Five days, two 150 year old Ryokans, The height of Cherry Blossoms blooming, 9 tasting menus, The Ritz and a train or two.

Let me break the experience down into pieces . . .

Japan in general . . .

After being in Shanghai a year you start to ignore and forget the daily things that used to seriously piss me off when I first arrived. The pushing into elevators when people haven’t come out, the lack of courtesy walking down a street and the snort and spit on the pavement.

When you go to Japan though, in my limited experience, you quite quickly start to realize what a humble and polite people they are (this may get me kicked out of China but still). They are gentle, kind, helpful and endearing! They have a way about them that feels like you are consistently somewhere you are wanted, liked and appreciated!

The way they express things and the way they talk is calm and to the point but in a loving way. There expressions are charming yet ancient and their outlook on life is everlasting!

Ryokans and Hotels . . .

To stay in a Ryokan is something quite special. The two I chose were Seikoro and Sumiya as they are quintessential representations of the ancient culture and civilization of Japan. When you arrive and are greeted you immediately feel the humble nature of the people and the history and heritage in the institution that has been around for 150 years.

You sit, slowly take off your shows and slip on traditional Japanese in door slippers. You transition into a world long gone, instantly.

The room is simple, cozy and leads onto the most exquisite Japanese garden outside. The seats are on the floor and in the afternoon are quickly removed and replaced by your bed. Western luxuries exist but are hidden away for those who don’t want the distraction.

Wake up is early, if you want or rather is expected, with a traditional style bath (they prefer you to use the communal baths as this is customary – for R10 000 a night I really preferred my own bathroom, call me a snob but I’m just not a fan of the communal showers since my boarding house or prison days) which consists of sitting on a midget stool while washing and hand showering and then climbing into a hot deep wooden bath – this process can be repeated several times.

While you are getting ready your room is re-transformed into a seated breakfast room with and array of dishes in every shape color and form, freshly prepared, clean and healthy (more on this later) served by what us Westerners term a butler, a term that has been horribly bastardised from the noble profession it once was (thanks Downton Abbey). This was a quiet, humble, educated and traditional women (who did sound a little like Mogwai from Gremlins when she spoke)

You head out for the day to what I will explain a little later and return for evening green tea, authentically made in powder form and mixed into a sweet, bitter combination of intense flavor accompanied by a sweet biscuit. No extreme cookies or cupcakes of decadence, the main focus is the simplicity of elegance and natural beauty, I guess this could be a framework for Japan in general.

Dinner is then served in the same quantity and variety as breakfast . . .

Then you head out for the blossoms and temples by night!

After four days in Ryokans the change to the Ritz Carlton in Osaka was happily anticlimactic if that makes any sense. It was nice to get to the absolute decadence of a corner suite at the Ritz but it was completely over shadowed by the quiet peaceful elegance of these small 150 year old establishments.

Never the less a when you get out of the full sized standing shower and put on those massive Ritz white robes it’s hard not to appreciate it!

The Food.

I live to eat, I always have (except this week I’m currently on a liquid only detox for the first time in my life) but this trip was never planned around the eating and yet somehow it managed to be a massive highlight. Like I said every morning and night in the Ryokans was a feast of tasting menu perfection.

First though a surprising stumble around the neighborhood to see a nighttime feast of blossoms down one of the streets meant we stumbled across a quaint looking restaurant, being 10 at night and they were still open we stumbled in sat down (actually they only took cash so they made one of there 7 chefs walk us ten minutes to an ATM) and quickly realized this was something special. As soon as a restaurant tells you they have one menu for tasting, they have 10 seats and 7 chefs you know something magical is happening. We managed to get a table at one of the best restaurants in the country called Guilo Guilo off the street while the friendly Aussies next to us booked 2 months in advance and could only get a 10pm seating. Sometimes I feel I’m destined to eat!

Epicurean splendor ensued . . .

From there in to 8 Ryokan menus was absolutely hedonistic-ally fantastic. This is pretty much what every breakfast and dinner looked like from then for the next few days!

