Project Schedule

My project at work has been pushed out a month and may be pushed out even further eventually. While this is good news because it pushes out lots of work for at least a month, it also pushed my travel schedule out. I was supposed to be "done" with this crazy travel schedule by the end of September. Now, it looks like it will be at least the end of October before I slow down my travel.

The good news is that I get to be home for the entire month of August. Who's free for dinner?

More Pages

I have the thicker 48-page U.S. passport (normal passports are ~24 pages). I have had it for 2.5 years and entry/exit stamps and visas have filled the pages, so now I am getting pages added to it. I sent it out on Monday and will probably get it back in a couple of weeks. Then I'll send it to get a visa for China.

The only issue is that I feel a bit "confined" without my passport. The good news is that I can't be sent out of the country until I get it back. So, it looks like I'll be in the US for at least a few weeks!

Early

I am very tired today. I think it's jetlag. I worked from home this morning because I had back-to-back conference calls and someone was coming by to work on the house.

This afternoon, I rushed into work for an important meeting. When I arrived, I thought I was late for my meeting, but actually, I was early. In fact, I was one week early...

Better Photos

Wedding

On Saturday, under beautiful clear blue skies in Monterey, my friend Susan and her fiance Mark were joined as husband and wife.

I love the moment during weddings when the bride and groom first see each other. There is always something so moving about that moment. And it was at that moment that I could see how incredibly happy my friend was as her father walked her down the aisle.

Congrats Susan and Mark!

My garden terrace

A picture from my garden terrace suite at the beach resort last
weekend. This was the private terrace area outside of my room. I
couldn't get all of the space into the photo...

Mean

They look innocent until they surround you and start hissing.

Taking Credit

There are parts of my job that I enjoy and other parts that I could live without. Nothing really upsets me except when someone else takes credit for something that I did. My management is really good at ensuring we are all recognized for our accomplishments and they give us credit for the work we do, so it doesn’t happen that often

Today, a supplier took credit for something I had to fight with them to get done. And they were blatant about it. They had the nerve to present it to my management as “their idea”. Their director was sitting next to me in the meeting and he apologized to me for taking my idea as theirs (he was there when I was fighting with them to get this activity done). Sigh.

Part of me doesn’t care because it doesn’t matter as long as the product coming off the end of the manufacturing line is good. Then there is the part of me that is really bothered by this. If they want to present it to their other customers and their own management as an idea they came up with, that’s fine. It’s not ok that they presented it to my management as their idea, especially while I was in the same meeting.

Lucky for me my management already knew that it was my idea before this.

Paradise

Picture from the beach resort

Exhausted

I am exhausted today. I had conference calls until midnight. I fell asleep shortly afterwards. Then, my phone rang. Since the call originated from the US, all that showed up on my phone was “Unknown Caller”. Then, the unknown caller called again. For some reason, my voicemail is not working on this trip, so the caller called again. All in all, I had 5 missed calls from the Unknown Caller between 12:30 AM to 1:00 AM. Now, I have no idea who called 5-times last night.

Then at 3:45 AM, I woke up. I could hear a dog barking and howling outside my room. Strange since I was on the 10th floor. I looked outside and it seemed like it was one of the neighborhood stray dogs. There are a lot of stray dogs in Asia.

Any chance to go back to sleep was lost. Now I’m tired. Luckily this is my last day in the office here. I fly to Singapore this evening and tomorrow, I make the long journey home.

Rain

Sunday was another rainy day at the beach resort. It started raining at 10Am and didn't stop for the rest of the day. Plans to parasail and ride wave runners were exchanged for a quiet day in the room watching illegal DVDs that I found at the night market.

The downtime was welcomed since I've been pretty tired on this trip. Just 2 more days of work here and then I get to go home. I start my travels on Wednesday evening, stop over in Singapore, then fly home on Thursday.

VIP

Saturday evening, I invited a colleague and her husband to dinner at the hotel restuaruant. It's a pretty well known restuarant across the island. When we got there, we were told that the tables were all booked.

While we stood there deciding what to do for dinner, one of the managers from the restaurant walked by and recognized me. He asked if we were there for dinner. I mentioned that they were all booked so we were trying to figure out what to do instead. He promptly gave us a table.

I’m starting to feel like a real VIP here at the beach resort. That probably means I’m here too much…

Monkey

Today’s activity was to see the top of Penang Hill. The initial plan was to take the funicular train to the top, but we found out this morning that the train was down for repairs. While most people decided to skip Penang Hill, I decided it would be a great idea to hike to the top.

This turned out to be quite a long hike. We climbed really steep slopes continuously for 5K, got to the top, saw a few sights, then hiked back down the really steep slopes. On the way down, there were monkeys everywhere.

