Another busy day… the theme for the day was ‘weird liquids’. It began with  breakfast.. with three colorful mystery juices.. all good.. all unidentifiable. 

We then bussed our way to the  IBM site for the day… Here’s Curry dutifully displaying his badge . this is NOT a place to flaunt the rules.

We spent the morning learning more about the emerging business geography of Asian.. that includes Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines,Thailand, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Myanmar,  . IBM has rapidly growing businesses in the first 6 of those. We met with the IBM technical leaders of those countries today in a combined in person/phone conference It was really fascinating to learn more about the technology and business capabilities of these places. The growth is phenomenal in almost all of them.. the skills are amazing too. there are so many bright technical minds over here.

I personally spent part of the morning exploring a small drink stand next store. I bough one of each weird drink think I could find including:

Then we had lunch.. they served us another cool green drink for desert.. this had little green worm like things in it . It was awesome.

Here’s the group we met with today. They were really wonderful hosts.. and very talented technical people.

We spent the rest of the afternoon in round table discussions with the technical leadership.  We were trying o brainstorm on ways that the worldwide IBM technical community could serve them better. It was very good getting their perspective on the company and our technology.  love meeting new communities like this. 

This guy’s name is Chai.. I proud to say that I managed not to say ” I have a dog with the same name as you” , which I think is the right thing to do in this culture.

At around 5:30 the meetings were over. A group of us piled in a cab and headed downtown. I had arraigned to have dinner with my friend Lucy.. and a couple of the gang came with me.   As we drove to the restaurant we crossed the ERP zone.. this is a special system that taxes cars on busy roads during rush hour. It’s designed to cut down on congestion.. and it really works… it was designed by IBM… which I think I’m proud of (though I don’t think I’d like to have this system in Richmond)

Lucy had chosen the restaurant..it specialized in real Singaporean food.

The meal was really good. lots of shredded papaya and chili sauce.. .. Here’s a picture of us.. that’s Lucy to my right .. Diane. Gabe and I came and stayed with Lucy and her Husband Lip when we came through Singapore last October. They were wonderful hosts… Lip is in California now visiting their daughter.   It was great seeing Lucy again.. it was a nice dinner.. good conversation.. we talked about religion. meditation. and vegetarians.

For desert, I just had to order durian just for Gabe.. He thinks it’s disgusting just because it smells like a garbage truck. I happen to love it because it smells like a garbage truck. You think I’m joking ? The bus this morning had a sign in it that said ‘no smoking’ and ‘no eating durian fruit’ . This was durian puree over sweet potatoes.. it was pretty strange and good..

Curry tried some on a dare…

Lucy had to be somewhere by 8 so the rest of us grabbed a taxi and went back to the hotel.   I fell asleep in the cab again..   I’m going to try and get a good night’s sleep tonight. I fly back tomorrow at noon.. another 19 hour non-stop flight. I’m actually looking forward to the quiet time again. I’m glad that I’m heading home. I  really miss Diane Gabe, Chai and … Satori (the puppy’s name at this point…. )

OK.. all for now. More tomorrow. g’nite my friends, g’nite Sam.
-me