Days 5 to 7 – 5/7/09-5/9/09 – Tokyo, Japan

As The Blogger types this he is sitting in the World Lounge at Narita airport outside Tokyo, typing on one of maybe 20 Macs that Apple has cleverly provided for our convenience, trip cut short by an urgent need to return to the States to attend to some unexpected matters.  Although 2.5 days and nights in Tokyo was far shorter than his anticipated stay, and he has much on his mind right now, The Blogger felt it important to pass on to you, dear readers, several short anecdotes about his truncated trip to Tokyo (alliteration unintended).

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Days 3 to 5 – 5/4/09-5/6/09 – Delhi, India

Over the Blogger’s past couple of days in India things have gotten far more “normal” for an India trip and the Blogger has started to accumulate a number of those “what the hell just happened?” moments that one expects in a country in which certain elements feel more American than New York and lull you into thinking that people generally think the same way we do.  This all begins with the town of Gurgaon, where our offices are located. 

Gurgaon is a pecularly Indian approach to the California-style office park.  It is an enormous development with maybe 40 or so major Class A Office Space buildings between 10-20 stories tall that is becoming the hot new home of India’s Business Process Outsourcing caste and has seen an almost unfathomable amount of investment, both foreign and local, over the past 5 years.  Walking down the streets of Gurgaon feels just like walking through any major business center in the U.S. or Europe.  Until you realize that (a) there is only one road that provides access to the area, (b) in lots of places that road is not paved, (c) accessing the majority of buildings requires navigating a critical choke point in which several thousand cars and motorbikes have to make a U-turn in the middle of an 8-lane divided road, and (d) the electrical grid only provdes 4-6 hours of power on a given day so the resident companies have created an electrical co-op to generate their own power for the buildings.  The U-turn, in particular, is an adventure.  This – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WwvMR0OxiPg – is a moderate version of our daily U-turn, only ours is far, far more crowded.

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Days 1 and 2 – 5/2/09-5/3/09 – Atlanta to Delhi

The Blogger originally told himself he would not blog about work-related travel because (a) sitting in meetings and international hotels is not particularly different anywhere in the world, and (b) most of the memorable things that happen on work trips are not things that The Blogger could or would share other than on a need-to-know basis.  However, when The Blogger is shipped off to India and Tokyo for two weeks, he believes that his wider reading audience might gain some benefit from the experiences he accumulates during that period.  To that end, the Blogger will provide some few updates over the next couple of weeks of his experiences in Tokyo and Delhi, with particular emphasis on lessons learned for your benefit.

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Day 2 – 2/7/09 – Cozumel, Mexico

Since today was The Blogger’s only full day on the island, as well as my friend’s 40th birthday by designation (it was actually the following Monday, but it was more convenient for all of us to rewrite history and celebrate on Saturday), this was the day to rock and roll.  The day began early, as it dawns in Cozumel around 5:30 this time of year, so after tossing and turning a bit The Blogger got up around 6:00, made coffee, and tried to get functional while waiting for everyone else to wake up.  The Birthday Boy and His Wife were up pretty quickly thereafter, and by 7:30 or so we had a full crew ready to go.  After a couple of hours of nonsense, we headed over to a private beach “club” to hang out, suntan, swim in the ocean, and generally act like baffoons. 

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Day 1 – 2/6/09 – Cozumel, Mexico

Today The Blogger headed to Cozumel, Mexico, sans The Lady, for a quick weekend trip to help celebrate a close friend’s 40th birthday.  The bad news is that the Blogger has been on the road a lot lately, the flight is on one of those little CanadaAir Regional jets, and The Blogger is not much of a beach person.  The good news is pretty much everything else – The Blogger will be in Cozumel helping his buddy enter his 5th decade in style, will get to see lots of old friends, and plans to raise a lot of hell.  The other good news is that The Blogger’s medallion upgrade came through on Delta both ways, so he doesn’t expect to arrive in Cosumel pissed off. 

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