Cool - me own blog!

Oh my God - where to even start!!!!!!!!!

OK - I've left Paris. The public transport strike threatened to slow passage though the city like it'd eaten an overdose of boiled eggs. Not only would the city be fed on them till it was blocked up - it would have a few shoved up the Khyber Pass for good measure to make sure no-one was going anywhere. But in true Paris style there were a few surprises. One of them was the beautiful dichotomy between the total and utter lack of available taxis (for us hoity toity business travellers), and the corresponding lack of other traffic on the road.

The streets of Paris normally have an incredible density of high speed, self propelled, manned, wheeled missiles hurtling around the city looking for yet another excuse to dance with death as they meet back at the Arc de Triumph. Yesterday... relative silence. Not the deathly silence that follows gran accidentally farting at Christmas dinner, just a relative silence, nice flowing traffic with spaces actually visible between the cars. So it was a nice, quick and easy ride to the airport once I'd actually managed to cad a lift with a colleague who is obviously a lot better at taxi booking than I am. I blame her looks although how they translate down a phone line I'm not sure.

Anyway - get to the airport and I'm bracing myself for a phone call from a customer that's not very happy for a variety of reasons. So when I find a seat and get spread out at the airport... the phone eventually rings and it's the salesman ringing to tell me the customer is especially upset because I hadn't gone to see them. The trivial situation of me not actually being able to get from the customer site to the airport afterwards seems to have been lost on them, the fact I would have had to sleep in their foyer, or on their front steps or... somewhere on their premise was somehow lost on them. I personally think they were looking for a fight, I personally think they had one. I'm not 100% sure.

I was on the phone and they were rabbiting away in French. To make it worse it was costing me quite a lot of money to be shouted at in a language I didn't know. I found that after a while my ears went numb and I was able to phase out and watch the airport wildlife as it paraded past in its multicultural glory. Every now and then I'd hear my name go roaring past in the tirade coming out of that tiny handheld speaker. Or the company name... which was even worse to me for some reason.

Anyway. The phone call ended and I quote "The customer is not very happy and I'll need to ring you back with an update". Remarkably I'd worked that out for myself but the assurances were nice.

So... onto the plane, take off, and fly directly to Amsterdam.. via Zurich... it was snowing in Zurich and the little ice crystals looked really cool when lit up by the strobe on the end of the wing. We're hurtling along at whatever speed and the flash of light is so damned fast the snowflakes are frozen in the air (terrible pun I know). I was fascinated.

Off the plane at Zurich and the very design of the airport makes transport between flights so easy. We were all like little wheels in a great big machine. How very Swiss. By contrast - my overwhelming memory of Zurich was the need for a pee while I walked toward the next flight. Never mind. It's a nice place.

Off to Amsterdam, the plane empties and we all head out to find the hotel bus. I see a quite senior guy from a major company we work with. I say hi - we get talking and start to feel the cold (It's heading into Winter up here... unlike NZ...). We get a cab, the bus is 20 minutes away and I can't be arsed waiting in the cold. Jim (cos that's his name... "Jim") and I get in the cab and the driver starts going on about how he'd been waiting at the airport for 4 hours and it was a short drive and he was going to give us a "fast fare". The poor man - stuck in a job he didn't enjoy, driving around in the cold, being forced to complain to complete stranger... and lacking an audience that cares even 1/2 a jot. It was funny though and oh how we laughed over the beer at the bar.

It's worth noting the theme of my travels this time is "things going wrong"... or "It's all my fault". It's not really my fault but I seem to have the aire of disaster following me so when the loverly bar lady smashed a glass behind the bar quite spontaneously it was no surprise. When my email refused to go keeping me awake to 4:00am trying to re-organise my travel schedule, when I got a knock on the door this morning by the nice man coming to fix the broken bulb in my shaving mirror and he smashed said mirror, and then he also smashed the replacement mirror... and... and ... and... it's just a lovely big pile of funny smelly poo really.

I'm glad I have my view on the world because I'm sure it would be enough to make some paranoid. C'est la vie. I need to make it home yet.

So here I sit. Timeless and location free. My system has no idea what time and where I am. I was adjusting quite nicely till my little sojourn into the wonderful world of broken email last night at a critical time - a time I'm trying to change flights, book hotels etc to make the most of what's turning out to be a trip which is sadly a complete waste of time. 2 weeks travelling around the world and through no-one's fault (except by default mine) various meetings have been poorly supported, events cancelled etc. Next week is looking better. In 24 hours this week ends. I close the curtains on its reign of disaster and all those other desperate turns of phrase that help me express how absolutely less than average it really is.

So - next week... looking quite bright really. I've just received word I have a very meaningful Monday and Tuesday which both promise to pay for the trip (Gawd they need to...!) .

Hopefully I haven't just put the curse on it.