As we come to the close of the ‘Noughties’, it’s time to wish all my friends and family a happy New Year 2010.  I was reading the paper this morning, and I think this quote summed up the year perfectly:

“(2009 was) like shock therapy, where people really change when something bad happens to them,” said accountant Conrad Jordaan, 35, as he enjoyed cigarettes and coffee Thursday at an outdoor cafe in London. “It will be interesting to see if it changes peoples’ behavior long term.”

I was born in the seventies.  Gerald Ford was president, the Cold War was very much alive, and I remember Star Wars, the Rubiks Cube, and listening to the music that we call ‘classic rock’ today.  It was a transitional generation, moving out the troubles of the 1960s – racial tensions, the Vietnam war and a general feeling of rebellion, and into something different.  My parents owned a yellow station wagon with chrome bumpers and ‘woody’ side panelling, and my mother frequently dressed me in highly-flammable, brightly-coloured synthetic clothes.  I was part of the generation raised on Sesame Street.  The highlight of my week was eating sugary cereal and watching the cartoons on a Saturday morning, having transformed the sofa into a fort.

Roll on the heady 80s.  Hostile takeovers, shoulder pads, Reaganomics, dodgy hairdos and even dodgier music, this was the ‘Me, Me, Me!’ generation.  These were my formative childhood years, marked by some amazing inventions like the mainstream adoption of computers and the launch of the first space shuttle, but also by some big new threats: the escalating Cold War, the outbreak of AIDS, Nancy Reagan telling us to ‘Just Say No’ and the Columbia exploding and falling back to earth.  We bought our first VCR, and later, a CD player.  My mother bought her first cellphone, the size of a purse.

The 90s brought high school and college.  I left the US and moved to Europe.  I jumped on the internet superhighway in the early 90s when it was barely a two-lane road, and never looked back.  If I think about the inventions that had the most impact on my life, the internet is surely one of them.  I got my first job just as the whole world moved to casual dress Fridays.  I watched the Democrats get elected into the White House the first time I was old enough to remember.  I watched the US get involved in Iraq and OJ Simpson get acquitted.  The cellphone was still analogue, but it was now the size of a transistor radio.

I had just started my professional career as the ‘Noughties’ arrived, and everyone was looking for the next big thing.  Everyone you spoke to was an entrepreneur, ready to make a million on the internet. The stock markets shot up every day, and it seemed every idiot with a stockbroker was making a fortune. 

I was working in New Orleans on 9/11, and I saw the coverage of what was happening in New York from my hotel room.  I tried to call home to let people know I was okay, but the lines were blocked.  It was the first time I could remember having an overwhelming urge to jump on a plane and get straight home.

In my industry, we shed loads of jobs in the wake of the burst of the internet bubble.  Friends and family lost their jobs, but at least the payouts were good, severance packages generous.  People took six-month vacations and then picked up where they left off.  When the real estate bubble burst, more jobs were lost – but this time, without the generous severance packages and with unemployment rates still hovering near 10%, the short-term prospects aren’t great.

But we have our health and the prospect of a new decade ahead of us.  As we enter our ‘teens’, I think we’re due another transitional decade, influenced by the unbridled optimism of the 80s, the huge technical advances of the 90s, the geopolitical shifts of the Noughties, and the sobering reality and lessons of the last few years.  Each time I visit Asia, I’m aware that the world order is changing, and that the whole world is becoming more interconnected.

I’m excited by what the next 10 years have in store, and ready to face whatever may come.

Best wishes to you and yours for a very happy, health, safe and prosperous 2010!

Well, it’s a year to the day since I wrote my last Christmas letter, and once again I’ve decided that a “year in review” on my blog is the way to go. We’re hosting Christmas here in the UK this year, and Aude’s parents arrived in London yesterday. They’re bundled up as warmly as they can be, but they’re still freezing.

What a year it’s been. We started the year in style with a great red-and-black New Years party with Marjo in Belgium. Never content with one party when there’s an excuse to have two, we rang in the New Year again with friends and family in London, Chinese-style.

And it seems that we were right to celebrate. All in all, it’s been a pretty good year. We’ve spent a lot of it travelling, and both my Amex and my frequent flyer cards have taken quite a pounding. We’ve had loads of good times with our friends, celebrating with them or just enjoying their company. And we got married, which is probably worth mentioning.