As a treat, as food markets always are, we hit the ‘kitchen of Kyoto’ or Niishiki market for a few hours. This single street that spans 8 blocks houses every fresh, dried, smoked and cooked thing possible to purchase (including a little delicious donut surprise!).  I decided to partake in the sweet teriyaki baby octopus on a stick complete with pickled quale’s egg stuffed in its head!

After escaping roughly 100 courses later we thought we could slow the consumption rate by getting to the Ritz and quietly sneaking off to a local sushi place. Needless to say the suggestion from the concierge was closed and turning to city guides for advice in a sudden rain storm proved to be fruitful as we were directed to XEX, again by coincidence and again one of the best in the city, for another tasting menu!

By this point I had been so full for so long I could barely take pics of the ice bar, fresh sashimi and another 10 courses. It was only lunchtime!

After passing out from lack of blood to the brain for a few hours it was on to what was supposed to be the ONLY pre planned culinary event. The Michelin starred IPPOH tempura restaurant. Complete with private room, private chef and a tasting menu through every kind of tempura possible, of course coupled with a few bottles of saki and once again served by a humble women in traditional dress.

The blossoms . . .

I can barely explain a cherry blossom tree if you haven’t seen a real one. I don’t mean a half arsed one that exists in most places in the world, I mean a tree so packed with blossoms it looks like it’s going to explode into a cloud of white and pink fluff!

These trees are mesmerizing in their pearl white and candy floss pink and as they blow in the wind they shed these beautiful flowers. I have seen few things in the world this surreal and beautiful.

There are a few highlights.

Philosophers walk is a canal that stretches about 3 kilometers and down almost all of it are these perfect blossoms lining the canal and falling slowly down into the water creating a white blanket over the water.

Maruyama Park is another magical place. Below the trees everyone sets up picnics or for drinking games or to relax with their family, mostly students drinking games, then the restaurants setup tables to lie down, drink your body weight in Asahi beer and stare up at the magical white blossoms with the sun shining perfectly through. Not a bad place to spend a day!

Lastly Kiyomidzu Temple at night is enthralling, it sits on a cliff overlooking the city and the scaffolding built hundreds of years ago supporting the entire structure is made without a single nail, did I mention the Japanese are genius designers in every respect. The Temples lit up at night are unbelievable to go along with the lit up blossoms all around the mountain.

As a final word on these amazing trees I have to say that the biggest surprise is how they look at night. The trees are all lit from below at night making every street look like an old black and white movie. There cannot be many more places on this earth better to be for 10 days during Cherry Blossom season!

So I finally watched Searching for Sugar Man.

Right now its Chinese New year or spring festival whatever you prefer and so the entire country is on holiday pretty much, which means I get to go home for the first time in 8 months.

This means an hour taxi to the airport, two hour wait in the emirates lounge, 10 hour flight to Dubai, another 3 hours in the Emirates lounge, another 8 hour flight and then another hour drive, all a tiny price to pay to see my friends and family again.

The truth is I get to drink champagne and decent wine for 24 hours while watching movies on a bed drifting in and out of sleep – it’s truly fantastic compared to what I would be doing any other day of the working year!

So after the first 10 hours of watching meaningless crap movies which I can barely remember or maybe I’m just trying to forget Richard Gear clinging to his acting career, Ben Affleck playing some glorified American, Steve Carrell dying in an earth ending asteroid with Kristen Stewart, I mean Kiera Knightly, and Jennifer Garner barren again (albeit this time far more annoyingly than the first with Juno) I saw ‘Searching for Sugar Man’

I had seen so much noise about it on twitter but for some reason I thought that it was another battle of drugs and hard knocked life story of some overrated over privileged musical superstar that I’ve grown numb to and the fact that it’s not exactly freely available behind the iron dumpling curtain made it impossible to see until now.

The truth is I was being stubborn – I’m a Taurean so not exactly out of character. So between the 5^th and 8^th glass of decent burgundy I watched Rodriguez’s story.

I had no idea what I was getting myself into. I’d seen that Cold Fact album cover a hundred times in various CD collections of my much older brothers, I had just assumed he had lived a life of music royalty. When you are a kid the world is much simpler, especially a kid in third world apartheid, or newly liberated South Africa. If you made a CD, let alone a CD of that quality, you were famous, you were rich and that was the end of it.

