I am too immature for the latest flu outbreak. The idea of catching diseases from Mexican pigs either leads me to a joke about a friends’ taste in girls or thoughts of piggy doom, which eventually lead to this mental image:
These pigs are for science!!!
People are dying, stupid brain.
I want a bookcase that can hold the my huge collection of books now and have room for the Library of Congress I hope to some day possess.
I want a bookcase that celebrates, even fetishizes, books and book ownership.
I want a bookcase that laughs at the gray lady and has never heard of goddamn email.
I want a bookcase that screams in your stupid kindle face, “BOOKS MOTHERFUCKER!!!”
Most specifically, I want this bookcase. Two tons of wood and a riotous price tag. A monument to love. A tower of babble.
Who the hell is paying $100 for a two year old goddamn Ikea bookshelf? Some fucktard must’ve told these assclowns that was the going rate for saggy aging pressboard.
I want names!
Has it been so long since I’ve posted that everyone’s dropped me from their blogrolls?
I offer no apology and certainly can’t promise to improve. I ask only that you thank your Product Managers and tip the waiter.
Unfortunately for Hank, the rest of my entry into Korea was pretty uneventful. BofA shut down all of my debit/credit cards, but luckily, Chase was not so anal with my United card. The KAL bus desk took Visa, so – after a quick hour fretting that I was going to the wrong hotel – I arrived safe and sound.
Granted, the Korean team needs product features tomorrow that will take months to produce and I have no labor to spend right now, but that’s nothing new.
Korea was pretty uneventful. Running back and forth from partner and prospect meetings and working through some minor jetlag, I didn’t really get a feel for Seoul (except the cold, my Dad warned me about February in Korea…).
Oh well, I’m sure I’ll be back.
Then I was off for the second leg of my APAC trip, Japan, Wednesday evening.
My entry into Tokyo had its own charming ignominy. Even after re-activating all of my BofA cards, I never actually handled Won. Arriving in Japan, I thought my debit card would work, but I didn’t know for sure. This concern, the late hour, and a few mini-bottles of wine on the flight, made me forget to check my iPod Touch currency convertor before taking cash out.
Two days in Tokyo? I’ll take out $100 to start with. Let’s see 90,000 Yen…
Yes, 90,000 Yen is $1000, a bit much for two days. Ah well.
My instructions for Tokyo were much sketchier than those I had for Seoul: take the monorail to H-something station and then take a cab to the hotel. I knew without ever having been there that the Tokyo rail system is just a minotaur short of mythical doom.
Luckily, the monorail is the simplest part of the Tokyo rail system. The airport is on one end and Hamamatsucho station is on the other. Lord knows I had enough cash to pay for a taxi to Yokohama and back four times, even if this didn’t go well.
The hotel was straight 70’s, which I now understand to be very Tokyo, but they of course had a robo-toilet. No internet was a major turnoff, so stole the two yukatas from the room in retribution.
Our Japanese team had me present five times over the course of the day. We broke it up with some kick-ass sukiyaki in Shinjuku and sushi in Ginza to gear up for a long night of sake and karaoke. Being “strong for alcohol” is apparently an important part of whether or not the team liked westerners and I’d like to think I did America proud.
This guy (front-right) had an encylcopedic knowledge of Sake and their alcohol volumes. So it’s partially his own fault that I can’t remember his name.
I had the whole next day to myself. It was raining, so I just returned to Ginza (the 5th Avenue of Tokyo) to do some shopping.
Neil had asked me over gchat in Korea if I had knuckled under and eaten western food. I finally did at the airport. The options were pretty weak in the Star Alliance terminal, so I did enjoy the first McDonald’s I’d eaten in a few years. It certainly felt surreal to leave Friday night and land Friday morning.
My company has an annual all-expenses vacation for sales reps that make their quota. The reps and management also pick top performers on the operations and product side to take part in the fun. This year the trip began on the 22nd and I was nominated. So, a scant 45 hours at home, and Liz and I were off to Cancun.
Can’t be overly effusive about a free vacation with an activities budget. It was awesome. Liz and I made a concerted effort to do absolutely nothing, spending the entertainment budget on massages. And I tried desperately, while surrounded by coworkers and sales guys who all wanted something from me, to not talk about work.
We extended the trip by one day, which turned out to be a good idea, as it seems I would’ve been sick for the first few hours of the flight. I’ll blame that one on the water.
Now home, there’s a lot to do. Work, apartment hunting, packing and moving. So no more travels for a month and a half or so.
Next stops? Back to Costa Rica? Columbia? Viet Nam? Probably the east bay. Woo-hoo!
I pride myself with being a tight traveller – no frills, no mistakes, no stress – but I bungled my entry into South Korea.
Roughly 13 hours after stepping onto UA 893, I stumbled off. I was tired, half-dead really, and a little buzzed from the cheapo wine the GIs next to me had snuck on in a water bottle. That guy was some kind of sorcerer…
I had three tasks on the agenda:
Bumbling through immigration, I can’t seem to get any service on the crackberry. Don’t I have a global card? Do they not have GSM over here?
I head over to the nearest international ATM. I can’t decipher what the hell they’re trying to express about my transaction, but no money comes out.
No cash. No phone. Five taxi drivers a minute propositioning me. I was starting to panic.
Back to survival training: count your assets. I had a non-functioning BofA debit card, a BofA credit card, a Chase credit card, and about $12 US. I had instructions on the KAL bus process and an address, written in Korean.
I decided to try my luck at the KAL desk, but had no idea if they took credit card and, if they did, that Chase wouldn’t shut that card down too. I also knew that there were two hotels with very similar names and the slightest slip of understanding could put me on the wrong side of town with just two useless plastic rectangles.
Giving a shit may be a career liability.
