TRB or not TRB - that is the question

Despite this being my 23rd visit to the US, there are still two things that I cannot get used to. Conferences beginning on a Sunday and breakfast meetings. Yesterday I was invited to a 7.30am breakfast briefing. On a Sunday. I just couldn't - I did find myself in a congestion pricing session at 9am though so I'm certainly not treating this as a holiday.

We're renting a house in the Brookland district of DC and amazingly I arrived at the front door at exactly the same time as our new President of H3B North America, Justin Peters, pulled up in his rental car after a 13 hour drive from Toronto. Synergy, I believe...

One long session, a lunch of equal length (including JP being served a meal we calculated as being 36 square inches of pasta), a fascinating coffee with Richard Bishop (the coffee wasn't fascinating, the conversation was) and a short trawl around the exhibition hall later and it was already time for dinner. We relocated to Marshalls on 26th and Pennsylvania for a highly contentious meal with Paul Najarian, his wife Philomena and daughter Emma, RicK Weiland, Richard Bishop, Justin and Amu Zuckerman. WHile Paul and I discussed the vagueries of the Premiership transfer window, Amy, Rick and Justin hammered away at the standards process with Richard B in no-man's land - too light in one direction, too heavy in the other but talk of Andrei Arshavin's £18m transfer from Zenit St Petersburg to Manchester City saw him join in with the standards banter.

Some interesting-looking sessions today, lunch with Neil Schister (not a typo) of World Trade Magazine and dinner with Phil Tarnoff to come and potentially a blog from either Justin, Amy or Richard tomorrow as an added bonus. We'll be promoting our new online magazine, FOOTPRINT, today so what with officially opening the North American office and launching the new website, we've got a rather interesting week coming up...

KB, DC