Wow. What a busy month!

It started out with a last minute trip to London for getting my ISO 27001 Lead Auditor certification. This was the first time that I actually got to stay in London. The company flew both Ayano and myself out for the certification as we were on fast-track for getting our PCI-QSA certifications and for me to become a Visa Certified Security Auditor (VISA SA).

We landed late on Saturday so that gave us one full day to (aka Sunday) to play ‘tourist’ and see the sites. We saw Princess Diana’s memorial fountain in Hyde park, took a beautiful stroll through the park, had Dim Sum at the Dorchester Hotel (with plenty of stares as we where not properly dressed in black attire or in our Sunday bests), and managed to do a quick walk around the Buckingham Palace to see the changing of the guard. Unfortunately we ran out of time to head down to the Thames river to see Big Ben.

The course was intense and involved a lot of studying, so we just didn’t have any time to enjoy things in the evening. It was raining of course… but we did get to spend some time with our instructor over supper or going for a pint or a shot down at the pub. It’s amazing how knowledgable he was was about the different types of Gin and Scotch.

That being said, I met some very interesting people. Some that I’d like to see again. One gentleman came in each day wearing his suit. After going out to the bar with him in the evening, I found out that until two weeks prior, he had long hair and was a drummer. A totally different personality. Wow!

Then there was Naiya who was working in Nairobi. At the end of our course, and after passing our exams, we went with her to the Victoria and Albert museums. It was a pleasure being able to talk with all these people from walks of live that our so different from my own.

After London it was back to work… flying to different locations to do security audits. I did managed to get out for some morning runs but places like Kansas were just too hot and humid, where other locations like Visa headquarters in Northern California were just too busy.

Towards the end of the month our friends from Montréal stop over on the way back from Australia. We hung out with them for a few days locally before taking a 4-day vacation with them up route 395 to Yosemite National Park and the Bodie Ghost town.

Though it would have been nice to travel with them longer, but I had to get back to work.

It was such a busy month so let’s see how things go next month.