Bing's Bright Idea

I now understand why Bing Crosby sang about White Christmas’ – because rainy ones are rubbish. We had to endure a good few inches of the blue stuff in the run up to the 24th / 25th December and the visit of Santa Claus. Thankfully now we’ve had a couple of dry days and bright blue skies.

Apart from the inclement weather it’s been a happy Christmas in the O’Brien clan of the South West of France. Maxime is now a confirmed present opener, including even those of his 2 month old brother, sister and his parents (who are slightly older than 2 months). Mrs. O’Brien was deservedly spoilt so at least she can say 2010 ended on a high after such a difficult year. And both Mr and Mrs O’Brien managed to avert any disputes over Christmas dinner because one was seafood based at the parents in law and the other was meat based at the parents. There really was something for everyone.

A few different things struck me at the start of the festive period. I particularly enjoyed going to Christmas mass this year. As Maxime starts to understand the mystery of Santa Claus I found myself musing about how I’m going to have to start explaining to him the mystery of baby Jesus and the Holy Trinity (admittedly made more difficult because of the lack of any super presents other than spiritual strength and eternal life). I suspect I’ll have to talk to him in terms of Jesus being a special friend whose opinion I respect and that I go to see for an hour each week. Thankfully I’ve got a few more months to hone my story. I suppose that the good news is that for all its failings the Catholic Church is very welcoming – so much so that the French parish priest even refused to acknowledge my mum’s Protestant faith and thrust a consecrated host down her throat during Christmas mass. I suspect the German Benedict would disapprove of such indiscriminate by hook or by crook French attempts to increase the size of the practising flock.

Despite the religious aspect to Christmas there is an undeniable materialistic part to proceedings as well. Whilst I genuinely believe that the word materialistic doesn’t have to have pejorative connotations (people take pleasure in giving and received gifts), I think I must be getting older because I now have the beginnings of some sort of formal sliding scale of presents in my head. When you are small, the most important thing is the size of the presents, afterwards it becomes the number of presents, when you’re a bit older their value seems important. Now I’m definitely getting older because it seems like the things that are most important to me are both the difficulty it takes to source a present (a blank envelope with an IOU in it (hastily scribbled on Christmas Eve no doubt) or online purchases from Amazon typically score poorly); and the utility of the item / whether or not it has been specifically requested; as an example receiving another pair of functional socks or underpants which can always be used is particularly demoralising, whereas receiving a pair of requested riding gloves is particularly pleasing. Again, something else for me to refine over the next 12 months to help my family find presents for someone who, admittedly, has everything he needs and is generally very picky.

Another thing which struck me was that although Christmas is a time of traditions, traditions are there to be created. Having grown up childless in Newcastle (successfully avoiding teenage pregnancies and the like), now it’s a case of living in the South of France and having children. This has clearly changed how Christmas is going to be over the next 20 years or so. I suppose it is up to us to decide how we want Christmas to play out e.g. parents in law on the 24^th, parents on the 25^th, midnight mass or not, all presents opened in a mad rush at the crack of dawn, or spread out over the course of the day etc. One of the nicest traditions that I’d heard about in talking with my clients was a Swiss family that put their odd pennies in a big jar over the course of the year. During the Christmas meal they all guess how much money is in the jar. The person who is closest gets to decide on the family outing or activity which is paid for using the money in the jar. That sounds like a great idea although he did confirm that even when he wins it is still his wife who decides what the chosen activity is. It seems like some traditions are the same the world over.

Daily Status - 24 hours and counting

A morning with Maxime looking at Clark Kent glasses before the rain started, a late afternoon outing with Pich de Toulven in the rain, two small twins who eat so well they look like they're being fed up for Christmas, a wife with a new fringe, and only 8 emails in my inbox outstanding. A good day all in all. Feels like I'm almost ready for Christmas - I've got a whole day tomorrow to get some presents for people!

Pich de Toulven

I'll also have to tell you how the latest addition to the family, Pich de Toulven, is getting on. Check out his vital statistics at the following site by typing his name into the "Nom du Cheval" box and hit "enter".... http://www.ffecompet.com/chevaux Sandie even seems to have a soft spot for him, and it's thanks to him that I'm developing a passion for hoof grease and disinfectant.

Blog or Bust

What a month December has been. I have spent quite a bit of it in Paris, Zurich and Basel as well as a few days in Biarritz. It’s been a bit manic as we come to the end of the quarter and the end of the year. It was a case of trying to see lots of people face to face before the holiday period (the internet can only take you so far even if I am now a confirmed Skype supporter). I realise I haven’t posted since the 4th December but I realise I must...not because of any particular commitment to my blog, but more because of a commitment to my bank manager.....Sandie has been on at me over the last few days that because I haven’t blogged it means that she has nothing to read in the middle of the night when she is feeding the babies. She has threatened that she will start logging onto eBay more frequently if I don’t post something – my financial health depends on it apparently!

So what have been my major musings over the past 3 weeks? Don’t judge a Swiss man by his pot belly, embrace the chaos and Christmas is most definitely coming (and thankfully the family is all well and together for the big day this weekend).

Earlier in the month I went out for dinner with one of my project teams in Zurich. After underestimating how many people wanted to eat sausages and cheese on a Tuesday night, we finally managed to find a restaurant. Whilst you can work as much as you want with people, it’s only when you get them out in an informal setting do you really get to know who they are. Our dinner reminded me you can’t judge a book by its cover. Two of the people there that night were a short stumpy Swiss fella with a pot belly and a tall Cypriot guy with hands like shovels. Both were near enough 50. During the conversation it turned out they had both played a lot of football in their past – despite being someone who played football for almost 25 years I still managed to guess incorrectly what position they played – my Swiss friend had been a goalkeeper in the first division and the Cypriot had been a tricky left winger (or so he tells me). It made me smile. Neither of them guessed that I had been a cynical centre half!

The other thing which Wipro’s Head of Europe told me when I met him in Paris was that I should not expect process and organisation in a company that is experiencing 20% year on year growth. Wiproites often talk about the company being a 6 billion dollar start up (our annual revenues). He talked about “infant mortality statistics” (the number of people who leave Wipro within 1 year of joining), and he told me I needed to “embrace the change” if I wanted to survive. I’m a bit German in my outlook on how things should be run, but that one comment helped me put my first 6 months in Wipro into some sort of perspective, and it reminded me of one of the main reasons why I left Accenture. I chose not to explain to him he could have chosen a better term than “infant mortality statistics” given recent family events!

The other thing which has struck me over the last few weeks is that Christmas is coming. Whilst the UK heaves under a heavy dose of the white stuff, the key thing which has made me realise this is not the number of fat men in red pyjamas walking around Biarritz but more the number of English TV series that are being concluded. I’m not a big TV watcher but I do have English TV in the south of France and for some reason over the last 3 months or so I have managed to more or less follow Strictly Come Dancing, The Apprentice and X-Factor. The finals of each show have been happening over the last week or so - Stella has been hired despite her modest background, Kara has a glitter ball and a new boyfriend, and I have just heard that Matt Cardle has been crowned Christmas number 1. Surely I shouldn’t know this type of thing! I need to stop having so many small children requiring regular feeding of hot milk meaning I am chained to the sofa on a Saturday night.....

On that subject the news is pretty good – Capucine is now out of hospital. She’s putting on lots of weight and this time it really seems like she is back on track. She’s 2.7 kg and Gaston is 3.6 kg for the statisticians among you. Maxime is increasingly interested in both of them, well at least removing dummies and putting blankets over their heads when we are not looking. He also seems to have really cottoned on to the idea of Le Pere Noel pretty quickly which is fairly impressive – why just this evening he told us that he has already baggy’sied the mince pies and pint of beer we’ll leave out for Santa Claus on Christmas eve.....

Bloody Sandman and Snowmen

What a week. It’s been another hectic one and I think everyone was more than happy to see my parents come back from a short stay in England. I think even my parents were surprised by the welcome party that greeted them at the airport (to discuss babysitting requirements amongst other things).

Work wise I was up in Zurich for a day on Tuesday for a couple of important clients meetings, both of which went well thankfully. I think I hid my sleep deprivation well; I suppose that’s the beauty of adrenalin. By the time I had driven home from Pau it was about midnight on Tuesday. I wasn’t just tired by the time I got home, it was as if the sandman had emptied the contents of the Sahara desert into my little peep holes. I was looking forward to snuggling up in a nice warm bed. Gaston on the other hand had other ideas. Ideas he was particularly keen to share at 1AM, 3AM, 4AM, 5.30AM and 7AM. The sandman only came to visit him about 8AM upon which time he then slept for the rest of the day. If only my work commitments had allowed me to do the same.

I was actually meant to be in London from Wednesday evening through to Friday afternoon but the inclement weather in the UK put paid to that. Whilst I flailed my arms around tut-tutting like a real Frenchmen when I saw the last minute cancellation of the meeting (meaning we’ll have to do it in January now), with hindsight it was actually most fortuitous because we had some less than good news about Capcuine. Capucine has struggled to put as much weight on as Gaston. Over the last few days she’d also developed a worrying tendency to have black outs, especially when she was eating (not typical meal time behaviour for an O’Brien!). The doctors were at a loss to explain this, and when we went to the hospital on Wednesday afternoon they decided to keep her in for observation. And observe they did. Whilst they are still not sure what the problem is, it seems that she has some form of pulmonary infection. They initially feared that a blood transfusion would be necessary because she is so tired by the whole episode, but thankfully that has subsequently been deemed unnecessary. She remains in hospital and we should have some more test results today. She definitely won’t be here for Maxime’s birthday tomorrow, but we really hope that she’ll be home for Christmas. In the meantime we’re rediscovered the 15 minute drive to the hospital 3 times a day and the wonderfully caring and professional nursing staff of Bayonne (who now automatically associate Capucine with a box of top notch Swiss chocolates so that can’t be a bad thing!).

