Tag Archives: Personal

Book Thing

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My friend/colleague Elliot recently did the exercise over on his blog and I thought I’d follow suit.

The rules are:

1) Look at the list and bold those you have read.
2) Italicize those you intend to read.
3) Underline the books you LOVE.
4) Strike out the books you have no intention of ever reading, or were forced to read at school and hated.
5) Reprint this list on your own blog.

I’ve adapted this slightly, and have only highlighted things I’ve read.

1 Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings – JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronte
4 The Harry Potter Series – JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee
6 The Bible (yes I have read it all, The New International Version most recently thanks to Rob)
7 Wuthering Heights – Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four – George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials – Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations – Charles Dickens
11 Little Women – Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles – Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 – Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare ( yes I have, my father gifted me a copy of the complete works and I did spend an inordinate amount of time reading through it all)
15 Rebecca – Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit – JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong – Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye – JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveller’s Wife – Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch – George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind – Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby – F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House – Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace – Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited – Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment – Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland – Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows – Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina – Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield – Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia – CS Lewis
34 Emma – Jane Austen
35 Persuasion – Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe – CS Lewis
37 The Kite Runner – Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin – Louis De Bernieres (yes it was cos a chick recommended it)
39 Memoirs of a Geisha – Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh – AA Milne
41 Animal Farm – George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code – Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney – John Irving
45 The Woman in White – Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables – LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd – Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies – William Golding
50 Atonement – Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi – Yann Martel
52 Dune – Frank Herbert (many, many times)
53 Cold Comfort Farm – Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility – Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy – Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind – Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities – Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World – Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time – Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men – John Steinbeck
62 Lolita – Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History – Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones – Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo – Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road – Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure – Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary – Helen Fielding
69 Midnight’s Children – Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick – Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist – Charles Dickens
72 Dracula – Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden – Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island – Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses – James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar – Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons – Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal – Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair – William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession – AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol – Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas – David Mitchell (good, but not that good)
83 The Color Purple – Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day – Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary – Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance – Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web – EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven – Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (have the complete works, i loved this stuff, sad I know)
90 The Faraway Tree Collection – Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness – Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince – Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory – Iain Banks
94 Watership Down – Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces – John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice – Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers – Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet – William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory – Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables – Victor Hugo

The Conflict of Convictions

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Been feeling torn lately … so I’ve been reflecting a lot on why that is … was almost ironic that during my introspection I recalled a passage from one of Melville’s old poems, I’ve transcribed the piece below in full … 

    The Conflict of Convictions
       by Herman Melville

On starry heights
  A bugle wails the long recall;
Derision stirs the deep abyss,
  Heaven's ominous silence over all.
Return, return, O eager Hope,
  And face man's latter fall.
Events, they make the dreamers quail;
Satan's old age is strong and hale,
A disciplined captain, gray in skill,
And Raphael a white enthusiast still;
Dashed aims, at which Christ's martyrs pale,
Shall Mammon's slaves fulfill?

    (Dismantle the fort,
    Cut down the fleet--
    Battle no more shall be!
    While the fields for fight in æons to come
    Congeal beneath the sea.)

The terrors of truth and dart of death
  To faith alike are vain;
Though comets, gone a thousand years,
    Return again,
Patient she stands--she can no more--
And waits, nor heeds she waxes hoar.

    (At a stony gate,
    A statue of stone,
    Weed overgrown--
    Long 'twill wait!)

But God his former mind retains,
  Confirms his old decree;
The generations are inured to pains,
  And strong Necessity
Surges, and heaps Time's strand with wrecks.
  The People spread like a weedy grass,
  The thing they will they bring to pass,
And prosper to the apoplex.
The rout it herds around the heart,
  The ghost is yielded in the gloom;
Kings wag their heads--Now save thyself
  Who wouldst rebuild the world in bloom.

    (Tide-mark
    And top of the ages' strike,
    Verge where they called the world to come,
    The last advance of life--
    Ha ha, the rust on the Iron Dome!)

Nay, but revere the hid event;
  In the cloud a sword is girded on,
I mark a twinkling in the tent
  Of Michael the warrior one.
Senior wisdom suits not now,
The light is on the youthful brow.

