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Visits to Expo2020

February 28, 2022 by tomtotley

The central plaza at Expo2020

So we visited Expo 2020, on a couple of days. After all, this was the principal ostensible reason for going. Just getting away for a week, to somewhere warm, after two years of not being able to do so had nothing to do with it. At all.

The Expo is on a new site about 25 miles or so from our hotel (Dubai really is that spread out). It’s broadly organised in three themes – Sustainability; Mobility; and Opportunity – and each theme has a has large area of the Expo dedicated to it within which is a grand thematic pavilion. Then in each area are the country pavilions, and the exhibition or display in each country pavilion is supposed to reflect, to some degree, the theme of the area it was situated in. There were over 200 country pavilions, ranging from vast (Thailand, for example) to small (Nigeria was just one room on one level). Then there were food outlets, again ranging in size from small carts to full scale restaurants. Some of the latter were associated with a country pavilion – we had a very good lunch in the restaurant attached to the Thai pavilion, for example – but there were a number of non-country specific outlets, e.g. there Costa Coffee outlets all over the site. There were also several parks, and a number of performance stages dotted around.

On our first day there (Saturday) we got there on the free shuttle bus provided by the hotel; this departed at 09:10 and arrived by about 9:45. There was also a later departure, at 11:10, and two return journeys with pickups from Expo at 6:45 and 8:45 in the evening. Our shuttle bus (just 17 seats) was pretty full on the way there, but when we came back at 6:45 there were just four of us on the bus. This suggested that the later bus might have been over-full. Fortunately there were alternatives; the local public transport authority was running free buses from various points in Dubai, Abu Dhabi and even points further afield every 30 minutes or so, and once you’ve got by bus to a convenient point in central Dubai then you can always get a taxi or use the metro to get to your hotel. Indeed, this was what we had to do today (Monday): the early bus to the Expo was full and we couldn’t get on it, so we took a taxi to Dubai Mall (25Dhs or a bit more) and then the free bus from there. Easy enough, but it meant we didn’t get there until an hour later than planned. Then we reversed the operation mid-afternoon.

Readers, we did not do well on Saturday. We visited a couple of the thematic pavilions (Sustainability and Opportunity) but keep looking at the country pavilions. In fact, we now think that it was the more thematic elements that were the best thing about the Expo. Some of the country pavilions hewed closer to their theme than others, and these were better – Singapore, situated in the Sustainability area, majored on their ‘city in a garden’ policy, for example. Others seemed to pay little attention to the theme.

Queues (and sunshade umbrellas) outside the Swiss pavilion

We were also taken aback by the fact that there were queues to get into many of the pavilions, and at first this put us off visiting them. For example, there were long queues around both of the entrances to the UAE’s pavilion, the biggest at the Expo, and so we didn’t bother. Later in the day we became more relaxed about this, but in the course of that first day, a fair proportion  of our time was taken up by foraging for food and searching for sanitation….

We decided to return today (Monday) specifically to target three pavilions that we had not visited: the UAE, Mobility, and Thailand. We were immediately disappointed when we discovered that the UAE pavilion was closed for most of the day, But we regrouped and did Thailand (where, as I mentioned above, we had an excellent lunch) and the Mobility pavilion. This was actually the best thing we saw, and we decided to leave after that – finish on a high note.

On purely practical points, we managed to bag ourselves a free multi-day pass courtesy of Emirates Airline who were supplying them to passengers. In theory visitors had to buy tickets, but I get the impression that as the Expo has continued (it’s been open since 1 October 2021 and will finish at the end of March), free tickets have become more common. Additionally, they were checking Covid vaccination status. Well in fact we snuck in on Saturday without that being checked which was as well because we weren’t ready to display our statuses, but by today we’d got that sorted out (downloaded the Covid pass to Apple Wallet) and indeed they were checked.

I’m still trying to summarise my thoughts about the Expo. Parts of it were spectacular (it certainly looked a million dollars), but it was also hot and tiring. And you have to ask about an exposition dedicated in part to Sustainability that’s being staged in a small desert country where everything has to be air-conditioned, and to which many visitors fly. But I have to say that I’m glad we went.