It seems little Gaston is missing his little sister despite now having the whole bed to himself at night. Whereas his mother would kill for the same thing, he seems to be particularly lonely when the lights go out. On Thursday we kept him with us for large parts of the night – something we always said we’d never do; but oh my goodness how wonderful it was to sleep for a whole 6 hours in a row. He seemed quite happy too.

Maxime is two this weekend and I am quite sure that the joy of having his little cousins from Toulouse to play with will outweigh the delight of any new toy. I hope so because we haven’t bought him any. I am obviously only joking – in fact they always say you should give a present that you would like to receive yourself, so I am sure that Maxime is going to be over the moon with his size 8 riding gloves and a renewed subscription to the Economist for 2011. He’s a lucky lad.

Indoor Swimming Pools, Chocolate Bribes and the 21st Century

It’s been just over a week or so since my last posting. I’d love to say that you’ve not missed much but having a job that requires travel each week and a family life that involves three kids under two, if I did say that, then I’d be lying.

The most recent news is that I’ve been out on the tiles...unfortunately not a night on the tiles, but more an afternoon on the tiles of my roof....we’ve had some awful weather in France recently and the hailstorm this afternoon was so heavy that it started to seep through into our living room! As a result I ended up on my roof with a mop and broom shovelling tennis ball sized hail stones for an hour in freezing temperatures with my brother in law. Thankfully things are now all back to normal although Maxime thought having a swimming pool in the middle of the front room was a great idea.

I suspect the most important news of the last 10 days or so was the hospital visit on Thursday. This was the “one week visit” – exactly a week after the little ones had left hospital. Things are essentially fine although Capucine has only put on 20 grams (babies that age should be putting on 20 grams a day). Gaston was fine. I also found out that there is a medical discipline called psychomotricity (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychometrician) Basically someone clearly very experienced, (she had grey hair), waxes lyrical about the way a baby waves his leg in the air when you roll him over, or the way in which she sneezes after looking at a black and white spiral which makes your eyes cross. I felt thoroughly reassured. The visit also gave us the opportunity to give the nursing staff three boxes of Swiss chocolate from Zurich...the doctor seemed particularly happy. He even then told us to cancel the vaccination we had planned with the paediatrician in town because if they did it at the hospital, then they would keep the twins overnight meaning that Sandie would get a full night’s sleep and a lie-in. My granny always used to say that the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach!

On the Maxime front we got thrown a bit when the crèche said they’d like to talk to us about how we think Maxime is adapting to life “in the collectivity”....Sandie saw straight through this and I was instructed to dig deeper and cross examine the head mistress Delphine the next morning. Indeed when I asked for further clarification, Delphine admitted that she was concerned that Maxime can display a certain refusal to accept no for an answer (not sure which parent that comes from), and that he has a tendency to launch the other children across the playground when he is upset, and to give them python like bear hugs when he is in a good mood. Clearly it would be better if used his determination and size to sell sweetcorm on the TV.

The penultimate thing of noteworthiness over the last 10 days is that I have lost my virginity in the Skype sense of the word. I have finally managed to get Skype installed and have made my first few calls. I have had a tour of an apartment in New York and seen snow up in Northumberland in the UK. Maxime has also taken to it like a duck to water (he’s clearly going to be a fully fledged member of the younger generation who I will need to rely on to configure whatever is the equivalent of the today’s iPhone in 30 years time). He regularly asks to see Papy and Mamy on Papa’s computer.

The final revelation of the last 10 days is that this blog has become a useful communication tool in my marriage. Sandie and I are often crossing each other like ships in the night as we prepare and deliver bottles of hot milk in the early hours of the morning (the 4AM shift is particularly difficult). At one stage in the day when we were both awake, in the same room, not dribbling from tiredness or in some form of sleep deprivation induced trance, Sandie said to me she had missed my posting from the day before because she often liked to read it in the middle of the night to keep up to date with what I am doing (I didn’t even know she had the web address!). Anyway, now that I now she’s reading it, just a quick one love.....would you mind picking up a 6 pack of Guinness, some fresh milk and a bag of carrots tomorrow pet? We’re running low on stocks. Thanks.

18 minus 1

18 years minus 1 day. We’re off! Not long to go now......

In fact if truth be told, last night went fine (largely thanks to Sandie). We were up about 3 times in the night although I have to say that it felt much less of an adventure than when we did it for the first time with Maxime two year ago. Even Capucine’s best efforts to dirty the whole bathroom at 4AM didn’t raise my interest levels much above “basic trance”.

In fact it was only on waking this morning did I realise the magnitude of the situation when Maxime fell out of bed around 8AM and we had precisely 1 hour to clean, feed and clothe 3 children (I certainly didn’t have time to shave, and even now I can’t even remember if I had a shower). Thankfully Maxime was delivered to crèche on time and I only joined my 9AM conference call two minutes late. That has to count as a success.

I was also delighted to see our home help turn up for the first time. Raymonde was fantastic and after 3 hours of her help, the house was so clean you wouldn’t have thought we had any children at all! With a bit of luck she’ll be back three times a week for the duration of Sandie’s maternity leave.

Another sub 10PM bedtime now.....we’ll see how tomorrow pans out. It’s a real shame I am not able to make my godson Reuben’s christening tomorrow in the UK, but it’s now quite clear that if two’s company then three is most definitely a crowd. On the upside, Sandie no longer seems to be talking about a fourth......

MGC Blockbuster!....Take 2

“Take two” – that’s what they said at the maternity in the hospital this morning. And so the latest releases came home and we’re now officially a family of five. It's life, Jim, but not as we know it….

At least that’s what Maxime thinks. Thankfully he seems to have taken to these new alien life forms quite well – he is particularly keen to clamber up and over the bars and into their (currently shared) bed. The lack of any emotion on their little faces when he tries to do this only goes to confirm that babies do not instinctively know fear.

Picking them up from the hospital this morning was also very enjoyable – there was not a client or meeting in the world that could have stopped me from being there today. It was also fun to see Sandie’s excitement as she finally got to take her babies home. We’ll be monitoring our levels of excitement at precisely midnight and 5AM as they start protesting (well they are French) for their bottles of warm milk.

I’m now going to hit the hay. It’s been a while since I’ve gone to bed at 9.30PM....but something tells me I’ll be happy about it tomorrow. I’ll try and remember over the next couple of days to tell you about the other events of the week including a glorious karting victory in Reading and lunch with some Belgians.

Blue Sky Thinking

As I write this posting I am currently sitting in a taxi going from the airport in Barcelona to the client site. It is cool but bright and there is a glorious blue sky above; I can’t help but have a spring in my step as a result, especially after two days in a grey and miserable Paris (and that was just the waiters in the restaurants).

Despite the soggy weather the two days in Paris were useful – amongst other things I took the opportunity to go to the Irish Embassy where I am trying to get a replacement passport and ensure that Maxime, Gaston and Capucine (MGC hereafter), are going to get Irish nationality. I was particularly surprised to find that I got more advice on having twins than securing official documentation – it turned out the lady who was serving me had had her twins in France 9 years ago so she gave me a number of tit-bits of information ranging from massaging babies to help them sleep, mixing breast and bottle feeding, and being sure to get vaccinations from somewhere called the PME. At the end of the conversation she was also convinced that I worked for Air France. I didn’t have the heart to tell her otherwise. I also managed to sort out one of my suits in Paris and I even had dinner with some old friends on Tuesday night which was excellent fun – it’s funny to see how people are growing up – one friend who I recruited into Accenture a number of years ago was now married and expecting his first baby.....that in itself made me feel older than having three of my own!

The downsides to the trip to Paris (apart from being away from home) was, as ever, some of the Parisians – I’m always astounded by their surliness – it is as if good will and pleasantness has to be rationed carefully – there’s just not enough to go round you know! I walked into a newsagents to a warm greeting but when I (quite apologetically) asked where the entrance to the local metro station was, the newsagents’ face turned thunderous and as I walked out sheepishly I could hear him tut-tutting and I could feel the daggers in my back. The other thing which always gets me about Paris, as with London, is the pace with which people have to walk in the metro itself and the general unpleasantness of the whole experience. For some reason it also always brings out my competitive side, which I’ve done well to control over the last few years (I think). On Tuesday I even found myself spontaneously clipping the heels of people walking on to the train just because they had pushed in ahead of me. Surely that’s not a good thing.....Something else that struck me when I was in Paris during our multi-cultural training meeting which included French, English, Irish, Dutch, German, Indian and Spanish people, was the fact that despite all being essentially very similar, you just can’t help avoid cultural differences – despite the obvious conversations about head scarves and what constitutes improper and personally intrusive questions, the image that will stick with me is the German who went to high five the Indian. The Indian clearly didn’t recognise the gesture and as a result and in the spur of the moment, he held up a limp risk. The (rather large) German then heartily slapped the back of his hand which almost made it look like he was reprimanding him. It was a most bizarre and awkward moment. Thankfully nobody from HR was in the room at the time.

One of the best things about the trip to Paris was most definitely the fact that it’s only an hour away from Biarritz, so I managed to get home on Wednesday night to see Sandie, pop in to see a sleeping Maxime, and sleep in my own bed. Similarly I am very happy to have discovered a little gem of an airport in San Sebastien. I went there for the first time this morning and although it makes the airport at Pau look like Heathrow, it has allowed me to do a day trip to Spain. This means that I can get home at a sensible time again tonight, before a day off tomorrow where I can spend some real time at home and in the hospital with Capucine and Gaston.

The Week Ahead

After a good weekend, which even included Sandie doing Capucine's bath whilst Maxime and I played in the soft play area at McDonalds, I was up early this morning to try to catch the worms. That plan was scuppered when I was quickly followed my Maxime. He's in great form today and he seems increasingly interested in the cartoons on English TV (as well as trying to make phone calls on my Blackberry). I'm looking forward to the week - I am sleeping at home every night except Tuesday night, and I am going to try out the San Sebastien Barcelona route for the first time on Thursday. I'm looking forward to taking Maxime to creche and picking him up more than normal, and I've even taken Friday off so that should hopefully make a difference to Sandie and the tribe. Right off to play at tractors because Maxime has deemed it an essential addition to my morning routine....

