Auspicious Beginnings

The start of my second trip to Japan is starting off much better than the first. For starters, on the way to the airport my flight wasn't cancelled which, for those who fly a lot, is a huge pain to deal with.  I got to the ticket counter for Japan Airlines the recommended 3 hours early. Well a tad more than that and the counters were devoid of helpful staff. Just a sign stating check-in would begin in ... well, 15 minutes. That wasn't too bad!  I spent my time watching the ants mill through the TSA lines. Poor people that don't get the PreCheck on their boarding passes that have to go through all the song and dance and long lines. Some are comically nervous when they get to the TSA agent and their wallets, boarding passes, purses, babies, etc. go flying and falling to the ground. I kid about the babies falling to the ground, but the amount to chaos caused at the agent is astonishing.  After a few minutes of entertainment a half dozen smartly dressed, young women come streaming around the corner as if summoned by some silent alarm the dozen travelers waiting in line are also not aware of.  They confer behind the counter in hushed tones momentarily and flow out in front of the counter, space themselves equally in front of us, bow and greet us in Japanese saying "Welcome and good morning!"  (Much better than the agent a the counter on my first trip basically telling me: "Too bad. Go over to this other airline and buy a ticket last minute and once your whole intineary closes, THEN we'll refund you for canceling your flight. Buh bye now.")  I'm politely handed back my passport, luggage claim tags, and boarding pass. Those that have been to Japan know how they hand items to you...  With more than a little trepidation, I noticed that there no bright, cheery TSA PreCheck staring back at me on my boarding pass. Anywhere. Well, my GlobalEntry will get me to the TSA agent without having to wait and he confirms my suspicions: if it's not printed on your boarding pass, you need to remove your shoes, laptop, etcetera like everyone else. Oh well, a relatively small hassle. Avoiding the long line was the key thing.

Now I'm in the JAL Airspace Lounge enjoying my "layover" until boarding time. This time is a non-stop to Narita on a 787 Dreamliner. I had this chance last year but opted for the upper deck of a 747. It was a good choice and I recommend it if any of you get the chance.

Bucket Lists and Big Sheep

     Easter Weekend.  A huge deal here down under.  A four-day public holiday.  Nothing open, except for occasional restaurants that want to pay their staff hefty wages for working weekends AND holiday pay.  So, there’s no one in the offices, most of the work is wrapped up and what isn’t needs the in-country people to be engaged with us to work through issues.  So here we have our quandary.  US people don’t have days off for the Friday and the Monday, but can’t do much.  So … what to do?  Thursday night we started pursuing one of my bucket list items.

     Now mind you, this is Thursday night before the four-day Easter weekend in which in entire continent takes a holiday and schools start a two-week break.  Chances of finding cheap accommodations, airfare, or anything like that would be very slim.  My goal: The Great Barrier Reef.  There’s a tour company that offers a day of snorkeling the Reef, then a night out on a pontoon under the stars 40 nautical miles from shore, more snorkeling and diving in the morning and then back into shore around noon with meals included.  With my heart set on that and those in my small group of two others, someone looked at airfare into the Whitsunday area.  Flying into Hamilton Island was $1,600 roundtrip.  Welp, there goes that bucket list item for this trip.

     Not one to give up so easily, I took the proverbial reins of the ipad and told the others to continue their wine and beer drinking whilst I worked some 1s and 0s magic (maybe).  A relatively quick look at a couple other locations to fly into (and after closing the 87 apps the person had open on their iPad) had me looking at round trip flights for $208 USD, car rental for $72 USD and a two-hour drive from Mackay to Airlie Beach where we needed to be.  Doable?  Hell, yeah.

     One of the group wanted to book the flight and car right then, but I wanted to wait on the dive/snorkel availability first.  So, in the morning, she was going to call at 8am and check the availability on the ReefSleep tour.  Well, sadly, that was a bust, all sold out for Friday night.  However, there was a day trip available that was $80 USD cheaper.  I’d miss out on seeing some incredible star gazing, but still get the major reason I wanted to go.  So, we all dove in… see what I did there?  5:00 PM flight to Mackay, on the ground by 6:30 got dinner, and we were at the hotel around 9:30, just before the downpour of the hour.

