My meeting has now come to an end. I have one last night here and then I fly back to CBR via YOW, ORD and LAX. This trip has been enjoyable although there have been moments. I wrote a few days ago about part of the saga in getting here. What I haven’t had time to write about is that my bag got lost and didn’t arrive until late Tuesday evening. This meant I attended the first day of a meeting in my travel jeans and a shirt. Not quite the professional image I try to portray.

The United Airlines bag trace page was less than helpful. Each time I checked it simply indicated they were still looking for my bag. On the Monday afternoon I went to Sears in the Rideau Centre and purchased a new business shirt, socks and jocks. The last thing I wanted to do was wash and wear underwear. On the Monday afternoon I also managed to top up my Canadian Virgin Mobile micro sim for 1 GB of data. Can I just say, Virgin Mobile 3G is amazingly fast. I have a Telstra 3G sim in Australia and it is no where near as fast. Telstra is known for its better coverage in Australia and until last week I thought 3G was good. I didn’t realise it could be so much better.

The days have been quite long. The meeting I’m participating in has been very good albeit intense mentally and the postprandial somnolence has been exacerbated by a lack of sleep. Normally I don’t suffer jet lag because of chronic insomnia, however on this trip I have been a little like a zombie from time to time. I didn’t arrive until 0100 on the Monday morning of the meeting and last night I had a teleconference from 2330 to 0030 this morning.

Despite the lack of sleep I’ve been making an effort to walk in the afternoons. I’ve walked around the Houses of Parliament and the Byward Market. On the Monday afternoon I managed to buy some Canadian ice wine tea for a good friend (P) and some Liquorice root tea from the Tea Store for a work friend. The ladies in the store were very lovely and helpful. Like all Canadians, so friendly cheery and helpful.

My diet while on this trip has been a bit up and down. I really haven’t been feeling that hungry and as opposed to previous trips I haven’t been overwhelmed with Tim Horton’s coffeeand doughnuts.

On the flights over to Ottawa the United Airways food has been fine.

I’ve already written about my beaver tail experience.

Some of the nice things I’ve seen while walking around have been the memorials, buildings and the Rideau Canal.

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