I’ve been in Belgium on a business trip for the past several days. I flew out of Salt Lake City on Saturday, May 15th through Kennedy Airport in New York City, arriving in Brussels the next morning at about 9 a.m. The flight was completely uneventful and everything happened right on time. It has been a delightful trip both personally and for business.

I’m staying in a reasonable hotel right in the heart of Gent (aka Ghent). The AMIS facility is located in the small city of Oudenaarde, about a half-hour south of Gent. Close to the hotel this river runs through the town on its way to the sea in Antwerp. I woke up early on Monday morning and got several pictures of this river with lovely reflections. It is an old European town with delightful architecture, intriguing shops, and great restaurants.

On of my engineers responsible for factory automation was here on business as well, so he met me at the airport and guided me to the hotel. After a couple hours of sleep, we walked around a little part of downtown Gent before having dinner and retiring for the night.

Did I mention that there was good food in Gent?? All of the meals have been quite delicious, including breakfast in the hotel. Our breakfasts in the U.S. should have so much variety of food. Fortunately, the portion sizes in the restaurants are much smaller than at home so perhaps I’m not gaining too much weight!

I have taken many, many pictures with my digital camera. Internet connections, however, are very difficult to come by, let alone having enough time at night to do something like this. I’m going to have the admin over here check around to see if there’s a hotel with a fast internet connection. It took some work to get this dial-up connection working, and it still won’t download e-mail correctly. I’ve probably got something setup incorrectly.

But, here I am, enjoying life (as well as work once again). The weather has been very cooperative and I’m quite happy with that. Life is good in Belgium!