Travel Notes for 2012 reflections at Christmas time

Christmas  Tree in Beach Rotana Abu Dhabi Dec 2012

Advent, the season leading up to Christmas is a time of rush and reflection in Australia. Those final trips to customers, the school concerts with parents and close of the year and the change of season to Sydney summer strong and hot every day, in the evening with the bright sky pushing in through the windows, flung open for any breeze possible. With Christmas tree lights flashing, I reflect on the year gone by. A year of much action in Invensys.

The sound of the cornets and tambours come floating through from the streets of Seville, where the streets full of flamenco colors where trams stroll along with the crowds and the bands in procession.

 where down the road are bullfights  We sip Mojito's after a long conference day [no siesta mind]and at midnight cathedral bells on automatic peal out into the Spanish air.  Large technical companies have many product gurus who need to get together and sales conferences have an opportunity for discussions all at the same time. It was here I met up with our Russian team from Moscow. We talk over things, chat, and come up with new ways to cooperate. We talk till 3:00 am at a restaurant where everything was 2 euro, among the bullfighters fresh from their.. How did Hemingway put it.?. in any case where the sun also rises. Sleepless but happy in Seville.

And no sleeping either in Madikwe, South Africa, a flat ancient grassland along the Botswana border, that day an Elephant decided to chase us hard in frustration while we discussed graphic scenery on multiple screens and SCADA object deployment and scanning drivers in the wild. Yet the animals in their own society lived in complexity, just like our own company with it's multiple product lines engineering teams, conference calls and meetings. That same society now expanded this year through the use of social networking and blogs, just like this one, now a year old. Technical blogs can be somewhat esoteric. Still dawn cold in the game park is magic and a joy to watch the buffalo, elephants, rhino. The tracker scanning the horizon for animals to watch and photograph.

Back in Foxboro USA, the Patriots played football, and the friendly Parrotheads turned up for their annual Jimmy Buffett concert. Yet before this I had landed in Los Angeles with an empty revolving luggage belt because lightning was all around on the airfield apron. Our HQ is in Boston and Rick Morse, our fearless leader was leading technology reviews at the time.

Moscow's weather was variable from sunshine to freezing rain forming balls of ice on your hair on contact.  They said I should have brought a coat and ditched the flip-flops on arrival - no surfing in Moscow.  Traffic was tough to.  Taxi's measuring cost in terms of time rather than distance, but if you like you can just flag down anyone an pay them to take you places.  All the same, I got used to walking places and down in the subway you can buy things from small kiosks… my eyeglasses broke, and have you ever tried to fix eyeglasses in a foreign country with no tools and no spare pair ?  I ended up in an electronics superstore looking for pliers and screws and.. Ok a magnifying glass.  What a way to spend a sub zero Saturday. At night we either frequented the 100 Tons or the restaurant across the road where one Friday night I think, no I am sure I saw a whole bull calf being roasted on a spit, while I sipped my simple traditional Borscht soup. I definitely have to thank Lydia Bolotina for her assistance @ Invensys Moscow. 

Spasibo i schastlivogo Rozhdestva

Christmas also makes you think of food and obviously restaurants, there is a wine bar down in San Viejo where our cyber-security guru Paul takes time out to play double bass solo. I was there because when travelling you just have to nab people wherever they hang out, and sometimes after hours.

But sometimes it's really nice to be invited to stay at one of our colleagues places and down in Johannesburg I stayed with Dawid Sadie and his wife, with 3 Shar Pei dogs and thanks we had a Braai together. The dogs barked each morning as soon as I stirred.  No matter how quietly I got up and crept to the bathroom, the dogs would bound up the stairs and give me a brash welcome with their friendly slippery fur coats they have. Wonderware South Africa has an excellent client base and a great team of people to support them and they really put on a show at their X-Change 2012 conference in Sun City. If you click on the link you will find a chance to get there for 2013. Definitely recommended.

The desert down in Al Ain - So glad the car operated just fine at 100mph in 50C heat.  Great radiators and air conditioning are essential.

In Xuzhou China the cabs are all blue. We were there meeting up with Sinopec.You get in and directions are given and the drivers take off at speed. Paul Kevin and I had to plead extensively with the driver to please stop and put the trunk down.  Eventually he did and the luggage was secured with a bang, followed by the door and the exhaust as we started off again.  Now it's a bit unfair since I know that most people can't read blogger sites in China.  I have to figure out how to get this content hosted there in the New Year.

I landed in Dallas in August, then drove down to Austin for the ISA Sales and Marketing conference.  Life at the classic Texan grandeur of the Driskill hotel where we met on the mezzanine and discussed, just how do you use social networking in our industry ? A fantastic group and I was happy to be on the panel run by Julie Fraser along with peers in marketing from Siemens and Yokogawa. They told me I was on a haunted floor - but typically too busy on conference calls to notice any temperature change or creeping creaking floorboards. Maybe next time.  Our team captain lives in Milwaukee, and I had the opportunity to drop in and have a guiness on tap in his basement bar.  My twitter avatar captures a moment in the telephone box installed there. Now I have facebook friends and twitter followers including some of my competitors.

It's been a good year, if your reading this blog and you remember anything of the events described, please feel free to add or comment on some of the wild inaccuracies there may be contained within.  Over the course of the holidays downunder I should add some graphics to the experience.  

Certainly I met and discussed SCADA and it's science with so many people it is impossible to name them all.  I kept business cards and many happy memories which is great to reflect on coming into Christmas week.

Would like to wish all bloggers and reader a happy Christmas and also best wishes for the New Year 2013.

CJS - Abu Dhabi.