Good to see a string of informed WBT posts, pushing aside the...

Good to see a string of informed WBT posts, pushing aside the bickering. The phenomenal team and technology speaks for itself.

This concern about essential travel during COVID lockdown, it's not the impenetrable barrier to progress some assume. Globally, air-travel millage dropped down to one third of normal - that's a lot of holidays cancelled, but essential business still goes on.

Here in Singapore we are as tightly quarantined off from world as Oz or NZ. Local transmission is typically zero. But there are green lanes, business bubbles, quarantine for those who need to, and of course an acceptance of Zoom business meetings.

Pre-lockdown, many people I knew, like bankers, architects, ad-execs, project managers, tech and media execs, complained about the international travel required for endless show your face, be present, press-the-flesh meet-ups with clients. It was an essential courtesy, but often pretty gratuitous.

Most of that has gone.

Business travel has adapted. A mate who used to shuttle to Korea every week to drive a marine engineering project, has simply stayed on site in Korea the past few months. Seems similar to setting up a FAB,

If you need to go and implement on site, you go, quarantine if unavoidable, and stay with the project. A lot of the endless shuttling was about form not function.

My son is now just heading off to Vienna for a Scientific research project - concerning immunology. His team is assembling from many countries. Some must test before entry, others must quarantine (and will start work while in quarantine), some just walk in. Happily, there's no restriction for entrants from low-risk countries like Singapore.

They'll also be sharing results and data real-time with other team members in other cities, other continents, too. No problem.

Finally, with Israel getting off their backsides to rapidly vaccinate the population, the travel gateway to and fro collaborating sites should be pretty open, if any sort of sense prevails.