T Hotel, Caligiari, Sardinia (www.thotel.it)

Stay November 2005

Caligiari has a business hotel with a modern look. Clean and efficient, it is a good hotel to stay in... or at least will be when it is finished. The cheap price now indicates that there are a lot of features that don't work yet, since it was only opened in October 2005.

For example, the fitness center will only be ready in February; broadband in rooms was not available despite being told on the phone 2 days befopre arrival that WLAN was in every room. We eventually got the hotel technitian to run a cable to the room for broadband, but it was not stable enough to connect a VPN, use voice over IP or even replicate email. At least web worked, allowing access to webmail.

The other notable comment is the styling, which is modern in a nineties sort of way. Lime green in every room draws a breath on entry, and sixties retro carpets were for me stomach churning.

Nevertheless, apart from the 'not quite ready functionality', it was a good hotel, with reasonable food, nice (english speaking) staff, and for business purposes fit the bill. I would not go as a tourist, I don't think, as the focus is clearly on business travel.

Tips on Working from Home

Working from home is not always the best option. Having worked from home more than 50% for the last 2 years, here are my top tips:

• Have a backup Internet connection. (Can you convince a neighbour to give you access to their WLAN?). Have a phone that you can answer professionally. It looks awful for someone to call your office number (which is diverting to your home) and a 3-year-old child answers.
• Have a seperate location to work in if you have family. It should be placed where a) you cannot hear their noise; b) they know not to disturb you
• Spend extra time documenting what you are doing. If you are having problems with something whilst in the office, everybody knows you were trying. If you have problems and fail to deliver whilst working from home, people think you are slacking off.
• Make extensive use of Instant Messenger. It help alleviate any sense of isolation.
• Go into the office periodically--just to make sure that you know the office gossip, and everybody knows you are still a player.
• It is only fair to do a 10-hour day when WFH. After all, you save 2 hours travelling.

Working from home is a great option, but it is not all roses, especially if you do the sort of projects which can take a lot of time to complete. Employers get very worried about people slacking when working from home.

The Grove, Chandlers Cross, Herts--Collete's Restaurant

When a restaurant snob can't fault a dinner, you know the restaurant is first class. Collete's surpassed my current lead restaurants (OXO tower and Rhodes 24) as the venue-of-choice in the London area for gastronomic excellence.

The best part is the venue, which justifies arriving an hour or so early to look around, especially if it is summer and you can look round the gardens. Although it is the best part, I am challenged to think of a restaurant experience where the service was more professional (except perhaps the OXO tower), or where the food was better (except perhaps Rhodes 24). Every course was superb, though for me the duck was the highlight, which melted in the mouth in the way that only perfect cuisine can do to meat. Quite exceptionally, the cheese platter offered a Camembert which was without exception the best cheese I have ever tasted--anywhere; ever.

This restaurant comes with some booking caveats: it is extremely hard to get a table unless you are a resident of the hotel, and bookings of more than six are frowned upon. It is worth, perhaps, paying the £200 a night for a room in order to get your reservation. At the very least, start trying to get a table six weeks before you plan to eat, if it is a weekend. Weekdays are easier to get in on.

Price: four of us had three courses, two bottles of wine, martinis to start and good whisky's and brandies to finish with cigars and the bill with extra service added was £450. We had just about the mosexpensiveve stuff on the menu, so you'd be challenged to make the bill higher unless you went for more expensive wine. The semillier can supply some very expensive wines.