     The next morning, I was awash with excitement.  It would be a two and a half hour fast boat ride to Knuckle Reef.  During the ride we met two interesting guys (from Orange County no less!) who are working on a movie that is being filmed at Gold Coast.  I can’t say much here on the interwebs, but I will tell you all in person when I see you. ;)  Needless to say, it’s a big movie.  They’re off for a week or two as well and getting some diving in at the Reef.  There was a gaggle of college students from all over the States studying at the University of Brisbane.  It was neat to chat with all of them.

     So, I really didn’t “dive” the Reef in the sense of using SCUBA equipment.  However, using the term “dive” in the sense of swimming under water, then I dove the Great Barrier Reef.  I spent as much time under the water looking around as I could.  I didn’t have cash to fork over for the dive lesson/equipment rental/etc.  Instead, I spent about five hours swimming around the Reef.  A very moving experience to say the least.

Sunset in Airlie Beach.

     One of the tenets I try to live by is that I would rather regret doing something than regret not doing something.  I have no regrets at all other than it was a bit expensive to do the trip.  It will be something I cherish for as long as I can remember.  The cost of the trip will fade from   The fact that I was swimming with lion, trigger, parrot, angel, damsel, and all sorts of other fish, interacting with giant clams, looking at some pretty bright colored coral in places, and in general seeing one of seven natural wonders of the world, I was humbled by the whole experience.
memory.

     The next day, we had to travel back to Mackay and fly back to Brisbane since I had a flight from Brisbane on Monday morning to Sydney.  So we decided to see the beaches down there.  It was Easter Sunday.  Here is what my Easter Sunday looked like:

Me at Blacks Beach, Mackay.

Eimeo Beach.  Crowded, eh?

     I’m writing this from my new digs in Bondi Beach.  My apartment is 3-4 minutes’ walk from dozens of restaurants and shops.  Another couple minutes brings you right to Bondi Beach.

     The words to a song have been running through my head since I landed here that some of you may know:  “Here we are in New South Wales.  Shearing sheep as big as whales…”.  Well, signing off from New South Wales:  cheers!

Binna Burra

Rainforest hike: check.
Seeing Australian animals in the wild: check.
Not being bit by snakes in Australia: check.
Seeing a snake: check.
Still not being bit: check.

How did you spend your weekend?  Did you get to see an Antarctic Beech tree?  I didn't think so.  Eat your heart out, Rich...  While not a Jeffrey, Ponderosa, or elusive Foxtail Pine of the Sierra, just the name alone to me says that this tree would have been rare.  Unfortunately not.  It was everywhere.  The rainforest was FULL of them.  Its ancient heritage is from Antarctica apparently.
So, yes, my first day off in this beautiful country I went 110km from Brisbane to the Lamington National Park into the Binna Burra rainforest.  One item off my bucket list: walk in a rainforest.  A couple of minutes into the hike there is a small little station that you can sanitize your shoes.  That is a clever little idea not to bring nasty pathogens into the ecosystem.
     After duly sanitizing my shoes, I head up the trail.  We don't have a ton of time for the trails and can't make it to a waterfall that is 11km away, but that would be a great destination.  It would be a negative hike too and not having my boots for the hike would have made it a bit uncomfortable. FYI: negative hikes mean your destination is lower than your start so going back to your car is all uphill.
     All told, we walked a nice loop with a side trail to an interesting rock formation and then went to look at some what they called "caves" which are really just rock outcroppings that made my hands itch to climb.  The views were nothing short of stunning.  To borrow words from another author: "There are moments that will live with a person for ever."  I have pictures, but as most who have been to majestic places have been, they really pale in comparison to being there.
     Certainly one of the highlights will be seeing a pademelon.  Unfortunately, the lighting and the timing of the shot I was able to get only afforded me a blurry shot of vegetation.  Still a cool experience.  The other wildlife experience was marginally benign.  The snake was merely sunning itself and slither away harmlessly.  I did see about half a myriad of butterflies and many, many very small lizards.  It seems they either don't grow very big in the rainforest there or get eaten once they are a bit bigger.
     Lunch at a bunch of rock formations they named caves was a very cool way to end my outing in the rainforest.  The view out over the valley was incredible and quite worth my first day off in this country.  My loose plan for my weekend next week is to have Friday off for a Football (Rugby) game (Broncos versus Cowboys) which should be a good rivalry game I'm told.
     I got home in time to catch the last vestiges of the setting sun.  This is my view for the next few weeks at night:

