I'd like to be adopted please.

Mum, its nothing personal, but I now have a hankering to be adopted by Dr. Vijay Mallya
chairman of Kingfisher Airlines.

I had a choice of airline from London to Bangalore - BA or Kingfisher - flight times were better on BA, but the thought of a few more inches of legroom with Kingfisher were just calling me loudly. Its a near enough 10 hour flight with one direction overnight! So Kingfisher it was.

Visa collected, flight booked.

Then I spotted "Upgrade Travel Option" through "Option Town"who's tagline is along the lines of "get an upgrade to business or first for 75% less". Hmm.. interesting, so I sign up. Desparately dubious about it...have to call OptionTown in India to throw my credit card over the fence - pay my sign up fee for each way on the flight that I want to be considered for upgrade. (about £6 in total), plus the £217 each way that I was quoted for the upgrade.

My card was charged, on the proviso that if I didn't get the upgrade I get my money credited back. They promise to let me know if I'm upgraded 4 hours before the flight. So that's an upgrade to first class for £217 for a 10 hour flight, that gives me a fully flat bed. The cost when I looked on the website for first both ways was TWO GRAND sterling. (which is definitely out of my price bracket!!). My economy class was actually cheaper than BA at £390, so its not like I paid over the odds to start with.

There was definitely part of me that was extremely dubious, that I'd never see my money again and it was all some elaborate scam, but you know I thought it must be real because its on the Kingfisher website (that'll be me trusting everything I read on the internet...) I searched and searched and could only find one reference to the service, on an obscure travel blog - and all they said was "new service launched".

So, I was a very happy bunny when I get the notification 36 hours before I fly that I've been upgraded - excited all the way to the executive lounge. Hurray. No longer am I one of the great unwashed at Heathrow terminal 4, no more fighting for a seat, an overpriced drink, and then joining a queue to sit in (admittedly 34 inches) of seat pitch (comfort) cattle class for 10 hours.

There are no two ways about it. It was an amazing experience. From the greeting as you get on the plane (my original seat was a "turn left" but it was an aisle seat, so I opted for 3k and the window), the acres and acres of space, three windows in my "suite", thats right I had three windows! And no neighbour - ok so there was a seat there, but it was empty. Wow all this space and I get to stretch out as well.

An amazing toiletry pack, with a wooden handbag sized hairbrush, smellies from Salvatore Ferragamo, jim jams (oh I'm sorry, a sleep suit), slippers. Papers, magazines, hot towels, man alive where am I going to put all this stuff? Ha, that's why I got the spare seat then...

Then Vijay, or do you want me to start calling you Pops already?, appears on the screen - the 17inch (I think it was 17inch, it needed to be that big, being at the end of my acres long suite...) screen and tells me that he's personally selected all the crew on board, and he's told them to treat me as if I were a guest in his home. Dr Mallya, after the Kingfisher First experience, I'm not sure just visiting is going to be enough for me. As my subject says, I think I'd like to be adopted.

I've been wracking my brains as to what wowed me the most - well it started with the onboard camera, that appears to be attached to the underside of the plane, so I could watch the runway from the bottom of the plane as we taxied, then watch London as we took off, and then the lights of whatever part of southern England we flew over, then Europe. Clearly I'm easily pleased.

But seriously, what wowed me the most? - there's no one thing, but there were plenty of them - it started with the offer of champagne - Dom Perignon no less, and yes I would like to drink my champagne in the bar - and yes I sat on the funky cream leather sofa watching Europe scoot past as I lived the high life and ordered my dinner.

After retiring to my suite, dinner (and obviously more fizz) was served. Oh boy. The marvellous tuna to start, and then a fabulous vegetable thali - served on a beaten silver platter. (ok it might not have been real, but I'm probably not the right person to judge, but wow, amazing food and superb presentation). I'm not sure I will ever be able to get back to a Ryanair sandwich again. (and it would probably cost me as much as this upgrade anyways!)

My fully flat bed was obviously prepared for me - and then the stars came out. Literally, the ceiling goes a midnight blue colour and stars appear, so I'm not only in heaven, I can see it as well.

