welcome to the buffer zone

Chained to a desk today.

A big project to finish which involves me from more or less when I wake up until when I go to sleep. The travelling around I do can also create accumulations of other tasks that don't get done.

Despite taking conference calls on headsets from airport lounges up to the minute I get asked to switch off the phone on the plane and sitting in coffee bars with PC fired up tapping away at the workload, it can still create a backlog of activity.

And, to be truthful, don't most of us look at 'people like that' with a slight groan. Eek - I am (sometimes) a blackberry and iphone totin' one of them.

And then, tonight, dealing with a foreign system that won't accept my uploads long after sensible people are in the pub or watching telly.

Time for some brain defrag.

Esta noche vamos a volver tarde

Sometimes things can get a bit random.

There was a moment when I stepped into the lift to reach my floor and accidentally pressed 4 instead of 10 (its easily done?) and found myself in a metal catacomb.

I staggered around for a while, suitably wild eyed, until I spotted the lift area on the outside of the building and got back into one of those bubble-lifts to reach my own floor. Only a momentary glimpse of someone else's world, but even a short view can provide a new perspective.

Same with the city. First time for me, but I can feel the appeal.

football interlude supporting a different team

The way to a mid afternoon meeting on Tuesday also encountered huge quantities of traffic. Partly the Metro strike, but I suspect there was another matter affecting everything.

The Spain vs Portugal match was to be that evening, and the city needed to be prepared.

With England already down and out, the natural thing was to switch allegiance for this match to the local team. Of course, the central area was somewhat overcome with the double bonus of being in the next round AND to play their nearest neighbours, oh, and to win.

So the temperature of an already hot Spanish evening clicked up a few more notches, and then the car horns and the whooping and firecrackers and finally what can best be described a small home-made bombs were being let off around the streets.

I decided it was safer to get back to the midnight party in the club at the top of the hotel.

Es para uso personal

An early sunrise view across to the four towers dominating the downtown skyline and then into a five minute breakfast before I was to be met at the hotel.

The world suddenly slowed down. A metro strike was in progress. I didn't need to use it, but everyone else who did had decided to take to the roads. We skittered through back streets and twisted through on ramps to the motorway system but it didn't help. Madrid had decided to go slowly. Luckily my companion knew her way around and we criss-crossed the city to be within five minutes of the planned arrival time for the first meeting.

But.

They didn't have a parking space for us and the roadside ones stretched full for at least fifteen minutes in each direction around this sleek modern high tech building. "No hay problema", said my colleague as she parked blocking the exit from the complex and called the PA of the person we were due to meet. A few moments later we were back inside, in my case having to leave the car, walk through security scanners and re-join the vehicle.

That was before they took my passport.

in which I get caught in a space vortex

When I moved the chair in this room, it made a sound that reverberated like that scene near the end of Kubrick's 2001. You know, when the spaceman is kept in that white room.

My room's black though; I had to choose it from a menu when I arrived here. Apparently each floor was designed by a different architect. There was a floor that looked like something out of another Kubrick. That swirly white curved bar where the droogs met.

I couldn't decide easily though, so chickened out and chose the highest floor on offer. The theme is Japanese, with lots of sliding panels and a box-shaped wooden bath next to the minimalist high tech shower which also has lots of minature nozzles. I've probably dropped into a Murakami novel.

Thinking back, it started right from the airport. It's what they call 'ultramodern' in its design and if I'd had more time I'd have marvelled even at the strange jet contraptions in the baggage hall. I'm pretty sure that if I was a space traveller, this city's terminal would be the type I'd be leaving from. I'm wondering if the nozzles have somehow rearranged the molecules around here.

But next I must figure out how to power the room down. There's several mystery buttons which, if pressed, cause large machinery noises to occur but no apparent change to anything in the room. And there's a button by the bed that buzzes intermittently as if to say 'press me'.

Oh well, here goes.

hips don't lie

No time for pop-up tents this weekend, so Glastonbury is missing its compliment from rashbre central for the first time in ages. Otherwise the wellies, sunnies, sunscreen and looroll would be in the compact backpack.

We are monitoring it, though, and consider that Groove Armada easily trumped Gorillaz yesterday evening.

Today I was practicing Spanish for next week with Shakira whose set shimmied with panache and earlier Mumford and Son drove some good folkiness ahead of Laura Marling who we'll fully support. And later tonight supermassive Muse (excuse the Britney 2007 blend) playing anthems, classical chords, Zep riffs and bits of Vienna whilst bathing everyone in light.

Between the footie, Wimbledon and Glasto, I'd easily select the music festival as the venue of choice, not just for the music, but for the rounded experience.

