teleconference in Cork in which I could not understand a word that was being said and then met a couple of people face-to-face and still couldn't understand a word that was being said. In Dublin, it was decidedly better but I still have difficulty especially when they get excited (which is often) and start talking really fast.
I attended a big meeting in which the CEO came for a short speech. When he opened his mouth, I thought, oooh, an Aussie and when he said 'well, that's just bullshit', I got homesick. Someone said that his accent is a lot easier to understand now than a year ago. All I can say is that he must have been as ocker as they come if his accent has moderated to its current state.
Dublin is a lovely city when it is not raining, which is to say about 1% of the time. Fortunately for me, I was there on 5 consecutively fine days, which is almost unheard of. I visited Trinity College, home of the Book of Kells, a set of the 4 gospels written around 800 AD. It is also home to the Long Room in the Old Library, a beautiful barrel-vaulted room filled with 200,000 books that runs the length of the building. It has a collection of marble busts of great thinkers through history and houses the oldest harp in Ireland, a 15th century oak and willow harp that is the model for the emblem of Ireland. It is attributed to Brian Boru (an Irish king) but he predates it by a couple of centuries. The Irish claim that their emblem is the only one in the world that is a musical instrument, hence their musicality. Even Guiness uses it in its emblem. Great for the singing, drunken Irish.
The rest of Dublin is quite boring tourist-wise. I'm sure the alcoholics of the world think that Temple Bar is a great location and shoppers like Grafton St & O'Connell St but even the National Gallery was a disappointment for me. They have a Vermeer there but it was on loan to Japan for an exhibition.
I took a tour down to visit Blarney Castle, Cork and Cobh. I asked a girl from the group to take a photo of me as I kissed the Blarney Stone but she didn't even get a blurry shot or a shot of the paving stones. She got no photo at all! Geez...Hopefully I have the gift of eloquence now, though. Had an Irish stew and a scone in Blarney (scones are a staple in Ireland more so than in the UK). Mmm...
Cobh (pronounced Cove and has also been called Queenstown in the past) has a very important place in Irish history. It was the last port that the Titanic stopped at before it sank, it is the port to which the Lusitania was heading when it was sunk by the Germans (3 mass graves are located at the Old Church Cemetery near Cobh and contain over 1000 bodies) and, most importantly, it was the port from which the Irish Emigrants left for the US at the time of the Great Famine and from which the Irish convicts were sent to Australia. A fungus is the reason there are so many Irish people in the US and Australia. Hundreds of thousands of people died and hundreds of thousands more emigrated due to a fungus that attacked the potato crops of 1845-1851, wiping out the staple of Irish diets.
All in all, Ireland is a lovely green country. It would be a nice place to live if it didn't rain as much as it does. As a tourist destination, it is not recommended unless you like a pint or two or twenty...
Cold count: 16

Melbourne & back

Back in the UK after 2 months in Melbourne.
Highlights included:
- Catching up with family and friends, most of them several times
- Catching up on 15 months of sleeping in
- Winning 2 things in 2 days in 2 competitions I didn't know I had entered: the novel Wolf of the Plains (based on the early life of Genghis Khan, I highly recommend it) and a Thermos bottle and matching cups
- Playing a set against former badminton Commonwealth gold medallist Silvia Ng (lost, of course)
- Having a hot stones massage, which turned out to be a normal massage using hot stones rather than what you see in pictures of stones placed at particularly places on your body
- Spending a couple of days with Ma's old school friends and listening to their fascinating stories of how daughters were treated like second class citizens just a generation ago

Last weekend I celebrated my birthday by treating myself to a show. I went to see The Sound of Music. I was interested to see what differences there were from the original show and the movie. As the movie has become such a classic, many of the changes that were made to the original stage show have stayed. For example, Maria sings I Have Confidence, which didn't exist in the original show, she and the children sing My Favourite Things on the bed in the thunderstorm but Mother Superior also sings it, which is where it originally was while The Lonely Goatherd was the song sung in the bedroom. Frau Schraeder and Uncle Max sing a couple of songs, which they don't do in the movie so no-one knows these songs. It was quite strange.
Sei Sum arrived in London to begin her Europe tour. I met her and a friend of hers for dinner.
On Sunday, I intended to visit Blenheim Palace, birthplace of Winston Churchill. Having looked up the directions to get there on their website, I arrived at Oxford station only to find that their directions were not as clear and accurate as they could be. The buses run from a different station on Sundays and instead of running every half hour, there is a 1 1/2 hour gap in the schedule in the middle of the day on Sundays. Of course, I arrived at the bus station just as the last bus of the morning was pulling away up the street. The next bus was so much later that I ended up visiting some of the Oxford sites I visited last time, including Radcliffe Camera and St Mary's. Finally, I got to Blenheim Palace, which is an incredible estate. It is the family estate of the Duke of Marlborough and the family is actually called Spencer Churchill. The first Duke's son died and one of his daughters became the first Duchess in her own right. She was married to one of the Spencers, Princess Diana's ancestors. A few generations later, the family applied to change their name to Spencer Churchill to honour the original Duke's surname. Winston Churchill's father was a younger son of the 7th Duke. The estate is enormous, the house is about 500m from the front gate and the rose garden is about 300m from the back door with other gardens and lakes further out. The difference between the wealthy and poor in Britain is very pronounced indeed.
Just a comment on travelling on public transport in peak hour in London. I can understand how Taffy feels. There are certainly a lot of idiots out there. The other week, I was waiting for a train at London Bridge and when it came, everyone bunched around the doors. One stupid woman stood in front of the doors with her handbag on the ground in between her legs. She was not actually getting on the train, just getting in the way of everyone else. Then she had the nerve to grumble out loud that people were crushing her. What the...?! Unbelievable!

