From mid-July I went on a month-long work trip with a colleague to Europe and the USA. Although in the last couple of years I have to jet off two or three times a year, but this trip is on another level with a much more intense schedule and a more hurried pace. I can finally appreciate what typical business trips are like. 七月中跟一個同事到歐洲和美國公幹一個月，雖然我近兩年每年都要外出公幹兩三次，但這次性質不同，行程也緊湊得多，而且很多時候都風塵僕僕，令我體會像一般人的商務公幹究竟是甚麼一回事了。 The purpose of this trip was to visit the manufacturers of a particular instrument that a university wishes to purchase as well as the laboratories using that instrument. My colleague and I spent one to three days at any one place (apart from the end of July when I spent one and a half weeks in Munich for my own lab work). Fortunately it was my colleague who took on the onerous task of contacting the many hosts to co-ordinate and organise the whole itinerary of the trip. It was particularly demanding as one of the companies kept changing its date on the lab visit in Heidelber