A night in the Bath

I spent yesterday evening in the Great Bath at the Roman Baths in Bath. A day before I had visited it with one of our partners as a possible venue for a conference for around 400+ people later this year.

For those who have never been, Bath is one of the most beautiful cities in the UK. Its made mostly of sandstone early Victorian buildings and has others dating back to Roman times.

I took an American there on Wednesday to look at the venues in the city and we ate at Sally Lunns. It was built in c1482 and has served as a tea shop for some 300+ years. Amazing place.

The Roman baths go back almost 2000 years.

While being shown round I was given the opportunity to come for an evening meal and drinks reception at the Roman Baths to showcase what the catering company can do and see the Baths at night, lit by flame.



I can't imagine many places in the world that would be more memorable to hold an evening reception. (The Allora caves in India I feel come close... ) It was simply amazing to see and imagine and feel the history.



The food too was absolutely stunning. It was served on the Victorian Terrace over looking the Great Bath. And one of those weird co-incidences that keeps happening happened. I sat down to eat and started to talk to the lady next to me. She was there in place of my neighbour from home, who had been unable to come as her husband was in London. What a small world.

Fingers crossed the conference will be there and we will be involved.



As one leaves the Baths at night, you face the floodlit Abbey, which is stunning.

BBC Newsnight Uzbekistan Cotton Videos

I finally managed to find a copy of the Newsnight Uzbek cotton program from the BBC on YouTube. Not sure what the copyright is on them, but they are worth watching if you are interested in this issue.

Spring is coming and new things are sprouting

I noticed on my way in to work this morning some greenness in the hedgerows. The first place I usually see this is on my way between Highworth and Lechlade. There is a long hawthorn hedge just as you enter Inglesham and every year I get excited when I see it start to turn green. I forget when I first saw it last year, so have blogged it here to see if its any earlier or later next year.

I've also started my Nokia N95 blog. So far regurgitated content from here. It can be found at http://myn95stuff.blogspot.com/. I'll add stuff to it as and when I find out about new stuff that can be done on the Nokia N95.

I'm also creating a new set of records for a CRM system called Sugar... will post on that too as I can as its a migration from an existing system and will throw up some issues I am sure.

Millie

Kids love to play with unexpected things. Here's Millie sitting happily in a wicker basket while Liz sorts out the washing. Look at this horse Daddy!

Flagpole for the church

Apparently years ago the church in Bishopstone used to have a flag pole on the top of the tower. Today Doug and I fitted a new one to the tower.

Here's the pics that tell the story.(GPS tagged).



On the way up through the bell tower roof.



Fixing the bottom bracket.



And the top bracket.



The St George's Red Cross flying proud.

And a video of the flag raising!



Sorry about the wind noise, it was pretty windy up there today.



As seen from the ground.

Whilst up there I took the opportunity to take some pictures of the view which is superb from up there. In the distance the new wind power turbines could be seen, one of them turning. I love seeing them, knowing that its clean power for us.

RIP VW Golf - or not...

Yesterday was stressful. I was running a bit late on my way to work and needed fuel. So I filled up to the top - nearly £50! It's getting so expensive to drive to work everyday...

I pulled out of the garage quite hard, and the wheels span a bit on the slippery road. I looked out of the rear view mirror and there was smoke everywhere. That could be done in my Rover P6 easily and the smoke came from the burning rubber on the tyres, but this was smoke from my exhaust.

I eased off a bit on the pedal and the smoke didn't stop. So I took it easy all the way to work. By the time I got to work, the smoke was so bad from the exhaust I could hardly see the office across the car park. I said a few carefully chosen words and opened the bonnet. It all looked ok and the engine sounded just fine. Hmmm.

At this point I thought that my cheap motoring had come to an end. Later on I called my good mate Colin at Kingsdown Garage in Faringdon and explained the symptoms. Fearing it was a few broken piston rings and the end of my great little VW. Mick who works for Colin had a suggestion that the crankcase ventilation breather could be blocked which leads to pressure build up in the engine, forcing oil past the piston rings and into the combustion chamber and that it may not be the piston rings at all...

I hung on to this hope all day, and drove to Faringdon on my way home. I decided that if this was the problem, removing the oil filler cap would probably help. Sadly the smoke continued. BUT... after about 10 miles it seemed to be getting better. When I got to Colin's he whipped off the rocker box and inside was the culprit. A completely blocked breather. Yipee not dead after all.