Prague and Cesky Krumlov

After Egypt, the Czech Republic seemed like the cleanest place on Earth! We had 1 1/2 days rest after Egypt in London (enough time to do laundry) before flying to Prague.
The public transport system of Prague is pleasantly surprisingly efficient and easy to use. The trip from the airport to our hotel in Mala Strana (just below Prague Castle) was quick and simple. There had been many warnings about pickpockets on the trains and buses but we did not encounter any issues. We had also been warned about the cobblestones but these were not that bad either. I don't know what everyone's problem is.
We were still feeling the effects of Egypt on our digestive systems but were determined to sample the local cuisine, particularly the pork knuckles. First dinner: roasted pork knuckle for 2. Mmmm... Second dinner: pork again (but not knuckle). Third dinner: carp (a fish that featured heavily on menus there but is rarely seen in Australia). Fourth dinner: duck, pork and bread and potato dumplings. We also had beef goulash for lunch one day, which was nothing special, just beef stew. In between I had 3 double ice creams as they were 10 krona per scoop (~A$0.70). This was only so in Cesky Krumlov, in Prague the price jumped to between 20-40 krona/scoop depending on the store.
On the second day we took a train from Prague down to Cesky Krumlov. On the way, we were able to see a lot of the pretty countryside, where they seemed to be growing a lot of what appeared to be grass. We never did find out what the crop was. The trip took ages - about 4.5 hours for a 200km trip. We were told that the trip is quicker by bus, which we found difficult to believe but on the way back we did take the bus and it was indeed slightly faster (~3.5 hours) but about the same in price (the bus driver stiffed everyone 10 krona per bag).
Cesky Krumlov is much better than Prague, still lots of lovely old buildings but without the hoards of tourists. Its castle is its highlight. There was a strangely titled 'bear moat', which I assumed to be a moat to keep out the bears but was, in fact, a moat to keep bears in. There have been bears in that moat for hundreds of years.
Both of the castles (at Cesky Krumlov and in Prague) are poor cousins to the castles and palaces of France and Austria. Their saving grace is that you can wander the grounds at will, you only pay to go in to see parts of the interiors. I recommend that you save your money and just look at the outsides, which have incredible decorations.
Wenceslas is the patron saint of the Czech Republic and he is mentioned everywhere. Whenever Ma asked who he was, I would sing the Christmas carol, which would drive her crazy. : ) St Vitus' Cathedral in Prague Castle has a chapel encrusted with semi-precious stones with his tomb in it. The cathedral was actually built around his tomb. It is the one thing that makes the cathedral stand out, otherwise it just blends into all the other churches in Europe.
The most peculiar thing about the Czech Republic was the proliferation of currency exchange shops. Each one advertises a better rate than the one before and most have zero commission. They are not above fraudulent advertising, however, as they often show their sell rates on big boards outside the shop and then show their buy rates in tiny numbers inside. I'm still trying to work out how the higher rated shops make money. I can't believe that anyone would be changing money back to their own currencies there.
Our accommodation in Cesky Krumlov was cheap and fantastic. It was half a house of 2 floors with a bedroom upstairs with 2 single beds and a TV and a bathroom and living area downstairs with a TV. There was lots of German TV on and we watched a show on dominoes that I had watched several times while working in Germany. The teams set up amazingly complex pictures, some of which are only revealed when the dominoes fall.
Our accommodation in Prague was very strange. Our room on the last night appeared to be very safe. There were 3 doors between the hallway and the bedroom. On closer inspection, however, the door to the hallway, the only one that was lockable, was built into a wall that had no ceiling. The ceiling was a couple of metres above this little wall. Lots of headroom for potential intruders!

Egypt - the Experience

The tour group

Intrepid tours are small groups of 12. Our group included a wealthy Kiwi couple, an Aussie girl from Adelaide, an American freelance journalist, an English guy, 2 brothers who live in the UK but have lived in Belgium, Japan, Canada & Singapore during their lives, an American couple studying in Jerusalem and his mother. The group would have to be one of the wimpiest on record. As a group, it barely drank, it didn't swim in the Nile, it barely partied, it wilted in the heat, it all got sick and it loved its showers. Our guide was an Egyptian from Cairo, who kept telling people to shut up when he was explaining the sites and the history. When asked whether his mum knew he was so rude, he said, 'Of course..., Not!' : )

The dirt & heat

May is the beginning of summer in Egypt but even so, it was already incredibly hot. In Aswan, it got up to 45oC. This combined with the dust & sand blown in from the desert made it hot, dirty and tiring. We showered constantly. The tour allowed for shower time in the mornings after the train journeys and felucca trip (the whole group was hankering for a shower after the train down to Aswan only to find that the water died in the whole hotel).

The Nile

The Nile is the lifeline of Egypt. It contains the last 1/4 of the river. The Aswan High Dam was built almost 40 years ago to control the floods and to generate electricity. The result is no silt to fertilise the country and more dust. The Egyptians treat the river like their toilet and rubbish bin. Everything goes into it, including the rubbish generated by tourist groups, who, to their shame, leave garbage everywhere.

The people

The business people were aggressive. Our group named the areas around the temples and monuments 'running the gauntlet'. The stall owners crowd in at you to try to get you to buy something. We were warned not to touch anything nor to take anything that was handed to us as it would be considered to be sold and you would be pressured to buy. You can't even look at things in peace. The result is that nobody buys anything, quite the opposite result to what they want.

The other peculiarity of the culture is that the people do not like giving change. They either ask you for smaller bills (how to you get these smaller bills when banks and exchange offices only give larger ones and vendors don't give change?), 'forget' to give you change or give you less change than you should get.

The people we met (who were not out to do business with us) were very friendly. We went to lunch at a local family's house in Luxor, where we were able to talk to the ladies of the household. The eldest daughter has just finished university with a degree in tourism. She hopes to be a tour guide, taking tours all over Egypt. However, her parents want her to only do day-tours around Luxor as good Muslim girls should not spend nights outside of their family homes. Classic case of tradition vs personal ambition, duty to the family vs personal happiness.

The houses

As we flew into Cairo, we had a view of desert and brown matchbox-like unfinished houses. As we travelled through the streets and towns, we saw that almost all of the houses were unfinished. They all had reinforced concrete pillars sticking out the top and often had concrete staircases leading to nowhere on their roofs. Apparently, there is a loophole in Egyptian law that allows landowners to pay less tax on unfinished houses than on complete ones. So, everyone lives in houses that appear to be unfinished on the outside but are actually fully furnished on the inside. This insanity has created a country of incredibly ugly towns and cities that people cannot feel pride about.

The convoys

We had police escorted convoys of buses to and from Abu Simbel and also back up to Luxor. The reason given was for our safety as there was not a lot of access to help if a bus broke down in the desert. However, the first police car took off and we never saw it again. From there, it was a race at breakneck speeds between the buses as to who would get there first. At times, we could not even see the bus in front of us, they were that far apart.

The trains

We took a sleeping train down from Cairo to Aswan - scheduled for 12 hours (900km) and took 15 hours. This was the first time I have been on a train with sleeping compartments. The compartments are built for 2 with beds that fold down over the 2 seats when it is time for bed and also with a wash basin so that you don't have to go down to the toilet at the end of the carriage all the time. It was rather like the trains that James Bond fought in against Grant and Jaws.

We took a sitting train from Luxor back to Cairo. The chaos and crush to get on was very daunting even though everyone had set seating. We had been warned about the quality of the toilet. One of the girls got to the end of the carriage and had to turn back before forcing herself to go later when things got desperate. Of the people who went, all said that it was the worst they had ever seen except for one couple who said the Trans-Siberian train toilet was their worst.

Photos in the usual place.

Sickness count: 2nd set of stomach problems, 13th cold in 12 months.

Egypt - the Sites

Cairo
We flew into Cairo and were not met as expected before immigration. The guy was waiting after customs. We were driven at dizzying speeds to the hotel, where our bags were physically wrenched from our arms and the porter hovered in our room waiting for a tip, which was never going to come (we had nothing on us less than A$10 and there was no way he was getting that). The reception was then unable to provide a map nor clear directions to restaurants and shops. The restaurant we went to then tried to rip up off by giving us incorrect change. Not a very good first impression of Egypt at all.
Our tour started the next day at lunchtime. We visited Islamic Cairo, including the El Azhar Mosque, one of the local bazaars and the tourist-oriented Khan-Khalili Bazaar. While we were sitting at one of the cafes, a woman grabbed my hand and painted a henna picture on my finger. Bizarrely, I was not required to pay anything for this. Our guide was later shocked when he found out that my tattoo was free ('Nothing is free in Egypt'). [Side note: I also acquired a scarab beetle amulet and a necklace for free during the trip.]

