As some of you are aware, my mother has lived in the United Arab Emirates for many years now. The official ruler, Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan al-Nahyan of Abu Dhabi died today at age 86.
The BBC report is here and so is the obituary. I hope the official transfer of power will be a peaceful process, I fully expect it to be.

Seeing as I am in the airport lounge at Heathrow and have just gone through airport security twice in the last three hours it is time for me to bitch about airport security again ( Read more... )

Since I am going on vacation I am turning my Volvo over to another colleague. I need to rent a car until I fly out. I just discovered that Hertz is apparently starting to rent Smart Cars in Europe. They list both the original fortwo and the newer forfour. Unfortunately they do not seem to have either one at Milan - Linate but this is definitely ( Read more... )

I have been mentioning for a while about my tours of small European countries. It turns out I had the list slightly wrong. I thought Andorra was one of the four smallest but I think it is the fifth. Courtesy of the CIA World Factbook here is the list:

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Instead of waking up on Sunday hungover and in Bilbao I woke up without a headache in Bellinzona to a great deal of rain. Had it not been raining I would have wandered around Bellinzona and taken a look at the castles in town. Instead I decided to go for a drive. I had always thought that Liechtenstein was a small country wedged between Germany and ( Read more... )

I finally got around to booking some much needed vacation. I fly on the 17th to Denver and I will have 10 days there. I plan on helping my friend with corn harvest and seeing my grandmother who I have not seen since Grandpa died last winter. He has 2000 acres of corn planted. (That's over 3 sq miles or 8 sq kilometers.) I have a 3 or 4 day stopover ( Read more... )

GRRR
A month ago I had booked my ticket to Bilbao. I knew I was taking a chance. This high-profile job came up in Switzerland and so I am here. Right now I should be on a plane from MXP to BIO with tamaraland with rdg having already arrived earlier this afternoon. Instead I am here in Biasca standing by as we wait for temperatures to stabilize. BORING. Late ( Read more... )

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