Northpole and more lectures
I’ve been travelling around the world for work now since a few weeks. I’ve started off this trip with a week in India. Then I travelled to Manilla and last week I was in Shanghai. Yesterday, I’ve arrived in San Francisco where I will meet some friends. Later this week I will then pass by Chicago and New York before I return to Belgium.
Training for a North Pole trip is not always that easy when you’re travelling. Not every hotel is equipped with a decent gym. But more importantly, during the day I have meetings with local management and at 4pm Europe wakes up. Which means continuous phone calls and conferences, sometimes until 1 am. It’s not always easy to find a gap in there for a workout. Last week however, my hotel had a very nice swimming pool on the 85th floor, so I was able to go for a swim a few times.
Last Thursday I have given another lecture. Xindanwei, an organization in Shanghai, had tracked me down via Caroline Zeller. I’ve met Caroline in Brussels but these days she lives in Shanghai. And Xindanwei asked me if I had some room in my agenda for a lecture on mountaineering and project management. That was my first international lecture.
Preparations for the North Pole trip are going well, although I could do with some more training. Everybody seems to be training hard, all the equipment has been bought or ordered, flights have been arranged and everyone is very enthusiastic. On the 6th March, the Belgian/Dutch part of the group will meet one last time to go over last minute details and on the 29th March I will fly to Oslo. Now, we just need the ice to drift in the right direction.