    (Ay, in caves the miner see:
    His forehead bears a blinking light;
    Darkness so he feebly braves--
    A meagre wight!)

But He who rules is old--is old;
Ah! faith is warm, but heaven with age is cold.

    (Ho ho, ho ho,
    The cloistered doubt
    Of olden times
    Is blurted out!)

The Ancient of Days forever is young,
  Forever the scheme of Nature thrives;
I know a wind in purpose strong--
  It spins against the way it drives.
What if the gulfs their slimed foundations bare?
So deep must the stones be hurled
Whereon the throes of ages rear
The final empire and the happier world.

    (The poor old Past,
    The Future's slave,
    She drudged through pain and crime
    To bring about the blissful Prime,
    Then--perished. There's a grave!)

  Power unanointed may come--
Dominion (unsought by the free)
  And the Iron Dome,
Stronger for stress and strain,
Fling her huge shadow athwart the main;
But the Founders' dream shall flee.
Agee after age shall be
As age after age has been,
(From man's changeless heart their way they win);

And death be busy with all who strive--
Death, with silent negative.

    YEA, AND NAY--
    EACH HATH HIS SAY;
    BUT GOD HE KEEPS THE MIDDLE WAY.
    NONE WAS BY
    WHEN HE SPREAD THE SKY;
    WISDOM IS VAIN, AND PROPHESY.

I’m an INFP … apparantly …

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Earlier this week I took one of those Myers-Briggs Personality Type Indicator tests … and according to it … I’m an INFP which stands for Introversion, iNtuition, Feeling, Perceiving. I wasn’t quite sure how to react to that … I didn’t really think too much before taking the test, it felt like it was a bit of a joke, and afterwards I wasn’t too sure how to feel about it … largely because I didn’t fully understand what it meant … then I read this description of an INFP ..

The polite, reserved exterior of INFPs can at first make them difficult to get to know. They enjoy conversation, however, taking particular delight in the unusual. When INFPs are in a sociable mood, their humor and charm shine through. Disposed to like people and to avoid conflict, INFPs tend to make pleasant company.

Devoted to those in their inner circle, INFPs guard the emotional well-being of others, consoling those in distress. Guided by their desire for harmony, INFPs prefer to be flexible unless their ethics are violated. Then, they become passionate advocates for their beliefs. They are often able sway the opinions of others through tact, diplomacy, and an ability to see varying sides of an issue.

INFPs develop these insights through reflection, and they require substantial time alone to ponder and process new information. While they can be quite patient with complex material, they are generally bored by routine. Though not always organized, INFPs are meticulous about things they value. Perfectionists, they may have trouble completing a task because it cannot meet their high standards. They may even go back to a completed project after the deadline so they can improve it.

INFPs are creative types and often have a gift for language. As Introverts, they may prefer to express themselves through writing. Their dominant Feeling drives their desire to communicate, while their auxiliary iNtuition supplies the imagination. They enjoy metaphors and similes, having a talent for symbolism. They continually seek new ideas and adapt well to change. They prefer working in an environment that values these gifts and allows them to make a positive difference in the world, according to their personal beliefs

So there was something that felt familiar in all that … and for the most part It does feel familiar, although I don’t know why that admission makes me feel awkward. I asked a couple of friends of mine to read it and asked what they thought … they seemed to think it did reflect the kind of person I am … which on one hand feels pretty cool … but on the other hand the notion that my I, or anyone, can be analyzed and reduced down to a four letter acronym disturbs me quite profoundly.

A life of fascinations

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Truly inspirational … Nathan Myhrvold talks about a few of his latest fascinations — animal photography, archeology, BBQ and generally being an eccentric genius multimillionaire. Listen for wild stories from the (somewhat raunchy) edge of the animal world.