Posted in Dubai 2022, Expo2020 | 6 Comments »

Dubai Mall and Aquarium

February 27, 2022 by tomtotley

On our first morning we went to Dubai Mall. My planning had seen us using the Metro to get around to places like this, but it’s a walk of about a kilometre to the nearest metro station and it was already hot by the time we were ready to go (having breakfasted late), so we did what everyone else does in Dubai – got a taxi.

Dubai Mall is vast – when first opened it was reputedly the largest in the world – and your first struggle is to navigate your way around it. I’d been there on a previous visit so had some knowledge of it, but I quickly got confused. But after wandering aimlessly around for a while we found an ATM and got Dirhams, the local currency, and then found a branch of ‘du’, the local mobile provider, and bought a sim for 100 Dhs (about £20). This will give me some local calls free, some international calls for free (they say – not going to test it), and 6 Gb of data. It’s actually for 28 days of which we will only use 7, but there you go. These days I feel lost whenever I’m in a strange place and don’t have Google Maps available. (Actually, I often am lost whenever etc, etc.)

While we were having lunch we realised that we were right by the entrance to Dubai Aquarium which I had on my list of possible things to do. It has little or nothing to do with Dubai or the wider UAE – it’s An Attraction – but given that we were there we decided to do it. it cost us about £60 each, but we enjoyed the visit. I won’t go into all the details, but we were close-up with a lot of fish. As walk-in aquariums go, this must be one of the best, and we didn’t feel short-changed. We saw a lot of fish; we fed some of them; we did a glass-bottomed boat tour so we could see more fish (or possibly the same fish from a different angle); we saw divers feeding the sharks (yes there were sharks; they’re well-fed as this stops them eating the other fish); we saw penguins (OK, birds rather than fish, but actually quite fish-like in their own way); and we saw the crocodiles being fed (once again, not fish but water-dwelling and seriously impressive so I’ll allow it).

Back at the hotel we went down for a buffet dinner and drinks at about 7 o’clock, and later went for a cocktail. Exhaustion (not the alcohol) finally overcame us at around 10 o’clock and we retired to our room for an early-ish night. Not only did we need this because of our limited sleep the night before but we were planning on being on the hotel’s free shuttle bus to the Expo at 9:10 the following morning, so the alarm was set. So we would have to get up, shower & dress, breakfast, do all the after-breakfast stuff and be in the lobby in about two hours. Who says holidays are for relaxing?

 

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Back to Dubai

February 27, 2022 by tomtotley

Evening view from our room

Ever since I’d heard about it, I’d wanted to visit Expo 2020 in Dubai. I wasn’t sure what the Expo would actually be, or be about, but it sounded interesting & fun; and of course it would be in Dubai, which I knew. (Well, I’d been there a few times.) So from late 2018 I started asking Trailfinders if they knew about it, and they said (a bit uncertainly at that time) that they were sure they did, but that they had no details yet. Then of course Covid arrived in early 2020, and international travel stopped; and that was that, I assumed. However, the Dubai government obtained agreement to postpone the event for 12 months, to run from Autumn 2021 to early spring 2022. So here we are, in February/March 2022, attending Expo 2020! – they retained the original name.

I say ‘we’, because one advantage of the enforced delay is that Val is no longer working – she retired in July 2021 – and has therefore been able to come with me without any problems. Cue a search for hotels of a quality to suit…

We booked through Trailfinders in Sheffield, for a seven night stay at the Grand Hyatt, not too far from the airport. I think it dates from the late 90s and must have been planned before then, so just before the explosion in construction. Certainly it stands in its own grounds, including gardens and a pool. In contrast the newer hotels along Sheikh Zayed road are each in their own spectacular tower, but the tower is all there is.

We flew with Emirates from Manchester. It’s about 7 hours or so in the air, which generally means 8 hours or so on the plane. Our flight was scheduled to leave Manchester at 13:10, arriving at Dubai International airport at around midnight local time (about 8pm UK time). In the event it was delayed for a couple of hours – the inbound flight was late arriving, and then because it was snowing(!) at Manchester airport the aircraft needed de-icing, and there’s a lot of A380 to de-ice. So in the event we didn’t land at Dubai until 2am local time.

