From Canon to Canberra to The Essence

As of March 24th, this blog has come to an end.

Please go to my new blog called "David Beckett and The Essence" at www.david-beckett.blogspot.com

If you would like to have a bound book of the blog entries from my world trip, please email me at david.beckett@TheEssenceOnline.com.

When I started this site in November 2008, I chose the address “Canon To Canberra”.

This was because I wanted to take the opportunity - presented by the move of my job to London - of doing something completely different. I quickly decided I would go to Australia, a plan which over the last 5 months turned into an amazing Round-The-World trip.

This blog's journey is now complete. A new blog has been set up to catalogue the beginning of my new venture, a start-up publishing company called DJB Pubs. On 10th October 2010 (10.10.10), the first book will be launched, called “Amsterdam... The Essence.”

While travelling, Internet was hard to come by. In South Amearica, it was hard to get a fast connection, while in Tahiti, Australia and New Zealand, the cost was incredible (anything from 1 -12 Euros per hour!). This pushed me to write and post the blog pieces very quickly, with little editing. Some of the postings are probably quite rough, but that is the nature of a blog, isn't it? I think of it like a live concert, a single go at getting the best bits down but there will certainly be a few glitches along the way.

So now it's time to move on to the next stage and my new publishing company is DJB Pubs BV. The first book will be titled “Amsterdam... The Essence” and will be the first in a series of travel books under the brand “The Essence”. It's a development of my early plans to write a novel about Amsterdam, and I will explain more about this in the new blog.

The unique part about “Amsterdam... The Essence” is that YOU can be part of the development of the book. You will have the opportunity to give your opinion on many things along the way – Do you like the design of the book? Is there content you would like to see? Would you suggest something special, based on what you know about Amsterdam? Would you be willing to be interviewed and have your opinions published on my website? Do you have a great photograph you would like to offer for inclusion in the book or for the website?

All of this and much more will become apparent as “The Essence” brand builds up. A website, www.TheEssenceOnline.com, will be launched on April 19th.

In the meantime, you can follow The Essence on my new blog, www.david-beckett.blogspot.com. You can also become a Fan of the Facebook page, The Essence.

Thanks so much for reading this blog, and please do put my new one in your favourites.

The End Of The Journey

In July 2009, Nicki and I sat in Windsor Great Park, eating scones and drinking tea, and talked for the first time about going travelling together, just weeks after we had met. 9 months on and that talk has resulted in so much. At the moment this blog appears, we will touch down in Heathrow at the end of a World Trip, made up like this.

We travelled 78000 Km in 154 days, covering 14 countries in 4 continents, with 19 flights.
This included our trip to Greece to enjoy my Dad's 70th Birthday party in Corfu – so the country list is Holland, UK, Greece, USA, Peru, Argentina, Uruguay, Chile, Easter Island, Tahiti, New Zealand, Australia, Hong Kong and Thailand.

My favourite city was probably Buenos Aires – a buzzing place with so many facets to it, new and old, and a sense that as a tourist, you could feel the way the people live. We both loved New Zealand, but neither of us really want to pick a favourite country – everything has been great in its own way.

We stayed in 61 different accommodations.
Highlights include; a hostel in Peru where the ceiling fell down on us; a hotel in Tahiti where it was so expensive we couldn't afford breakfast; excellent self-catering units in New Zealand and Australia where Nicki cooked fantastic meals and I made us beans on toast; a tent on the Inca trail which filled with the smell of my feet (industrial strength after 12 hours hiking and no shower possible...); generous friends giving us a homely place to rest; the eco-resort on Fraser Island; and a boiling hot, screamingly noisy 6 nights in a hostel in Buenos Aires.

My favourite accommodation was the charmingly simple and cheap (16 Euros per night) place in Bangkok – unexpectedly lovely, run by sweet, gentle people.

We ran 49 times...
Both of us run regularly at home, and we did our best to keep this up. There were periods where it was just not possible – like in Peru, where the altitude made it too difficult. Or in Australia, where it was so incredibly hot at 8am that I had hyper-ventilation after losing litres of water in a 30-minute run.

Our favourite run was in Gorda Springs, a 7am start with the sun coming up over the Pacific Coastal Highway. It started a memorable day – after our run, we sat and ate our breakfast on a cliff looking over the ocean, saw huge seals on the beach, raced down the coast to the Stones and Michael Jackson, and finished the day among the Human Zoo that is Venice Beach near LA at sunset. Wonderful.