An hour later it had been cut out as we couldn't clean it as it was so badly clogged up. In its place Colin shoved a bit of wire wool up the breather pipe to act as a filter. I helped him shut up shop and drove a beautiful Triumph TR8 into the garage and helped shove a very low mileage bright yellow Rover SD1 2600 in for the night. Colin followed me back down the road on the way home - no smoke - RESULT!

Lack of posts = busy times

For my regular readers I apologise for the lack of posting. I've been incredibly busy since getting back from Bangladesh. I note that the stats are up a bit with around 25 people every day reading this blog. I wish I knew who they all were! I know about 75% of them are not first time readers, some even come and look everyday... I also know some of them are friends and family just keeping up on what is going on. I posted a few items on technical issues with my Nokia N95 and these seem to be leading to increased hits from unknown people, so may move them out to a separate blog... if only I had time.

Taking on 2 week business trips inevitably leads to a build up of email, much of it requiring urgent attention. I've not had a problem keeping on top of work email before, but have done this time. The way I manage it needs changing. Until now I have been running a bunch of rules in Outlook and automatically move incoming email to folders which relate in someway either to who sent the mail or the subject matter. This leads to scattered unread messages throughout my Outlook folders. This is failing me. I am now constantly finding that I've missed messages from people, because I didn't see their message amongst the mass of unimportant unread messages. Any suggestions on better ways to deal with lots of incoming email would be welcomed!

Meanwhile stuff has been happening.

Since my last posts on family members, Millie has learned to crawl properly. Keeping her in one place is getting hard! She's also learned to stand up at furniture and walk along holding onto it. She can say "Dadda" and makes "woof" noises at the dog and "miaow" at the cat. She says "Mumma" (mummy), "num num" (food). Huw broke a bone in his finger this week. He fell in the tennis courts at school apparently. Liz stopped being a school governor. Mabel is getting ready for ballet exams and doing very well. Martha has started the long run of GCSE examinations, and seems to be doing fine. Nelson continues to fail to understand that he's not allowed in the lounge during the day, either that or considers the challenge to be part of the fun.

My traveling shows no signs of stopping with confirmed trips ahead to Sao Paulo, (Brasil), Amsterdam (Netherlands) and Uganda all before Summer starts properly here. I'm hoping that the Brazil trip may be multi location but timings look out to get via Bolivia, Paraguay and Florida on the same visit. That would be an amazing trip for sure, but may not be viable from a business perspective. Given the work we are doing in Bangladesh too, I could well end up back there before long.

Summer holidays seem a long way off but one has to book holidays now, or we may even be too late. A friend who lives in Bulgaria has suggested we go there, a cottage may come up in Wales we heard this week too. I quite fancy visiting the coast of old Yugoslavia having seen a bit of what it may be like form my trips to Slovenia. For the first time in I think 6 years we're not going to Herm. I feel a bit sad about that, but hopefully we'll find something new to focus on in the next few weeks.

The garden is coming back to life, and for the first time in months I've been woken by bird song with the daylight coming before its time to wake up. Even in the evenings now it's almost light still at 5pm. Not long now till the clocks change and the house martins return. Bring it on. I'll be clearing my vegetable plots later today and getting them ready for the coming season's new plants. I've got in mind some different things to try and grow this year including Salsify and red cabbages which we love.

Last night I cooked a delicious curry again, and really must get round to working on publishing some recipes here and cookery videos. Its amazing how many searches hit this blog with the words "how to make curry"...

Many years ago (1997-onwards) I ran a website for villages in the UK. Sadly the server I used to host it on was hacked and everything was deleted and I've never had an opportunity to get it all back on line. A colleague at work showed me a cool new technology this week, which may be just what I need to re-awaken that. When I did it last time, I spent ages getting a complete list of every village name in the UK. I still have that and can't help feeling it must be possible to generate some income from that while I sleep! I also own the domain villages.co.uk which has to have some value... watch this space. Work conspires to keep me busy so be patient!

No rest on Sundays

I spent a large part of today going round a largish textile factory and presenting what my company does to a number of it's employees. Not the best way to spend a Sunday thats for sure.

One benefit was getting to see more of Dhaka. I saw some of the less nice bits along with some very pleasant areas in the diplomatic and retired officers living areas. Tree lined roads with flowers and neat gardens, all guarded by armed soldiers.

In the evening we had fish and chips on the 5th floor of the hotel looking out across the swimming pool. It was a cool evening and no matter how hard we tried we couldn't persuade the waiter that we actually wanted the chips on the plate. Instead a big bowl came in the middle of the table despite him having said "yes" to understanding what we wanted. "Yes" is the standard answer to everything here. Once you realise this is the case you no longer get caught out by it...

