Editions

Books on order whilst I was away now safely arrived, so I am the happy owner of a full set of the new paperback Bond editions, just out to mark the 70th anniversary of the publication of Casino Royale, and rather nice they are too.

Also collected the new Bond story by Charlie Higson, published to mark the King's coronation.

And as I mentioned, this along with my recent purchase of most of an earlier paperback edition, although with two gaps to be filled. 

Home

 One thing we've learned, despite the best of intentions, is that overseas trips aren't the best for blogging. One starts off with the best of intentions, but then stuff just gets in the way! The days are pretty full, and by the time that it is time to switch off, the energy just isn't there. As for those people who manage to get into a proper habit of keeping a daily diary irrespective of how busy they are, heaven knows how they do it!

Anyway, we ended out trip with a couple of days based from Singapore - meetings and property-related stuff, including a visit into Johor Bahru in the southern tip of Malaysia (the causeway and border being a bit of a pain - much easier to get in and out of Singapore by air than by land!). One of our stops was to the URA (the Urban Redevelopment Agency), and they have a couple of rather fancy models of Singapore, one of the whole country, and one of the central area only, with enables them to show how the plans for the country's continuing development are being deployed.

Interestingly, they also have a Stephen Wiltshire artwork in display, done in 2014 after he visited Singapore.

Then, of course, never mind models and drawings, the real place is rather photogenic as well. 

Train

 Well, here it is at last. Another blog post from the trip, this time being written offline from the six-hour train journey from Medan for later uploading. Rather a lot to catch up on since previous posting from Singapore.

We all made it from Singapore to Jakarta fine last Saturday, meeting up with more colleagues on arrival, and the main event of our first stop in Jakarta was to have a celebratory dinner with everyone from the office on Saturday evening. Our staff did an excellent job of organising the event, and we had the hotel ballroom booked out and decorated, along with traditional dancers, two members of staff dressed in traditional costume doing MC’ing, speeches before dinner, and lots of photos (the least said about the 360 video/photos of me and a couple of colleagues now doing the rounds on Tiktok the better). I was called on stage to hand out prizes for the logo competition (!) after dinner and then, having thought I’d dodged them, to make a speech of my own.

Up and out on Sunday to fly to East Kalimantan and an opportunity for the other directors to visit our regional office there before the long journey on Monday by a combination of road and sea to the very eastern tip of East Kalimantan where huge changes had taken place since my last visit which was pre pandemic. Because of this, we were catching up with official openings of new facilities, all operational at this stage, as clubhouse remains a building site for now. Not my turn to do ribbon cutting, but it was nice to see my gold pen signature turned into permanent chiselling at our regional office.

More celebratory parties and more speeches on our last night (in hastily constructed marquee due to lack of clubhouse), before our return trip to Jakarta with early start to get to boat (thankfully millpond-like), followed by car and plane – with car journey running well enough to time that we were able to take our first flight option. Total door-to-door still around 12 hours, so we sensibly decided against trying to wedge in any time in the office and decamped straight to the hotel and after a brief rest gathered for dinner in their teppanyaki restaurant, sadly minus P who wasn’t feeling too good.

And so to the office on Friday morning for meetings and presentations, still without P, left to recuperate in the hotel, and gradually during the day some members of the group peeled off for their respective onward journeys, some to KL and some for the return trip to London. L and I saw it through to the end of the day and headed out to our favourite Jakarta Indian restaurant with R, before the journey to Medan on Saturday morning, where we settled in in time for watching the Coronation. Understandably, it was only L and I who were particularly bothered about it, and R & G went out in Medan for dinner whilst L & I ordered in some room service whilst we watched London in the rain.

And that brings us pretty much up to date. Up and away this morning to get the 8am train. Station only a few minutes from the hotel, but the powers that be decided to make it briefly interesting by closing most of the roads around the station, so making for a fairly mega taxi detour, but we still made it with plenty of time. Passed the time on the train by finishing book four of the trip (already mentioned two in previous post, but also read Richard Osman book 2 and a Harlan Coben), and finally catching up on some emails.

Throughout this update, it’s all been a bit factual hasn’t it. I haven’t mentioned that I’ve spoken to Nicky every day. I haven’t mentioned that being away doesn’t get any easier. I haven’t mentioned that I miss her hideously, so much so that I don’t know what to do about it at times. She sent me a link to a special song, and I listened to it this morning in the hotel whilst I was packing. I think I’m going to stop now, and go and listen to it again.