Crawl out of bed feeling okay – late night burger did the trick.

Al packed up and ready to go home. Been in for half a day I the last 10 days. This time last week was in Liverpool and was only back for Saturday afternoon before coming here. Could be last show for some time.

Tight schedule this morning. Fitted in two moiré meeting to already jammed roster.

9:30 – 1:00
Good meeting with mobile software firm. They do a lot of the IP stuff for both mobile TV and IP and business mobility. Give me bottle of win at end. Been shite on freebie front since day 1. Got one more memory sick but it’s an old 128 MB one. What an ungrateful bastard I am. These get he full half hour but next 3 only 20 mins covering security on mobiles, 3G networks, and 3G networks again, business mobility, chipsets then finally FMC. 3G networks at Ericsson good. Then again it’s near the lovely phones which I’d like to get my hands on. Could be the case that special broadcasting mobile TV networks will not be the sure thing they say it will be. Big operators supporting this TDTV technology and they have a business model.

Interviews slipping as key staff get lost. Still packed but more stand girls today. One company giving away Stetsons and soft gets are wearing them around the show. Spend last half hour finishing work work in particular storage column. That market booming as regulation driving the need to store more and more and companies just generate more and more data.

Spend half hour saying goodbyes in press room. Been a great trip and reminds me of trips of old. Done load of work here some good stuff as well. PR co been cool; we’ve all done our jobs and enjoyed it as well as it should be.

No one real highlight, just a great trip.

14:00

Airport heaving as ever. Actually a relief to see ‘normal’ people. Bump into PR trying to get on same flight as me; if she can’t she’s on the 10:00. I’ve done that one -you have to leg it out to get to the last pre-midnight train to Brighton. Pain with luggage.

Two of us start working as we talk. We look likely an advert for BT or HP: two suited people with laptops, phones and Blackberry on table (well in her case; it’s wireless LAN for me).

Latter a bit patchy. To work. Need to do webinar intro and do it as the sun stream in. even the airport is pretty in Barca, well airside anyway. It seems ludicrous to say but Barca has one of my favourite airports. It’s a steel and glass job and funnily enough it’s the first i.e. that I’ve been here during the day. The usual script is getting here on the first EasyJet and going home on the last, the aforementioned 10:00.

The way security works now means that you can have up to two hours to kill before the flight. Combine doing this with work, a perfect way of keeping up the mobile pro at airport image.

That said, it’s because of all the enterprise mobility and comms stuff that |I can do that. Maybe I am living the dream and not realising it. Work mailbox still hideously full to bursting so I have to concentrate on writing work that gets sent on Virgin media mail.

Truth i is that the days spent here have really made me aware of just how possible it is to do virtually everything from everywhere (full mailboxes notwithstanding) even using really basic laptops lie what I have. Next move really is to start making voice calls over IP via the laptop -okay that’s been possible for a bout three or four years now and you can go to any ‘business people’s’ chain hotel and see the one-man bands and the SMEs doing voice class via a headset but v soon we’ll all be doing this over our mobiles and at a quality that is truly acceptable and secure. It’s just a case really of getting the handsets down in price. Year’s time? The Tosh devices that I saw on Day three were very much headed in this direction – they get it.

16:40
Flight time. Early arrival means that I bag from seat by the door for that added legroom. Gives grandstand view of plane filling up. EasyJet is a curious airline – they don’t come across as cheap any more but they experience certainly is. You pays your money. Virtually everyone ion a suit arrives to view the plane and the sense of deflation if having to rush for a seat is almost palpable. You just know that they wish they’d spent the extra £30 on BA and stride to their assigned seat in a manner that befits their status. Rest are juts clubbers who are too tired to bother about status and just want to crash out and wake up in blighty. Two hour flight so a coffee may go down well but I’m not paying £3 for one.

Sunny all the way up to north France. Wonderful views of Pyrenees, Bordeaux and La Rochelle. Arrive on time. Gatwick chocker as ever and 30 min wait for bags. Bump into PR who has been given orders to attend a ball tonight. Sounds good but we’ve all just had enough.

Out with mates tonight and looking forward to stepping off train and into restaurant/bar for some sea bass and wine. Put a bit of latter away; still got going out head on. Friend who I don’t see much there and we have a talk about ‘real’ things. Bit of blessed relief compared to tech-fest of the lat week. She’s ex-comms mags and knows the score. Wants to live in Barca and think of upping sticks with family as well. Why bother buying a house in Hove when we could have a bit of Barca. We’d all love it and be really good for girls. That sure is the Rioja talking I guess.

Call time around 10 and drag officially designated heavy case to taxi rank. Cabbie has hernia and can’t put it in boot. Fair play, weighs a ton. Sit back and enjoy stream of chat from driver to home. Just want to unpack prezzies, shower and go to bed. Perform such perfunctory task with a sense of achievement for some reason. The tour is now well and truly over.

Adios y hasta el ano que viene. Bienvenidios al Home Tourist otra vez.

that is normal blog service at http://thehometourist.blog.co.uk/ now resumed