The Long Way Around & UK Scenery

I have been sorting photos from the past years and came across this one. It was taken north of Manchester on the way back home from Edinburgh, Scotland. Believe it or not, we'd stopped at one of the motorway services for a rest and looked out through the window. A wonderful lake, and with the snow making things look even better. I remember it was amazingly quiet - the snow seems to dramatically dampen the sound of the traffic. Wish we were there again...

I received a DVD for Christmas (thanks mum and dad) called "The Long Way Around" and have just finished watching all of it (two DVDs). Ewan Macgregor and Charlie Boorman riding BMW 1150 bikes from London to New York heading east. A really good series to watch - worth looking for. Originally shown on TV (in UK, I guess) as a seven-part series.

Another day at the office. Letter from Evan & Kirsten when we got home after fighting the KL traffic at rush hour. Funny how it doesn't matter how much effort it invested in the KL roading network, the jams just keep getting bigger and bigger...

Looking for holiday destinations for the coming year - somewhere warm, a little quiet, and not too expensive. There are lots of places advertising around Phuket (etc.), but they all seem to be very expensive, or look like there will be a million German/French tourists lying around the pool (after they get up at 6:00am to use their towels to reserve a sun lounger until they're ready to use it around lunch time). Still, when you find a place that works out, the search is worth it.

Back to the letter - Evan's 40th birthday this year. Will mean another trip to Canada - late summer this time, which will bea nice time to visit. Looking forward to that.

First day back

Today was the first day back at work after the long break. Most of my teams are still away on holiday for the rest of this week, so it was a pretty slow day. Still, got a chance to complete a lot of tasks that had been outstanding for a while.

We're going through BS15000 certification (you may know it as ITIL) at the moment, so today's tasks included writing the Service Management Plan, Service Improvement Plan, and Account Management Plans.

Tomorrow promises to be another day in a similar vein, although it is Friday so leading up to the weekend is good. Nothing like a two-day week to ease back into things.

Chinese New Year

Gong Xi Fa Cai!

For us, this Chinese New Year was spent relaxing by the pool at Bon Ton in Langkawi. A great small hotel with only seven rooms and therefore somewhere that we could get away from the bustle of KL. We were lucky enough to catch a couple of great sunsets while sipping cool drinks on the deck next to the pool. The picture is from the second night - I did not have the camera with me on the first night, however the sunset on the first night was even better. We really didn't move from the hotel all weekend, and have now managed to catchup on sleep and generally relax.

It's been hard trying to get organised to log entries here as you can tell. I looked at the date and it's a month since the first (and only) post. Promise to try harder.

The past month was gone reasonably quickly with (business) trips to Singapore, Hong Kong, and Guangzhou. My first trip to Guangzhou, and it put paid to some preconceptions. Isn't that always the way? Much more developed than I'd expected.