The times I've thought I'd explained something only to try and confirm it to find out my message is not understood because the person doesn't speak a word of English other than "yes". The joy of travel.

The Best Curry in the World?

After a tip off from our host, Farhan and I headed for a small but splendid looking restaurant called Heritage a couple of blocks from our hotel in Dhaka.

It turns out that this is run by a Bangladeshi chap called Tommy Miah. This fella cut his teeth making curry back home in Birmingham in England. Having made his fortune and opened several restaurants in the UK he's back here now and created the Heritage, a Bangladeshi Fusion restaurant in the style of the sort of cooking he did in England.

The starter we had was called the Heritage starter. It was out of this world. I've never had such a tasty starter anywhere in the world.

For our main course we had a fish and a lamb dish which we shared between us. Again totally delicious. The lamb was so juicy and succulent and the fish had real texture to it. The sauces were neither too thick or thin and wonderfully dark, rich and aromatic with just the right heat for my palate.

If you read this because you are coming to Dhaka, I can thoroughly recommend Heritage. A search on the web will find it. Though its website wasn't working properly when I looked earlier.

In the garden live 3 small Deer. They are fed the left over vegetables from the kitchen and look in at the window as you eat! The place itself is like a small ancient fort in the front with a big arched gate you have to pass through.

Well worth the 2010Tak we paid. About £25 for 2 of us - so not ever so cheap by Bangladeshi standards but about half what you'd pay in the UK and infinitely better value than the rather poor Italian we had at the Westin last night.

A cricket match in Dhaka

Farhan and I were invited along today to watch our customer play cricket against one of their suppliers here. This was a great opportunity to socialise with the people we work with. Unfortunately the result didn't look like it was going the way our hosts had hoped.

Whilst sitting in the sun watching the match, I switched on my phone and despite being way away from buildings found I had several wireless access points available to me. So I connected to GMaps and could see exactly where I was in the city.


View Larger Map



It was a good match - 20/20 - Vyellatex 142 to Tesco's 99.

Here's a bit of action from the game.





We had a boxed Biryani for lunch, which was eaten with fingers. I've never quite managed to get to grips with eating rice with my fingers. So much of it ended up on the floor.



Some street kids came over the fence when we finished. They had bags to collect anything they could sell for recycling. They packed the cardboard, bottles and plastic into separate bags and were shooed away by the security staff!

Customers in Dhaka

I've only been to Dhaka once before, and liked it. Having been here for a second time I still like it and saw a different side of it tonight.

My customer in Dhaka is a short walk from the Hotel and has taken a strong stand on a current issue that is in the news a lot in the UK at the moment. We're helping them with that which is good. The people in the office were great.

I ran through my proposed presentation to their suppliers which I will make on Monday and Tuesday and Farhan and I demo'd our service. Unfortunately the Internet dropped out again during this, but we had a fall back position which was fine.

During the course of the day the regional manager introduced herself and invited me out to a place called the Nordic Club here in Dhaka. Apparently the centre of ex-pat activity and one of the few places with an alcohol licence. Tonight there was also to be a band playing.

Once the day was wrapped up Farhan and I met with another customer and planned a couple of weeks ahead to the work he'll be doing here and in Chittagong in the south of the country. That concluded we went for a meal in the Italian restaurant on the 23rd floor of this building. It was average and not that cheap.



I left Farhan to retire to his room and headed to the Nordic Club with my host. We ordered some cocktails. Something I have done very rarely before so I had no idea what was in them. I was introduced to various friends and they all were really great people who were mostly pretty senior people from multi national companies who had chosen to come to live and work here in Dhaka.

Best of all was my transport there. My host drives a long wheelbase Land Rover 110 here. Cool. The picture is a bit rubbish, but will I hope find it's way in to print as I know someone who will be interested!



Another chap I met there (a Norwegian) also has one and in August is going to drive it from here to Norway! What an adventure. I wish I could go along for the ride...

A band was playing, and I was told that sometimes they have a Turkish Saxophonist who comes over from Turkey fixing washing machines and then plays in the band. What sort of story is that? I wish he'd been there to ask...

They were pretty good as bands go and so surreal here in Dhaka.



In fact this place is really nothing at all like one expects Bangladesh to be from the TV. Everyone I spoke to at the club loves living here and says it is a great place to live.

A fascinating insight into ex-pat life out here. Thanks for taking me. Life is so full of surprises.