Project Pongo - the German meeting

For those who have been following my blogs, you may remember that sometime in May of this year, I had to go to our factory in the East Coast of USA for a face to face meeting with the Project Pongo team. We were trying to re-engineer the Support Assist team structure - roles and responsibilities. I am managing the Asia Pacific team. Since the project began early this year, the team have been having telemeetings on Wednesdays and I always ended up with a 10pm to midnite slot - EVERY WEDNESDAY!!!. There is only so much one can do on the phone and so, we had to have another face to face meeting to thrash out the details of the plans. We met in Waldbron in the week of 27th August.

The meetings were scheduled for the whole day and on one of those days, it dragged on till almost 8pm. You can see the hagged look on the team members. Okay - a couple did smile for the camera.

But it was not all work and no play. As I have stated in my previous blogs, August this year seems to be Middle Management Month - my middle, my waistline. After a hard day of meetings - including the one which ended around 8pm, we went out for dinner as a group. Those who know me knows that I am a social drinker. And even then I limit myself to a glass of beer, max is 2. In that week in Waldbron, I drank more beer than I normally would have in the previous 6 months. If my WW boss - Mark D, who was also in this meeting sees me writing this, he would probably have a good laugh as he was drinking beer like water. It was not just the beer - there was the food. Most times, I try to order something relatively light like FISH. See what happened when I ordered spare ribs. I did justice to it.

In my previous visits to Waldbron, I normally stayed at the Stathotel Engel. This time, I joined the majority of the team and stayed at Erbprinz Hotel. It is a building full of history. On one of the days of my stay, they even provided me with a fruit basket. In the hotel entrance and courtyard, there were various plants, flowers and trees. For many Asians, we normally eat chestnuts without knowing what the tree looks like. Here is a chestnut tree, with the chestnuts still wrapped in it's spiky skin (looking very much like a mini durian). There was also a lemon tree near the entrance. Rooms are much more comfortable than the Engel and for once in more than a decade, I did not rent a car. I car pooled with Jon. That meant that when I had to go back to Frankfurt Flughafen (airport), I had to take the train. That was actually quite fast and comfortable. Pat and I took the taxi from the hotel to Karlsruhe Hauptbanhof (main train station), took the ICE to Mannheim, changed platform and within 70 minutes was in Frankfurt airport. Here is Pat taking the opportunity to get some rest.

All I want to say about the airport in Frankfurt is that there seemed to be planes landing almost every 2 minutes on the side that I could observe - which had 2 runways. I will be lucky to see more than 1 plane landing in the KL airport for the duration that I am there - typically 2 hours.