Waking to breakfast and coffee served from silver jugs (I'm going to have to change the coffee machine at home now..) there was just enough time to move my chair into every position possible, (I'm sorry folks, its the little things), test out the massage options on it (yes seriously good), work my way through a little "Kingfisher Radio" and then we were in Bangalore. And of course I love being first off the plane, and seeing my bag the second one out.

Kingfisher - you did me proud, it was an amazing experience, I fear you've spoiled me for life. OptionTown, I'm sorry I ever doubted you - for me it was great, your support staff were fabulous, explained everything in great detail, your emails were timely, informative (and of course the one notifying me about the upgrade was sooooo exciting!)

And of course, the last word must go to Dr Mallya. Sir, you have done a grand job. (personally, you knocked spots off Virgin Upper Class) And should you ever feel the need to adopt me, then my mother would understand, so long as, of course that she gets upgraded.

Enigma's, Bombe's and FaceTime

The Infosecurity exhibition, held in Earls Court, London is our biggest European event here at FaceTime and this year whilst promoting the company and our products we decided to support Bletchley Park. Until very recently Bletchley Park hadn't received any government funding. It's run as a museum, but runs primarily on charitable contributions.

In the place where the Enigma code was broken, where the war was shortened by at least two years, where, during the war more than 100,000 people worked in complete secrecy at Bletchley Park - from brilliant mathematicians, to linguist, to crossword experts and chess champions. It's the home of modern computing, it paved the way for modern computing, for with Colossus, they gave us the world's first programmable electronic computer.

Fitting then, that in our industry we support and maintain the memory of the momentous history of Bletchley Park not just for us, but for future generations. I drove down to Bletchley today, before I head to London on Monday 27th April to set up for Infosecurity, to remind myself why we're doing this and why we all should care and contribute to this living memorial of intelligence work, computing and cryptography.



You can see some of the buildings and the sterling work that the volunteers of the Bletchley Park Trust do everday - from the guided tours (not to be missed), the the slate tiles being sold from the roof of the mansion to fund ongoing repairs, to the rebuilds of the Bombe machines.


I'm very proud to be working with the Bletchley Park team over this next week - and I really do hope that I blow my budget on our campaign. We're donating £10 for everyone who comes to a FaceTime presentation during the Infosecurity Exhibition, and hoping to raise a significant amount for the coffers, but also to raise the profile of one of the most incredible and crucial contributors to the second world war. We have Bletchley Park volunteers on site with us, and also one of the Enigma machines

Join me, Chris Boyd from our research labs, Nick Sears, our EMEA VP and the rest of the EMEA team, as we not only promote FaceTime at Infosecurity, but also ask you to either donate a little of your time, or perhaps the spare change in your pockets to support Bletchley.

See you at stand H92.

Official Warning

I had an official warning yesterday. Minutes after our briefing for RSA I couldn't see my laptop screen. By the time I got back into the office I share with Bev and Larissa, I couldn't see much of anything. Even when I closed my eyes, it was all swimmy.

Migraine. Wow, years since I had one of these.

Bundled off back to my room, I went to bed, because there wasn't actually anything else I could do. Field the amazingly kind offers of help from friends here, but then just close my eyes.

Acceptance is amazingly peaceful. I feel like I've been in a state of "just another email, just another hour of trying to get this done, or if I work this Saturday, I'll clear the backlog" for months now. Now finally, it was beyond my control.

And you know what? I wasn't stressed, hassled frantically sending my mind in 360degree spirals wondering how I was going to get things done. I just stopped. Even now, nearly 24 hours later, after a long long nights sleep, I'm up early, but I'm writing this, not juggling datasheets or presentations or thinking about how to meet some deadlines for next week. I am thinking about what I have to do, but I'm also thinking that unless I stop thinking about it, I'm going to be in the same state as I was yesterday.

It's like the stress swam out with my vision. For the time being anyways.

