It is nice to be home, if only for a week before we go back to Asia again for the Indian Grand Prix. I want to like Korea, but the place we go us just not much fun, and people do not seem to much care whether we are there or not, which is always a bad sign. We have decided that next year we will stay in a different city and take the pain of additional travel to see if we can have a better experience. To be brutally honest, most of the F1 circus has given up on Korea. There was a decent crowd on Sunday, which was something, but the paddock was a desert, the Paddock Club was quieter than a church on a Tuesday, and for those who could get away quickly on Sunday, the rush to get up to Incheon after the race was almost unseemly. The departure lounge was a popular place to be.
From a personal point of view, the pain of a dying computer is never much fun particularly if you are an Apple user in the land of Samsung, but I got through the Grand Prix weekend despite the computer grief thanks to the help of the good folks of F1 notably the FIA’s computer whizz Chris Bentley, otherwise known as “The Dr, who understands computers and has workarounds for workarounds. Matteo Bonciani and the Press Office people were very helpful too. Everything came out on time although that did involve writing several thousand words on an iPhone, which was a brain-aching experience which is best avoided. It is all part of the fun and before long I’ll be saying “D’you remember that time if Korea when I tipped coffee into the back of my computer?” And we’ll have a good laugh.
The journey home was not so bad. A taxi to the train station. The cabbies in Mokpo at least understand that instruction, although we did have it written down as well to make sure. The train to the impressive Gwangmyeong Station was long but easy. The bus to the airport was painless. We waited half an hour to check in and then most of the gold card holders found themselves upgraded, which was a joy as the A380 is a great plane. It took me three whole minutes to find the required replacement machine in Dubai duty free although they did not have the adaptors one needs to get the latest Macs to connect to the old ones. Still I was able to a Qwerty keyboard, which is next to impossible in France where they are still using the Azerty.
By this evening life will be back to normal – if indeed one has a normal life as an F1 reporter. I will then take a look at the jibber-jabber of recent days and see if we can extract any sense from it all…
Joe,
Glad that you enjoyed Korea
I don’t mind the place. Initially I didnt like it when I first went there in 1992, but, you get used to it. Enormous changes since then.
Incheon airport is rated in the top 10 in the world.. Clean and professional.
In fact, you will find that the major Asian airports rate in the Top 10 in the world.
Yes, the airport buses are clean and efficient as well. Always on time too.
Now, was this you one the podium ?:-) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9bZkp7q19f0
Joe,
I must have an exceptional Apple dealer in Aix en Provence (Andromac). They gets me QWERTY Macs with no problems at all. I just phone up and they are usually available the next day. The one time they made an error on one of the original black MacBooks (admittedly I did not open the box to check), they were very apologetic and changed the keyboard while I waited.
Wilson
Lucky you. The words Duty Free might also be considered at this point.
The same with my dealer in Dijon. I use two keyboards with my i mac, English and French. My MacBook Air has a QWERTY board I and use ‘special characters’ for accents etc. Maybe that’s better for Joe.
Entertaining as always Mr. Saward! Although you’ve not included your morality debate with Mr. Brito in the Williams hospitality, which was an entertaining side show at lunch time.
I’m not sure I can remember that! Brito and I always find something to argue about – but I doubt we ever manage to change the world!
Haha yeah I remember being at a friends house (he was French and had French house mates) and had to use the Azerty keyboard. Messes with your mind – I must of looked like an 80 year old man who’d just found this new thing called the internet that these young whipper snappers are up to. This is baring in mind I can touch type!
From a software guy of many years – Apples are great, superb at times, but when you just need to get some work done, a PC cannot be beaten.
Coffee doesn’t help though.
Live and learn.. I thought the QWERTY keyboards where the only ones.. I do want to try one of those AZERTY ones.. once, when sober, when not typing anything important…
btw how many more years left on the Korea contract? It didn’t offer much for the TV viewers either.
Four more years
And the AZERTY contract ? You seem to be saying (” they are still using the Azerty”) that you think they’ll change sometime soon. Surely not. La gloire and all that. (actually if they’d just change the A’s and Q’s that would fix most of the problems I have going from one to the other).
Maybe they’ll get it right before 2016.
You mean bulldozing the track and starting again ?