The Dream Called Life

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       The Dream Called Life

A dream it was in which I found myself.
And you that hail me now, then hailed me king,
In a brave palace that was all my own,
Within, and all without it, mine; until,
Drunk with excess of majesty and pride,
Methought I towered so big and swelled so wide
That of myself I burst the glittering bubble
Which my ambition had about me blown,
And all again was darkness. Such a dream
As this, in which I may be walking now,
Dispensing solemn justice to you shadows,
Who make believe to listen; but anon
Kings, princes, captains, warriors, plume and steel,
Aye, even with all your airy theatre,
May flit into the air you seem to rend
With acclamations, leaving me to wake
In the dark tower; or dreaming that I wake
From this that waking is; or this and that,
Both waking and both dreaming; such a doubt
Confounds and clouds our moral life about.
But whether wake or dreaming, this I know,
How dreamwise human glories come and go;
Whose momentary tenure not to break,
Walking as one who knows he soon may wake,
So fairly carry the full cup, so well
Disordered insolence and passion quell,
That there be nothing after to upbraid
Dreamer or doer in the part he played;
Whether tomorrow's dawn shall break the spell,
Or the last trumpet of the Eternal Day,
When dreaming, with the night, shall pass away.

            -- by Edward Fitzgerald

Something Inside So Strong …

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The last few days have been quite enlightening. Our offices at Talis were closed on Thursday and Friday as the entire company took part in a two day internal conference for all employees which was held at Warwick University. I’ve never worked for an organisation before that shut down shop for two days so its emloyees could learn about each other and what the various parts of the business did. Sounds surreal right? and I suppose that’s how it felt to begin with.

The conference was two days long and comprised of 26 featured presentations by colleagues from every part of the business as well as a dozen or so three minute lightning talks. There were also a number of breakout sessions where staff split off into their respective divisions and worked on discussing issues around vision, ethics and culture.

From my perspective it was hugely valuable and gave me an opportunity to listen to colleagues from other parts of the business, whom I ordinarily wouldn’t have really gotten to speak to or have ever really gotten to know – thats a failing on my part. In fact this realisation was part of the reason I did a relatively spontaneous lightning talk during which I put up pictures of cartoon characters and revealed the names of colleagues that, from my personal perspective, embodied the characteristics of each character – this was a variation of a game that Sarah often uses when she asks us to think of a character that embodies us on a good day, or when we are in a happy place, and a character that embodies us on a bad day :). The point I wanted to make though was that out of roughly 90 people in the company I could only really do that for maybe twenty: that’s how many people I felt I had enough of a rapore with, and felt comfortable enough around to be able to do that. So if we were here as a group talking about the direction of the company, our shared ethos and developing a culture then how could we do that unless we first got to know who we are. I think the point was well received, and I do believe that events like this internal conference are definitely a step in the right direction and serve as a great way of bringing us together. Oh and incidentally for those who are curious here’s the two characters that I believe reflect my good and bad sides …


click on either for more details

On the friday afternoon, I had to give the penultimate presentation. Rob and I were asked to put together a presentation about our recent trip to WWW2008 in Beijing, and to talk about why the trip was important for the company, and for each us as individuals. Rob and I wanted the presentation to be amusing, however since Rob wasn’t going to be at the conference in person, we had a bit of a challenge on our hands. We opted to record a bunch of pre-canned videos with rob in various guises (including Princess Leia), and I had to work each of the clips in as I was talking. I think it went down really well, the first half of the talk focussed on the conference itself, the people we met formed relationships with, and the importance of that to us as individuals and the company. The second half of the presentation was about the five of us who went and what the journey meant to us a individuals and how it brought us closer as a team. I used a slideshow of photos from the trip which was overlayed with a some music ( well it was me playing my flute ), I talked about the journey we went through, and how dealing with adversity is what often brings teams, or any group of people, together. I finished with a slide that said “a journey is best measured in friends, rather than miles“. I wasn’t sure how this half of the talk would be perceived since it deliberately lacked the outlandish humour of the first half. Yet if the response I got from everyone who came up afterwards is anything to go by, then I think it was really well received.

Our CEO Dave Errington gave the final talk of the conference, and offered a very personal perspective of Talis and what it means to him. It was a brilliant talk, and quite inspired, although my heart did skip a beat at the end when he put a slide that said “the journey is its own reward”, since I had used the same quote on my final slide but removed it about half hour before I presented since I didn’t think I had enough time to explain fully what I meant.

