People can be divided into two groups: those that use electricity (and let’s face it, that’s the vast majority of us), and those that produce electricity (a very small, select group). And that’s why I’d like to congratulate everyone on Energy Day – 22 December. I’m here on the banks of the Yenisei in the village of Cheryomushki at the Sayano–Shushenskaya hydroelectric plant.

More: This is a truly beautiful, fascinating place…

Salam folks!

My list of the countries in the world I’ve been to has just had a +1 – Morocco. My total now comes to 72, including Antarctica. Kind of sluggish plusses of late being added to this list, but I guess that’s mathematically unavoidable the longer the list gets, and of course the list takes no account of the multiple repeat trips I make to a handful of countries…

So here I am in Morocco – in the city of Marrakesh (sometimes referred to as Marrakech, but never Marakesh/Marakech!). We had our annual European Partners’ Conference here. We normally have this somewhere on the European shores of the Mediterranean, but this year we fancied having it over the other side of that pond – on African shores. The conference was great – dynamic, fun, useful, interesting and entertaining. And an F1 replica racing car was present for the occasion.

But that’s all you’re getting re the business bit of the trip. Now for the cultural bit…

More: Morocco – a very interesting place …

Well, what can I say? The race track was constructed very… interestingly, as I’ve mentioned; however, the first race was kinda boring. So let me simply share some visuals with you…

More: The visuals …

Hi all!

Still on the road Stateside… with an extra-enjoyable installment coming up. This time we’re flying south from New York and heading for the capital of Texas. Houston? No. Dallas? No. Austin? Yes! Why? To see Formula 1 crack America, of course!

Our US tour so far has gone something like this: LA – Arizona – Chicago – Louisville – Miami – Boston – NYC. And now we’re back in the sunny south and revving up for F1. Formula 1 has tried repeatedly in the past to make its “formula” work in the USA as well as it does in much of the rest of the world, but never quite made it – like “soccer” has never really taken off here fully. But F1 of course reeaally wants to crack Terra Incognita – as successfully as… well, let’s see… Scotch whisky, French wine, and Stolichnaya! I think choosing Texas as the venue was a tad  ambitious – since of course you Don’t Mess with Texas – but hey, if they pull it off here, America will be in the bag!

More: Few nuances of the Austin track …

Three weeks on the road and counting… no, that can’t be right – since I’ve lost count! Of everything. The number of flights, hotels, cities, taxis, friendly maids, and of course the zillions – or thereabouts – of interviews, roundtables, presentations, lectures, partner meetings and negotiations. I’m a bit fuzzy on the what and where of the last 21 days. If I try hard and really get the old memory working – a few bits of spatiotemporal data do start to appear, but it’s still all a bit blurry. The best way of giving the cognizance a jolt is by looking over my photo archives – my own special personal pics on my laptop (sorry, I’ll be keeping those to myself!) and public ones – on Flickr and Instagram.

Yesterday we found ourselves at the place where a Tea Party led to no less than the American Revolution – Boston. I’ll skip the business part of the day and get straight into the more interesting bit – checking out some of the local must-sees, actually, one in particular.

The suburbs of Boston, in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts (curious official state title considering this place’s association with fighting the country with the original, biggest and baddest commonwealth! Maybe not, we are in New England, after all :), are home to the oldest, most respected, most prestigious, (and I’m sure there are many more mosts this place can claim) university in the USA (the world?). Of course I’m talking about Harvard, in the town of Cambridge (not to be confused with town of the same name in the UK – also home to a multi-most uni).

To say this place impresses will hardly come as a surprise. Of course it impresses. It has an aura about it – the unmistakable aura of academe, something I both respect and have fond memories of (back in my home country). A magical bookish atmosphere against a backdrop of imposing classical 18^th-19^th century architecture. Lush!

Incidentally, it was here where the Oscar-winning A Beautiful Mind was filmed.

