October 2008

Hope you all had a scary good time! I watched some old thriller on Turner Classic Movies. Dogs really don’t dig halloween and ours dislikes the noise, kids, and unusual sounds. Otherwise, enjoy the interlude.

Well, a week here in Chennai comes to an end. I spend today in our Chennai offices and then hop a flight at almost midnight that will take me back to Singapore and then make me wait a few hours for a morning flight to SFO via Inchon, Korea. That’s the long haul part of things so I’m hoping to sleep for most of the flight back since I’ll be up an evening pretty much.

The team got a lot accomplished compared to where we were last week at this time. If you do project management, you all know its like writing software. It evolves even as much as you want it discrete. But like Caro at IBM told me once “project management is managing process and people”. I’ve given a lot of thought to that description over the years and I think Caro was one smart project manager at IBM. She had the process and the people down.

Now, the bags are packed and checked. I have a day left of meetings and then hopefully some relaxing time at the hotel this evening working a bit, eating, and leaving for the Chennai airport around 8pm.

It’ll be good to get home. I get home tomorrow at noon (yikes). That means I spend a day in the netherworld of ultimate jet lag and sleep it off that night starting at about 8pm hopefully. If I can sleep through that night, the next day is not so bad. My clock is still messed up here though. I wake up at 3am fully charged and ready to go. Not so good.

Man… Last night on the rooftop of the Raintree was simply incredible. What a place to watch the spontaneous display. You all know the orchestrated way we do things with fireworks. Its all beyond our reach as viewers. Someone else decides music, fireworks, the when and how much of things. Here in Chennai, it seems all open and they came right over our heads; they blasted and lit the sky up for hours. What a show!

Tomorrow, I depart Chennai. I wish I could have done more here on the weekend but I battled with laziness and sloth and ended up going to the world’s second longest beach one day here only. Oh well, there are more trips. I’ll be glad to get home after the marathon flying and over 10k miles logged. I don’t know that I’ll blog again on this side of the world but this trip was good for me at a work level and an interaction level with the India team.

See everyone on the flipside unless I get all charged up in Singapore on Thursday morning. I’m on a redeye flight so hopefully I’ll be tired enough to sleep on the longer flight.

See ya!

Well, its Friday here and I landed on Wednesday night rather late. Did not sleep too well that night but last night, I drank a few beers and managed to sleep for about 6 hours straight. The dark side of jet lag is the waking up at odd hours in the early mornings. I got up this morning around 5am and started working. I got stuff done so it was good. Today I work with our India development team some more and I’m really enjoying this trip because it seems we’re all engaged in the process, we’re team building at a major level, and it all feels very good.

I’ll be here another week and will bow out of regular work stuff next Friday and enjoy a day or two away from work and resting. Getting older means jet lag takes longer to deal with I guess and after that I’m flying back to Singapore for a day and night and then leaving the next morning for home.

I feel very fortunate to have what I have. I was able to transition to a role that I designed myself at my company with the blessings of management from the CEO down. That felt really good. I like working on Linux and managing and evangelizing our Linux products and platforms.

Man… I love Singapore. I just wish I could have a Star Trek type of transporter. Seventeen hours, timezones, Seoul, and Singapore. Only to find out my luggage was checked all the way through to Chennai. I’m gonna have to watch that in the future. Now I’m staying at a second-rate hotel that charges wifi by the hour. Turns out that my selection could not wait and booked me a room at this other place in a so-called “suite”. But its not suite or sweet. Its kinda flaky.

On to Chennai tonite for the final fling at hours of timezone differences.

I’m really hours away from my 2 week trip to Singapore and India now. Looking at the things I need to bring, want to bring. I’ve made lists and checked them twice. I don’t know that I’ve gotten more comfortable or have better prior planning; but I have figured out there are things I just don’t need to bring traveling internationally. I don’t need to bring a wristwatch because time is going to be changing way too much. I don’t need to bring a phone even though my Motorola Q9 world edition works fine in both places. Too damned expensive for the usual phoning. Instead I use Skype. I don’t need any keys for house, car, office. Keys get lost in hotel rooms.

There are things I need to bring for a 15 hour flight tomorrow. I need books. I will probably pack 2 books and get through 1.5 of them. I need my 80g Rockbox’ed Ipod which gives me 13 hours and 40g of music without the crappy ipod interface. I need my HP Ipaq which does games, notes, etc. The Ipaq works very nicely on airplanes since its not a phone and just a PocketPC.

