So I am back at home finally. The travel home was pretty uneventful. The flight out of Hong Kong left on time and so we arrived on time at 7am into Johannesburg. I was pretty tired when I got onto the plane as it was 11:15pm already when we boarded. Add to that 3 days of limited sleep and a round of golf in 30 degrees I was ready to sleep in any position. I fell asleep before they had even closed the doors and I woke up about 45 minutes after take off while they were serving dinner. I debated with myself whether I should put my chair down and go straight to sleep or try and having some dinner. I eventually concluded that it was only 7pm in SA and so if I was to beat the jet lag that I should try and have some dinner and stay awake a little longer. So I took that option and watched an episode of CSI and then Modern Family while eating supper. I then put the chair back into the bed position and fell asleep almost immediately. That was about 8pm SA time. I woke up at 12am SA time (6am in HK) and thought I would probably not go back to sleep again (given the time in HK) but closed my eyes again and fell asleep until 3:50am SA time. That meant I slept close on 8 hours (which must almost be a record for me on a plane) and if you could the other hour at the beginning of the flight you could even say 9 hours. That was despite the fact that the business class seats on Cathay are not nearly as good as SAA, BA or Virgin (in my view). I am hoping this extra long sleep will help me beat the jet lag entirely.

We arrived in Johannesburg at the same time as 6 other international flights (BA from London, SAA from London, SAA from HK; Lufthansa from Frankfurt; SAA from Munich and one other I missed). Fortunately we were just behind the BA and in front of everyone else so the queue was not that long at immigration (probably took 15 minutes to get through). The luggage started to come off just as I got to the belt and the priority tags worked for once with the business class bags coming off first. I got mine and went to the domestic departures to re-check it for the flight to CT. That flight also left on time at 9:15am and we got back to CT at 11:15. My bag was first off and came out as I got to the baggage carousel. So I managed to eventually get through a long international trip without my luggage getting lost.

So what are my overall impressions for the trip – here is my quick summary:

• LA is a pretty dull place (sorry Rachel)
• LA airport is the worst international airport have been too in the last 10 years (worse than Nairobi).  And it wasn’t just my opinion but I see in an email today from Paul that he concurs with my view (and he used another terminal)
• Cathay Pacific have a fantastic First Class but a so-so business class
• I love Asia and need to plan to go back on holiday with the family
• I particularly like Taiwan and especially the people who are very jovial, always joking and really make you feel welcome
• I really am not as fussy an eater as most people think … next time one of you says I am fussy remember I have eaten Sea Snail, Insects, Frog’s Cream and other things which a whole lot of you would never eat (and have told me so)

Thanks everyone for your comments along the way. I write for an audience so it is always great to get the comments back!  Sorry I did not reply to all of them but I did occasionally. Consider yourself a lucky one if you got a personal response. However, I do have to mention the best reply I got in 11 days and it came this morning when I downloaded my emails in Johannesburg. This was it:

If nothing else it proves I have at least one resourceful staff member with a sense of humor. Pity he didn’t actually see them himself otherwise I might have considered promoting him…

If you’re enjoyed the read then you will be pleased to know that we go on holiday in June/July and I will blog our holiday as per usual. Until then…

Woke up at 5:30am this morning and even though I tried to sleep in for another 30 minutes I just couldn’t. So I got up and packed up and was ready to leave at 6:30am for the golf course. One of the Taiwan office staff came to collect me (Chiren). He drives what looks like a Lexus what is a Taiwanese manufactured car that is a Lexus copy. The trip to the golf course (Lung Tan Golf Course – which means ‘The Lakes’ – should have been a sign about the amount of water on the course) took about an hour. What I learnt is that if I ever come to Taiwan on holiday, hire a driver. The roads are incredibly confusing. And a large number of signs do not have English markings. For example, the golf course was only ever signposted in Chinese characters. They clearly aren’t keen on visitors.