How naïve.

I guess so many of us believe we are destined for something great, I thought I was the only one until I read that 85% of all people think that, I didn’t feel so great after that. I suppose all of us fantasize that in some place half way around the world they understand our genius and praise us not for anything other than our ability to connect with them on some level.

This man’s music has been one of the default songs when my brain thinks about music for so long I couldn’t believe that he wasn’t one of music’s golden children, one that was adored in every city on every stage in every country. I truly believed that by the way his music had become such a household standard that he was given the credit that he deserved for as long as I was alive and so really didn’t give it another thought!

When I saw the clips of him returning to South Africa in 1998 to an audience that had believed they had lost an icon, and that base started to play, the base that instinctively started a generation singing the same song much like the Beatles or the Stones, I started to cry. I’m not sure why it impacted me so heavily, maybe it’s because I think that I was so happy that he finally got the recognition that he deserved, maybe because the people got to connect in that moment with an artist who defined their first love, first intimate relationship, first joint, first whatever but a man who completed moments for so many South Africans. Maybe I was just happy that these two great forces got to connect with each other finally after so many years.

To see this man that had lived a life of relative poverty for most of his life to at least get a glimpse of the power his music had on a generation of people he probably didn’t even know existed, took my breath away. It made me believe in the magic of great music all over again. The magic of people, the hope of stories with happy endings and the ability to be great regardless of who you think is lestening.

If you haven’t seen it, you are allowing a part of South African and global music history that will make your heart smile, cry, break and come together all at the same time disappear all over again. This man is a genius, a true genius, a genius in the way great musicians used to be before they we created just to be jammed down our throats for a quick buck and a catchy tune!  Sadly the world doesn’t always understand genius at the time it appears. I can only hope the rest of the world will be able to experience this magic before it’s too late.

Searching for Sugar Man . . .

So I have had a rather lengthy year, besides moving to Shanghai in March, there has been a bit of China travel and experience and then some fun and some work globetrotting so it’s important to have a few days to relax and go visit the one man phenomenon Jack Spanish (my brother the writer in Phuket) and then to really chill out at the Racha!

So if you don’t hear from me for a few days, its because I will be feet up, drinking excessively here (start hating all you want!)

Dont worry I will be sure to post a large amount of luxuriously decadent pics along the way

From STM, may you have a massive New Year, one that you feel well into 2013 and may 2013 be the year that you create, conquor, love, be loved, exist, have fun, meet friends, gain trust, build, laugh, cry, sing, drink, eat, and all round make it a year of epic proportions!

So as if I thought Beijing and Tianjin were not cold enough, I decided, well I was told rather, to head to Moscow for a bit of business. Ordinarily one would assume there would be some time to acclimate to the impossible to inhabit temperatures  however the travelling time to and from Moscow all in (35 hours) was more than half of the time actually spent in Moscow (60 hours) so not exactly a lot of time to mess about getting used to the weather!

So what did I learn from this excursion (outside of the productive work that is)?

When you live in a city, like Shanghai, that is completely foreign to you in every way you start to develop an understanding of things without being able to read pretty much anything. This does help you in a city where the signs look like they have come straight out of an Asterix & Obelix cartoon!

Moscow is beautiful, not when its grey, freezing and gloomy, but when the sun is shining (It only comes up at 10am) it really is a great city by day. The buildings have heritage and grace, the scenery is really magnificent for a big city and even the underground stations are based in the most glorious historical stories. The subway trains on the other hand look just like what I’d imagine Soviet Russia to be like!

There is seems to be such strength in the pride of the country and for the history that everything seems to have meaning and a purpose . . .

By night the city comes alive. It is, in the right locations, a world filled with Cristal champagne in every corner. Models, well they pretty much all look like models, on every arm and everything you would expect a cosmopolitan nouveau riche city to be!

This is the right location, overlooking the famous Red Square . . . .

When in Rome . . . you drink VODKA and when you see a giant Faberge egg being sold for the sole purpose of drinking like some kind of Siberian Prince you realize how serious these people are about two things – being exceedingly wealthy and drinking! Fortunately I was prepared mentally and physically for the latter!