At times this year, it felt like I was spending my entire life on planes or in hotels, and when I look back at the numbers, there’s some truth in that. I spent over a hundred nights in hotels this year and can recite a number of room-service menus from memory, and clocked up about 150,000 miles in travel. My passport is quickly filling up with stamps from around the world, little memoirs of where I’ve been.

We started the year as we intended to continue, gathering up loads of our friends for a long weekend in New York. Anne-Laure, Neil and MG joined us in the big Apple, where we ate like kings and shopped until we dropped.

After a few quiet weeks, it was time for a quick run to France to stock up on booze, and before we knew it, it was time to celebrate Easter on the French Riviera with Aude’s parents.

A few weeks later, we were off to the US to spend some time with my parents. We introduced Aude to one of the finest foods in the world – fresh crabs on the Chesapeake Bay, then headed down to New Orleans, one of my favourite places in the world, to celebrate Jazzfest. For me, it was also a chance to catch up with a lot of old friends, but also to see first-hand the damage that Katrina had caused and how much work there was to be done cleaning the city up and rebuilding it again.

More catching up with old friends in Washington, then it was off Paris for a few days on business, then to Amsterdam to lead a training course. Almost before we knew it, summer had arrived and it was time for a mid-summer break in France, then a job interview in Paris.

Before we knew it, it was time to head back to France to get married, then we were back on a plane to Turkey to celebrate our honeymoon. Our plan was to see a lot of the Turkish countryside, but mostly I saw a lot of the inside of a doctor’s office and the toilet. Never let it be said that I’m not romantic.

Just days after we returned from honeymoon, I got my marching orders and it was off to Singapore. Where I spent even more time on the toilet. Undeterred by my struggling guts, Gina dragged me along as she went on a one-woman culinary tour of Singapore. And I took lots of pictures.

From Singapore, it was off to Bangkok, then back to Turkey again, this time for business. I did manage to sneak Aude out for the weekend, which was some consolation. This time, to the delight of everyone, I managed not to spend the entire trip on the toilet.

From Turkey, it was back to Singapore for a few weeks, and now finally I’m home. It’s good to be home, even if it’s only for a little while. There’s nothing quite like sleeping in your own bed, even if housekeeping doesn’t turn it down each night. At our house, you’re more likely to find a cat on the pillow than a mint.

We’ve seen loads of friends this year, in between our busy travel schedule. Julien and Karine came to see us in Canterbury,
and Dara came to see us, all the way from Afghanistan.

Neil quit his job and went off to learn French, although like me he mostly learned to swear. Now he’s got a new job in the City, and we’re train buddies each morning.

MG celebrated her birthday, and I celebrated mine, in Singapore-sling style. Aude celebrated hers twice — once in Canterbury, where I managed to fall asleep during dinner, and again in Paris, surrounded by her friends. AnnMarie celebrated hers…

And before we knew it, it was time for Christmas again. There were parties and tree trimming, and plenty of chances to catch up with even more friends.

Last but not least, we used the ultimate excuse to see all our friends and family — we got married. There was a lot of planning, and paperwork, but finally the big day came. One of these days, I’ll get around to editing all the pictures, maybe in time for next year’s Christmas letter.

As I look forward to 2008, we have another big year ahead of us. We’re moving to Paris next month, and with any luck I’ll learn enough French to survive. It’s a new job for Aude and a whole new set of challenges and adventures for both of us. Until then, though, it just remains for me to wish everyone a joyeux noel and une bonne nouvelle année. I hope that your holidays are happy and safe.

Singapore harbour, just after sunrise

The Durian Convention Centre, which looks a lot like the fruit!

A sea of cranes — there is construction going on everywhere in Singapore

It’s another nice morning in Singapore. Friday night was a bit of a wash-out. We were all tired from a long week, so after a few quick beers with my client after work, I headed straight back to the hotel and into bed. Life looks so much nicer after ten hours of uninterrupted sleep.

Today is all about doing some sight-seeing around Singapore. Gina, my colleague, is taking me out for some dim sum (yes, this is the same Gina that is responsible for taking me out to Steamboat on the first night and ensuring I spent the first few days of the trip feeling quite ill). She lived in Singapore for ten years and is keen to show me the sights, although knowing Gina the sights are likely to include quite a lot of the shops along Orchard Road!