The club house was enormous. I don’t think I have seen a golf club house that large anywhere. You get your own locker with an electronic code. Though I doubt anyone would steal anything anyway. You can’t play at Lung Tan unless you are a member or you arrange a golf day (like today). My 4-ball consisted of me, the MD of HSBC Insurance (Lee Wood – an American but now living in Taiwan) and two local Taiwanese insurance guys (both apparently from companies Lee reckons are technically insolvent). One of them was able to speak English much better than the other. Both were very friendly. The reason I have not mentioned their names is because I could not pronounce them let alone type them and my keyboard doesn’t have Chinese characters. Chiren (the guy who picked me up) lent me his golf clubs. I felt bad that he had to sit out and not play. He took photos, organized the food etc for the day. Roger (our branch manager in Taiwan) did not seem concerned – he said he must sit out to enable me to play. I hate playing golf without my clubs but I really liked his irons and hit them so well I reckon I am going to buy myself a set this weekend when I get back home.

Golf in Taiwan is an experience. We had 2 caddies – both women and both wrapped up like to was 10 degrees outside. It wasn’t, it was more like 30 degrees with 90% humidity. By the second hole my shirt was wet with sweat. By the ninth I could wring sweat out of my shirt and my hat was drenched so that the sweat just ran down my face. The one Taiwanese guy looked like it was 15 degrees outside – I never saw a drop of sweat the whole day! I drank a bottle of water, 3 cokes, a glass of water, a Sprite and never needed the toilet at any stage. I reckon I have lost at least 2 kgs today. My pants keep slipping off as I walk – really irritating. In addition to the 2 caddies, you also take a cart. They are 5 people carts. One of the caddies drives, 3 on the backseat (only Taiwanese size people can fit). The other caddy holds on the side. I wished I could do that as I am sure the air flowing would have cooled me down a touch. The caddies do everything. Give you clubs, tell you yardage (even in English in my case), keep the score, mark & clean your golf ball when you’re on the green, give you the putting line (not always right I discovered) etc. Paul would have hated it. My sons would have loved it. It was a really enjoyable round, I played quite well (despite not having my clubs) and I only hit one ball in the water (which I was able to recover even). For the golfers reading this, I had no blow outs at all (a shoes round Paul) and 32 putts despite having the strangest putter I have ever seen. It had a grip with a diameter of about 4cms. They don’t just have a halfway house – they have points also at holes 5 and 14.

After golf we had lunch at the club. Who knows what I ate. Some I recognized (like Sea Whelk … seen that 3 times now so I recognized it) and some I have no idea what it was. Very nice prawns but try de-shelling a prawn with chopsticks. Believe me you can do it. I watched one of them doing it and then I copied. Was 80% successful in getting it right. As usual there was a HUGE amount of food with about 8 courses for lunch. The Taiwanese also love to toast and the visitors get individual toasts. It happened last night as well. One by one they toast you and each time you must drink. Fortunately I can drink a lot of beer and certainly a lot more than any of them. At lunch it was just toasting with Iced Tea (fortunately). Very special technique to toasting – I will show you when I get home.

Chiren then took me to the airport. It was about 30 minutes away. My flight was only at 7:35pm back to HK but there are almost two flights an hour so I asked them to move me onto the next flight they could. They put me on the 4:15pm flight. The plan was that it would give me time to shop at HK airport. The flight ended up being delayed for about 30 minutes but I still got to HK just after 6pm. My flight leaves at 11:45pm this evening for Johannesburg so lots of time to kill. I checked out every shop. Most of them are ridiculously overpriced. They are the big brand names – Dunhill; Armani; Ralph Lauren; Jimmy Choo, Boss etc. Nothing cheap. Shirts on special at R2500. They felt great but I cannot believe any shirt is worth R2500. I did manage to buy two things – a present for Helen and a present for Helen & me (combined one though I suspect Helen will use it more than me). Nothing else of interest though. Pretty disappointing as it was my only real chance to shop. I am now sitting in the Cathay lounge. I am pretty tired – combination of early morning, golf in 30 degrees, long trip, lots of jet lag etc. I will have some dinner in the lounge (they have a fantastic buffet including sushi) so that when I get onto the plane I can go straight to sleep. Unfortunately I am slumming it in Business Class this time as there is no First Class on the plane.

