… hand-me-down shirt and all!

I dare say this shirt is the defining one of our family’s next generation. Purchased in Japan and sent to Ella in Virginia before she was even born, handed down to Ryan in Canada – and now back in Japan on the Naokster. Manger Du Pain! It still hasn’t lost its coolness.

While we’re all waiting for more videos – how about some snapshots of life with the original genfab adventurer? I spent this past week in HCMC, Vietnam while Makiko & Naoki have headed up to Niigata for some family time. Here’s but a few oddities and highlights of my quick trip …

hcmc vietnam

While the rest of the family remains up in Niigata – dad works hard in Tokyo and gets in the odd bit of geocaching to keep his mind off the great emptiness of our apartment. Gotta get those stats up and see more of this ginormous city …

tokyo geocaching

… back before too long!

View Larger Map

My week in Beijing was – dare I say – delightful!

From my perspective the city has changed dramatically. There are tons of new buildings – of course the Olympic ones – but also a fantastic new airport which I would rank in my top 3 (… Vancouver still being #1!). Even the attitudes of people have changed. I recall getting yelled at last time by an airport Immigration officer for not having a pen … well now – they have machines installed that let you instantly rate the service you’re getting on a scale of 1 to 5. Sweet!

I regret not having more time for sightseeing – but that’s the way these business trips go: work, work, work, see a few sights from the car, rush back home. One of these trips I must take in the great wall…

In any case – I did take a surprising amount of pictures for a business trip. Read on to have a look see and join me on my business trip!

beijing

Call me crazy – but I’m looking forward to my next trip back to Beijing.

iPod – check. Nintendo DS – check. A book for all those periods of “no electronics” during take off and landing – check.

… oh, and how about flying on the newest planes in the skies?

That’s right – the Airbus A380 – the largest passenger airliner in the world. With two full decks that can seat between 525 and 853 people – making it 50% larger (!) than a Boeing 747 – it is truly an impressive feat of engineering.

I had three legs of my journey on A380′s – all with Singapore Airlines. It is by far the most comfortable I have felt sitting in economy class. I can only dream of what the suites onboard would be like… someday, someday.

While the leg room and seat sizes were pretty typical of economy class – the part that really impressed me was the smoothness of the ride. The take offs and landings were easily the most fluid I have ever experienced. The size of the plane must have some impact on turbulance too – or least we got lucky with weather – because it didn’t feel nearly bumpy as normal.

Food? Great as always with SA – I even pre-ordered Indian vegetarian food to spice things up!

Entertainment system? Largest screen I have ever seen – and an impressive array of the latest movies, TV shows and music.

Yes – if I could, I would fly exclusively A380′s going forward – but unfortunately there’s only about 5 in service today. At this rate they’ll never get me back home to New Brunswick…

a380

I think about stupid stuff all the time like how to get free hotel porn pay-per-view movies, how to maximize the amount of free soap you get, and why oh why do the maids in EVERY hotel I’ve EVER stayed at do this:

Does my toilet paper really need daily folding? I don’t do this at home – and it works just as good. In fact – I’m a bit grossed out by the fact that someone has touched my toilet paper and folded it as such. Call me a germaphobe – but I always throw away the first 3 or 4 sheets since they’re not clean enough to grace the bottom of my soiled arse.

Am I alone here? I don’t think so…

Now, India was back with a vengeance – and there was no escape. Our hero was destined for hard times in Mumbai and Pune… or was he?

Read on to find out how our hero fares in the latest episode of this epic drama…

… So, I had another business trip to India, eh. Let me just say this:

India: 0
Scott: 2

Haha! Try to get me to drink your disease ridden water will you? Take that!

Again I have managed to escape unscathed. This time the trip wasn’t so cushy…

I landed in Mumbai a week ago Sunday and got a ride first thing Monday morning with our local business partner to Pune. Pune is a dwarf of a town (about 4 million residents) compared to the mega city of Mumbai (over 10 million). Needless to say, these are both extremely crowded and poverty stricken regions like I would imagine most places in India to be.

The three hour drive between the two cities was interesting. There are actually some decent stretches of roads along the way. At one point we stopped at a rest stop for a quick break. Our partner asked me if I’d like a snack, to which I shook my head and replied “I’m ok”, but was interpreted as “Yes – please, and find me something gross!”. The snack consisted of a steamed rice bun thingy, a fried spicy donut thingy, yogurty type sauce stuff and insanely spicy looking sauce stuff. It being my first day in the country I was a bit cautious of eating anything – especially from a dive such as this one. I nibbled at it a bit to be polite, but really didn’t have much of an appetite mainly due to the place’s lack of basic sanitary procedures (yes, your hands really shouldn’t be filthy when handling your customer’s food).