Conkers

The last time I was preparing a blog posting on the plane, Sandie was preparing for a ceasarian. Whilst I will drive to the hospital again tonight after arriving at the airport at Pau, hopefully this time it will be only to help feed Capucine and Gaston around midnight. Although Sandie’s not rolling out the bunting just yet, they are doing well, are out of their incubators, are clothed, are drinking (milk) from bottles and we’re beginning to talk about bringing them home soon. Apart from that, I’m also looking forward to seeing the Little Giant at home tomorrow morning.

This week has been a long week with its good and bad bits. This week I’ve done 7 flights and 4 countries (France, Sweden, Finland and England). Whilst I was delighted to see so many old friends, I’m ready for a bit of time at home. When I was out running in London this week I was also struck by the fact that the autumn is clearly upon us – the streets are decked in orangey brown leaves. I even saw a street cleaner brushing up the leaves and chatting to an elderly gentleman who was passing by. It reminded me of my favourite street cleaner in Morpeth when I was about 7 or 8 years old who used to stop, chat to us and give us huge big conkers on our way to St. Robert’s First School. The only difference this time was that when I stopped to ask the street cleaner for directions to Paddington station (I was lost on my morning run), he looked blankly at the elderly man, they had a conversation in Polish, and then he shook his head and gestured to me with his hands essentially saying I was miles away from where I needed to be. How life has changed over the last 25 years (I never got lost when I was 8 years old).

The last two days of the week were spent in London at a marketing event where I was representing Wipro with another recent recruit, Rajesh, who does a similar job to me but for the UK market. It was the first occasion for us to spend an extended amount of time together. He’s a splendid chap and he really made me laugh when he discovered after 10 minutes on the first day that he had a huge hole in the inside leg of his trousers. We debated for about two minutes whether or not this was the right image we should be portraying, before he scuttled off to buy a new suit. He made me laugh again when he came back, clearly looking very proud of himself but unfortunately wearing what was a shiny black evening dinner suit. It was only 10 o’clock in the morning. Apparently his wife was even more scathing about his emergency purchase and she ordered him to take it back for a refund.

Cock-A-Doodle Madness

It was pitch black when I got up in Stockholm at 4.30AM today. There weren’t many cockerels around at that time I certainly didn’t feel like shaking my tail feathers with any real vigour. I have a flight this morning from Stockholm to Helsinki at 6.50AM. What to many might seem like a stupid idea, seemed to me like a good idea at the time of booking my tickets. In fact even now I still think it was a splendid idea because it meant that I was able to have dinner with an old school friend and his family last night at their home in Sweden.

It was a very enjoyable evening despite the obvious tiredness in the house as a result of a 3 year old who is slowly having his dummy taken away from him and therefore won’t go to sleep easily, and a 3 month old who just doesn’t get the difference between night and day yet, (surely a hard thing to learn in these funny Nordic countries which have 23 hour long days or nights depending on the season). The ability to stop and see old friends all around Europe and Scandinavia is most definitely the best thing about the job. It will therefore be of little surprise to learn that I’ve already had dinner with friends in Paris on Sunday evening and in addition to last night, I have another dinner planned with some friends in Helsinki tonight and then I’ll go out with another friend in London on Thursday for the Indian Festival of Light. It’s funny to see but regardless of location, background, current profession or anything else, we all essentially move through life at roughly the same pace and we face roughly the same challenges at roughly the same time. It’s hard not to develop a certain perspective once you see that your challenges are not unique. I suppose that’s what experience is all about – the number of different phases of life you’ve gone through and the range of different problems you’ve encountered and surmounted. And it’s also the reason why you can’t amass experience in a classroom or overnight. Thankfully by the end of the week I’ll also have had a few business meetings as well to justify all this gallivanting around and noddy philosophy; Monday was a software vendor, Tuesday and Wednesday are internal planning meetings and Thursday and Friday are a big marketing event that we’re sponsoring in London.

On the home front things are also looking better. Gaston was clothed for the first time yesterday and his incubator has been switched off. Capucine shouldn’t be far behind and we’re hopeful she might cross the 2 kg threshold this morning. I’m trying to get a load of trips done now such that I can be more at home when they finally get out of hospital, which should be soon. I’m already itching to get back home to see them. They’re growing up so quickly – I’m half expecting Gaston to be smoking a pipe and wearing slippers when I see him next on Friday night.

Day Tripper

Today's been a good day overall. I woke up at home and had a nice easy start to the day...well as easy as it can be when you've got a little 2 year old jumping all over you at 7.30AM. I am now on my way home after my little day trip out to Paris. The meeting went well and apart from re-connecting with a lot of people in the office, I even managed to see an old friend for a coffee after my client meeting. It was nice to see him in better form than a couple of months ago.

It will also be good to be back in my own bed again tonight - I should even be home in time for "Koh Lanta" - a ridiculous French programme about people who go and live on a desert island for 6 weeks to diet and do stupid amounts of exercise and competitive games to win a bag of rice which they can't even boil because they don't have any way of heating water. After that, a good night's sleep is in order because Sandie apparently has a list of jobs that need to be done tomorrow.....hmmmmm.

1 chicken 2 chicken 3 chicken

Delayed at Lyon by 45 minutes, risk of being diverted to Bordeaux.....Grrrrrrrrr.

Bored but not Blocked

5 hours even in my favourite Air France lounge would be bad enough (Amsterdam for the record), but I have to say I'm quite ready to leave Lyon and head to Pau in just under an hour. On re-reading that first sentence the only thing that strikes me is the fact that people shouldn't have favourite Air France lounges. What a ridiculous idea.

When I get to Pau I'll pick up the car and drive home. I'll stop at the hospital to see the world's largest set of premature twins, if that isn't a contradiction in terms. I'll then be home for around midnight so long as Maxime, the world's largest 2 year old, hasn't blockaded the house by leaving his slippers lying behind the front door. I felt most inferior when I lived in Denmark where everyone is so tall (and indeed on Wednesday when I was in Amsterdam), I hadn't realised that I would soon be a dwarf in my home. Maybe I'll buy a Shetland pony or a Bonsai tree to make myself feel better.

I am happy at the prospect of sleeping in my own bed tonight even if I am back to the airport tomorrow morning for a flight up to Paris to meet a banking customer in the afternoon. Hopefully Sandie will have prepared a nice little packed lunch for my day trip out to see the Eiffel tower. Right, where is that boarding gate.... adieu fair Lyon.

Ho Ho Ho Green Giant

I hate sweet corn. It is therefore somewhat ironic that the only TV advertisement jingle I remember from my childhood is that for sweet corn. I remember growing up in the UK singing along whenever a rather large green man appeared on the box. Today it would be more fitting, although admittedly less catchy, if that theme tune went something like “Ho Ho Ho Oversized Red White and Blue Child”. That is because my 22 month old son Maxime, (who only possesses a French passport for the minute – visit to the Irish embassy in Paris planned for November), went to the pediatrician today. We were told that Maxime is the same size as a child who is 3 ½ years old. Given the way that he loves to rugby tackle visitors to the house we always suspected something may be up. I suppose being ridiculously large and super strong for your age is better than a disease which makes you think that you’re a guard dog. The pediatrician did however warn us that we must be careful that people don’t think he is much older than what he actually is i.e. when he starts school in 12 months time people must not assume he’s a bit dim for an 18 year old. We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.

The other good news on the children front, (jees when you’ve got 3 kids there’s always something to blog about), is that Gaston and Capucine are coming along nicely. They seem to have developed a certain ability to eat copious amounts and grow very quickly (spot a theme yet? I’m going to need a pay rise and employ someone at home who can make clown shoes). Together they are now over 4 kgs and apparently the news from the hospital is that they could even be back home in a couple of weeks. I suspect I might need to start building a nursery and putting up some shelves soon which as you all know I detest with a passion, almost as much as sweet corn.

The other recent news is that the new relationship I have entered into seems to be blossoming…. Last Saturday I had my first clear round with Pich de Touleven – it seems like there might be the basis of a solid couple forming there. Just a shame he’s a castrated male, 700kg and a horse, rather than a drinking buddy, supervisor or colleague at work. Anyhow, I am just getting back to my hotel in Zurich after a day out in Amsterdam. How very European of me, I know. I should be back home in France tomorrow despite some more frog strikes. This time I have to fly from Basel Mulhouse to Pau via Lyon (where I have a 5 hour layover) so definitely more inconvenient than last week, but not really very impressive compared to yesteryear. Poor old Sarkozy, he really has let the country go to the dogs.

A Proud Cockerel? Cock-A-Doodle-Splutter

A 75 minute delay at Paris CDG reduced to 30 minutes on appeal. Is this the best the striking French can do?! How the protestors of May 1968 would cringe with shame. I’ve travelled the length of Europe and the best they could do was a pathetic abandoned suitcase, which held me up for 10 minutes, and then a 75 minute delay which they later reduced to 30 minutes when I complained that it was my birthday. I’m not home yet and I don’t want to count any chickens but really, what has this country come to?! I don’t think I’ll be so cocky when I’ve run out of petrol on Saturday night and have to sleep in my car slowly freezing to death, but for the minute, I’m feeling pretty triumphant, almost.

Birthday Boy and First Rate Friends

It is my birthday today and I got up at Silly O’Clock to go to Basel. I was touched that even before 5.30AM I had already received kind birthday messages from no less 7 of my good friends; it just goes to prove that old adage....you can tell a man by the friends he keeps! More seriously, I felt very special that so many people had spared a thought for me so early in the day. I am a very lucky boy. Hopefully that luck will continue throughout my journey to France later on today!

