Nota Bene

Brazil is a huge country that, just like Russia, actually stretches across two hemispheres. The difference is that while Brazil sits across both the Northern and Southern Hemispheres, Russia straddles the Eastern and Western ones.

But perhaps what sets Russia apart from Brazil the most is that Russia’s territories mostly lie on permafrost. Brazil is all about tropics and humid subtropics – perfectly suitable for street carnivals with scantily-clad crowds…

Sure – there are differences; where aren’t there any? But we’re also more or less similar. Let’s take a look:

Size: Brazil = eight million km²; Russia = 17 million km² (but permafrost is more than half of that).

Population: though 10–15 years ago the two countries were roughly equal, today – Brazil = 212 million; Russia = 144 million.

Now, for geography and populations, Wikipedia will do for me. But when it comes to economies, I trust – believe it or not – CIA data more!

Here, for example, are the top 10 economies in the world in terms of GDP at purchasing power parity (2024 data):

Read on…

Continuing my winter globetrotting tales, today we’re back in Saudi Arabia; specifically – in the mountainous Wadi Al Disah nature reserve…

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My “Another day – another different corner of the globe” series continues! Today – back to Kamchatka!…

Some 350 kilometers north of Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky is one of the most magnificent volcanic sights in the world – the Klyuchevskaya group of volcanoes. It’s the largest “agglomeration” in Russia – combining 14 volcanoes (including four active ones) and several hundred cones, domes, and other knolls. And the stars of the show of this group are the three adjacent volcanoes Klyuchevskaya Sopka, Kamen, and Bezymianny.

I never tire of marveling at the Klyuchevskaya group, which is why I’ve kept returning over and over down the years. During our September 2025 trip around Kamchatka we approached it from a different direction but, alas, it was completely shrouded in dense cloud. Still, even in that setting the views are simply stunning. Add to that the lack of oxygen in the helicopter (we were flying up near the summits – altitudes not to be sniffed (between ~3000 and nearly 5000 meters!)) and the other impressions we’d picked up along the way, and it all still added up to a  VIP experience (Volcanism Impossibly Perfect)!

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My recent trip to Saudi Arabia was spoiled somewhat by some logistical troubles – of a suitcase! – on the way back. It was something that had never happened to me before: ALL the luggage of ALL the passengers got lost! It happened on the Riyadh–Moscow Saudi Airlines flight. The plane arrived in Moscow with… an empty cargo hold: they’d simply failed to load it at the departure airport! As a result, around 90 passengers – mostly Saudis – lined up for the red channel at Sheremetyevo (those are the rules there – only through the red channel if your suitcase is lost). And since it took some 10 minutes to process the paperwork for each passenger, the customs officials joked grimly that the last person in line would still be around to see the next flight and to personally receive their luggage!

But at least we were first in said line. And we were first because I’d heard the announcement in Russian: “Passengers arriving from Riyadh – please proceed to the lost luggage desk”, so my travel companion, NK, and I raced to lost-and-found as fast as we could. But there was more: we still had to then get over to the red channel and separately fill out the customs “baggage without passenger” form.

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And now for my traditional review of the outgoing year, and a preview of the new one…

// To some of you who are new to these here blog-pages of mine, January 13 might seem a bit late for such a review/preview; let me briefly explain: the first week – sometimes longer (like this year) in Russia is a national holiday: everyone’s off work – this year till last Monday, January 12! So this means business is generally put on hold from the last few days of a year through to mid-January of the next!

All righty. Let’s start with 2025 business…

The main result of the year: despite the pressure of ongoing double-dyed geopolitics, we’re doing just fine.

Our global business is developing – with revenues growing in many places. Sure – not everywhere, and of course the situation’s not straightforward – but when was/is it ever easy?

So yes, everything’s fine. The company is stable and resilient, we’re steadily developing products and technologies, and our regional teams around the world are getting stronger. In the current environment this really is a major achievement, and it’s the result of all the hard – smart – work done by the whole team.

Read on…

Privyet folks!

