I Love China

WoAi with mum, dad, Rich, Tate and Lyle Caitlin at London’s Park Lane Marriott on new year’s day.

Sadly, the time has come for me to return to Shanghai after 2 weeks at home in London with my newly expanded family. It’s been a great fortnight. All I’ve done is shop in the sales and hang out with my family.

WoAi with his university lecturer (1987 to 1991) Andrew Ward.

Well that’s not entirely true. I met up with the very lovely D, frequent commenter here, who rewarded me for all my blogging efforts with a cappuccino in Covent Garden – thanks D, great to meet you.  And on my very last day, I met up for lunch with two of my university lecturers and their respective partners. I’ve known them all for 22 years now – it’s shocking how time passes by.

WoAi with university marketing lecturer, Steve.

I hadn’t seen these guys for 4 or 5 years, so it was great to catch up with the people responsible for making me the successful captain of industry that I am today!

I’m flying back Sunday, so my next post will be from Shanghai.  Have a great weekend, the first of 2009!

I’m at home in London feeling lazy, hanging out with the family, playing Wii Tennis and eating lots of mum’s tasty home cooked food, which is a rare treat for me.

Here’s a clip of my 4 year old nephew Tate and his dad playing a game of Wii Tennis. Sadly none of the bootleg Wii games I brought over work on the UK Wii, but Wii Sports has enough to keep all of us occupied for days!

I’m leaving next Sunday for Shanghai, so that means one more week of doing not a lot, watching lots of telly (that’s television for you non-Brits) and perhaps a bit more shopping in the winter sales.

Normal blogging will therefore resume next week.

Happy new year!

Some of you will remember that I was in Beijing a few weeks ago to ensure that the preparations for the 2008 Beijing Olympics are going well and I was happy to report it’s all under control.

Yesterday, I flew home to London – also home of the 2012 Olympic Games – to see how well the preparations are coming along. I suppose this is a good opportunity to show (again) the London 2012 official logo, which controversially cost 1.2 million pounds (seriously, 1.2 million pounds!) to design. It is supposed to represent the numbers 2012 with the 5 Olympic rings embedded in the zero, but some people claim looks like cartoon character Lisa Simpson on her knees performing ….. oh never mind, I personally can’t see it myself!

Tonight I’ll be heading to Marbella in southern Spain, for a 3 day work conference, after which I’ll spend 3 nights in Barcelona followed by a week in London catching up with family and friends. So you can expect some on-the-road blogging over the next few weeks, but I expect China will still come up in many of the posts.

This is the plane I took, a British Airways Boeing 777 which they use exclusively on their Shanghai to London route, which runs 5 days per week since the service was launched in 2005.

I checked in online the night before, which relieves some of the stress and means my chosen seat is already reserved and I only need to drop off my bags at the airport and not worry that I’ll be sandwiched between two fat guys for 12 hours.

The sharp eyed among you will notice that written on the side of the plane are the words:

“Official Airline England Football Team”.

That’s all very nice, especially with the UEFA European Championships about to start next Saturday in Austria and Switzerland (it’s like the world cup, but only for European countries). Sadly though, England failed to qualify, so we won’t really be needing an official airline this summer – thanks Mr McClaren!