Monday 2 October 2023 We arrived in Almaty last night and were given a VIP escort through customs before being driven to our hotel by Glebe, the Royal Canin country manager. Sylvia had a breakfast meeting with Janibek, the Ukrainian GM, who lives in Almaty, before heading off to visit the company office and do […]
Monday 25 September 2023 On arriving into Dubai late yesterday, we checked into the Fairmount Palms, where Sylvia is attending a conference. This morning I took the shuttle into the Dubai Mall, about 20kms from here. There I had booked a VIP visit to the tower; at 825 meters tall it is still the tallest […]
Sunday 17 September 2023 A mid morning flight from Marseille landed me in Frankfurt around noon, where I was met by Rachel and, after checking into my hotel in a not too flash part of Frankfurt, we drove to her flat in the village of Steinbach, about 20 kms from Frankfurt. Her youngest son, Killian, […]
Saturday 16 September 2023. We were privileged to have a visit from Sylvia’s Mum, Rosie and partner, Lardy, along with her uncle Roger, aunt Wendy and their friend Alan, who had al arrived just before I headed to London. They had spent the week while I was away exploring the local sites and relaxing by […]
I was in London attending the Defence and Security Equipment International (DSEI) trade show, which I am not going to write much about. I did get to try out the new helmet for the Typhoon pilots, with its heads up display linked into the plane’s cameras. If you look down you can see the ground […]
Monday 28 August 2023 After meeting Sylvia at Auckland International Airport in the early evening, we boarded the 12.5 hour LATAM flight to Chile about 6:30pm. We arrived in Santiago for a short stop over before heading on to Buenos Aires, where we checked into the Sofitel Hotel at about 8pm on the Monday evening. […]
Sunday 9 July 2023 At 0400 hrs a taxi picked us up for the normal 90 minute trip to Marseille Airport, which at that time was just on an hour. Marseille is one of the world’s not very good airports: old, dirty, packed with people and with poor facilities such as lounges. However in a […]
I was in Israel for a business trip and had the opportunity to do a couple of brief guided visits, one in Jaffa, the old port near Tel Aviv, (where I was staying), and one in Jerusalem. Israel is a tiny country, steeped in history. Many of the cities have been built, destroyed and rebuilt […]