First it was one monkey, then we would turn the corner and there would be 5 or 10 monkeys. We would get away from those monkeys and then there would be more a little further down. They kept surrounding us and hissing at us. One monkey stole the sunglasses off the head of some tourists in front of us. They were trying to coax the monkey down with food to try to get them back. We didn’t stick around to see how it turned out.

I was very happy to be finished with the hike. Mostly because I was glad to be away from the monkeys!

Hotel Heaven

I had planned to spend the weekend in Singapore, but the weather forecast was for thunderstorms, so I changed my plans. I decided to try the beach resort (again) and my friend from Singapore will join me later today.

I checked into the Shangri-la's Rasa Sayang resort today after work and got quite the surprise when I walked to my room. It is HUGE! GIGANTIC!!! I couldn't believe my eyes when I walked in. Yes, it was THAT big. In the main living area, there is a small kitchen, a desk, a bathroom, a dining table, a sitting area, and a balcony. Then the bedroom is big and I can hear my voice echo when I am in the master bathroom. There is a jacuzzi tub in there along with a huge, separate shower.

The best part of this room is that I have a garden terrace. Yes, this is in addition to the two balconies in the main room. I estimate I could park at least 5 cars on the terrace if there was a way to get them up to the 6th floor... There is a big patch of grass along with two chairs and an amazing view of the ocean.

Spoiled isn't even the right word for me anymore. I may never leave here.

Toothbrush

I'm not sure how many of you realize this, but I have a "touch" of OCD. Yes, I have some obsessive-compulsive behaviors, but I think most of them are justified.

For example, I do not like it when other people touch my toothbrush, especially the housekeeping staff at hotels. No matter how nice of a hotel I am staying at, I put my toothbrush away after using it every morning.

This morning, I was very tired and woke up a bit late... and I forgot to put my toothbrush away. And I know the housekeeping staff touched it because everything in the bathroom moved around from where I left it this morning.

Now I have to decide if I am going to use my toothbrush or throw it away. Sigh.

To the housekeeping staff at hotels: PLEASE DO NOT TOUCH MY TOOTHBRUSH!!!

Back to Work

It was back to work for me today. The rest of the week will likely be busy, so I will not write unless something interesting happens... I'll be in touch later this week.

Have a nice week!

Kuala Lumpur

Here are some pictures from KL. It was a fun weekend, but really busy and now I'm exhausted. I hope they don't mind if I'm not 100% tomorrow at work!

The KL tower - I wanted to climb the stairs, but my friend insisted we take the elevator...

The Petronas Twin Towers in KL.

Was the tallest building in the world until Taipei 101 was finished...

I think they look like corn cobs.

Road Trip

My friend from Singapore joined me on Friday evening. After a few hours of rain on Saturday morning, we decided to check-out of the beach resort and take a road trip to Kuala Lumpur (or KL as the locals call it). It took about 6-hours to drive down to KL because the downpour of rain in certain areas required really slow driving. It is normally a 4-hour drive. I'm exhausted, even though I wasn't the one behind the wheel!

By the time I checked into the hotel, it was quite late and they were almost out of rooms. So, they upgraded the room to a suite. This may be the biggest hotel room I have ever been in! It has a separate dining area, a 1/2 bath, a living room, a big bedroom and a huge bathroom. It is so nice that I may stay in and relax all day.

LET ME OUT!!!

Today (Friday), the elevator got stuck in our supplier's brand new building. That's not such a big deal except I was INSIDE of the elevator with three other people at the time. We walked in, someone pressed the button, the elevator started moving, and then the power went out.

It was pitch black inside and I could feel the panic instantly wash over me. I never thought I had claustrophobia, but it turns out I might... The darkness was overwhelming and it started to get hot in there. We pressed the alarm buzzer, but no one came. We pressed the alarm buzzer again. Still nothing. It's a holiday weekend here, so lots of people had left before us.

Then I remembered that I had my iPhone in my pocket. I took it out and there was no signal in the elevator. Crap. But the phone was still useful because even the little bit of light was reassuring. Luckily, our program manager was able to text for help.

We spent a total of 10-minutes stuck in the elevator. It seemed like forever. Although the confinement was stressful, the darkness is what really got to me.

I think I will be taking the stairs for awhile...

Senses

Last night was very strange. I somehow managed to lose two of my five senses. I could not smell anything and I could not taste anything. This made for a very bland dinner.

I'm very happy to report that those senses are back this morning. Probably had to do with my cold...

Rain

Once again, I am amazed by the rainstorms in Asia. I suppose this is because it rains so infrequently in California and when it does rain, it's no where near the tropical downpour that happens regularly here.