Nearby is a very cool pedestrian bridge to south bank that I decided to see if I could meander and find.  No worries about finding it at all.  The views are spectacular, but better pictures will be posted when I have them.  Apparently there was a smudge on the lens for all those shots.
 

A Quick Way Down

So, a typical Monday: dealing with secure data issues, high profile problems and then the email pops in the inbox with a simple subject "Australia" and an almost even equally brief body: "Call me when you get a chance."  Hmmm.  Intrigued to say the least, I sign out of the secure area I'm in as I get no phone communication capabilities when working what I was doing at the time and extricate myself from the NORAD-esque concrete structure and go see if there's daylight still in the real world and get cell coverage again outside.

My cell phone call was, to say the least, very informative.  "They" (I will use "they" to protect the innocent or whomever I deem I want thank you very much).  Anyway, this pronoun of "they" want me in Australia and apparently want me on that plane now, now, now.  Why am I still here?  Umm... Can... can I do laundry first before I go please?  Yes, apparently I can.  So with a little conversation I'm given some details I've asked politely for.  "Where in Australia?" being one of them as I believe it is a large CONTINENT with most of it being classified as outback.

A day later I have all I need, the exactly where (sort of), the exactly when (sort of), and how long (sort of).  I book flights, apply for visas (oh right, Kari's joining me down under at some point), and a service apartment for the month-ish that I should be there.  Apparently last minute flights half-way around the world book up quickly and I wasn't able to get anything until Sunday afternoon.  Actually there were flights earlier, but since they'll let me fly business and the only thing available was economy, I put my foot down and said "there wasn't anything reasonable available flying out on Friday or Saturday."  They said, "OK, come out Sunday and we'll see you on the ground here on Tuesday morning."  Crikey.  So, while you all get to enjoy gaining your hour of Daylight Saving Time, I get to enjoy my losing a day of sitting in an airplane.  Well, it will be in business class, paid by work so I probably will garner no sympathy from anyone here.

As for how long I will be gone and where?  That's the real question. You see, I *should* be in Brisbane until April 10, but that all depends on how things go over the next few weeks there and what the team sees when part of it goes to Canberra on Tuesday.  I could be going down there for some time.  In short, I could be in one place for a month or in several over several weeks.

I do plan to update this space with my sojourns but I have been told that what I am going into is a veritable maelstrom of crap meeting a deadline of monumental stature so my free time may be very limited resource.  However, I have told them that I am flying my wife down to meet me when the work is finalized to enjoy a vacation and they're all fine with that.  I just need to find out when "work is finalized" and where I will be so I can fly and meet Kari somewhere down under.

An edit from the airport:
Just a word of caution to my friends and family who may be reading this: if you'd like to avoid any issues checking in for an international flight to Australia, a) make sure you have completed the visa process online like I did and b) however, not like I did, make sure that the line for your "given name" on the form is indeed your first AND  middle names. This way your granted visa matches your passport and your check-in process will be more of a breeze.  It was not a huge deal here at the commuter terminal at 3:15pm on a Sunday and a matter of a simple code a supervisor needed to supply ("SXA", consider yourselves empowered) and I was on to TSA check. No Pre-check for me this time (why did I get Global Entry anyway?).  No matter, I was the only one in line and they were all joking with me and each other. Very lax.  Much better start than my September 18 trip to Japan if you all may recall started with it being canceled as I was 20 minutes from the airport.