The Pyramids of Giza

The Great Pyramid of Giza (aka the Pyramid of Khufu or the Pyramid of Cheops) is the largest of the pyramids at Giza (there are 9 - 3 large and 6 small) and the last remaining member of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. The strange thing is that it actually looks smaller than the Second Pyramid (Khafre's Pyramid, Khufu's son). This is because the casing stones have gone from the Great Pyramid and the Second Pyramid is built on higher ground.

The whole tour group bought tickets to go into the Second Pyramid but only 4 made it to the middle chamber. The tunnel is very small so you have to double up to get through it. As there is very little ventilation, it is hot and stuffy.

The Sphinx was built by Khafre to guard his pyramid. It is surprisingly small, even though it is 50m x 20m, dwarfed by the pyramids behind it.

In the afternoon, we visited the Egyptian Museum, the home Tutankhamun's treasures, including his phenomenal gold mask and gem-studded sarcophagi. They would have to have been the highlight of our visit there. Oh, the mummified crocodile, snake and assorted cats and dogs were fascinating too.

Aswan

Philae Temple
Philae Temple, along with Abu Simbel, was moved when the Aswan High Dam was built, resulting in the creation of a lake, which flooded the areas where the monuments were located. The island that the temple is situated on now is not quite long enough for the temple, so the temple has been offset. The result is that you cannot stand at the inner chamber and look all the way out to the front of the complex. Despite this, it is an awesome temple being on of the most complete still remaining. It is actually quite 'new', built in around 300 BC.

Abu Simbel

We woke up at 3am to join the convoy to Abu Simbel. It was a 3 hour race there, a 2 hour visit before it got too hot and then a 3 hour race back. The 2 temples at Abu Simbel were built by Ramses II for himself and his favourite wife, Nefertari. Her temple in unusual in that her statues are the same size as his. Normally, the concubine statues only go up to the pharaoh's knees. Our guide told us to go straight into the temples while other groups stood outside listening to their guides. Ma and I got there first so we were the ONLY 2 people in Ramses II's temple for a full 5 minutes. We were then the only 2 people in Nefertari's temple for another 5 minutes. Awesome! Later, we went back to have a look in Ramses' temple and it was absolutely packed with people.

Felucca

We spent a day and night on the Nile on a felucca, a sailboat that basically has a big mattress on its deck with pillows at the sides. It was sailed by Nubians who also prepared our meals. It was a very relaxing day, which was followed by a rather painful day when most of the group got sick. The theory is that the dishes were washed with Nile water, which is less than hygienic.

Luxor

After the day on the felucca, we caught the convoy back up to Luxor. First stop was Karnak Temple, the largest temple complex in the world. It was added to by various pharaohs during their reigns. It includes a spectacular hall by Seti I and his son Ramses II and the tallest surviving obelisk in the world by Hatshepsut, the great Queen (~1450 BC) who is never mentioned in western literature. She usurped power from her nephew for whom she was acting as regent and ruled as Egypt's pharaoh for 22 years, leading troops into battle early in her reign and then guiding Egypt through a peaceful and prosperous time. Her mortuary temple, Djeser-Djeseru, is believed to be the reason the Valley of the Kings is where is it - later pharaohs wanted to put their tombs near her great architectural gem. Cool! We saw it on our hot air balloon ride over the Valley of the Kings.

We visited 3 of the tombs in the Valley of the Kings: Ramses I, III & IV in sweltering heat. These are remarkable for the quality of the decorations still present and the colour. Like the Terracotta Warriors of China, the tombs and temples of Egypt were originally painted in vibrant colours. Only some of this remains.

Habu Temple (of Ramses III) is a fine example of the colour. A lot of it is still visible in the sheltered parts of the temple. It also has examples of the practice of etching hieroglyphics deeply into the walls so that future leaders could not remove them without affecting the structural integrity of the walls. Some of the 'Ra' signs, a sun, are big and deep enough to stick your head in them.

It is worth a trip to Egypt to see what a great civilisation they were 5000-2000 years ago. It is a pity that they are no longer anything like that anymore and rapidly heading in the opposite direction.

Vienna

My B&B Hostess
All the ladies out there who say that learning to use the computer and the internet is too hard, hang your heads in shame. I have met the ultimate grand dame. My B&B hostess inherited a magnificent apartment in the middle of Vienna from her mother and has turned it into a B&B. It is in an old building with one of those lifts they have in the movies, it has 4m high ceilings, 2 family sized rooms and 2 'studios' (mezzanine floors with enough room for a bed and some furniture). I slept in one of these studios, which was directly above her bed.
But, back to the internet. Her apartment is set up with wireless broadband. She has her laptop and she has set up a desktop with a webcam for her guests to use. All of her guests come either through word of mouth or through the internet.
She speaks a multitude of languages: German, Hungarian, English, 'I can't remember much French or Spanish anymore' and 'I can only read and write Russian now'.
I found her hanging upside-down on rings hanging from a doorway one morning doing stretching exercises. What an amazing old lady!
The Sites
Some of the sites I visited: Nasch Markt (Flea and produce market), Schönbrunn Palace (summer palace of the Hapsburgs, where Mozart played for Maria Theresia and then jumped in her lap), Hofburg Palace (working palace of the Hapsburgs in the centre of Vienna), Volksgarten (the people's garden), Staatsoper (State Opera House), Karlskirche (You have to pay to get into a church? No way! Didn't go in.), Sacher Hotel for a Sacher Torte (wasn't wild about it) and a melange (Viennese cappuccino with dollop of cream), Kunsthistorimuseum (Museum of Fine Arts with an exhibition of Arcimboldo's work (the seasons and the elements made into portraits using fruit, vegetables, flowers, animals, books etc. - I love the ones that look like a bowl of veggies and then when you turn it upside down you get a face with a hat)), Stephansdom & the Rathaus (Town Hall - the word always cracks me up).
The Concerts
I went to concert by the Residenz Orchestra, which is usually held at the Hofburg palace but the evening that I went, it was at the Börse Palace, which was literally next to where I was staying. It took 2 minutes to walk there and back. They played Mozart and Strauss and had a soprano, baritone and 2 dancers there to break the monotony. The soprano had beautiful dresses from the 2 eras. The flautist was cute in a nerdy way but tended to 'feel' the music a little too much. I am a firm believer that you can be 'in the zone' without having to double up in your chair, rock back and forth and nearly head-butt the oboist next to you.
An aside: I cannot let this pass without a comment. There was a man at the concert (member of the audience) who had the most grotesque nose I have ever seen. It was horrendous from every angle. It was like someone grabbed a massive handful of red Play-Doh, punctured it with lots of little holes and shoved it on his face. It was big & lumpy front-on and big & lumpy (and hooked) side-on. It was like the proverbial car crash - you want to look away but you can't help but stare. (p.s. his wife also had a big nose.)
I attended mass at the Hofmusikkapelle on Sunday morning. The Vienna Boys' Choir sings there every week. They are indeed a fantastic group. They sang from up top, unseen, until the end where they came out and sang one piece from the front.
The Original Princess Di
I didn't know that Princess Di lived before. Her name was Empress Elizabeth (aka Sissi), wife of Emperor Franz Josef. She was very beautiful, was married at 16, was depressive and hated court duties, exercised like mad to keep her figure (42-45kg at 172cm including floor length hair!) (there is gym equipment screwed into the walls and doorways of her apartments in the Hofburg palace), stopped having photographs of herself taken when she was in her early 30s so that only her youthful beauty would be preserved and was assassinated in Geneva when she was in her early 60s. She has become a legend, more popular after her death than during her life.
Poor Emperor Franz Josef. He sent his brother to be Emperor of Mexico. He was captured and executed by the revolutionaries after a very short reign. Franz Josef & Sissi's only son committed suicide at the age of 31 and then Sissi was assassinated. Franz Josef, on the other hand, woke at 3am every morning from an iron single bed, started work at 5am, had breakfast at his desk, received 100s of commoners every week and lived to the ripe old age of 86 in 1916.
Guide
What is it about me that makes people think I know where I'm going? It doesn't matter what city I'm in, people come up to me and ask me for directions. I don't know! I just got here! I'm either a suspicious character or a guide. Make up your minds, people!
The Mousetrap
This weekend, Taffy and I went to see The Mousetrap, Agatha Christie's play, the longest running play ever in the world (currently at 23,090 performances, 55 1/2 years). It is quite cute with a twist ending but I am not sure I understand why it has been running for so long.