I am now at the airport in Zurich....half the journey is done (admitedly the first part being in Switzerland is clearly the easy half). I have just logged on to the internet and been bowled over by the number of kind emails, text messages, ecards, texts etc that I have received. On top of that the workshop this morning has gone really well and I felt that I was vaguely useful. I'm feeling very happy, let's just hope the French don't ruin it.....

Horses, Ghoulash and Home from Home

Since my last post the main news has been that Capucine and Gaston continue to progress well. They have their little ups and downs with threats of infections, nights when they breathe less well than others, and problems with mini catheters, but overall they seem to be on the right track. Sandie is also managing to spend lots of time with Maxime so that’s brightened her up no end.

This week has also seen me get back to work in terms of travelling. I had a very productive two days in Budapest speaking to a couple of different clients. One of the visits was 24 hours before an RFP submission and I managed to get some great insights which meant I ended up re-writing an executive summary until midnight. I did however manage to eat well in Hungary (yes it is possible) – traditional Hungarian fare at lunch time in Buda and then a wonderful Japanese restaurant in Pest in the evening. My adventurous spirit got the better of me after a positive first meeting in the back of beyond, and so I simply asked the taxi driver to take me to a good traditional restaurant in the middle of Budapest and leave me there. I then decided to navigate my way back to my hotel via trains, metros, buses, hitch-hiking etc. I managed pretty well, although I did end up taking a taxi for the last 1km because I got a bit lost after a couple of hours! I don’t think I’m ready for my first jungle trek yet.

I left Eastern Europe this afternoon and headed to my home from home in Zurich. I have a meeting in Basel tomorrow but I decided I wanted to stay in my favourite hotel in Zurich, so I’ll get an early train in the morning. Hopefully I’ll be doing quite a bit of travelling on my birthday tomorrow. With a bit of luck it will be Zurich Basel by train first thing, return to Zurich airport in the afternoon before a flight to petrol starved Paris, and then a second flight to Pau before an hour’s drive to Biarritz and my own bed. If I manage to do all of that tomorrow without crossing a picket line or stumble into a street protest, then I’ll be happy.

The other big news is that I managed to ride a horse at the weekend, Pich de Touleven, and whilst I didn’t bring home any silverware, things went pretty well. With a bit of luck I’ll ride him again on Saturday and then I can confirm with his owner that I’ll take a half-livery which basically means I will have scored myself a super jumping horse without having to splash out a large amount of money to buy my own beast. The horse will still belong to its owner, but I’ll be able to ride him in competitions at the weekend, so all in all it seems a good compromise. Sandie even seems to be heartily supportive, so strike while the iron is hot is what I say....finally an upside to all of those hormones flying around her system!

The New Normal

I would have called this posting "the end of life as we know it" but I’ll save that title for when Capucine and Gaston actually arrive home. Therefore I would rather say that the new normal starts today....Sandie is coming out of hospital.

Capcuine and Gaston will stay in hospital for the foreseeable future, but at least one part of the family is coming home (in any case she’s much more useful around the house than the babies so I’m not complaining). Basically Sandie is desperate to see more of Maxime, hence the reason why she is coming out earlier than expected. “Unfortunately” in an unrelated and pre-arranged agreement, I'm off to ride horses in Bordeaux today and tomorrow morning. Oops. I'm trying out a horse which I might buy half of....oh yes, we don't do things by halves here in the south of France - why stop at premature twins when you can add half a horse to the mix! I just hope they've given me the half of the horse with the brain.

Highlight of yesterday? Falling asleep with Capucine in my arms after a busy week combining hospital visits and work. Bliss.

Stars and Cherries

I really enjoyed living in Denmark a few years ago – I particularly liked the fact that we had lunch at 11.30AM – I was always something of an early bird and even today still enjoy getting up at the crack of dawn – basically I like doing things early. I do also have to confess I since living in the south of France I have become partial to a little afternoon nap or “siesta” after lunch. The other thought I have had recently is how grateful I am to my boss at work – he has been wonderfully flexible meaning I can spend more time in the hospital with the babies during the daytime. The upshot of this is that I end up working quite late – for example I only managed to get to bed at 1AM last night.

Why am I sharing these random thoughts? Well it’s rare that all your stars align, but today was one of those days.....I came to the hospital tired after not having had much sleep (Maxime still wakes at the same time and still needs to be taken to crèche). However I was given a boost when the nurse said I could hold Gaston. So around 11.30 I settled into a nice comfortable chair and then fell asleep with Gaston’s little heart beating on my chest for the next 90 minutes or so. Although I can’t yet speak on his behalf, it was undoubtedly the best siesta that I have had for a long time.

And the news from the paediatrician as I stirred from my slumber that the brain scans are officially “all clear”?....Well that was just the cherry on the cake.

Just When You Thought It Couldn't Get Any Better

You've got to go someway to top successful brain scan results (yesterday's news)...so imagine our delight when the nursing staff said today that we could for the first time actually hold the babies. Sandie clutched Gaston next to her chest for over 2 hours. An emotional moment. A good day. I'll sit with Capucine tomorrow... er later today actually. That's the problem with spending so much time in the hospital during the day time...work comes in the evening and early hours of the morning. Off to bed now still with a spring in my step, but physical tiredness means the spring is slightly smaller than yesterday.

Let Me Get A Chair......

I can promise you that when you’re a parent waiting for feedback from a paediatrician on a brain scan for your premature babies, the last thing you want the doctor to have as an opening line is, “let me get a chair”......My heart jumped in my mouth when our gently spoken paediatrician uttered these words this afternoon. However after he had taken 40 minutes to take us through everything I then understood why he had wanted a chair in the first place.

Essentially the news is positive. The radiologist did the scan this afternoon and didn’t ring the paediatrician afterwards. The paediatrician took no news to mean good news – however he reassured me straight away that this is not just French “Laissez Faire Medicine” – apparently she always rings if there is a problem. The paediatrician also sought to assuage our concerns about the bleeding that was seen in the initial scan on Friday. After a bit of a lesson on the anatomy of the brain, which hurt my brain because it was all in French, I think I understood that he was saying that things looked ok. He also said that we shouldn’t focus on the bleeding because all of the clinical signs, essentially the demonstrable behaviours such as movement and alertness, were so good, and because the bleeding was really very slight on Friday. He said if it had been him, then he wouldn’t even have mentioned it to us and that for him, the initial examination was “normal”.

Despite still not being sure if he is actually younger than us, and despite feeling particularly guilty about how much his work benefits society compared to our own, we both really appreciated his calm and gentle demeanour. He had an excellent bedside manner and let us ask all the questions we wanted without giving us the feeling we were being rushed at all. Glasnost at last! I’m almost ready to vote communist.

He also took the time to explain the major phases of the premature baby which really helped my personality deficiency that requires that I put things into lists and boxes (just ask anyone who has worked or lived with me!). Stage 1 is stabilisation of the respiratory function (going well so far), stage 2 is getting the babies to accept milk (all related to the maturity of the intestines – just for information, both Capucine and Gaston are drinking a whole 2ml per meal!), and stage 3 is when they are sufficiently mature to suck milk from a bottle. I was particularly reassured because once we’re through stage 1, everything else is directly related to eating – this is definitely something that the O’Brien’s have never had a problem with. Because of that I can therefore end this posting with something of a (no doubt medically irrational) spring in my step.

The Little Terrorist

It is fair to say that for the last 7 months whilst Sandie has suffered from a tremendously difficult pregnancy, I have been what Social Security might call the “Primary Carer” for 22 month old Maxime. It’s been a lot of fun in many respects – it’s funny to hear him call out “Papa, Papa” as soon as he wakes at the crack of dawn, and now I’m certainly more adept in getting him ready for creche in the morning in less 90 minutes. However complacency is a dangerous thing as I found out to my cost this morning. I thought the quickest option to resolve the issue of a dirty nappy was to whisk him under the shower. I took the nappy to the bin in the kitchen not realising that I was being followed. I turned around to see a happy smiling face which took great delight in uttering the word “caca”. My jaw dropped when I realised that I hadn’t made sure the nappy was nice and full before heading for the kitchen....let’s just say the bathroom and the hallway through to the kitchen reminded me of the Irish dirty protest in the 1980s (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irish_hunger_strike) ...you could say that it was like the Hunger strike but without the hunger as Maxime proceeded to eat his own breakfast and half of mine. Humpf

Thankfully the news from the hospital was better and put something of a spring in my step. Whilst chickens are still not being counted, the second paediatrician who set the babies up in the ICU on Friday morning came and spoke to us today. She was really quite happy with Capucine’s behaviour since the birth stating that the way she was acting was really not in a way that is typically associated with really sick children. A nurse also later told us that the general feeling in the department is that the pair of them are doing well and really aren’t a source of huge concern for the nurses, especially when compared to another baby currently in ICU who was born at 25 weeks.....that said, fingers remain firmly crossed for the brain scan tomorrow however.

We want Glasnost, Give us Pravda!

At times it feels like getting information would be easier in a communist state in the 1930s than in a maternity ward. This morning I was delighted to stumble across the paediatrician that resuscitated Capucine after her birth on Friday. I couldn’t get my questions out quick enough and I hung on every syllable of every word that he said. It was just a shame that he said it all in French (now’s the time when you see the real limits of your ability to speak a foreign language). Thankfully Sandie was there to help understand both what was said, but also what was not said. It was obvious after the paediatrician had left that we could have picked over the bones of the conversation for the next two days but the overall message, I hope, is one of cautious optimism. There will be a brain scan every Tuesday and Friday for the next two weeks. Only at the end of this period can we see if the potential problems related to the difficulties at the birth have led to anything really serious. It is a nervous time indeed even despite the fact that all the other signs are good. Without that confirmation neither Sandie nor I will sleep easy.

The other thing which this led me to thinking is the difficulty of the job the doctors and paediatricians do. I think it is inevitable that faced with a barrage of questions from understandably nervous (and therefore unpredictable) parents, the rational thing to do is to release only the minimum amount of information for fear of information arbitrage if the same question is asked to different doctors (which it inevitably will be). A vicious circle then ensues; a doctor’s desire to protect his own skin and the parents, (who are invariably ill-qualified to understand the technical nature of the information being shared) mean a drying up of information which only increases the nervousness and frustration of the parents. I think Glasnost in Bayonne will take a wee while longer even if there is no physical wall to break down.