...walked 19 times...
These walks were as long as a 7 hour, 23km burn through the Abel Tasman country park in New Zealand; or a 6 hour tramp to the volcano crater on Easter Island; or a similar length hike up a beautiful mountain in Maine when the leaves were still an amazing colour. They were also as short as a boiling 35 degrees 1 hour meltdown up the lookout in Port Stephens, AUS; and a 1 hour walk up the hill in Cuzco, only to find ourselves lost as the rain poured down.

The most memorable was in Taupo, NZ – we started with the small cultural museum and along the way saw bungee jumping, Zorbing in the park, hot springs by the river and a dramatic waterfall at the end. The variety of scenery and the way the locals enjoyed it to the full totally helped us fall in love with New Zealand.

...and trekked 4 days along the Inca Trail.
It was hard! The first day was a gentle introduction, the second a rude awakening. The third was just hard work as the rain was relentless. And the fourth day was a gift, a repayment for what we put in as we came down to the site of Machu Picchu in the sunshine and saw it in every possible bit of its glory.

That third day afforded us one of the moments of the trip. We'd stopped keeping up with the other walkers in our group, tired and wet and wanting each other's company and nobody else's. Suddenly, a window of sunshine opened up between the clouds above and the mist below. We sat on an Inca stone step together and ate a mini-picnic of cereal bars and biscuits shaped like animals, bought from the old ladies along the way. It was a little blessing to be able to see the mountains after a day and a half of solid rain.

There were 19 boat trips.
These varied from an overnight cruise on Milford Sound in NZ, to a 30 minute tempestuous ferry journey from Sydney to Manly. One time it was a one-hour ferry journey from Buenos Aires to Colonia in Uruguay. Another time, it was a half day dolphin watching tour in the Bay of Islands, a trip up the river to see crocodiles, or a 20 minute trip from Hong Kong island to Kowloon.

Perhaps the most impactful was a tour to the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island in New York. Seeing the sunset with the statue in the background is an image I will never forget.

And we hired 5 cars, 4 bicycles, 2 scooters, a buggy and a 4x4.
Our favourite car was Dumpy, the Nissan Sunny with bags of character and no power for driving up hills.

All along we marvelled at the wildlife.
A Possum on our porch; Lorikeets eating Nicki's orange cake; Koalas wisely perched in Eucalyptus above; Kangaroos hopping in the fields; Alpaca in Peru; stray dogs in every city; elephants in Thailand; crocodiles cooling my blood with fear;crabs and jellyfish on the beach; an Iguana on the doorstep.

But the best of all has to be the Kookaburra, a bird with a mohican haircut that makes a noise like a monkey.

And so to “the real world”.
Our lives move on to new phases, having had an amazing set of experiences together and the unique opportunity and gift of time to step back and think about what we really want in our lives. We both have plans for what to do next, and we'll move on purposefully with those plans.

But for now, I look at the pictures, read a few stories and think back to the card that started it all, and a phrase that has never been truer.

It certainly was a glorious ride.

Elephants by Scooter in Thailand

These days in Phuket have been very lazy. The temperature is so incredibly hot – around 37 degrees – that it's impossible to do anything energetic. Luckily it is incredibly cheap to rent a scooter, so we headed off around the coast on my birthday.

Riding in Thailand is a lottery. There are lots of scooters on the roads and the traffic rules seem to be, well, “loose” (and no wonder – when I showed my driving license to the company I rented from, they said “we don't need that”). The rule I stuck to (as taught by my Dad many years ago, and used in my work and personal life many times since) - “if in doubt, go with conviction”. Watching two young lads separate scooters, exchanging food while flying down a main road at 70km/h is something I will not forget easily. Neither is the feeling of the back wheel skidding underneath me after the slightest touch on the back brake, a couple of seconds after the realisation that the front brake was not really working.

I started the day in non-typical Thai fashion, having a coffee in a well-airco'd Starbucks and reading “The Time Traveler's Wife” - here was the first of our “Ladyboy” meetings, as an incredibly effeminate and small breasted person with lipstick and a 10am shadow took my order. Meanwhile Nicki braved the sweltering shops populated with over-zealous salespeople – at one point she could feel the body warmth of one seller, who was following her so closely around the shop.