Best Housemate in the World (but don't tell him!)

I must have the best housemate in the world (but don't tell him or he'll get a big head).
Last Friday, my luggage failed to appear when I got to London City Airport (still only took me 20 minutes to get from the plane, through immigration, wait for all the luggage to come through to determine that mine wasn't there, lodge a report with the baggage people to emerge out into the street - what an airport!).
This created quite a problem for me as I was due to visit Harry & Jenny in High Wycombe for the weekend. I waited for a phonecall all evening (played some terrible badminton in between) to no avail and called them in the morning to find out what was going on. An hour later, they called back to say that it had been delivered through to the airport.
Dilemma: wait for an indeterminate amount of time for luggage to do my laundry for the next trip on Monday morning or go visit friends.
Solution: ask Taffy to do my laundry for me when the luggage arrived.
The luggage hadn't arrived by the time he left the house for the day so he had to battle through an idiot concierge to get it ('Has there been any luggage delivered?' 'No, haven't seen anything.' 'Well, it was supposed to have been delivered today.' 'No, nothing.' 'Was anything delivered this morning?' 'Oh, I don't know, I just got here. You can go look in the back.' And there it was...).
Once collected, he had to struggle through the smokey stench that had been smouldering in my clothes for 1 1/2 days since our team decided to go to a pub for hours on end on Thursday night.
When I arrived home on Sunday afternoon (having spent a lovely weekend in Henley on the Thames (where the regatta is held), passing through Reading to Marlow (where Jenny works), and then dinner & lazy breakfast in High Wycombe), my laundry had all been done and some of it had already been folded. What a legend!

Geneva

Instead of going back to London for the weekend, I took myself off to Geneva. The train ride from Basel to Geneva is just under 3 hours and passes through a lot of Heidi countryside.
Lake Geneva (Lac Léman) is incredibly beautiful and Geneva, especially at night, looks spectacular, with the mountains in the background and the lake with its famous Jet d’Eau in the foreground. The original Flower Clock is not really that much better than the Melbourne version, though (a partisan view, perhaps).
Before visiting Geneva, I knew nothing much about Jean Calvin & John Knox, barely knowing of their existence. Geneva is full of references to them. St Peter’s Cathedral (with a most fabulous chapel that is very poorly advertised – one tiny little sign pointing the way was the only mention of it anywhere) was central to their teachings and the Reformation Wall (a huge monument commemorating the Protestant Reformation) is in the Parc de Bastions.
I visited the UN, which was also very poorly signposted. You walk past several of their gates, which all point the direction to the guided tours but when you get to the gate you are supposed to enter through, there are no signs and it looks like it is shut. The building and grounds are much grander than in New York (the old marble building dates back to the League of Nations) but for sheer wow-factor, NY leaves it for dead. Having a story about how one General Assembly was held there because Yasser Arafat was invited to address them but the US would not grant him a visa to attend in NY just isn’t as exciting as all the stories about the Security Council etc. Also, I did have a much higher ranking ‘guide’ for NY than the lowly run-of-the-mill guide I had in Geneva.
Taffy had suggested the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Museum as a good place to visit. The Lonely Planet had said that it was free. Well, it cost CHF10 and, it was, to use one of Taffy’s favourite phrases, ‘boring as batshit’. The one interesting snippet of information for me was that the Geneva Convention and I share a birthday, it just being >100 years older than I am. ; )
While at Cat, I spent 5 months working on a project with Sana via email and the phone as she lives in Geneva. The closest we got to meeting was her going to Singapore and then to Sydney just after I had left for London. Well, we have finally met! She took me to a steakhouse where she filled me in on the success of the program that we developed. In her words, ‘it went very well and if I say that others will tell you that it went perfectly.’ Awesome! She also kept telling me that she asked Rod several times why he had let me leave. : )

