Budapest is a very beautiful city – especially from the Pest side. The city currently has a light coating of snow over most of it (where they haven’t cleared it), which adds a certain wintry charm to the place.

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Hi folks!

Cenotes. Gotta love ’em.

What’s a cenote, you ask? A cenote is “a natural pit, or sinkhole, resulting from the collapse of limestone bedrock that exposes groundwater underneath. Especially associated with the Yucatán Peninsula of Mexico, cenotes were sometimes used by the ancient Maya for sacrificial offerings.” – Wikipedia.

Cenotes of the Yucatán Peninsula – gotta love ’em especially. For these aren’t just pretty lakes somewhere deep down below in huge pits (like Ik Kil); these are rivers and pools that are completely underground – invisible from the surface. Yucatán’s climate is well and truly tropical, meaning there’s plenty of rain too; all the same, on the surface there are practically no rivers at all to be seen. Why? Before the limestone bedrock collapses the rivers run underneath it. When a collapse does eventually take place, only then do the rivers show their faces rapids to the world once again after millennia underground.

Btw, you aren’t allowed to take camera/video equipment into the cenotes; accordingly, none of the pics here are mine.

Here are a few pics I found on the net: oh my grotto!…

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I’m a curious chap. Example: I’ve long wondered what the differences are between European and Russian… steel works! Ok, not quite everyone else in the world is wondering about such a thing, but, then, you don’t follow this blog for more on what everyone else is thinking, right? ).

So wonder I did. Past tense. Today – no more wondering, for now I know…

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I first set eyes on these incredible creatures last year in 2017. Just a year later and I was back for more, and since then I haven’t been able to stop wondering: where did they come from and how did they manage to survive? Wikipedia gave me part of the answers, which in this instance I trust completely: the Aldabra giant tortoise is endemic to the island of the Aldabra atoll in Seychelles.

// Endemic, btw, refers to species – not individuals. So, let’s say you live and don’t ever venture far from a single address/location, you aren’t endemic to that place; you’re just lazy – or a hikikomori, if in Japan! :)

But how? This question keeps me up at night…

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I really cannot remember a winter in Moscow like this one. A Moscow winter as it should be – frosty, icy, snowy, chilly, splendid, and sometimes even sunny. More often than not it’s a soggy, slushy, sullied affair, but I’m normally on the other side of the planet so it doesn’t really affect me so I’ve nothing to complain about.

Not that I never see snow of a winter. I’ve seen not small quantities of it twice in Antarctica (in 2009/2010 and 2017), in Greenland, and in Sweden-Denmark in February 2011 (oh such a long time ago that was). I’ve been to the typically, famously, thoroughly chilly Iceland and Yakutia, but only in summer, so those don’t count. Ah yes, I’ve skied in the Alps a few times, but I won’t count those either. So, that makes just four times in the last 10 (or even 15) years when I saw serious snow. Therefore, a rare total white-out in Moscow is only to be welcomed! Here are the views out of my office window and from the balcony next to it:

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I’ve just got myself a +1 to my collection of German industrial exhibitions/conferences, which now runs to a grand total of three. It was Bosch Connected World – both a conference and exhibition that ‘celebrate the Internet of Things’. Hardware & software, robotics, stationary + mobile, automotive, cloud-based, AI… basically all the buzz words – and all here. But everything here is somehow Bosch-connected, either belonging thereto of partnering with it; therefore, it was rather smaller than the other two in my collection: Embedded World and Hannover Messe. The former is about all things cyber-digital-industrial-automotive, the latter – all things industrial in general, not just security.

If you’re already in the computer automation/robotics/smart-whatever field, or are planning on entering it soon, you need to get yourself here. We were here as we’ve decided to attend more vendor-themed events: they’re smaller scale, but more focused. So here we are: welcome to Bosch Connected World!…

Read on: Nice place, proper technology, business opportunities…

Hi folks!

Today’s post is from Munich; specifically – from one of its fine museums, and then from a conference I was speaking at…

All righty. The museum: the Deutsches Museum, the world’s largest science and technology museum!