It has been raining for 2 hours now. The rain is causing so much noise in the conference room that we can not hear the people on the phone. We finally had to postpone some of our meetings until tomorrow. Now I am wearing earplugs and can still hear the rain.

This may put a small damper on my weekend at the beach resort...

SE Asia

I'm in South East Asia at the moment. As I just learned, that means south of China and east of India. So far, I have spend one day in Singapore and two days in Malaysia. Work has been rather quiet, but will ramp up over the next week.

This weekend is a 3-day weekend in Penang. It's the Governor's Birthday and Monday is a holiday in the state of Penang. I'll be headed to the beach resort again. I thought about taking a trip to another city or country in SE Asia, but since I've been sick, it's probably best to stay local. This will be my 3rd stay at the beach resort and it is starting to feel like a "regular hangout" rather than a really fancy beach resort.

Yes, I am spoiled, but we already knew that!

No Durian

I never realized signs in taxi cabs were so amusing until recently... Here's one prohibiting the very smelly fruit, durian from a taxi cab in Singapore.

More Mickey

The new stuffed toys at Hong Kong Disneyland (the store at HKG
airport)... These are weird to me.

To the “Gentleman” in seat 15H…

I would like to inform you that you are the most annoying passenger I have ever had the fortune (or misfortune) of sitting next to. And I’ve flown lots.

First off, I thought you were joking when you asked me if I was strong enough to open the emergency exit door. Then you asked the flight attendant to make sure I was strong enough to do so. That’s when it stopped being funny. As I informed you and the flight attendant, I am more than capable of opening the exit door in case of emergency.

I tried to brush off the first incident since you seemed like the “nervous” type. Then you went on to tell me about how well traveled you think you are. I almost laughed when you said that you finally made Premier status on United last year. That’s 30K miles in one year, right? I flew that much just in the month of January this year.

I’m pretty sure you didn’t pick-up on this, but when I put my earplugs in and my noise-reduction earphones on, it meant I wanted you to STOP talking to me. Even reading a magazine and pretending to watch a movie didn’t stop you from trying to talk to me. I’m not sure what you thought was so important that you couldn’t wait to tell someone who cared, because I wasn’t actually listening. I just nodded my head and smiled to be polite.

Also, when the flight attendants ask everyone to close their window shades so everyone can enjoy their movies and sleep, it is totally rude to keep your window shade open. Everyone else had closed their window shades, why is it you felt the need to keep yours open? Are you scared of the dark? Do you need vitamin D from the sunlight? You weren’t even looking out the window!

On your next flight, please try to keep your arms and your stuff in your own seat during the flight. Business class seats are big enough so that your arm and your things should never cross over that imaginary divider between our seats. And I'm not trying to be mean here, but you really should think about your personal hygiene. You smelled "less than fresh" and that's saying something since I can barely smell anything because of my cold.

Thank you for making the first leg of my journey today one of the worst flights I have been on for a long time. I should have given up the exit row seat when I had the chance. I just didn’t realize you were going to be quite so annoying!

Oh, and by the way, thank you for your card. Chances are you will not be hearing from me since I tossed it in the first trash can I could find.

Sincerely,
Me

Off Again

Well, I am off again. I am in the United lounge at SFO airport, waiting for my flight to Hong Kong. For the next 30+ hours, I will be on airplanes or "in transit".

I'm feeling mostly better. I am still a bit congested, but nothing too serious, I hope. Nothing a 3-week business trip won't fix. Have a good rest of your holiday weekend. I'll update my blog when I get to Asia.

Salad Spinner

First, I want to apologize to all of those people who have salad spinners.

Why?

Because I seriously thought you were all nuts. CRAZY! I never voiced it, but in my head, I thought the salad spinner was the most useless, space-hogging "tool" to have in your kitchen cabinets. I could not imagine ever needing one or wanting one. And I figured there were many other ways to get water off of lettuce.

Well, today, I bought a salad spinner. Have I lost my mind? Probably. Mostly though, I got tired of wasting paper towels and eating wet salads.

Now I feel the need to apologize to all of you who had to read this blog entry about salad spinners.

Time for bed!

The Doctor

I thought it would be a good idea to go see my doctor today. I don't want to travel with anything serious and even though I figured it was just a cold, I went anyway.

And guess what? It's just a cold. Shocking, I know. But he did give me a prescription for antibiotics to be filled on Saturday if I am still sick.

At least I won't be that person you hear about who infected the entire plane and now they need to be tested for TB.

Why is it so cold?

As I sat downstairs on my sofa, I wondered why it was so cold.

I walked upstairs to check the thermostat. Walking up the stairs was
difficult because I was achy.

The thermostat said it was 74.

Then I checked my temperature. The thermometer said it was 101.3.

Sigh.