Showing posts with label Business travel. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Business travel. Show all posts

Monday, November 26, 2007

C.R.A.P.

Phone in loo
Undesirable placement of telephone and toilet

I'm now safely back home after my jaunt to the Far East and recovering from 18 hours of being cooped up in a metal tube and forced to consume some kind of substance purporting to be food. But fortunately I avoided the gastrointestinal difficulties that have in the past made traveling in far off lands a miserable experience. Indeed following a trip to New Delhi a few years ago, I remember praying for death for several days after making innumerable trips, mostly on my hands and knees, to the bathroom. But that's a story for another day. However I do wish to comment on the growing, and to the mind of this old microbiologist, the quite rebarbative trend in so-called luxury hotels of placing extra telephones adjacent to toilets. The last thing I want to do when I'm, err, doing my ablutions, is to receive incoming phone calls. And if I make a call to someone I certainly don't want to talk to them while they are otherwise engaged. Most of all it has to by unhygienic as by definition the user cannot have washed their hands. It's beyond the pale. I'm going to start a movement (pun intended) which I'm going to call the Campaign for the Removal of Ancillary Phones (CRAP).

While we're on the subject Chertz makes a related observation.

Friday, November 16, 2007

On The Road Again, Again

thailand-buddha-temple1

Once again I'm heading off the airport. There's been a lot of travel on the agenda this year and I've still got two major trips before the end of the year. On this occasion I'm going to Thailand, a land I've not yet visited and I'm excited. I should get in a couple of days sightseeing on either side of the conference. And if there's time I'll try one of those "body treatment programs" the hotel brags about on its website. The problem with these jaunts to far-flung places is the opportunity to acquire interesting new gut flora which in the past has resulted in me praying for death for as long as a week. So this time I'm armed with a bag full of contingency pharmaceuticals including cipro. Fingers crossed it will be enough. Hopefully I'll manage a post or two from the road. More soon...

Wednesday, August 15, 2007

Out of Town

Alaska

Today I'm off to the smogbound hellhole that is Orange County in Southern California to discuss a collaboration. Blogging is thus on hold until after I'm back from Mickey Mouse land on Friday...