After the conference we all headed to the venue for the Summer Ball and spent the evening eating, drinking and some people even danced 😉 it was a great way to end two days of collective thinking and sharing of ideas and vividly recall as I left the ball around midnight feeling very happy, and in many ways re-invigorated.

I spent most of yesterday recovering from the conference and the ball, and also reflecting on it all which is why I’m writing this piece. I spent some time thinking about what the conference had taught me about the people I work with as well as a few things I’d learn’t about myself. At some point yesterday evening, I was sitting and reading through some notes when my ipod randomly shuffled to a song I hadn’t heard in a very long time … and as I listened to it I realised that it epitomises the image I have in my mind of the kind of people I work with, the kind of people make up Talis, and the kind of ethos we share, the resilience we have, the “fuck off great big ambitions” and dreams we share (as Dave put it), … that something inside that is so strong …

A Dream Within A Dream

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       A Dream Within a Dream

Take this kiss upon the brow!
And, in parting from you now,
Thus much let me avow --
You are not wrong, who deem
That my days have been a dream;
Yet if hope has flown away
In a night, or in a day,
In a vision, or in none,
Is it therefore the less gone?
All that we see or seem
Is but a dream within a dream.

I stand amid the roar
Of a surf-tormented shore,
And I hold within my hand
Grains of the golden sand --
How few! yet how they creep
Through my fingers to the deep,
While I weep -- while I weep!
O God! can I not grasp
Them with a tighter clasp?
O God! can I not save
One from the pitiless wave?
Is all that we see or seem
But a dream within a dream?

        --by Edgar Allan Poe

Revelation

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    1913 A Boy's Will
       Revelation

WE make ourselves a place apart
Behind light words that tease and flout,
But oh, the agitated heart
Till someone find us really out.
'Tis pity if the case require
(Or so we say) that in the end
We speak the literal to inspire
The understanding of a friend.
But so with all, from babes that play
At hide-and-seek to God afar,
So all who hide too well away
Must speak and tell us where they are.

          -- by Robert Frost

WWW2008 – Day Three

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The full WWW2008 Conference got under way yesterday with a Opening Ceremony that involved music and dancing and fancy lights. There were some introductions from key dignatories, before the Plenary Keynote by Google’s Dr Kai-Fu Lee. He talked about Cloud Computing and explained how it liberates the user from having to remember where data is, how it enables the user to access information from anywhere, and how cloud computing makes services faster and more powerful by leveraging what could be an infinite amount of information and massively scalable infrastructure. He explained at a high level how Google uses thousands of small cheap servers rather than fewer large expensive servers in order to create a massive network of commodity servers that form its cloud, he explained how replication works and how every piece of information is replicated to at least three different servers in this cloud. we also learned a little about how Google’s Translate service works and saw some examples of how and why its better than many of the alternatives out there.

After the keynote I went to to the Panel discussion on The Future of Online Social Interactions: What to Expect in 2020. The discussion was about how Online social interactions will evolve in the next decade – I didn’t get a lot out of this discussion it was hard take bits of it seriously, I found the thought that one might review someones rating, before allowing them to come over and sleep on one’s couch just a little far fetched … or am I just too cynical?


After lunch I attended the W3C Track, in which Tom would be giving his presentation on Linking Open Data. Tom presented this with Chris Bizer and they both did a great job conveying both the importance of opening up data and then linking data. Following Tom’s talk Raphael Troncy gave a short presentation on Semantic Multimedia, most of which I had already seen earlier in the week during his tutorial session on the same subject, nevertheless it was a good presentation. The final talk in the session was given by Huajun Chen on Semantic Web Development in China. This was a really useful talk that gave us an insight and a sense of how much Semantic Web research is going on in China – which was encouraging to hear and also very impressive.