Germany, Switzerland & Austria

I started on a new project 2 weeks ago in Grenzach, Germany. It is on the border with Switzerland and France. I fly into Basel, exit out of the French side of the airport, work in Grenzach, stay in Rheinfelden (on the German side), have had dinner on the Swiss side of Rheinfelden (by walking across the bridge over the Rhine) and leave via Zurich. Phew! It is a beautiful area, with mountains (or at least large hills) very close to the river. We drive along the side of the river to and from work.
The town of Rheinfelden is split into 2, one half in Germany and one half in Switzerland. The Swiss side contains the old town and so has much more charm with its cobbled streets and old buildings. I had to laugh when bells chimed 10 o'clock and then a minute later another set of bells chimed. So much for Swiss clocks!
The first night I was there we went to a Chinese restaurant. I ended up ordering in Cantonese as that was the language that the waitress and I had in common. With a large sample of 1, I can confidently say that German Chinese restaurants are just as bad as English Chinese restaurants. : )
On the second night, we went to an Indian/Tibetan place. We have now been there twice. On our second visit it was festooned with political statements about freeing Tibet and boycotting the Olympics. Taffy reckons I sound like a pro-Chinese person when I talk about this topic (which I'm not) because I get annoyed with the very pro-Tibetan stance of the media. Yes, the Chinese are nuts and extremely heavy-handed but why is the violence perpetrated by the Tibetans (including monks!) on ethnic Chinese largely ignored?
Anyway, enough on politics. The third night we went over the river to the Swiss side and had local food (schnitzel for me) and then played darts in a local pub. The last time I played was years ago at Fiona's place where we managed to hit the bricks of the wall more than the board itself. Surprisingly, I managed to do very well. Beginner's luck. : )
In this past week we have had dinner at the hotel, where I had some local pork dish (can't remember the name) and a really yummy, crunchy rosti, the Indian/Tibetan place and an Argentinian steakhouse.
The Germans, I would have to say, are more considerate than the French. There is much less physical contact (a handshake at most) but they revert to speaking in English whenever I am in the room. I was taken on a tour of one of the plants and afterwards was taken back to the manager's office, where he and my colleague were talking in German on the phone with someone. I was particularly touched that they changed to English after the phone call so that I could understand, even though I was not involved in the conversation.
My colleagues are a very interesting bunch of people. One speaks some Mandarin; he went to the Chinese restaurant under duress because he knows German Chinese food is no good. Another is married to an Indonesian lady. He speaks to his children in Bahasa Indonesian (to which the younger ones respond in German - isn't it good to see that kids around the world with second languages at home are all the same), she speaks to them in German and his mother-in-law speaks to him in Dutch (because she grew up in an Indonesia where Dutch was the national language), to which he responds in Bahasa Indonesian.
For Easter, Taffy and I went to Salzburg. We flew BA to Munich (indulging in a huge amount of snacks in the BA lounge at Heathrow to get the full benefits of the last vestiges of my Qantas Gold status) and then caught a train to Salzburg. The plane was delayed for an hour, which mad us miss the train we wanted to catch by 5 mins. By the time we got to the hotel in Salzburg, Taffy just wanted to collapse on his bed, only to find that there was only one double bed! I have now been banned from booking any more hotels as the previous one I booked for us turned out to be a hellhole of a student accommodation block in Bath. : )
Salzburg is a very beautiful town. The windy streets are very charming with their narrow old buildings squashed together, the markets with lots of food to try and the horsedrawn carriages for tourists (with a poo-guy riding around behind them scooping up the droppings - what a job!).
The key To-Do for us was the Sound of Music Tour, which we did on Saturday afternoon. The tour guide was very dry and funny, telling us about all the mistakes in the movie (for example, at the end of the film they hike through the mountains to get to Switzerland. Only problem? They were hiking on the Untersberg, which is a mountain between Austria and Germany so they were going the wrong way! : ) We took lots of photos of us at the various film locations re-enacting the scenes (photos posted).
To balance things, we visited some more historical and classically cultural places on Sunday. Mozart's birthplace was a huge disappointment. They have employed some artist to decorate the interior in themes. The freakiest were 1. the closet/baby room where Mozart was born and first slept - it had a cradle in the middle of it with a doll made up to look like a baby and an old man (with a grey wig) to somehow represent Mozart being timeless and 2. the living room with 2D wooden figures (a man with a gun, a child and a dog) that moved when you entered the room, which were to represent the favourite pastime of the era - target practice indoors. How bizarre.
Mozart's Residence, where he lived as a teenager was much better. There were more artifacts and explanations of key people and events in Mozart's life.
Other weird places we visited were: the Salzburg Museum, which had a strange, eclectic mix of collections to do with Salzburg (we did it in 20 mins including a toilet break), the Residenz, home of the prince archbishops of old, which had a small art gallery with classical paintings as well as modern (including a square of red wax) (done in 15 mins), the Hohensalzburg Fortress, also a home for the prince archbishops, also with a very poor setup for tourists (~45 mins), the Mönchsberg Museum of Modern Art (20 mins plus afternoon tea at their restaurant overlooking the town) and the Festival Halls, of which the old one (the one featured in the Sound of Music where they sing So Long, Farewell and Edelweiss at the competition) was closed. The girl doing the tour of the Festival Halls did it both in German and in English. However, as a non-German speaker, it seemed like she was doing a translation rather like the Miss Universe interpreters, that is, speak for ages in German and then say a couple of lines in English.
All in all, a lovely, if at times bizarre, visit to a beautiful part of the world.

Tower of London

All finished on the Gueugnon project - no more white cows, saucisson, driving lessons and French countryside. Very interesting experience and has made me realise how much I like training people on Six Sigma (how nerdy!).
Managed to chat to many people this week including Michael & Rachel, Lye Seng, Steve & Sandra, Fiona, Fiona, Vicki, Jacqui, Eppie & Jean and Koufu & Ye Leong. It's great to find out how everyone else is going.
I visited the Tower of London this weekend. It is the last place in London that I had been meaning to visit and hadn't yet done. The English Crown Jewels are very impressive but the exhibition is not done as well as the Scottish one. There is very little information on the designs & history of each piece. The Yeoman Warder tour was very entertaining. I think they get chosen as much for their personalities as for their service in the armed forces. The site of the Scaffold (the private execution place for the royals and other important people) is quite strange - there is a sculpture there with a glass pillow/cushion in memory of the people who had their heads hacked off (including Anne Boleyn and Katherine Howard). There was a hands-on display in the White Tower where you could feel some of the types of weapons they used to use. There was one display where you could draw a bow and depending on how hard you pulled back, it would tell you if you hit the enemy. I watched several boys pull as hard as they could and they all overshot the target. So, when I had a go, I pulled it to the middle and got to 'You're a Natural', just short of the target. Brains over brawn every time. ; )
On a side note, this is the first year in memory that I have missed the Oscars. What is more, I didn't even find out the results until just recently, not that I have seen any of the films (except such high brow winners as Ratatouille and Bourne Ultimatum, both of which I loved). Not sure that I missed a lot, what happy films 'No Country for Old Men' and 'There Will Be Blood' sound like, but I did miss bitching about how beautiful people can make themselves so ugly in prime time.
I anticipate a very large entry next time...Stay tuned.

Paintball and Driving

I went paintballing for the first time a couple of weeks ago. We went into the hills near Autun (a town in the middle of Burgundy). I was hit only 4 times as I hung back, snipered off the opposition and then ran for the flags. I got my team the flag twice. Also got 3 bruises (one of which is still there). I can see why this sort of game appeals to guys so much. They all went crazy, wriggling through the undergrowth, firing randomly, throwing themselves into trenches. A couple did kamikaze runs because they couldn't be bothered waiting around.
A comment about mealtimes. For a person who loves to eat, mealtimes have been a time that I both look forward to and dread. Look forward to because the food is fantastic with all manner of beef, lamb, chicken, duck and fish dishes, cheese platters and yummy desserts (I even enjoy the salads!). I dread them because people tend to lapse into French for the majority of the time and I don't know what anyone is saying. They tell me I should say 'speak in English' but this is difficult to do when people are in a full blown, heated conversation. Plus their English is not that good so it is a struggle for most of them to participate.
I have become a translator of Arabic to French, neither of which I understand much at all. One of the guys paid huge amounts of money to an official translator to translate his birth certificate etc from Arabic to French and got such a crappy file in return that he had to check the whole thing over and do it again himself. As I was watching him, I noticed an inconsistency in the information (a whole line missing), hence my new job as a translator from Arabic to French!
After numerous promises to teach me to drive a manual car (yes, I mean you Jean, Kuhn, Shannon, Rosey etc.!), I had to go all the way to the other side of the world (and the other side of the road) for someone to make good on his promise. I had 2 lessons last week in the car park of a sports stadium and on the country roads of Burgundy. I was pooh-poohed for the speed I was driving at (60-80km/hr as opposed to 100-130km/hr as the boys usually do) and not knowing where the high beam was (get confused because the indicators and wipers are on the opposite side in European cars). After a couple of hair-raising instances, we finally got back to the hotel only to have one of the other guys catch up to us. Knowing it was me driving, he zoomed past us as I was going into park, almost sideswiping us, causing me to slam on the brakes and stall the car. Stupid idiot.