Back in the "real" world, both Capucine and Gaston seemed calm today, especially Gaston. Capucine likes to squeeze my finger when I hold her hand, so that's something which already gives me a lot of joy. Some other information that is easy to digest is the fact that Capucine measures 40.2cm and Gaston 42.6cm. That at least is information that can be confirmed by the naked eye!

Beach Babies

The first thing that Sandie told me when I got to the hospital today was that Capucine had lost 70 grams and Gaston had lost 60 grams overnight. That, by all accounts, is nothing unusual with new born babies. However I started to get a bit suspicious about the French health system when I went to see them for myself. I was shocked to see Capucine under a blue UV lamp wearing an eye mask. I knew the French were vain, but surely putting them on a diet and encouraging sunbathing at less than 48 hours old was going a touch too far. Thankfully there was a nurse on hand to explain to me that this was actually a very common treatment for jaundice. The babies’ livers are working overtime to get rid of a few too many red blood cells. I heaved a sigh of relief. I spent most of the afternoon in ICU with a copy of the Economist and my iPod (they’re nice kids but not very talkative for the minute, especially when they’re topping up their sun tans). In general Gaston seems un-phased by the whole thing whereas Capucine is definitely more agitated. Thankfully by the end of the day Sandie and I were reassured because they were both sleeping peacefully. The next big event will be a brain scan for the pair of them on Tuesday. This will be particularly important to understand what’s going on for Capucine who had the more troubled birth of the two.

The other thing that the last 24 hours has taught me is the premium that the right information should command. Having only a small amount of information and a large amount of time to think is a dangerous combination. However providing a huge deluge of information is definitely not the answer either. Sandie managed to read the medical charts of the babies and saw Capucine’s poor Apgar scores...she then proceeded to fret about them and was only finally reassured after managing to get on the internet and finding out that a poor Apga score is thankfully not any indication of future (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apgar_score). It’s already quite clear that it’s going to be a rollercoaster ride for the next two months. With a bit of luck we’ll manage to keep a bit of perspective along the way and even more so, that the whole story will have a happy ending.

COB - Bilan

One of the future god fathers kindly pointed out this morning that Capucine O'Brien has the initials COB, which also stand for "Close Of Business". So it seems fitting to tell you all how she's doing at the end of her first day in the world. Of the two, she had the more difficult birth and required a certain degree of assistance to get her up and running....Not even a day old and she's already "high maintenance" - I had hoped this was one characteristic that her mother wouldn't hand down, but it seems that genetics has got the better of me again (if either of them have been "blessed" with the Rogeret ears then Sandie and I will be having stern words). Thankfully since that stuttering arrival, she's been sailing through all sorts of tests and there seems to be a certain guarded optimism about her future. There still seems to be one slight internal bleeding issue, but hopefully that will resolve itself over the next couple of days. Gaston on the other hand came out wriggling and screaming. I managed to watch for quite a long time as they got him ready before he went up to the intensive care unit (ICU). He’s a cute little thing (be sure to put the emphasis on “little” rather than “cute”), although his lungs aren't as developed as his sisters, and he did have to receive an injection in the morning to help his alveoli. Apart from that he seems a stable wee man; I’m already relying on him to keep his sister in line in due course.

More anon tomorrow, although one of the priorities is definitely to spend a good bit of time with Maxime – he seems to be the only one who’s taking this in his stride!

Afterthought

In a most bizarre event in the delivery room after the arrival of Capucine and Gaston, Sandie talked about "not ruling out a fourth". I immediately sought to nip this ludicrous idea in the bud and I attributed the utterance to the copious amounts of drugs that must still have been rushing through her veins. I've never heard such madness in my life, especially not at 4AM in the morning!

Capucine & Gaston

Patience is a virtue possess it if you can, seldom found in women and never in a man. However at only 6.5 months old, it was little Capucine who decided to force the issue by kicking her way out of her protective sack of amniotic fluid on Wednesday night. Chapter 1 of the story ended this morning at 1.59AM as she exited Sandie's stomach thanks to the deft hands of a very capable surgeon. Gaston followed 2 minutes later and they're now both in intensive care in their own little room in the maternity ward at Bayonne hospital in France. More information in due course but for now, an exhausted "papa" is going to his bed.

P.O.W

The title of this posting has less to do with a Batman comic from the 1980s and more to do with the fight against terrorism. Whoever dreamt up the idea of sleep deprivation as a form of torture (excuse the pun), was a smart cookie. Sandie has just telephoned. It is 8 minutes past midnight. It's time to go to the hospital again. A false start? Only time will tell.

Topsy Turvy Whirling Dervish

Just an update after last night's posting. Despite AF774 landing safely and me getting no speeding tickets on the way home, we don't have any babies yet....the doctors want to delay the birth as much as possible because Sandie's still only 6.5 months pregnant. She's had an injection to accelerate the development of the lungs of the babies and that takes 48 hours to kick in so they are trying to buy time. That said the babies will be here within the week and they could be here as early as tomorrow night or over the weekend. I bought two new "dou-dous" from Toys-r-us at lunch time today (the French equivalent of a security blanket for small children), so I now feel thoroughly prepared for life in a family of five....

Final Call for Passenger Water Sbreaking

I am sitting in the Air France lounge at Paris CDG airport. Never have I wanted a plane to leave on time as much as this one. Sandie's waters have just broken and she's off to the hospital. AF774 will take me to Pau where I will pick up the car before driving to the hospital in Bayonne. I could be in a family of 5 by the time I get to the south of France tonight. Wish us luck! Flight boarding now.....

Morning Run

Today's morning run in the beautiful forests in Zurich was less eventful than last Friday's excursion in Eastern Europe. That said it was good to get out after a hectic week which included having to rush Sandie to hospital (everything fine now), a plane ticket that the travel centre had "forgotten to buy", 5 hours in a French train and 2 days in Zurich. I am now currently sitting in the airport at Zurich waiting to travel home. The 2 day workshop I've just completed in Zurich was useful in parts. We did some interesting work on cultural dimensions which I'll digest on the flight home and share in due course....does that make me high power distance or lower power distance? Anyway, much more important than that, I'm looking forward to a day out with Maxime tomorrow at the show jumping in Pau. It will be good to see everyone again - it's been a while.

Köszönöm Tesco!

Many of you know that despite the fact that I hate running, I often go running in the morning to try and keep fit and to get to know the various towns and cities I travel to. You may also have picked up that I am a specialist in getting lost – in Paris I used to run around with my tube pass because I often had to get the train back to my home station when I got too lost. This morning I went one better when out running in the rain in Hungary. My hotel was already in the industrial outskirts of Budapest so when I got lost this morning, I really got lost. After about 30 minutes I ended up stopping two middle-aged Hungarian women who didn’t speak a word of English. All I could mutter was, “Tesco”. Thankfully they understood that I needed to go to the local Tesco supermarket which happened to be next to my hotel. The first lady quickly realised that it would impossible to give me directions, so she looked at the second lady who gestured that I should get in their car. The husband of one (or possibly both of them) was standing at the gate of their garden with his huge Alsatian dog – I felt it would have been rude (or dangerous) to refuse, so in I got. Shortly afterwards I was very happy because it was quite clear that after 10 minutes of driving on the motorway I had really got myself very lost indeed. I was also very happy that the day before I had asked my taxi driver how to say “Thank You” in the local language (something I often do). Never had it been more useful. As I got out of the car they gave me a huge smile as I muttered “Köszönöm” (pronounced cus-u-num). I was just glad I had got out alive with my watch, wedding ring and the fillings in my teeth.

But it’s not only because of this experience that I like Hungary and Eastern Europe in general. I can understand that some might be put off by the lack of any border control checks at the airport, the clearly drunk taxi driver, or the either tasteless or deep fried food served in the hotel and client canteen (yesterday was the first time I have eaten deep fried camembert cheese!). But not me. I like Hungary and it’s not just because of the belly dancers at the restaurant last night. The Hungarians I have met are a nice and friendly bunch. They are typically happy to listen and to talk with you. I will be quite happy if I end up making regular trips to Budapest, although I’ll be sure to take a hotel in the city centre next time.

Köszönöm Tesco!

Many of you know that despite the fact that I hate running, I often go running in the morning to try and keep fit and to get to know the various towns and cities I travel to. You may also have picked up that I am a specialist in getting lost – in Paris I used to run around with my tube pass because I often had to get the train back to home station when I got too lost. This morning I went one better when out running in the rain in Hungary. My hotel was already in the industrial outskirts of Budapest so when I got lost this morning, I really got lost. After about 30 minutes I ended up stopping two middle-aged Hungarian women who didn’t speak a word of English. All I could mutter was, “Tesco”. Thankfully they understood that I needed to go to the local Tesco supermarket which happened to be next to my hotel. The first lady quickly realised that it would impossible to give me directions, so she looked at the second lady who gestured that I should get in their car. The husband of one (or possibly both of them) was standing at the gate of their garden with his huge Alsatian dog – I felt it would have been rude (or dangerous) to refuse, so in I got. Shortly afterwards I was very happy because it was quite clear that after 10 minutes of driving on the motorway I had really got myself very lost indeed. I was also very happy that the day before I had asked my taxi driver how to say “Thank You” in the local language (something I often do). Never had it been more useful. As I got out of the car they gave me a huge smile as I muttered “Köszönöm” (pronounced cus-u-num). I was just glad I had got out alive with my watch, wedding ring and the fillings in my teeth.

