NOTES, COMMENT AND BUZZ FROM EUGENE KASPERSKY – OFFICIAL BLOG
November 15, 2017
Be careful what you wish for!…
…I’d been wishing for an aerial view – from an airplane – of Santorini for years. Well now it’s come to pass.
I had in fact flown over the Greek island before, only at night and/or on a cloudy day, so I never saw anything. This time, the conditions were perfect: a bright, clear day. The conditions were so perfect that even the pilots were taking pics!
Santorini!
Read on: Santorini from a plane – the beauty’s almost insane…
November 10, 2017
I’ve been getting about quite a bit this fall, and practically every day I’ve been as busy as a bee. It’s that slightly disorienting routine I get into every few months or so: each day something new – starting with the hotel room I wake up in.
But the other day it wasn’t a hotel room. Upon waking, my first question to myself was the usual ‘Where am I?’, but the answer this time came ‘in an Airbus!’ Indeed I was, flying Xi-an – Beijing – Moscow – London – the Bahamas – London over several days.
Such continent hopping in a short time with lots on the work agenda forces my happy-snapping habit into its minimalist regime. This isn’t so bad, as the pics that do manage to get taken are normally very much ‘greatest hits’ and no padding. Thus, this post: ‘Greatest Hits of the Last Several Days’!
First, here’s a masterpiece from Petrovich taken at dawn at Danxia:
Before you ask about the fly, let me make the introductions: please meet our pet fly, whom we carry around the world with us in a jar and sometimes let him out for a walk fly :).
And now for a brief rundown of my recent continent hopping…
October 2, 2017
What a week! A working week, I mean – and one that included both weekends each end of it.
It started on Saturday, September 9, and finished nine days later on Monday, September 18. It was long and it was tough – so quite typical really – and it went like this…
On the Saturday I needed to be in St. Pete – so I off I popped. As I’ve said before on these here pages, I don’t get one bit the bad rep St. Petersburg has in terms of weather. I’m sure it’s an anti-St.P rumor-based conspiracy. Why? Because when I come here the sun’s always shining and the Petersburgers are strolling about all leisurely and tanned – some even wearing shorts. It’s in Moscow where the bad weather’s at – all murky and sticky and blustery and rainy. Meanwhile in Leningrad…
When in St. Petersburg – have a Belgian craft burger ).
August 1, 2017
Now, it’s time for another travel-related installment.
Sanya is a good place to get some R&R by the sea and catch up on sleep; if only the holidays weren’t so short…. Once again it’s time to board a plane, and… twiddle my thumbs for 3.5 hours, waiting for departure clearance. Yeah, such things happen here every now and again. Later, I heard that at the same time, some people had to wait for 6 hours for their departure at Beijing airport! That would be enough to drive you mad… When you’re actually traveling in a plane, time passes much quicker than when your departure is delayed indefinitely, and you’re just sitting around in the airport building or in a plane next to the runway.
And finally we’re airborne!
This place is sunny, the clouds are fluffy white, it’s all cheery, and palm trees line the sandy beaches.
After we have flown a little deeper into mainland China, the weather changes dramatically into the more familiar Chinese climate. The clouds are quite thick, lined up in several layers, making sure the sun cannot break through to the land below…
Read on: multi-colored bowls of Huanglong and Lake Jiuzhaigou…
July 4, 2017
Sometimes the views you get out the window of a plane are simply fantastic. And sometimes I’m not behind on sleep, so I don’t just crash after the in-flight meal; instead, I get out my camera and get clicking. As I did recently over Lake Sevan in Armenia:
June 26, 2017
You though it (NZ) was all over? Nope. More! Whoah! Or, to be more precise – Whoakaari!
Here we are on White Island, known in the local dialect as Whakaari. We got here on a chopper. Whoakaari! Piloted by a really cool woman! Whoakaari!
Oh my gorgeous! Just look at the views we got up there. Almost as if it was all carefully painted, trimmed, and then Photoshopped!…
June 21, 2017
I’m taking a short break from my stories about New Zealand: firstly, I do not want to “overload” my readers, and secondly, I have something new to talk about.
A few sketches along the way last week, something like this:
1. Wow! What a great name for a business – ‘Ikar’! Obviously a subsidiary of ‘Daedalus’ airlines. Hard to believe anyone would deliberately board a plane named Icarus.
June 9, 2017
Hi all,
Herewith, a brief interlude from my NZ tales, since an equally interesting topic has come up…
Question: What was your longest ever flight? I mean – without a connection.
Why do I ask? Because I’ve just flown an uninterrupted long-haul silly-haul that went like this:
It was a reeeaaalllly long night. Though folks who live north of the Arctic Circle will scoff when I talk of ‘long nights’ (their ‘long night’ lasts half-a-year!), for me this was perhaps my longest ever night – at least down here in the lower-mid latitudes. The plane took off at 9pm NZ time – when it was already dark, and 16 hours later landed at 5am Dubai time; that is, almost at dawn. It gets dark in Auckland around 6pm at this time of year, so that night for me lasted 19 hours. A personal record, I do believe.
June 1, 2017
The brainteaser from yesterday’s post: ‘what’s not right in this [that] blogpost?’
Answer: the last three pix were of Melbourne! :)
Yep, for that was the next city on my itinerary. Now, I always like visiting Melbourne, but having to leave Sydney on the eve of its yearly Vivid festival to get to Melbourne, well, that’s just not cricket. Here are the pics from 2015 and 2013. Vivid Sydney is a festival that you really have to experience once in a lifetime if possible. There’s no other festival comes near. But I digress. Here we are… in Melbourne!
Another lovely city, but we saw hardly any of it this time: airport (‘welcome!’) > taxi > conference > speech (‘thank you, good bye, come again!’) > taxi > airport. And that was it! The only (non-work-related) thing worth taking photos of were… these here works of art on the walls of the hotel where the conference was taking place. Perplexing is the word I’d used to describe them. Mysterious too, perhaps. What do you think? Oh, and… what, exactly, are the pictures of? :)
Oh well; I’ll just have to show you some work-themed pics – from CeBit Australia conference:
May 29, 2017
So what is an exhausted business traveler to do in Japan after a tough working week? Easy: you get yourself to a traditional Japanese ryokan!
We did the ryokan thing in the town of Hakone. I wondered at first why my super hosts chose this particular spot; I found out a little later – it’s right next to a not fully dormant volcano ).
