Qatar again

From Qatar

Yet another trip to Qatar.  Apparently Vodafone is i-conX's largest customer, so there is virtually nothing that the company will not do to keep them happy, which includes making my consultancy services available to them on a regular basis.  So it looks like there will be several more visits to wonderful Doha over the next year or so.
This time we were staying in the W Hotel, which was certainly very comfortable indeed. This was just as well as there is not much to do elsewhere in tone, and the international hotels are basically the focus of all night-life, not only for us visitors, but also for all the ex-pats working here.

Dublin downer

Not a very jolly visit this time around.  The company has recently lost a fairly important account and this necessitated making three employees redundant.  This in spite of the fact that we have just won the biggest single contract in the company's history.  The senior management team were particularly despondent and it took several lenghty sessions in the hotel bar for them to regain even a fraction of their normal good spirits.

Hong Kong

I was expecting to have much more free time at my disposal for this part of my trip as I only had two shortish meetings arranged over the three day period. I ended up spending most of the time in my hotel room attending to various pressing work tasks that had accumulated over the previous few days. Ah! the wonders of life with the Internet.  
I was not too bothered by this as I reckon I have seen pretty much all of the interesting stuff in Hong Kong several times over. 

(not) Diving in Pangkor

The plan was to go to Pangkor for a couple of days diving with a few buddies from KL, before heading on to Hong Kong.  Pangkor is a smallish island of the west coast of Malaysia, to the north of KL and to the south of Penang.  The fact that the only airline offering a service to the island had ceased to operate this route last year should have served as a warning that all was not going to turn out as planned.  We ended up making the 6 hour trip by road and ferry.
Once there it transpired that my mate's information was somewhat out of date.  The only dive shop on the island, which he had used a couple of years ago, was now closed.  We decided to make the  best of it by doing some snorkeling instead.  This was also a failure as the water was so cloudy that visibility was less than two meters.  Apparently this is the case for a bout 50% of the time, depending on rain and other seasonal factors.  Not surprising then that the dive shop closed down!  The moral of that tale is: always do your own research beforehand.
Leaving aside the lack of diving, the island was pleasant enough and the beach we were staying at was pleasant enough.  Most of the other holiday makers were Chinese Malays, and the local restaurants seemed to  cater for their tastes, so we ended up eating some excellent Chinese food.

Capacity Asia 2011，Kuala Lumpur

Back in KL again for this annual telecoms conference, although it is two years since I was last here. This time no stand to man, leaving more time for networking, which is what this event is really all about. Some useful information gathered from the people I was planning to see, but as often happens, the chance meetings over lunch turned out to be the most fruitful. I may even have identified a new channel to market for our software.

In the evening I had time to revisit some of my favourite KL venues, including the street dining delights of Jalan Alor.