Then as we moved on, we realised we needed to buy petrol, and this is hilarious too. You can buy gasoline in unmarked litre jars on the side of the road. Or you can go to the more “sophisticated” stands where a petrol-filled glass canister has a piece of paper with ball-point pen markings down the side with numbers “10, 20, 30” and so on written by each mark. You pay your money – in this case 100 Baht (2GBP/2.25 Euros - they put the tube into your petrol tank, the level of the petrol reduces to the 100 mark and they stop pouring. Pricing? Yesterday I paid 100 Baht for a full tank – the day before 130 Baht for half a tank. In short, the price seems to be “whatever you can get away with”.

The same goes for shopping. Bartering is ludicrous and Nicki is getting really good at it - she has bought things as low as 80% less than the first offer made. But at times you just give up and think to yourself “what value do I put on this thing I am buying? Is it a fair price?” Maybe we could save a Euro or two here and there, but probably the few Euros we could save with a bit of extra bargaining mean more to the locals than they do to us.

The scooter ride took us to the Elephant places, something Nicki had been really keen to see. Along the side of the road, there were half a dozen places where you could feed elephants or even have a ride on them. They are amazing and quite scarey creatures, being so huge and powerful. Yet they very gently plucked the pineapple from Nicki's hand with the end of their snouts (though I was glad one ele stuck her snout to the side when having a good snort – that was a lot of elephant snot!).

In one place we found a 1-month old baby. Amazingly, the mother seemed quite OK for us to pet the little thing. It was a lovely thing to be able to interact with these unusual, ancient beasts.

It also reminded me of a proverb I once heard - “Beware of Elephant Thinking”. Apparently, when very young they are chained to pole in the ground to prevent them from getting away. While still very small, the elephant stops trying to pull the chain and pole out of the ground, knowing that it's not possible after numerous attempts. As they get older, of course they are strong enough to break the chain but they don't even try because the memory of failure is so strong.

The day moved on to a café with an amazing view across the bay. But customer service, surprisingly, has been very patchy here. I stood waiting to pay and counted 8 people hanging around not doing much – I was almost embarrassed to interrupt our waiter from playing with his Nintendo DS Lite. The same went for the waiters in our evening restaurant, where they seemed to have perfected the art of avoiding the customer's eyes in case they might order something...

But back to the positives! This part of the trip has been a welcome breather to review the holiday and we have been lucky to have sun, sea, good cheap food and a few little surprises along the way here in Phuket. Luckily, the BA strike won't have any effect on our Qantas flight and we land in Heathrow early on Friday morning.

So just one more World Trip blog posting to come...

Footnote
In case you have heard about the protests in Bangkok, we are far away from them. But the cause of the protests is baffling to me and shows how politics in poorer countries seems to work.

The protesters are claiming that the current government and prime minister came into power by foul means (it was a military coup - then again, it was supported by mass demos then too) and should dissolve the government. To me, it is virtually impossible to govern a country like Thailand, with little infrastructure for gaining taxes, salaries at an incredibly low level and with very limited resources. How to please the public within one term of government? Impossible. So it's not a surprise that protesters are on the streets.

But who is the person they support? Thaksin, a previous Prime Minister. He was recently adjudged by the High Courts to have embezzled huge sums of money ($2.3BN) for himself and his family while in power, plus there are rumours that he bribed voters to support him – a very shady character indeed. And yet, 1000's of people mad their voices heard on his behalf. The message seems to be – “we prefer a brutal embezzler to the current mess of government”. It's so hard to see what the future holds for such a country and its lovely people.

Lazing in Phuket

After our experiences in Bangkok, we moved on to Phuket island and an area called Karon Beach where we've been finishing off the trip in a typical tourist beach resort.

It's a good breather to look back on the trip and look forward to the next phase of going back into “real life”. In the meantime, we sit on the beach or by the pool, eat hot Thai food and marvel at the fact that neither of us have had a bad stomach on the whole trip – until now, as I am writing this after the 4th visit to the toilet before 10am... Still, 5 months of pretty sound stomachs considering all the changes of diet we've had has been pretty good going.

Our beach is jammed with umbrellas and full every day mainly with Russians and Finns, plus Swedes, Brits and Dutch. Beachsellers swarm over the place, but they have really touched us in the way they work. They are very non-aggressive and will only come to you if they catch your eye – a polite no and they move on (unlike the shopsellers who pounce and hold on to you like rotweilers). They even smile at you as they go on their way.

