The flight back home was fairly uneventful, except for the bit where we landed in a thunderstorm :)
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Tag: travel
Bears on a plane
Little family selfie on the way back home.
Casa Buitoni
We went on a team building retreat at Casa Buitoni last week. It was brilliant. Not only did we get a lot of good work done, but we also gelled as a team. We defined a mission statement, core values, a project roadmap and also worked out decision-making processes, org charts, team agreements and best practices. We also ate a cubic buttload of food.
More pictures here: http://www.flubu.com/various_pics/casa_buitoni_sep_2013/
Casa Buitoni is located up in the hills of Tuscany along with the fields of tomatoes, wheat, vegetables, herbs, and olives. It serves as the symbol of Buitoni’s symbol of quality, commitment, and tradition. It was the house of Giulia’s grandson, Giuseppe, and it now serves as a company product development center. This is the place where products are created and sampled.
Soooo much food
As part of the team building we’re doing at casa Buitoni, we cooked our own dinner tonight. We made 2 types of pasta and some pizza. This was above and beyond the other courses we had. This continues the sinister plot to try and kill us all with massive quantities of good food.
Who the fuck steals deodorant?
I’m in Italy for a work strategic retreat. When I packed my suitcase on Sunday night, I packed some toiletteries, my phone charger and my camera charger in the front of my suitcase. I didn’t really give it much thought and checked my bag in at Geneva. I took lots of pictures the first day and tried to recharge my camera, but couldn’t find my charger. OK, thought I, I must’ve left it at home. Later that night, when I went to brush my teeth, I realised that my toothbrush, toothpaste, deodorant and cologne had also gone awol. Now I could believe forgetting one item, but not the whole kit. A bent baggage handler must’ve scooped out my front pocket at the airport. Yay.
In brighter news though, the Italians are trying to kill me with mountains of delicious food.
How auto-correct can make your life interesting…
My quest to find “something nice”
When I travel for work, sans Katy, I always try and bring her something nice back. The conversation I had by text with her today went something like this:
Katy: Got me anything nice?
Me: Does a kilo of iberico ham count?
Katy: Nope
Me: ok, I’ll keep an eye out, but the only thing I’m seeing so far is shoe shops and fashion for stick insects :(
— later —
Me: Hahaa! Success. Not only have I found somethink I think you’ll like, according to the female contingent here I have done very well. They seem rather surprised!
— EDIT —
I’m back home, and she’s seen it (and loved it), so I can say that I bought her a designer hand bag from Desigual:
I need a salad, STAT!
I now understand why, when a member of the Spanish Mafia comes back from a sojourn to the motherland, they eat salad for a week on their return to the UK.
Tonight’s dinner was a 7 course affair with enough booze to kill a horse. I had jamon and white asparagus, grilled prawns, octopus, croquetas, hake fillet with red peppers and a steak that was as big ad my face, then pudding. At one point the people around me were begging for a digestif to help them with the steak so the guys
out a liter of homemade Spanish grappa (which our group of alcoholics managed to polish off). That doesn’t even take into account the 1.5 liter bottles of red wine, nor the half dozen bottles of champagne.
Dinner started at 9pm and ended sometime after 1am. Excuse me while I go digest now…
Dear Bilbao
You’re a lovely city, the weather is wonderful but please, enough already! All it seems I’ve been doing for the last 36 hours is eat and drink!!!!! You’ve been very good to not kill me with my allergies but that doesn’t mean you need to try with volume!
Bobble @EMBL-Heidelberg
The Bobble that lives in my bag has travelled quite a bit. This is a picture from his latest jaunt, the winter 2011 EMBL council meeting in Heidelberg, Germany.
The lovely lady giving him a hand up is Catherine, the central pillar of the Staff Association without whom everything collapses into chaos and disrepair :)