Gueugnon

I spent the last week on a project in France. In Gueugnon, in fact. If you look it up on the map, you will see that it is in the middle of nowhere in the east of France. It is a rural area famous for its beef. The nearest cities are Lyon, Dijon and Geneva. It took me 7 hours to get there on Monday and 7 hours to get back on Friday. I took the Eurostar for the first time, which is quite a pleasant way to travel. Luckily I had my London-based French colleague with me or getting from Gare du Nord to Gare de Lyon in peak hour would have been crazy. We then took a TGV train and then a car.
The Language
Not being a French speaker was a decided frustration factor. Most people do not have good English. The people on the shop floor do not have any English at all (though the chef in the canteen told me what the choices were each day in English - pork, lamb, beef etc.) Even some of my colleagues are no good. However, I was proud to finish the week providing some training on Statistical Process Control (in English) using a presentation that had previously been created in French with some tweaking on my part in English. Babelfish is my friend (most of the time).
One of my colleagues speaks Mandarin. This proved to be very confusing for me as he would put in some Chinese phrases in the middle of speaking French or English. He worked in Shanghai for 3 years, met his wife and brought her back to France with him. He is very rusty, though, so he is taking Chinese lessons. I would say that he is no better than I am, which is to say, pretty crap.
The Hotel
We stayed in a chateau. It is a massive mansion with 3 storeys plus a basement, which has additional rooms. I stayed in a large room on the top floor with wooden shutters on the windows. The bathroom was down the hall and had a room with just a sink (I think it used to be a bedroom) and then a bath and toilet hidden in a little room behind this. The bath was the typical European bath with the handheld shower attachment that is impossible to use to wash your hair without being alternately very cold and then splashing water everywhere.
Breakfast and dinner was in the stables, where they still have the racks for the hay and the walls between the stalls. Dinner was incredibly late, 8.30-9pm each evening and 3 courses (entree, main, cheese/dessert or both). However, I did not feel overly full afterwards and was crawl into bed soon afterwards and fall asleep easily (which I wasn't able to do on the previous project).
The People
All of the French people I have met (in the last week and otherwise) have been lovely. I don't understand why people always say that they are arrogant and rude. Quite the contrary. A little too much so. I have not been kissed so much and shaken hands with so many people in such a short space of time. Every morning with colleagues and people they work closely with, everytime you pass someone in the corridor, kisses or handshakes are exchanged. Perhaps it is my Australian and/or Chinese background showing through but this is altogether too much physical contact.
My colleagues are an ethnically varied bunch of people with a Moroccan-French, a Lebanese-French, a 1/2 Ukrainian-French, a French with Chinese wife, the usual European mixes and a Brit, who just joined the team this week. They all drive incredibly fast (100-130 km/hr on country roads in the middle of the night) and enjoy their food and wine (a little too much).
Another thing I have noticed about the French is that they are probably the opposite of the Chinese as far as business culture is concerned. The Chinese defer all decisions and opinions to the most senior person in the room. The French want everyone to have an equal say and can't decide anything. Neither model is good.
I caught up with my cousin Michelle on the weekend. She is studying international relations at LSE. Finding it tough work but enjoying it a lot. Hopefully we will be able to catch up a few more times before she goes home.
On another note, I have been on fire at badminton in the last few weeks. Lye Seng, you had better be on your toes! : )

Amsterdam

While Taffy and his cousins were off bribing officials in Budapest last weekend, I went to Amsterdam. Before you get all excited, like the people I was working with, no, I didn't get high. (Vicki, I can almost hear your disappointment.)
I had decided that I was going to be a British/American tourist and not bother to learn any local phrases at all. This was fine as the people of Amsterdam all speak perfect English. Their transport system is easy to use and their ticket machines and announcements all have English components.
First stop on Saturday morning was the Flower Market. Ma would like it there. The stalls have row upon row of bulbs and seeds of all sorts of flowers. They also had some bunches of flowers, wooden flowers and quite a lot of cactii (including aloe vera plants! I didn't buy one though. Transportability.)
Next stop was the Rijksmuseum. It contrasts greatly with the Van Gogh museum in that it is housed in a beautiful old building whereas the Van Gogh museum is a hideous concrete structure.
The Rijksmuseum holds a lot of art from the Golden Age, when the Dutch were a force in the world and the East and West India Companies dominated trade. There were a lot of pieces that were either from Asia or had been heavily influenced by Asian work - intricately carved Indonesian woodwork and Chinese porcelain.
I was surprised by the dullness of The Nightwatch. I don't know what I was expecting but it isn't a piece that stands out as a great masterpiece. I think I like some of Rembrandt's other pieces better.
I didn't realise that Van Gogh only painted for 10 years (with 800+ paintings and >1000 drawings during that time) and that he died at 36. From his self portraits, I always thought he was older. The museum is organised into his various periods so that you can walk from his dark years through to the bright colours (especially yellow) in the last few years. They also had a lot of his drawings that were really great (some done on backs of menus and scraps of paper).
The weather held out for me for the whole weekend and I was able to wander along the canals to look at the houses, the houseboats and the abundance of art galleries.
I stopped in at one of the diamond houses and viewed some diamonds. The lady showed me a few diamonds of various grades of colour, which, when you put in a setting, you can't tell which is which. Only when you put them on white paper can you see that one is quite yellow and the others are blue-white. She also showed me a green diamond, which I was tempted to buy. Thought about it overnight and decided against it.
I found out this week that my cousin is in London studying for a Masters. She has been here since September and has only just contacted me 5 months later. What the...?!
This week was my last week on the project in Dewsbury. The EHS team gave me a present to remember them by: a Chuck-a-duck (a gun that shoots little ducks out - similar to the Chicken Shooter that we had been playing with) and a Monster notebook (I had been using Monster post-it notes instead of normal rectangular ones during our process mapping). Very nice. Even the wrapping paper had Monsters on it. I am off to France next week to the middle of nowhere.
Some photos of Amsterdam in the usual place.