When we bought an ice cream from one, we realised they keep them cold with mounds of heavy ice in the cool box. When we and a couple of others around us paid, he gave us the ice cream and took the wrapper off as he hands it over. Why? Because they know the average tourist can't be bothered to take the rubbish with them, and they will get in trouble, not us. Embarrassing. As he left, he had the courtesy to give us a smiley “goodbye” and went off to try to sell for the rest of the day – in 35 degree heat, probably for commission worth a tiny fraction of what he sold.

It's hard not to think about the gap in life between us lazy tourists – being served on the beach for next to no money – and those doing the selling, weighed down with stuff and trying to earn a few pence. The possibilities of luxury for them are so incredibly tiny. Meanwhile, we go back to societies where possibilities are relatively endless and their idea of luxury is a basic standard for us. Watching the arrogance of one Russian woman wave away the guy who collects the 2 Euros price for the umbrella and beach-chair reminded how little most people care or are aware of their good fortune.

Yesterday we went on a “free” trip to the Phi-Phi islands. It was a day of heat, sweat and more heat and sweat! Despite two lovely boat trip for a couple of hours each way, the rest was a combination of sitting in sweltering mini-buses through the hair-raising streets of Phuket, waiting to get on or off boats in airless, diesel-fumed areas among crowds of 100's, or sitting and melting on the boat waiting for it to get going and bring some breeze. It was a forgettable experience - and I even bought a hat to keep the sun off me, funny though it made me look...

Now we have just 5 full days here, then we fly back to Bangkok on Thursday lunchtime and fly back to Heathrow a few hours later, just after midnight on Friday. Tomorrow I'll take my life into my hands and rent a scooter (it's just 4 GBP/5 Euros per day!) and brave the utter madness of the traffic here. The day after – my birthday – we will rent a Jeep and see the island a bit more widely.

One Night in Bangkok

Every time we mentioned to anybody that we would go to Bangkok, they said “don't bother, leave as quickly as possible, nothing to see.” But we found the whole experience of being there fascinating.

The biggest surprise is that it's really modern. Thailand is a poor country but the capital is a well-kept, beautiful city. As we drove from the well-equipped airport, the highway took us past lovely monuments by the roadside. As you go deeper into the city, you see markets and rougher areas, but in better shape than we had seen in Lima and Buenos Aires. Our hostel was run by the gentlest people I have ever come across, and for 16 GBP we had a clean, airco'd room with a great bathroom (and three shower attachments, for some reason), firm bed and a free breakfast of fruit, cereal, eggs and toast.

Prices are incredibly low. You can buy s skewer of meat by the roadside for 20 pence/25 Euro cents, a bowl of Thai curry and rice for less than 2GBP/2.50 Euros, and the 40 minute taxi ride from the airport cost 8GBP/9Euros. In Amsterdam, the same journey would have cost around 8 times as much. Clothing and handicrafts are also incredibly cheap, with of course many fake brands. Nicki's fetish for Birkenstock sandals was fed by seeing a rack of them for 8 Euros, although when she tried them, the shape felt completely different to the real thing. The man at the stand looked down at her feet and said “you have originals. Sorry, These just lookey-likey.” Lovely.

The people are incredibly sweet and friendly, so even when you are getting ripped off as a tourist, you feel OK. Our personal rip-off started at the airport, where we were offered a 4-hour city tour for just 10 Euros, with a guide and a driver – apparently run by the Thailand government tourist board. This turned out to be hilarious, as we took a 45 visit to a temple and then a 3 hour tour around various Kashmir carpet, jewellery and clothing shops. From the moment we got in, our guide Nancy started selling their services to book us a hotel in Phuket.

Nancy did tell us a bit about the country too. They have some similarities with UK – 62 million people, they drive on the left and they have a monarchy. However, the level that the king's presence is in your face is something else. As you leave the airport, there is a gold-leaved arch over the road with a picture of the king and his birthday date. It was back in December so they keep the decorations for some time, and similar homage was paid all around the city, with golden images of the royals along the side of the streets and car stickers in back windows with “We love the King” written in large letters.

There is an amazing buzz about the city and there are a couple of main areas for the tourists – the shopping area (Khao san road) and the dodgy area (PatPhong). We started with shopping as the street was full of grizzled old hippies and young backpackers. Massage places – proper ones – offered half and hour for less than 3 Euros, and food stands, live music and street hawkers made it a great atmosphere.

But Bangkok is famous for its rough side too, and of course Nicki and I had to see it. I will try to put this as delicately as I can.