Following the afternoon break I went to the Panel Discussion on WWW in China. This proved to be very useful, not only did we get a sense of the kind of WWW research going on in China we get a very real sense of how much academics from the various universities represented by the panelists want to engage with their colleagues outside of China to further their research. Some of the specific research discussed included Spam Filtering, Search Clustering, Modelling and Mining the emergent web etc. After the talk I got a chance to talk briefly with one of the panelists, Professor Xiaoming Li (pictured), from Peking University and suggested to him that the data he and his colleagues where capturing and mining from the web might be ideally suited to being modelled in RDF and Linked to other sources which he seemed to think was an interesting idea. I offered our help which he seemed to welcome 🙂

Since this was the final session of the day we headed back to the hotel. Rob suggested that he wanted to skip going to the evening Reception in favour of exploring Beijing on foot and taking some pictures. Chris and Paul decided that they wanted to go to the reception and meet up with Tom ( and make sure he came out with us for a bite to eat 😉 ) so I decided to go on walkabout with Rob. Turned out to be a great decision – I haven’t had so much fun in ages.

I don’t know how far we walked but we were walking for a couple of hours, we explored the area around the new National Stadium, and whilst it is still a building site no one said anything to us in fact everyone was really polite and very welcoming. I have traveled a great deal in my life and it’s very rare that I’m out and about anywhere and don’t feel that I need to be alert in fact I’m usually always aware of my safety. Yet, yesterday, as we wandered around with our Camera’s in our hands, snapping pictures of anything and everything at dusk and into the night, I never once felt unsafe or felt the slightest bit of anxiety – I loved that. I haven’t had so much fun in very long time. I also learned a lot about my buddy Rob, he was behaving like a school kid at times, climbing up onto pallets of bricks, or onto a crane, to take pictures, willing to walk to anyone and say hello, At one point late into the evening we stopped near the stadium and Rob was trying to ask a bunch of young police officers if they could give him permission to get onto something higher to take a picture. Obviously they didn’t understand english and he doesn’t speak a word of Chinese and yet we were all laughing as they tried to translate what he was saying.
It was good to see him laughing so much …sometimes I think Rob thinks too much about things, we are both very similar in that respect, we can become hugely introspective … but I know we all need to let our hair down from time to time and just have fun … and we did! As some of the pictures show.

Later in the evening Paul, Chris, Tom, Denny and Gloria met up with the two of us and we all headed to a restaurant that Rob and I had passed on our walk that we thought looked nice, it turned out to be a wonderful place and we all had a wonderful meal, before heading back to the hotel. Rob and I did walk back over to the Stadium to take some more pictures and this is when he got permission to climb up onto one of the cranes on the building site to take a few pictures.

All in all I had a great time at the conference yesterday and one of the most memorable evenings I have had in a very long time exploring a strange new city with a great friend.

I have just uploaded just under 200 more pictures to my flickr account here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/kiyanwang/

Got to Beijing, more or less in one piece

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It’s 10:30am on Monday 21st April local time here in Beijing as I sit in a hotel room and reflect on the last 36 hours. It feels like its been a long and arduous journey my whole body seems to be aching which is unusual.

The journey began in Birmingham on Saturday evening, my brother and uncle dropped me off at Birmingham International Airport at about 6pm. I checked in with no difficulty at all and gave Rob a quick call to let him know I had arrived and was going to proceed through security into the departure lounge. As I walked towards to the security checks I ran into Tom who had just arrived at the Airport and told him where the check in counter was and that I’d be with Rob in the departure lounge. Tom walked off to get checked in and I went and queued to get through the security checks.

That’s where the fun and games began. Once I was clear of the metal detectors and had my hand luggage, I was stopped by a police officer who took me to one side to ask me a few questions. He asked me where I was going, to which I replied China via Dubai. He asked me why I was going there, to which I replied For a Conference, I’m presenting a paper on the Semantic Web. Oh man was that a mistake. I spent the next twenty minutes filling out embarkation cards, which ominously had Terrorist Act written at the bottom of them in tiny font. I was repeatedly asked if my company had given me any travel advice from the Foreign Office? whether I was some kind of expert in my field? What is the Semantic Web? Whether I thought China was a good place to be having a conference? Whether I had ever been approached by Chinese Officials? Did my Company routinely send people to China? … it went on and on …

I was left trying to explain The Semantic Web to someone who admitted he only kind of had an idea of what eBay and Google was. At this point I was getting visibly shaken, having been stood there for over twenty minutes. I simply didn’t know whether the officer believed a single word I was saying. It occurred to me that I had my Letter of Invitation from the Conference Organisers which I handed to the Officer, and then explained that the Conference was an annual event and each year the venue changed. I remember thinking, cool now he know’s why I’m going – the letter kind of proves that, now I have to convince him I’m actually presenting. So, rather comically, I reached into my laptop bag and pulled out a copy of Nodalities Magazine, which contains not only an article I’ve written but also picture of me, and intimates that I along with some of my colleagues would be presenting at the annual WWW2008 conference. This seemed to convince him a little more, or at least I thought it did until he started asking all the same questions all over again.