Entry to Dubai went very quickly and smoothly, as did getting our bags. We had arranged a transfer to the hotel which got us there quickly and very comfortably. Even so it was 3:15am when we checked in and about 4 o’clock before we collapsed into bed. (Fortunately, Emirates’ schedules mean that travellers are arriving into Dubai throughout the night, so the reception desks at the hotels are staffed 24/7 – no night porters here.) We had thought that we would not sleep easily – that sudden switch between busy busy travelling and lying in bed can be disconcerting – but in fact we both slept well, if not perhaps overly long. We woke up at around half-past nine the following morning; fortunately, breakfast is served from 6am to 11am. Having breakfasted we took a taxi to Dubai Mall, to get some currency and a local sim for my phone. Details of this adventure, together with an impromptu visit to the aquarium at Dubai Mall, will be in the next post!

Posted in Dubai 2022 | Tagged , | 1 Comment »

A Visit to Birmingham

January 24, 2022 by tomtotley

Near Brindley Place and the old Gas Street basin

In early December we went to Birmingham for a few nights. In recent years we’ve had a short winter holiday instead of giving each other Christmas presents; this year we mixed that with the opportunity for a family get-together and lunch. We stayed in central Birmingham – that’s an easy place for family members living in the midlands to get to.

We stayed at Hotel Indigo in The Cube, a modern building close to Brindley Place. That in turn is a restored/converted canal area, close to the former Gas Street Basin. This used to be the heart of the Birmingham narrowboat canal ring, about three-quarters of a mile from the city centre (New Street/High Street area). Once it was very industrial, with lots of small-scale factories and warehouses alongside the canal; then as the canals fell out of use it became increasingly derelict; but today it’s an entertainment/restaurant hub. Some of the buildings are converted/restored old buildings, others are new developments. It’s a busy and attractive area.

One afternoon during our stay we went for a walk along the canals. This turned out to take the best part of two hours. We walked through the former Gas Street Basin, continued along the canal through the heart of Brindley Place, and then turned right onto the Birmingham and Faiseley canal, eventually ending up near Digbeth. This canal runs around central Birmingham, first just to the north of the city centre and then to its east. The industrial architecture on view is impressive. Along one stretch the canal drops through a series of locks, some of which are effectively underneath buildings overhead. Some of these look like restored former industrial buildings, while others look as if they are new builds, both commercial and residential. It’s extraordinary to think that the canal, which just 30 or 40 years ago was decried as an eyesore and a waste of space and resource, is now regarded as a desirable thing to have in the basement of your development, or at the least alongside it!

I think that what Birmingham has done with its industrial heritage is interesting and worthwhile. Better to find a use of the old facilities and preserve/maintain them, than destroy them. Well done Birmingham.

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A Visit to Northumberland

January 11, 2022 by tomtotley

Looking north from Hadrians Wall into the badlands of Caledonia….

Carrying on with the theme of ‘Holidays from last Year’ (see my previous post for the first of these), here’s a second about a short break we had in Northumberland in the early autumn of 2021.

We’ve never really been to Northumberland. We’ve driven through it, up the A1 on the way to Edinburgh, and we’ve ridden trains up the East Coast Main Line and enjoyed the sights you see on that journey: Durham cathedral (ok, not actually Northumberland but never mind), crossing the Tyne on the way into Newcastle, Holy Island, Berwick-on-Tweed, Torcross  Nuclear Power Station (ok, that one’s definitely not in Northumberland, it’s well into Scotland, but still a remarkable site….). But we’ve never visited Northumberland, and never got away from the main arteries through the region.

In the early autumn of 2021 we had the opportunity to have a couple of nights’ stay at a reasonable price at Slaley Hall, a country house (possibly 19th century) that’s been converted into a hotel and golf course. It’s in the south of Northumberland, quite close to the County Durham border in fact. Its main attraction is the golf course, which looks beautiful from the hotel and is, I gather, rewarding to play. Certainly there were lots of golfers there, both staying at the hotel and visiting for the day. We, on the other hand, were there to enjoy the area and the countryside.

We’d booked a night in a Premier Inn in Country Durham for the night before; this would give us two full days in the area, plus as much of the day of our journey home as we felt like spending. We’d planned three possible destinations, weather permitting. The first would be to explore a National Trust site, Allen Banks. This lies along the River Allen which rises in hills on the Northumberland/Durham border and runs swiftly northwards to the River South Tyne. Not a long river – just 5 miles from where it forms at the confluence of two tributaries – it runs mainly through a steep-sided gorge before emptying into the South Tyne. It’s this gorge that the NT has taken over. In fact much of the gorge is cultivated – it’s a late Victorian garden!

