Triscribe

Category: Taipei

  • This is what I miss

    Traveling to upstate NY and similar scenic and historic routes: The Empire State, Route 20

    Pity I have to work when I’d rather travel :(.

  • Saturday respite

    Quiet office day today… just came from AJS place, enjoyed typical brunch with him, lots of sausages, 3 fried egss, brown rice and loads of bacon with mango, guava, orance juice to wash it all down.  Caught up with him as he was busy flying around.

    Stopped by Taipei’s first McDonald’s on MinSheng E. Road for some ice tea and fried apple pie (yes, they are F-R-I-E-D here! :D) and now in my office for some quietness.  Peace and quiet listening to Ray Gelato

    Need to catch up on my 360 degree profile responses and just general peace and my coaching homework.  Been reading The First 90 Days by Michael Watkins (HBS Press) and The Extraordinary Leader: Turning Good managers into Great Leaders by John Zenger & Joseph Folkman (McGraw-Hill).  Part of my big responsibilities is the need to develop staff both for succession planning purposes and for nurturing talent.  This forms part of my POs. 

    Heard about the heat over there which sounds real lousy, sorry about that, but that’s par for the course here.  Keep cool!

     

    Thanks for the Gramercy Park posting FC.  One I never got to.  I really love Union Sq. Cafe though.

  • Back on the ROC!

    Lots of people, when they ask me “How’s it going… how are you?” My reply has been “I’m tired”  I am really, I just can’t fake it anymore.  6 weeks on the road since mid-May, I’ve travelled on Cathay, Singapore Air, China Airlines, to KL twice, Singapore twice, Jakarta, London, Hong Kong twice…. Loads of FF and hotel loyalty points, but I need a rest :o.

    B- was already here when I came back on the 5th.  She’d done a great job on the new apartment to make it very homey.  It’s nice to come home now.  New beginnings for the both of us in many ways, from the apt, being away, catching up, and also celebrating her b-day as well.  So it’s been good.  We did some apt shopping together, got a new convection oven, microwave oven as well as accessories for her new Canon A-530 digital camera.  Apparently she only had 16Mb so automatically upgraded her to 1G so she’s got like almost 700 pictures and she’s excited about it :).

    Brought back a lot of goodies from the States… I got my b-day gift in advance already and definitely some of the best gifts I’ve ever got :D.  She picked out this awesome watch and a crochet scarf :).  Is very handy already!

    Hope everyone is doing well.  Keeping cool here in the hot and humid Taipei summer. 

    http://www.pricegrabber.com/search_getprod.php/masterid=3546791/search=Citizen

  • Popping In ….

    Haven’t blogged in a while.  Last week was in London for a Global IT conference at the Riverside Park Plaza hotel.  Cost of the conference for two days was 1500 sterling.  Fantastically crazy price.  I’ve been spoiled with the relatively low cost of Asian hotels at 5 star levels.  Riverside Park Plaza was pretty crappy blah :(.  Have to say that the Cathay Flight on business from TPE – LHR was great.  Cathay is certainly a top airline without the BA or Sing Air pricing.  Just excellent! 🙂

    Tomorrow, on the way to Singapore and staying at the Shangri-La for Prince 2 training – Foundation and Practitioner.  Company standard.  Project Management is pretty common sensical stuff though.

    Summer has arrived in Asia and I’m glad no more rain.  The humidity though… oh well. 

  • My own Amazing Race ….

    Back in Sydney, yesterday flew the red eye from Taipei to Sydney for a quick project meeting.  Sometimes, in this line of work, f-2-f is the way to go as virtual working doesn’t work so effectively.  Back at staying in Sheraton on the Park and enjoying Sydney much.  People are just so nice, pleasant and down to earth to talk to, even over work issues.

    Ordered in room service, prime tenderloin, apple pie and cinnamon ice cream.  Catching up on my personal projects on the side, watching TV (I don’t have at home), and just chilling not dealing with all the work issues.