There is a fair amount of arbitrary things, this too you seem to get used to living in China, but there were a few prize things that stood out like this tiny glass sculpture in my hotel room of a fat squirrel, rat or whatever type of rodent randomly perched against a mirror . . .

Then a trip to the supermarket gave these two beauties, yes, that is Strawberry toilet paper!

Finally, and without doubt most importantly, DO NOT, I repeat DO NOT lose your passports five hours before your plane is going to take you home. This creates an epic F%$# UP for you and everyone around you. No, I am not this stupid, my brother however, decided it was too easy to do things normally and so he let a fair whack of cash and both his passports get stolen, okay he didn’t let it happen but when you dress like a Russian oligarch and carry TUMI everything you are bound to be a target!

If this does happen – here is the checklist of SH1T you will have to go through to travel out of the country!

1. Go to the SA embassy
2. Fill out a massive amount of paperwork
3. Get finger printed by a South Africa (who takes your left hand twice by mistake)
4. Travel in numerous cars of random strangers (in Moscow you can hail a normal private citizens car down, offer them some money and they will take you wherever you want – this is common practice in getting around the city because the taxis are so corrupt?!)
5. Go to a police station and explain the situation to get a police report filed
6. Fill out much more paperwork
7. Get ID photos taken by a guy who thinks he shoots the Playboy swimwear edition!
8. Fill out some more paperwork
9. Wait for South Africa to confirm you are actually who you are (waiting for SA could take until summer)

There are a few more steps from here but fortunately I didn’t lose all of my crap so I left Russia, barely making my plane but for a mad dash from the train. All in all I learnt that if the wine and vodka are flowing not much can upset you! Also you will get to the airport with just enough time to have a smoke, in the bizarre cordoned off smoking section next to the gate and slump into your chair with a glass of Roederer champagne to ease you off to sleep!

That ladies and gentlemen was 60 hours in Moscow, not for the faint hearted!

My brothers and I are very close, and now that we live in three very separate parts of the world it makes seeing each other rather difficult, so when our diaries do somehow overlap it’s cause to celebrate (even if it is for only 30hrs) and what better place to do that than Bangkok!

Now having seen The Hangover II, the dangers of three grown men running wild in the streets of Bangkok are clearly apparent, but who says common sense was part of the weekends proceedings?

Here’s what I learnt!

1. If you arrive at your hotel at midnight on a Friday night and have to leave Sunday morning you are asking for trouble. If you cannot avoid it then make sure you have a private TUK TUK for the duration and some Chang Quarts ready, cold and waiting (fortunately my one brother is very focused and prepared for things like this! He has seen man a tour of this nature!) – this is our fearless driver, Ten (yes his name was Ten)

Ten in all his glory! Do not at 4am tell him you want to go to ‘one more place’ – GO HOME!

2. In a whirlwind tour like this you need to get absorbed early on. A bucket, a Phad Thai on the street and a box of Marlboros on the Khao San road will do this for you . . .

This is a bucket (its filled with goodness, black magic and red bull)!!

3. Somehow over the last little while I have forgotten what it’s like to be in a really good club. I also have seemed to have forgotten what it’s like waking up with stamps on your arms and not remembering where the hell they came from!

4. If you are going to wake up extraordinarily hangover, do it in a place like the Mandarin Oriental. First of all the luxury does add a little padding to the pain you will feel and secondly it’s easier to go down for something to eat when there is a string quartet playing in the lobby.

5. As soon as your body is strong enough, head down the river (DO NOT TAKE THE PUBLIC FERRY – YOU WILL HURL!). There is something about a little bit of chaos, dirt and general decay that reminds me of Africa as a whole and allows you to channel the inner warrior for recovery! Eat something overlooking the water (hot is good) and have a beer, no matter how hard it is!

6. When you are in a private boat, do not get ripped off like a tourist and if it starts to rain, you are F%$#@! Subsequent to this point, if it starts to rain and you find one umbrella for three people, its every man for himself (I almost got pushed out of the boat over this)

7. Anticipate the above and have more than one pair of jeans for the trip (I did, but I was alone – hotel dri-cleaning takes time you do not have). If you are at the Mandarin Oriental, take their shuttle boat across the river to the spa. Get a massage (note to self – DO NOT GO FOR A RUN) then steam, sauna and climb into the tiny bubble jet pool and fully re-focus for next night!