Our second objective was Hadrian’s Wall, and specifically the site of Housesteads fort which lies on the wall. I had in fact visited Housesteads long before, but my memories of it were quite hazy.

Finally, if the weather was good on the day we were due to drive home, I felt that detouring to the coast and visiting Whitley Bay might be enjoyable, and very different from the two previous days. I’m pleased to say that we managed all of these things.

We drove up to the Premier Inn at Bishop Auckland in drenching rain – possibly the least pleasant drive I’ve done for many years. We were just there for a single night, and the hotel and attached restaurant/pub fulfilled its purpose. Then the following morning we headed across country, driving up though Weardale in the direction of Alston. In contrast to the day before this was a lovely drive. The sun was shining, the scenery was lovely, and the roads were deserted – I remember miles of road with no other vehicles in view, either in front or behind. Before we reached Alston we turned off north and went high over the watershed between the Wear and Tyne valleys, and dropped down into Allendale. We stopped at Allendale Town – actually a small village, but very beautiful. In the past, before transport was easy, this would have been a hub of activity. Today it’s quite sleepy and peaceful. We drove  down lower Allendale until we reached the Tyne valley and found our way to the Allen Banks NT site.

This was an impressive spot. We did a circular walk – a couple of miles up one side of the river, walking high up on the bank, then dropping down to the river, crossing it via an old foot bridge and basically walking back on the other side. We had some route-finding problems – our map suggested that on the way back we could get back down to the river edge and cross it via a suspension bridge, but we didn’t find any paths that would lead us to it so we navigated our way out via a different route. We later learned that the map was wrong – the suspension bridge was destroyed in a flood some years ago, and we had missed the warning notices near the car park. All together we were walking for a couple of hours or more; a lovely morning in beautiful and dramatic scenery. That took more or less to check-in time at the hotel, which we eventually found after a traumatic time navigating our way through Hexham.

The hotel itself was fine. Not perhaps as grand as it likes to suggest it is, but we had a good time. We particularly enjoyed the main bar area, which was bright, airy and comfortable.

The following day we went to Housesteads Roman fort, on Hadrian’s Wall. Obviously this is a ruin, but has been tidied up and made intelligible to a non-expert audience. In fact the information boards tell the fort’s history well – established before the Wall, then having its northern side turned into the Wall; abandoned when the frontier was pushed north to the Forth-Clyde gap; reestablished when that in turn was abandoned; and further changes in the late Roman period as the nature of the military units posted there changed. Finally, abandoned altogether (although I wonder how much of the masonry used to build it found its way into other nearby structures over the centuries). It’s an evocative site. From the fort you can walk along, and even (for a short distance) on the remains of the Wall – it stands maybe 5 feet above ground level near Housesteads. We walked along it as far as Milecastle 37, which is the best-preserved mile castle along the wall, and back again.

River South Tyne at Hayden Bridge

On the way back to the hotel we looked for some lunch in the small town of Haydon Bridge. We thought we were going to be unsuccessful until we walked into The General Havelock Inn, which was displaying a ‘Lunches served’ sign The pub itself is small and we weren’t feeling hopeful but we were shown into a restaurant at the back. This was obviously a former stone barn or something similar where we were served a simple ‘pub classic’ meal that was actually the best food we had throughout the holiday. Recommended, if you’re ever in that area.

Finally, on the last morning the sun shone again and we drove to the coast at Whitley Bay. We didn’t stay long – we still had a long drive home – but we had a good walk along the beach. We drove back down past the other seaside townships along the coast, through Cullercoats and Tynemouth  before heading for the Tyne tunnel. And we drove past the Spanish City amusement park – so of course I couldn’t help remembering that Dire Straits song, Tunnel of Love, with the line “From Cullercoats to Whitley Bay, out to Rockaway”. But all of these seaside towns looked attractive in their own way.

We enjoyed this break very much. As I said at the top, we’ve never been to this part of England before, and we liked it enough to seriously think about going back. Maybe further north, so that Alnwick, Holy Island and maybe Berwick would be within easy reach. Hopefully, that will happen this summer.

