Four stars or four tries

Four starts at nothing but annoyance

As you approach the main entrance to my hotel you see a sign that appears to have 4 stars, well, do not be cajoled into thinking you are in a 4* star hotel because that sign could have easily fallen off a lorry or been acquired at a car-boot sale.

Seriously, I am now under no illusion about that as I returned from a long day at the conference, I was in the lift with one of the housekeeping staff at about 19:30; little did I know that she would bound out of the lift and make a bee-line to my room to clean it.

So, for 15 minutes I waited for the lady to do what she should have done before 14:00 whilst the reception commiserated but had no clue as to how a room vacated at 7:30 in the morning only saw the feather duster 12 hours later.

Four sessions of info-drowning

It was 4 sessions again out of 5, though many were caught out by a session that indicated something about infrastructure but was entirely about something else called Groove 2007, we should read the small print a lot more - I made my excuses and left to catch the tail-end of something more interesting.

The country parties sealed up the day and I went to the Netherlands drinks when with hindsight I should have considered alternatives not so much related to where I live but other parts of my heritage, like the UK party being English or the World party for counties that did not have critical mass - at least everything would have been in English.

I am getting embarrassed about being an Englishman abroad and I am not as responsive to hearing things said in Dutch, it would have to be more lessons or a new location.

Once again, I see solutions and new problems, it is all going to take a lot of thinking about before anything gets rolled out - play, I must, learn, I should and I must avoid the dangers of information overload.