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First, just a quick re-cap on O R Tambo airport in Johannesburg. Last year I witnessed the new lavish, spacious departure lounge for the first time. It’s very nice and a vast improvement on the cramped and disorganised departure lounge of the past. Unfortunately check-in, security and passport control are still an utter nightmare.

Speaking of nightmares, let’s move on to Heathrow’s Terminal 5. Yesterday I noticed that BAA’s Chief Executive Colin Matthews had stated “BAA fully recognises that the inauguration of Terminal 5 has not been as smooth as we and BA would have wished”. No, really?

So, here’s my guided tour of the T5 arrival experience:

• Disembark the plane - delayed three minutes because of something
• Walk a fair distance (although some of it is covered by moving walk-ways)
• Go down three flights of stairs
• Wait for a little shuttle train which isn’t big enough for a 747-size load of passengers
• Get off the little train and go up double escalators (which aren’t big enough to comfortably handle a 747-size load of passengers)
• Go up another set of escalators, past the unfinished walls - anyone over six foot should duck to avoid the sharp metal frame hanging down over said escalators
• Go through passport control
• Go down the escalators to baggage reclaim
• Hunt for the right baggage carousel because the announcement board wasn’t working

At this point, after many changes in altitude (down, up, down again), I was ready to pick up my suitcase and be on my way. I arrived at this point at 06:50, about half an hour after the airplane had landed. At about 07:00 an announcement stated that they apologised for the late arrival of baggage from Joburg and they were doing everything possible to get it to the carousel quickly. At 07:25 (over an hour after landing) some suitcases appeared. And after a while a few more arrived. I picked mine up at 07:40 - after fifty minutes of waiting.

Now here comes my ‘favourite’ bit. I had to go upstairs to departures to meet the minicab (that’s their arrangement, and it is less busy up there so a good idea really). So how do you get upstairs? Easy, take an escalator. Which is what I did… I went up the first one, did a u-turn to go up the next one… and found that it was coming down. Yep, the first up escalator was met by a down escalator. A member of staff was standing nearby, and I asked about the logic of this and how I was supposed to get upstairs. He pointed to a nearby lift. It’s a shame ‘One Foot In The Grave’ has finished, because they could do a one-hour special with Victor Meldrew arriving back at T5 from holiday. The scary thing is that the script would write itself.

Trouble, it’s said, comes in threes. If that’s true, then I hope my quota for this week is done.

Trouble #1 - the flight to Cape Town was delayed and eventually took off three hours late. All down to an inch of snow earlier in the day apparently. Having said that, I will consider myself lucky. An IBM colleague I saw at the airport had her flight to Boston cancelled outright.

The Cape Town rendition of Lotusphere Comes To You (LCTY) was a great success - I’m told it was the biggest-ever IBM Software event held in Cape Town. Personally I didn’t rate my presentation as one of my best - I would have given myself 6 out of 10.

Trouble #2 - my suitcase went missing in between Cape Town and Johannesburg. As we approached the luggage carousal I joked with Brendan Tutt that luggage came off the plane in reverse alphabetical surname order. Quarter of an hour later, when all other bags were claimed, I wasn’t joking so much. The airline’s baggage management team didn’t seem to give a toss and I couldn’t get them to understand the gravity of the situation. The lady said it was now late so they’d try to find it tomorrow. She then said she’s make some calls and ring me later. “Later” meant 07:30 the next morning. I should also mention at this point that it was lucky that I’d kept the free toothbrush supplied by the airline. I received a call saying they thought they’d found my bag, but asked if I could describe it. “Yes, it’s a suitcase with my name on the tag”. She went off to have a look.

An hour later I called them and was told it wasn’t my case. What were they doing about it? “We’re going to call Cape Town”. Not inspired with confidence, I put yesterday’s clothes back on (it was either that or the white bath robe) and headed back to the airport. And there was my case, sitting behind the desk. Overjoyed. Annoyed. I asked if or when they intended to call me to let me know. The lady shrugged her shoulders.

The pleasure of clean underwear, a fresh shirt and a full range of toiletries did wonders for my mood, and after a shower and a shave I headed to the venue of the Johannesburg LCTY, Summer Place. The event was great, over 150 attendees, and if I do say so myself I was on top form and I awarded myself 9 out of 10.

Trouble #3 - that evening I agreed to pay for some customer entertainment, but my credit card was refused. This has happened before, with the over-cautious credit card company blocking transactions suddenly appearing in a foreign country. I phoned them, explained I was in South Africa, and they said everything would now be okay.

