Try travelling without a mobile phone, a watch or, worst still, jewellery. On the advice of friends and guide books concerned for my safety, I left them all behind for seeing the sights of Buenos Aires.

I did think of taking my fake Rolex but had left it too late to get a replacement battery and besides, as another friend wisely pointed out, it could probably make you even more of a target.

So I went walking the streets and riding on trains with my eyes constantly vigilant, and a mostly empty handbag strapped securely across my chest and gripped firmly into my armpit.

Going without a mobile for most of the day is no great hardship, and going without a watch seems to work all right so long as you have a travelling companion who doesn't mind repeatedly being asked what the time is. I find that without a mobile, there can be parts of the day when you can be truly idle and spend time just looking out of train windows.

What is the personal gain from travel if we do not take some time to look out at views, from planes or trains or skyscraper hotels? I liked this article on "reader's block" which I read in the Times last week, which quoted "the cosmonaut who said that he didn't read a page of the book that he'd taken to the space station because his spare moments were better spent gazing out of the window."

Dubai is a popular destination for western petrochemical people who want to visit the Middle East but stay within their comfort zone.

It is often referred to as Middle East-lite, in the same way that Singapore is Asia-lite, Capetown is Africa-lite and Buenos Aires is South America-lite.

The Dubai debt crisis is unlikely to deter petchem conference organisers like ICIS from staging future events there. You only have to read about the growing popularity of recent events like the Women in Leadership Forum, the ICIS Baseoils conference and the ICIS Training Seminars to understand that it will take more than a few half-built buildings and abandoned cars at airports to divert conference-goers away to other less westernised Gulf destinations.

Indeed, the ICIS editorial and sales teams from Singapore will be out and about at the forthcoming GPCA Forum on 8-10 December 2009, to be held in Dubai's Intercontinental Hotel, Festival City.

And since the Dubai debt crisis is now firmly in the news headlines, the Blog takes this opportunity to pass on a few popular Dubai heat jokes, which could just as easily be relocated to other Gulf hotspots where petrochemical folk are hard at work, or even to Texas in the summertime ...

You no longer associate bridges with water.

You can say 113 degrees without fainting.

You learn that a seat belt makes a pretty good branding iron.

The temperature drops below 95, you feel a bit chilly.

Even the water in the toilet is hot.

You would give anything to be able to splash cold water on your face. Can't get it from the faucet!

The 4 seasons are: tolerable, hot, really hot, and ARE YOU KIDDING ME??!!

Golf being the chosen sport of the petrochemical industry, it would be remiss of the Blog to ignore the biggest golf story of recent times. Here we share a few topical Tiger Woods jokes which I read this morning...

• Tiger Woods crashed into a fire hydrant and a tree ... he couldn't decide between a wood and an iron.
• Perhaps Tiger should have used a driver
•   I find it's a nightmare driving at 2.05am: sometimes you can't see the Woods for the trees. 
•  Tiger's wife went for him over a birdie.
• What was the second worst part of Tiger's car accident? The police found the driver in the trunk.

And more Tiger Woods jokes in today's Sunday Times

The ICIS Aromatics Conference was featured on Bloomberg.com today, with quotes from the conference chairman Paul Hodges, and from our BASF speakers, Udo Fenske and Jaroslav Michniuk.

Bloomberg News reporter Richard Weiss attended the conference, and contributed to a piece entitled: BASF, Dow Compete to Offload Unwanted $10 Billion Styrene Units.

The Aromatics Conference is over, and before I even see the results of the delegate feedback, I know it is going to rate as one of the best conferences we've ever done, possibly even the very best.

Throughout the first day on Wednesday, which was mostly on benzene and styrene, people kept coming up to say, with a mixture of pleasure and astonishment, that certain papers had been really excellent and that they had thoroughly enjoyed the sessions.

We certainly had some Big Name Speakers on both days, and they had plenty of riveting stuff to say about these most unpredictable of "interesting times."

From a selfish point of view, we organisers were pleased and indeed relieved when about 20 delegates, most of them from major producers, signed up in the last week. Just-in-time planning seems to be a feature of the industry at many levels now.