I remembered one other thing from the National Treasures Museum last night which I forgot to include in yesterday’s blog. It is for all the Gen Re people reading the blog (and CBD people). I learnt that you know a promotion is imminent when you see a Monkey riding a horse. So when you see that happen you can ask me when your next promotion and related salary increase is due. Otherwise don’t bother …

Until tomorrow which should be (all things going well) written from home! Looking forward to seeing the family. Looking forward to my nightly hug from Chloe. Playing Call of Duty with Michael (we have to finish that stupid mission now). Beating Stephen again at squash and snooker (though the latter is not a certainty these days). And no, I haven’t forgotten Helen … just can’t put that in writing.

As I only got to bed at 2am this morning I was still pretty tired when my alarm went off at 7am. I did manage to drag myself out of bed and had a bath for the first time in 9 days. I think other people might have noticed the smell so I thought it was time. Seriously this was the first hotel to have a bath and a shower and so up until now I have been forced to shower only. (By the way, this hotel was rated as 2nd best business hotel in the World – don’t ask the price!). Breakfast at 8am and the seminar started at 9am. The seminar was in the hotel and about 50 people arrived. I was first up. I only got up to speak at 9:20 though as the introductions were done by Roger Chen (our branch manager in Taiwan) who then also allowed the head of the Insurance Institute in Taiwan to speak. They both did so in Chinese (or Taiwanese) so I had no idea what they were saying. While there were no questions again, the audience were much more receptive than HK and they nodded their heads etc at the appropriate points. I also didn’t notice anyone falling asleep. John Gilbert spoke after me, we had a break for tea, John spoke again and then I had the last session again. The people really liked my last session and while again there were no questions, afterwards people came over and engaged with me on the thrust of the presentation. I think it went down well and even John Gilbert said he thoroughly enjoyed it and it made him think.

We had lunch (this time nothing strange) and then at 2:30pm we headed out for the National Treasures Museum. We had a tour guide who started guiding on the bus. She was very funny (in both English and Chinese). She said it was the first time that she had taken a tour group around for 3 hours (3pm-6pm). We had booked for dinner at 7pm at the restaurant right next to the Museum and so she said that we could spend form 6pm-7pm in the gift shop (another first for her to have a group spend an hour in the gift shop!). As you can see that spirit and humor was pervasive throughout the afternoon. As John and I were the only 2 needing English translation, Tuan offered to be our English tour guide so that Sunny (our real tour guide) could just speak Chinese. The museum houses 680 000 artifacts from China – the majority of them from mainland China and brought to Taiwan before Mao’s cultural revolution. That is probably the only reason they were preserved. Only very little of the artifacts are on display at any one time. They change the displays every 3 months and Sunny told us that if you came once every 3 months (i.e. to see the new items on display), it would require you coming 20 years consecutively before you had seen all the artefacts they have.

I could probably write a whole book on the museum but I won’t because I am tired and need to be up 6am tomorrow again and it is now 10:30pm.  My impressions from the museum were:

1. The Chinese love Jade – and the most valuable and sought after is White Jade – just in case you thought Jade was always a greenish color – you would be wrong!
2. The Chinese were miles ahead of the Western culture in 12th and 13th century.  The pottery they had was already glazed and if you hadn’t told me it was from then I would have guessed it was made last week.
3. They eye for detail is clearly displayed in their carvings (some you could only see with a magnifying glass and yet when you did the detail was incredible – and these were done in 18th century)
4. If you own anything “Ming” you are incredibly wealthy – a Ming Tea Cup sold on auction recently for R40m.  Forget about a Ming Vase … give me a teacup!
5. I learnt about the Qing, Ming and Han dynasty’s.  I probably quadrupled my Chinese history knowledge.
6. Taiwanese have an excellent sense of humor
7. Walking around for 3 hours at a museum is very tiring.

One thing did strike me (as a point of application … especially for Mssrs Pillay & Lewis given recent events). You can be miles ahead in the 12th century and become overly confident about your abilities and cut yourself off from the rest of the world and then the end result is that you end up lagging the rest of the world by 2012. It is a great analogy for business (or what not to do).