Well, thus starts my meteoric wait for a commuter plane to LAX kicking off a stellar layover until my 10:30pm flight to Sydney. At least I will be able to get into the United Club and be a bit more comfortable there.

Off to the east…

Well, not the Far East, but east none-the-less.  I was home for three days and then I was lucky enough to win an award from my company and they are sending me to Texas to pick it up and attend a ceremony.  So this trip is much different than the one I am just recovering from.  More "fun" type of work than "easy" type of work.

This may be a boring read for many since there isn’t cool new stuff to see, but it will give me an avenue to relay a travel experience I hope none of my lovely readers ever experience and is the second time for me.

I arrived in Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport and hopped off the plane with my minimal carry on (just a laptop and ipad really).  I was able to finally get TSA Pre-Check flying out of San Diego and it was much quicker (if the scanner isn’t malfunctioning so bad that it is picking up the change in someone’s pocket 15-feet away).  Didn’t have to remove the baggie of liquids (if I had any), the laptop, or my shoes.  I highly recommend using it if you can.  Anyway, back in Texas:  I head to the baggage claim area (they have one for every gate or pair of gates it seems).  Follow travelers on my flight gleefully, almost mockingly, trapse away with their bags, but mine?  Mine and three other passengers seem to have no luggage.  Sure enough, the conveyor belt stops signaling the end of bags and the raising of the middle finger to me and hopes of stress-free travel.

No problem, right?  This happens often enough.  I head over to where two … human beings are sitting.  I state that I just landed and all the bags seem to have been delivered, but mine is missing.  I’m asked my flight number and am told that hasn’t landed yet.  Um… riiiiight.  Well, I’ve been here for about 20 minutes and I assure you that I have landed.  He says that they’re probably not done unloading.  The “helpful scale” on which I’m judging these two … humans (I don’t even want to dignify them as being employed in a capacity to which they are obviously not fulfilling), has now broken through the lowest levels recorded in eons.  He says that he’ll call down “to the ramp”, which I take it to mean the area where the gorillas shuffle bags from plane to cart and back again ad nauseum.  After a quick conversation, he says that he’s been told that they haven’t finished unloading the plane.  Umm… the other 98% of the passengers have already walked away with their bags and there are only four people waiting for bags.  Try again.  One of the … humans … walks away to see what is going on down there.  He comes back stating he got nothing but attitude from the ramp people and promptly called his supervisor.  He’s moving up the scale now.  After getting a call back from the supervisor, he informs us that the ramp crew was on a shift change and our bags should be en route any time.  As if on cue, the carousel whirrs to life again and four bags magically appear, one of which is mine.  So, the shift change caused a 40-minute delay in four bags.  You want to know what’s wrong with America?  Unions.

After that fun, it was a 30-minute long wait for a car and then figuring out the labyrinthine ways of DFW airport.  I <3 GPS navigation.  Check in at the hotel: 2 minutes.  My third hotel in as many weeks and they’re increasing in “meh” each time.  Oh hey! I can get ice here!  It’s a good thing, because it’s 102°F.

I unpack and meet a co-worker in the lobby later for dinner.  He used to live here and we head to a “good chain” steakhouse that won’t set us back $100 each.  I had the Cowboy bone-in rib eye.  It has been a while since I had rib eye and it was nice to know it is still really good.

We chat over dinner about stuff we have worked on together over the years but have never met (he lives in Melbourne, FL currently), colleges we work with, etc.  A fun night to be sure, made even better by his insistence that he buy for “all the work that you’ve done for me over the years.”  Fine; I get beers tomorrow.   Speaking of beers: I did get a chance to stop by a local beer joint to browse their bottles and walked out with a beaut:

So I have no idea how big a production tomorrow will be or how big a deal these awards are (fairly if they’re willing to fly people in to get them), but I will update tomorrow if I get a chance.