Well that’s enough words. Let the pictures say a thousand things more than words ever could…

Not red rock; red brick

More: Hat Off to Harvard…

Hi all! We’re still darting about the U S of A… California, Arizona, Illinois, Kentucky, and on and on and on. As before, there continues to be few opps for tourism (well, apart from Arizona, already mentioned), while opps for work in various shapes and sizes are plentiful. Along the way we’ve been coming across assorted anomalisms and atypicalness, invariably snapped by D.Z. before you’ve time to say photogenic (I think he’s moonlighting as a travel photographer, you know. In fact I’m sure of it!) Here’s one such oddity. This one in the Windy City: More: The kunst continues …

Northern Arizona is famous for its astounding landscapes. In a relatively small area that can be covered in a car in just two or three hours there are three unique red rock formations.

First, there’s the world famous Monument Valley, offering breathtakingly beautiful panoramic views. Alas, we didn’t manage to get up close to it ourselves – only flying over it on a plane; but that was still enough to overload the senses with the place’s grandiosity.

Second, there’s Antelope Canyon. This is a mind-blowing slot-canyon – a big crevice in red sandstone. This is how it looked:

More: And regarding the third …

Howdy all!

Been quite hectic of late on the road, and quite a while since I’ve downed tools (laptop, microphone) and chilled a bit in a nice location – even though there’ve been plenty of interesting and unusual places along the way. Let me make amends…

So here we are, at the aptly titled Enchantment Resort, Sedona, Arizona, USA.

This is a real nice hotel and with really picturesque surroundings. It has cabins scattered about the valley and amazing views of red cliffs all around. Breathtakingly beautiful! And the weather ain’t bad of course either. The resort also has a golf course, allegedly a super-duper spa (didn’t get round to trying it out), and wild deer perma-guests that occasionally appear in the clearings around and about the grounds. I really recommend this place if ever you’re in sunny Arizona.

As is often the case on the more exotic of my travels – since pictures speak louder than words, let me give you some photos; no – lots!

More: Red Rocks hotel…

Howdy!

I love my job. Sometimes it gets really fun. But sometimes it gets mega-fun, like today…

It’s been high time to replenish the arsenal of corporate photos for a while now, so we thought we’d do it properly – and where else but in a remote corner of Arizona, of course! It was out here on the landing strip of Sedona Airport – up on a hill surrounded by desert – that we had a real-pro photo session… which lasted a whopping six hours! We decided to let photographer-to-the-stars Jonas Fredwall Karlson do the shooting, after he did such a great job with the pic for an article in Vanity Fair some time back. He really knows his stuff!

Sedona’s a popular place with the New Age lot, apparently. Nice place. Super views. Unusual place! More familiar to us in these unfamiliar surroundings was the jet we flew in on: we’ve flown on it quite a few times already, but to an airport atop a hill in desolate wilds like this – that’s a first.

Let me go over the last few days in order.

It all started off with a bit of time travel – Dr. Who or Back to the Future style (take your pick). On November 1 at around 5pm Tokyo time we flew out of the Japanese capital and traversed Pacific Ocean to land in Los Angeles, California – at 11am on the same day, November 1. Doctorin’ the Tardis or what?

But after that nice bit of time gain it pains me to say that it all went downhill from there. From touching down to leaving the airport we had two (TWO!) hours waiting around in various lines – passport control, customs… and to make matters way worse, all the waiting around was topped off with killer dose of I-truly-couldn’t-care-less American “service” at every turn. I guess our negative first impressions this time were made worse for just having just been – later that day! – in Japan. What a contrast!

Anyway, getting on with business… in LA we had a (surprise!) busy schedule. First I spoke at the UCLA; then we got together with our regional partners and partied; and next morning we were on the plane and heading for Sedona.

UCLA campus

Here’s a view of the airport’s runway on approach. We landed not long after.

And some more shots of the surrounding landscape…

Not our plane!

That one’s ours! It’s not all work, work, work, you know :)

Hi all!

Well it’s back on the road again for me, off on another crazy trip around the planet. First stop – Japan, for the Nikkei Global Management Forum. I won’t go into the details of the event, but here are a few photos:

More: But the most interesting bit came in Tokyo Disneyland!