Separé Cafe, Ljubljana, Slovenia

Separé Cafe - a relatively new place that deserves a whole lot of praise. Pleasing design, great food and service. Somewhat empty, but that can also be considered as luxury. A thumbs up recommendation - even if you have to drive from far away, go for it.

Andrej Mertelj - reigning CEO of DataLab, fast growing ERP solution provider based in Slovenia. Native from Radovljica, started his entrepreneurial path with PC company Gekko and later turned a need for a SMB-type ERP into business opportunity and co-founded DataLab. A lot of info about him can be found on the net - as can for a lot of other people. And some think there's more to it than meets the eye - not so innocent above all. "The book 1984 should be called 2004". Snowboarding, sailing and kiting. Passionately. Digital Phoenix, The God Effect and Mars Trilogy would be his reading recommendations. Early retirement, even more sailing and book writting on top of reading - that's ahead for Andrej. As is ongoing social responsibility and righteousness - runs in family.


That was a first of kind for me in Separe Cafe - you or your kids cannot seat, but your suitcase can. Nice touch. Differentiator.

Restavracija & Lounge Slon, Ljubljana, Slovenia

Classy restaurant in Hotel Slon in center of Ljubljana. Nice place, good food, good service. Even if you are not a hotel guest, it's a recommendation.

Aco Vidovic (Vidović) - IBM Innovation Center Manager and Technology Manager for partners in CEMAAS region. With roots in Serbia and Montenegro he was born and raised in Ljubljana, lived in Vienna and Rochester, Minnesota and came back to Domzale. Has a degree in pedagogy and sociology from FF and after he tried teaching for a while, he got interested in IT, got sucked in and worked successfully for IBM ever since. Being part of IBM ITSO team he wrote RedBooks and was also a long time IBM System i a.k.a. iSeries a.k.a. AS/400 evangelist. Has two daughters, played basketball, did karate and knows something about astrology. His latest book was Bringers of the Dawn. One day he will invest a lot into general education with a goal to influence curriculum and add subjects that would have practical impact on people's behaviour and general understanding. Beyond raw fact gathering. Noble cause.

Best Western is supposedly the world's largest hotel chain with over 4000 hotels in 80 countries. Hotel Slon (Slon = Elephant) is one of them.

Gostilna Rogovilc, Ljubljana, Slovenia

Gostilna Rogovilc - old, old fashioned and unfashionable. Used to be a semi-popular pizzeria. As they stopped offering pizzas, now they have even less customers. Seemed pretty empty. Cold. Barren. Not a recommendation. And an outdated website on top of that.

Bogdan* - working for Spica International in sales and project management. Grew up in a remote village Volče near Tolmin on the other side of Kolovrat mountain range - with a nice view of Krn. Graduate degree in philosophy at FF and post graduate degree in economics at EF. As a student worked for SOU Sport and then Spica. A real book worm, windsurfer and holds a snowboarding instructor license. He also travels a lot and searches for new ways to look at common things. Reading Other People's Money and would recommend Alchemist and Four Agreements. One day he will be famous philosopher, spreading ideas and new ways of looking at stuff - in a manner smilar to Alain de Botton.

*Yet another one with a do-not-want-to-have-my-full-name-published attitude. As I do respect such stance, I am beginning to wonder if this is not showing some kind of a trend now. Thanks to Facebook and the likes. Beware of Pals on the other side of the Pay. The Guardian is guarding us in this article.

Two rooms. As the slightly more appealing Italian style room was not being heated, all the guests (three altogether) were kindly requested to be seated in the dull one. Ah.

Pr' Noni, Ljubljana, Slovenia

Pr' Noni - popular, nice, clean, regular-business-lunch-guests place. If you're in town for business, that's definitely one of the places you wanna take your customer or business partner to. A recommendation and a Luka Gourmet franchise.

Miha Zerko (Žerko) - SRC.SI Group Sales and Marketing Director, son of one of the founders of the company that he now helps to manage and grow. Lives in Ljubljana, spent his childhood in Trzin, graduated at EF and later earned MBA degree at INSEAD. After a lot of summer works in his youth, he started seriously with Abanka and later switched to SRC.SI. Avid wake boarder, half marathon runner, had a brief romance with golf and is a sucker for VW Beetles. His mind was recently entertained by The Shadow of The Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon and by Fooled by Randomness by Nassim Taleb. (Was that too many by-s in one sentence?) Will fly to space and will give even more to people/places that really need it (a.k.a. charity), but not to Africa as funds/help does not actually make it to where it is supposed to.

Pr' Noni indoors is soothing and they serve delicious ginger soup. When the conversation goes down the right alley, one can find a lot about India without going (back) there. For instance that there is a Mumbai based company called Pinstorm that is making Google unhappy.

Barbies having a break after a hard work day. Some people have Barbie's head hanging down their car rear-view mirror. VW Beetle owners tend to do that sometimes :)

Seattle's Best Coffee, Dubai Internet City, Dubai, U.A.E.

Seattle's Best Coffee - another one of many Starbucks wannabes. Kinda cool though. In some places too cool. Refill station for IT professional burnouts.

Mazen F.* - developing IBM's hardware volume business in Middle East. Born and raised in Beirut, Lebanon, graduated at American University of Beirut, worked as a freelance diamond broker, lived in Montreal, Antwerp and lately in Dubai. You don't wanna mess around with him as he knows his Muay Thai moves and on top of it he has a monster in his garage. Ducati S4 Monster that is. Half way through his MBA does not leave much time for non-MBA reading, but he did manage to devour The Tipping Point. "One day I will accept your Facebook invitation, not because it will be so popular, but because I will have more time." Sometime in the future, after he will take care of homeless and education problems in Lebanon, he will devote a lot of time to tuning his bikes and cars and he will build his first kit car.