When we arrived in Pune, we were told by the customer to come back after lunch – so we went for pizza – Indian style. That was actually quite tasty and the place appeared to have their rat situation under control. Picture regular vegetarian pizza but with a spicy curry sauce instead of your classic tomato one. Overall I really enjoyed it – aside from the half dozen black hairs I found in mine….

Lunch time in Pune that week turned out to be quite an adventure. The next two days we ate at some pretty dodgy looking establishments. No sir, no award winning fine dining by renowned chefs. HOWEVER – let me tell you – it was possibly the best Indian food I have ever had. Fresh roti breads. Palak paneer. Chilli fried paneer. Tikki Masala. It was all so very tasty! I was a bit concerned about my digestive system, but so far – everything was working normally! Hooray!

The work finished with great success in Pune so I was able to go back to Mumbai come Thursday. While my hotel in Pune wasn’t that bad, my final night in India at the Hyatt Regency was awesome. That place is an oasis in Mumbai. Outside – craziness: dirty taxis, filthy roads, crowds of people. Inside – American style serenity.

On Thursday night I had a personal tour of Mumbai from one of our partners in town, and it was so eye opening. He took me on the train system from a station nearby my hotel to central Mumbai. While I don’t have my own picture of what the trains were like, this is very accurate:

I thought the trains in Tokyo were crowded – but this was a degree worse. They are jam packed, and the doors don’t even shut. People hang on for dear life in the doorways. I even saw a few kids riding on top of the car! Insanity… Fortunately, the line we were on wasn’t that bad. We rode in the “first class” car which – believe me – is not even close to as good as it sounds. At least we could actually sit down though.

For dinner – McDonald’s. That’s no typo. McDonald’s. In India. Scary? No! It was good! Really good! And clean! Really clean! Cleaner than some McDonald’s here I might add. They didn’t have any beef hamburgers of course, but I did try a fried potato veggie burger, along with one of these:

A McCurry Pan! I opted for the paneer one – the vegetarian choice. It’s amazing how many options they had for vegetarians.

One final hectic day of work there, and then I was back on a 12 hour flight to Sydney. Good week all and all – and no nights on the toilet. Bonus!

For a bit more detailed look (well, at least of some of the hotels where I stayed) – have a look at my latest photo album.

Take a look at the rest in the photo album.

Thanks Pete and Steph for the hospitality!

Finished work a bit early on Monday afternoon, so it gave me a chance to get around and take some pictures. I even had a chance to do a bit of geocaching – a great way to get out and explore an unfamiliar city.

Wish I had more of a chance to get to know Adelaide better – but such is the life of the business traveler. Next week – back to the northern hemisphere for a couple weeks: a conference in Orlando (woo! Disney World!) then a stop over to visit my bro and my new niece!

Hate those flights, but it’s going to be fun…

While in Wellington for work last week, I took some shots and videos here and there – for my good ol’ pal Murf. Here’s the results of gluing them together to music in hopes of maximizing their entertainment value:

Enjoy!

Update: For those wanting a more static view of Wellington, I’ve also uploaded some random pictures here.

It was good to be in Hong Kong again. It was my first time there in over 4 years. I think part of me thought that I would never get another chance to go. It just goes to show you, you never know what’s around the next corner.

Hong Kong was pretty much how I remembered it. There were a couple of times last week where I had major deja-vu – not realizing that I had been down a particular street before until I got there. Weird really. One thing I didn’t remember about Hong Kong though was the massive amounts of foreigners living and working there. Seems like every street I walked down and every subway car I rode on – there was some other white, black, Indian or otherwise non-Chinese face around. It’s much more of a global city than Tokyo is by a long shot.

While I was there primarily for work – I did have a chance to look around a bit. Did I take many pictures then? Well, it’s pretty hard to when your camera battery runs out on the first day. I knew I should’ve packed the charger. Another lesson learned the hard way.

What did I get a picture of then? The mini bar menu:

“Mini bar menu?? What the… why bother??”, you say. Well, this caught my eye:

Panda – only $38 HKD! Not a bad price to pay for a chance to eat an endangered species! I wonder what it tastes like. Let’s dig in!!

Oh… that kind of panda. I’ll pass. Looks too chewy.

Seriously though – I did get a couple more pictures, but not nearly as many as I had hoped. Have a gander in the album. I’m never leaving home without my charger again!

If you don’t get it – check out the name.

It’s no fake either – check out their site. Someone’s parents have quite the sense of humour.