With 87 European aromatics folk in the room, it looked nice and full, and there was a very lively level of questioning, particularly after the first day's trader panel.

"Tough crowd," said our keynote speaker, after a lady in the audience accused aromatics producers of speculating in the markets.

The Top Conference Food moment was the arrival of Dutch Speculaas cookies, courtesy of Vitol, in Thursday's morning break. They are traditional around Sinterklaas time in the Netherlands.

(photo: aromatic Speculaas spices)

Delegates will be able to see all the papers in full on the conference website, but for those with a more limited attention span, there are nine news articles with the highlights of the conference on the ICIS news website.

Click here for:

Europe benzene prices likely to stay volatile - Shell

The 8th European Aromatics & Derivatives Conference, jointly organised by ICIS and International e-Chem, took place in Amsterdam from Wednesday 25 November to Thursday 26 November 2009.

I'm off to Amsterdam today for the Aromatics Conference. Why Amsterdam again? Because even in boom business times, and these are not they, conference-going chemical types like to look as if they're on a business trip, and not as if they're off to the beach. If we set a conference in the Bahamas or Phuket, they say, they will not come.

So the Blog's eyes lit up on reading this article in the Times today: "New York's not so great - Cities that Beat the Big Apple."

1 Buenos Aires

2 London

3 Tel Aviv

4 Berlin

5 Mumbai

6 Madrid

Since EPCA was just in Berlin, and next year's APIC is already set for Mumbai, and IP Week is always in London, that leaves .....

Acrylic hair extensions have been used in a celebrity L'Oreal advert to fake the luxuriant effects of a shampoo and conditioner range, according to an article in the Sunday Times.

Cheryl Cole, singer in Girls Aloud and all-round celebrity, is accused of starring in a misleading shampoo campaign for L'Oreal Elvive Full Restore 5.

The advert suggests that the luscious shiny locks are produced by the hair products rather than extruded from a machine and braided into the star's hair, "then sealed using the heated ends of a clamping gun."

Cole's hairdresser confirms that she regularly uses acrylic hair extensions rather than "natural" hair which is "typically sold by Russian women for a few pounds."

The petrochemical world is divided, as in so many things, on the subject of whether it is cool to wear sunglasses indoors - for example, at a conference.

Digressing for just a moment, it is almost always acceptable even mandatory to wear sunglasses at outdoor industry events. What self-respecting delegate would even think of walking to a conference meeting across Monaco's Place du Casino during EPCA or along the San Antonio Riverwalk during NPRA without a pair of shades?

But wearing sunglasses indoors is always going to look ridiculous - or is it?

What about if your sunglasses could be a means to watching a film on a long-distance journey or while killing time at an airport?

These hi-tech plastic Vuzix Wrap 280 video spectacles create the impression of a 51-inch widescreen display floating 10 ft before your eyes, and the sound comes from noise-cancelling stereo earbuds and a pocket remote control. They're selling like hotcakes, and from the Vuzix website, you can see that the more expensive lines are all sold out.

They look quite chunky compared to normal sunglasses, according to a review in yesterday's Sunday Times, which ends with the pointed question: "Are you prepared to look a turkey wearing them in public?"

(photo: Vuzix)

Gift catalogues are on my doormat every evening when I return home at this time of year. Usually I put them straight into the recycling bag, because there are only so many cotton poloshirts or floral arrangements or crafty wooden toys that any family needs.

I do, however, make an exception for the geeky gadget catalogues like Firebox and iwantoneofthose.com (strapline: "stuff you don't need...but you really, really want,") thinking that I might find something for my son or even a chemical-related item for my Blog.

And sure enough, there's one to send a shudder through the global paraffin wax industry.

At this festive time of year, when northern hemisphere demand for candles reaches its peak, what could be less welcome than the arrival on the market of remote control electric candles?

"No hunting for matches, no wax oozing over the furniture, and of course, no getting up from your chair - just click the remote control  and your candles magically spring to life in a variety of colours and flickering effects."

The remote control has a button for adjusting the brightness (no more candle dazzle headaches), and even a timer, so you need never worry about falling asleep and burning the house down.

I'll be watching the ICIS pricing Paraffin Wax report to see the impact of this new threat to the industry.

