Just back from a great night on the town with my family. We met friends and long time mentor Bill, Julie and son Ray for sushi
then headed for the Flynn to see an amazing play. It was called the intergalactic nemesis and it was basically a graphic novel presented on stage as a play with projected artwork. The dialog, music and sound effects were all live. Just watching the sound effects made it worthwhile . The plot was the old standard’ guy-comes-back-in-time-to-save-the-world-from-evil-sludge-monsters-only-to-find-that-he-falls-in-love-with-ace-reporter-with-a-telekinetic-sidekick-who-then-all-defeat-the-sludge-monsters-with-the-help-of-creatures-from-a-robot-planet.’ routine.
I have to confess that my jet lag had me comatose for 15 min of act 1 … But I think my snoring was taken as part of the excellent sound effects.
It was exciting and fun. Even more fun was seeing who else in town was tempted to see such a goofy, bizarre and fun show like this. I wasnt surprised to run into many of my favorite folks in the audience.
Ok. I’m asleep in my feet again. Gotta go climb back towards this time zone
Nite everyone, nite Sam
Had a great sleep last night. 9 hours of sleep. Woke feeling like I was in the western hemesphere again. Still waiting for jetlag.. .
I had a jampacked day with meeting that began in the early morning. One bright spot of the day was a tour of the mask house at work with friends Jim and Amy.. I’ve walked by the building for years but never asked to go in.. Today I was helping out wiht some brainstorming so they took me on a tour.. very cool.. It’s been awhile since I had to suit up to be in manufacturing. I saw such amazing things (but nothing I can share here.. sorry 🙂
At the other end of my day I had a Jolts and Volts show for a cub scout troop in the very small town of Monkton Vermont..  I had a bi of a disaster on my way there.. my electric go-cart (freind larry’s old wheel chair) .. shorted out before I left IBM.. I quickly loaded my gear on a hand pulled cart and made it there in time.. I’ll have to debug the cart tomorrow…
My show went well.. I love doing shows in small towns like Monkton..
ewwww my pickles went moldy !!!
Monkton has special meaning to me now because it was the home of my friend Jim Monzell. Jim was a long time friend an co-member of the local IEEE chapter. Jim died last year just after giving me a grant to build my new tesla coil. Tonight was fittingly , my first use of that coil in my normal show. I dedicated it to Jim in his home town tonight
Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh .. home again. .. after a very productive trip.
I got some sleep .. .but my body is still 13 hours off… so. this will be a short post. I left my hotel in Beijing just before 4AM,… and got home just about 1PM which makes for a 22 hour travel day.. Most of it upright in a cramped coach seat. I know It sounds terrible.. but .. I dont mind it.. actually.. I quite like it.. Is a great time to work, think.. and … not think. I woke up just as we were crossing the international dateline.. i was thinking.. wow .. its yesterday already …
It is so nice coming home to my wife , my kid, my dogs, my house, my mess..I love traveling.. bu I love coming home even more…
On that overly sentimental note.. Ill sign off and try to find the nights sleep I missed somewhere over the pacific.
Hello from Beijing.. I had just one day here this time.. and I worked hard to make it worthwhile.. This is my forth stay in this hotel.. and it brings back memories.. I remember buying the weirdest white socks I ever owned here.. another time I remember going to the lost and found and ‘finding’ a pair of running shoes because I’d forgotten mine (I ‘lost’ them again after I used them).. I also remember going to a whole in the wall restaurant a few blocks away and having a blast trying to communicate with the folks there.. they had as much fun with us.. One of our group (Hi David !) had the presence of mind to have brought a Chinese restaurant menu from the states.. we used that as our rosetta stone… .. so from then on we called the place ‘rosetta’s
Most of all, I like running from this place.. it’s a block off of a canal..there are cobblestone paths on either side of the canal.. and it’s just a perfect place to run in an otherwise unrunnable city.. this morning it was dark and about 20 degrees when I got out to the canal.. it was completely iced over an beautiful
before the run I improvised a quick breakfast in the room. instead of paying for the $35 breakfast I ate a whole package of oreos from the minibar.. and then ate an apple.. i think it balanced out health wise.. .. ying and yang..
Next stop was work.. I got on a shuttle bus with a bunch of other ibmers and had a great talk about work stuff on the longish drive to the site.. one of them was a Colony fan.. so we talked about that too.  Next week is the Spring Festival here.. so work was pretty quiet wiht many folks already out on holiday.. but I was able to meet with most of the folks I wanted to see.. Her’ my freind Yong-hua and her team.. they gave em a great (!!!) demo of the stuff they’ve been working on.. I was so impressed..
Yong-hua and Ling Shao and I grabbed lunch in the caf.. you can see how empty it was…
I had several great meetings there at the lab.. then new freind JY showed up from Shanghai and we headed over to a client.. You could really see the cities famous haze in the air as we drove..
The client meeting was fun and interesting.. After that JY and I went outside to try and find a taxi.. no dice.. the streets wore completely packed with traffic and all the cabs were filled.. JY made the great suggestion that we eat first.. then find cab later.. We found a great, great, great !! place that served high end Beijing style food..
You simply have to check out soem of the things on the menu.. ‘numbed and hot camel tendon’, donkey skin role, jew’s ears (a yummy fungus) , pine needle salad, stinly tofu, multi flavor intestines .. the list goes on.. !
JY made soem expert choices from the menu befitting my non meat prefernce.. and we ate like kings.. It was great talking to JY.. what a great guy !!!
We got back to the hotel around 8:30.. now I’m goign to sleep. I have a 6:50 am flight which means I need to leave the hotel at 4AM.. ugh..
good day.. good trip..
more from the road tomorrow..
nite all, nite sam
-me
