Tag Archives: on the road again

Everything about New Year is good! And one of the best things is that it’s the perfect time to take a break, take stock, take note, share impressions, and recharge the batteries for next year. I go through this procedure every year (2014, 2013) – I find it useful in all sorts of ways. I recommend you all do the same and give all those around you a burst of pure positivity. So, how did 2015 shape up? Well, let’s see what my notebook says:

• I shattered my personal record for number of flights – 116 for the year, ~500 hours and ~400,000 km in the air. The most intense month was March – 15 flights.
• Visited 23 countries, some more than once. I was in China, Germany and the UK most of all.
• Gave 50+ presentations, did 100+ interviews, got through 20 business conferences, met 6 presidents, prime ministers and ministers.
• Stayed, lived or simply slept in 41 hotels
• Discoveries of the year: the Maldives, Guatemala, Gabon, Iceland. I now have 80 countries under my belt.
• Completed the 9^th round-the-world trip. Not much for a year, but it was all fast and action-packed.
• Caught a connecting flight at SVO for the first time.
• Turned 50 while “on the road again”.

Read on: Geographical discoveries…

…To lose it twice on two flights in as many days looks like carelessness!

My black suitcase gets around a bit. In fact – right around the globe several times a year. So you can imagine my… incredulousness, when it goes astray – TWICE – on a quick dash over to Western Europe!…

Ok, maybe I’m at least partly to blame. I should have listened. More experienced Europe-hoppers told me how, if you need to get from Moscow to Luxembourg and back quick, it’s best to fly to Dusseldorf in neighboring Germany and then drive a rental car 2+ hours (200 kilometers; untypically autobahny roads) to Lux; and coming back – the same route in reverse.

I just didn’t fancy two hours behind the wheel. So in the end we flew out Moscow-Milan-Luxembourg (Aeroflot + Luxair), and back – Luxembourg-Frankfurt-Moscow (Lufthansa + Aeroflot). In the end this route worked out longer, since we were waiting in Milan more than the 2+ hours it would have taken to drive Duss-Lux. But that was nothing…

See, when you fly with different airlines of different alliances – with transfers involving more than one terminal – there’s always a risk that your luggage won’t keep up with you. Which is what happened with me last week. But, like I say, my case managed to go astray both on the way there and on the way back! I might as well have not taken my case, since I never got round to using the bits and pieces inside it that would have made my trip to Luxembourg… comfortable!

On the way there things weren’t so bad: I was swiftly informed my “suitcase is still in Milan”, and that evening it was delivered to my hotel room. Phew.

It was on the way back when things got unacceptably… boycottable. Customs forms to fill out, having to list what was in the case (why?), a line for lost-and-found… All that meant I left the airport about an hour after landing.

My case did eventually arrive – but only two days later! What would have happened if I’d flown onward, say, to South-East Asia? A friend had that problem once – he was on a multi-city business trip to the US, and his case never caught him up after being mislaid still in Europe (though it did try – following him from hotel to hotel all around the States!!).

Here she is, sat outside my office @ HQ. ‘Rush’? RUSH???!!! :)

Oh well, at least something positive has come out of this incident: I will now try my best to forgo a large suitcase to be checked in for short trips. Hand luggage only – it’s the only way forward upward.

Back soon folks; don’t go away!…

After yet more non-stop business meets and greets and chats and speeches – this time in Nagasaki – onward we traveled, on a high-speed train in pitch darkness. You’ll never guess where to, but here’s a hint:

Ok, enough intrigue. We sped to the island of Kyushu, namely to the city of Fukuoka (the capital of the prefecture of the same name), specifically – the Hakata-ku district. Curiously, the trains (including ours) going to the Hakata district are designated the ‘trains to Hakata’, not the ‘trains to Fukuoka’. That’d be like having ‘trains to Kings Cross’ as opposed to ‘trains to London’. Unusual.

Read on: A gaijin who knows such places…

Phew! For a moment then I thought I was getting too old for all this. But just for a moment :)…

I’ve just completed a crazy quick business trip to Japan. Three islands (Honshu, Kyushu and Okinawa) and four cities – some well-known, others not very. Contrary to custom, there was practically no sightseeing on the schedule, only meetings, speeches and interviews. Still, you know me: there’s always something to write about and point a camera at!…

The Japanese market is complex, tricky, demanding, conservative, tough. Business is always good, and numbers of customers and partners grow – but only very slowly. So slowly I need to regularly get myself over there in person two or three times a year – a lot more often than to other countries. Not that I’m complaining. Regular readers will recall I have a soft spot for all things Nippon.

Now, the schedule’s always tight in Japan, but this time was just silly tight. A non-stop marathon of meetings, interviews, presentations and negotiations. It almost got too much physically. So I was naturally looking forward to a nice warm soft bed in the evening back at the hotel. But hey, a not-so warm, hard bed? Even that will do!…

Perhaps what made the trip especially trying was that it was tacked onto the end of a similarly busy working schedule in Beijing. But no, there was no mistaking it when I woke up that morning: I was in one of the most interesting and unusual cities on the planet – and a personal favorite of mine. Clear skies and Mount Fuji as the backdrop (to whose peak I’ve been twice already!). Unmistakably… Tokyo!

