Nota Bene

Hi folks!

Only just coming back to my senses after a mega-hectic few weeks in Southeast Asia on business. All went to plan, all good, plus a spot of micro–tourism was tagged on too. But after such an intense couple weeks, it was high time to lie low for a while – regroup, re-center, re-balance… all that. Then I needed to catch up and finish off my on-the-road tales from the APAC side, of course…

The next port-of-call on our Asia-Pacific tour was Singapore. Hurray!

I’d been to this city-island-state more than a dozen times before, and seen plenty of its places of interest. How many exactly? Going through my posts tagged with Singapore would probably tell you that, but let’s just say “many” – especially for such a small island. But if you do click on that link, you’ll also find lots on Singapore’s main tourist attractions, events, street scenes, hotel stays, eats, and so on and so forth. (Btw, perhaps the highlight among all my visits was the time I had the honor of being at a meeting and shaking hands with none other than Lee Kuan Yew (sadly no longer with us), the founding father of Singapore. That was I think way back in 2012 or 2013.) But there were still a few places I hadn’t yet checked out – with one that I’d been wanting to see for years: Singapore’s central park/nature reserve. But that was to come later on. First up – a walk to the National Gallery Singapore in the building of the Former Supreme Court. Why? First – hadn’t been; second – locals recommended them, and here’s why! ->

Read on…

Today, aviation theme…

Window-seat air travel can be strange. There you are, ensconced, with plenty of thoughts whirling around in your head, but your brain doesn’t pay any attention to them – it just keeps looking out the window. Then, something aerial-awesome comes into view. Thoughts? What thoughts?! And then the hands reach for the camera almost automatically, and it’s “here we go again!” At least, that’s how things played out recently when flying on the short flight from Tokyo to Singapore, in this here mid-size airliner:

Right from the get-go after take-off the views out the window were fantastic. First up – the Japanese strong work-ethic, preciseness, and space-economy were in full view as far as the eye could see ->

Read on…

Food is seldom a guest on these here blog pages of mine, but when it is – it’s something really special. Like when it’s Japanese food that I’ve been eating – in Japan itself. Oh my gorgeous-gourmet-grub!…

I’m normally partial to Japanese food no matter how far away I am from the country itself, but that’s often merely sushi – which the Japanese themselves scoff it. But in the good country itself, in a good restaurant (in good company:), it’s oh-so not-just-sushi: it’s OMG-varied and interesting and simply wonderful!…

We were real lucky this time: we dined at the famous – at least among the gourmet-dining set and restaurant critics – Kamakurayama (which means Kamakura mountain). Ok, enough text; time for pics of the dishes we were served. Just a shame you can’t taste them )…

First up, of course – my starter:

Read on…

Hi folks!

I’d been meaning to put fingers to keyboard for a few days, but I’d been just too busy of late, as I’ve mentioned in my previous three posts. Finally, the much-anticipated downtime at the end of our stay in Japan had arrived, which saw most of the day dedicated to steady-tempo tourism and some free time in the evening to write this here post…

As mentioned, we were headed to Kamakura, just south of Tokyo. First up, we needed to drop by the hotel where we were to have dinner that evening (oh-my-gourmet that was too; more in that in a bit…). Alas, the hotel wasn’t a traditional Ryokan, but it was just as charming – and our on-foot tourism began right from its front door…

First up, the Buddhist Hōkoku-ji temple:

Read on…

The flight from Seoul to Tokyo takes just two hours. Above Korea it was cloudy, so there wasn’t much worth looking at – or taking photos of – out the windows. Just as well really, since it meant I could concentrate on some admin catch-up (mostly checking emails) – the kind of thing that always gets neglected on a business trip with a busy schedule. On the plane I was undisturbed for most of the way (save for the flight attendant, who kept asking if I’d like another drink:). Nearing the end of the flight, I took my first look out the window to find that the cloud had cleared and Japan was clearly in view down below ->

Read on…

As regular readers will know – my globetrotting business-trip schedule can sometimes be tight: fly in, straight to meetings/hand-shakings/interviews/presentations/dinners, and only then to the hotel. Repeat for two or three days, then it’s back to the airport to fly to the next port-of-call for much of the same. Necessary, interesting, physically rather draining. And that’s how my trip to Korea pretty much started, which I told you about a few days ago. But I’ve a rule: no trip can be deemed complete if there’s no spot of tourism and photography. Thus, here, today – let’s complete Korea! )…

I’ve another rule: the small doses of tourism need to be “correct” in two key ways – in terms of both the places to be visited and the season to visit them. For example – when heading to Asia-Pacific, aim for doing so when the cherry blossom is flowering. I’ve yet another rule: don’t be too hard on yourself (or your trip-organizing colleagues:) if the “correctness of tourism” rule gets broken – you can’t have everything! If a trip needed to be mid-March, it needed to be mid-March – cherry blossom or no! Thing is – we missed the cherry blossom by just a week (it was only just beginning to sprout)! As Homer Simpson would say – do’h!

Not to worry; we’ll just have to come back next time – be that next year or the year after – at least a week later.

