All but four of you missed a cracker of an event in Singapore last week. Honestly….you must come next year. Pencil it in the diary for the 1st week of June and I will keep you in touch once dates are confirmed. My restaurant choice was not that bad and in general I behaved much better than last year when there was an incident involving a bamboo tree in a pot on the walkway back to my hotel ( think Mt Kinabalu ) although I let myself down just once on which more later.
There were 163 companies from Asia and Japan available to meet with and outside of that an eclectic series of fascinating presentations ( see attached agenda ) none of which I even came close to falling asleep in. Furthermore the Ritz-Carlton is a great venue with none of the lift problems that you endure each year at the Grand Hyatt in HK. Dig dig.
I did have a lift trauma once though that was in my hotel, the Pan Pacific. Bear in mind we were on high alert given newspaper headlines flashing MERS at us each morning. Thus it was all the more disconcerting, after I had waited five minutes heading down to the hotel lobby one morning, when a lift finally arrived and the doors opened, only to find the sole occupant, a young Australian girl, clutching a tissue to her mouth, who looked at me and barked “Don’t come in. I’m trying not to vomit”. I thought to myself “Well that’s not very polite”, but left her to it and crossed my fingers that another lift would be along quicker than the last one.
I broke a long held rule of mine though. When I first had children and went off on business trips I returned laden with gifts, but I stopped that quite quickly. It was a pain, not to mention expensive, picking stuff up and lugging it back and anyway the children really were just delighted to have me home in one piece regardless of whether or not I had something for them. However on this trip I found a little trinket lying around which someone appeared to have lost so I thought to myself finders keepers and popped it in my pocket. I was later appalled when I discovered it was actually a napkin holder from one of Singapore’s top restaurants. Oh well mum’s the word. I can’t take it back. My 14 year old daughter was delighted when I gave her the charming bracelet ( see attached photo ) and come to think of it I havn’t had such a warm welcome home for a long time.
27th wedding anniversary yesterday. There’s commitment for you even if the only acknowledgement I got from Sophie was a cursory call on Wednesday that if I was anywhere near a card shop could I pick one up for her to give to me.
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