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A visit to the Thames Valley

January 3, 2022 by tomtotley

Along the Thames near Henley

Well, this is the first post here in a very long time. Last year just didn’t feel like the time to be posting about ‘travel’, even though we did a bit of it (but only in the UK). However my New Year’s resolutions include things about being more positive because, like so many others, I found 2021 hard to cope with; a continual see-saw of hopes and disappointments; and that therefore I should recommence writing posts here. So here goes.

Many years ago I happened to take my elder daughter down to Heathrow, and en-route we stopped somewhere along the Thames for lunch. I liked what I saw and determined that one day I’d go back. Years passed but eventually I booked a short break at the Hotel Du Vin in Henley-on-Thames for early summer 2020. Well, that didn’t happen thanks to Covid lockdown, but we rebooked for the equivalent period (end of June) in 2021.

We spent four nights at the Hotel du Vin in Henley. Like many hotels in this chain, it’s in a re-purposed old building, in this case the old Brakspears brewery. In general they do these conversions very well, and we enjoyed the hotel. Good-sized room, comfortable bed, characterful building – what’s not to like. We had three full days in the Thames Valley, plus the journey down.Sadly the weather was not on our side – it was cloudy and overcast for a lot of the stay, and rainy for part of the time.

Waddesden Manor

On the way down we visited Waddesden Manor, a National Trust site. Mainly we visited the gardens; but the house is actually owned by the Rothschild family and not surprisingly the on-site shop specialises in wine from the Rothschild family’s various vineyards. Just up our street, then… We enjoyed the visit and would like to go back.

Then on to Henley which we reached in the late afternoon. We had brief walk around the area by the hotel – it’s close to the river – then had a quick drink in the courtyard and laterhad dinner. Truthfully, this was not very inspiring; burgers and not especially great wine. Still, we were also tired after the drive and the visit to Waddesden Manor.

 

For our first full day we stayed local. We explored the town in the morning, and we found it attractive and busy. The best part of the day, however, was exploring the riverside. We walked upstream for a couple of miles, up past Marsh Lock and across the fields until the Thames Path (which we were on) moved inland, and when it hit suburbia we turned round and walked back. We were impressed by the river-side architecture – oh, to have the money to live like that! – but the most delightful part of the day was the visit to the Museum of Rowing and River Life, beside the river on the edge of Henley. This was interesting and quirky, but the best part was an exhibition based on The Wind in the Willows, which is of course set along the Thames. (Kenneth Grahame, the author, lived for many years at Cookham). That evening we had an excellent meal at The Giggling Squid in Henley.

Our second full day was grey and overcast, with rain later. This turned into a bit of a ‘filler’ day. We went to Ham House in Kingston-on-Thames for the morning, then walked along the river again after lunch until the rain started, and spent the afternoon in the hotel. Dinner that evening was in the hotel, an ‘English Food & Wine’ meal. For example, I had a Battered Salmon main course with a rosé sparkling wine, so basically fish & chips & fizz! Interesting, but not altogether convincing.

The third day was the best. The sun came out, and that helped, of course. We did a long riverside walk – 9 miles, from Marlow back to Henley. We got the local bus into Marlow (which is the first town downstream from Henley), loaded up with refreshments in Marlow, and set off. I had been worried there would no facilities – i.e. refreshments and toilets – en-route, but in fact I needn’t have worried. About two-and-a-bit miles from Marlow we found a little refreshment kiosk near Hurley lock where we had a cup of tea; there were also toilets there. Then after quite a few more miles, and with lunchtime approaching, we found The Flower Pot Hotel, a lovely riverside pub at Aston. We stopped here for lunch and a soft drink – if we’d started on the alcohol I don’t think we’d have been able to tear ourselves away.

During the final stretch of the walk along the river into Henley we observed a lot of boats being placed onto the river. There were a number of eights, plus lots of smaller boats. Then we noticed that all of the oarsmen were in fact oarswomen; and I later learned that this was the first preparation day for the 2021 Henley Women’s Regatta. This was first held in 1988, in response to the absence of women’s events at Henley Royal Regatta. The latter does now include women’s events, but Women’s Henley (as it’s known) has gone from strength to strength.

