Monday the 18 of January I went to Liverpool for a business meeting. The first one in a very large project with England’s National Health System.
It was a quick trip, that started off the right way, with a “Game of Thrones” chair made out of electric guitars at the station, and Virgin giving me an upgrade to First Class. I usually can care less about traveling in first class for short train rides.
On January 3 I took my wife, along with my parents, to visit one of my childhood “safe places”: Moraira and Javea, in Alicante’s White Coast.
Alongside Ibiza, always my favorite, Moraira’s beaches have a very special place in my memory.
While it has grown a lot in population and housing developments, being a “prime real estate” area (and therefore rich town), they have made a pretty good job keeping it nice and beautiful.
For almost a month between mid-December and mid-January we escaped London’s grey sky and went to Valencia (Spain) to meet my team for some strategic sessions, and to be with the family.
The first thing we did was to behave like tourists, craving serrano ham, freshly squeezed orange juice, paella, or walks on the beach.
It’s easy to see how clichés are formed, being nothing else than the brain’s reductionist tendencies at play.
On December 4 I was lucky enough to be invited to visit Ai Weiwei`s exhibition at the Royal Academy.
I knew I would enjoy it since Ai Weiwei is one of my favourite artists. I knew even my son, my wife and my mother-in-law would enjoy it, since Ai Weiweis art is highly figurative and symbolic, even to the point of being obvious with his latest works (which makes its appeal that more far-reaching if slightly less elitist).
December 2 I went to the Tate Modern with the whole family, since my mother-in-law was visiting from overseas.
I really like how it is set up according to concepts, rather than chronologically, by artists, or by styles. It feels more like an art gallery (which it is) than a museum. It puts things into the subjective focus of the curator. I wonder how much the artists themselves would agree with the collection parameters, but it definitely is a welcome departure from the more traditional museum logic.
In the past few days I have had quite a few “interesting” meetings.
On November 26 I was invited to the Pre-Christmas Reception at HSBC corporate offices, along with other business owners/entrepreneurs: a weird mix of industries and interests (which I find a complete waste of business networking time). But one thing was completely homogeneous: wherever you looked, there were men. Middle aged, white, balding, dark suit-wearing men. Just like me.
Yesterday, after spending the day at a tradeshow in Düsseldorf, on my way by train to the hotel in Mülheim, I stopped in the town of Duisburg, which was on my way, because I heard they were setting up a Christmas market. The market was indeed being set up, but it was still closed, so I decided to go back to the station. To avoid the sprinkling rain I took the 901 tram at König-Heinrich Platz.
