Venerdi 27th agosto 2010 Abroad

Talking about travel today. Work has been intense, lots of travel, and lots more to come. So far in the past couple of months I have been to the Ireland, Philippines and USA, and in the next 6 weeks I have Germany, Singapore, China and the Philippines again. I offered for one of my team to do some of these trips, but my team actually do real work, rather than just process improvement and line management or whatever it is I'm supposed to do ;) I enojy the travel side of things, but it really is a little too much just now on top of things.

I have attached some pictures that I took in Boston, (the USA one) and a couple from the crazy town of Manila in the Philippines. Manila people are lovely but the town is a huge mega metropolis, up to about 20 million people, and it is really not that great. Apparently the rest of the Philippines is lovely, but I cannot recommend Manila. Strangely, where we were staying in the centre of Manila was very very western. I guess that applies to the whole of the Philippines - very eastern, but all speaking English, well American English, if such a thing exists. Anyway, deep in the heart of Manila there we had: Marks & Spencers, Debenhams, Kenny Rogers Roasting Chicken, McDonalds, Burger King, etc etc. Actually, at the end of the week I found an Irish pub, well, actually I walked far and wide to find it, and was delighted when I had done so! Strange city, beautiful buildings right next door to slums.

Whilst I was there I took a tae kwon do lesson at the Gold's Gym from a girl who had competed at sparring in the world champs. Made me realise how much I missed martial arts and how much I haev slipped in the last 4 months.

In the US it was great to get some things, everything was so so cheap. Things in the UK are pretty cheap compared to here, and things in the US are cheap compared to the UK, so it was pretty good to stock up.

Pictures include: Dawn's old flat in the US, a colleague's floating home on Boston docks, a great tramp in Boston, a great t-shirt in the US, a massage advert in Manila (I don't know if the massage was kitchy-cheesey or if cheese was involved, scary, but I'm sure you could've got anything you asked for!), a Jeepney in Manila (the super cheap taxi buses), some slums and the Irish bar :)

Ciao ciao.