Friday I set out for Heathrow early to catch a flight to Tehran, thats in Iran, who according to George W Bush is the axis of all evil. Early to give me some time to get through the rush hour traffic. I envisaged there would be a lot more traffic as the result of the previous days London bombings. Seemed to be a real lack of traffic, arriving very early. Well the next bit made be swear I would never fly KLM again. One hour and forty minutes queuing for check in. The queue was not exceptional in anyway. I have seen Easyjet queues twice as long being processed in minutes.
Arrived at Schipol in Amsterdam on time, where I met up with Mark Berry, to make our connection to Tehran. At least this bit of the trip worked, had some OK chicken, several glasses of wine and a very large brandy. Watched Miss Congeniality 2 on the inflight.
Arrived at Tehran on time at midnight, picked up are visa, taxi from hotel was waiting for us. Arrived and in bed by 2.00 am in the morning. Even at that time the roads appeared to be really very hectic, cars everywhere, people milling through the streets. Quite a nice warm evening and people out enjoying themselves.
On the flight there appeared to be quite a few Iranian women, who just before we landed, put on their headscarves and a uniform short coat over their clothes.
Saturday up late, and out of the hotel by 9ish. I had rather a poor sleep, waking every half hour or so. Breakfast was a buffet, containing usual non pork fried breakfast, cold meats and fruit.
Into work where we met the e5 team. Rather ominous start of day, lift stopped between the second and third floor. We were released quite quickly, so probably a regular occurrence. We worked until lunchtime, where upon the power went off and never came on again. Lunch was chicken and rice with a vegetable stew. Afterwards we walked up the street and had some massive cocktail type ice creams. Still no power back in the office. We were told that this was rather unusual. Just as we were leaving, the power came back on. One more problem to beset us, Mark’s PC won’t work, something failed on the way over here. So now back into the hotel writing up my blog.
The people we were working with were helpful, and were mainly women. I was asked if I was interested in politics, and how was the change of leadership viewed. I think they were a little worried as what the their new leader would do, it had been assume the pro Western, reformist leader was going to get in. The city is a bit of a concrete sprawl, with lots of traffic driving fast and very close together, lots of lane changing and the creation of additional lanes between the official lanes.