The taxi dropped us off in Patphong, and we wandered around the streets with various offers of “sexy show”. We finally followed one iffy-looking guy down a side-street and up some stairs, and sat in a dimly-lit bar in front of a stage as three girls immediately came and sat with us – then left in 30 seconds, leaving two half-drunk glasses on the table. A selection of girls appeared on stage and in the most matter-of-fact way possible, then proceeded to eject ping pong balls and smoke out of various orifices. One squatted down and wrote “I Love You” surrounded by a heart with a marker pen on sheet of paper. She wasn't holding the pen in her hand. It was an oddly impressive skill, but sexy it was not.

Then a bill was thrust under our faces – 80 quid! Without hesitation, both of us – inspired by Eric Cantona in “Looking for Eric” **(see below for reference) - said in stereo “NO!”. We'd drunk a beer each, and they wanted to charge us for the two cocktails, the girls talking to us, the show and our own drinks. Our negative vehemence paid off and we ended up paying 12 Euros for our two beers.

We scooted out and headed home soon after. One Night in Bangkok – all part of the experience.

**Eric Cantona has been one of my heroes for years. He won the English League in each of the 5 seasons that he completed, 4 with Manchester United. Yet he was a "flawed genius", who lost his temper for no apparent reason again and again on the football field, until the fateful night when he kung-fu kicked a racist abuse-hurling fan in 1995. He was banned for 8 months and yet came back, never lost his temper on the pitch again, won two more championships, and retired the exact right moment, at the age of 31. His transformation and his legendary status as a player was enigmatically wrapped up in a man who rarely spoke in English, so I have hardly ever heard him speak.

Imagine my joy when I heard about "Looking for Eric", a film by Ken Loach about a Manchester postman who finds his life running off the rails and starts smoking his son's pot. Cantona appears to him at these moments and gives him life-advice - its an utterly enthralling and tantalising insight into what Eric, my hero , was really like.

In one scene, he tells the postman that he has to stand up to his problems and say "Non". After some feeble attempts, Cantona shouts at him "Say it like you mean it! NON! NON! NON!" All through the trip, since we saw the film, Nicki and I have faced certain situations with a smiling "NON!" - but this time there was no smile and Eric inspired us to avoid a massive bill.

The trailer for the film has the fantastic line. "I am not a man. I am Cantoma." OUI!

Big Buddha - Hong Kong Day Two

Hong Kong is relentless.

It has all kinds of smells, loads of traffic and people. Shops and markets are constantly open. The light-blocking high rises are all around you. Food is on sale everywhere. People smoke like hell and work long hours.

And yet, it works incredibly well. 7 million people, 95% of whom are Chinese, go about their daily business in an incredibly small area thanks to an efficient infrastructure. The transport systems are a good case in point. The Metro system is clean, fast, runs regularly and is cheap, with a 20-minute ride costing 1.50 GBP (you can't go anywhere for that money in London).

We took the metro to Tung Chung, where the Ngong Ping cable car runs up to the Tan Tian Buddha and Po Lin monastery (it's nice to feel the sound of the enigmatic language in the mouth, although the street called Wan Kee gave us a few laughs...). The cable ride stretched out into the distance and we settled into our seats as a local cheerfully informed us that a car fell off three years ago. Nicki spent the next 25 minutes of the ride trying to understand if the carriages were attached to the cables or just hanging from them, and as the wind got up, we both felt a touch nervous as we swayed from side to side up into the clouds.

When we reached the Buddha – a 216 step journey upward – it was swathed in fast-moving clouds These gave an eerie atmosphere to the huge Buddha statue, suited to the mystic sense that should surround it. The monastery was stunningly colourful, though again I felt strange to take pictures in a place of worship for the locals. Roger, the guide for our tour the day before, had described the Chinese as superstitious rather than religious – nevertheless, people were praying and carrying out their rituals as we tourists wandered around with our cameras.

In Australia we had met David and Alice, an English couple who had just graduated from University. They had told us about a bar called Cicada with Happy Hour cocktails for 3 GBP. “It's near the escalators, you'll see it”, they had said. So we headed for the only thing that seemed to match their description – the “travelator” which is the longest escalator in the world, leading up the hill to SoHo. Sure enough, we found it and left a few hours later, having solved the world poverty problem and paid a bill of 50GBP...

