I woke this morning and it was still pitch dark outside and the first thought through my mind was ‘Oh no, jet lag’ but then I looked at the clock and it said 5:55am which meant I had slept through from about 11:20pm to 6am.  So hopefully that is the jet lag beaten straightaway.

I had a breakfast meeting at 7:30am. The lifts are so inefficient (or overused not sure which) that it can take 10 minutes to get from my 15th floor room down to the breakfast floor.  This morning it took 7 minutes.  You would have thought that architects would realize that 4 lifts for 22 floors won’t work. Breakfast made up for the frustration of standing at the lifts for 7 minutes.  There are at least 7 different stations starting with fruit juices, then fruit/cereals and then any type of hot breakfast you could ever want including Western (eggs to order), Chinese, Japanese, Indian etc. I reckon I could have tried 100 different things for breakfast this morning if I had wanted to. I didn’t. I did have some fruit (and their fruit is very tasty) and did try a new fruit I had never had before called jackfruit.  As I am a helpful bloke, this is what a jackfruit is:

“It is a species of tree of the mulberry family which is native to part Southeast Asia.  It has the largest tree-borne fruit of any tree in the world reaching up to 36 kgs. The flesh of the jackfruit is starchy and fibrous and is a source of dietary fiber. The flavor is comparable to a combination of apple, pineapple, mango and banana.” All that courtesy of Wikipedia.  I think it is partly right.  It is starchy and fibrous.  It doesn’t take like an apple, pineapple, mango and banana put together. In fact I reckon it didn’t have much taste at all. But at least I got my fiber for the day.

After breakfast and the meeting (which morphed into another post-breakfast meeting) were finished, I had the balance of the morning free to answers all the emails that had come in overnight and to finish my presentation that I had to do tonight. Then another lunch time meeting with the Australian’s (yes I did manage to slip in their rugby prowess – or lack thereof – at the moment).  At lunch all the dishes were marked by the hotel and I particularly liked the one label which said ‘Fish Tamarind’ and then underneath ‘Warning: May contain seafood’.  Really?!

This afternoon was occupied by almost 2 hours on the phone with my UK office (fortunately the room has a speaker phone) and then at 6pm I was picked up to speak at the Gen Re client dinner that had been arranged.  We were back to the Fullerton Hotel again for the dinner – this time in a private room. I spoke and then took questions and then we were served the dinner.  Nothing too exotic in the food (fortunately or unfortunately) but I did get to have crab for a 2nd night running. Crab is the local national food and so it seems appropriate that I should eat it once a day while I am here.

A relatively productive working day. Sorry about the lack of photos but the one I have posted is the view from my room which I thought would be appropriate to send because that is probably where I spent most of my day working! It was threatening to rain and did eventually do that shortly after we arrived at dinner. It is now even more humid than yesterday.