I left you yesterday with us on our way out of Khonuu early morning heading to the nearest filling station. As you’ll no doubt know, refueling is normally rather straightforward; however, up here – just outside the Arctic Circle – it’s far from simple…

First of all, you have to find a filling station, for there aren’t many. That often means heading to the next village – or the one after that – and in northern Yakutia that can mean serious distances (an extra hundred kilometers, for example). But there’s more to refueling than just that; accordingly, I hereby announce that this post is dedicated to… Yakutian gas stations!…

Now, filling stations in the Far North aren’t the all-singing-all-dancing minimarket-cafes with hotdogs and assorted other bells and whistles like you get in more temperate climes across the developed world. In a word, here, they’re simple:

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In the previous installment in the series of blogposts on our Yakutsk-Tiksi-Yakutsk expedition, we’d just arrived in the small village of Khonuu after nightfall.

Now, since Far North villages fascinate me – particularly how life can and is lived in such places – I really wanted to get a closer look at what’s what here to be able to then convey it to you, dear readers. Not that we ventured out far: we literally just walked around our lodgings, but still…

Here are those lodgings:

You see the pipes in the above pic? Those carry hot water to all buildings in the village from a centralized heating plant. I was rather astonished to find out that this – a holdover from Soviet times – is a mandatory attribute across the whole of Yakutia – even its northern reaches.

So what’s it like inside apartment buildings like this one?… ->

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Hi folks!

So many business trips – so little time for… continuing my tales from the deep-frozen Siberian Far North side! But since flying back from China, let me get back to it. So, where was I? Ah – yes: arriving in the village of Sasyr after nightfall and, given there are no hotels or guesthouses to stay at, we were bedding down in the village school’s gym hall on rubber mats!…

Unusual circumstances? Yes. Original? Indeed. Uncomfortable? No!…

We were warm (here – crucial!), there was food, there was fuel at the nearby filling station (we drove there later), and – most importantly – there was table tennis. What more could you ask for?

The following morning – on the fourth day of our Yakutsk-Tiksi-Yakutsk road trip – after breakfast, we were back on our way on the winter/ice road. Next destination: the village of Khonuu (see the map at the very end of this post). And what an interesting and gorgeous day it was too…

First – warm-up pic:

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My Southeast Asian/Chinese business trip was drawing to a close…

Japan – done;

Hong Kong – done;

Beijing outskirts – done.

So far – so good: meetings, events, public speaking, plus the mandatory insertions of micro-tourism along the way – just how I like it.

Just before setting off back home – we had a night in central Beijing. And while there, in my hotel room, I came over all nostalgic…

// Brief digression: you see the clouds in the sky? You know what they mean? That the Beijing air has cleaned up its act. Respect! I wrote about this back in July of last year.

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Farewell Hong Kong; hello Beijing!…

On this multi-stage business trip around Southeast Asia, our next port of call was the Chinese capital for another conference of ours. Here, as per, I told our partners and clients all about our latest achievements, new technologies and products and services. I say “as per”, since I know the routine so well now I hardly need glance at my slides for facts and figures. But… one thing was different this time – very. It was the setting the conference took place in: the Yanqi Kempinski.

I couldn’t find much info about the place on the internet, so I’ll give you my first-person account based on my short stay there…

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When you hear the words “Hong Kong”, what springs to mind first? Go on – what images just appeared in your mind’s eye just now? Was it a film you’ve seen set there – maybe one starring Jackie Chan or perhaps Bruce Lee, or was it a Bond movie? Was it the skyscrapers and bright lights? For me, it’s normally a mixture of all the above…

Hong Kong is a very distinctive city (or special administrative region, to be precise). One could call it the result of a historical symbiosis between traditional Chinese and Western (British) cultures. And the views to be had here today often highlight this symbiosis perfectly; like here ->

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After surviving the Fugu, it was time for a stroll. And since the Tokyo Imperial Palace wasn’t far from our hotel, we figured that’s where we should be heading…

Coming up – lots of photos, few words. Who needs words when you’ve got scenes like these? ->

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My recent trip to Japan wasn’t a very long one, but you’ve already had five posts about it (on transportation, a safari park, Disneyland, TeamLab and work)! And guess what? There are quite a few more still to come! But of course there are. For this is Japan – always different, always curiously fascinating!

Coming up – the following themes: food, city, and… hotel-room views. So where shall I begin? Always begin with a full belly – so here we go with Japanese dining!…

Japanese cuisine is fantastically beautiful – besides being fantastically delicious. Oiy-shee means “tasty” in Japanese, and I found myself repeating the word every single day while in the country…

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After all the good fun with the kids at Japan’s Disneyland and TeamLab, it was time to turn my attention to work. And that meant the Interop 24 IT exhibition, meetings with business partners, plus several interviews with the press…

I also needed to drop by our Tokyo office to lift the spirits of the team there given the ongoing geopolitical turbulence ->

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My next tale from the Japanese side is one of astonishment.

It’s not too often you see me astonished. But it does happen occasionally. It happened on the Kolyma Highway in Siberia – and not due to the extreme cold itself but its extraordinary bleaching effect on the surrounding landscapes. There was astonishment at the beauty to behold on the roads of Namibia. There was the way the company pulled through the covid pandemic. There was our vacation to the Galapagos Islands (pdf – 25MB). All these and more…

My latest astonishment came while visiting Tokyo’s TeamLab art-collective’s light-and-sound installations, which this post is all about.

Basically, it’s unbelievably cool. It all lasts just an hour-and-a-half, but the journey you take there through different halls digitally painted in the most insanely grandiose way – it’s, well… astonishing…

There are hanging strings of light that change color constantly ->

Read on…