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

It’s about 10:30 at night on a warm and drizzly night here. I’m just back from a very big dinner.. I’m mega jetlagged.. but I don’t want to fall asleep until I’ve had a chance to digest a little. That’s what blogging’s for !

I’ve got surprisingly little to report today.. it was another productive ll day meeting with my friends. I only stepped outside once before dinner. The food in the hotel is really excellent.. lots of choices . This morning, for example, they had four colors of juice. I was drawn to the green one… I poured myself a big glass

… then started thinking.. the last time I poured myself a big glass of something green .  and we remember how that went

Well.. no need to worry this time.. this tasted like fuzzy strawberry juice.. maybe it was kiwi or something..

The morning meetings went fine.. then it was time for lunch.. They had this great sashimi bar again.. Yum !

After lunch I had a good meeting with my friends Steve and Bill. Steve’s wife Helen died  about a year and a half ago. Bills wife Linda died last July. We’ve formed a small traveling support group around our shared experience of loss. Today we got together to talk about writing a short personal account of our experiences at work that IBM could give to people who have experienced loss, their management and their peers. Our hope is that sharing our experiences of what grieving on the job has been like for us might help other folks  understand  how they can best help their employees and peers. Believe it or not, there isn’t much material to help people in the workplace understand what to expect with this kind of loss.. Maybe it will help someone.. maybe not. In any case, it will be healing to work with Steve and Bill .

The afternoon’s meeting was interesting and lively. I went upstairs to drop my stuff off  before dinner. I stuck my key in the door.. no green light.. it was read.. I tried again.. red light..

.. then it dawned on me.. My key had been in my shirt pocket right behind the Sam button I always have… And.. what’s on the back of my Sam pin ? A magnet !. I had completely zapped my key… I started laughing.   I had to schlep downstairs and get my key reprogrammed..

Funny trick, Sam…

A few minutes later,some of our local IBM colleagues came by and picked us up for dinner. It was nice driving around during daylight. It’s an amazingly topical place here.. I learned that we’re just 17 miles north of the equator. (or 70.. I wasn’t sure which)

Our destination was a Chinese seafood restaurant overlooking the ocean.

The food was delicios and plentiful.. They started us out on jellyfish

Eventually this guy showed up…

and some chili crab (a regional delicacy)

.. and prawny things..

.. and green stuff with abalone  ( i was about to sprout gills at this point)

then we ended up with seaweed based sweet agar

and finally shaved ice with coconut milk and tapioca..

I had eaten sort of sparingly but I was still so full I could hardly move.. Dinner was great as was the conversation. Here I am with one of our hosts.

and the other folks at out table. (Ragu’s leg, Curry, Lori, Chris, Fukinaga-san, Charlie…)

Here’s one of the other tables from our group viewed from outside.

As we walked back to the car we looked over and saw people water skiing.. but we saw and heard no boats.. as we got closer we discovered that this was a skiing contraption that used a system of cables and pulleys to pull skiers around this large lagoon. It was pretty cool !!  We didn’t have a chance to try it tonight..It looks like fun though.
 

OK.. that’s it for now.. My jet lag is taking over. More tomorrow. Talk to you all tomorrow. G’nite Sam
-me