After we finished at about 6:30pm (we managed to get in another 30 minutes before they kicked us out of the museum itself), I did get to go to the gift shop and I found another present for Chloe. Still nothing for anyone else though. I am hoping for some shopping time at HK airport tomorrow though! We then went to dinner at Silks Restaurant right next door to the museum. One quick look at the menu and I knew we were in for another interesting dinner. The courses included:

• Water chestnuts (make that another first for me)
• Sautéed Sea Whelk (had that yesterday and sea snails twice in a row didn’t appeal to me)
• Frog’s cream with Crab Meat Soup (ate that … still don’t know exactly what it was but was assured it had to do with frog … so another first)
• Pan-fried Lamb Chop with Curry (skipped that for obvious reasons)
• Shrimps with Jelly Fish (again)
• Jadiete Cabbage with Insects (Yes – was worried about that one – ate the cabbage and skipped on the insects)
• Steamed Grouper with Tree Pod
• Chicken Soup with Yams
• Flied rice (sorry … Fried Rice)
• And then desert…

There were starters as well – never figured out what all of them were but one thing I did eat was bamboo stems – which were ok actually – would have them again. I sat next to John at dinner and we talked about the food (a lot) and avoided the same things. The quantity is just ridiculous though. I was full after the the Soup. I have no idea how they eat so much and yet stay so slim. I will skip breakfast tomorrow as I don’t think I could manage to wake up that early any way and I am sure I don’t need it.

After dinner it was back the hotel. Everyone seemed to be heading off to the mall or the night market but John and I headed to our rooms and bed.  It is quite hard work talking to people whose first language is not English. I have to admit that they all tried really hard, are very polite and are friendly and nice people. You get a sense that they enjoy life. I like the Taiwanese people. If you want to see what Taipei looks like from my hotel room have a look on my Facebook site. I have posted a photo there (and also of the menu tonight).

Sleep well.

This morning I woke up with lightening striking and thunder rolling.  Of course it was 2:45am and I felt like I had finished sleeping for the night.  Here we go again with the jet lag.  I forced myself to go to sleep again until 4am but slept very lightly due to the lightening.  I tend to sleep with my curtains open in a hotel room (not sure why but it has become a habit now).  At 5am I finally gave up and got up and answered emails.  I realized that the reason I could not see anything when I arrived in the room was probably due to the fact that I was in the cloud.  As it was now raining the clouds had lifted and I could see the lights of the harbour.  It was quite beautiful.

We had a breakfast meeting at 8am in the hotel.  What I realized immediately is that the food was going to be different over the next 3 days.  Steamed buns, sago and various other chinese items which were unrecognizable at breakfast.  Even the fruit was interesting.  At least half of the fruit I had never seen before.  I stuck with the known.  They had bottled fruit juices of every type you could imagine.  I went with watermelon – it was fantastic – like drinking a watermelon.  I stuck with the Western breakfast this time and had my usual of 2 eggs.

I had free then until lunch but as I was feeling really jet lagged I headed back to the room and tried to have another hour of sleep to get me through what I knew would be a long day.  I did nap on and off but never managed to fall asleep properly.  We then had lunch in the Dynasty Club in Hong Kong.  It is a private members only club.  There are two Gen Re people speaking at the events – myself and John Gilbert who is our Chief Investment Officer (and based in the USA).  He spoke during lunch today.  He spoke incredibly well and all the clients were paying attention.  My mind wandered from time to time but he even managed to keep my jet lagged mind most of the time.  Lunch was an experience as well.  I think I must have eaten at least 10 things I have never eaten before.  It consisted of 7 courses and then 2 desert courses as well.  It was a HUGE amount of food.  Impossible to eat all of it.  I think in every course there was something I had never eaten before.  If you’re squeamish, you might want to skip this part!  Here are the things I ate today which I have never had before:

• Jelly Fish
• Deep-fried bean curd (remind me not to ever try that again)
• Sea Whelk (sea snail)
• Chinese Yam
• Longan
• Meldar (it is herb used for healing)
• Abalone
• Conpoy (this is dried scallops – scallops I have eaten previously but never dried)
• Spotted Grouper (they offered the head around for people to eat the eyes etc)
• Dragon Fruit

The soup also had chicken feet in it (though I have had those before).  I could not bring myself to eat the Sago Cream Mango for desert.  This was all accompanied by plenty of wine – one of which was Rupert & Rothchild from SA.

