Today was a down day … nice, quiet.. a few really nice visits with good friends.. ..even so,  I am feeling very  blue. Not sure where it’s coming from.. .. more than likely it’s the jetlag somehow ..I’m just being with it.  As much as I like it, travel always has some  hidden  stress associated with it.   I tried to shake my mood by going out on a snowshoe this morning with Chai. The snow was covered with a sheet of crunchy ice. Some places it was too slick to walk on even with crampons. I  bend down to write Sam’s name in the snow and could barely make a dent…

Chai took atvantage of my attempts to write and grabbed my glove and ran off. she thought it was pretty funny !

She redeemed herself a bit later when I tried to walk down the sledding hill. the ice took over and I slid down out of control.. loosing my hat .. Chai ran back up and got it from me.   I bruised myself when I fell and broke my favorite $5 glasses…   Oh well,

Tyler was over when I got back.. his pants cheered me up a bit..

Gabe and Trevor had gone up to the Mountain mid day.. but it was too icy to ski/board.. so I went and fetched them at about 3.. It was a blizzard up there !

Then Diane and I went over to Tom and Beth’s. for an early dinner. Ron, Paula and Carolyn were also over.   I managed to bring mismatched slippers…   It was really nice talking to those guys..  we spent a very peaceful 3 hours over there.

Meanwhile, Gabe, Ian and Trevor had gone up to Jen and Tim’s .. We went up to get them.. and ended up staying for a couple of hours.. It was good to be around people.. One great first happened tonight.. Gab had is first Twinkie ! (and here it is for posterity). This motivated me to secretly fill another twinkie with mustard and put it back in the box.. but I confessed before we left.. The kids tried to get Evan and Marie to eat it when they showed up.. but no dice.

Well.. nothing else to report.. I’m hoping that another good nights sleep will get my emotional compass back on track.. At this point I know I sometimes just have to sit back and wait for that to happen.. it usually does.. OK .. g’nite friends .. G’nite Sam…

-me

Oh, it is sooo nice to be home. Yesterday was the longest travel day of my life .. I think 31 hours door to door. I left my hotel in Singapore at 10 AM grabbed a bus to Changi Airport and boarded Singapore Air’s direct non-stop flight to Newark. It aw just over 18 hours long.. about the same distance as the Newark Singapore direct flight I took over last Sunday. It was definitely the longest in-air flight I’ve ever taken.. A little internet research verified that SQ21, my flight yesterday is the longest non-stop commercial flight In the history of the world. believe me it feels like it ! One surprise is that the Newark-Singapore route went east.. and so did the Singapore-Newark flight. So I did my 3rd complete around the world trip in a year. The route there went northeast just south of the pole then down over England, Iraq, Afghanistan. Pakistan, Singapore.. The route back went up over japan, Siberia, crossed over to Alaska, Toronto and then down into NYC.

I hadn’t  expected to cross the pacific.. but crossing the dateline gave me back a calender day.. According to the calender, I got back to the states about 4 hours after I left.. That missing day goes in the bank somehow.

We flew over the Bering straights where all of North and South America’s indigenous people walked over from Asia.. That’s pretty cool

I didn’t sleep much on the flight,  I meditated,  thought about my akl kids, (Sam.. I felt you there) worked on my laptop, read some (Brian Green’s excellent Fabric of the Cosmos.. about the nature of spacetime.. a GREAT read) ..  I also played around with a cup of water and watched the vibrational resonance of the big airplane.. The devil finds work for the idle mind 🙂

 I finally decided to watch a movie. I chose Juno.. a story about a 16 yer old kid who gets pregnant. . The lead actress was wonderful.. and I really liked the way her parents were portrayed. the movie avoided being judgmental or preachy about teenage pregnancy, abortion, adoption. etc.. It was funny and very cool..the music was great.  I really liked the movie.

What as cool is that the Juno movie ended just as we were flying over Juneau

It was funny how the time passed. After we hit Alaska.. the last 6 hours of the flight went by so quickly. I was really happy to see us about to land.. the time had passed peacefully and quickly..

The flight from Singapore turned out to be the easiest part of the trip.. I got into Newark and cleared customs and integration in less than 15 minutes.. then I had to get to JFK to catch a Jetblue flight home. I’ll spare you the details.. but they included a 2 and a half hour overpacked, overheated,van ride with a sadistic freak-o driver…Here’s a view from the back of the van…

Then a 3 hour delay on my flight to burlington…

had a slow and quiet dinner in the packed terminal.. I enjoy eating when I travel more now than I ever have..

  Then I found a nice place to sit and started working.. I had to keep from getting too comfortable so I wouldn’t fall asleep and miss my flight.

Around 11 I was happy to run into my friend David (on the right) He and I have worked on some education outreach programs together. I sat with him as he ate dinner and we had a great conversation about the use of video games in education, physics, families and a bunch of other stuff.   It was great catching up with him.

An additional bonus is that David lives in Stowe.. so he was able to give me a ride home from the airport..   It was exactly 4AM when we drove up to the house.. I was so tired.. I crawled into bed and slept until noon !

Today was pretty uneventful.. I feel pretty non-jetlagged.. I think it might hit me more  tomorrow.   Around 2 I took Gabe and some friends into Williston to see a mvie. I took advantage of the trip to try out my new super power TV-B-Gone..   First I went into BestBuy.. I picked up a basket as part of my shopper disguise..

It worked pretty well.. Now they’re on…

Now they’re off

Here too

Here was the acid test.. one of those great big wall of TV’s.. It works great !

I tried it at Mexicali (with their permission)

I picked Gabe and his friends up at the move.. Gabe came home and noticed that the rain had caused a huge pond in our back yard. I got the idea to get out his skim board. It was very cool to watch.. and VERY cold to fall in !

Just before  6 the freezng rain finally got the best of the power lines.. the lights flickered out a few times.. then boom. Darkness all over town. It was cool and erie. We dug for candles and flashlights.

Around 6, Tim, Jen and Nate picked us up to go see Julie’s dance show GREAZZY at Higher Ground. It was a hip-hop rendition of the movie Grease.. It was so well done.. It was amazing how these girls kept moving and kept in sync so well during the hour and a half show. It was really cool.

We got home around 10 to find the power back on. Gage and Trevor had made aluminum foil helmuts to protect them from the Zombies that might have shown up while the power was out.. Good idea !..

Speaking of good ideas.. sleep sounds like a good idea to me now.. so more tomorrow. G’nite all.. G’nite Sam.

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