8. Have a drink at the edge of the river at the hotel bar (DO NOT WEAR SHORTS EVEN THOUGH ITS A BIJJILLION DEGREEs). Watch the sun go down, have a Corona with lime. Change your dinner reservation 12 times with Quintessentially, the hotel concierge and the various restaurants themselves (you don’t have to do this really but for some reason my family seems to think its imperative!).

9. If you listen to nothing else, listen to this! Go to the Hotel Lebua and have a dirty martini at Sirocco (just check the gallery). This was the place they filmed the scene with the helicopters in the Hangover II . The bar will be packed, you will feel like you are touching immortality (well after 3 very strong Martinis you will). Keep a steady supply of Red Bull to your blood and eat something!

10. If sufficiently drunk move onto the Soi Cowboy (this is the road they party on / lose their shit on in Hangover II – I can see how easily it can happen). The shortest, brightest, dodgiest, craziest road in Bangkok. There’s only one thing to do here, survive!

11. If you are still alive the next morning, have a walk, have something to eat and make sure you fly back business class, anything else at this point may put your body over the edge.

Leave before Bangkok gets you and make a clean break. Make sure all the brothers are still alive (well alive enough) before you leave.

Plan for the next gathering of The Brothers!

Due to an early terrifying and scaring event with sharks (and by this I mean my brothers let me watch it from my crib at age 3, and to make it even more of a #1stworldproblem we were here at the time!) I do not go in the water! Ever! So I like to find myself rooms like these ones, to stay in . . .

. . . that overlook the ocean (cause yes its pretty) and have a nice small fresh water swimming pool to paddle around in! The truth is I do wish I could wallow around with all the cool kids in the lakes and etc. and finally it is possible!

I thought initially this would be my savior . . .

But actually we all know from the pool lilos that if you manage to climb on this thing without capsizing it then you have to lie dead still, never taking a drag of your smoke or having a sip of your Champaz (The woman – YES, the float-able deck chairs – NO & for the cost of $4500 DEFINITELY Not! But if you are interested though – HERE YOU GO! - CLUE: Dont answer yet!)

So onto bigger and better things . . .

This magnificent beauty is a TUG BOAT HOT TUB! It come complete with all the things a tiny boat needs (except you have to bring your own of these & of these). This brilliant invention does cost a little at around $22 000 but to be fair by this photo you can see how many of these you can fit in it!

The family is for demo purposes – we would fill it up with a few more interesting creatures

You can place your orders with these guys (or even rent it for a while!) If you want just go check out the pics of this thing (full or not – but if its empty its just a slow crappy boat really?!)

It’s been a rather long start to the year here in Shanghai. In fact let me give you a better description of what I have been doing.

Imagine running an army.

Imagine everything from deploying the tracks, tracking their progress, ensuring they have the right weapons, uniforms and helmets. Making sure they have lunch every day, correct menus and water for their trips. Imagine having to order every piece of equipment, every tank, every gun and every bullet. Imagine have to check and monitor who has survived, who needs to be replaced and who is not up to their job and then what happens to them. Imagine having to continuously find new troops and train them while simultaneously have to stay on the front foot in the battle.

Now imagine doing all of that in CHINESE!

My job is pretty similar without the bloodshed I guess (even sometimes that’s the same) so when I tell you it’s been a long few months (sure I’ve had a few escapes recently) but really its time to go off the grid, drink a F*&% LOAD of champagne and stare at the most beautiful things imaginable!

The Chinese government is nice enough to take two holidays and move them together so pretty much the whole country gets the Mid Autumn Festival off for a week!

So if you see no new content for a bit, this is where I’ll be if you wanna come ask for it Ill be in the pool villa at the epically sexy Alila Villas in Uluwatu Bali. . .

For some sun . . .

Afternoon cocktails . . .

And finally where i will rest my head at night

After a few days of recharging in the mountains its down to the beach to my ABSOLUTE BEST HOTEL CHAIN THE WORLD. THE W!!