No, I mean actually promoting the race properly, making it so foreigners can easily get tickets, book rooms, etc., and have half-way decent food at the track.
I live here. This is the first year I’ve gone to the race because I knew how bad it was going to be the first year because of my commercial construction experience.
I didn’t go the second year because it seemed like nothing had changed. I only went this year because I honestly thought it would be the last one. The city is losing around $45 million each race.
Correction. $27 million. “Why Korean GP loses money”(sic)
http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/news/sports/2012/10/136_122211.html
The real reason is probably because they hire the same quality of race promoters/event managers as the English proofreaders that the Korea Times hires.
Ha! Never have three words expressed such dread!
Sounds like a prison sentence.. Hopefully the new accommodation will be significantly better next year.
That’s what George W. said, and look at the mess that four years got us into.
Hi Joe, did the PSY guy being there make any difference for awareness of the Korean people and the crowds from what you saw?
On another note, as you predicted the 6 teams only FIA-commission was dropped before the next round of talks, so I guess that means we can now soon expect said teams to agree with the FIA on raised / point based entry fees.
Only the grandstand ticket holders could go to the Psy concert…
But there is a cool point of having a AZERTY kbd at my desk. Just you watch those annoying people try to “just check their email”, mid being otherwise dinner guest . .or for that matter, nobody’s watching my keystrokes too accurately if I type a password . .
Full disclosure, having decided to brush up some language, prep school style, I was not fully aware that AZERTY keyboards are absolutely useless for typing French accents . .
I came for the imaginary ease of typing in not – english. I stayed for the schadenfreude of watching nuisance types try to use my machine. Whole new level of “hunt and peck” ;~)
Doesn’t your AZERTY keyboard have an accented letters row along the top (with the numbers actually in the upper case position) ? I thought that was standard. There are also French Canadian keyboards which are QWERTY but with some keys also having accented letters, or accents you can use with an ALT-key combination – best of both worlds.
Only some of them – there’s also thing like brackets. Here’s the top row lower case : &锑(-è_çà)=. Having the numbers in upper case is maddening, altho’ less so if you have a number pad. The worst thing of all is the full stop in upper case. I suppose the reasoning is that you’re going to be upper case anyway for the next capital letter. But most of us aren’t as quick as that …
Mac Books don’t do number pads.
Yes, but it’s often a physical contortion still. Try a circumflex. Shift – up arrow, vowel. Blows, when at speed, unless you have the Multi Language Windows, and blows more with in line spellcheck on websites. Mapped the thing to the number pad . . acutes are ALT + GR + vowel . . and there are many missing, particularly for capitals. Capital E acute, not happening.
Honestly, a clearly marked modifier plus the key itself would be much nicer. I remapped a few things. You can barely see the key markings on what I type on anyhow . .
Sad thing is, that stuffs me for using a normal keyboard, even AZERTY, on the road.
I mean it’s cool I can type a Mu ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mu_(letter) ) as a SI unit (apparently the guy who designed this layout was a geek, but that’s lost below the percent sign. . .
What makes it not so bad is my kbd is made in Japan, by Topre. Silly money (you can get a laptop for the same price) but seriously worth it if you type all day. 10k words a day, no strain. (if your posture okay) Many people import them.
I think I’ll just accept remappings, though, and get what’s called a “Realforce 87U Tenkeyless “Silent” (White)” in straight US layout, regain 8 inches of desk . .
When I watched FP1 on Friday I was impressed at how much less smog and what a light shade of blue/grey the air appeared to be on tv. However it seemed to get steadily worse as the weekend went on with the ends of the straights dissolving into haze by the conclusion of the race.
It must be rather like Taipei 20 years ago when a surgical mask was a common sight on the streets.
Taipei hasn’t changed much. The only clear days were before a major typhoon hit – but the city being in a bowl doesn’t help
I was there. No smog at all. The view of the surrounding islands was beautiful.
Where will you be staying for next year’s Korean GP? Williams stay in Gwangju apparently.
From a TV perspective I thought there was even less people than last year aside from the main grandstand and the ones at Turns 1 and 2. Do you have figures or is this just an impression?
It was pretty empty. One track official I talked to said 50-60,000 people on Sunday.
It was more than that. About 86,000 I believe.
