Sitting at Bengaluru International Airport, sipping on a Kingfisher beer. The working week is over and we are waiting for the flight to HongKong with Dragon Air. It still feels like work, since the discussions with the rest of the team still circulates around job stuff and that's probably the way it will continue during the weekend in Beijing too. It's been nice to feel the warm climate again. Around 30 degrees in Bangalore. Unfortunately, we haven't spent any quality time outside. We were invited for a big Indian dinner last night at one of the Mindtree's top bosses home. Lots of nice food and drinks. My stomache has been fine all week, even though I've tried lots of local food. Tonight I ate some very spicy Chicken Tikka Masala. I had to leave the dinner table and run to the toilet when my eyes & nose started rinning and the sweat was pumping out from my forehead. My mouth is still burning. Lucky that I didn't go for the real spicy dishes on the menu. 

After a long and tiresome day in a conference room, coming back to the hotel just before 8 PM, the plan was to have a dinner together with the rest of the delegation in the hotel restaurant. One guy said, "Enjoy your nice dinner, but I will spend some time in the gym instead". Guess who? Of course. It's a matter of getting the priorities right. What is an exclusive 3 course dinner with to many Kingfisher beer, in comparsion to a sweaty workout on a treadmill in the gym? Honestly, it's nice to get a break from the people that you spend all days with in the office and also great to get some new oxygen into the brain. My 1 hour running was excellent, then some swimming in the outside roof pool on the 6th floor under an exotic black sky full of stars.

Instead of a big social dinner, I ate 2 red apples and drank 3 bottles of mineral water all alone after my training. What a party! Well, I actually can feel my stomache asking for food right now (almost 11 PM), but I will endure it until breakfast. No problem! or should I grab some nuts and a chocolate bar from the minibar. No way! Show character man!

That's the catchy slogan they use everywhere here and Yes, it's from many aspects incredible. Organized chaos. It normally takes me a couple of days to mentally adjust to the lack of structure and to cope with my patience due to lots of waiting and questionable promises that seldom are fullfilled. Always with an attached explanation, starting like Sorry Sorry Sir, but ... bla bla bla. They always have a friendly attitude, so it's OK. Sometimes it just feels like they are to many persons involved in doing rather basic things, that actually quite often not really are needed at all. Still they manage to look very important and irreplaceable.

Bangalore being the IT world capital of low cost sourcing is an amazing place with very strong IT competencies & capacity, but with a really poor city infrastructure (roads etc). The new airport was a nice experience though. Regardless of all the practicalities, I admire & respect the Indian people, who are so ambitious and opportunity minded.

Instead of spending all the time here in the office, hotel & traffic jam, I would prefer to go out in the wilderness. 2 years ago, we were trying to spot tigers in the Banjipur National Park. That was very exciting. Only managed to find fresh paw prints, but we could feel their presence in the air. All other animals and birds behave odd when there's a tiger around. Shere Khan.

By the way, I have a mosquito in my hotel room now. Need to do some hunting.

The Sunday ski race in Mullsjö became a tough challenge. 14 laps on a 3 km course with artificial snow, starting on crispy icy surface, using sticky glue type of wax from tubes. It was a bit crowded in the start (500 skiers) and one of my poles was broken. The surface changed after a few laps to a muddy mix of wet snow and dirt. Most of the tracks were then gone too. The fun part was that you could see your friends many times, since it was a turn-around course. My finish time over 40 km's was 3.44 and I was very tired afterwards. I expected to do it in around 3 hours, but due to the conditions most skiers used longer time. Anyhow, a good practice race. Now I'm suddenly in Bangalore, also crowded, but no snow at all. More about that later. Need to catch some sleep ...

Today's badminton training with Oliver was excellent. I haven't played with him since October. He has made great improvements. Training 2-3 times a week makes the difference and also that he has understood the keys to the game. We have now set a target. He will be the number 1 Junior in the club within 2½ years, when he's 15. A year later he should be able to beat his old man. I better stay in shape, because he's hungry for success.

His first competition will be in Torslanda in the end of February. That will be interesting.

For me, this week has been totally free from all kind of training otherwise. No time at all for anything but work. Well, tomorrow morning it's time for Stråkenloppet in Mullsjö. 40 km's XC skiing. It will be on artificial snow as it looks, since there haven't been enough of the real stuff lately, in combination with rather mild weather.

The skis are prepared, but I'm not really. Just have to see it as an opportunity to get some milage before Vasaloppet.

It definately applies to my driving in the traffic at the moment. I'm not proud of it at all, but I'm currently chasing time to often and there are no margins between the various activities. Bad planning maybe, but I try to squeeze in as much as possible and I'm still no good at saying NO.

During my year in Kuala Lumpur, I got acclimatized to the local traffic there and developed a Malaysian driving style. I actually liked it and I think it suits my personality. Not so oriented towards following the rules etc, more a pragmatic approach to make the most of what's possible in each situation. During the following year in Seoul, I also had to cope with very intensive pace in the city traffic where it always were to many cars everywhere. Tough experience during rush hour traffic. The small nice Koreans developed devilish horns on their heads when they got behind the steering wheel. That's probably why 99% of the cars in Korea have tinted windows. Once I gave a guy "the finger" because he provoked me on the motor way and he actually started a bit of a fight with me during high speed driving. Dangerous and scary. I let him "win", so he could speed on in his ego macho proud manor.

It also make the traffic jams here in Gothenburg looking like the kids driving circuit at Legoland. Still, I drive like in Asia even here. Probably due to the internal stress factor of always being without any margins, in combination with hating to be late to meetings etc. OK, I'm also rather restless by nature.

It will be nice to be in the traffic chaos in Bangalore again next week. That will make my driving back home here look like going to the Sunday school.

The current world cup tournament in handball has started in a very promising way for Sweden. 3 wins in 3 days in the group play so far. I have only managed to watch the game against South Korea yesterday. It's funny to look at the Koreans. Very quick and intensive players, but a bit to short overall to become champions on the global level. They have dominated handball in Asia all through modern history (7 times Asian champions out of 11 possible). Koreans are very good in sports in general and people there are also very much into healthy activities. Seoul has outdoor gym's all over the city, in parks and along the Han river.

During the handball match against Sweden they were not just smaller, they didn't have more Kim's in the team than Sweden. One each and our Andersson was better and much bigger. Otherwise 10% of the Korean population is called Kim. Also very common is Lee and Park. Another funny thing is that more or less everyone has double-names just like me.

Today South Korea managed to beat Kuwait, but I'm afraid that they wont make it through to the next round. They need to beat Spain now. Viva La Korea!

We met the newest member of the extended family today. Zorro, 9 weeks old, the son of Rex, who is Helene & Martin's Fox Terrier. They have 2 now. Very pleasant little fellow and a small copy of his father, but with the dark patterns on the opposite side of his face. Elvira & Oliver were delighted and of course the topic of having another dog came up again. They grew up having a big Dalmatian at home all the time when they were small kids, so they are true naturals with dogs. I had the same situation myself and would also like to have another dog, but but but ... it's not possible at the moment. It would be to add another burden and stress factor in to our lives, regardless of how nice it would be. I'm convinced that dogs are good for children and people in general. Most people with dogs that I know, have a relaxed and good attitude towards life & things. Often not so materialistic.

So no dog for us for a while. Instead we will hopefully be able to sometimes be dog-sitters for Rex & Zorro.