The spa if the weather turns south . . .

The desk to get drunk and read (the 17 000 books I have stored up to get through)

And again not a bad place to rest my over indulged liver at night . . .

If you are starting to hate me just a little, remember, firstly I really don’t care because believe me I have earned this excursion and secondly, Ill be in BALI BABY!

See you soon!

So STM has decided that it’s been a while since the last break and while these inner city breaks and tasting menus are fine to stall the inevitable, this city does get a bit much! With all the time being dedicated to the move to Shanghai there has been little time to get away (well for more than a weekend that is) so a family wedding is the ideal excuse to sneak out for a week or so!

So if we are a little quiet xia xingqi (that means next week – soon we will be writing only in Manadarin Pinyin) you will know why!

First, a few days in Mayfair (which if you are going to London – I don’t care what anyone says – IS the best area to stay in London if you disagree just punch yourself in the face #thatsall) at the sensationail ATHENAEUM HOTEL with its famous ‘living wall’ by Ptrick Blanc . . .

Measuring 8 stories tall this vertical garden contains over 260 plant species and more than 12,000 individual plants. Patrick Blanc, a research scientist and artist designed the wall and plans to spread the notion that we don’t have to give up nature just because we live in cities.

Maybe a few trips to the SPA to unwind . . .

But without doubt one thing im looking forward to is the Afternoon tea, I just love the civility of it all!!

So onto more pressing business, land in Heathrow T5 quick hotel car to to the Athenaeum and into the shower, for the main reason of this trip is a little family wedding (and by little my family means a week of getting drunk and pushing our bodies to the limit!) and as with all great weddings come a great night out for the bachelor (this bachelor is far less sleaze and far more class) so here is the evening of London night ONE!

Dinner at the EPICALLY good Hakkasan in Mayfair (and I thought just to show you what I mean I’d insert a little menu sample!)

Click on it to see bigger (trust me you want to read this!)

Then onto BOUJIS which is famous for drunk royals and celebs stumbling out at all ungodly hours of the morning, something I hope to emulate this trip!

Here is a small taste of what these guys do . . .

Then, if I know my self as I do there will be the desperate need to prepare both my body and mind for the upcoming familial nuptuals. So in order to focus there must be a break from the city and a few days in the ‘old country’ of Oxford at the classic OLD PARSONAGE HOTEL . . .

I cannot express to you how excited I will be at this point to read a thousand English newspapers, sitting outside, and gently consuming glass after glass of Chardonnay (or sitting inside next to that stoked fire and doing the same with a few bottles of Merlot)

But most importantly one cannot just walk into a wedding on an unprepared liver , so three bookings at restaurants like LE MANOIR AUX QUAT ‘SAISONS have been secured just so my liver can absorb some decadence before its bombarded with all the brilliance this wedding will bring and all the damage that, while I know may not be good for me, I’m going to do it anyway! 

Then back into town for what should be an absolutely monstrous party and sadly a flight back to Shanghai the next day! Wish me luck – I assure you I will need it to survive. If you don’t hear from us for a few days at least now you know where we will be!

But enough about me, now that you are feeling a little vexed, know that i wish you only THIS for your week ahead!

As you are aware I have moved to Shanghai recently (if you are not click the link) and while getting used to a new city that operates in a language that sounds mostly like klingon is a little difficult, I have started to navigate the city and so I decided to put on my big boy pants and walk home.

Now if you are South African this concept will be rather foreign to you but never the less, I put my iPhone in, put on target=”_blank”>NERD- Hot n Fun (if you don’t know this song – YOU REALLY SHOULD) walked the total of 25 minutes to my front door on a warm spring evening. If you live in a city (I mean a real city) you will probably think I am quite pathetic and cant work out what all the fuss is about but the truth is I have never, ever walked home.

The small sense of pride I got when I arrived home has seldom been better and I started to wonder why we seem to let these small moments of joy pass us by.

