Passing the time on the flight home

Ok another day down, I’m on a plane, wasn’t that a line out of a Nirvana song ? I think it went I’m on a plane, I can’t complain, I’m on a plane. Anyway I’m heading back from Germany. Of course I’m writing this in the plane but can’t post it online till I get back to home. It’s interesting I was reading the in-flight magazine on another flight last week that said they were soon to introduce an in-flight wireless network. To me that’s great because I spend a lot of time in planes. If I could have internet access on the plane then I could organise my weekends while I’m the captive audience of the flight attendants.

It’s amazing how some systems have become so pervasive that we start to take them for granted. I get lost when I go to a hotel that doesn’t have a broadband connection. I have to watch TV in a language that I haven’t had the time to learn. Maybe if I have internet access in the plane I can learn a new language while I’m travelling. Hmmm sounds like a plan.

Consistence is a great thing, I have to catch of lot of taxis and land transport. It’s great in the Scandinavian countries like Denmark and Sweden to catch a taxi because they have a fantastic taxi system. They always take credit cards and you always get a printed receipt. Other countries you have to carry a stack of cash to pay the driver. This is fine I guess but the system isn’t electronic and I get a handwritten receipt that says something like 35 and of course you are always in a hurry to get out of the cab, you don’t check it. So around comes the time to do your expenses and you have no idea what day and which meeting the trip was for. Having paid in cash I don’t have the credit card statement to double check so I end up not claiming the expense because I forgot which country and which currency the amount actually represents.

You can see I like consistency and integration. I work with the MBS products and at the heart of any ERP system is accounting. Which funny enough is consistent the world over, debits and credits at least. We have politicians to thank for some of the tax systems and other laws that make it complicated. MBS have a great localisation department that produce a general ledger that can be used in most countries around the world. The accounting systems we produce have a unique multi-language system so that they ship in most languages and can store and report in any currency, this is great if only I can remember what that receipt was for.

Cheers

LC

This posting is provided “AS IS” with no warranties, and confers no rights.