After lunch we had about an hour before the next meeting so we went into the office and I met everyone I have only ever dealt with via email.  The office is on the 68th floor and you have to take 2 lifts to get up that high.  Half way up is an observation deck with fantastic views of the city.  We then went to have a meeting with the Actuarial Society of HK.  As we were slightly early, my host (Tuan) asked if I minded if he popped into a bookstore at the bottom of the building.  Tuan lives in China and is our branch manager there.  The bookshop turned out to be ‘Elim Christian Bookstore’.  This obviously resulted in us having a conversation about Christianity and it turns out that Tuan is a Christian.  He is Malaysian by birth and 3 of his family members were converted all in different countries.  He told me it was ‘by the Grace of God’.  He bought two books (one by Josh Harris translated into Chinese).  He told me it is illegal to take them back into China but he will do it anyway.  He cannot get any Christian books in China.  We got talking about CBD and our numerous branches.  I could see the envy in his eyes.  I asked about his Church and he says they meet illegally because they are not allowed to have an official church.  He runs the house church – they do not have a pastor.  They usually get 35-40 on a Sunday morning but he says that they have about 80 people linked to the church.  He said the Church in China is growing rapidly because of the suppression.  It said it is really encouraging to be involved.  A lot of the people attending are younger people and they have no teaching and so he tries to get books every time he comes to HK to take back.  It was an amazing conversation and incredibly encouraging to find this out.  I have know Tuan for about 2-3 years now and he is a very nice guy but he never mentioned that he was a Christian previously.  He said he knew I was a Christian because Wolfgang (our head of Asia-Pacific) told him.

We then had a benign (by comparison to the 15 minutes of conversation above), discussion with the ASHK about actuarial education and various items of mutual interest (which none of you, even the actuaries, would probably be interested in).  The ASHK had organized me for to speak to their members and we had to walk to the KPMG building about 15 minutes away.  It was bucketing down with rain but most of the walkways are covered so it was only the occasional drop of rain that actually fell on me as we ran from one walkway to the other.  The talk was attended by about 50 actuaries from across the market.  I had been warned that there was likely to be no questions.  And there weren’t until I eventually coaxed one out.  They seemed entertained.  I only noticed 1 person fall asleep.  I spoke really slowly and deliberately so my usual 30-35 minute presentation became a 45 minute presentation.  Afterwards a few people came up to me and spoke to me and thanked me or asked some questions.

We were then off the airport to catch our 22:40 flight to Taipei.  We had about 2 hours to kill in the airport but as I with Tuan & Wolfgang we went to the Cathay Pacific lounge and had dinner and chatted about various things including Gen Re matters.  It was good catching up with Wolfgang in particular.  The flight left bang on time and arrived at 12:20am.  We got through immigration & customs with no problem.  The airport is a little like JHB/CT airports were about 5-10 years ago.  Old but functioning.  We had a car pick us up and take us to the hotel.  We are staying in the Far Eastern Plaza Hotel in Taipei.  It is very nice.  The rooms are spacious, have a walk in closet and a beautiful marble bathroom.  Given that it is now 2:05am, I am going to send this email and then get into bed and sleep until about 7am.  I have breakfast at 8am followed by a seminar (which I am speaking at twice).

Good night, sleep tight.

Burb ….  (must be the sea whelk)

Just arrived in Hong Kong. It is 8:50pm. I travelled 15 hours and there was a 15 hour time change. That means I have gone from being 9 hours behind SA to 6 hours ahead of SA. Sunday went past without me noticing it. I am writing this now because if I don’t do it before I have a shower, I know for certain I will fall asleep before I get to it. I am feeling totally out of it at the moment so again excuse the missing words and typos (I am not reading it again before I send it!).

