The week that was November 16-20

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The week that was November 16-20

Singapore – Shanghai – Guilin – Yangshuo – Guilin – Shanghai – Singapore, Weekend 21-22 November 2015

The perils of travel around the globe
As the header may already indicate I am in for a fair bit of travel lately. While the site is gorgeously located in the middle of the Guiling Mountains which is famous for featuring on the back of the Chinese 20 dollar RMB note, the travel this time of the year is arduous to say the least. At this time of the year there are hardly any flights to and from Guilin due to being out of season and as a result we are left with travel options that are not in the least pleasant or attractive. After scouting around for the best link from Singapore to Guilin the route via Shanghai came out as the best solution albeit a very long one. As it turned out it took in the end 17 hours (!) from leaving my apartment in Singapore to reaching the hotel at destination in Yangshuo; though this was 2 hours longer than scheduled as we had to wait on arrival at Guilin Airport on arrival on a team member arriving on a delayed flight from Taipei. Transit and waiting times added to the overall duration. As I write this blog I am flying at 30,000 ft altitude on my way back from Shanghai to Singapore after another long nearly 4 hour transit time at the lounge earlier on. With the poor internet catching up on emails it was kind of a challenge there, but I got some work done. Now comfortable seated I can work on some fee proposals and finalise my presentation for next week’s event in Abu Dhabi. I will upload the blog over the weekend in the peace and comfort of home…

Airlines
Travelling is more or less inherent to our profession, at least in my case, with my projects located in and around Asia Pacific, which means a lot of travel. Only a very small part of my projects are in Singapore or Australia, my two adopted home countries and hence I find myself in a plane nearly every week. The “trick” when travelling is of course to take the shortest, fastest and safest route, but that is easier said than done. Singapore Airlines is my airline of choice and I have flown with them for more than 25 years and both the airline and Changi Airport have consistently been at the top as one of the best in the world. Operating out of Singapore this makes sense as the airline and its partners have an outreach to practically every major destination in the world. Sometimes however clients chose for you and you travel with “different” airlines. In this case China Eastern…it is not difficult to see why SQ economy class is about the same price as China Eastern business….

With the different airline alliances finding connecting partner airlines that provide smooth timing and connections are sometimes a big challenge. Luckily our travel expenses are generally separately reimbursable so once we have the travel request approved the costs responsibility is shifted to the client. The more you travel you more you appreciate the comfort and not surprisingly as principal of the company most of my travels today are business class avoiding budget airlines as much as I can.

Projects and Time zones
For a long time I have adapted the strategy to have my projects in the North-South axis with Shanghai in the north, Singapore in the middle, Perth in the South, Mumbai in the west and Manilla in the East as this keeps my activities more or less in the same time zone. However lately with the shifting economies, project locations seem to shift as well projects now pushed out as far the Africa, Middle East and Eastern Europe to the West and New Zealand and Polynesia to the East. This brings the added challenge of flights, flight connections (as direct flights are becoming more difficult), flight duration and time zone differences. Keeping up with the office during the trips is also more complicated because of the longer flights and time differences. Having a great team to back you up is essential and I am blessed with my team allowing me to go out there while making sure our clients remain fully satisfied with our support.

The week that was
It seem fitting to end this week with the red, white and blue lighting tribute to the Paris attacks that have appeared on landmark buildings around the globe in support of France; something that somehow sadly would not have been possible a few years ago if not for LED technology. While I applaud the tributes and outpouring of support I say sadly as it also exposes the fact that every landmark today for some reason has succumbed to the need to install RGB LED illumination, something that for 90% surely is driven by the Cowboy-esque approaches from the local manufacturers and suppliers. Cities who now cannot illuminate their treasures in RGB lighting are being regarded (and made to feel embarrassed) as, stingy, not going with the times and trends. When I looked at the amount of well-known landmark buildings lit in RGB (including Rio the Janeiro’s Christ statue and Jerusalem’s wall …really?) I was astounded…I had no idea that LED had penetrated so deeply and on landmarks that in my opinion do not need any of this and for some reason that scares me. Only a very few seem to have a temporary lighting projection installation (Brandenburg Gate in Berlin), but do we really need a world where at the flick of a switch we can turn the lighting into any random colour?

Here are some famous and some random images of buildings and city sites. I leave you to identify the landmarks…have a great weekend.