Tools of Change Conference

Warren Buckleitner. (Not my photo)

So over coffee and juice and pastries, Cheryle and Denise told us about their trips to Venice and Rome before heading over to Bologna. While waiting in line I met Warren Buckleitner, the editor of the Children's Technology Review. Mr. Buckleitner who is the Editor of the Children's Technology Review, and one of the judges for The Digital Razzie Award (Not to be confused with the Hollywood Razzie Award) chatted with me about his trip to Singapore, where he attended last year's Asian Festival of Children's Content. It's always a pleasure to meet an industry bigwig who is so gracious and down to earth. Thank you, Mr Buckleitner.

Russell  Hampton

Then we headed in for the keynote address by Russell Hampton of  Disney Publishing.  After that we broke up to attend the different sessions before hitting the buffet table for lunch. OK the food was good and the line was long. Kenneth, I hope the food will be as good at this year's AFCC. 

Lunch

We caught up a bit with Cheryle and Denise from Bookaburra. After lunch I headed for Kate Wilson's of Nosy Crow talk 'A Year of Appiness'. She's an incredibly good speaker and very funny to boot so I hope that she eventually makes it to AFCC one year. She's got an incredibly inspiring success story.


I also attended Nat Sims', Night& Day studios, talk which was equally enjoyable. The conference wound up at about 6pm and Kenneth had to attend to a commitment in town before we headed back to the hotel. Exhausted and stuffed from all that eating, we decided on having a light dinner of a gigante gelato before collapsing for a hopefully a good night's rest...we were both up at around 4am the next day, though.

Walking Tour of Bologna

Archway to our hotel

Huge church

Perspective

The walkways of Bologna

Syrian demonstration at the town square

Bologna's famous twin towers

Church with interesting brick work

The best gelato ever!!

Kenneth at dinner on our first night in Bologna. Thanks
for dinner Kenneth!

17th March 2012

So after freshening up, Kenneth and I decided to walk around town. The buildings and the architecture as you can see were amazing--really, really beautiful.  After our tour, we headed to a famous gelato shop, recommended by our hotel's GM Laura,--it was unbelievable!! If you want a taste of real gelato...Italy's the place to try it, not some place on Orchard Road in Singapore. After our tour, we headed to a mini mart near our hotel to pick up some supplies. The Indian girl at the cash register couldn't speak a word or English but her Italian was flawless!! We picked up some strawberries, a bag of potato chips and some ginormous cans of Fanta Orange and Coca Cola. Let me tell you, Fanta Orange tastes vastly different and a miles lot better than the sugar loaded garbage we get here. When we got back to our hotel, we K'oed for a bit before waking up and heading for dinner. The first restaurant we headed to was fully booked, but the one we ended up going to was rather charming with tables named after famous authors. Thanks for dinner, Kenneth, I was stuffed. With sleep gradually overcoming us, he went back to the hotel for hopefully a good night's rest before the Tools of Change conference the next day.

Checking into the Il Convento dei Fiori di seta

So after a taxi ride through the streets of Bologna--I've never seen so many beautiful old builidings or quite so much grafitti. If Singapore law prevailed there, there would be significantly less wall art and a whole lot more sore bottoms, that's for sure-we arrived at the charming Il Convento dei Fiori di Seta, a boutique hotel with only ten guests rooms and such charming and lovely staff, led by the GM Laura.

our room (photo: Il Convento dei Fiori di Seta)

Francesco showed us to our room and as we are kids of the technology age, we whipped Ken whipped out his laptop and I my facebook and we immediately began checking our emails and facebook page!!

Kenneth relaxing in the room after dealing
with a basket case aka David Seow on the plane!

My big fat head and the view from  our room

The view from our room

I looked out of our room to the building acroos the street and an old lady standing by one of the windows closed her shutters. Guess I must have freaked her out a bit. After a few snap shots, we freshened up and decided to explore the city. 


Laura the GM recommended a famous gelato place we had to try, I mean of course we were going to try it. The one food place we decided not to try was, of course, McDonald's. One does not go to Italy to eat a big mac!


So with map in hand and Kenneth leading the way-I would have gotten us lost and we may have ended up in Rome or Venice or Florence- we headed out to see the city.

London Landing

Kenneth buckled up and ready to go to Gatwick

17 March 2011

So after a 13 hour flight we landed on London. Kenneth managed to catch some Zzzs despite the loud wailing-not from me-but from a baby in the front row.  I hadn't realized that the route would take us between Baghdad and Tehran, My eyes flicked back and forth between the two cities on the map and our plane which was on a course between those two cities. Kenneth turned to me and said very simply that we were too high for any missle to hit us. Phew!! Ok the rest of the flight was rather uneventful, other than my digging my fingers into Kenneth's flesh when we hit turbulence as well as  the incessant hacking from a passenger, which brought back memories of the movie Contagion for me.  I certainly did not want to be in Quarantine for the duration of my holiday. The pilot announced that the weather wasild between 6 and 7 degrees...haha! 

The look of fatigue and relief: I'm on terra firma in London!!

So we disembarked and spotted Australian author Chris Cheng in the immigration line.  I was kind of getting antsy as we approached the immigration officiers as one of them was in a foul mood and barking at some Chinese tourists who had no idea what he was talking about, pushing him further into the grumps. I crossed my fingers and hoped I didn't get him--it worked!


I got a very nice lady officer and babbled about having lived in london and where I lived etc, while Kenneth, I assume was interrogated in a gestapo-like manner by officer Grumps.  Here's a tip: babble on  non-stop about your life story and your immigration officer will wave you through. They'll be glad to be rid of you. Having survived immigration we headed out the doors to find out transport to Gatwick where we would catch our connecting flight to Bologna.

On the way to Gatwick

Our transport was waiting for us and swiftly escorted us to the car park, but I had to take a potty break first as my bladder was unaccustomed to the cold weather. Then we were off and away to Gatwick as the jet black sky slowly faded into a dull grey. Our driver was an affable man from Iraq, and  Kenneth peppered him with questions...I'm thankful he didn't probe too far because if he had been a secret operative or assassin Ken and I might  still be in England right now, in a ditch somewhere, serving our purpose as human fertilizer for the surrounding countryside.


While I was just thrilled to see the English country cows and horses and sheep. I hadn't been back to England since 1992-too long- and I was thrilled to be back.