Aaaanyway – there’s more to Seoul than cherry blossom, right? Right…

Read on…

Alas, as often happens around this time of year around K-HQ in Moscow, the springtime goes in for an identity crisis: it keeps thinking it’s wintertime, darn it! Little sunshine, no birdsong, nothing blooming, zero other attributes of awakening nature, and plenty of… snow. Like this! ->

Still, it has its charms – I guess. It’s just those charms always become anything but charming after a full five months of the same. But what am I complaining about? It could be worse (it could be like this year-round, as in Antarctica); and anyway, “there’s no such thing as bad weather – only bad clothing”, or so I’ve been told. But it is always nice to get away from the gray gloom at this time of year. And this year’s no exception: we were headed east to the (snow-free) Asia-Pacific region to kick off my business-trip season. First stop… well, you should be able to guess it from this pic:

“Ehhhhh, sexy lady“

Oh yes: time for some Seoul searching!…

Read on: Go East, young man…

Finally, another dream of mine has come true. I got to see… THIS! ->

This That, of course, being Aurora Borealis, aka the Northern Lights. Actually, I shouldn’t have written “of course” just there, because photos like these could have been taken in the southern hemisphere. Indeed, there are auroras down there too, but they’re referred to as Aurora Australis; and as Michael Caine once famously uttered – “Not a lot of people know that”! Record duly set straight, onward with this post )…

Read on…

Hi folks!

As per usual, having only just seen off the previous year in blog format, it’s February already!

So here we are – in 2023; I wonder, will it continue the trend of being “roaring” – but not quite like the Roaring Twenties of last century? You know – first covid and the lockdowns, then you-know-what. Whatever next? I just hope there’s less roaring, and more… purring – and a lot less geopoliticism…

All this geopolitics, though – it has had one interesting effect on us here at K: it’s forced us out of our comfort zone. It made us adapt, quickly, to the new macro-reality we found ourselves in. We’ve been working harder than ever before – not quite in panic-mode, but not far from it, and we’ve ended up stronger, nimbler and smarter for it. Just as well – for who else is going to do much of the heavy-lifting in building the secure digital future we all deserve?!…

And all our hard work really has paid off: despite everything (though the official figures aren’t in just yet), we managed to maintain sales of our products practically at the same level as in 2021! Sure, we took hits in both North America and Europe, but those were made up for by boosts in all the other regions of the world. In a word: woahski.

// Photographic digression. Why? See the bold below… ->

So, like, how did we manage it? Two main ways really: first – because we’re awesome, obviously; second – we’re kinda getting used to thriving through ****storms! For let’s face it, they’re becoming the norm for us. Crisis management – what’s that? It’s simply “management” now ). Yes, of course we’d prefer calmer seas, without all the geopolitical thunderstorms we’ve zero control over. Instead the seas are as choppy as heck. So we adapt, we toughen up, we get our sea legs, and steer the ship as best we can to ride out the storm. What else can we do?…

Read on…

There’s no stopping – not even a slowing down of – the passing of time, no matter how much we might want it. So we don’t waste… time, energy and nerves on fighting the inevitable. But what do we do instead? Well, I reckon that if you pump the time you have on the planet with meaningful and useful goals, events, achievements, excitement, and assorted other positive, busy “content” (though I do so dislike that term:), then said time we have will leave two-dimensional linearity and inevitability and blossom into a multi-dimensional world of energy and vigor to give life meaning. Yep – you know me: always positive – no matter what )…

Routine screws up memories, while the passing of time steadily nullifies the memory cells that store those memories. Life imperceptibly turns into an expressionless mass of vague sensations, and after renewing your passport two or three times – there can be emptiness. Note – “can” be. But life is what you make it: you can instead live as “correctly” as possible. And for me, included in my list of living maximally “correct” come my annual reviews! To stop, duck out of the routine, think, remember, write, think again, and be amazed. And out of the fog of the passing year an outline of experiences, events and achievements becomes distinguishable. Then, emboldened by pride, I find myself fully ready for new endeavors in the New Year.

In the oh-so tricky year of 2022, the chances of losing oneself all the more in the fog were through the roof: geopolitics gets in the way of all that’s good. But at the same time this makes summarizing the results of last year all the more a correct and necessary endeavor. So this time I’ve split up my reviews to make sure we don’t miss vital detail: I’ve already shared my mostly-personal annual review, and also my patent review.

What remains is the concluding third part – which is what I’ll be giving you today in this here post: about our product-and-tech achievements – our “bread and butter” that makes up our whole raison d’être: protecting the world from cyber-evil. And there were plenty such achievements – a lot more than might be expected given the difficult circumstances throughout the year… All righty – enough “intro”; let’s get to it (after all, it’s February already, like – tomorrow!!)…

// Btw – that’s the cover of our Midori Kuma 2023 calendar – simply to brighten up this here text ). As per, it can be downloaded – here.

Ok – sit  down. Better – fasten your seatbelt too! For this number is a shocker – in the good sense: last year we launched more than 750 releases! No, no typo there folks. Really: seven hundred fifty releases! By that I mean new products, updates, patches, and assorted other localizations/customizations. // And some folks still think we just do antivirus?!!

Out of that huge bulk, here are a few I want to highlight…

Read on…