After the pleasant long weekend at Cambridge, reality struck home.  Rosemary dropped me off at Heathrow in the evening to catch the 8.45 to Jeddah. 

Bit of a shock when I was told about the redundancies at Cedar.  Old colleagues of mine, John Curd, Peter Willson, Anne Walsh, Stuart Charlton and Yura Usvyat had been let go on Friday. Spent  the waiting time on the plane phoning John, Peter and Anne.

Managed a few hours sleep on the plane, finally arrived to the most awful heat and humidity.  Well not so warm (29) but everything was dripping with wet.  My hotel windows, I cannot see out of because of the condensation on the outside.

Ian Rosethorne lost his luggage in transit.  Probably because we booked in so late,  booking in late was a strategy recommended by the ticket sales to get an upgrade to business class. 

Another set of meetings today.  Seemed to go well, but does require us to do lots of work when we get home.

Had supper at the hotel, it was an all you can eat meat place.  Ate 10 different meats in all, beef, lamp, chicken, ostrich, quail.  The only missing meat was the pork.

Chaos on the roads getting to the terminal,  we did set out early in the hope of securing upgrades and also to make sure we were not bumped of the flight.  Don’t think we have the upgrades though.  The security is very painstakinging.  Ended up having to take my belt off.  Then my hand luggage was searched, had to power on my PC and sign on.  Getting worried they might want me to open up my emails or something.

Still a wait before take off, flight leaves at 1.55 am.  No airport restictions here.

Talking about security, very noticeable how concrete blocks are in the road around sensitive areas and hotels.