At this point I semi lost my temper. I played the only card I had left, and told him to phone Inspector Williams who heads up security at the airport and ask him to vouch for me. On reflection I hate the fact that it came to that, but I was becoming rather frightened, and trust me … Orange is not a good color on me, and I was starting to have visions of me wearing an orange jump suit.

At that point the officer took my letter of invitation, my passport and disappeared behind a security screen. I was left waiting anxiously. It was at that point that Rob wondered back into the security check area. He had been waiting in the departure lounge for me for almost half an hour and had become worried that I had not appeared, so wondered back in to see where I had disappeared to.

He saw me standing at the police check counter and walked over and asked me if I was ok. I explained what was happening and he made a joke about it, which was good actually because it calmed me down. Anyway Rob stood their with me, which was a wonderful gesture, and even as I sit here and write this I’m still touched by it. The officer returned with my things and then apologised for detaining me, and said he hoped he hadn’t caused any offence, and told me I could go. At this point it’s important to point out that whilst I didn’t enjoy the experience one bit, the officer in question was impeccably polite.

Rob and I went and sat in the departure lounge and it took me a few moments to compose myself. In fact it took a bit longer than that, the entire episode played in my mind for much of the evening. It’s sad but it’s the world we live in.

Rob and I waited around for Tom, who eventually arrived through security and the we walked through to one of the private departure lounges that I had access to, and I signed the guys in as my guests and we sat and relaxed and waited for Chris. The flight was delayed a little while so comfort of the private lounge with free snacks and drinks gave us a chance to natter and me a chance to gather my equilibrium a part of me was still seething but also rather shaken by events. Tom repeatedly asked me if I was ok as did Chris, whilst Rob repeatedly made fun of me … which was probably exactly what I needed … thanks buddy!

We finally boarded  about 9:30, I was sitting next to Rob for the flight so played chess, chatted, and I think we both managed to get some sleep. We arrived in Dubai seven hours later for a four hour stop over. We got off the plane but Tom got separated from us. Rob, Chris and myself got through the Connecting Flights security bit but there was no sign of Tom anywhere and we started to worry a little bit that he had stayed  on the bus might have ended up in immigration control. It was at that point Paul found us and we explained how we had lost Tom … but not for long he turned up and explained the bus had stopped at a different entrance.

We had a quick  look around at some of the electronic gadgets on sale and then walked back to one of the private lounges at the airport, I signed the guys in and we had chilled in there for the next few hours. Had some wonderful food, drink, chatted, took photos, some of us even took the opportunity to get showered as we waited for our connecting flight.

This flight was also approx seven hours long, I spent this leg of the journey sitting next to Chris. We also played chess and talked a lot about work and ideas we had. Paul joined us for a while as did Rob and we had a great time just chatting about work, ideas, the conference, etc. We even managed to take some photos on the plane.

We arrived in Beijing airport at about 11pm local time and since none of us had flown here before we had no idea what to expect. We were all amazed at the sheer spectacle of the terminal. It is an amazing looking building not to mention absolutely huge … we had to catch a train from immigration to where we collected our baggage … that’s how huge!

We found our way out of the airport and ended up waiting in the longest queue ever for a taxi. Eventually a guy in a toyota hiace wondered over to us and offered us his services so we accepted and arrived at the Beijing Continental Hotel at 2am – only to discover that the had given our rooms away. We were all getting a little annoyed but eventually the hotel agreed to put us up in another hotel for the night and collect us in the morning – in fact I’m sitting in the taxi waiting for the others to check out as I write this.

All in all it feels great to be in China, I think I’ve managed to put the emotions of the earlier parts of this journey behind me. Now I just want to look forward to the conference and having the opportunity to speak to and interact with some amazing people.