Last Wednesday I was invited to attend a reception honoring the new Chairman of the Spain – U.S. Chamber of Commerce, retired Ambassador Alan D. Solomon, at Hunton & Williams.
Located at 200 Park Avenue, NY – Met Life building, floor 52 (if I remember correctly) the views were outstanding.
It was definitely a “business attire” reception, with everyone wearing a suit, and only a couple of us “daring” not to wear a tie.
I was in Lisbon, London, Valencia, and Paris for a day each last week, including flights, and meetings, so too short for individual long blog posts… or even picture galleries!
Some of the anecdotes in those trips:
– My flight to Lisbon was delayed 2:05h. The airline, TAP-Portugalia, tried really hard to departure 1:55h late at most, since after two hours delay they have to compensate passengers monetarily. But they couldn’t make it.
A couple weeks ago I was at Schiphol Airport in Amsterdam. Of course, when I arrive in an airport with enough time ahead of my boarding, I look for a plug and wifi. Luckily Schiphol is an excellent airport, offering both. The only problem is that every time I clicked on the “Enjoy unlimited free wifi – Connect” button, I got an “Unknown error 0” message back.
Don`t tell me “Enjoy unlimited free wifi” and then try to prevent me from accessing it.
As soon as I arrived in Utrecht, Diederik took me to a lunch at a very nice restaurant, inside an industrial complex: Zuiver. Both him and the waiter suggested the smoked eel salad, and I must agree, it was delicious.
Then, after a couple of very interesting meetings, he took me to dinner to another very nice restaurant, this time in the colorful and very touristy Red Light District: ANNA, where we had pre-appetizer, appetizer, main course, pre-dessert, and dessert.
On Monday September 15 I flew from New York to Milan, and went straight to a business meeting. From there I took the train to Rome. Although I was quite tired upon arrival, I had to stay awake until it was “local time to go to bed” to avoid jet-lag, so I took a stroll through the Piazza della Repubblica, where I had a Panini di melanzana e mozzarella, and Piazza Santa Maria Maggiore, where I had a Gelato di canoli (yes, canoli flavor, not a canoli).
So much traveling, flying, walking, sitting and time zone changes make your body ache, so some exercise is absolutely necessary. In my case, I try to book hotels with swimming pool, so I can swim. In the case of Singapore, given the year round mild climate, I felt like swimming in the outdoors swimming pool to start my third day.
I spent most of the day working, meeting with potential customers.
In the morning I had a business meeting with Dr. Ho at Suntec City, (home of the world largest HD screen), where I also attended the Medical Asia trade show. It wasn’t easy to get there, because the Formula 1 preparations had many streets closed to pedestrians, so I had to navigate my way around a maze of hotels and shopping malls. In one of them, the Marina Square, I saw a Mr.