That’s good. I talked to the official on Saturday, so he only had estimates, I guess.
Hi Chris,
Did you attend the Korean GP? If so, can I ask a favour and direct you the following link to review your spectator experience? https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/GPA_review (Joe, I hope it’s OK to put this link here).
Thanks in advance!
The Korean newspaper today said 62,000 on Sunday.
86,000, that’s for the weekend, isn’t it?
This figure is in the ballpark of a Saturday attendance in Melbourne. That would seem a lot for a Sunday at Yeongam, considering grandstands D to H.(turn 6 to the end of the lap) were pretty much empty.
No the weekend figure was 165,000
Two words – Bluetooth keyboard.
Forgive, but this computer saga is taking up too much of your valuable time. I cannot understand. It is not difficult or expensive to obtain a new Apple laptop in France. Clearly you need it, and you also need to have a backup. Please purchase two devices and then you can devote more time to the real purpose of your blog.
Further, the cost can be claimed as a legitimate expense on your tax form.
On the other hand, failure to do so promptly carries a penalty of 3 years confinement to a one star hotel in Korea.
Mokpo doesn’t have any one-star hotels…
from what I’ve hear, they don’t have any “Hotels” at all, just “Motels”.
Exactly my point…
The Korean track, the event as a whole and its public perception remind me very much of the short-lived Pacific GP at Aida.
What are your memories of this event Joe?
Never eating properly. We stated so far from the track – because there was no local accommodation – and we travelled on buses up these small hill roads on that area, that by the time we got back each evening all the restaurants were closed. We lived off sandwiches from the local mini marts.
Stupid event!
Remember trying to navigtate when we decided to skip the bus and take my hire car – and we only had a map with Japanese symbols ? And the driver was driving for the first time since losing the sight of one eye. And there were six foot ditches each side of the very narorw roads. Everone seemed nervous except the driver …
Yes, I remember it well. Navigation by symbols. Interesting…
Circuit accommodation……nicknamed brookside………..
No food catering for public at circuit facilities?
It seems the mess that cvc was involved with at channel 9 was finally been resolved. I’m guessing incidents like this respect quite badly on CVC.
If the Paddock Club is empty, wouldn’t it be a good idea if F1 opened it up (and the paddock, for that matter) to more people in Korea ? Get the locals in, kind of thing ? Or would that be too imaginative ?
The locals think (s)Hite is good beer. The paddock club would be like throwing pearls before swine.
Opening the paddock to the public? That’s a laugh. Never stood in line in Korea, have you? Those tape barriers are not to keep people out here, they’re just decorations.
Hite is OK – it’s a plain, clean tasting beer which is exactly what you want with spicy food. For me it works, if you’re having it with the food. But cold soju is better…
Beer is not really a Korean thing.
So obviously they’re not going to make beer like the Belgium’s.
Good god man, let the riff raff into the paddock club ? Whatever did they feed you at Eton ? Go and stand in the corner til you learn to behave ! The general admission are just feeding the circuit money, no one actually cares about the spectators. Unless they are paddock club, £1800 (last time I checked) for the weekend ticket holders.
“I will then take a look at the jibber-jabber of recent days and see if we can extract any sense from it all…”
Good luck with that Joe, altho’ if anyone can, you can …
You live and learn. I had no idea there were so many different keyboard layouts, or that it would be hard to find an Apple dealer in one of the most hi-tech countries on earth. All that and F1, too. Excellent!
“…and people do not seem to much care whether we are there or not…”
As a ‘local’ here for the last ten years, I can sincerely tell you the average Korean doesn’t care.
“To be brutally honest, most of the F1 circus has given up on Korea.”
Not without reason.
The facilities are what a local would expect at a normal Korean public event, but far below what should be at an F1 race, in my opinion. The ease of getting around the track is marginal at best, and there is no crowd control at all. ‘Just sit where you want to’ is what most of the people who came to section “Ha” seemed to think.
I had the ‘luck’ of meeting the head of the website and promotion materials for the Korean F1 at the campground. I asked why the English housing link still doesn’t work. He dropped his head in embarrassment (in an unusually contrite manner) and replied in Korean, “We’ve been meaning to get that fixed all year.” My wife then jokingly “yelled” at him for not fixing it because she has had to listen to me b*#ch about it since last year’s race! I then pointed out a misspelling – Perimmon Tree : Beatiful Resting Place – on a BIG promotional banner behind us, and he just looked down, shook his head, turned around and walked away. They’re clueless.