Last Times

I wanted to start my last day in the office early to make sure I got everything done before I left the country.  Breakfast was back at the Garden Lounge overlooking the beautiful garden (go figure) and it was overcast out and promising some precipitation.  The walk to work was somber and I purposely wandered through the back streets to impress that upon my mind and not the dull, main traffic street as my last memory.  I pass by Bic Camera knowing that I’ll be here in a few hours to buy a printer and a monitor for one of the users.  I get into work and now know the trick for getting in if I’m the first to arrive.  I apparently am not the first and spend a couple minutes chatting with the one other in the office as I wait for my tea to seep.

Bic Camera is an onslaught to the senses.  I can read about 2% of the displays.  When there with one of the office workers I’m just there to answer the technical questions they may have or I have them translate my questions.  We settle on a printer and a monitor and I carry them out.  They personally strap and create handles for you to carry out your boxed items including wrapping the handle in bubble wrap to make it comfortable to carry.  These people think of everything.

One thing I that sticks out about that store is their very catchy jingle, but if you hangout in the PC department or the TV department for long, you’ll hear the very catchy song from Frozen, “Let It Go”, a few times in English and a version in Japanese which sounds pretty cool.  It’s no AKB48, but it was good.

Getting all the new hardware installed was no problem and I say my goodbyes to some of the office staff that are heading to meetings at the US Embassy and the Japanese Ministry of Defense.  Afterwards, a couple of us head to a shabu-shabu place for my last lunch on this trip.  That was a fun and relatively healthy lunch and even came with a choice of mango pudding or orange sherbet.  That sherbet was perfect for the 85% humidity outside.

The afternoon was filled with last minute emails and minor panic items and me trying to get receipts scanned so I can get my expenses paid.  I say my good-byes and “mata rai nen” (see you next year) and I’m corrected to just “mata ne” (see you later).  That sounds a lot better.  I am looking forward to coming back and helping these people and seeing a bit more of this country.

For the evening, I decide to go back to Akihabara and explore Yodobashi Akiba.  Remember my description of Bic Camera?  Ok,  same number of floors, but the floors are about 8-10 times larger and one floor is dedicated to restaurants.  It was crazy in there.  I wanted to explore a bit more of the Akihabara area after browsing through Yodobashi Akiba but the weather report had lied to me when it said no chance of rain and I didn’t bring my rain jacket with me.  Oh well, there will be a next time.

I take the subway back and as I finish my final trip on the Tokyo Metro, I have ¥75 left on my PASMO card.  Perfect.  I will keep the card and use it when I return.  I didn’t find anything tantalizing on the 8^th floor of Yodobashi Akiba for food so I decided to try one place that I have been passing by practically every night.  It is usually busy and tonight was no exception.  It always smelled awesome, but I had so many other restaurants on my list that I never got to this one until tonight.  This was a great little find as well.  It’s a restaurant where you order meat (or tongue, or inards) that is thinly sliced and you have a small, round grill in front of you and you cook your food to your liking.  It was very cool and very tasty.  There were two native-looking people sitting next to me and they struck up a conversation in perfect English with me as they were leaving and made a suggestion on what to order next time.  This was their first time here as well and they too had passed by it a few times in the past and decided to try it.

On my way back to the hotel, I spot three guys from the office sitting in front of a pub.  I sit and join them for a bit for conversation.  It has been a while since I’ve been able to just listen to a conversation or contribute to one.  It was a nice experience.  All four of us are staying in the same hotel and we talk shop as we head back to our rooms and get ready for tomorrow’s long day.

I now sit relaxing and typing the last entry in this blog for this trip gazing out of my hotel room window at the skyline of east-south-east Chiyoda-ku.  I am amazed at the luck I’ve had getting here, the memories I made, the new friends I’ve met, and the joy of visiting a country I’ve longed dreamed about but never thought I would get to experience.  One week was not enough for me.  Two is just about right.  I’ve seen a lot, experienced a lot but I am ready to come home.  I am looking forward to coming back and it will be even better as I will be able to bring the love of my life here and share what I have found in this beautiful country.

Wrapping up a business trip can be a bit taxing.  Finally finishing jobs, tying up loose ends, saying good-byes to new friends are all part of the experience.  A bitter sweet end to the work here for now.  As the last day of this sojourn completes, I am thankful for the opportunity that got me here and to all of you for allowing me to share my times here.  Relaying my experiences helps me keep a connection to all of you and makes the distance seem not so far after all.

