GENEVA, Switzerland – Day 10 and about 14 interviews later, the team is ready to go home. We have had such fun on this trip but it’s been alot of hard work. From Heidi our positive producer’s planning expertise, Andrew our cameraman extraordinaire’s amazing footage and constantly smiling attitude, Paul our editor/cameraman/entertainment/social director/driver/all around good guy, I certainly have been blessed with an amazing group of people to work with.

When we travel for assignments around the world, I believe it’s the people who you spend all your time with that make the pieces we air amazing. They are the ones who become your family and it is through the shared energy that we all work harder and better.

The Geneva leg of our trip certainly felt like the work was all coming to a head and that we really had to summon up our reserves energy to complete our tasks. The weather has been horrible but since we all moved from our… uh… last place of stay to more refined digs, things moved on much more smoothly.

We have generated a lot of pieces for the network, each one bringing something different… even though the topic has been the same, and for the most part so have the products. Each CEO I met brought something different to the table.
They were each passionate about their jobs and their companies. And that is what I learn from. I learn from their abilities, their successes, and their challenges. After all, it doesn’t just come down to their job, it also comes down to them being people.

There is another world out there when looking at the luxury industry. One where money is no object. For me though, money is an object so perhaps it gives me that ability to see through the glitter and hopefully report with an eye on the pocketbooks of the majority of people in the world.

Still though, being around the glitter is no war zone… and I have the utmost respect for those who are reporting from perhaps less luxurious surroundings!

Michael Holmes, this is for you.

GENEVA, Switzerland – Day 8 and it’s Geneva, Switzerland. Truth is I’m not keeping count. Paul our editor is. Poor guy, he’s had to work into the early hours of the morning to edit our pieces. All the hard work, though, is paying off. The packages look great.

We arrived in Geneva yesterday after a three hour drive from Basel. En route we stopped in Bern for lunch. It’s a beautiful city and the main tourist attraction seems to be these bears that are in the centre of the city.

We also stopped in Bern to take stock. It seems that while the interviews with the CEOs and the packages on the luxury industry are our main focus, the trip is turning out to be an episode of Survivor … or is it Big Brother? We’ve had a flat tire, we’ve had complicated driving in Basel resulting in mounting curbs, we’ve had a lost wallet, and now the piece de resistance is our hotel in Geneva.

All I will say is it is in the city’s red light district and the corner shop not only sells water, it also sells X-rated material. I went to sleep making sure I stayed in one spot.

Rubbing salt on our wounds is the fact that we will be doing interviews with CEOs today in beautiful hotels. Such is life. All that said, I’m having a really fun time. This doesn’t feel like work at all. Even standing out in the rain yesterday by Lake Geneva as we shot links for our special didn’t feel like work (the special, by the way will air this weekend). It’s cold in Geneva but despite a few glitches we’re all in one piece and having a lot of fun. That’s what I keep telling Paul. Let Day 8 begin.

BASEL, Switzerland – It’s Saturday and it’s been busy as ever. From nine this morning we have been rushed off our feet to get to our CEO interviews at the Baselworld conference center. Despite having a flat tire, we made it to the center and got cracking.

The one thing about this week long special that is different from general news reports is that we wanted to take the time to really make the interviews and stories look beautiful. The artistic shots, the editing have to be slick and edgy.

Monita blogging in Basel

Andrew (camera) and Paul (editor) take the time to find the best locations possible (within limits of a company’s stall of course) — while also sussing out any free food opportunities. These stalls at the trade fair can rival any retail outlet. The sad thing is, they will be taken down after the fair is over.

Walking around the massive lot we see many men in suits. Many are retailers and clients looking for the latest product to offer their customers. A lot of business is done at this fair. The annual revenues range from 15 to 80 percent solely from deals that have been signed here. Each year the fair gets bigger and brands look for larger, more visual and prominent stalls.

Today, I had three interviews back-to-back with the Presidents and CEOs of major watch and jewellery brands. Each one had something completely different to offer product-wise. Chanel brought out the elegance. Ebel brought out the athleticism. DeGrisogono brought out the bling.

After six hours at the trade fair we came back to the ship/hotel to write and edit my piece on watch trends this year. Needless to say, I can’t afford any of it.

BASEL, Switzerland – We landed in Basel yesterday. I should have known it would not all go smoothly when I found out I would be flying out of Heathrow’s Terminal 5. All those horror stories about bags being lost became all too familiar and all too close for comfort. We arrived in Basel on time, my crew got all thirteen pieces of their luggage but me … no. I stood there waiting, watching the baggage carousel slowly come to a halt with all the bags that were on the plane delivered to their rightful owners. Except me (and some other people I should mention).

Monita with co-presidents of Chopard, Caroline Gruosi Scheufle and her brother, Karl Friedrich Scheufle.

My bag with all my clothing for interviews with CEOs of luxury brands and companies, make up, toiletries, was nowhere in sight. I really shouldn’t have been surprised. I was, however, not impressed. We left Basel airport somewhat stressed but Andrew, our cameraman, and Paul, our editor, kept spirits high with their jovial attitude. With our rental car jam packed with equipment (minus my bag..although i don’t think it would have fit in the car anyway), we made our way to the hotel. It was on the Rhine river. Yup, ON the Rhine. Our hotel was a ship. Not luxurious but clean which is all we could really ask for after driving around for an hour or so looking for it. I’ve stayed on boats before but those were luxury yachts — our ship-hotel wasn’t. But, as I say, it was clean and gave us all that we needed for a good night’s sleep. 