But I'm probably a bit of a hippy at heart.

The dragon around sunrise at the Healing Fields

in which the Pimms loosens the brain

Its been a hectic few days for me with a rather wide range of challenges and a consequently diminutive amount of blog posting. There's probably an inverse square law about blogging content and time, and I suspect I'm suffering from it right now.

It amounts to lots happening but a consequent lack of time (and in some cases technology) to scribble it into the blog. Add to that the rather generous Pimms I've just been handed and I can see why it can sometimes all go rather wobbly.

A few days ago I was in a car park next to a colleague's car. He opened the back doors and out hopped two smart looking Rottweilers, who immediately wanted to become my next best friends.

He'd driven them to the meeting (a round trip over two days of circa 700 miles) because his wife was away and of course they needed to be looked after. They were as good as gold whilst we attended the meeting and then he was going to take them onward to an expedition in the scenic area we'd reached for the meeting.

I, meantime, was planning the equally long drive home.

I guess the point of this is to remember the work/life thing and to figure the ways to integrate things together as much as possible, Sometimes the work wins for a while (like it is with me at the moment) but the trick is to find ways to redress the balance rather than let it become too one-sided.

In other news, four red arrow planes just flew over the garden low enough to make ripples in the Pimms. Brilliant.

My artist's impression of the two Rottweilers is slightly inaccurate; the triangular ears pointed downwards and they were not green. They did have those spiky collars.

Trains, Planes and Automobiles

No prizes for guessing Switzerland today.

I travelled part of the way in a smooth and exceptionally punctual IC train as I headed from Geneva for my meeting.

It's another country where scenery police outlaw unsightly views and I noticed even the towering cranes in Lausanne had Edelweiss pictures adorning them to assist them to blend in.

window seat

I still prefer the window seats on planes.

Plenty of people prefer aisle seats so that they can get out without disturbing others and so forth, but I'm still a sucker for the view. I can't help it, but I like looking out of the window. Whether its clouds, distant planes, stars, or the ground on a fortunate day with clear views, I just prefer to have the option.

Thursday its the Alps, as we travelled back from Italy, and there was good views of mountains, lakes, winding roads and snow. It may not bee cool to be taking photos of this, but I don't care. Its great to see the earth from this viewpoint.

Milan again

From meetings in Kingston upon Thames in the morning to the streets of Milan by the early evening, on the way to a cafe for a light evening meal.

I was staying centrally in preparation for tomorrow's meetings, which were in the same part of town. Milan's central streets can be as busy as London, so an optimum location for the morning could save vital minutes.

I didn't hear the England score until I was in Italy and still only have the vaguest notion of how the team performed.

continuous wavelet transforms mark an entire region in the time-scale plane

Another hectic day of meetings today, whilst also trying to get a piece of major project moved along. Som etim es the re are ju st to o man y inte rru ptions.

The most productive time was when I escaped alone, for an hour, in a small park, where I was able to set up a mini work environment in the sunshine.

I did have all the technology - laptops and blackberries - around me, but the simplest pencil and paper solution allowed me to make some good progress on getting the stuff done.

Tomorrow it's Wednesday, so it must be Milan.

bread on the night

I was sent on a mission involving an unusual aisle of the supermarket during the weekend.

My target was to find moulding icing, which is not part of my usual spectrum of shopping possibilities. The risk was that it would take me at slow speeds close to areas that I don't usually visit. Multiple passes too, because it wasn't called moulding icing and came in a chunky oblong box in a choice of white or ivory*.

The danger of slow speed meant I'd have time to note the adjacent area containing the flours and bakery products. I loitered just too long in the bread-making area. Like a tractor beam those stone ground flours were beckoning, along with various brands of baker's yeast.

First, and almost accidentally, a pack of seeded flour fell into my trolley, and then a couple of others, with me partly drawn to the brightness of the packaging and those cursive artisan scripts.

I knew I'd gone too far, when I arrived home and found myself smuggling the heavy bag of excess baking products past the security scanners. There was nothing for it, I'd have to get my hands into some dough.

Hours passed and that tell-tale aroma of bread in preparation began to waft through the scene. Would I be rumbled? Not as I was also preparing a relatively spicy evening meal.

By the next morning, it was too much to hide. The first bread was ready in all its glory. I like to think of it as different in a good way from the bread in the supermarkets. And it seems to have met with approval. It's only Monday and we are onto the second loaf.

And the moulding icing? The expresso cake guitar it eventually adorned as frets and fingerboard was also a great success.

*- reading this back, I'm slightly surprised if it was really called Ivory in these sensitive times. But I know it wasn't called beige.