I missed my only Friday night that I get to spend in the Bay area this trip, I was going to cycle some more of the Bay Trail, then go for dinner at Town or Cask here in San Carlos. But boy did I enjoy the sleep. I enjoyed the fact that my neighbour turned his darned TV off for what must be the first time in a week. Even the refrigerator in the suite that I'm in seemed to be quieter last night. But I can do Friday on Wednesday, or next time.

Isn't it great when a wake up call actually means that you get to sleep soundly?

Expectant parents

No no, don't go getting excited, nothing quite so momentous. Or perhaps it is.

We've been proud half-tenants of an allotment for over a year now. Well, I think it was Christmas 2007 when we first started discussing the allotment with Tom and Jane and decided we'd go for it in a haze of Merlot induced enthusiasm. It took a further year (and further wine, although this time I think it was Cava) to move the allotment discussion on.

It became a reality in March of this year. Four raised beds. Planning on a scrap of paper. Regular "how many peas do you get from a seed" type conversations and well, we're making progress.

The house has been taken over, we have root trainers in the porch - on all windowsills, herbs, tomatoes and peppers throughout the rest of the house. Potato grow bags, onions and garlic in the back yard and a distinct dislike for B&Q peat free compost, which has the consistency of horse hair and a similar itching capacity.

The planting selection has been based on

1. what we'll eat fresh
2. what we can make into chutney
3. what we can freeze

Although what we're going to do with all that cauliflower and sprouts, I really don't know - but at least this Christmas, it will (hopefully) be a totter down to the allotment to pick the carrots, parsnsips and sprouts for lunch, rather than Asda.

It's rather exciting, at the moment - obviously because we're obsessed, in that new parent sort of a way, we can see changes from day to day, although I suspect I will become bored in looking at the state of change of a leek pretty quickly.

We've had our first casualty. Three actually. Three of the peppers were lost at sea. Nigel has an interesting watering technique - if its not swimming then it needs more. We are now exercising caution and restraint in watering. I don't think squeezing out the peat pods and hoping there is still life is a viable solution to over watering. But what would I know. I still don't know how many peas you get from a plant. And where is there to ask dumb questions like that? None of the gardening books or websites seem to cater for such basic questions - I know, I know, that the answer is a piece of string one, but please, have pity on us newbies!

Grating Potatoes

As ever we bought too much food for Christmas and now there is the frenzied searching of the fridge to work out what we have to eat and by when.

The ham has been sliced and tin foiled into Nigel sandwich sized parcels, so that's 8 days food in the freezer.

Our bargain Tesco's "buy one get one free" 2.5kg of potatoes was planned to be potato and leek soup, after all the ham generated a huge amount of stock, now residing in the freezer in small plastic containers, but the market had no leeks and I really didn't want to get into the car (I'm thinking of the cost of fuel involved in this as well now!) and go to the supermarket. So we decided on rosti's.

Rosti's actually helps us out on a number of front. Firstly, obviously the potatoes, then there's the left over onions (red and yellow), then the garlic, and the extra cooking bacon that I didn't use in the super cheese straws that I made earlier (more on that later). The final benefit - my forearms. We decided that our ancient food processor, which seems to have several modes (chunks, small chunks or decimation) wouldn't actually help. So I'm around 1.25kilos into a series of scraped and grated potatoes.

Taste test: Great, wow. I made these? Around 20 mins in a frying pan (ok, so I had to go to Odells and pick up some cooking rings, but I figure this will be one of our freezer staples that we'll make at the weekend and warm up during the week. Put it this way, it will make a change from the veggie chilli and curry that has made up our staple winter diet for the last two years.

Back to the kitchen, another batch is on route, although I'm not sure my forearms are fit enough for the rest of the grating!

And what to do about Christmas?

All of a sudden it seems like Christmas is upon us and we're stuck in that what do we do what do we buy people? It only seems like yesterday when I was thinking that I had this under control.

Apparently not. Nigel is doing his usual and putting off the decision. I feel that I want to do something cheaper, something more natural and something that we've perhaps made ourselves. Perhaps we'll end up giving everyone a few paper bricks...and a jar of chutney.

Perhaps not.

If I don't tell anyone..

about this. is it a blog or a diary. or is it my own personal rant line?