See also: Global polystyrene industry threatened by sheep

(photo: Electric Mooncandles)

Peter Mandelson was confronted by an inebriated audience member as he sped away from the platform after delivering his speech at last night's Chemical Industries Association (CIA) dinner at London's Grosvenor House hotel, according to our own Will Beacham, deputy bureau chief of ICB.

Mandelson's speechwriters had been keen to stress reliance the chemical industry has on the automotive sector, and perhaps laboured the point, he remembers.

A furious chemical salesman contact told him afterwards that Mandelson was a fool for neglecting all the other key industry sectors, especially the product he works in. It showed his ignorance of how the industry functioned.

He told Will: "I happened to be coming back from the gents when I saw Mandelson was leaving the event and walking towards me. I went up to him and told him he knew nothing about the chemical industry and was an idiot to be coming here spouting all this nonsense."

Needless to say Mandelson's minder whisked him swiftly away from the ranting man.

The ICIS contingent at last night's Chemical Industries Association (CIA) dinner has now recovered sufficiently to be able to string a few words together about the event...

A great time was had by all in the Great Room at the Grosvenor House Hotel in London on Thursday evening at the CIA's annual dinner. The CIA had made something of a coup in attracting UK Business Secretary Lord Mandelson to speak. He was a little late and it was generally assumed that he had been involved in the horse trading which saw Baroness Ashton of Upholland (what a great title) become the EU's first High Representative for Foreign and Security Policy and Belgian Prime Minister Herman Van Rompuy EU President. Mandelson had also been a potential UK candidate for the High Representative post.

He gave a good speech vowing support for the industry in innovation and skills while warning of the "huge challenge of decarbonising industrial chemistry." (Says chemical engineer Simon: "Just how we're going to do that in an industry based on organic chemistry is beyond me, but where there's a will and unlimited science budget there could be a way.")

Numbers were down, but that had to be expected given the dire year we've had. What was noticeable was that a lot of diners stayed in the Great Room to chat after the meal rather than dash off to company hospitality suites (of which there were pitifully few), and it only thinned out at close to 1.00 am.

The CIA used its most important gathering of the year to launch a new "blueprint" for UK chemical and pharmaceutical manufacturing. The £60 billion industry helps support 600,000 jobs and makes a big positive contribution to the UK balance of trade and, the CIA feels, deserves wider recognition.

(Event coverage by Nigel Davis, Will Beacham, Simon Robinson, Franco Capaldo.)

Click here for ICIS news articles:

UK chemicals face total re-invention

UK chemical industry at risk - CIA

Cinemas in the Houston area are a thing of wonder, according to my ICIS colleagues there. For years I have been hearing of a cinema complex in Katy, Texas, just outside Houston, which not only has wide reclining seats, but also tables in front of the seats where waitresses bring you a meal while you're watching the film. Fantastic.

Cinemas everywhere have become vastly more comfortable, but theatres and opera houses, not to mention economy (coach) airline seats, have been slow to keep up. The hard narrow seats in the upper wings of London theatres, where you fight your neighbour for the armrest, are agony even for this snake-hipped Blog.

For those broader of beam, the new recently opened Dallas opera house has been designed by the Norman Foster architectural practice with maximum comfort in mind. During the design process, the architects reduced the number of seats from 3,300 to 2,200.

The architects said that they had found that, like many things in Texas, "the opera-going bottoms that would fill them are broader than they used to be," according to an article in Private Eye.

 (photo: dallasopera.org)

A rugby fan won himself £250,000 by kicking a ball from 30 metres directly onto the crossbar at the Saracens vs South Africa match on Tuesday.

Saracens fan Stuart Tinner won the giant cheque in the half-time kicking competition, and the video link has been circulating around the chemical publishing industry today, bringing joy and laughter into a grey afternoon. Thanks to Nigel for sending it my way.

Swine flu may have been halted in its tracks by the rise of a common cold virus, according to an article in this week's New Scientist.

Research in the US, France and Sweden has shown that rhinovirus, which causes colds, was on the rise just as the number of swine flu cases began to plateau in October.