In a word, this place: ‘WHOAH!’

How can I best describe it? Ok, how about this:

Imagine you’re in a market – a massive one. There are rows of stalls selling fruit and vegetables, eggs, nuts, knick-knacks… whatever. Well, here – it’s just like that, only the stalls feature cars, planes, computers and all sorts of other tech, from the ancient to the modern-day – lots of it too: 28,000 exhibits! Oh my grandiose!

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Sometimes, especially on a flight on the other side of the world, the following thoughts creep into my mind: I’ve lost track of my total number of air-miles flown, of the names of the places I’ve stayed at, of the interesting sights I’ve seen, and so on. To remember it all is practically impossible.

But then I recall: to remember things, people have always written things down, which is just what I’ve been doing since the year dot! And should ever laziness have gotten a hold of me (moi?), I could just consult our accounting department, who are even more conscientious about book keeping (whence ‘bookkeeping’!) than I am: where I was, how I got there, which airports I used, where I stayed and for how long, where I dined… even where I had a beer! And of course let’s not forget the 100GB+ of (sorted, processed and compressed) photos I’ve accumulated down the years. So yes – you get the picture photo: there’s no chance anything could possibly be forgotten!

I also have practically a bottomless store of (actually, nearly 20 years of) travel (both business and touristic) experience, which is now not a bad resource to be tapped by practically any traveler (ok, maybe not the budget traveler; apologies for that) or potential traveler since it’s so vast. And it just keeps being supplemented with more and more new places and experiences. I sometimes have a trip down memory lane and get all nostalgic for the places I’ve been to and haven’t returned to for so long, and also for the simpler days when cameras had film inside that needed to be processed at special shops :). I’m also rather proud of some of the detailed subsections of my blog; for example, my Top-100 Must-See Places in the World and its various sub-sub-sections, my hotels list, and so on…

I also get to thinking about how lucky I am to visit so many beaches of the world on my travels – a bonus of having to be at business conferences, which have a handy knack of taking place in sunny resorts. But of course they are: where are you going to get the most accepted invitations to a conference – in, say, Munich, or in, say, Hawaii? Yep: it’s not rocket science. And I can even give rankings of the best resorts/beaches/conference venues too (my current fave: Surfers Paradise).

And talking of sunny resorts and rankings of the best this or that, there’s also my ranking of the business events. What’s at the top of this list? Naturally, it’s our own: the Security Analyst Summit (SAS). And naturally it always takes place in a real nice sunny resort with obligatory beach. Examples: Croatia, Cyprus, Malaga, the Canary Islands, Caribbean islands; and next month – once again back in Cancun, which will be our tenth SAS!

So what’s most important to you when it comes to beach resorts? Yes, it all depends on your priorities, for a super resort that ticks all the boxes for absolutely everyone simply doesn’t exist. Trust me, I’m a doctor :). Let me explain.

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Hi folks!

Herewith, as promised, a brief summary of our recent Indonesian New-Year adventure.

We scaled seven volcanoes (Merapi, Arjuno–Welirang–Kembar, Bromo, Ijen, Kelimutu), saw four dizzying dawns from volcano peaks, stayed on five Indonesian islands, bathed in two seas and one volcanic lake, photographed three orangutans and many a Komodo dragon, swam with manta fish and untold quantities of other marine life, ate tons of local exotic super-fresh fruits, flew four inter-island flights (in addition to the flights to Indonesia and back), and spent countless hours on buses and 4x4s (covering 1300km on… hazardous roads). In a word: phew!

Already back home, I thought I’d dig around on the internet to see what I could find on the volcanoes we climbed. And there was plenty…

Bromo:

Kelimutu:

In all, 18 days (not including getting there and back). A extraordinary expedition. So if you have a bit of a soft spot for volcanism – make sure to get here one day; you won’t be disappointed!

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Our Indonesian adventure was coming to an end, but we didn’t mind that inevitability, as we were in full-on touristic-meditative mode… no – full-on touristic-meditative Komodo!

And Komodo happens to be home to very large reptiles! Check these beauts out!

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