  In the first part of this paper I shall discuss the round-about way of how
the integrable chiral Potts model was discovered about 30 years ago. As there
should be more higher-genus models to be discovered, this might be of interest.
In the second part I shall discuss some quantum group aspects, especially
issues of odd versus even $N$ related to the Serre relations conjecture in our
quantum loop subalgebra paper of 5 years ago and how we can make good use of
coproducts, also borrowing ideas of Drinfeld, Jimbo, Deguchi, Fabricius, McCoy
and Nishino.