Experts suspect rhinovirus may have blocked the spread of swine flu via a process called viral interference, which is thought to occur when one virus blocks another.

The Blog is still relying on the idea that swine flu only affects people of a different, younger age range, and has blithely booked a business trip to an east European city which is currently listed as "high risk."

Since London is also considered high risk, and the Blog is confident of being in the wrong age range, it seems a manageable risk, but we shall see.

 A weekly LinkedIn Network Update has just landed in the Blog inbox, showing how industrious all my contacts have been in joining groups, connecting with each other, updating their profiles, linking to news articles, reading books, updating their status, and planning their trips via TripIt.

The TripIt application has testimonials or "Raves" from users who can hardly contain themselves in their admiration:

• "A terrific site that has changed my travel life..." - WNBC New York TV
• "It's kind of magical..." - Joel on Software

It's just a bunch of boxes which you fill in with details of your business or holiday travel plans, so that all your contacts are emailed with updates stating that: AN Other is returning from a trip to Dubai via TripIt, or Joe Bloggs is planning a trip to New York, NY in November via TripIt.

The ostensible purpose is to alert your many contacts in Dubai or New York - so many that you couldn't possibly contact them all yourself - so that they can bombard you with requests for mutually beneficial business meetings. The real point is of course to show off to all your friends, contacts, previous and prospective employers about your globe-trotting activities. Fair enough, but "magical" or life-changing? I don't think so.

For more in a similar vein:

Persecution via LinkedIn

Best Chemicals Mag on LinkedIn poll

I've been enjoying the third book of Stieg Larssen's Millenium trilogy. My friend Philippa at Tecnon recommended the first one to me because we both enjoy Henning Mankell's Wallander series, and I was in such a hurry to buy the second book in the trilogy that I ended up buying it in hardback rather than waiting for the paperback to come out in the UK in July 2009. It's a perfect book to read on trains or flights, but it's crazy to go on a shorthaul trip with a book that weighs as much as the rest of your luggage put together.

The third book went on sale on 1 October 2009. It was in every bookshop window in its shiny dark green cover, but only in hardback until the paperback comes out in the UK next year. The list price was a staggering £18.99, although Amazon was offering it for £8 plus postage, and at 600 pages the hardback was prohibitively heavy for carry-on luggage.

I resisted, because I hate to reward this kind of manipulative marketing, but then on the way to Amsterdam for the ICIS Training Seminar in October, I weakened and went in to the WH Smiths bookshop in Heathrow's Terminal 4 to look for it.

As if the whole hardback/paperback scam wasn't annoying enough, the book was sold out and not even coming in to the WH Smith warehouse system, the assistant told me.

I took the Amsterdam flight with just a newspaper for company, but on the way back, on a table outside the Schipol florist next to racks of bulbs, the book was on sale and in paperback. It was still a weighty tome, and not exactly a bargain in euros, but it was one small short-lived consumerist triumph ...

Because last week, while I was in a discount bookshop picking up the new Terry Pratchett to give as a present, I saw that all three Millenium books were packaged together with a ribbon and a large bar of Galaxy chocolate for £21 the lot.

Along with all the other early adopters, I'd been taken to the cleaners, and the ribbon and the chocolate were just the final insult.

A big hearty round of congratulations goes out to Heinz Inhester of Ruhrpetrol who tells us that yesterday he became the grandfather of triplets.

"It's been an interesting week. And it's certainly more interesting than propylene," he told our Nel Weddle when she called to talk to him about the olefins market.

More Chemical Babies

Chemicals II: The Next Generation

Alert: Kids in the Office

Truong Mellor, editor of the ICIS butanediol (BDO) report writes ...

In a petrochemical story unlikely to make the ICIS news website, the Australian media has reported that a high-ranking member of a Hells Angels motorcycle gang is facing serious drug charges.

It is alleged the gang has been involved in trafficking large amounts of 1,4-Butanediol between Sydney and Melbourne, which when ingested turns into liquid Ecstasy, also known as GHB.

I feel a faint pucker of disappointment, as Ian Smith was known to be particularly excited about ICIS, within the great empire of businesses which is publishing giant Reed Elsevier, perhaps because of his distant links to oil and chemicals at Shell. We had been looking forward to being the recipients of his largesse and to welcoming him to spend a Day on the Shop Floor with us.