The trip came to an end as we nursed hangovers, but we both were happy that our travel agent gave us this option of stopping over in Hong Kong. It is a place neither of us could imagine living in, but it's a fascinating mix of new and old, an insanely intense place.

A day in Hong Kong

We arrived in Hong Kong for a short 2-day/3-night stopover – my 3rd time there and Nicki's 1st. In these 2 days we've packed a lot in.

As we came in to land, the view from the city was incredible. The clouds were patchy, grey and swirling, like a disaster movie as the wrath of God gathers. The glow from the numerous tower blocks made it an amazing sight. As we drove into the city by bus, we saw thousands of containers at rest in or being moved around the huge harbour.

Our first surprise has been how cheap everything is. The journey to our hotel was just 11 GBP/13Euros each, a 40-minute trip, and our hotel itself was 30 GBP per night. Water has been 2 big bottles for 1 GBP, you can eat a big bowl of noodles and meat for less than 5 Euros and sending a postcard to the UK was cheaper than sending a first class letter within the UK. Even a hangover-cure McDonalds was half the price we paid in Australia.

We stayed in Kowloon, across the water from the main Hong Kong island, and while there are glassy high rise banks and buildings around, the area is more residential and down to earth. As we walked around the area of our hotel on our first morning, we stumbled into the midst of the markets, complete with live chickens being traded and powerful odours of fish (still flapping in trays, they were so fresh), livestock and sewage.

Other backstreet sights included tiny metal workshops and tool shops with piles of dead tools lying all over the place and spilling out onto the pavement. Looking up, 40-storey blocks of flats were commonplace, and you had to be aware to avoid the line made by drips of water coming down from the countless airco units

We took a day-tour around the city, starting at a temple in the very centre. There was an almost overwhelming smoke of incense as the locals paid homage and the tourists joined in with burning the free sticks. I felt strange taking pictures of this religious activity, but snapped away along with my fellow visitors. We headed onto the The Peak, a high point on the hill behind the main city with an amazing view across it.

Our guide, Roger, was a very knowledgeable but weird, unlikeable guy with a matter-of-fact manner and a lazy patter based on 20 years as a guide. He strangely had a plummy English accent peppered with Australian inflections on certain vowels. He explained that the tram line up to the Peak had been built because the British governors used to be carried up in a sedan chair – and given that they tended to be large people, the tram was constructed to give the sedan-carriers a break.

He also explained why 70% of Hong Kong is still countryside, and why little beyond the intense pocket of high-rise civilisation had been developed. In 1848, Britain was handed the 99-year lease to Hong Kong, and there was an understanding at the time that on the termination of the lease, all except Hong Kong's main island would be returned. Therefore the British focused on developing that main island and little else – why develop something that you couldn't keep? In the years leading up to 1997 and the lease's end, it was clear that this was not going to be the case and everything would be returned to China.

We took a Sampan ride (a small, traditional boat) at the harbour where Jumbo is moored, the biggest floating restaurant in the world. It was a big shock because when I came 5 years ago, the harbour was full of real working boats. Now the majority of it is taken by rich people's yachts and multi-million dollar boats, with a small section of the harbour still preserving the old ways. The times are changing fast in Hong Kong and cultural icons are at risk, according to Roger.

In the evening, we took the ferry back across to Kowloon and I spied the Canon logo - a reminder of how this all started - amongst the various neon signs. I smiled and thanked them wordlessly for being set free to make this amazing journey.

As night fell, the laser show that goes on at 8pm every night across the harbour was fantastic. We then headed on to the Night Markets at Temple Street which run until 11pm. As we walked back, we came across a backstreet open-air Karaoke area with various locals wailing into a microphone – an utterly terrible sound. This was side by side with a series of stalls housing fortune-tellers.

We landed in bed, tired and full of the city.

Footnote.

When we were up at The Peak, I felt a really strong sense of very positive nostalgia and well-being. The last time I had been there was in Spring 2005 on a Canon trip and I have a treasured photograph of myself, Morten and Andrea there. That time was a golden little period, as I had moved to Austria 18 months before. I'd settled down in my new city, got to grips with the work, business was going well, we had a great team and I was fit and healthy.
Being there again gave me a moment to look back and realise how lucky I was during that period. Vienna is a great city and I was working with some great people in an excellent company for a boss who gave me the freedom to develop things my way. That trip to Hong Kong (and then onto China) was one of the strong memories of that time. It was a lovely feeling to re-live that.