A Bit Too Much Culture

I went to my first ballet a couple of weeks ago. I decided to stick with something classical and wanted to see The Nutcracker as that is my favourite but it was sold out so I went with Swan Lake.
It started very slowly with quite a bit of dancing from the corps, a little from Prince Siegfried and almost none from Odette. After the first intermission it got more exciting but as the swans started to come out, a strange image popped into my head - I started to think about the hippos dancing from Fantasia. Then, as things went on, I started to think about the Trocadero ballet troupe - the company of classically trained male dancers who formed because there are so few roles available to men in ballet. So, in the middle of a serious performance, I started to get the giggles (nothing unusual about that!). It finished on a high and I was quite happy with my first foray into the ballet. One thing I did find distracting was the noise of their shoes against the wooden stage. When the music is quiet, the 'clock-clock' of the shoes is very noticeable.
Last weekend, David asked us to go to a performance by the London Philharmonic. It was sold out when we got there with a big queue waiting for returns so we headed towards Leicester Square to see if there were tickets available for a show. On the way, we passed St-Martin-in-the-Fields, where there was an ad for Mozart's Requiem on that night. We went in to have a look and there were tickets for £22 (restricted view), £18 (restricted view) and £6 (no view). Well, as it was an orchestra and a choir, I figured there was precious little to see anyway so I made the decision on behalf of the boys to get the £6 tickets. St-Martin-in-the-Fields is a beautiful church and it has just been refurbished (the outside is still hidden behind scaffolding). Its acoustics are magnificent. I have not heard such tremendous acoustics before. As with Swan Lake, my pop culture showed through. In the middle, I started thinking about the film Amadeus. :-) As to the view, I was ok with only being able to see the people in the opposite balcony but the boys were very uncomfortable that they couldn't see the performers.
This weekend I went to another PLCOCA afternoon tea, this time in Norbury (south south west London). I missed a train, got lost, missed another train and 2 hours later finally made it there. The same ladies were in attendance as last time. It is very interesting to spend an afternoon with a bunch of women who are on average 2 1/2 times your age. They provide such insights into life.

Some clips to enjoy:

Fantasia clips
Hippos dance:
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=kujWSIFoe94
Mushroom dance (my favourites from the film - love their bottoms wiggling!):
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=ddTBeNv9PwQ

Les Ballets du Trocadero clips:
Swan Lake Pas de Quatre - Small Swans:
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=MfKdC6SYcnM
The Dying Swan - Saint Saens:
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=YRp5nE0Hlsc

New Year's, Edinburgh & Stirling

I arrived back in London on New Year's Eve and had the pleasure of watching some fireworks from the comfort of my living room. Apart from all the fireworks across the river, there were a couple of guys letting off rockets right beneath my window. I've never seen fireworks that close. After they were finished with about 8 individual rockets, they brought out a heavy box and looked for somewhere to put it. They stuck it next to the embankment wall and lit it. It shot out rocket after rocket, alternating between coloured fireworks and gold ones that had secondary starbursts. Cool!
On the 2nd, I headed up to Scotland to visit Edinburgh and Stirling. The primary purpose of the trip was to see Stirling Castle, the castle that my house at school was named after. I didn't realise that it had such an important position in Scottish history. James VI of Scotland (James I of England) was crowned at the Church of Holyrood down the road from the castle and spent a lot of time at Stirling, as did his mother, Mary, Queen of Scots and various other Scottish kings. The castle has not been fully restored so the palace is just a large stone house with no ceilings (which have all rotted away), no flooring or wall hangings. There are plans to return some of the remaining Stirling Heads to the ceilings of the palace and also put up tapestries and furnishings as per Mary and James's time.
The Wallace Monument is also in Stirling and has seen the dreaded hand of Hollywood. There is a sculpture at the base of hill, which looks remarkably like Mel Gibson. Very disappointing.
It was very cold up in Scotland, snowing and windy, particularly on the day I went up to Stirling. I asked a stupid question about precipitation as there were small white balls that fell straight down from the sky. These alternated with the snow, which was blown sideways by the wind. Turns out that it was hail, much smaller and whiter than the stuff at home.
Edinburgh Castle was in much better condition than Stirling. There was a big exhibit on the Scottish Crown Jewels, which, I was surprised to learn, have a longer history than the English Crown Jewels as they were hidden during the revolution and were not destroyed. The Stone of Destiny is quite the most boring piece of stone I have ever come across. After learning about its history, you would think that there might be something special about it but no, it is just a rectangular piece of rock. The crown, sceptre and sword, on the other hand, were very nice relics. The Scottish War Memorial in the castle was also done very well, situated in the chapel with light coming in through the stained glass windows.
The Royal Mile has a lot of tourist shops and not much else. It finishes with the Palace of Holyroodhouse, the Queen's official residence when she is in town. The Scottish Parliament building is quite a contrast to all the old architecture. Despite this, it does seem to fit.
Carlton Hill gives good views of the city, though the walk up and down it was very slippery from the ice and snow. I held onto the railing the whole way.
The National Gallery of Scotland is significantly smaller than the one in London but still has a good international, as well as Scottish, collection. I think it is the first time I have seen paintings of people in tartans.
Taffy and I are off to the ballet this weekend. It will be the first ballet for both of us so I chose a classical version of a traditional one - Swan Lake. Looking forward to it!

Turkey - the experience

The Tour Group
The tour group was a great bunch of people. Everyone was aged between 25 and 40, with only a couple of people over 35. Most were Aussies and Kiwis working in London. There were also a couple from South Africa (also working in London), a handful of Brits, a Malaysian working in London and a couple of Canadians working in Hong Kong. I had read on the Net that Fez Travel groups were more about seeing the sights and less about the drinking than groups like Contiki and this was true. The people were great fun but were almost always on time for everything and only drank heavily on the last night.
I had decided to take the gamble, not pay for a single supplement and see who I was paired with. I was therefore pleasantly surprised to find that the other 2 girls who were travelling alone had paid for the single supplement and so I got a single room for free. Bonus!
One of the boys had a terrible roommate, who washed his clothes every night and hung them around the room to dry, fell sleep almost immediately after going to bed and snored heavily. One night he opened the balcony door without telling his roommate, who froze all night. What a nightmare!
The only sour note of the tour was the way that it ended. We all filled out feedback forms and gave our tips to the guide and drivers on the way back to Istanbul. Needless to say, we were quite complementary. However, when we got to Istanbul, the guide disappeared and the hotel was lousy. Apparently, some of the group bumped into members of another tour by the same company and they had the same experience. They don't seem to realise how detrimental a poor ending to a tour and poor word of mouth are to their business. I would have happily recommended the tour to others before the last 24 hours but am now not sure.
Health
I was mostly over a cold at the beginning of the trip and had fairly good health for the first 5 days of the trip. After the Turkish Bath, I was quite dehydrated, stupidly didn't drink enough water, couldn't dry my hair and ended the day with a headache and feeling a cold coming on. Got progressively worse on the next day and then that night had diarrhea. Next morning, had some tea for breakfast and then promptly threw up. I ended the tour with a body shaking cough. Despite the illness, the trip was still really good.
Activities
During the Turkish Bath, they scrub you with a salt scrubber. It is amazing how much skin they rub off! Rolls and rolls of it! Skin feels so smooth afterwards. : )
There was the option of taking a hot air balloon ride in Capadoccia. Not being a scenery person (I am the only person I know who preferred the North Island to the South Island of New Zealand - I prefer it because of the history), not liking early starts to days, not liking the price and not liking the cold much, I had decided to give it a miss. Great decision! That was the morning I had the diarrhea and vomiting and when the people came back, they told of how their toes were frozen and some of their cameras were so cold that they didn't work. Not my idea of fun. We were taken to some lookouts later in the day and that was enough scenery for me.
On the last night, we went to a Turkish Folk Night. They did dances from the various regions of Turkey working their way up from the south to the north. They had Whirling Dervishes (not real ones), dances that progressively got closer and closer to Russian style dancing and belly dancers. This is the first time I have seen a great belly dancer who is skinny. She was fantastic. She was able to move each part of her body independently from every other part - her chest, upper abdomen, lower abdomen, hips & legs all moved separately without the sword on her head moving one bit. Cool!
The Turkish People
The Turkish people are, on the whole, incredibly friendly. There are a few exceptions to this. If you ever need a defence line for a rugby team, look no further than old Turkish women. They have the heft and the determination to stop anybody. When I was at the holy relics museum, I was crushed against the Mohammed's beard and tooth exhibit by some very aggressive old women who were not afraid to use their elbows. I got a much better view of the beard and tooth than I ever wanted to along with a couple of bruises. Old Turkish women are also incapable of queuing. They are as bad if not worse than Chinese people (and that's saying something!) They again use their elbows to push their way through and then are ready, planted firmly to fend you off.
Turkish people are also very secular. For a country that is 98% Muslim, there are a remarkable number of people who smoke and drink. My feeling on this is that they adhere to the 5 pillars of Islam and then everything else is just a guideline. The result is a very interesting East meets West country.