You see for me I have always tried to behave far senior to my years and perhaps this has always stopped me from enjoying small moments that could be perceive as trivial – things like getting my first assistant, my first office, my first apartment etc

I’ve been so hell bent on acting above my age that sometimes I tend to forget the smallest joys in life which are so often the most important ones. Moving to a new country all these tiny victories seem to become magnanimous and rightly so. From now on I’m going to try and enjoy these a lot more – like setting up two outside chairs from IKEA (even though there are step by step instructions and a 4 year old could do it)

The moral of the story is quite simple – enjoy the little things. They are the things above all else that are most important! No victory is to small and no victory is not worth celebrating whether it be with a jeroboam of champagne or a small silent victory dance in the middle of the street. Life is there to be enjoyed and if you cannot do that even for the smallest of moment then you have a serious problem!

In the words of Johnny Drama ‘VICTORY!’

So STM decided to stick out the quiet and peaceful Joburg until all of you animals started returning – now it’s our turn!

First a small hop to Dubai on the new A380 Business Class (don’t worry we know we’ve let you down but next trip will be First I promise) but still I fear a few glasses of Champaz at the bar are necessary to kick off the holiday (yes there is an on-board bar)!

Then I think there shall be an important focus on TV, movies and perhaps the needed few hours of work!

Finally after a sleep in the hotel in Dubai and a leg to Zurich its time to hit the majestic KULM hotel . . .

For a bit of a relax . . . .

Some superb dining . . .

And most importantly to behave like absolute animals on the slopes!

Don’t worry though, I may decide to write something or other, but if I do just know that I will be lying on a deck chair overlooking the crisp white mountain with some kind of vodka concoction in hand in the middle of this!

Don’t HATE – its just not nice

STM needed a little fun in the sun to relax and revitalize before the summer rush – so . . .

If you wanna come visit for a bit - HERE YOU GO!

STM has to do a little business in Shanghai this week so we thought we would give you a little taste of what most people think is purely high-rise madness!

Now if you are a frequent hotel stayer like me you will know if you are a big hotel kinda person or a boutique hotel kinda person. The truth is I have spent so much time in hotels that I can pretty describe my ideal hotel room down to the tap fittings! So without giving you too much detail I’m a big hotel kinda person with the style, class and attention of a boutique hotel . . . enter the world class PULI HOTEL (a boutique hotel with like 300 rooms! Paradise!)

Just look out the window of this net pic and tell me if this looks like a concrete, dull, grey world?

And if you think its just the hotels . . .

If you think you’re important, perhaps you should think again…

I’m not entirely sure what my view on this is. While by default we’re the most significant things in our own reality, and while we have the ability to be hugely influential in the lives of those around us, our communities, countries or even the planet, in the bigger scheme of things what does this actually mean?

SO STM is out of office for the rest if the week (yes i know it’s nothing new except for the lineup)

We are hitting THE CONSUMER GOODS GLOBAL FORUM for a few days in Barcelona.

Now I was relatively unexcited until I saw, firstly the hotel (which after the last time I was there, in the W, will be hard to beat) and second and more importantly the lineup of speakers!
First the sensational HOTEL ARTS . . .

Then, far more impressive is the list of speaks – heres just a snapshot . . .

- Guida BARILLA – Chairman of the Barilla Group (fun, no?)

- Amir KAssaei - Chief Creative Officer DDB WORLDWIDE (getting interested yet?)

- Nobu Matsuhisa – You may know him better as the founder of legendary restaurants NOBU

- Indra Nooyi – Chairman & CEO Pepsico (told you it was star studded)

- Muhtar Kent – Chairman & CEO of Coca Cola Global (cause Pepsi and Coke cant be without each other)

- Franck Riboud - Chairman & CEO of Danone global

Thats just a snippet of the lineup – HERE’S THE FULL SHOW!

Finally just to add insult to injury end off the week with a little lunch on Lake Zurich (without doubt one of my best places in the world) . . .

. . . and then a little coffee at SPRUNGLI and a shop on the BAHNHOFSTRASSE – anyone want anything?

The snow was good but we decided to hit a city we hadnt seen before so ISTANBUL was the place!

Now if you are visiting a city, any city, and their is a W hotel? You stay there! I learnt this very quickly in BARCELONA!

So this is where we are hanging out this week W ISTANBUL!