The week that was…12 – 16th November 2018

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The week that was…12 – 16th November 2018

Singapore – Mumbai – Bangkok – Singapore, Weekend 17-18th November 2018
As relatively quiet last week may have looked like, the more hectic and faster pace this week has been. From Singapore to Mumbai, on to Bangkok and back to Singapore, with meetings in Singapore on Monday before departure and Friday back on return, with very little sleep in between. I was glad to finally have a full night sleep last night…

Monday meetings
Before leaving for Mumbai I first had a project kick off meeting for a new prestigious restaurant in Singapore (our award winning and successful Atlas Bar project seems to have attracted some interest from new clients in the F&B sector). The project is confidential for now, but I am looking forward to share it with you once we get going. The meeting was followed by a conference call (tender follow up interview) for one of our projects in Malaysia where we are shortlisted for final confirmation. While they gave us the impression that it was more a matter of when rather than if in regards to our appointment, I have no illusion they may have spoken in the same way to the other shortlisted practice. Official appointment confirmation due in December…

Air #%$#@
A bit of ranting first…For my trip to India I had reluctantly accepted to fly one of the national carriers to fly to Mumbai as SQ was fully booked with little other options available to meet the project meeting time schedules. The airline listed the Dreamliner as the aircraft, so I thought how bad can it be…well it was…while I was prepared for the lesser service and food offerings…my business class seat reclining was hardly working and my TV screen had to be rebooted no less than 6 times (!) after which it still did not work. The remote was not working and the so-called touch screen was so far away that I had to unbuckle myself to even reach the screen. It did not work either anyhow. I decided to take it on the chin and just go to sleep in half-half reclined seat position. Strangely enough 30 mins before landing my TV screen decided it was going to work again…out of itself…

The return overnight flight was a total disaster. I thought that as long as I have a flat bed I can at least sleep. But lo and behold they had changed the aircraft from a Dreamliner to a 20-year-old A320 with seats only reclining about 10 degrees! Reason for the change? Not enough passengers to justify the Dreamliner…I can tell you the mood in the business class section was foul! I would not be surprised if many will file a complaint. I am considering…specifically as I had a connecting flight to Bangkok on arrival in Singapore in the early morning. Having some sleep on the overnight flight was really elementary in the overall scheme of my schedule…I did manage to have a quick shower in the lounge, but you can imagine how the lack of sleep impacted on the rest of my day! Not an airline I will reuse anytime soon…

Mumbai
Ranting aside, I did have a great time with fruitful meetings in Mumbai. The project had been on hold for about a year but we are back steaming ahead with the mock up room soon to be completed and the rest of the project’s design development moving fast forward. The meetings were held in the architect’s office in downtown Mumbai and saw the whole project team coordinating the design in a workshop style meeting over two days to update and bring everyone up to speed with the design changes. Architectural value engineering had compressed the building’s podium block from 8 stories to 7 stories, effectually integrating two levels of public areas (restaurants, spa, lounges, lobbies, etc) into one. A creative exercise but it all seemed to have worked out well. The two-storey convention centre housed in the basement “suffered” only minor changes. Over the coming weeks we will revisit our original concept designs and work everything to a level where we can move swiftly into DD stage. We are looking forward to finally move ahead with this prestigious project. While the actual project is in Delhi, the MUR is being built in in Mumbai, which we visited to see the work in progress…

Traffic jams
Going from Mumbai to Bangkok basically means you are moving from one traffic jam to another. In Mumbai over the 2 days I was there I spent nearly 7 hours in a car moving to and from hotel to the architects office and the MUR site. I added another 3 hours in Bangkok driving to and from the airport to site…I really can not understand how people can live in these cities, not only because of the traffic woes, but also the unhealthy air quality you need to “wade” through…

Bangkok
The Bangkok trip was very much a kick off meeting for me. The client only recently signed us on as part of the team and I look forward to develop the working relationship with them. While they are a big player in the Thai market, owning a bank, shopping malls, hotels and residences, they have so far hardly used any outside consultants for their projects, mostly being supported by their own inhouse design team in the past. Besides our architectural lighting services this project also will have opportunities to introduce our LDoT services in several areas. We really appreciate the client’s confidence in our services and will do our very best to deliver well beyond their expectations…

Governments
My return flight from Bangkok was delayed with a 2am arrival in Singapore as a result, but no let up there as I had Friday meetings and conference calls lined up. As it happened my brother, who works for the Dutch government, was in Singapore leading a delegation of government representatives, entrepreneurs in innovation, smart systems and blockchain technologies. When my brother invited me to join their delegation to visit the Future Cities Lab I grabbed the opportunity with both hands. Blockchain technologies are a potential opportunity for lighting so I wanted to know and understand more. But most of all getting inroads into governments is always difficult so the opportunity to connect to both the Singapore as well as the Dutch government delegations as well as the innovation research carried out by the Singapore universities was an opportunity not to be missed…

Enjoy the weekend

Mumbai in the morning…on our way to the meeting…impressions