Sumary of the year

Well this has been a very busy year, I have taken 127 flights totalling just over 360 hours of flying. I have flown into 56 different airports in 19 different countries two British Overseas Territories and one Sovereign base area apart from the number of hours on an aircraft which was higher than usual due to an increase in long haul flying this was a very typical year. The work highlights would be getting Air Seychelles started on the Falklands service for the MOD in a record breaking three weeks, looking after the airport Logistics for the Circ Du Soleil during their European tour and being a speaker at an international aviation software conference.

2011’s flying starts on the 5^th January with a visit to Paris and already has a number of trips planned including France Germany and Malaysia so it looks like being just another year much like the last

The Magic of the Seychelles

What’s a difference a day (and a Hotel) makes. I have never really seen the magic of the Seychelles until this visit.

I have been here four times now and with one exception stayed in the Beau Vallon Bay Hotel. This hotel was built in the 1970’s and is to be honest a little tired, its simple things like the quality of the door on the hotel rooms, the dark corridors, architecture and the fact that the electricity supply does not always provide enough juice to charge your phone and laptop.

This time after one night in at Beau Vallon we were transferred to the Constance Ephelia Hotel on the far side of Mahe this is a new property which was only opened in February 2010, it is outstanding, the rack rate on the rooms varies from €250-€2500 per night dependant on the season and room quality. On arrival you are met and you luggage is taken from you then you proceed to the bar where they take your passport and credit card whilst you have a drink. A few moments later they reappear with your room key and when you are ready you can go to the room where your bags are waiting. The hotel is low rise and built to fit in with the surroundings, the entry level rooms are junior suits built in blocks of seven spread over the site, if you don’t fancy the walk between your room and the hotel building then you ring reception and they send a golf cart.

The Hotel is a luxurious 5 star affair, very spread out and low rise, nothing is above two stories or treetop height. It is very low density and you hardly see anyone except for when you are in the main building. The entry level rooms are stunning, well lit with high quality furniture, a bathroom big enough to accommodate the standalone bath, the rooms have patio windows running round over half the room and lead to a balcony. In order to hide the hotel from the sea the rooms do not have a sea view but this is not a problem.

The Hotel has three beaches, one of them is OK for swimming but the other two are on a lagoon where the water depth is only about 75cm at high tide, it is these two that were my favourite. They almost always totally deserted and are one of the most breathtaking places I have been on the planet. Access to the second beach is by wading round a rock outcrop where the fish are swimming round your feet. Walking around the grounds you can hear the wildlife all around in the enormous amount of greenery there is. That said I am still not a beach person and an hour a day after the conference finished was enough for me and all I wanted to do on the last day was come back home!!!

As CNN would say though there is a “back story” The Hotel has been unpopular with the locals as it has blocked access to a beach they used to use for Barbeques, the Hotel still say they can swim on the beach and eat in the restaurant if they want but few locals could afford to step foot in the place. It was a staff member from the hotel that told me this and I have to say its quite unusual to find this sort of stuff out, I am told that whenever there is news in the Seychelles that they don’t want the tourists to read it is published in Creole only. Apparently this was the case a while ago when a tourist was shot in the head.

Days like these

Days like these.........

I am back in the Seychelles again for a management meeting, it’s the last big trip of the year for me and it’s nice that given this is the first year of this blog that I start and finish the long haul with the same location. Today was one of the great evenings that really add to my enjoyment of the job I have.

I had arrived in Mahe on Sunday morning at 10AM after an overnight flight from Paris, The service on Air Seychelles is great and of a quality that most airlines have forgotten how to deliver. In business class it’s the small things like the quality of wash bag and the meal being served direct from the galley to your seat and not from a trolley. In economy it’s just the fact that you really think they care and the fact that they do two meal services on the ten hour flight not just one and a sandwich.

I spent the day dosing by the pool, its no my thing at all. I get very board at beaches, I just can’t see the point, and this time I was tired so it was OK. In the late afternoon I took a walk down the beach and at the very end there were fish in the water so close to the edge of the beach I could have reached in to pick them up.

The evening was the real highlight though, I met another delegate for the meeting and asked where they were eating, it transpires that they had arranged for a local beach trader to organise a barbecue for them and they asked if I wanted to come along. The Barbeque was on the beach just outside the Hotel, and there were just five of us, the local youth who was organising it had turned up with a bonito and a small Tuna fish, the accompaniment was two breadfruits that were cooked within the barbeque. The “Barbeque” was a few tree branches and the cooking was very simple in that it was just flavoured using a Creole sauce and gilled. The food was served on small palm leaves that he had just cut from the trees and eaten using our fingers. The waves were gently breaking on the beach it was 25°C and the stars were out and, with much less light pollution than the UK, are bright. After we had all finished he put sand on the barbeque to put it out, he took our empty beer bottles out of the bin and took them to be recycled I assume he was getting paid to return them. When we left it was as if we had never been there. We then sat outside the hotel drinking Citronella which was made from the leaves of one of the garden plants infused in boiling water.

What a great evening, the payback is to come tomorrow though as I have to start work at 8AM which is 3AM on my body clock. Still its worth it for days like these.

Great Architecture

I have travelled through Paris Charles De Gaulle Airport Terminal 2F a few times and the roof is a fantastic structure. The attached photos are from my blackberry and really don’t do it justice. The lighting really creates a sense of space and relaxation, the latter is really not easy to do in Airports these days. Someone, I think it was Robbie Williams filmed a music video with the roof as the backdrop.

Copper theft

We have had the copper telephone wires that connect our village to the telephone exchange dug up twice in the last two weeks, the attempted theft has failed on both occasions when the police turned up and on both occasions failed to make an arrest. It has took our phone company a week to repair the phones the first time and three days the second time. apparenelty copper is worth £6000 per tonne and the wire had two tonnes of copper in it. I hope they catch the person soon as its really annoying not having the internet

Lost in Translation

This is a brand of German Liquorish and can be found on all the kids sweet counters, it might not work in the UK!!

Jasey Jay Anderson

I was at one of my customer’s management meetings in Montreal and the motivational speaker was Jasey Jay Anderson who won a gold medal for snowboarding at the 2010 winter Olympics in Vancouver. Having retired from snowboarding he is embarking on a career as a public speaker. It was very interesting to hear about the career of an athlete and what motivates them. After the talk I got a chance to ask him something that I have always wondered about. What was “the moment” for him, when he crossed the line and realised he had won or when he was on the podium collecting the medal. As It turned out I seem to have been the first one to ask the question after some thought he told me it was crossing the line.

Christopher Simpson

I had the pleasure of sitting next to the Actor Christopher Simpson of "Brick Lane" fame the other day, he was on the way to a conference in France. He was a really interesting person and I would have loved to talk to him for longer IT was fascinating to hear how an actor goes about there craft.