As you know, I left LA at 12:55pm on Saturday. The LA international terminal is terrible. It is far worse than any other international terminal I have been to in the last 20 years. They are finally renovating it but that renovation must be at least 10 years overdue. My first ‘Asian’ experience came at the gate when they announced just prior to boarding ‘that adults with children did not have to queue with the rest of the grown uppers but there was a separate line for them’. That isn’t a typo or the jet lag speaking. Of course their boarding system is brilliantly organized. Separately marked lines for First, Business and Economy and the economy lines are split by row number. Why don’t other airlines do the same thing? We had been warned at check-in that the plane was parked at a remote gate. I didn’t realize that meant they parked the plane in Nevada and that we had to take a 20 minute bus trip to it. And I am not exaggerating that much here. The bus trip took us to the furthest point on the airfield. They have these remote gates which are just a concrete ramp to get up the arm which links onto the plane. It is the weirdest thing I have ever seen and I have not seen it anywhere else in the world except now in LA. It actually looks rather freaky (as Chloe would say) especially since they are located so far away from the terminal. It is like a quarantine area.

Once on board I could immediately see why Cathay Pacific is just a highly rated airline. Their attention to detail is incredible. I had the privileged of traveling first class and there are only 6 seats (or should I say beds or maybe rather a better description would be double beds) in First Class. 3 cabin crew for the 6 people (3 of whom were Mexicans … in my view drug lords because why else would a Mexican be traveling First Class to HK?). 2 toilets for the 6 people (never had to wait for a toilet at any time on the flight). The TV was the size of our TV at home that we have in our bedroom. At least 35-40 cms. It had 200 movies, 500 TV shows and 888 choices of music. That excludes the games which I never even looked at. The seat has it’s own cupboard to hang your jacket and clothes. They give you a sleep suit so that you don’t crease your other clothes. Slippers so that you don’t have to walk into the bathroom barefoot or in your socks. The seat is so big you could easily fit two people next to each other. It is opulent.

As you can imagine their service is superb. They called me by name from the moment I got on the plane. They gave me a handwritten note (I have attached a photo of it). You can eat whenever you want to and they had three meal options – lunch, snack (which looked liked lunch or dinner in my view) and then dinner. I had all three at various points in the flight. I had the lunch just after take off and they have a Western option and an Asian option. When they came to ask me what I wanted they only offered me the Western option! I think they assumed I would not eat the Asian food. I quickly corrected them in that regard (especially as the Asian menu had lobster on it .. not kidding). In fact as we I finished dinner this evening the air hostess said they were very impressed that I only ate the Chinese food (which is what I did for all three meals). The food was superb. I really like Chinese food and this was just the type of food I like. I couldn’t have asked for anything better. The vegetables aren’t always recognizable but they taste good – I must just remember what their names are because I never can remember. Fortunately I can use chopsticks otherwise it would have been very messy as chopsticks is all that they gave me.

I managed to watch 3 movies again on the flight. All 3 were action/thriller ones. The 3rd movie (called The Game) got me so wound up that I decided no more movies and I went to TV shows instead. I did manage to get in two sleeps. The first one was around 4 hours and the second one of about 2 hours so roughly 6 hours in total. However, I don’t feel like I have slept 6 hours at the moment. The one thing I found amusing is how difficult it is to understand the air hostesses. They were all very quietly spoken so I was always straining to hear them and they seemed to battle to understand me as well. I had to repeat myself 2 or 3 times usually. I will have to change my intonation and say things like “Flied rice” so that they can understand me better.

The sun was setting as we landed in HK and there were thunderstorms about as well (I tried taking a photo out of the window which I have attached but it does’t look nearly as good as it did on the plane). The water is littered with boats of all shapes and sizes. The runway is built on reclaimed land and so you keep wondering where you are going to land and then you just suddenly see land and touch down. The runway lights are in the water even. Of course the airport was very busy and it took about 30 minutes to get through immigration. However, once I got through that my bag was already waiting for me. I had a car pickup service from the hotel (why travel in a taxi when you you can travel in a Mercedes S-class). It was 29 degrees when we landed at 7pm and it hasn’t cooled down at all. It is also very humid. I am staying at the Renaissance Harbour View Hotel. When you check in they come up to the room with you to do the check-in in the room rather than at a desk downstairs. I have staying on the 38th floor (there are only 39 floors) and I do have a view over the harbor (even though it is pretty dark right now).

Well that is it for today. I am going to have a shower and then go straight to bed. I have a breakfast meeting (again) tomorrow morning and a full day of meetings so I am hoping for a good nights rest so that I am not jet lagged for tomorrow’s full day.