LA from the ground Hollywood

All in all it was a really depressing city, I am glad I took the tour but I would hate to live there, there is apparently a fence round the Hollywood sign because people used to climb up the letters and commit suicide by jumping off.



some tours take you round all the stars houses, or you can buy the map and take your own tour, this was not for me.



the tour stopped at the Kodak theatre which hosts "the Oscars" every year.



The Foyer has every "best picture" winner on the walls as you walk in going back many years and with a number of great films.



they are confident of a long future in this location !!!



all the stars are outside, apparently its $20,000 to have a star, we were told some of the stars pay for themselves and the costs for the rest are picked up by the studios

LA from the ground Venice and Venice Beach

On this occasion I had allowed a day in Los Angeles for a possible meeting. In the end the meeting took place at the conference in San Diego so I had a spare day in LA. I took advantage of this to take a trip round the town.

The trip started in Venice, apparenelty some one liked the original one so much they decided to build a copy in LA.



The copy has a beach .... Venice Beach, which is now more famous that the suburb it took its name from.




Venice Beach was where Bay Watch was filmed and Arnold Schwarzenegger was discovered on Muscle beach which is itself part of Venice Beach.


Waiting for the next big wave......judging by how calm it was they may still be waiting

LA from the air

After two and a half tough days it was time to come home. There are no direct flights from San Diego to Europe so a stopover had to be taken somewhere. on this occasion it was LA. Flying over LA has a lot of parallels to flying over Cairo it is a huge metropolis

I had thought it was just a large drainage ditch but it turns out it is the Los Angeles River. Apparently it is dry for an average of 360 days a year. It seems appropriate that the river banks are entirely concrete

The parallels with Cairo disappeared as we flew over this freeway intersection

Navy Park

Next to the USS Midway is a great park, the Bronzes represent bob Hope entertaining an audience of injured military personnel, around the installation there are speakers that are playing a bob hope routine. It’s a great piece of art

The other piece of Art is a great statue we sat and looked at it for a while, it was amazing how many people came along and looked her skirt!!

The current Navy carriers can also be seen from within the park. I understand it is quite rare to see three carriers in port at one time. These were the USS Nimitz (CVN68) USS Carl Vinson (CVN70) and the USS Ronald Regan (CVN76). Each of these carriers displaces just over 100,000 tonnes has a crew of over 5600 with 90 aircraft and can achieve 30 knots

USS Midway

San Diego is a navy town; it’s the Principle west coast navy base and 20% of the jobs in the city are Navy or Navy support. The USS Midway a WW2 aircraft carrier that was retired in the 1990’s has been turned in to a great museum http://www.midway.org/ its well worth a visit. This was my second visit to the Midway having managed to get a visit when she visited Hong Kong in the 1980’s. at 74,000 tonnes its quite a museum.

This photo below was taken from the “air traffic control tower” all the aircraft that are in the air are marked on a board, but as space is tight the person updating the board has to stand behind the board and write backwards in order not to block the view for the tower controllers, join the navy and learn to write backwards.

With over 4000 crew space for each crew member was limited you had a bunk area and a locker, in which your stuff seemed to only just fit.

Helming the ship was a task allocated to a young sailor often they would be only 18 or 19 and not even have a driving licence

This is the entrance to the magazine; there was a Marine Corps guard who was instructed to issue a verbal warning to any unauthorised person who stood on the yellow zone and to draw his weapon if they stepped into the red zone.

San Diego

I get to attend a major industry conference every year, it is held in some great locations around the world, this year it was San Diego. The conference started on the Sunday evening which gave me Sunday morning to see the town. I did not know what it would be like but I was pleasantly surprised, It a real combination of modern and nearly old.


The view from the Hotel


A thoroughly modern hotel



An interesting way of combining an office block with a metro station


The Americans are very proud of their flag and this was a very large example of the stars and stripes, how often do they have to wash it and how strong does the flag pole have to be.

San Diego has a lovely old railway station, at least I think its old, it might in fact be new and made to look old

Being California it had a welcoming message on the outside of the building the same message was on the door of our Hotel. Personally I can’t understand it, either its safe, in which case don’t put the message on the door, or its dangerous so don’t let people come in.


Inside it is a lovely old (or new made to look old) booking hall
And there was no sign of any dangerous chemicals, maybe it’s the wood polish that's the problem

How management meetings should be

I had one of my regular management meetings with my number two; he lives in Nice I live in London. On this occasion I flew down to meet him for the day, it was a 03:30 start from home and a 06:30 flight, I arrived in Nice at 09:00 local.

Sitting on the left on arrival in Nice there is a great view of one of my favourite buildings. I think the curves of the building look great, one day, as its partially a Hotel, I will go in and have a look.

My number 2 works from home so there was no office to go to so we usually go for a drive round the local area talking through the issues as we go. On this occasion we took a drive out to St. Tropez, this was my first time in this town and it is very nice

There is a real cafe culture where you have to be “seen” we stopped in a famous local cafe on the harbour front, most of the seats face out towards the harbour and it is a really pleasant atmosphere to discuss which way to take the business.

Even though it was out of season the harbour was still full of very nice boats, both motor powered and sail powered

After a late morning glass of wine we went for a wonder round the town, it was market day and France has a great artisan culture and the supermarkets have yet to make much inroad into the French psyche.



Then it was a late lunch on a beach overlooking St Tropez, away from the office a lot can be covered in a very relaxed atmosphere.

Then it was back onto the plane for the flight home getting back at 7PM much refreshed and reinvigorated, a much better deal than meeting at a service station on the M25 !!!