Another person running part of the race management team (name/position withheld on purpose) told us he was quitting after this year. He just couldn’t take it anymore. He didn’t speak kindly of the organizers.
Since I stayed in my trailer at the campsite, housing was fine for me… :^)
Join us next year?
On the way back to home, I ran into some Red Bull crew at around 9:00PM at a highway rest stop. It surprised me that they were getting out of there that quickly, so I asked one of them. He said that many of them had already left!
We’re planning on going again next year, but the wife and kids are going to stay at the campsite…
From all the talk from the F1 circus and paddock,
If the race was in Seoul or much closer to Seoul with everything a modern city can provide would that solve all their disappointment?
Probably
Joe, I respect your work immensely, sorry if my tongue in cheek comment didn’t come across as that.
The Asian Le Mans track “Autopia” is going to be about 130km(?) from Seoul, and will be 4.2 km. I wonder if it could be used for F1. That would solve a lot of problems as long as it doesn’t get ‘built’ the same way the F1 track was.
http://www.lemans.org/en/news/asian-le-mans-series—korea-becomes-part-of-the-2013-calendar_8929.html
I do have a link from another source, but I don’t think Joe likes them that much. ;^)
Uh oh. The Autopia track is at Inje, which is almost all the way to the East coast of Korea. KIC redux?
http://www.autosportcalendar.com/map.php?code=KOR-ACI
This means highway 50, which means up to 8 hours to get back to Incheon on a Sunday evening. Our ‘record’ is nine hours… My ‘other record’ is 2 hours and 50 minutes. From Yang Yang (양양) beach! Hee hee
Not just Seoul – any location with decent places to sleep and eat.
Having had the A380 business class experience, I don’t think I can ever go back to steerage! What comfort…
Indian visa is looking slow, so I might well see you in the lounge next week.
Hi Joe,
Glad you made it home in one piece, even though the laptop became a ‘casualty to caffeine’ along the way.
I noted in an earlier post that you said you use an Apple Mac laptop, which was not easy to replace as in addition to being in the land of samsung there was an issue of software Etc.
A number of people have posted ideas and suggestions for how they have dealt with the loss of a laptop when overseas, so here’s my 2c….
Carry multiple USB thumb drives (which are relatively small and inexpensive nowadays) which have back up copies of your most important files AND MORE IMPORTANTLY THE INSTALLATION FILES FOR YOUR MOST IMPORTANT APPLICATION SOFTWARE. This way if you are indeed able to secure a replacement machine on the go then you can be up and running relatively quickly.
Alternatives would be to use a VPN to allow you to log onto your home Mac from anywhere you can beg, borrow or steal an internet connection. The latency issue would not be great, and obviously such arrangements would need to be in place before leaving home, but this is better than nothing. ‘Cloud’ apps such as Google Docs & SOHO office offer alternatives of course but these are also dependant upon being able to secure internet access using someone else’s hardware.
As an Apple Mac user myself I would guess that you are using ‘Scrivner’ and ‘DevonThink’ and possible ‘Filemaker’ but I would be genuinely very interested in knowing if indeed that is the case and what other software you use.
Whilst I don’t travel to anywhere near the extent that you do (nor do I travel to such exotic locations!!) I always prepare a list of contact details for emergencies before I travel (Embassy, A&E, Airline, Etc.) and I always try and include a few places where a replacement laptop could be sourced in an emergency.
I love how many people suggest that you should simply carry multiple laptops, with little or no regard to logistics or expense.
I salute anyone who can type 1000′s of words on their iPhone!! Did you ever see the movie ‘RV’ where Robin Williams’s character types out his important business report on a blackberry phone?
Good luck in your travels to India, don’t be tempted to try and recoup some of the money you’ve just spent on a replacement laptop by opting for a cheaper flight with ‘Kingfisher’ I think Emirates are a much safer option
Mike.
I would not travel on kingfisher as a matter if principle.
I hope you find Austin more to your liking. The food is excellent, you won’t have any technology issues (unless they are of your own making), and the prices shouldn’t be too bad given exchange rates. You may even hear some good music.