We were talking about how to sleep on the plane and this is something I have issues with but I have an answer. Someone at work suggested benadryl but that causes bad ju ju with high blood pressure meds. Instead I partake of the Heineken medication. Three beers and I’m done and I sleep. Its a gentle way of relaxing, becoming one with the flight, and finally easing into the hour-eating restless winked out state.

So finally, the time is coming and I’ll be in wondrous Singapore staying here for a night. Then its on to Chennai and I’ll be staying here. Both are very nice. I have little time in Singapore and more time to explore, tour, and play in Chennai. But I’ll be above sea level at the Raintree definitely. Its one of the places that create wonder with the noisy nights in Chennai. I’ll be drinking a beer too. A Kingfisher in India and Tiger in Singapore.

I’m there long enough to send postcards this time but truth be told I’m gonna be busy. This is no holiday away. This is about needs and approaches and requirements. And I’m good for all those things.

I’m planning on a rather convoluted trip this January which will encompass Japan, Thailand, and India. I think I’m lucky overall because I’m going with someone that has driven around the globe any number of ways and is  a savvy traveler plus someone that likes the act of travel. The fun part is the rather chaotic and evolutionary way the trip has evolved. We started wanting to get to Japan for a day or two of exploring and fun. We needed to be in Thailand for a world-wide sales conference after that for four days. We booked the tickets. Suddenly airfares jumped way up on the normal airlines and we had to book on a different one. Emails and calls went back and forth on travel times.

The place we are going in Thailand is 4 hours away from Bangkok so its a 12 hour train ride or a 2 hour flight. Another little evolutionary bump. Then we fly out of Bangkok and on to Chennai and have to be back to catch the return trip to Japan. Round and round we go

Now we have it just about done. Airlines are booked but alas I have not heard back from Offbeat Guides as of yet. Perhaps its for the best because this trip is definitely not guided. Its more of re-inventing every small travel wrinkle as we go. If Offbeat Guides had a section for Offbeat Guides that were Seriously Unplanned that would be the best for Todd and I.

Luckily where we work is very supportive of travel and they encourage us to go invent itineraries. This is gonna be fun and I don’t think we really need a guide. Chaos cannot be guided or it would no longer be chaos.

I’m also leaving this Monday for India and Singapore for 2 weeks. I have weekends in India. May do a day tour. Wish me well and as a friend at Visa used to tell me, to “travel wisely”.

I’ve been tracking the progress of a new multi-platform audio player since I first heard or read of it. I’ve used it on Windows and Linux primarily and with the current release; Songbird has seemed to truly arrive on Linux. Resource use seems down, issues with how the screen redraws are gone. It has a lot of plug-in and themes and reminds one of Mozilla Firefox for obvious reasons since its powered by Mozilla. I used it now and then before primarily because it seemed the stability was less on Ubuntu and the themes/skins seemed to consume way too much memory for my puny systems.

Now I’m happy to say that this player has reached a great point in its development and I’d like to say thanks to those that fly with the Songbird.

If you are out looking for something new to try; give Songbird a try. If you want virtualization for cheaper, try out Virtualbox definitely. It seems to work and is cheaper around memory and use than VMware Player.

Prologue and Past…

A friend, Theo, still calls on occasion. Theo is a Physical Anthropologist I worked with at a few places. We shared hotel rooms, dug up human remains outside of Redding, walked an electrical transmission line outside of Reno, hiked a long one out of Barstow. He is one of the few from “the day” that still calls or emails. This time he dropped me an email from a Starbuck’s or something outside of some place in some state, USA. We are both gracefully aging and he has been having questions about his passing days. We only see each other every few years. But we remember…

That’s a good thing ™. Its my perception as one ages that its damned hard to make friends. I used to make friends at work often; but I’ve had a few things which have caused my grief doing that. Now I would rather be cordial; be a colleague; do the work. Being a friend at work is risky. I seem to always lose them one way or another.

Theo, thanks for the email from somewhere, USA. I love ya, man. No one knows “dem bonez” like you do. I know you’re evolving and changing; finding the new horizon. I can have a case of suds in the fridge at a moment’s notice. Take care.