At the end of the 9-mile walk!

At the end of all that walking we had a glass of wine on the riverside terrace of the Angel Inn, by Henley bridge. Drinking 250ml of Malbec out of a full plastic cup was an odd experience, but enjoyable; especially with the sunshine. Dinner that evening was out of the hotel again – an excellent Italian meal at the Villa Marina. For me this was the best meal of the holiday; my main course was ‘Involutini di Pollo ai Carciofi e Spinaci’ – stuffed chicken breast with marinaded artichoke & spinach, and it was absolutely delicious. We washed it down with an excellent bottle of Pinot Grigio, which was a number of steps better than standard supermarket/pub PG.

 

This was our first holiday for over a year. It’s fair to say that before we went I was nervous about being out, but we avoided the dreaded virus. Overall the holiday was excellent. Not cheap, but worth it. The hotel was good as a hotel – quirky, characterful and comfortable – though perhaps a bit let-down by its restaurant. The first and third full days were very enjoyable, and the two meals away from the hotel were excellent. I preferred the Italian meal on the last night, Val probably preferred the Thai curry a couple of nights earlier, but both were very good.

 

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… and Real Sizes

October 14, 2020 by tomtotley

One other effect that the distortion in Mercator Projection maps introduces is that land areas closer to the poles appear, on the map, to be bigger – sometimes much bigger – than similarly-sized land areas closer to the equator. Have you ever looked at Greenland on a ‘normal’ map and wondered at how big it looks? Or Alaska? We all know that Alaska is the biggest State in the Union, but is it really half the size of continental USA? No, it’s not. The image above shows how it compares when the distortion is removed and it’s placed alongside the other 48 continental States. Yes, it’s still big but not as big as it appeared.

There’s a website (as there always is) that allows you to select individual countries and then moving them around the map. Great fun, but also instructive. Here’s the link: https://www.thetruesize.com. Start by clicking on ‘Clear the Map’ – that will deselect the countries selected by default when you first access the map – then type the name of the country you want in the box – that will highlight that country. You can then select the country and drag it around the map, resize the map, etc.

The images below show some other interesting comparisons: India placed over Europe – when seen at the same scale as Europe it stretches from northern Norway to the toe of Italy, and from London to east of Moscow; the UK on top of Australia – actually, on top of less than half of just one State; and especially for my sister, Turkey (she lives there) lying on top of Europe, with London and Istanbul just about contiguous.

 

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Great Circles….

October 13, 2020 by tomtotley

In my last post, ‘Travels of a Laptop‘, I briefly mentioned that on its journey from South  Korea to Germany, the package that contained my new laptop followed a Great Circle Route. I didn’t however explain what they are, and why they’re significant.

For most of us, the usual map of the world that we look at is based on the Mercator Projection. This preserves accurate latitude distances – that is, North/South distances – but distorts Longitude. 1˚ of Latitude is always the same distance, both on the map and on the actual globe, but 1˚ of Longitude will vary on the globe depending on your latitude. We all know that there are 360˚ in a circle, which means that at the equator the length of 1˚ of longitude will be the circumference of the earth at the equator (about 24,900 miles) divided by 360, or just over 69 miles. But at a latitude of 45˚ (North or South) the circumference of the earth is only about 17,637 miles. Therefore at that latitude, 1˚ of Longitude is 17637 miles/360, which is about 49 miles – less than it is at the equator. Unfortunately the Mercator Projection doesn’t show this at all, and therefore the further away from there equator, the more the map distorts reality. This has two distinct effects on what we see on the map and possibly on how we think.

The first relates to distances and directions. As I mentioned in that earlier post, one stage in my laptop’s journey was from Anchorage, Alaska to Cologne in Germany. The image below shows the route you might expect it to take between those two points. I’ve created as near a straight lines as I could on the Google Maps image, and that route works out at 6,410 miles.

In fact the route taken was very different, and below are two images showing that route. First is how it looks on a standard Mercator map:

That looks truly odd; why would it take that strange curving route instead of the straight line? Well, actually it was a straight line, as this third image shows.

That’s the Great Circle route – the shortest route around the curvature of the globe – and you can see that it is in fact pretty close to a straight line. Furthermore it’s shorter than the first route I traced out – 4,600 miles as against 6,400 miles, or 1,800 miles shorter. That’s more than three hours’ flying time, and a whole lot of fuel.