Thus far my impression is bad. Hotel prices are insane and venues wildly greedy. I expect all the restaurant prices will go up as well.
“Welcome to Texas! Now give us your money and go home.” Hopefully the barbecue and beer will stay cheap.
That’s too bad. At least you’ll be able to search for better rooms and get real food easily.
Had to chuckle at the favorable exchange rate comment, presume that was a joke. I’m not so far away, Denver, had intended to go, and gave it up when I saw hotels going for > 4-5x normal.
Looks like it’ll be a good one for Austin area, hope so.
Welcome back, Joe. Thanks for sharing the joys and foibles of your travels, and the local atmosphere you encounter. You give your readers a good idea of the F1 experience from the inside.
Best,
Joe
I have a journalist friend who does something similar to you, producing an ‘insider letter’, in the electronics world. Like you, he is a confirmed Mac person. 3 ‘drowned” macs in 18mths, and he was desperate to not lose his subscribers, and his main magazine day job. Try finding a Mac repair shop in darkest Africa. I persuaded him that a plan B was needed. This consists of cloud storage for past issues and graphics etc. A USB drive with some Windows freeware. Scribus – Page setting, GIMP(or Paint.net) – for photo manipulation, Filezilla – FTP client, Open Office – for various, Password safe – for passwords etc. This has already saved the day. His ultimate solution is probably going to be the Panasonic ToughBook or similar, after seeing the YouTubes of people pouring water over them. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eWUnsj9WVC8&feature=related. Dont’ do this with a Macbook
I see that Cosworth is for sale. McLaren to buy, or is that too obvious a conclusion?
I see that some are speculating that Cosworth might attract a premium valuation because its customers include prestige brands such as Aston Martin and McLaren. That got me thinking… what are Cosworth supplying to McLaren that McLaren can’t do in-house? Intriguing.
John, just look at what happens to NPV calculations when you put a zero interest rate in them. That’s been the entire purpose, to bolster equities. Just it’s gone wrong, rather a bit.
Iain, if that’s your pal on the video, he’s very engaging. There’s untold “unboxing” and other drivel out there, nice to have someone present well. Good luck to the guy.
However, I would actually argue that Win7 is a pretty robust desktop now, security wise. Even moreso, you can actually just copy a image file of the OS to a flash card / usb stick, and choose that as boot, or even from a file without partition. Super clean. I used to wish GIMP made any sense for me (though people like Lucasfilm have modified it for specific ends) but you get stuck with what customers expect. (way back, Alias / then Formvision Eclipse was a wonderful paint editor)
Have you come across Backblaze? Silly cheap for unlimited storage, and moreover I can use a local hardware key for the encryption, so I can post that to a customer, at a pinch.
Wouldn’t ever rely on any of this for do or die stuff, but I’m a bit smitten how good a deal you can find out there which can simplify things. I almost do not need my own computer, at a pinch, for simple business. Joe, this stuff works for Macs nicely, too, as far as I can find out. If you ever need serious backup for data, check out Zmanda or its free version Amanda which does MacOS just fine. That’s the only tape archive system that is not nasty proprietary, and tape is – remains – a real cheap way to post off complete record sets to e.g. safe deposit.
Glad to hear you got back home OK and the computer issue is resolved.
We arrived back from California this morning, landed 07.45 and were home at 09.45 in Northants.
Amazing how cheap stuff is in the competitive arena of the USA, and how tightly Apple control their retail sales. Most Laptops were in the $500 region, while most Apple laptops are $999 or more.
Looking forward to the next race report.
Joe, you’re such an apple snob that you tortured yourself by writing on an iphone rather than breaking down and spending a few hundred dollars for a samsung netbook (that’s what they cost in the states) that you could easily sell for a small loss when you returned to france?
What an amazing comment. You must be off your head to suggest that anyone tries to convert from a Mac to a PC in the course of a busy GP weekend. I have used Macs for more than 15 years and I am very at home with them. To make such a switch in a country where I am staying for just four days, where I speak one word of the language, and in a region which is so cosmopolitan it does not have more than a couple of decent hotels, would have been insanity. Not to mention the fact that I needed to have software templates for very specific software that would have taken many hours to create.