A day later, my card was declined again, this time because it was apparently over the credit limit. I checked my account on-line and found there were over £900 worth of pending transactions. This was about £500 more than I could account for, so again I rang the credit card company. They couldn’t tell me what the transactions were, so after a discussion we took the decision to cancel the card.

Now, hindsight is a wonderful thing, and what I should have done is gone to this hotel’s reception first. It turns out that they took a holding deposit of 10,000 Rand from my card (that’s nearly £700). This would have been refunded when I checked out, but now the card is dead so the process is much more difficult. Great. Shouldn’t a hotel tell you they’re doing that?

Trouble #4 - hang on, there’s only supposed to be three. Today I upgraded dadams.co.uk to WordPress version 2.5. First I upgraded a test installation and it all went fine. I then upgraded the main blog (this one) and it all went tits-up. After some remedial work it’s mostly okay… there’s some controls missing from the authoring palette (this can be fixed) but the main problem is that the new management interface is crap. It’s poorly laid out and difficult to navigate.

Tomorrow I fly back to sunny England, and this should go without a hitch as I arrive back at - let me just check my itinerary - Heathrow Terminal 5. Ah…

There can be few IBM offices in the world with a view as incredible as the Cape Town office. Just beyond the hot-desk area is a set of windows and double doors which lead to a patio area and provide a full view of Table Mountain. It would be even better if there wasn’t a bloody great crane and a half-finished building in the foreground. I’d post a picture but I left the camera’s USB cable at home. So go and do a Google image search for Table Mountain, and then add a big yellow crane. It pains me to say it but (even with the crane) it’s more impressive than the view from any window in the Staines office.

What a week… I arrived at Cape Town on Tuesday morning, in the nick of time to present at the launch event for our three new offerings (Notes 8, Connections and Quickr). That evening I flew to Johannesburg with my colleagues (Ross, Uffe and local-boy Hannes) ready for the next event and a meeting with the press on Wednesday. The Joburg event (in the swanky Melrose Arch development) was crammed to capacity with an audience of around 140 attendees. This was followed by dinner at the Butcher Shop in Nelson Mandela Square (I had ostrich - but not a whole one, and not even a leg). An early flight to Durban started the Thursday agenda, and Friday consisted of some customer visits before a late lunch at the Indigo Moon restaurant in Pretoria.

Reaction to the new products was amazing. I’ve already heard that one company in South Africa has already upgraded to Notes / Domino 8, and an attending CEO has taken the decision to move in Notes / Domino 8 in place of Outlook / Exchange in his company. That speaks volumes. And again, just like some recent events in the UK, I had numerous conversations with people very serious about replacing Microsoft Office with the free integrated productivity editors.

I came to one important conclusion while travelling in and out of South Africa… they really need to sort the airports out before the 2010 World Cup. Okay, they have improved the departure gates at Johannesburg, but the check-in area is still absolute bedlam. They seem to think the best way to reduce unemployment is to give everyone a job at the airport (but not assign them any duties… just let them stand around doing nothing).

Cape Town airport isn’t much better - I arrived at 08:20 in the morning and it was the only flight coming in. I got off the plane and got to the luggage carousel within 15 minutes (great)… but it was a further 40 minutes before my case arrived. Acceptable for a large airport with a lot of flights arriving, but not a small airport handling just one flight.

I travelled out in Premium Economy (or ‘World Traveller Plus’ as British Airways call it). Officially I was eligible for Business Class (over 10 hours, overnight, work on arrival) but I find gaining approval too long-winded and tiresome. So I opted for the easy approval option of World Traveller Plus - this worked well as I had the first row with plenty of leg room. However the return journey promised to be a nightmare, in cattle-class shoved in a tiny seat with no leg room or elbow room for 11 hours. Things promised to get worse - even though I checked in fairly early (after battling for 15 minutes to join the end of the queue) there were no aisle seats left (groan). I requested a seat move if at all possible and carried on. After a cuppa and a mooch round the shops I went to the gate to find that they’d found me an aisle seat, 28J. Economy, but an aisle seat, so an improvement. What I didn’t know until I got to 28J was that this newly-allocated seat was in World Traveller Plus… and, double bonus, was on it’s own next to the emergency exit so I had 7 feet of leg room (more than enough) and no-one beside me. Thank you British Airways.