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Waterfront Jieying, Charles, Elaine Charles and Elaine Harbour Bridge

Felt bad as Charles Anderson, CEO of Sovereign, the New Zealand Life Insurance company, limped along with us, down to the harbour for a dinner at Peter Doyle @ The Quay. Charles, it turned out, had had an operation the previous day, but refused the offer of a taxi. Still, we managed a delightful meal and then walked carefully back uphill to the Shangri-La, where I chatted for a while to Jieying – a much-missed intern with Volans before shipping out to NZ to join Sovereign.

P&O dawn: the view this morning Harbour Bridge Opera House 1 Opera House 2 Opera House 3 – with a pair of Asian hoodies echoing the building Opera House 4 Opera House 5: Japanese girl contemplates an icon Botanical Gardens 1: giant Ficus trees Botanical Gardens 2: graffiti in bamboo Botanical Gardens 3: Pan parties Botanical Gardens 4 Botanical Garden fruit bats/flying foxes: they’re killing trees and on the verge of being evicted Woolloomooloo/Finger Wharf 1 Woolloomooloo/Finger Wharf 2: Teddy Bear Woolloomooloo/Finger Wharf 3: Gallipoli Woolloomooloo/Finger Wharf 4: handkerchief Woolloomooloo/Finger Wharf 5 Woolloomooloo/Finger Wharf 6: Arrivals and Departures Woolloomooloo/Finger Wharf 7: Oldsmobile Wedding party at Circular Quay

Read much of William Gibson’s new book Zero History on the Qantas flights to Hong Kong and then on to Sydney, yesterday. History was all around, partly because I have been mugging up on the history of Qantas itself for a speech for the Qantas Foundation on Tuesday, and partly because Sydney brims over with history – both prior to discovery by Europeans and after.

Discovering a vast P&O liner moored across from our hotel this morning, I wondered what Captain James Cook would have made of its scale if it had come sailing out of the harbour towards him when he first arrived. It had rained heavily in the night and dense curtains of rain were visible early on, but the day cleared up later and eventually became distinctly summery. A lot more Chinese in the hotel and the streets than I remember from previous visits – and weddings of all denominations were everywhere to be seen across town today.

We walked around the wonderful Botanical Gardens, marvelling at the size of the Ficus trees – and at the number of the ibises. Elaine’s first time in Australia. Then a delightful lunch at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, where the treasures ranged from Aboriginal woven eel traps through to paintings by J.W. Waterhouse. Had a nice glass of white wine from the delightfully named Hay Shed Hill winery.

Then back down the hill to the harbour and to Woolloomooloo, where we walked along the waterfront. Here, on a previous visit with the Murray Edmonds tour, we had bumped into a bevy of very attractive Miss Earth contestants, enjoying a delightful exchange of views. (Oddly, a few weeks ago I had a request from California for a copy of one of my photos that appeared on this blog at the time, showing Bob Adams of IDEO gallantly engaging some of the Misses Earth.)  See September 19 2006 entry, here.

Finger Wharf is dramatic, but tinged with the memories of all those who came and went through here, including immigrants arriving and soldiers leaving for two World Wars, including the Gallipoli disaster that helped forge Australia as a modern nation. Very struck by the etched glass panels in various parts of the building – and by the tribute set into the planked floor at one of the arrival gates, showing a man in uniform, a woman waving goodbye and a child holding a teddy bear.

A boy waving farewell to his father or older brother in WWI could so easily have ended up shipping out for WWII. This city wears its history well.

And now to finish preparing for the presentations I have to do here and in Melbourne, this week and next.

Heythrop Park 1 Heythrop Park  2 Heythrop Park 3 Heythrop Park  4 Heythrop Park 5 Heythrop Park 6 Heythrop Park 7 Heythrop Park 8

Got up ferociously early to drive west, beyond Oxford, to Heythrop Park, near Entstone. Lovely morning, with early morning mist hanging over the landscape, right through to Entstone. Was speaking at an SAP conference on the theme of ‘sustainable utilities’. First time I have used Apple’s Keynote presentation software successfully, having had a hiccup at the National Grid a few days back, which forced me to rewrite that slide deck in short order in PowerPoint.

One of my messages was that the very fact that companies like Unilever (see previous entry) are committed to buying 100% of their ingredients from sustainable sources by 2020 spotlights a potentially huge market for software and related services to support the growing consumer and business-to-bussiness customer appetite for through-the-supply-chain traceability.

Had a lovely walk around the grounds, once I was sure the presentation would work, with a heron croaking wonderfully in the woods and the mist adding a sense of deep, Agatha-Christie-like mystery to the proceedings. Glorious to watch the red kites spiralling over the landscape as I drove to and from.

Ai Weiwei (in the middle), speaking to Edward McMillan-Scott My smoking main course

Unfortunately, the exact nature of Ai Weiwei’s exhibit in the Turbine Room of the Tate Modern is a state secret – at the request of Unilever CEO Paul Polman – until the event opens on 12 October. But Elaine and I went to the launch this evening – and, as far as I’m concerned, it’s the most multi-dimensional, symbolic and interactive of the commissions we have been privileged to see.

Talked to, among others, Ai Weiwei, Paul Polman, Rupert Howes (of the Marine Stewardship Council) and Peter Madden (Forum for the Future), plus a number of other folk. I thanked Ai Weiwei for his extraordinary courage and enterprise in uncovering the number of dead young people after the Sichuan earthquake. Some of the details can be found here.

One of them, Edward McMillan-Scott, a VP at the European Parliament, commented on my surname, wondering whether I was related to Guy Elkington, who had lived in his village? Yes, I said, if he was the Guy Elkington who had had his testicles shot off in WWI. Ah, he said, he hadn’t known about that, but it would account for various things. Among other things, I suspect, the facts that he was consitutionally gumpy and lived with his sisters. I remember quite liking him. More anon on the Ai Weiwei story.

GRI Board pauses for coffee Graffito Elevator moment Clownfish in Indonesian restaurant Shopfront en route back to the Eden Lancaster Canalscape Chess genius Bicycle

Flew to Amsterdam late on Sunday for Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) Board meeting. Have just signed on for another three years. Some sadness, with a number of Board members coming to the end of their terms, including John Evans (shown on the right in the first photograph above) and Kumi Naidoo of Greenpeace International. But also a very positive outcome, in that we decided to develop a new round (G4) of the GRI reporting guidelines. With the sort of trends spotlighted in our report for GRI, The Transparent Economy, this seems to me the logical next step.

Nightmare moment when I got to the hotel on Sunday evening – and realised that I had left my Mac laptop in the security tray at Heathrow T4. Elaine and Sam helped track down numbers for Lost Property at Heathrow – and Sam called them first thing on Monday, to be told that they had my lost limb in protective care.

Sam then came out to Heathrow this evening, partly to see of her husband Sanjiev and Griff Rhys Jones off to India, where they are filming. But she also trekked across to T3 to get my computer – and reunited me with it almost as soon as I landed. Not sure whether it’s a symptom of ageing or of tiredness, but this sort of thing has been happening rather more often in recent weeks.