I can only guess that you do not get out into the real world much.
I agree with that, our friend in California installed Linux for me (Lubuntu) before we came back home, and that by itself was a major change to cope with, I doubt anyone could swap PC-MAC in less than a few days, and there would still be issues cropping up months later. I’m still sorting out FTP stuff 5 days on.
Once you have got established with one of the other, you aren’t going to change anytime soon, and Apple have always been very strong in publishing and graphics.
I’d agree you can switch so much from any OS to Ubuntu or another Linux. Presto, done. So seriously improved recently, I’d never argue against that choice. But ironically, the reason I am suck in Windows is because Adobe got the hump with Apple, and so to keep current, my graphics works are on Windows. Moreover, if you search about, and Luminous Landscape forums have a thicket of serious color science types, MacOS is really not playing so nicely any more with color calibration. I think the thread was entitled “Just when you think it’s safe . .” In pre press, I have far more options on Windows. Their color management is also much more advanced (not that anyone I know has truly exploited that, but the underlying design for CIECAM02 is far more flexible, so you have opportunities laid on which Apple do not present). Basically, Apple, since they did the iPhone, has slacked. Now, actual artists, tend to be MacOS people. Heck, not bit he bullet, but some of the drafting / sketching apps for iPad make me drool. But I would dispute that Apple is strong at the sharp end of a press, though that’s hardly where most designers go, anyhow . .
“I am suck in Windows” was obviously a deliberate typo LOL
Ouch! Someone just got spanked!
I believe this works, but don’t know how well: running MacOS inside VMWare, image saved to USB drive.
Okay, I know it will be a PITA to set up and test, but it’s a last ditch possibility.
. . .
Cutting out most of the saga, had to use a replacement phone, a Lumia 900. I was almost hallucinating trying to get to grips with the change from a N8. Oh, O2 network was flaking, BT had scuppered their peering affecting my ISP. We’re all on O2 and all our DSL in three locations was in the same boat. To boot, the ad networks just seem to have overnight created choking traffic like the Usenet “Eternal September”.
Bottom line, this is the city of London, not the marshes of Mokpo, and we are still in deep breathing mode. Not like we’re clueless admins here. All things we couldn’t influence.
What I need is Emacs (a either silly or super powerful text editor, depending your POV) running cross platform with a Indesign Markup Language pre parser. Have to write the parser, but Emacs is doable on most machines.
Yup, I just advocated a command line setup. One that would run on a old Psion organiser possibly equally well, over a modem. One that doesn’t need to send a few megabytes of a page for one to type plain text. One that means only a few kB need to to get to the other end of the line, for the home machine to render a nice letter / pdf / report and send that back when done.
Not being funny, but I be when Joe was battling on to get us a magazine on deadline, a little thing like a Psion 5MX (plus a way to hustle his words into production layout) would have been seriously not so bad at all. When future civilisations visit the barren lifeless Earth, they might conclude “Oh it’s simple, we see it now. Mankind became extinct because they threw away all their fantastical tools. They must have had a some revolution. Look how many are smashed and broken and piled up in these ceremonial graves . .” Well, , it makes me feel bad, what kit is become disposable.
Obligatory satire: http://xkcd.com/378/
So Magny-Cors is too far away from civilisation for the F1 folk. But they are happy it seems to fly half way around the world to stay in a brothel next to a swamp in a third world country. People are weird.
I think you need to visit Korea before spouting forth about Third World Countries. It id definitely not that.
Not third-world at all. Just bass-ackwards in certain respects.
It’s quaint when you get out in the small towns. One of the nice things is you don’t have to lock anything. Shopkeepers just leave their wares out at night. They only cover them if it is going to rain.
In the cities it’s a whole different story, though.
It’s always a bit of fun when I read your carnet de voyage and the related tribulations. It reminds me of the late Gérard Crombac whose race reports in “Sport Auto” were written like a diary and it was a real joy to read them. I watched Korea on the BBC and one could tell from the images alone that it was a very boring place and I am not surprised by your experience. The guy who came up with the idea of bringing the F1 circus onto a sleepy fisherman neighbourhood out to be hanged. It may be that Korea is a big market, as they say nowadays. But what sort of market? Must be for rice crispies I guess. As you recently said, Mr E doesn’t care about the fans. I am sure he would even stage a race at the South Pole as long as somebody comes up with a Tilkodrom and another fool comes with up with a performance bond and related juicy contract in the belief that the TV does the rest!