December is usually a pretty busy month for us. There’s the year-end budget-closing and reporting, an evening with our key clients and partners (x 2: (i) for our traditional/new products, and (ii) for our Operating System), New Year department parties, and my annual Santa Claus & Co. tour of all three HQ buildings (festive speeches, poetry and team photos on all 15 floors – and a sherry on each some:). And there’s another fun year-end event, which just so happens to be getting crazily big!…

I’m talking about our 10 and 25-years-working-at-K anniversary awards!

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SAS-2025 is already long gone, but a tale from the Thai side still needs to be told!…

So, after the business part of the event (which, it goes without saying, was great), we needed to unwind and hang out with SAS participants in a more relaxed atmosphere – I call it “decompression”. And that’s why our whole group headed out to the Similan Islands in the Andaman Sea – about 65km west of the Thai coast (not far to the north of Phuket). And I couldn’t have been happier, since I’m fast approaching a full 200 islands visited in my life, and I hadn’t been to this particular one (rather – this particular grouping of islands)!…

So what can I say? I’ll say that the Similan Islands are really great: they’re rather unusual, really picturesque granite formations. However, the islands in the bay just east of Phuket are even better for contemplative sightseeing, IMHO. Never mind; these granite islands still have a special charm of their own…

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Easter Island – done and dusted. But I’ve still got more tales from the Kamchatkan side to tell – including this one about… a volcano; fancy that?!

After a miserable first few days in Kamchatka – miserable due to the incessant rain spoiling our plans – the weather finally came to its senses to give us a bit of sunshine. Naturally, we tried to catch up on what we’d missed – the places we hadn’t managed to see yet. And first on the list was the most significant (constantly active!) of the northern volcanos – Shiveluch. And here it is in all its glory:

Shiveluch is one of the most active volcanoes in Kamchatka. It doesn’t just erupt at regular intervals – sometimes it does so with real force. There’ve even been cases where, after one of its eruptions, the airspace over Alaska (!) was closed – which is, believe it or not, more than two thousand kilometers away!

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Hi everyone!

Yesterday I was lucky enough to personally watch the landing of the Soyuz MS-27 descent module from the RKA Mission Control Center in the town of Korolyov just outside Moscow. And it was a wholly interesting event! Surprisingly, taking photos was allowed, with the press up on the balcony reporting live. I too was up on the same balcony – and it all looked like this:

// Curiously, down on the right there are two flags next to each other – those of Russia and the U.S., which is quite a rarity these days.

Launches and landings of spacecraft – especially manned ones – are rather long-winded processes. When landing, the cosmonauts close the hatches more than three hours before undocking (six hours and 40+ minutes before the actual landing), undocking from the ISS occurs around two hours and 30 minutes before braking begins, and from the beginning of braking to touching down on Earth it’s just under an hour.

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In this, my last post in the series on Easter Island, a few words on day-to-day practicalities: how to get there, where to stay, and how to get around the island.

There are two ways to get to Rapa Nui: either a five-hour flight from Santiago (and getting to Santiago from anywhere on the planet is straightforward – albeit often long-winded:), or a two-week (!) boat trip from Valparaiso, Chile’s main port, which is about 120km from the capital. There used to be flights from Lima, Peru, too, but they stopped during covid in 2020, and somehow they just never resumed after that.

Anyway, back to the Santiago > Easter Island route…

Either one or two large planes do the route there and back daily. But on days when two planes fly, the lines at the airport in Santiago grow to truly inhumane lengths. We ended up queuing for our boarding gate all the way to the very furthest corner of the airport – in a line that stretched at least a hundred meters. Still, one should only ever remember the good stuff (and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise)! So, just read these lines, forget about them – and then go ahead and dream about planning your own Easter Island trip!…

Once there, how do you get yourself to the various tourist spots dotted across the whole island? You can do so yourself in cars, on scooters or bikes you can rent. But if you do, it’s better if you know Spanish, because almost every site charges entry, and there’s no guarantee anyone at the entrance speaks a language you know. We rented a mini-bus with a local guide, who was half-Spanish and half-Rapa-Nui, but unfortunately he didn’t speak the language of his island ancestors. (Curious fact: “Rapa Nui” = the Rapa Nui people, the Rapa Nui language, and the island of Rapa Nui!)

Next – where to stay? There are lots of options. We were apparently booked in at “the best place on the island” – the Explora Rapa Nui hotel, here…

And here ->

Read on…