In the next post I’ll show you how the Mercator Project distorts the size of countries, and makes those closer to the either pole look much bigger than they actually are. In the meantime here’s a link to the website (greatcirclemap.com) from where I got the two images above. You can make your own maps – just enter the starting and finishing airports, and use the buttons over on the r/hand side to see the difference between the great circle route and the apparent route on a Mercator map.

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Travels of a Laptop

June 4, 2020 by tomtotley

Yes, that’s right – Travels OF a Laptop, not Travels WITH a Laptop. Let me explain.

Apple recently released a new version of one of their best-selling computers, the MacBook Pro 13″, and I was immediately tempted. I’ve been without a laptop for almost a year. I used to have a 2014 MacBook Pro which I mainly used for travel – quite apart from the whole browsing & email thing, it was good to be able to do some initial processing of images while I was still on a trip, and of course I was also able to write blog articles (both here and in the Cruise blog). However, when the time came to replace the old laptop I was seduced by the idea of using an iPad as a laptop replacement, and so I bought an 11″ iPad Pro, a Smart Folio keyboard, and an Apple Pencil. (I also part-exchanged the old laptop.)

In the event the “iPad as laptop replacement” idea didn’t work for me. Well, it worked, insofar as I was able to use it, but I didn’t get on with the key piece of software that I had to use, Lightroom Mobile. So I had been thinking of going back to a laptop anyway, and when Apple announced the 2020 13″ MacBook Pro I was interested.

Apple has improved the base specification of the new laptop over last year’s model in some areas – double the storage and an improved keyboard, for example – and for the same starting price, but I decided to enhance the spec by going for a further optional upgrade, an extra 8Gb of memory making a total of 16Gb. I knew that this was not a standard build and that therefore delivery would be slightly delayed, but I had expected that it would still come from Apple UK – my assumption was that Apple themselves must order small numbers of the various optional configurations for onward supply to customers. Not so in the case of mine!

In addition to the usual deluge of order confirmation, etc, emails that I got from Apple, I was surprised to receive a tracking notification email from UPS showing “the package” (my new laptop) starting in China – “Label created” was the first entry in the list, on 29 May. “The package” spent the rest of that day and a couple of following days in China. The first entry just said ‘China’ but subsequent ones said ‘Shanghai’. Here are steps “the package” went through:

  • 29/5 to 31/5: Order Processed in China, then customs clearance and various scans in Shanghai (presumably, this location refers to a UPS facility in Shanghai);
  • 1 June: a Departure Scan 😁 at Shanghai at 3am, followed by an Arrival scan at Incheon, South Korea at 5am on the same day;
  • 1 June: more progress! At 7:30am there was a Departure scan at Incheon, followed by an Arrival scan at Anchorage, Alaska, at 9:25pm – date 31 May. This was initially confusing – had “the package” travelled back in time? could this be how UPS meets its deadlines? – but then I realised that the journey from South Korea to Alaska would have taken it across the International Date Line, and that’s what caused the date reversal;
  • It didn’t stay long in Alaska – less than two hours later, at 11:17pm, still on 31 May, there was a departure scan from Anchorage;
  • Next was was an arrival scan at Koeln (Cologne) in Germany, at 18:15pm on 1 June (again….). There’s a 9 hour time difference between Alaska and Germany, so actually it arrived in Germany just 8 or 9 hours after leaving Alaska. Interestingly, the Great Circle route between Anchorage and Cologne passes across the Arctic, so “the package” went close by the North Pole, albeit at 35,000 ft or so;
  • It had an overnight stay in Germany before having an Exit scan from Koeln at 4:48am on 2 June, followed by a Departure scan at Stanford-Le-Hope at 8:48pm the same day. Stanford-Le-Hope? Well it turns out there’s a huge UPS facility near to St-L-Hope which I believe handles packages arriving both by sea at the new London Gateway container port, and by air at Stansted airport;
  • After Stanford-Le-Hope came an Arrival scan at Tamworth late on 2 June followed by an Arrival scan at Sheffield early on 3 June….
  • ….and finally “The Package” was delivered to me at home just before 1pm on 3 June.