I can’t believe the teams have no say whatsoever in this regard. Am sure AbuDhabi wil be the same even though the images from the helicopter could make you think otherwise. Doing a race course at the waterfront and having fast cars go around a shiny swimming pool doesn’t make a 2nd Monaco out of it.
We should have 2 races in England, F1′s home turf. And 2 events in Italy. At least the grand stands would never be empty! And it should be written into the damn Concorde so as to stop the farting around it every year when it comes to renewing race contracts. You know the sort of blabber like “increase your cash, there’s another market (sic!) interested in snapping your racing slot bla bla”.
Blah blah blah another bitter,
Seriously how old are you?
Market for rice crispies, is this your level of intellect?
On a serious note, go and have a whinge to Bernie and Tilke.
I dare you.
Like Joe says, “everybody is entitled to his opinion”. Even if it is tosh. Everyone should do his job. Mine is not about talking to Bernie & Tilke.
PS
Now we’re 2 having a doubt about each other’s intellect. (\;o))
Joe, this person treats me as “a bitter”. I don’t know what it means. Can you help? And do I have a sort-of-right to answer without being suppressed?
Just remain calm and leave the tosh trolling for some place else.
“The guy who came up with the idea of bringing the F1 circus onto a sleepy fisherman neighbourhood out(sic) to be hanged.” I’m still not really sure who it actually was that came up with the idea, but I believe he was voted out of office or fired after the first race, depending on which person it actually is.
The idea was one that came from Joe Chung. He made it happen and the idea of building a new entertainment-based city on the coast was not a bad idea, as this region is underdeveloped compared to the rest of the country. The project included better transport links with the rest of the country. The problem was not the idea. The problem was that the recession came along and there was no money to do it. Joe was removed from the company that was running the race. In fact that has also gone, so it is being run directly by the provincial government, which guaranteed the money.
I have to disagree. The problem was three-fold: a lack of demand for such a facility/city even in the most populated areas (e.g. Songdo), financial plans that were pie-in-the-sky at best, and very poor execution. The racetrack by itself, in an area that is closer to a major metropolitan city, could be viable. Land in those areas is prohibitively expensive though, which would make the business model impractical. Had the racetrack been completed properly, on-time, and the race promoted and run well during the first race, there wouldn’t have been the tidalwave of bad press that killed almost all prospects of attracting a lot of spectators in the future. This is what I observed from within Korea, knowing the business market and people for as long as I have, and from my experience in large-scale commercial/industrial construction in the U.S. I’d love to hear your thoughts. In my eyes it’s such an opportunity lost.
What? No one tasted dog steak? Or dog sandwich?
It’s dog soup (보신탕), not sandwiches or steak. And no, it’s not that common, nor is it cheap. It smells like (s)Hite!!!! I have no idea what it tastes like, and I never will.
Have you?
You seem to know more about it than all of us.
Sure, Chris is from Korea. But you apparently have no clue about anything.
Stay calm, my message was for you not Chris Y R.
There is no such thing as a dog steak and sandwich which shows you have no clue about anything.
Flying Emirates A380 to Ho Chi Minh City, via Dubai from LHR, two weeks today ! I am almost as excited about flying Emirates and the A380, as I am about the wonderful food and culture of Vietnam !
I saw online earlier this week that Emirates have ordered 90 A380′s on order, with 26 delivered so far, an astonishing figure !
Looks like i’ll miss a few races tho, arrive back on November 18th.
Wonder if F1 is shown in Vietnam, does anyone actually know ? Peruvian broadcasting of F1 in 2010 was very amusing
I’d assume a decent hotel will have Star Sports or ESPN.
Get the biggest iPad you can. It’s life changing.
I took the A380 from L:A: to FRA and hat to settle for a damn middle seat. No good! It was much better on an old 747-400 from SFO to ZRH, take the seats at the far end, in groups of 2. Priceless!
Perhaps a useful snippet for the next time you’re careless with your coffee.
You can ‘pair’ a bluetooth keyboard with your iPhone and type away as fast as you like.