I did a little shopping myself the other day. I needed to set up Skype so that I could call back to the UK without spending a fortune. After a somewhat disappointing first attempt using the built-in speaker and microphone, a colleague insisted that a good quality headset was the key to reliable Skype communications. So I headed out in search of a Sennheiser headset, which took me to Funan IT mall (and solved my Skype problems!). I’m sure for anyone who lives in Asia and is surrounded by new technology, this sort of mall is commonplace, but for me it was a little overwhelming. Imagine a seven-storey mall full of nothing but IT shops. For a gadget guy like me, there is temptation everywhere. Only my upcoming trips to Hong Kong, where technology is even cheaper, has kept me on the straight-and-narrow…

I’m really warming to Singapore. It’s cleaner than anywhere else I’ve been in Asia by a long way – so clean that it loses a little bit of its character. It doesn’t have the same buzz as Hong Kong or Bangkok – the pace of life is much more sedate. The food is wonderful and there’s a huge variety, all of it very cheap. Taxis are ten-a-penny, inexpensive, and make it very easy to get around the city. Customer service is just as refined and friendly as you’d expect it to be. The fact that everyone speaks good English means that it’s really easy to communicate and make yourself understood.

If Disneyland created countries, they’d have created Singapore.

The last two days have been absolute chaos at my hotel near Heathrow. The airlines have had to cancel hundreds of flights due to freezing fog and the hotels around the airport have been inundated with stranded travellers. Aude and I are crossing our fingers and hoping that the weather lifts in time for us to fly to France on Christmas Eve.

My Christmas cards are sent, and as the year draws to a close, I thought I would use my blog to reflect on the past year rather than send out a “Christmas Letter”. Mostly because I’m lazy and this is easier.

As I look back over the past year (which is easy to do, since it’s all neatly documented online), I’m amazed at how much we’ve managed to squeeze into twelve months – some of it feels like a lifetime ago, some of it feels like it was just yesterday.

At least I can take some reassurance in the cyclical nature of the world. Some things never change. Air travel is still stressful, and nothing ever works out quite the way you planned. A year ago we were waiting for Aude’s parents to arrive. The finally made it, a few hours late, but had to spend the entire holiday in what they’d worn on the plane as their luggage took in a scenic journey of Europe.

Happily, they were reunited with their luggage when they got back home a few days later. Aude and I joined them, and together we rang in 2006 in style in the south of France, this time with all of our luggage and a full complement of family and friends. Minouche, the cat, was still a kitten and kept us all entertained.

Minouche got lost, but thankfully was found several weeks later, looking fairly sorry for herself. Cats will be cats. She’s now doing well and steadily putting on weight – she’ll look like Daisy and Calypso in no time.

Sadly, we had to say goodbye to a number of friends this year including Faouzia and Alain and Julien, who moved to France, Alessandro and Virgine, who have gone off exploring the world, and countless others who have moved to Walton Oaks (!). I’ve also had to say goodbye to most of the friends I worked with on my consulting projects down here, as they’ve moved on to other clients and other parts of the world.

We’ve both moved this year – 100 metres down the road in both cases – to our new place in Canterbury where we’re finally settled in. The back garden has been a godsend and we’ve used it constant throughout the summer for entertaining and barbeques. I can’t believe I lived so long in England without a garden.

I’ve changed jobs, but that doesn’t mean very much as a consultant. I still managed to spend more than a hundred nights in a hotel this year, where I’m greeted more like a long-lost friend than a guest when I arrive. And I still seem to find the most glamorous clients slung around the far side of the M25 – meaning hundreds of miles each week in gridlocked traffic.

In March, I crashed my car. Much to my embarrassment.

We’ve done our fair share of travel this year. We’ve been skiing in France, where Aude did her impression of Les Bronzes and I demonstrated “what not to wear”. I went to Washington to visit my parents. We visited Thailand for Songkran and got absolutely doused. We visited Alsace, Basel, Zurich and saw our friends get married in Nancy. We visited Aude’s grandfather in Orbec. We visited friends in Paris and we went to Scotland to see Mike and Karen getting married, where I was so inspired that I decided to get engaged myself.

We had some visitors, too – Aude’s parents in December, Joan and Joey in July, and my parents, Dasha and Nick in November. And Aude’s brother, Jerome, who has come to see us countless times – although I’m convinced it’s only because he fancies a change from the food in the office canteen!

We’ve had plenty of good food and wine this year. I ate testicles. And frog’s legs. And I seem to have spent most of the month of December in black tie.

All in all, it’s been a very good year, and one I’ll look back upon fondly. To those of you reading this who I haven’t heard from in a while – I’d love to hear what you’re up to, even if it’s only in a Christmas letter.

Best wishes to everyone for a merry Christmas and happy New Year!