More on drinks on frigates ...

 (photo: Royal Navy frigate HMS St Albans in the Solent.)

The APPEC conference in Singapore last week had some spectacular social events every night, Christine tells me today on her return to London. At the Lukoil party, guests had their photos taken and were given souvenir postcards to take away. Here the ICIS team is captured hard at work on Russian/Singaporean détente - clockwise from top:  Roland, Vicky, Sachie, Sheldon.

I absolutely love this article about a newlywed couple finding out that their wedding cake was made of polystyrene, which Stuart spotted on the BBC news website today. Since everyone is usually too full to manage more sweet food at the end of a wedding reception, and the concept of the cake is more ceremonial and symbolic than gastronomic, the Blog thinks that this would be a good new market for hard-pressed polystyrene producers to explore.

Picture his despair when Joe Chang, a die-hard New York Mets fan - who did NOT want to see the New York Yankees win the World Series - got to his desk the morning following their triumph to find it covered in Yankees logos.

His mournful cry of "Noooo!!!" chilled the bones of all who were working in the Park Avenue South NYC offices of ICIS Chemical Business.

Polyester producer Teijin is to stage a free jazz concert in Bangkok on 6 December 2009 starring the famous saxophone player, Koh Mr Saxman, the company announced in a press release today, spotted by my fellow blogger Doris.

The concert is expected to attract two to three thousand people, and will reflect the company's green philosophy. On stage, Koh Mr Saxman will wear the company's environmentally-friendly recyclable casual jackets. After the jackets are worn out, they can be collected and recycled into new polyester materials through Teijin's "Eco Circle" closed-loop recycling system.

(photo: Koh Mr Saxman)

At last, the official EPCA photos we were all looking forward to. EPCA posted them on the website on Wednesday, where delegates are able to download them by using their conference username and password. A few selected highlights have been chosen for the Blog's readers (photos copyright EPCA).

A UK bus driver became allergic to his wife due to his reaction to polyethylene glycol, according to this article in the Telegraph.

He discovered his allergy when he was given a steroid injection containing polyethylene glycol to treat a problem with his foot. His face swelled up, his heart stopped and he had to be resuscitated.

Now he finds he comes out in a rash whenever he goes near his wife, since polyethylene glycol is a frequent ingredient in skincare products.

It's been a bad week for glycol stories in the press ...

Polyurethane swimsuits are again causing an uproar in the international world of swimming. The 50,000 members of U.S. Masters Swimming are divided over the neck-to-ankle polymer suits, and some members of the association are accusing their fellows of unfair propulsion and are pushing for a ban.

This follows the decision in July by the sport's ruling body, the Fédération Internationale de Natation, or the International Swimming Federation, known as FINA, that it would ban the suits as of January 2010 following pressure from coaches.

"The costume magically helps the wearer shed decades and seconds off the clock. The suits provide a kind of support that elite athletes never have to think about. They suck in nonaerodynamic paunches, flatten aging flab and bolster arthritic knees," according to an article in the Wall Street Journal.

(photo: Adidas)

The whole EPCA Berlin experience is captured for posterity in this video clip, shot in the lobby of the Berlin Intercontinental and the ICIS suite, and starring familiar faces from the world of petrochemicals as they rush about their business over three days in October 2009. Thanks to Stephen Burns of ICIS Houston for encapsulating the drama and passion of the event in this 2.19 minute video, with a jolly German oompah band backing track.

Glycols are back in the news and not in a good way. I read at the weekend about cats being poisoned when they drink up glycol-based antifreeze in the streets. Keen chemical reporters who set up Google alerts on glycols find that they are regularly sent news items about accidental deaths and even murders. Last year the Blog was shown news of two murder cases involving ethylene glycol (MEG).

On the same theme, a colleague who was following the nylon market, found that she was constantly being alerted to news about people hanging themselves with nylon cord. And another reporter in the ICIS London office has had to stop receiving alerts after coming across some very unpleasant news articles on the use of Butanediol (BDO) as a date rape drug.