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San Francisco – last post


Today I am heading back home to good old bonnies Scotland. This has been a relatively long trip so I am thinking long to get home again ( thinking about a song which reminds me of home – The Northern Lights of Old Aberdeen…….. lyrics availble click here).

Yesterday, I travelled from San Francisco to San Jose to participate in an Executive Briefing event. This is where some key decision makers from a company or organisation travel to Cisco’s Exective Briefing Center in San Jose to listen to some presentations about new technology developments.

I was one of four presenters and this is the first time I have done an event like this at Cisco’s main Headquarters. Cisco occupies a number of buildings which are spread along Tasmin Drive. We travelled there to arrive in time for breakfast and also to transport our customers so it was a relatively early start ( we needed to be in San Jose for 7.30am to have breakfast).

The photo above shows the sun rising just as we left San Francisco having passed under the Bay Bridge.

This has been a long but enjoyable trip – I will look forward my next trip when I hope to manage my time to make it possible to do two things which were not possible between business commitments this time around – ride on a San Francisco Tram and also visit Alcatraz. The later was my objective this time – but it seems that you need to book that a few days in advance which made it impossible this time around.

At the moment I am spending some time at San Francisco International airport waiting for my flight departure time. Oh the joys of international travel 😉

Dubai – Walk on the beach

Tonight, I fly out to my next destination – at 1.ooam!!! We decided to relax and take a walk in the “cool” of the evening!!! The view of the Gulf made it well worthwhile, see below.


When we arrived at our destination about 30min later – walking on the sand is harder then I recalled 😉 We did stick to the we part but it was still hard work – but very enjoyable. I think the temp would have been around 28 degrees!!!!

Here is me at our destination – looking rather damp!!!! Very enjoyable though!!!! I really do need to get a bit fitter!!!

Holiday – Crovie October 2007

We have just returned from a very enjoyable and relaxing holiday at Crovie.

Crovie is a coastal village on the Moray Firth coast of Aberdeenshire. It was like taking a few steps back in time I have to say. For a start you cannot drive your car to the door of the cottage – you have to carry your belongings along a narrow path which is between the houses and the beach and is at times no more then about 1.5 meters wide. A wheel barrow is provided for each house to assist with this process. Here is a picture of the cottage taken just as we were arriving. We stayed in the terracotta coloured one.

The cottage was very comfortable inside as can be seen in the next photo.

Most nights we were treated to a stunning sunset which we tried to capture with the camera. To be honest the camera simply does not do the scene any real justice – here is one of my attempts.

We had a really enjoyable week and certainly managed to ‘chill’ a lot! A delight to be in a location where mobile phones don’t really work very well. It’s amazing how much we seem to depend on that technology these days! I suspect that we will be back there again sometime in the not too distant future 😉

To see some more photos Click Here