* Personal Digital Footprint issue. It appears from time to time. Personal decisions are to be respected.

If one is into building kit cars, AC Cobra is a good place to start. Googling "coincidental fate" returns 128 results.

Al Hadiqa, Sheraton Jumeirah, Dubai, U.A.E.

Al Hadiqa a.k.a. The Garden - a very nice beach-front-tent-restaurant-shisha-beer-place outside Sheraton Jumeirah. January breezes and time flies.

Michael Bernat - recently appointed IBM channel development person for Tivoli Netcool partners based in Prague. Bernat is not a very common Czech name as there are only about 260 of them in Czech Republic. Born and raised in Zatec , where supposedly best hops in the world is grown. Who would argue that. Graduated at Czech Tech Uni in Prague, earned Rochester MBA, worked for Lotus, Sun, Compaq, Oracle and finally came to IBM. Used to do a lot of skiing and climbing in Via Ferrata before his 5 year old son and 3 months old daughter took over top position on the priority list. His support goes to people who actively work toward preserving our earth and nature, such as Greenpeace. He would do that even full time if circumstances would allow that. Noble cause.

Up, Up, Up feat. Dubai:

I feel it through my window

I feel it on the road

Construction's all around me

And so the buildings grow

It's written on the cranes

It's everywhere I go

So if you really want it

Come on and buy it now

...

Moods, Sheraton Jumeirah, Dubai, U.A.E.

Sheraton Jumeirah - one in the countless number of high class hotels you can find all over Dubai. It seems they have an affinity for pure white luxury cars. White BMW 7, white Bentley, white X5. Demand driving supply. No end in sight.

Johnny Keklik - Software Account Manager at Gulf Business Machines (GBM) covering Qatar. Half Turkish and half Syrian origin, born and raised in Ludwigsburg, Germany. After a short stop in Germany, his family was supposed to follow their relatives and move to USA (hint for his name), but his father was getting more and more successful in car export business in Germany, so they stayed. He worked for IBM in Germany, switched to Oracle and after moved to GBM in Dubai. Played football in 3. Liga, doesn't really read books, but did read Malcolm X Autobiography. Given a lot of excess money, he would first help his more or less distant relatives in Turkey to climb pout of near-poverty to a dignified level.

Sorina Ghita - Tivoli Sales lady working at IBM in Romania. Born, raised and educated in Bucharest, worked for Crescendo and Net Consulting mostly on HP OpenView platform and in 2007 decided to come to IBM, get bluewashed and support "the red brand". She is reading Positive Mental Attitude by Napoleon Hill, but also likes Milan Kundera and Pascal Bruckner. She shoots pool a lot and is pretty good at it. Her future fortunes will go to help and development of poorer areas in Romania that are unfortunately not that rare occasion there. As she would fix that, she would go around the world and visit all the interesting spots on this planet. Bon voyage.

Desserts in Sheraton are really delicious. Fighting the craving becomes unbearable.

Lucky, Bandra, Mumbai, India

Lucky - a popular restaurant near Lucky Hotel in Bandra, Mumbai, not very far away from IBM office in Bandra Kurla Complex, as we started there and we actually did not drive very long.

Debabrata Das and Kalyan Roy - recent additions to IBM Software Group in IBM Mumbai. Deb (short for Debabrata) came from CA and Kalyan from HP. IT job market is still a very heated area in India as big international companies keep pouring investments, primarily to Bangalore though, and that is driving big demands for workforce. We also had Ashutosh Sarkar joining us at the table. He has been with IBM already several years and on top of that he has also been active Stock Exchange investor in looking at Sensex performance in recent years that seems to be a damn smart move.

Common after lunch munch. Mix of anise or similar herbs and grains and sugar cubes. Refreshing. Self made Tic Tac Indian style.

From relative calmness of the restaurant into the crowded reality of workday Mumbai.

Lufthansa in Sanskrit actually means "flying swan". That's how close and related we really are.

BreadTalk, Mumbai, India

BreadTalk is a Singapore based Fast Food Retail company with branches all over Asia and dedicated to consumer experience. This one was in Inorbit Mall in Mumbai. Very interesting looking place and very interesting and tasty bakery products. Especially for a European taste.

Uday Kiran Kandarpa - overseeing operations of BreadTalk in India. Born in Nikobar Islands to father whose mission in Indian Armed Forces was to set up first Indian settlement on one of small islands there - supposedly of high strategic importance. Studied in Hyderabad where he's got his MBA at Osmania University. Worked for Dell in Bangalore and later moved to Mumbai for job post at BreadTalk. Likes trekking and "rappling" - that would be Hindi slang for absailing. Also paints on canvas has an account at Orkut, Google's social networking attempt that did not succeed in North America and Europe, but is quite popular in South America and Asia. Recently finished a book by Krishnamurti and is currently chewing on God is Not Great. Also he recently had a chance to get to know the secret of Vipassana. One day he will fly to space orbit with the Russian Space Tourism program.

BreadTalk stores are mostly known for their see-thru kitchens. You actually see how your snack is being prepared and baked. No hidden agenda. Clean and entertaining.

Incredible!ndia

The other side of Incredible!ndia. Kurla, Mumbai.