But it’s not only because of this experience that I like Hungary and Eastern Europe in general. I can understand that some might be put off by the lack of any border control checks at the airport, the clearly drunk taxi driver, or the either tasteless or deep fried food served in the hotel and client canteen (yesterday was the first time I have eaten deep fried camembert cheese!). But not me. I like Hungary and it’s not just because of the belly dancers at the restaurant last night. The Hungarians I have met are a nice and friendly bunch. They are typically happy to listen and to talk with you. I will be quite happy if I end up making regular trips to Budapest, although I’ll be sure to take a hotel in the city centre next time.

Home Sweet Home

I've been pondering recently why people are so attached to their homes. Sandie always said that my way of living that involves travelling with just a suitcase of clothes is not normal. I find she often has an "alternative" way of seeing things. With her being sick at the minute I've actually been working a lot more from home recently (although I am travelling to Hungary tonight and Zurich for 2 days next week). I have to say it's not unpleasant. So why do people like their homes so much - for me I suspect it's because it gives me a major point of reference and a sense of belonging - I've always said to Sandie that I feel like I'm a little butterfly stuck on the end of a piece of elastic that has one end firmly pinned down in the south west of France. Me, as a butterfly. I bet not many people have described me like that before.

Business Case - Genius

From The London Times: A Well-Planned Retirement
Outside England 's Bristol Zoo there is a parking lot for 150 cars and 8 buses. For 25 years, it's parking fees were managed by a very pleasant attendant. The fees were for cars (£1.40), for buses (about £7).Then, one day, after 25 solid years of never missing a day off work, he just didn't show up; so the Zoo Management called the City Council and asked it to send them another parking agent. The Council did some research and replied that the parking lot was the Zoo's own responsibility. The Zoo advised the Council that the attendant was a City employee. The City Council responded that the lot attendant had never been on the City payroll. Meanwhile, sitting in his villa somewhere on the coast of Spain or France or Italy ... is a man who'd apparently had a ticket machine installed completely on his own, and then, had simply begun to show up every day, to collect and keep the parking fees, estimated at about £560 per day -- for 25 years. Assuming 7 days a week, this amounts to just over 7 million pounds ... and no one even knows his name!

Paranoia

I was feeling virtuous this morning as a result of not killing anyone, but does that mean everyone now hates me.... an interesting article in the Economist suggests that maybe they do. It says that "too much virtue (is) seen as a vice".....http://www.economist.com/node/16843817?story_id=16843817

28 KPH

As I was driving Maxime to crèche this morning I made a conscious effort to respect the speed limit near the school building. The speed counter flashed up with 28 in bright green letters and I felt particularly virtuous. I think it was the first time that I’ve ever respected the speed limit on that hill despite having lived in Biarritz for 10 years.

Why did I make the effort this time? Well because I’ve now got a child. It is funny how having experienced something first hand (having a child), your perception of, and attitudes to, different things (speed limits) changes. Sandie said a similar thing to me this week – she told me that lying in a hospital bed worrying about the health of two young foetuses has helped her put a lot of things into perspective.

I suspect the upshot of these two musings is (1) now I understand why you can’t be CEO straight after graduating – you just haven’t had enough first hand experiences, (2) that reading, and in particular reading the accounts of first hand experiences of others, is probably the next best way to get additional experience (even if it is only second hand), and (3) I am hopeful that this means that Sandie will be even easier to live with when she gets out of hospital.

8.19PM -> 8.39PM

The time I landed in Zurich airport last night and the time at which I was in my regular hotel next to the zoo. I didn't forget any pushchairs at the airport. I didn't open the taxi door on the motorway once. We didn't stop for any nappy changes. I didn't split my head open. Travelling without Maxime is infinitely less complicated, but somehow less exciting. On a different note I have to say that I like my little routines here in Zurich. The highlight of the day today, apart from meeting two new clients, was seeing a llama in the zoo at 6.45AM. No elephants though.

Gold Rush

I had forgotten to mention on this blog a major development of the last couple of weeks. After only minutes of practice in our patio with a beach ball, it looks like Maxime is a left footer. I think I may have struck gold. My retirement is clearly secure and all I need do now is to sit back and wait for the phone calls from the scouts of various professional football clubs... that is of course if he and I don't have too many weekends away without his mother over the next 18 years.

I do she don't

This was the story of my little brother's wedding. However before you think that he was left standing all alone at the altar, the title of this blog relates more to my own experience here in the UK over the last couple of days rather than his. I came across with Maxime but without Sandie who needs to rest in France. If one asked the question do you agree that Maxime should be allowed to travel alone with his father in the future, I think my answer would be, “I do”, but Sandie’s answer would be “I don’t”. Let’s consider the evidence on both sides.

My view of things: We managed to leave Biarritz on Thursday, arrive in London, pick up a hire car and drive to the venue. Maxime was fed and watered appropriately and slept well on arrival. On the Friday my little brother managed to get married and Maxime was in bed for 9PM.

Now the case for the prosecution: It is true that I gave Ryanair the wrong boarding passes on Thursday, it is true we almost lost Maxime as he excitedly ran up the runway chasing an Air France Airbus jet, and it is also true that he took great delight in patting the head of the elderly passenger in front of him (his joy at this was only surpassed by his invention of a great game that involved putting a jam filled biscuit in the hair of the aforementioned passenger). Just for the record, we hadn’t even left Biarritz by this stage. It is also true that on arrival in London I managed to forget to pick up the pushchair when collecting our suitcase. In addition to that and after cheating death numerous times on the walk to the Hertz car rental car park, Maxime then proceeded to open his car door four times during a 90 minute journey on the motorway whilst travelling at around 130 KPH. Whilst discussing this with my Dad (oh yes, I was not travelling alone – I had another responsible adult with me), I felt that the first 6.5 hours travelling with my son had gone pretty well. I also concluded that the lost milk bottle was so insignificant it wasn’t even worth mentioning to Sandie.

Day 2: The first part of the day went exceedingly well. After travelling so far I was naturally delighted not to see any of the service after my reading because Maxime just didn’t fancy sitting still (even 750 grams of biscuits weren’t enough to keep him in one place). That said, Maxime was still in fine form and still in one piece. In fact the only time he wanted to go into the church was after the ceremony had finished – for those of you without children this is because it is much easier to climb over the seats when the church is empty. I do however have to admit I felt awful as Maxime cut his forehead open on a radiator during the wedding reception (even if he was not strictly under my supervision at that point in time I hasten to add, m'lud).

By the time the young adventurer got to bed, again around 9PM, I was covered in sweat, tears, blood and chocolate (Maxime spat out a half eaten sweet that managed to tumble down the full length of my white shirt). As we enter the final 24 hours of this little adventure, the main conclusion that I have drawn is that having children should be a conscious choice – you can opt to have no children at all. That plus the fact that I should appreciate more what Sandie does…it’s just a shame she’s going to spend the next 2 months in hospital waiting for the twins to arrive.

Scout's Honour

The secrets of successful business? If you say you're going to do something, then do it, and don't forget to keep people updated on where you're at with something they've asked you to do. The basic things are easy, but boy does it make a difference when you don't do them. I'm seeing some unbelievable examples of trust busting behaviour today. Ouch. The good news is that it should be easy to resolve.....

Trudge Trudge Trudge

Trudging back to work this week after a super holiday, although it's been a bizarre mix of things moving at 100 MPH but nothing actually really changing or moving forward – sprinting on the spot if you like. I guess that's when I need to take a step back and avoid getting drawn into the hubris and work out what really is the best use of my time. I spent some good quality time with my boss yesterday so that’s helped both re-orientate me and also cover off a number of minor admin points such as expense claims…. I also took great pleasure in seeing a young Belgian last night – he almost looked and sounded like a serious professional now that he’s no longer working for me. He’ll be here in London until the end of the year so hopefully I’ll be able to see a bit more of him and another young chip and mayonnaise eating individual. Flying back to France this afternoon to come back to the UK tomorrow night with Maxime (but without the wife) ahead of my little brother’s wedding on Friday. I’m actually looking forward to my first trip away with 20 month old Maxime, although Sandie seems petrified by the whole idea….I am pretty sure I know who will be proved right (I can already see myself throwing the little monster into the Ryanair bag drop on Sunday afternoon).

The Art of Selling

I'm not a great fan of shopping and I am fortunate to consider myself as having pretty much all I need in terms of material possessions (with the obvious exception of a horse). However I remember learning that one of the most important things when selling is to generate a sense of need in potential customers, a form of "demand generation". Sandie's latest purchase leaves me gob smacked and wishing I was a better salesman - I didn't even know that milking cushions for twins existed, never mind the fact that my wife thinks the price of 70 EUR is perfectly acceptable for one. Unbelievable. Check it out and scroll down to see the latest bit of useless kit that is going to take up yet more space in our house which was originally intended to be somewhat minimalist.... http://www.doublezamours.fr/coussin-dallaitement-special-jumeaux.html?47e67078d2fbf846448c8c91ec70f8c3=63c8ad940856fce8f2661adc6154ed0b

Conjugal Communication

Nothing much to say in honesty so I'll keep it brief. The holidays continue to go well - I'm trying to match Maxime in the sleeping stakes - sleeping 12 hours a night does wonders for me the next day! I've also ridden some stupidly good (and expensive) horses thanks to my pal Michel, and both Sandie and I are looking forward to seeing an old friend at the end of the week. I've also enjoyed seeing a good bit of my elder brother and his little tribe.

One vaguely interesting thought did pop into my sun dried brain the other day and that is whether or not having children helps you get to know your spouse / partner better. Does Maxime's behaviour help me better understand Sandie's likely reaction to things? I presume it does in some way, but I've yet to form any concrete theory either way. For the minute I am just basking in Sandie's unprompted apology last Sunday for being unbearable (hormones must have been working in my favour on that occasion), and the revelation the day after when we realised her siestas are equivalent to my need to do sport. After 10 years together I think we've finally found a common language! If only for that, it's been a great holiday - much better than the last arm breaking and hospital operation affair!

