The official number, which the Blog has taken from the EPCA website today, will probably exceed the 2011 total of around 2,500.

The conference takes place in Budapest on 6-10 October, and the weather forecast for the second week of October is between 9 and 18 degrees C.

Term is starting for Mandarin evening classes and I had better dust off last year's work and see if any of it is still lodged in my long-term memory. Of the class of eight, only two of us decided to sit, and happily pass, the GCSE exam at the end of last term.

My two speeches on "My holiday in California" and "My favourite sports" (this latter a tissue of lies), which I rehearsed diligently for weeks and thought would be stuck in my brain till my dying day, are now but a distant memory. My insights into why Wayne Rooney is a top footballer are sadly lost to posterity.

Watching the table tennis team of the People's Republic of China at the London 2012 Olympics, the Blog's daughter asked if ping pong started in China. I'm not sure if it did, I told her, but I certainly said it did in my GCSE speech for the oral exam. It was a great eye-opener to learn from the teacher that, "it doesn't have to be true." It is so much easier to give a presentation if the facts don't have to be true.

Since I now have half a GCSE in Mandarin, I change my LinkedIn profile to "Mandarin - Limited Proficiency."

From time to time, my ICIS Asian colleagues ask how the Mandarin is coming along. I tell them about my holidays and they look at me blankly. I think it will be a long time till we can talk about petrochemical markets.

Messaging via Yahoo Messenger (YM) is such an established part of petrochemical life, particularly trading and reporting, that it is already old hat to be messaging with someone on a desktop, laptop or mobile phone. The Blog can still be impressed, however, by innovation on a theme, and it was definitely impressive to get a message the other day from a trader on a plane. The chat connection was as good as normal, and the conversation only came to a halt when the plane was coming in to land.

I don't think I'll be following suit any time soon. With the cost of onboard internet still quite steep, it would have to be a very important item of information, or I'd have to be very bored, to want to go online mid-flight.

I am on a transatlantic flight the day after the London 2012 Paralympics closing ceremony. I pass athletes from Brazil in the departures lounge, and a wheelchair athlete for Team USA is boarding my flight just ahead of me. It has been a wonderful summer of watching the Olympics and Paralympics, and no-one wants it to be over.

On the plane I am going to watch "The Hunger Games" which I have just read, and "Game of Thrones" which I can resist no longer because now it is not just my family but all my colleagues who are raving about it.

For the first time ever I am flying long haul with just carry-on luggage. It has demanded great discipline in the packing. This is not at all the usual ICIS way, which requires an extensive wardrobe and a variety of shoes, a heavy laptop plus accoutrements, for ICIS training a projector, and for conferences a batch of ICB magazines which otherwise might get stuck at customs and miss the conference.

Friendly or informative comments on the Blog have always been welcome, so it is a matter of some disappointment that the commenting function on the ICIS blogs has been switched off. It seems that the servers were being swamped with spam.

If you would like to post a comment on a posting, you can take the alternative route and do it via Twitter (@barbaraortner) or LinkedIn.

"You'll hate the commute," my ICIS suburban colleagues warned me when I told them I was moving to work in central London. My new office is on the corner of Trafalgar Square (site of today's Olympic Victory Parade), and it takes a fair bit longer to travel there each day.

And it's on public transport, so I will be catching colds and moaning about delays and the expense and over-crowding...

Still, one week in, and I'm enjoying the time on the train to read. I like the ten minute walk over the new Golden Jubilee Bridge in the early morning. The view from the bridge in the blazing sunshine every day in the last week has been uplifting and energising.

Once the winter comes, I will treat the morning journey as if it is a day's walking in the Highlands of Scotland: sensible shoes, waterproof clothing with a hood, gloves. Between entering my office building and getting in the shiny lift in the atrium, I will undergo a Cinderella-like transformation, emerging unrecognisable.

(Photo: view from the bridge, walking to work last week.)

It turns out that one of my colleagues is a trained flight attendant. She knows how to deliver a baby, deal with drunks and passengers with flight-phobia, as well as smile all day and put her hair up neatly.

I was on the same flight with her only once, when we flew into Berlin together for EPCA, and her luggage was lost somewhere between connecting flights. I was unaware of her relevant background then, or I'd have been watching her reactions more closely.

As I remember, she did not seem very concerned about attending a conference without her luggage. She borrowed a jacket and away she went.

Not like another conference attendee (let's call him D) who found himself at APIC in KL this year without luggage, and managed within three hours of landing to get out and buy himself a suit, two shirts, tie, shoes and full accessories - all later reclaimed on travel insurance.

(photo: Rex)

The multi-pocketed travel smock which looked so ridiculous when Janos modelled it in the office, is now getting mainstream media attention.

"I'm not going through security with you," I told him when he showed it to me. "You look like a suicide bomber."

Now I read that the luggage restrictions on no-frills airlines have led to canny passengers wearing as much clothing as they can to avoid excess luggage charges.

Passing the time in London Stansted departures lounge, in a comfortable seat outside the Kurt Geiger concession, I can't help but notice that no-one is buying shoes at this time in the morning. That is no surprise, since the budget airlines are pretty brutal about charging for excess , and most travellers have already filled up their 55 x 40 x 20 cases with no space at all for an extra pair of platform party shoes.

(photo: Rex)

Booking holiday flights on a no-frills airline is like an obstacle course. No sooner have I finished congratulating myself on avoiding all the online extra charges, all the queuing, and all the airport stress hot spots, when the ground attendant greets me with "Madam you have two pieces of luggage. You will have to pay extra unless you can get the handbag into the other one."

Ha, I'm wise to this one, squeezing one into the other. I get my luggage into the overhead locker: I'm laughing. I have sustained minimal injuries: only one bruised shin and one broken nail, and we are already airborne.

I know everyone hates London Stansted airport, but really it has been good this morning. Fifteen minutes from taxi to departures, swift security. It's a holiday airport. The flights on this occasion are £60 all-in, as opposed to the flights from Heathrow at £250: no argument.

I read the article this week about the woman who ended up paying an extra £236 because she did not print out Ryanair boarding passes for her return flight, and 350,000 people have joined her complaint via social media. I am curious whether there wasn't a printer anywhere in the airport for her to print out the boarding passes.

My ICIS colleague Peter once turned up for a transatlantic flight without having registered for an ESTA. When he was refused check in, he went away, logged on and registered for an ESTA, then went back for check-in. Sometimes it pays to be a bit clever.

(photo: www.stanstedairporthotels.net)

EPCA 2012 will take place on 6-10 October at three hotels: Intercontinental, Marriott and Sofitel.

The ICIS suite will be in the Sofitel Hotel.

Mike Cromack has been appointed Global Business Director for Aromatic Feedstocks, and Rafael Cayuela has moved to become European Commercial Manager for Aromatics at Styron Europe, focusing on both styrene monomer and benzene.

The moves are the result of Chatchai's departure to take up a senior commercial leadership role in the SCG-Dow Group, a joint venture company between The Siam Cement Public Company Limited and The Dow Chemical Company in Thailand, the company announced in an email to the Blog on 16 July.

Rafael Cayuela's former responsibilities as European Butadiene Commercial Manager will be passed back to Anamaria Cioanca who will now have the newly configured role of European Butadiene Commercial Manager and Global Raw Materials Purchasing Manager for the Rubber business.