Turkey - the sights

Istanbul
We started the tour with a walking tour of the old part of Istanbul (European side). First up was Hippodrome Square, which used to be a Hippodrome and has since been converted to a square. There is an obelisk there that was stolen from the temple of Amun in Karnak. It was sawn to 2/3 its original length for easier transportation! I thought it was just the Brits who did stuff like this! Outrageous!
Next up was the Blue Mosque, which was beautiful. It has 6 minarets, which was what the mosque in Mecca had, so to keep the one in Mecca better, they persuaded them to put an extra one there. The inside was spectacular, with blue tiles being the dominant feature. There was the sultan's section and the screens to section off the women from the men.
Hagia Sofia (aka Aya Sofia) was originally built as a Christian church and then converted to a mosque before its final transformation into a museum. When it was converted to a mosque, the Christian mosaics were just plastered over and so were preserved.
We also visited the Byzantine Cistern, water storage facility for Istanbul in the Byzantine period. They used columns from around the city and near the back, ran out of columns of the same height. So, they found a couple of Medusa head carvings and stuck them upside down under shorter columns.
Topkapi Palace, ancient home of the Sultans, is now a museum. It contains one of the largest diamonds in the world (5th, I think), an 86 carat diamond called the Spoon diamond because it was found in a rubbish heap and sold for 3 spoons. There is also a Holy Relic museum, which claims to have amongst other things: Mohammed's sword, Abraham's turban, Moses' rod, John the Baptist's arm (!), Mohammed's beard and tooth. Urgh! All I can say is that the turban and rod look in remarkably good condition for things that are supposed to be thousands of years old.
Gallipoli
After a looong bus ride the next day, we arrived at Gallipoli. We were shown Brighton Beach (the beach the Anzacs were supposed to land on - with a gentle slope up from the beach) and Anzac Cove, the beach they actually landed on with the steep hill rising straight from the beach. There were several very moving memorials to the soldiers, in particular a quote from Ataturk, including: 'You, the mothers, who sent their sons from far away countries, wipe away your tears; your sons are now lying in our bosom and are in peace. After having lost their lives on this land they have become our sons as well.' We visited Lone Pine Memorial, where the pine tree is actually a seedling from the original lone pine. It was brought over to Turkey from Australia after the original died in a fire. There was also a memorial to the 57th Regiment of the Turkish army. This regiment was completely wiped out in the defence of the peninsula. Ataturk was actually the commander of the depleted forces at Gallipoli and he sent the men to defend Anzac Cove knowing that he was sending them to their deaths. What a terrible decision to have to make. The graves had each soldier's name and age and most on both sides were between 18 and 22. Such a waste.
Troy
There are 9 Troys built one on top of each other. The famous Troy is Troy VI. The coolest thing about the excavation was the discovery of the 'secret gate' of Troy VI. As our guide says, you would have to be stupid not to find the secret gate. However, that was not its secret. The gate was built such that there was a second wall on the outside which curved around to the gate. This prevented invading armies from using battering rams to charge the gate as there was not enough room to get the battering rams around the curve. Even to the untrained eye it was quite obvious the differences between Troy I to Troy VI to Troy IX. The advances in stonework is quite amazing.
Pergamon
Pergamon is situated at the top of a hill, which, two thousand years ago was next to the sea. Since then, the rivers have brought aluvial earth down past the hill and it is now 5km from the sea. The Acropolis has been reconstructed from the ruins. Archeologists have cemented the pieces together to show what it looked like. They have done this with quite a few of the ruins, including the famous library facade at Ephesus. I feel a little cheated that these are all reconstructed pieces and not still standing from two to three thousand years ago. There were great archives and libraries at Pergamon and Ephesus but these were taken to Alexandria at the request of Cleopatra and then were lost in the fire.
Ephesus
Ephesus is one of the great old cities with significant amounts of ruins still there. It was once a thriving metropolis of ~250,000 people. There are the remains of a public toilet, what is thought to be a brothel, shops, houses and the 3 most famous parts of the city: Hadrian's temple, the library facade (truly spectacular) and the theatre, which could hold 20,000 people. It was visited by Cleopatra and Marc Antony shortly after their marriage.
Pamukkale
The calcium terraces of Pamukkale are incredible. As one tour member asked stupidly after the guide had just explained the origins of the phenomenon, 'Oh, is that snow?' It is an amazing view from afar, a great white expanse across the hills. I am still shocked that you are allowed to walk on a bit of it (shocked but I still did it). You have to go barefoot. It is very cold and very hard. Just above the terraces are the ruins of yet another city, Hierapolis, with yet another theatre. I was just about ruined out by this time. There are only so many ruins you can see in one hit without them all blurring into each other.
Capadoccia
People carved entire towns into the rock in the Capadoccia region. Many early Christians lived in the area and when they were persecuted, they ran to hide in their underground cities, which have very small tunnels leading to large rooms with heavy, round stones that can be rolled into position over the doorways. In their normal towns they built churches, kitchens and dining halls for everyday use. The rock formations are very unusual and very different from the landscape of the rest of western Turkey.
Ankara
We stopped in Ankara for lunch on the way back to Istanbul and several of us tried Maccas and KFC at the shopping centre. 4 YTL (1 YTL ~ A$1) for a cheeseburger and small fries! What a rip-off!
A very enjoyable trip to a very exotic country.
Photos in the usual place.