Venturing Out in Europe

Despite having lost my Irish passport, I’m now well and truly back in Europe. Since my return from India I’ve been to London (the day after), Glasgow (for a night out), Biarritz (of course), Pau, Paris, Zurich, San Sebastian and Orthez. I’ve found my way onto the back of a number of extremely good horses and I’ve even ridden my bike (and this time not just in my garage). Any weight I lost in Bangaluru is now well and truly piled back on, and homemade pizzas and burgers are on the BBQ menu at my parents’ place on Friday night. I’ve managed to take the tail end of August as holiday and thankfully the weather is holding up nicely despite being a bit iffy whilst I was on my travels.

After a triple fracture, sick wife and 2.5 months of a new job, I’ve not had much time to focus on the impending arrival. This little holiday has helped that as I’ve started to flick through books of baby names. The challenge with Mrs. O’Brien is, once again, avoiding excessively French names. She’d love a little Louis, Clement or Pierre-Charles but I have to keep reminding her that they will all be shipped off to some English or Chinese speaking nation as soon as I am seriously thinking about retirement. Even with this strong argument I don’t think I’ll ever get my Aoife, Orla, Cathal or Cormac, but hopefully we’ll manage to find some middle ground. I was a big fan of my brother’s recent choice, Reuben, but I don’t think we’ll find many Hebrew names in Sandie’s final short list. And although she is the proud owner of a beautiful new silk sari, I don’t think she’ll be opting for Prashant, Pushpa or Pavitra any time soon either. I have another 10 days or so of holidays. Whilst I don’t think we’ll have a final name choice, hopefully we’ll be a bit further forward in our preparations. Me thinks that November is going to come around very quickly!

Someone pass the knife

I am now on my way home – I am currently sitting outside the bakery “Paul” in Dubai airport. It’s been a long trip and I am very happy at the prospect of seeing my little brother and Sandie in Biarritz, sleeping in my own bed tonight, and getting to play with Maxime before his bedtime (which will hopefully be extended by 30 minutes tonight if his mother agrees). I suspect the four key things I would take from the trip are as follows:

The Indians really do have a keen sense of customer service. The Europeans in our party were aghast when someone explained early in the trip that they believed that the food you give to your children or the clothes on your back come directly from customer. Never would we make such a direct connection. Over the course of the 3 weeks this reactivity to customer requests is obvious, even if at times it is poorly executed.

The Indians are also extremely tolerant – well they put up with me for almost 3 weeks! More seriously when I asked them, as the current Wipro workforce, how they felt about this sea change and increased hiring into their (very successful) company of non Indians in local markets. Their immediate reaction was one of, “it’s what we need if we want to be successful in those markets, and hopefully we’ll be able to mix the best of both worlds and cultures”. My previous experience, where I was part of the incumbent workforce facing a massive explosion in the number of new colleagues, was quite different and we talked openly of being careful not to “dilute the secret sauce” too much.

Another key take away for me was the generosity of Indians in terms of both material things and also in terms of the time they afford you. In material terms India is obviously a developing economy by comparison with Europe – I won’t win a Nobel Prize in economics for identifying that. However on Saturday my friend insisted on buying a present for my wife in his local town – there was no need to spend such sums on a person he had never met, but he wanted her to be happy and to have a positive impression of his local town and our friendship. In terms of the time people afford you, I have essentially finished 10 days of head to head meetings. Whilst that is exhausting for me personally, you also have to note the fact that that is a lot of people giving up time that is dedicated just to me. Whilst many of the meetings didn’t start on time, even fewer finished on time. The vast majority needed a follow up session because they wanted to share additional information, and in the whole three weeks only one meeting was postponed to next week when I am back in Europe, none were cancelled. I realised that time is the most precious thing anyone can give you...I would do very well to remember that as the person who likes to try and do everything, and often at break neck speed.

The final memory which will endure is the picture of a cow eating rubbish in Bangalore city centre. Initially horrified I took a picture and sent it to Sandie. I was fully expecting a similar reaction from my cow loving wife who has been trained in the ways of all things porcine, equine and bovine. Her response was that the cow actually looked in rude health. Whilst I am not sure I’m going to go and guzzle down a pint of Bangalore’s finest white stuff, that plus India’s 8.5% annual GDP growth should make me realise that there really are many ways to skin a cat....someone pass the knife.

Jingle Bells Jingle Bells

It felt like Christmas Day when I woke up this morning. Finally I get to come home. I took great delight in finally packing my suitcase before breakfast. The only reason why I wasn't jumping up and down like a 6 year old was the knowledge that what lies before me is a hard day's work and a 24 hour journey rather than a raft of exciting presents. That and sheer physical tiredness of course!

Catching Up and Taking Over

Nothing about cars or Wipro's business plans, more a very interesting article about how China has secured know-how from other countries yet why it will never out-innovate them. As a result China is unlikely to stride ahead of all other nations unless it gets its way and companies agree to put all R&D into China if they want to win contracts....but the unfortunate consequence of that might be that innovation is stifled at a global level.... http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-10792465

The Fourth Shuttle

When I was in high school I played for the U19 football team. Every Tuesday we had to do fitness training. We had to do five 35 second sprints with 35 seconds of rest in between each run. They were called “shuttles”. It was widely acknowledged that the penultimate or fourth run was always the most difficult. The first two were easy, the third meant that you were more than half way there and the final one, well that was the final one. It was the fourth shuttle that was just hard because you were tired and it had no particular significance. My second Sunday here in Bangalore is like that fourth shuttle. Monday and Tuesday will whizz by because they represent the final shuttle, and I am sure that come Wednesday night I will never have been so happy as to have travelled 24 hours! But today, it is a bit difficult.

On the other hand yesterday delivered a real high point of my trip. My new Indian colleagues became aware of me being here this weekend and they have then proceeded to arrange different things for me to make sure I wasn’t by myself. I have been astounded by their generosity. One of my colleagues took me to his native town about an hour away from Bangalore. He invited me to his home and he took me around the town. It was a wonderful experience – I felt as if I had been lucky enough to see the real India. The town had 1.5 million inhabitants but I can guarantee you I was the only white person there....at one point I was encircled by 30-40 Indian children of varying ages who wanted to touch me, to ask me my name and to ask “where was my native country”. The other thing that struck me, apart from the monkeys eating rubbish, was that despite all the differences, that people are essentially the same the world over. My friend showed me where his elderly father lived, explained that his sister had moved back in with her father to help him in his old age, and showed me where other members of his family lived – all within walking distance of his father’s house. The close proximity of family members reminded me not only of my own situation in Biarritz, but also of towns such as Newcastle and Ashington where families often live within very small distances of each other.

Today has been a bit difficult up until now – for example the high point was discovering that a type of shower fitting that I had always admired back in Europe, and which happens to be installed here in my hotel room (although I have only just realised today, 2 weeks after arriving), is highly impractical.....That said I am expecting things to pick up – 3 of my other colleagues are coming to pick me up later on so I’m looking forward to that. I might also treat myself at the end of the day by packing my suitcase – now if that isn’t a sign that I’m ready to come home I don’t know what is!

The Fat Lady....

...isn’t singing for the minute. Theoretically this should have been my last day here and I should have taken a flight in the early hours of Saturday morning. However my boss here in India has requested that I stay for a meeting with the Gartner analyst next Tuesday. He will give us our annual feedback which feeds into the “Magic Quadrant” rating we get – this a very important indicator in the industry as to how strong we are, and how we relate to other companies including Accenture and IBM (the other two companies in the top 3). It is certainly an interesting meeting and an excellent opportunity for me to understand what our clients are saying about Wipro, but it does mean another 4 days in India. Whilst my new colleagues are really nice, warm, fun and welcoming, I’m keen to get home to see Sandie and Maxime. The fact that I need to stay longer has also put in jeopardy my chances of attending my little brother’s stag do next weekend. I basically arrive in France on Wednesday night and then have to go to London on the Thursday for 2 days. Whereas I had initially planned to spend the following weekend drinking Guinness in Scotland, I may choose to come home and spend some time with Sandie and Maxime, especially because we need to move house in Pau before the end of that weekend......I’m looking forward to my two weeks holiday at the end of August that’s for sure!

It’s been a very good but long and tiring week. On top of that I have managed to get a touch sick – the cod last night obviously didn’t agree with me. I thought I had done well to survive 15 days in India without any issues, but it was only after I ordered that my colleague told me I shouldn’t order fish in Bangalore because the sea is too far away (we’re 900m above sea level to give you an inexact idea), and that there aren’t really any great ways to transport such food such long distances. I initially mocked such views but as I was being sick at 2AM I rued my confidence in Indian fish.

Two more physical meetings to go and then one conference call before I collapse into bed. No doubt I’ll feel a tinge of loneliness as all the other “induction programme” participants make their way home. At least some of my new Indian colleagues have generously invited me to spend some time with them and their families tomorrow. I’ll be able to have a lie in before being picked up in the afternoon for a trip around some country villages. Naturally I’ll be taking my own packed lunch!

Bangalore Update

Sunday was an interesting day. After doing a fair amount of work on the Saturday I decided to do the tourist thing on Sunday. There was a day trip from the hotel into Bangalore and despite getting stranded for an hour or so in the King’s stables in the presidential palace (true), it was a good day out. We visited a Hindu temple, barefoot, a run-down palace (even worse than our own in Pau J) with 170 horses, and the main shopping district of Bangalore. In the palace I even managed to get within about 20 metres of the king was who having an afternoon nap. I reassured the tour guide that after living with Sandie for 10 years I was pretty good at being quiet so as not to wake people. My overall impression of Bangalore is people, people, people, pollution, dust and smog. That said the people really are very friendly – even after I managed to negotiate a 50% discount on an article that I really didn’t need or want. He was a very nice shopkeeper and it was without doubt the most enjoyable 25 eurocents I have ever spent.

