Almost home again

Just waiting at Heathrow - London for a next plane to bring me back to Ivone and Camila. Last week I was in Bangkok. Via Helsinki flown to Brussels for a Fortis meeting (and met Pusinne). And in the weekend I made a short stopover in Soest, met Roselle and the CLAM-boys. This early morning from Schiphol to London. At 10:30 AM finally flight back home!

(London - Heathrow Terminal 5, waiting for take-off)

Visit to New Delhi (नई दिल्ली)

Thursday and Friday I was in New Delhi. We did the presentation of our new product Incomesurance. Delhi was the second city for the launch, after Mumbai. Monday I will travel for it to Kolkata (Calcutta) for the presentation.

Friday I attended meetings of the Indian Netherlands Business Circles and the the evening I was at a reception of the Ambassador of The Netherlands at his recidency. This recidency is (together with the one in Paris) considered to be the most beautiful in the Dutch diplomatic service, I couldn't find a picture. It is the former Delhi home of Jinnah, the founder of Pakistan, a beautiful house, fully maintained by the Dutch Ambassy in its original state. You can sit in the library where Gandhi and Jinnah had their discussions and made their conclusions on the future of India and Pakistan, a truly historic place. Jinnah was maried to 'Ruttie' Petit, the grandaunt of our landlord in Mumbai and the sister of the Sir Petit who constructed the house where we are living right now. It's a small world ...

Happy Thanksgiving!

Melissa travelled to Pittsburg yesterday. In the US it is a holiday week because of Thanksgiving. She is invited by Cassie's family to celebrate Thanksgiving at their farm in West Virginia. Of course she wanted very much to go. Cassie is her friend and roommate at Nick Bollettieri's, next week the whole sports academy will be completely empty, and going to a big farm (!) to hunt, drive quad bikes and eat turkey is much better. Have fun Melissa!

Garden chairs

Buying at Chor Bazaar ("thief's market") is a new experience, a collection of small, dirty streets with many shops and mosques, lots of fake stuff and some very nice old things. We went last week and saw some nice chairs for the garden, today we went back to finish the negotiations. In the end the bargaining took more time than finding the chairs ...

A Flea in Her Ear

Yesterday was the performance ("A Flea in Her Ear") of the drama students of Camila's school, the American School in Bombay. And Camila did an impressive performance in her beautiful red dress. She did not only take part in the play but also designed all the constumes. We concluded the evening with a nice dinner together with Bharti and Jarrett.

Next birthday party

Regretfully I have to postpone my birthday parties for at least some 20 years. This week we had several health checks at work and I had not really the intention to participate. But when my whole department walked around disappointed about the results (too fat, ..., haha), I offered to participate to raise the average a bit. A lot of noise how that little guy was going to raise the average! In the end: my metabolic age is 30 (!!). Everyone surprised, except for Ivone.

Rough sea

Today all the Mumbaikers are stressed; there are very strange weather conditions. Normally weather forcast in Mumbai is very simple: it is hot, humid and rains in June, July, and August (monsoon). The rest of the year it is hot, humid and dry. After February till monsoon: it is very hot.

But today it is not (so) hot and it rains. Tropical storm Phyan (a rare phenomenon at these coast) has hit India, just a bit south of Mumbai. Not something like a tyfoon or real storm, but enough to send staff home, close schools and government offices, ...

It was a nice opportunity for Ivone to make some photos of the sea and the eagles. Enjoy!

Front view of entrance

This beautiful tree is standing at the front side of our house.

And this is a part of the 'roundabout' in front of the door.

Cochin (കൊച്ചി)

Cochin is also a very nice place in Kerala. Last year I visited Federal Bank - one of our banking and joint venture partners in IDBI Fortis. It has a for Portugues and Dutch interesting history. The Portugues were the first Europeans to arrive here, Fort Cochin was even the first European settlement in India! Famous Portugues pirate explorer Vasco da Gama is buried here. After some time the Dutch kicked the Portuguese out and sold Cochin to the English. Some pictures:

The Chinese fishing nets (yep, the Portugese were speedy but the Chinese were here some centuries before) with my Hong Kong colleague Alain Wong.

The VOC had its offices here.

The Dutch Palace (constructed by the Portugues - but the Dutch made nice arrangements with the local kings, enlarged the building and let the royal family use it, diplomacy avant la lettre!).

This was the nice, little Saj Earth resort were I stayed arriving from Singapore before we went of for Munnar a week ago.

Gogola (tm)

Only possible in 'Incredible India'

Melissa in Florida

A picture of Melissa (with Max, a friend also playing tennis) in Florida (we are still waiting for all the other pictures, especially those of Haloween). Nice tan they have, haven't they? Christmas Melissa will spend (with us) in India! Great, we look very much forward to it. Especially as she can correct my Dutch English in these blog entries ... English is one of her best subjects!

Ain't she sweet?!

(and yes, indeed, it looks like the North of Portugal,

but it is in the South of India!)

Home, sweet home (2)

Later I will post more photos of the interior - this time a bit more of the flora and fauna around the house.

Home, sweet home

Sometimes you don't have to travel far for a nice view!

Kumarakom

From Munnar we travelled to Kumarakom, as the bird flies only a few kilometers, but as there is only one road it's a five hour (!) drive. We stayed in a Taj Garden Resort, the photograph above is the view from our bungalow. Not bad at all!

Kerala's backwaters are lakes linked with the sea, all together you can travel around 200 km over rivers and lakes from Cochin land inwards. It's a state where you meet beautiful women and where men wear skirts.

Munnar

This weekend we enjoyed the rest and freshness of the tea gardens in Munnar (Kerala - one of the Southern states of India). Ivone flew from Mumbai to Cochin with Mike and Elain Wood (Mike is the actuary of IDBI Fortis), and I joined via Hong Kong - Bangkok - Singapore in Munnar. We stayed in a nice bungalow (former housing of the managers of these Tata tea gardens, our bungalow was Seven Mallay) overlooking the hills. It is in Munnar much cooler as it is much higher; our bungalow was at an altitude of about 1,550m. We also visited the nearby (two hour drive ...) Top Station (~1,900m), but everything was in the clouds. Anyway, the trip up and down was great. We saw monkeys and elephants, but still no tigers ... Ever eaten a tree-tomato, we did!