So my laptop entered 5 different countries – China, South Korea, the USA, Germany and the UK – passed over several more (the Great Circle route from Alaska to Germany would include Canada, Greenland, Norway, and maybe Denmark), crossed an ocean, a pole, and the International Date Line. Not a bad trip! – I wish I’d been with it.

I found this to be an interesting insight into the world of global logistics. I was surprised that my order was being handled as a separate, discrete package, on its own – clearly, it wasn’t in a container with thousands of other Apple laptops. I discovered that the facilities at Incheon, Anchorage and Cologne are mega-hubs for their continent, and that it’s normal for packages to be routed from one such hub to another if their journey requires it; my little laptop would never have been sent from Shanghai direct to the UK. I can only imagine the cost of doing this – while I’m sure that Apple doesn’t pay the rate I would to send a 2.9kg package half-way round the world, there must have been some cost. (Which I didn’t see, btw – my order included free delivery.)

And thereby hangs a bit of a tale, perhaps. A couple of days after I’d ordered my new laptop, and had the order accepted, Apple doubled the price of the memory upgrade that I’d included, from $/£100 to $/£200. There’s no official reason for this, although it is suggested that the lower price was a mistake. Really? By Apple, the most price- and market-conscious corporation on the planet? Well, perhaps; but is it also possible that one month into the new product’s life they were finding that there were so few orders for that particular upgrade that they were having to be handled as one-offs? Increasing the price would have two effects, perhaps: a) it would increase the revenue from orders for that configuration and thus meet the shipping costs, and b) it would narrow the price difference gap between that bespoke configuration and the next standard configuration up, and thus encourage customers to order the higher-priced standard config which would always be shipped in bulk. But we’ll never know the truth.

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Thoughts on Singapore and Covid-19 virus

February 15, 2020 by tomtotley

Over the years I’ve read about a number of epidemics in various parts of the world – SARs, the various Ebola outbreaks, the Zika virus, Swine fever – I’m sure you all remember reading about them just as I do. I certainly did, but they all seemed fairly academic, and while of course I empathised with the sufferers as much as I could, it all seemed rather remote.

Now we have Covid-19, the official name for what has generally been referred-to as the Coronavirus, and this one has hit home much more with me. That’s because one of the places at risk is Singapore, which is a country and city that I have visited and enjoyed several times, and have come to – yes – love. It’s one of those places where I just feel at home. And now it faces great risk, of at least significant economic and social disruption, and possibly major health risk to its population.

There are many reasons why Singapore is especially vulnerable. It’s a very small country, physically, with a significant population, and the population density is therefore high. The nature of life in Singapore is to be very sociable – eating in restaurants, hawker centres or food courts, going to coffee bars, shopping either in the glitzy malls along Orchard Road or in more local shopping centres, and just generally socialising are all key aspects of life in Singapore. There is a huge amount of international travel, in and out of the country. A significant number of non-Singaporeans with PR (Permanent Resident) status are from nearby nations, especially Malaysia, and frequently travel back and forwards. Then there is tourism. In 2018 almost 15m tourists visited Singapore. That’s not very high for Asia, but it has to be remembered that all of those tourists will be heading to the same places in that tiny country – Marina Bay, Gardens by the Bay, and so on. And finally there are the business travellers; Singapore is one of the greatest international business centres in the world. A single sales conference in January, attended by 100 people from all over the world, resulted in 7 new cases of Covid-19 infection among attendees, and of course they passed it on to others. In one well-documented case a British attendee contracted the virus at the meeting and himself passed it on to at least 11 others. The numbers of people infected in Singapore is steadily rising, though not yet at the rate that has been in China, and restrictions on travel to and from Singapore are beginning to be discussed.

I’m confident that Singapore, in common with other affected countries, will beat this infection eventually, and of all the affected countries in Asia I would expect Singapore to do so most quickly – the small size and low number of international gateways can be an advantage here. Indeed it might even be best to accept a medium-sized, temporary hit and quarantine the nation in order to stop continual re-infection from travellers from infected areas. In the meantime, I can only hope that they can stay on top of it. And finally – and selfishly – I ought to report that I am now pleased that I visited Singapore in September last year instead of February/March this year. If I had followed the patter of previous visits, I could well have been there now!

 

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