3GSM Barcelona 07

Susi in La Rambla

Me in La Rambla

Reuniting colleagues - Nokia Networks Spain team 2000

Susi and me posing for an mms postcard at the Nokia party

Emilio, me and Patricio - the Chilean connection
Hello again,

So what’s 3GSM you may ask? Well it’s actually the biggest telecoms congress in the world and it was held in Barcelona last week. Anyone who is anyone is telecoms goes, so it’s the best place in the world for networking.

Yes, of course it’s all about work and new products and services but for me it’s all about meeting colleagues old and new. In the company I worked for before we had a few sayings which were Connecting People, Disconnecting Families and Reuniting Colleagues and I like the last one best! It was great to see Marianne, Yolande, Tia, Suvi, Ben, Thomas, Xavier, Eva, Anna and a whole load of other ex colleagues again.

From what I could gather, the 3GSM congress this year was all about internet in your mobile phone, also about mobile TV and to some extent newish technologies such as Wimax. And of course, Windows mobile. But I’m sure you don’t want to hear about the congress but about what I did for fun.

And yes, there was quite a lot of fun. I took Susi my daughter with me as she had a few days off after her exams and was going to the UK on Thursday with her friend Merce from Alicante to see Oli in Falmouth. So there we were the 2 of us in a splendid hotel, the Eurostars Grand Marina in the port of Barcelona for 3 nights and when I wasn’t working we were playing.

We set aside some time for shopping and Susi did some tourism. The most I got in was a walk down the Rambla which was as beautiful as ever. We were lucky with the weather as it was around 20º C and upwards most of the week.

The nights were the best with quite a few parties, the best, of course, being the Nokia party and that’s the night we were out longest. It was held at the Museum of Catalán Art at the top of Montjuic with fabulous views of Barcelona at night. There must have been more than a 1000 people and tickets were like gold to get hold of. With my connections I managed to get 4 and took Susi and 2 Finnish friends, Viivi and Hanna. The dinner was great with buffets of Spanish, Mexican, Japanese and Italian food, not to mention the chocolate buffet and the drinks, champagne most of the night. The funniest bit was when a Greek chap, based in Teheran told me I was beautiful – in front of my daughter!! Having just celebrated my 50th birthday that came as quite a compliment.

As the night went along I bumped into many familiar faces which was such a pleasure. It was great to see you Pepe Comas, Pedro Molpeceres, Roberto Sanz, Miquel Teixidor, Luis Ríos, Tia Matthews, Michael Wittenberg, Emilio Brambilla (el chavalín), Patricio Valenzuela, Cristina Miranda, José Luis Pérez from Siemens and a friend from my Motorola days, Stephen Green from Satama, Ikka from the Ngage tour, …..I also met a host of great new people including a Dane dressed like a Mexican whose name I think was Johan. He was such fun.

From there a big group of us went to Luz de Gas for after party drinks. Luz de Gas is the place I always end up at in Barcelona. And there we danced the night through (yes I did Anne!) and drank lovely Mojitos. The night ended after 4 o’clock when Susi and I went exhausted to bed. The next day was the end of the fair which was actually a good thing as I had been on the go since the 8th February and my body needed a rest.

From Barcelona Susi went on to Alicante from where she was flying to Bristol with Merce and from Bristol they were hiring a car to drive to Falmouth. The poor kids ended up at Oli’s place at 4 in the morning. Well, they are young and can take it.

And I came home on Friday to home sweet home and in need of a good rest in order to build up energy again for work next week.

Cheers till next week.