A quiet week following my return from Bangkok, with work, cycling but also a book club meeting and lunch with Eri.
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I start with some cycling photos, from one of my usual rides to Agost, stopping at the small village Verdegás with its many cats:
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Agost, just like Aigues a few weeks ago, had an outdoor painting exhibition going on. This seems to be a thing in these villages:
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Definitely not an Agost scene:
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Agost has a train station of sorts, about 4 km from the centre. The town is on Alicante-Albacete line. But you cannot get on the train in Agost, so there is no waiting room or ticket office; you can only get off. If you want to take the train to Agost, you have to request it when buying your ticket. Someone has written the name of the town in Russian letters on the official sign:
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Next to the station there are fields of grapes. These are table grapes, not wine grapes:
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It is harvest time:
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On Tuesday evening, we had the monthly meeting of the WeRead book club:
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The book of the month; this time only one non-English version was present:
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We have several new trainee members (the new crop of trainees entered the office in September):
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Andreea is one of the new trainees whose young minds we aim to pollute. She is from Romania:
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Caroline is the unofficial president and certainly the driving force behind our book club:
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A photo from an early morning walk. Some people having their morning coffee before starting work:
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A photo from an evening walk. Mochi is looking at my Kwak (Belgian beer), but what he is really interested in is the small plate of nuts just outside the frame:
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At the office, we hosted a visit from the Zhejiang Intellectual Property Office. In China, there is the national IP office but each province also has its own IP office. I am not 100% sure about the division of labour between the national and regional offices in China, but in any event this particular office represents an economically important region of China, so we received them appropriately. Here is our Deputy Executive Director, Edyta:
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The Chinese delegation. Reflecting the hierarchical nature of Chinese society, the only person who spoke was the Director-General, and his interpreter (I suspect that they understood English, but it is part of the ritual in meetings like this that everyone speaks their own language):
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On Friday I had lunch with Eri. This time we tried a new place called Honest Greens. We liked the place and the food:
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Afterwards, we went for dessert at a nearby café called Santa Gloria:
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We both had some “enhanced” coffee:
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I finish with two more Mochi walk photos. Friday night, full moon over our beach:
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Saturday morning, the exercise crew busy before sunrise:
