A Month of Travel, All Within The Country

Sorry it's been so long between posts, but I've really, really liked seeing that moose head picture on the top of my blog.

It's been a long two months of travel (October and November) and for once I haven't even left the safe confines of the US of A. After coming home from my sister's wedding in mid-October, I visited Santa Cruz, Honolulu, Disneyland (SoCal) and Las Vegas:

• Honolulu

  Honolulu was nice. I was there for a company junket and it was only for four days, but Hawaii is still Hawaii.
  
  
  
  Shelley and I hadn't been to Hawaii in about three years and really enjoyed ourselves -- mostly doing nothing.




• SoCal

  Later that week, we had to go to another junket -- but this time for Shelley's company. I was dreading going to this (as it was at Disneyland) but it turned out pretty damn good. Weather was cool and the park was mostly empty.
  
  
  
  
  Shelley got to meet the Incredibles.
  
  
  
  
  And we snuck out of the company festivities on Sunday to go down to the coast. This is Newport Beach just at sunset.
  
  




• Vegas

  Just a week after getting back from SoCal, I was off to Las Vegas for a week to help run a training conference for my company. It was friggin exhausting, but I did get to go to a subzero bar (Minus 5 Experience).
  
  
  
  
  Yes, this was a complete waste of money. And yes, that is Elvis. But I think that is the point of Vegas.

I've just got back from Chicago and Columbus this week, which rounds out my travel for the year. I'll try and get those pictures up this week.

Amy's Wedding

Amy's Wedding, originally uploaded by /k.

Two days of flying back to Ohio this weekend resulted in Shelley and I seeing my younger sister married (and my niece Grace).

More photos on my Flickr page.

My Summer Vacation (2008 Edition)

As I mentioned in my last entry, I actually did have a large number of half-assed half-done posts from this summer, that hadn't progressed enough to be posted. Instead of trying to finish them, here they are in their half-baked glory:

• I bid farewell to my goat neighbors. This made me sad, as the goats were much more lively than the horses. And they used to continuously screw with their owners whenever they weren't promptly fed (which is often with my slackass neighbors). As a tribute to my goat friends (of which I nicknamed mama, runt and rowdy), I present to you my favorite video of rowdy the goat:
  
  



• I became a professional photographer:

  Hi /k,
  
  I am delighted to let you know that your submitted photo has been selected for inclusion in the newly released second edition of our Schmap California Guide:
  
  Arco Arena
  
  Thanks so much for letting us include your photo - please enjoy the guide!

  Sadly, this photo sucks. And it came from my old Treo mobile phone.



• We endured high winds and epic wildfires. For a few weeks in June/July, it literally looked/smelled/felt like the entire state of California was on fire. And being near a large body of water, we got to see a lot of the firefighting preparations first hand:
  
  



• The summer was not completely without travel. I had to make a quick swing through Asia to present at our fiscal year kickoffs, which basically meant that I flew for about 10 hours every other day for one week to present for 1 hour total. However, this did leave some free time which I was able to fill. Below is a picture of the Sapporo Beer Station, which is on the Sapporo Beer Headquarters grounds in Ebisu-ku, Tokyo, Japan.
  
  
  

I am sure there were a few others things along the way, but this should bring you up to date.

Maglev

I've spent the last two weeks shuttling around China, reviewing some of my company's offices. I'll write up a longer entry later this week, but I wanted to post some video while I was still thinking about. The clip below shows my trip on Shanghai's Maglev train between the city and Pudong International Airport. The clip is almost the entire ride -- since it last only 7 minutes to cover 30 KM.



Although it doesn't show on the video well, the train leans about 30 degrees.

I'll have some more pictures and video from Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou later this week.

Mumbai Tourist

I had a free afternoon in India a few weeks ago and since the entire country was watching the Twenty20 Cricket World Cup or celebrating a Hindu festival, I decided to do some sightseeing with my driver Anand. I kept it short and visited:

• Gateway of India
• Kamala Nehru park
• Mahatma Ghandi's residence

Overall it was a good trip. The only real problems came as I was rushing to the airport to leave: my flight was scheduled to leave just after the Indian cricket team arrived home from winning the World Cup. The resulting traffic jam left me barely minutes to make my flight.

Tiger Live

Here is the video that I threatened you with earlier this week. It chronicles my free day in Singapore two weeks ago.

Some setup, since the video audio is somewhat soft:

I went to Tiger Live thinking it was the home of Tiger Beer, one of my favorite beers in the world. Instead it turned to be a cross between a night club (they have several inside) and Disney world. If Walt Disney had taken a lot of acid in the '60s. At one point in the "experience," they actually showed hops "having sex" as a metaphor for fermentation. Unfortunately (or fortunately), they didn't let me take any video inside but I did get some video at the bar (they gave you a few free beers afterward. I think it was a reward for sitting through the "experience").

To add insult to injury, it also turns out that you can actually tour the brewery.

I also captured some video from near my hotel in Clarke Quay.

Here's the video:

Seoul Food

I still haven't finished editing my cinematic masterpiece on Singapore, but I did cobble together some footage from yesterday night's trip to a traditional Korean restaurant here in Seoul.


This video is embedded with Google Video, which lowers the resolution and quality a fair bit. If you want to see the higher resolution (640x480) and quality (H264 encoding) version, subscribe to the podcast in iTunes or your podcaster. I changed this over to Revver because Google Video was doing strange things with the images. You can subscribe to the iTunes feed, click here. You'll get each video as I upload them and you can sync it to your iPhone :>

I'll post my video from Singapore once I get home and I can make some sense out of it.