On The Importance of Literacy

Stay it school kids and don’t forget to learn all you can about this emerging technology called “computers”.

Today: rainy but that’s cool, I like rain.  This city is still pretty in the rain and how it was built to handle it.  Apparently snow is a different story here.  First dusting and six people die in the morning commute and everything is fine again.  In a society where walking and biking are the primary forms of locomotion after the subway, it can make for some interesting situations I am told.

Breakfast was at a place that wasn’t a buffet.  The only place here where your coupons for breakfast of the four that isn’t a well-appointed and disguised food trough for guests.  It was also a place that served traditional Japanese breakfast.  It was delicious and I can only assume by the ingredients, healthy.  Another bonus was that it was just beyond the Garden Lounge from yesterday so I had a pretty amazing view of an uninhabited garden.

Work was nothing but calm.  There was a meeting that started at 8:00am (an hour early for the office) and I needed to help someone just before.  So I made it, even in the rain and breakfast, by about 7:40.  I got the meeting going with not much work, finished working on the one user’s computer I needed to and then waited for others to start showing up.

It seems they finally realized that their IT support only had two more days in country because I was bouncing between the three offices constantly.  As soon as I would get one fixed and try to understand what the next issue was with a different user, the first would have a question.  Towards the end of the morning, I was having to fix “panics” involving printing when I knew it was just working (user changed the default to Microsoft OneNote) and basic usage questions for Outlook.

It is still cooking on the plate.

Lunch wasn’t until 1:00pm, but that was just as well as we went to the Kobe steak house just down the road and it can be incredibly busy between 11:30 and about 12:45.  Oishi kata desu!!  (Was very tasty).  So we drag ourselves back to the office through cold winds and wet sidewalks.  The steak place is maybe about a 45 second walk from the front doors of the office building so it wasn’t too long outside to feel cold.

The rest of the afternoon I felt like Bill Murray in Lost in Translation in the scene where he’s film the commercial and the assistant tells him that the director wants “more intensity” after going on a 20-second tirade.  One of the users in trying to understand Outlook was asking me questions that would be the equivalent of something like:  “I have two rock. One for moon, other in shoe.  How can I make ocean become rock for old way?”  Umm, OK.  I *can* help you, I just need to understand what you need.  So I got the bilingual person to assist and after, and I not kidding, an energetic, three-minute, back-and-forth conversation that had me thinking of ham, she explained what he wanted and about two minutes later I had him all set.

Thinking I was done, I head back to my desk to check on the situation where someone locked their account and we had to wait for the UK to wake up.  Yup, I’m dealing with friends and family in the Pacific  and Mountain time zones, co-workers in the Pacific, the international support team based in the East and the international server team contacts in the UK.  16, 15, 13, and 9 hours behind me, respectively.  Joy…  I didn’t get to enjoy myself too much with email as I was called back to answer some other issues about transferring contacts from Outlook Express [shudder] to Outlook.   Welcome to comma-seperated value address books.  I hope you didn’t have any commas in your addresses or comments or anything like that.  Oh and since it is basically a flat text file, just guess what happens to all those kanji characters when converted to text?  If you guessed it looks like ASCII up and barfed in a file, you’d be right.

After 6 again, I drag myself from the office for the penultimate time for this trip with a slight sense of sadness.  To feel better, I apply a copious amount of すし.  I’m sure there is a kanji for sushi, but that is how I know how to spell it now.  Walking around Akasaka-Mitsuke, I'm beginning to be able to read more.  Now I need to start learning what words mean.  Time to get a dictionary.

Tomorrow’s sojourn may be very brief or it may be a long night.  I may go to Akihabra again to stroll through the electronic nirvana some more.  I was way too tired Saturday night to enjoy it.  I’ll have to check the balance on my PASMO card to see if I have enough to get there and back.  They have Japanese language learner devices. I may look for one and see how it works.

Mata ne