Read on: a hectic day…

All good things must come to an end: that’s it for at least another year. Time to go home.

In all we’ve trekked/climbed/clambered/slipped/tripped around 300 kilometers, been up five volcanoes (though not always quite to the very top), scanned hundreds of square kilometers of phenomenal natural beauty, scared (or maybe just surprised) dozens of bears, and fed a zillion mosquitos. We’ve also used up kilometers of Kodachrome gigabytes of memory cards :).

https://instagram.com/p/7FAR9GuiWS/

Read on: Good-bye Kamchatka!…

Most US airports are catastrophically crummy when it comes to connections. So, when planning multi-leg air journeys, if you ever get the opportunity to not have a connection in the country – take it; even if that means using the in-flight services of your most hateful airline!

But out of all American airports, one in particular is so awful… well, you just feel embarrassed for the country for accommodating such an abomination. Yes folks, this airport is so appallingly atrocious that it needs to be avoided at all costs. As a frequent business traveler I established a strict embargo on using it several years ago already, and if you too travel the world up in the air quite a lot, I recommend you do the same.

At least, that’s the situation as I know (knew?) it. But then along comes D.Z. singing its praises after a recent positive experience there (why he was embargo-busting in the first place I’ve yet to find out:). Must say, his arguments seem convincing. So I’ll now pass the reins over to him, and let you decide for yourself…:

—8<—

Location: On board the Moscow to New York Delta flight (DL467), September, 2015. 

News: From December 1, 2015 Delta Airlines will be stopping its flights to Russia, for reasons known only to itself. However, I think Aeroflot and other airlines will be fully aware of the reasons, and understand, share and support them.

‘Delta’… the airline with traditionally unobtrusive air service. But this time… 

…One of the toilets at the front is ‘reserved for pilots only’. To one side of it there’s a trolley blocking the aisle; to the other there’s a flight attendant installed telling all-comers not to go further – ‘it’s for the pilots, and there are some safety rules’ or some such. When pressed, she remarks: ‘Use the other toilet!’. Ok! So the whole of business class gets in the endless line for the loo on the other side!

So what shall I do now? 

Terminator Genisys – watched! Mad Max 4 – watched a month earlier. Emails all sorted, Kaspersky Daily blogpost ready for publication.

But then, suddenly, somewhere between Norway and Iceland I notice the onboard Wi-Fi! $14.95 for an hour, $27.95 for the flight, $45.95 for the day. Ok. Credit card inserted, PIN entered, logged in. Let’s see how fast this baby goes…

Woh! No sooner do I press ‘enter’ – I’m fully connected to the WWW! EH??!!

Read on: Will Eugene drop his embargo already?…

I get to Japan a lot on business.

Normally the airport procedures you have to go through to get from airplane seat to airport exit, luggage in hand, are quick and efficient. But just sometimes, it seems, things don’t run quite so smoothly: just recently we landed in Osaka and the line for passport control lasted two hours! Just look at the crowds of disgruntled travelers. This is just… unacceptable! I mean, Japan, come ON. Is it really that difficult to put more staff on? Hello?

Read on: Things only got more unusual…

After a two-hour express connection in Sydney, and 12 hours up in air on the Santiago de Chile – Beijing route, we finally land. Phew! This completes my latest circumnavigation of our planet: 25+ hours in the air, 32 hours traveling door-to-door. A little tired, but never one to complain.

Our flight crossing the Equator

It turned out to be rather an exotic route in all, and not just because we flew past Antarctica: we crossed the Equator twice and half the trip was in the southern hemisphere. The route had a certain symmetry too it too (see the map below), and in all four continents (Asia, Europe, South America, Australasia) were visited. Oh, the main bit: this was my ninth round-the-worlder! Hurray!

I hardly noticed. Round the world in 10 days! It all started in sunny Kamchatka, and finished in China: Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky – Moscow – Paris – Sao-Paulo – Santiago – Sydney (connection) – Beijing. A resourceful friend helpfully marked the route out on a world map:

Nice and symmetrical :-)

Read on: Whoa!…

Hola amigos!

Not long ago I flew one of the most unusual commercial air routes I’ve ever taken.

It was the Santiago–Sydney-route on Qantas QF28 in a Boeing 747. The route forms a smile shape as it curves downwards and flies past… Antarctica! It felt a bit eerie flying – for 14 hours! – over a part of the world where there happens to be absolutely nothing at all! No islands, no ships, no folks, no hamburger stands… the very definition of ‘godforsaken’! Even submarines don’t bother with these remote southern reaches. Curiously, there’s one thing that features relatively prominently here: deceased satellites! They have them fall out of orbit and give them a marine burial here, well out of the way so they do no harm to Homo sapiens.

“Cheese!”

Read on: Antarctica!!…

It had to happen sooner or later.

What with the hundreds of flights I make in a year, with all sorts of different airlines, to and from all sorts of random cities, my getting aboard such a plane was sure to be sooner rather than later.

A dream flight. On a dream airliner – the Boeing 787 Dreamliner. Packed with the very latest technologies, a curvaceous ‘designer’ form, and improved comfort. I’d been patiently waiting for this moment quite a while. And then suddenly, unexpectedly, and totally by chance… it finally came to pass…

Read on: Here she is, the beauty…