I’ve now completed my first couple of days with the “Information Management” team here in Bangalore. This is basically the offshore engine and the guys who I have been speaking with on the phone for the last 7 weeks since I joined Wipro. It’s great to meet them and they are a really good bunch of guys – I think I am going to enjoy working with them a lot. I’ve also been able to get a good deal of time with the global head of IM for Wipro and we even had lunch together today. Another impressive guy who clearly has his head screwed on right. Another thing that really impressed me was the comprehensive and consolidated way in which they have pooled all of their assets, solutions and R&D – they have a dedicated lab environment will all the assets and demos installed just waiting for the client to be wheeled in. Professionally I am beginning to feel more relaxed about having made the right choice, now we just need to sort out the “brand in Europe” issue and then I think it’s going to be a fun ride.

Although I have been in India for 10 days, it only now feels like I’m now working – last week locked in a room with 30 other middle aged white Europeans, Americans and Australians didn’t really feel like it was the “real Indian deal”. It wasn’t, even if it was quite good fun. Now I’m talking with Indians, eating Indian and even wiggling my head like an Indian every now and again. The Wipro campus is also large and pleasant – a cross between Thames Valley Park in Reading and a US university campus. It’s very green although a few of the buildings could do with a new lick of paint. There is Indian music playing constantly in the lifts and the melodic tones are only interrupted by the voice of an Indian woman declaring that we have arrived at the second floor. There are also a large number of restaurants and coffee shops all over the place and the good news is that I have found one that sells a perfectly acceptable chocolate cake! I also made sure that I took a trip 90 minutes round trip across town to say hello to the Europe Travel Team – even though I only spoke to Nishad, Vinod and Stanley for 10 minutes, I am guessing that it will have been time very well spent given how complicated my travel plans tend to be!

Today is another day full of meetings and I should be going out with a few of the lads who look after our Telco, Media and High Tech clients today. I’m looking forward to that. Theoretically I’m into my last 3 days here but my boss said on Monday that he might want me to stay on for a meeting with Gartner next Tuesday. They will be giving us our annual feedback based on their conversations with our clients so that would certainly be very interesting even though I’m keen to get home. We’ll see how that one works out over the next day or so.

Howzat!!!

A busy day yesterday and more of a relaxed one today. I set off for my morning run yesterday grinning like a Cheshire cat. I got a number of smiles en route but the highlight was most definitely stumbling across my first ever game of street cricket. Apparently something very famous in India, I was most surprised to see 15 odd men and adolescent boys playing the old game at 6.30 in the morning behind an rather pungent shanty town. Most bizarre. I stopped and watched for a few minutes before heading off. Maybe by the end of my trip I’ll have managed to get a game!

The presentations yesterday were another mixed bag. My overall gripe is that you either have content or style in any given presentation but rarely the two together. There were very few people that could glide across the cultural boundaries with the appropriate mix of humour and humility. That said the presentation on the core values of the company, or the “Spirit of Wipro” as it is called, was particularly thought provoking, delivered by an interesting little character that has clearly travelled the world. He brought up a number of ideas, not all of which I am sure I agree with e.g. values underpin culture (agree), values have to change as time passes (not so sure I agree), routine makes you predictable (agree) and that this is a bad thing (not so sure I agree). Machines and screens have taken over our lives (I understand his point but not sure if I buy in completely despite spending Saturday afternoon working on my laptop), and intangibles (such as emotions and feelings) move tangibles (such as mobile phone handsets or other material possessions)....violently agree. The last session of the Global Assimilation Programme (GAP), so called because it was not appropriate to call it “Corporate Sheep Dip Programme”, was the Wipro Meet Me meeting which is a quarterly meeting for the whole corporation. It was hosted in Bangaluru (so we were there “live”), and beamed back to the rest of the world. The whole of the executive team were up on stage fielding questions from the audience and the “question bank”. One thing that struck me was that today’s leadership, rather understandably, is anything but diverse. Whilst that is to be expected, I wonder what Wipro Meet Me will look like 5 years from now....

Last night included a little foray into Bangaluru itself for a few drinks before coming back to the hotel where we managed to sneak our way into the after party for the Bangaluru Fashion Week that is being hosted at our hotel. I have to say I am much less taken with the Indian Liz Hurleys of the world than the western version, but it was interesting to see nonetheless. The best news of the night that for once the person who dived into the swimming pool fully clothed wasn’t me – the paltry sum of 1000 rupees was just not enough.

Smile Power

I am obviously feeling a bit more confident as I decided to leave the secured confines of my plush hotel for my morning run today (a blessing that the hotel gym was late in opening). I ended up running through a number of poor villages and it was another eye opener; the basic nature of everything, the dirt and grime, the lack of shoes, the shoddy sanitation system, the random animals and herds of dogs, the odd smells. It was the herd of dogs that made me most uneasy as I made a mental note to check on Google what to do if bitten by a rabid dog in India. It was also somewhat surreal to listen to this week’s Charlemagne on my iPod as I ran through a shanty town....Charlemagne lamented the reluctance of Europeans to give up some of their benefits and to work a bit harder; they want to spend a couple of weeks over here! That said, I became increasingly relaxed as my run progressed. In the last 2 or 3 minutes I didn’t see any dogs and managed to smile at a few locals. Their reactions to my smile were huge toothy grins – that’s when you see that despite coming from different worlds, there’s nothing more powerful than a smile to break down barriers. I’m already looking forward to tomorrow’s run where I’m going to make even more of an effort to be the happy, but polite, tourist.

The most difficult thing about doing these blog posts while in India is that I can’t make sense of the place. I am no William Hague and I need my frameworks to help me understand things. I just can’t get the measure of the place for the minute. No sooner than I think I have sussed something out, then in the very next breath I can’t help but conclude the complete opposite. Admittedly I have only been here 3.5 days, and I am definitely looking forward to next week when I will get to work directly with my Indian colleagues (I am currently locked in a room all day with lots of white, middle aged Americans and Europeans), but it’s certain that I haven’t got the measure of the place yet.

Still no elephants, but lots of roadside cows

Yep, you guessed it, I'm now in India. I’ve now completed by 26 hour journey to get here and my first day of presentations.

The journey itself was long via Paris, Dubai and then on to Bangalore, but it passed off without any major incidents. During the journey I renewed my love for McDonalds - not because of their food but because of their free wifi at CDG airport. I also took my first ever flight on the super jumbo from Airbus - the new A380. In reality the only time you really know you're on such a large plane is when you are boarding – one because you can see it through the window, and secondly because there are multiple streams of passengers boarding different parts of the plane in parallel. Once aboard it is very similar to many of the other larger types of planes. Whereas I had assumed there would be a swimming pool and running track in the cabin and that it would be some sort of Titanic like experience, in reality it was a normal flight seated next to a normal arguing married couple and in front of a normal screaming baby. Despite what I had heard about Emirates and its cabin crew, the food was very normal and the air hostess even managed to spill a bottle of water over me. Thankfully I was dressed in shorts and flip flops (I really was expecting a swimming pool) so there was no real issue. The one very positive plus point was the entertainment system with over 200 movies and multiple episodes of my favourite TV programme Glee!

The airports at Dubai and Bangalore were quite different. I was at Dubai at around 1AM In the morning and it was a hive of activity and bustling shoppers. I arrived at Bangalore smack bang in the middle of rush hour at 9AM. Despite the first thing I saw in India being a huge bill board advertisement for Accenture (!), the things which I remember most were the fact that it took me under 2 minutes to get through passport control and the quietness of the whole airport apart from a squeaky conveyer belt that delivered our luggage. After 10 years with Accenture I was used to Homeland Security in Chicago, but here in Bangalore it was as if they couldn’t wait to rush me into the country. Whilst I was determined to arrive without any preconceptions about what it was going to be like, the journey itself had already destroyed a number of myths in my mind. I also have to confess I was somewhat reassured to see that the floors in the airport were marble as opposed to mud, and I also was quite relieved to see my suitcase turn up after only an hour of waiting.

The final leg of the journey, a 2.5 hour taxi ride through rush hour Bangalore, was probably the most interesting part of the journey despite my exhaustion. I have never seen anything like it. I struggled to find any parallels and if I were forced to make any comparisons I would have to say it felt like a mix of the outskirts of Budapest in Hungary, the worst parts of Slovakia or Romania, and Morocco. The poverty and randomness of the place is quite clear to see, but there are clearly pockets of wealth and affluence and the place is not complete chaos as I was led to believe it would be. The cows were particularly well behaved and most seemed to be staying on the side of the road rather than actually being in the midst of the traffic. The other journey that was particularly interesting was the 45 minute morning run from the hotel to the Wipro campus on the Tuesday morning. We left our extremely plush hotel at around 7.30AM before crossing through shanty towns on the way to our corporate campus. Seeing hundreds of people (mainly men) just milling around with seemingly nothing to do and more of these sacred cows scavenging in piles of rubbish is something of an eye opener and a far cry from my regular commute in the lavish, moneyed streets of Zurich. When I left Accenture I wanted to see how the other half live and how things are done in the emerging markets. At least I can’t say I have been shielded from that experience.

We were privileged yesterday to have many of the company’s top brass come and talk to us in a series of lectures. Our results are being announced at the end of the week so they are all in India for that. Overall I felt the quality of the speakers and the material was mixed. Rather unsurprisingly the most impressive in my opinion was the head of sales. Whilst I heard a lot of the right messages and I felt people were saying more or less the right thing, and reassuringly they were saying the same things as my direct boss back in Europe, I couldn’t help but get the feeling that reading between the lines and understanding what wasn’t said is going to be especially important here in Wipro.

We’re back in the bus going through the shanty towns for the second day of lectures. I suspect PowerPoint fatigue is going to set in quite quickly, but for the minute it’s been an interesting trip. The other participants are also very interesting – it seems that Wipro is currently following a policy of hiring older, more experienced people to try and improve gravitas in front of the clients, especially in developed markets. As a result people aren’t shy in coming forward and asking difficult questions – for example it was the first time I have ever heard an American complain about his 10 days of statutory leave, the Wipro working culture, and his desire to take things a bit easier at his age (he was turning 30 next week). More anon no doubt over the coming days.