Belated Posts From August

Here are some of entries that were previously left out...
Live in Europe, Work in Asia: My Visit To Istanbul (6 - 10 Aug)

As part of an upcoming big corporate meeting I was helping to organize for my company, I visited our distributor in Turkey to support some materials preparation.

My hotel was located at a very tourist friendly Taksim square in the European part of Istanbul. The distributor's office was situated on the part of Istanbul on the Asian continent. Every morning during my trip, I had to leave Europe, where I'm sleeping, by car to go to work in Asia.

During my visit, I was recommended to visit Odakoy, where I took this impressive picture above. In the foreground is the Odakoy mosque. In the background, one of the three bridges connecting Europe on this side to Asia on the far side is showing.


A lot of restaurants and pubs can be found around Odakoy mosque. Because of the nice seafront view the place offers, the restaurants and pubs were frequented by tourists and local alike. A row of bazaar is also located between the pubs and seafront marketing all sorts of souvenirs, arts and crafts and even second hand books.

Odakoy was definitely a cool discovery for me during the trip, except that I was alone and it got kind of boring.

A Farewell Party



It seems kind of strange that after being based in Lebanon for over 3 years, this was the first time I was invited to the house of a Lebanese and it was for Xinyi and my farewell.

But when we arrived to his beautiful home, we discovered to our delight that our host had spared no efforts in making sure that we were comfortable and well fed. The fare was a sumptuous spread of cold cuts, cheese and wine. Besides, his wife made us the much-touted-in-the-office "monkey bread" and an American cheesecake to top up the dinner also attended by several colleagues.

Yummy Cheesecake courtesy of Mdm. Derkaloustian

Nice and Monte Carlo: 17th - 22nd Aug

About the big corporate meeting I mentioned in the Istanbul section above? It was held in Nice.

For me it was a nice gesture from the company (no pun intended) because I've visited Algeria on the south side of the Mediterranean sea and resided in Lebanon on the east coast, so visiting Nice allowed me to see the north side of the sea.

Actually, it was torturing to go to Nice for work. While the alluring pristine Mediterranean beckons, I had to force myself to think about the smooth execution of the corporate meeting (I was one of the organizers. We had a great team of organizers by the way...)

Nevertheless, I was able to explore the Cote d'Azur using non working hours such as evenings or during my morning run. Here are some of my photos:

Le Meridien, where we resided and its surroundings
A night shot of the corniche along Cote d'Azur.
Deck chairs enjoying the coolness of evening.
A lovely beach side restaurant was the place for our first dinner since arrival. Prices were a tad steep.Official welcome dinner was organized at this place, La Petite Maison. I was told it is a famous restaurant.
The beach is crowded with people! I cannot understand why? The beach is that great, they have pebble instead of fine sand. However, the scenery's great!
Two outdoor cafes somewhere in the old town Nice, called the Vieux. I cannot pronounce the name accurately in French without someone laughing.
On the last day of our meeting, our Monaco distributor hosted a dinner for us in Monte Carlo. Some of us got so high that everything was a blur.

France 2: 0 Sencha

It's incredible that I encountered two problems with Air France in one single month! My impression of France now is already bad even before I visited the country!

If you remember, Air France lost my luggage for a week because of labor strike in Paris in the beginning of October. This time as I was coming back from Algiers, they screwed up again! The French are simply marvellous at screwing up!

There I was on my return trip, with Sakai, sitting comfortably on ME212 (coach share with AF), waiting for take off, when they ordered all passenger to disembark. Fortunately or unfortunately, when alighting, we met Hisham, a colleague working for our Moroccan distributor, on his way to Beirut. Sham told us that when the ground crew was retracting the boarding stairs from the plane, the machinery sliced through the door of the plane and badly damaged the door.

So we were stuck in Charles de Gaulle airport while the ground crew tried to repair the plane. Turned out, the spare part they need can only be found in Hamburg and it is not likely for the part to arrive in such a short time. Incredible! Airbus has no spare parts in France? Seems like all the passengers will be stuck in Paris for a while because there wasn't a way for the repair to be done so quickly.

After two hours, AF staff finally hatched a plan. They would book accomodations in a transit hotel and put us up for the night and arrange us to fly on the first available flight to Beirut the next morning. So after being stucked in the terminal for 5 hours past our schedule flight, we could finally leave the airport and go to the transit hotel. But we couldn't leave Sham behind. Being a Morrocan, Sham needs a visa to enter Paris and so we stayed back in the terminal with him.

It was the beginning of the long wait with Sham and some of the other passengers who had their passports detained to apply for their temporary visa. We watched as the AF staff, who were dispatched to handle us, disappear one by one. The promised 1 hour wait stretched to 3 hours. By then, we decided to check on the visa application status with the AF booth outside the terminal. Guess what? They have no clue about Sham and the other passengers without visa. Sakai mentioned that this could be real-life event of The Terminal in the making but fortunately, Sham didn't watch the movie. The new AF staff only followed-up on the visa application status when one of the Lebanese "aunties" and Sham started to complain loudly. I guess there was no proper handover of the issue because after the complaint, the AF staff were able to come up with their passports and a collective visa. Finally, it was okay for us to leave for the transit hotel at about 10 pm after such a long ordeal at the airport.

There were approximately 90 people from our delayed flight scheduled for the next day 9pm morning flight to Beirut. There were approximately 90 people who didn't brush their teeth and change their clothes that morning...

After such a bad experience with Air France (twice for me!), we didn't have much to expect from them other than just get us where we want to go safely. As usual, almost on cue, our new flight was delayed for an hour because the cabin crew couldn't ascertain the correct number of people on the flight and they kept counting and counting from back to front and front to back. Amazing!

When we were stuck in the airport, the three of us started to play a little game called, Renaming Air France. The objective of the game is to come up with the best definition for the acronym AF. Sakai won the game with a new acronym for Air France..... AF - Always Frustrating!

Luggage Lost and Found...

I lost my luggage in Paris when I was flying back from Morocco on the 4th last Tuesday...

My flight from Charles de Gaulle Aeroport was delayed for two hours because there was a strike involving French transport workers, including those working at the airport. My luggage must have gotten lost. I realized that my luggage was missing at the baggage collection point along with 20 over people from the same flight. To register for luggage claim, I have to queue for another 2 hours.

It was a terrible experience because almost everything I own in Lebanon, I carried in my luggage. One of my colleague helped me by lending me some clothes to wear. Other stuffs, I had to buy. I even had to go to a colleague's "posh" wedding dinner without any formal wear! So...Tak Glam.... =(

Today morning, the company recep told me that they found it. Finally! A colleague drove me to the airport and I had to get through the bureaucracy to retrieve my luggage. It was almost one week due....

In post mortem analysis, the main culprit for this inconvenience is........AIR FRANCE !!!

A few colleagues and superiors had taken the same flight before and also had their luggage lost.
Yes, not everything European are first class. In fact, Air France is quite sub-standard. The service wasn't something to yell about...There was no procedure for lost luggage handling. You lose your luggage? Too bad! Don't complain and wait until it comes....No bloody mention of compensation for the delay at all!

Take Air France at your own risk....Have a nice FRIGHT!

Grrr....Have to get even....I want to watch The Last of The Mohicans movie DVD again to see the French get their ass kicked!