After borrowing make up from my producer Heidi and having purchased some basic toiletries at a supermarket that was thankfully open late the night before, Day Two in Basel began without much stress. We met and interviewed Caroline Gruosi Scheufle and her brother Karl Friedrich Scheufle. They are co-presidents of Chopard. I had met Caroline a few years ago when Art of Life did a story on her husband Fawaz Gruosi who is the founder of de Grisogono, the watch and jewellery company. We will be meeting with Fawaz next week when we head to Geneva. 

For now, Day Two in Basel ended on a high note. We got two of our interviews done which will air later on in the week. My bag finally arrived fully intact, and we are off to a cocktail soiree hosted by Swarovski Crystals. Hopefully Andrew will behave himself. He keeps muttering the word “soiree”.We should all be worried

CNN's Adrian Finighan (left), Neil Bennet (center-left) and Alysen Miller (right) meet Robert Redford at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.

BARCELONA, Spain — The stands are being dismantled. The delegates are drifting away to prepare for the journey home. Relationships have been strengthened and new ones begun. And so, after four frenetic days, the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona is over for another year.

I sincerely hope to be back. As trade fairs go this one is pretty special. Wherever you are and whatever you do, if you use mobile technology in any way, shape, or form what happened here in Barcelona this week will impact your life

From the phone that you’ll upgrade to, to the software you’ll use. From the applications and content you’ll download to the network infrastructure innovations you’ll use without even knowing it. It all debuted right here at this show.

But while it’s all so very exciting, the journalist in me is frustrated. I could have filled hours of airtime with coverage of what went on here. Being the premier industry showcase, the big fish in mobile technology are all here and freely available to those of us here to cover it.

And while our reporting told you everything you need to know about the main issues of the day, the constraints of TV and the Web mean that I was only able to scratch the surface!

And I haven’t even mentioned the little guys. There are so many smaller companies with fascinating stories to tell and exciting products to push that I’d have needed a whole year of airtime to give you a true flavor of the show. Such is the life of a TV reporter!

So, what did I enjoy most? Well, meeting and interviewing Robert Redford, urbane and articulate as always, was a high point. And chatting with industry big-wigs and CEOs like Sunil Mittal of Bharti, Jim Balsillie of RIM, Samsung’s Geesung Choi. And with Dan Harple of GyPSii, a mobile social networking platform which, I’m willing to bet, will soon be as big a phenomenon as Facebook. Bigger, perhaps.

And of course there were the phones, the new “iPhone killers.” My Palm Treo 650 is looking a little tired and if Apple doesn’t release a 3G version of its iPhone anytime soon I’ll be choosing Samsung’s gorgeous new “Soul.” Or one of Nokia’s new GPS-equipped beauties. And if I can hang on just a little longer I could take possession of the sublime new Garmin GPS phone which will ship later this year.

I loved the mobile software company that was marketing an application that offered real-time translations of both SMS and voice calls, just like the babel fish in “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.”

But, for me at least, the most exciting innovation on show was the Femtocell, the small white box that may sound the death knell for fixed line telephony. Remember where you read about it first.

Time for me to head back to London. So, until February 2009 and next year’s Mobile World Congress, it’s adios Barcelona!

Watch my report on the Femtocell here.

GUANGZHOU, China — The roar beats like storm gusts against my hotel window. It is the sound of human voices. If they are using words, they have lost any separate identity. It is simply the sound of a crowd, the elemental unit of Chinese history.

Like the police officers who sprawl in the lobby of this hotel opposite Guangzhou train station, I am tired. I know from standing among the people, for days and nights on end now, that they are also, individually, tired. Some are spent. They stagger, some supported by others, some in tears, as they proceed from barricade to crowded barricade in their journey towards the possibility of a train ride home.

But the crowd itself is perpetually refreshed.

As each new few thousand are released from one barricade, to run with their bags for a good position at the next barricade, the energy and the sound is as urgent as it was a week ago.

It is no wonder the Beijing authorities fear the crowd above everything. It was the masses that brought the communists to power. The government now is barely recognizable in its policies from those Maoist revolutionaries. But they understand the power of mass emotion.

So, they have produced a troop surge. 306,000 Chinese troops have been deployed, here, in southern China. That is nearly twice the total U.S. deployment in Iraq. The soldiers of the People’s Liberation Army are fighting what Beijing is rather sweetly calling “the war on wintry weather.”

The people crammed and crushed against barricades are perfectly ordinary people. After four years in China, I identify with them not quite as a native, but enough to understand as perfectly reasonable their desire to get back to be with their families for the Chinese New Year holiday.

The police and the soldiers seem genuinely interested in helping them, to ease their suffering. Again and again, I have seen these agents of state security racing beneath the feet of a thundering crowd to re-right a toppled pile of suitcases, to ease pregnant women and children and the frail and the simply over-emotional to a place of greater safety.

On Friday, a woman called Li Hongxia fell before the rushing crowd. By the time, she was lifted clear, she had been trampled by people powerless to avoid her. She died the next day in hospital. Li worked in a watch factory in Guandong. She was trying to get home to Hubei province.

But by the count I received a few hours ago, 483,000 people have made it onto trains. By the surf-like roar from the street outside, many many more are still anxious to try.