Taking care of illegal parking with a fork-lift

Went to a potential customer in Islamabad, Pakistan to do a short Proof of concept. The this was the first thing I saw when I stepped out of the airport…

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The Business Class lounge in Singapore

Working hard the whole week in KL with workdays starting at 9:00 and ending at 03:00AM so I fell asleep immediately as I sat down on the plane. Woke up after 2 hours and went to the toilet. As soon as the air stewardess saw that I was getting up she immediately asked:

- Would you like your T-bone now Mr. Karlsson?

That is really good service! The food was really good, the meat was cooked perfectly and really tender.

So, enjoyed another perfect meal, watched a movie and continued to enjoy the lie flat bed by sleeping all the way back.

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The Bosport

One of two bridges over the Bosport

Mosque beneath the bridge over the Bosport

Looking out over Istanbul from the hotel

On the way to office

I arrived in Istanbul, Turkey late yesterday evening to take part in a two day workshop. I must say that Istanbul wasn’t at all what I had expected. It’s actually really nice, people are open minded and the city itself is really green as opposed to the usual Mediterranean bushy landscape. There was a lot of work but one evening there was a company activity that we took part in with a boat trip on the Bosport and a good dinner.

Istanbul · Turkey

The process for getting your visa is rather complex and nothing that should be done without using help:

1) You have to make your visa application in Arabic

2) Once the application is handed in, there is a waiting period that was rather quick

3) Then you get your official visa letter which has to have your border entry stamp on it. There are basically two choices, either go out of the country and back in (easiest way is to drive to Oman) or go down to a place close to the airport and pay a fee (roughly 500 AED) to have it stamped.

4) Once all this is done, it’s time for your medical

5) Finally you hand in your passport together with the visa letter and then you will get your official visa put into your passport.

The whole process took about 2-3 weeks and I doubt that it could be done much faster.

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Keeping the actual departure time seems to be only one of the things that Air Algeria is not capable of…

But on the good side, it was nice to see something besides desert and extremely warm weather for a change. The weather was really pleasant with a temperature of about 20-23 degrees. The landscape around Algiers was really green and it’s situated just between the mountains and the Mediterranean. Unfortunately it was a short stay in Algiers and I didn’t have time to see anything in particular. We however went out to eat in the older areas of the city.

People were friendly in general even though the persons working in the service sector probably would benefit from a less French attitude. I mean, if you can speak some English and the person you’re talking to speaks absolutely no French, it might help if you try in English.

One comment I heard when one person was describing Algeria was that the country took a pause for 15 years and are now trying to catch up. One example of this is that the airport apparently took 30 years to build. I think that describes what I saw pretty well. There seems to be a lot of hope and willingness to create something. Also, Algeria has a lot of oil which will help them with this if they manage thing in a good way.

Unfortunately I forgot my camera at home so I couldn’t take any pictures on the trip.

I arrived at the apartment in Dubai about 04.00 on Friday morning and most of the Friday was spent in bed making up for lost sleep.

Algeria

Contrast between modern and old society

The hotel was nice

This week was spent in Bangalore, India to hold a course about our product. It was my first time to India so it was exciting. Unfortunately there wasn’t much time over for sightseeing since the days where spent holding the course and the evenings where used to adjust the next days schedule according to how the current days session evolved.

I must say that I was surprised at seeing Bangalore. Always when someone is talking about it it tends to be in the context of the IT business and companies starting up subsidiaries there and you expect it to look something like Kuala Lumpur or Bangkok. I.e., a lot of things happening, many projects, but first and foremost, a city evolving fast. Even though the most that I saw was related to the drive between the hotel and the customer (a 30-60 min drive, even though it wasn’t that far) I must say that if this is representative of India I wouldn’t be surprised if there will be problems really soon.

The infrastructure is extremely bad (on the verge of non-existing). Just to give some examples:

• Bangalore international airport only has one (1) gate. To be fair I should say that there was 1a and 1b…
• The roads are not maintained. The fact that the car scraped against the bumps in the road was something that you had to get used to.
• There where power outages 3-4 times each evening in the central city. So, you have to get used to getting stuck in warm elevators. This must happen during daytime also so I guess all companies have their own generators to be able to work efficiently.
• The list goes on…

We stayed at a good five star hotel with western standard, which was nice (and I guess a requirement since I got a bad stomach here also). Our host was pointing out that they use first class chauffeurs (they are required to guard us with their lives in the case of a riot). I’m not sure that this information made me feel any better

You notice that work force is cheap when the most natural way to copy a large file (not having a DVD burner) was to actually suggest that they should remove my HD from the laptop, connect it to another computer and copy the files from there. I refused this and asked if I couldn’t just connect over the network. After the classic sideway/circle nodding I was pointed to a free network cable hanging from the desk. 5 minutes later the file was copied.

When I was going to school one of the things you heard about India was that there where cows roaming the streets. It’s true even today and it’s not unusual for the car to be standing for a minute or two in the city center while the driver is honking the horn to get the buffalo to move. I was explained that the cows are owned by farmers (who are not allowed to keep them like this, but no one cares). This anyway explains the cow that was tipped over with it’s feet tied together that I saw on the sidewalk…

Anyway, the trip home after another 6 day work week was ended with a really bad stomach, apparently you can’t be to careful with the food and water in India. So, efter spending the whole Saturday running between the bed and the toilet it’s a bit better even though not completely safe.

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