TRAVEL ITINERARY FOR NEXT 48 HOURS (all times are local)

Thursday
8pm - CX to Singapore

Friday
8am - breakfast meeting / interview
9am - meeting / interview
10am - meeting / interview
10.45am - meeting / interview
11.30am - meeting / interview
12.30pm - lunch / meeting / interview
2.30pm - to Changi airport
4.05pm - CX to Hong Kong
7.35pm - arrive Hong Kong
8.30pm - arrive home
8.30 - 9.00pm - shower, change, pack
9.00pm - car BACK to HK airport
11.45pm - BA to London with wife and 2 very small insomniacs

Saturday
5.30am - arrive Heathrow
5.30am-8.05am - wait in Heathrow
8.05am - BA to Nice
11.00am - arrive Nice, collect bags, meet stepfather
11.30am - dep Nice in car for 2 hour drive.
1.30pm - arrive my parents house to be greeted by my mother who will not understand why I am so snappy.
2.00pm - arrested by French police for drowning mother in swimming pool.

I can hardly wait....

JOB AGAIN

I've had a lucky reprieve and Singapore is back in the race....

On tonights flight there, then back tomorrow evening before setting off to Europe tomorrow night for a week off followed by two weeks "working fron London".

All will be decided before my return...

BEAM HIM UP

Star Trek's Scotty dies aged 85

JOB UPDATE

It's now 5.45pm and there is a stony silence from Singapore which means that possibility has probably disappeared.

So it's down to beaches, beers, barbies and bronzed babes versus blair, bombs, bus lanes and bloaters from Essex tottering around in high heels screaming into their mobile phones.

What would you do?

SCOTLAND (with apologies to Mia, who seems to love all things Scottish)

It's a very rare indeed that my mother and I see eye to eye on anything, but I just got an email from my mother who is on her way back from her first trip to the Outer Hebrides (my brother-in-law's family have a place there and my sister is there with her family at the moment).

I quote...

sitting in bloody glasgow airport rain fog mist drizzle i HATE scotland never never to return though majestic scenery getting here but granite grubby restarants grubby people who talk fuunny LONG for civilisation no wonder they all emigrated

(that may also explain where I get my notoriously laissez-faire attitude towards punctuation and grammar from)

there's then some family stuff followed by...

never wiil i venture into unknown terriory again cured for life

raining again and fog give me sweaty london anyday

Well said Mum, though even I am appalled at the lack of the odd comma.

JOBS

So it looks like we're down to....

versus

(that's Canary Wharf for those who don't know it. Note the grey skies)

with Singapore as an outside chance.

Tough choice eh. Beaches, sun, food and wine vs tony blair, bombs, traffic jams and rain. What to do, what to do...?

BBC SPORT | Cricket | Giles relishing battle for Ashes]

Couldn't have put it better myself.

THE SOUND OF SILENCE...

Apologies for the long silence.

I was off on a jaunt and thought I'd post while I was away but I couldn't be bothered.

for the record...

The Lions really were as bad in the flesh as they looked on TV.

Auckland is fun, cold and wet.

Wellington is windy, cold and wet.

Sydney is sunny, warm (even in mid-winter) and hideously expensive if you're looking for property (small clue there for the perceptive among you as to how my job situation is panning out...)

More later....

OLYMPICS 2012

Felicitations Paris.

Vous avez reussi a eviter les Jeux Olympiques.

Je suis tellement impressione que vous avez aussi reussi, au meme temps, a donner ces "Jeux" a votre ennemi mortel, Londres. Maintenant ca sera les anglais qui doivent payer et organiser ce tournament futile, pendant que vous ne devez faire que de prendre le train pour 2 1/2 heures si vous voulez le voir.

Un resultat excellent.

(Veuillez m'excuser si j'ai fait des betises enormes. Ca fait presque 5 annees des que j'ai du essayer d'ecrire ou parler francais.)

THE SPORTS SECTION

Rugby
-----
Lions Kick-off
New Zealand - catch kick-off, pass, run, pass, score try, convert.

repeat for 80 minutes or until those of us who are going down to NZ for the thrid test are sobbing into our Tsing Tao.

Wimbledon
----------
Serve, miss, serve, hit but miss court, repeat ad nauseam or ad infinitum, whichever comes first.