I’m a mathematician.

So, based on the numbers alone – with my constant frequent flying – I’m hardly surprised: sooner or later it had to happen – I missed my plane!

It’s happened just once before – back in May 2010, towards the end of one of my customarily lengthy round-the-world tours. I’d… let my hair down a wee bit too low at a conference in Cyprus, got ’20:00′ and ’02:00′ – or something like that – mixed up, and that was that – late. Flight missed. That was in Limassol, heading for Tokyo. In the end I managed to get a flight the next day.

So, now I’ve notched up two missed flights. Still, that’s pretty good considering I fly hundreds of times a year!

This time I was late for my plane leaving London for Nice in France. So how did I manage it?

Well, due to some bizarre oversight, I looked at the wrong place on the piece of paper that had my flight details on it, and instead of having my taxi take me to Terminal 5, I asked the cockney driver to head for Terminal 4! Once I realized the mix-up upon arrival, I got onto the Heathrow Express to get to T5 – but then that took 40 (!) minutes (I’d have been better taking a taxi, darn it!).

This was after the journey from downtown to the airport, which took 80 minutes (London + Saturday = traffic jams). Should have taken the Tube! The following Monday was a bank holiday (national day-off), so maybe that was why there was even more traffic than usual. And we’d left the hotel with loads of time to spare! All the same, the terminal mix-up decided my fate that day. Late. Flight missed. :-/.

But – oh what joy! Turned out that an hour later a second plane would be taking off to Nice “for those who’d missed the first one” ( :%) ). I really needed to race to make that one – and I don’t mean a steady jog but a sprint. But I rushed in vain. The plane stood for another hour on the ground since Heathrow too was suffering from bad traffic (also due to the bank holiday?). An airport traffic jam. In short, it wasn’t my day. The following day thankfully made up for that…

See you tomorrow… Au revoir!

Hi all!

You’d be a fool not to climb Mount Fuji. Doubly so to climb it twice.

~ A traditional nugget of Japanese wisdom

I agree: to be in Japan and not go up the most beautiful mountain in the country – that’s just silly. But to do it again is also pretty bonkers. I wonder if a third ascent would cancel out the madness? Hope so, because last Saturday was my second climb up Fuji!

Fuji from below…

…and from the top!

Read on: Fujiyama or Fuji-san?…

The more I keep coming back to London, the more I like it…

I was first here in the Smoke in 1992. But back then and for the following several years I was never too impressed with the city, never feeling quite at ease here. Severe and imposing imperial architecture, the interminably awful traffic, far too many folks on the sidewalks, the dirty Thames… ugh – not nice.

But then I started to see the city change – bit by bit, year by year. They largely solved the problem of city center traffic congestion – helped by the introduction of a bike-sharing scheme (‘Boris Bikes‘). They tidied up the embankments, cleaned up the Thames, and added a Gherkin, Cheesegrater, Walkie-talkie and Shard among other progressive architectural delights. Then there was the London Eye, then the Olympics… Two decades ago the place was completely different: somber, bleak and wearisome. Now it’s just the opposite: cheerful, accomodating and lively!

Of course, the addition of our finally up and running new office makes the place even more of a hit. Around 150 KLers will be based here furthering the struggle to maintain a secure and peaceful cyberspace. Have to say I envy them a bit – they’ve got everything: great city, great office, great work :).

Read on:…

Now I’d like to write about some other places on Hawaii which I liked and which stuck in my memory.

For some reason, I took a real liking to a place called Waikoloa on the west coast of the Big Island.

It’s a small town (really more of a village) with hotels, beaches and small houses, built amidst a huge field of lava which appeared some time around the mid-19^th century. The western part of the island is dry and rocky, while the eastern part is wet, covered by jungle and swamp. On the dry west coast, the lava streams have remained bare and deserted for more than 150 years, never seeing any vegetation. But then, a man came and decided to build a garden city in this desert. No sooner said than invested and done, producing a stunning – and highly photogenic – miracle. See for yourself.

Read on: a terrifying story of captain James Cook…

The Hawaiian Islands are a chain of active and extinct volcanoes, so various manifestations of volcanic activity are abundant here, like craters, calderas, lava streams, sulfuric steam vents and other subsurface natural features. However, not a single geyser was detected, no hot springs… That’s strange given the amount of precipitation and the rivers here – there must be some springs somewhere. But there are none.

Read on: The geological origin of Hawaii is absolutely unique…

“Those born to crawl cannot fly, but sometimes the bastards crawl up to a great height,” to very loosely paraphrase a revolutionary phrase.

Open your eyes and let your jaw drop, because there is a fish on this earth of ours that sometimes flies to an altitude of 100 m or more. The O’opu lives in Hawaii’s Kolekole Stream and in the 130-meter Akaka falls.

Read on: A merciless evolution…

Aloha folks!

I’m currently cooling off after a visit to the Big Island of the Hawaiian archipelago. What an amazing place – tipping the emotions over the edge with its mixture of perfect weather, pristine oceans, vibrant volcanism, opulent jungles and overall breathtaking beauty. Aloha Hawaii, and mahalo Hawaii :).

That things aren’t as 100% American as apple pie you kinda get the idea of when on the flight approaching the USA’s 50^th state (it was the last state to join the Union, in 1959). Instead of the usual ‘thank you’ at the end of tannoyed messages, the stewardesses say ‘aloha and mahalo!’ as if heralding the fact that it isn’t quite, fully, the United States you’re approaching… It’s just different – so get ready!…

Read on: Hawaii is really quite distinct from the other states…

Aloha, droogs!

Today I’m reporting to you from Hawaii, USA. Yes, it is nice for some :).

Read on:

At last! Another dream of mine has come true – to see a spaceship take off! Hurray!

Last week it left Baikonur in Kazakhstan, and by the weekend it had already reached the International Space Station and docked. The crew’s made up of two Russians and one American – which perhaps explains why around town and in our hotel much American-accented English was to be heard.

We watched the liftoff from about two kilometers away, which might seem a long way off. But it isn’t. This isn’t U2 playing a stadium where being at the back is almost a waste of time and money… This is the Baikonur experience. The power generated by the massive rocket engines shook everything around so much it felt like an earthquake was occurring at the same time as the liftoff. Rather unnerving.

The spike on the top means the ship’s manned; if it was without one, it would mean no crew – an unmanned remote-controlled cargo mission

Read on: Baikonur from inside…

Hi folks!

Another intense stint of globetrotting is over – finally. We’d been on the road for almost two months, visiting eight countries in total. It went like this: Dominican Republic – Brazil – Chile (Patagonia) – Saudi Arabia – Italy – Germany – Korea – China.

The second half of the journey turned out to be really tough – non-stop sprinting as opposed to the steady-jog pace which we normally aim for. Meetings, speeches, and moving around from A to B to C… with hardly any let-up whatsoever, not so much as a stroll after a long day – for two whole weeks! I was starting to burn out – when the habitual zip and zest and general lust for life just vanishes and everything seems either uninteresting or irritating or both. A bit like jetlag – which incidentally had also been building from acute to chronic… Cue some much-needed MANDATORY down time. Happily for me – in Hainan – the Chinese island some 30 kilometers to the south of the mainland. I had about a week there. Oh boy, did I need it. And, oh boy, how I enjoyed it.

Summarizing this latest world tour won’t take all that long as, since Patagonia, there was hardly any time for tourism. So, briefly…

Read on: It started with an intercontinental leap…