    Flying back tomorrow morning to Taipei, then on Friday I’ll be flying to HK and hook up with FC and P-.  I’m confirmed.

    Then my June month looks like 2 HK trips, 1 London trip, 1 Singapore trip, going into early July, one KL trip.

    Whew….

  • Fly away ..

    Catching up on some blogging now at the Dynasty Lounge in Jakarta international airport before heading back to TPE.  Been on the road now for 8 days, KUL -> SIN -> CGK (Jakarta Airport code).  Glad to have missed the Typhoon up north but the weather down here has not been normal either.  Lots of rain in the early and late mornings.  In Malaysia, flash floods due to heavy rains is a real danger on the road.  Hills around the KL -> Ipoh -> Penang highway get washed away forcing the road crews to rebuild around the clock.  Making it harder is the fact that the soil around Malayia is soft redish sand/clay like substance.

    It’s a lot of work traveling getting to know people and learning what’s going on.  Met a few really nice and smart people.  Impressed with the folks here in the Jakarta office.  Wish I had them.  Team and relationship building along with skills development are the driving forces now. 

    What I haven’t figured out yet is that although it’s only 1.5 hours away from Singapore, Why is Jakarta an hour behind?  I’ll have to take a look at the map again.  I thought they’d be in the same window.

    Jakarta is a city of 11 million people, sprawling megapolis and quite beautiful, even though areas of it area quite poor.  In between Manila/Makati City Philippines, and KL.  Food delicious and the people here are just so warm, friendly and welcoming.  Refreshing compared to Taiwan despite the Taiwanese reputation for being friendly people.  My colleagues took me to Hotel Borobudur Jakarta which is famous for its oxtail delicacies and boy, it didn’t disappoint.  I’d love to come back again soon.

    Not-so-looking forward to a busy travel schedule the next 6 weeks.  I’ll be headed back to HK a couple of times, KL again, London, Singapore again.  In between I’ll have to find time to move.

    Ouch.

    Happy trails folks and be well!

  • Long Distance

    Thursday, I had AS try out the SlingBox using the new PocketPC version of the viewer software from Taipei. After some fiddling, it seems to work just as well as the laptop version, but it fits in the palm of your hand. Rats, only one person can register their PocketPC with SlingBox to use it.

    Friday, saw Man of the Heart, which I described on Thursday. Nominally, it is an attempt to bring back awareness of Bengali mystic Lalon Pkokir, who is an original source of Bengali culture, and have been used as a focus of a nonsectarian Indian way of life. However, the subtext is a conjoining of John Lennon’s utopian song “Imagine” and something of a gnostic Islamic-Hindu belief system (gnostic Christianity being more familiar to the public from the DaVinci Code and the Matrix movie series). The play takes a lot of getting your mind wrapped around. The singing is extraordinary, and it immediately brings the impressions and thoughts into feelings, even though it is sung in the Baoul caste style. (The projected supertitles help out, too). The work toured through Southern California, and will journey to India after this run.

    Saturday was the 150 mile round trip journey to Mommonth, New Jersey for P-‘s friend’s wedding. Very simple – 15 minutes for the actual ceremony, where the groom’s brother managed to get ordained from some church to be able to preform the multidenominational wedding. The area was beautiful, and the DJ did his best to get Hava Nagila blended with Pulp Fiction and Motown.

    Sunday we helped P-‘s other friend move to Long Island City. The place is really starting to take off, development wise. Afterwards, we went to the 25th annual Sakura Festival at the Brooklyn Botanical Garden, which was sponsored by Inuyuama Council Member and Brooklyn son Anthony Bianchi. We visited him last year at this time, and the NY Times covered this year’s tour. To celebrate the anniversary, he brought a 60 person contingent of cultural performers, a calligraphy expert and an artisian tofu maker. Families who had recently sent their children to Inuyuama offered homestays to the Japanese visitors, completing the circle of cultural exchanges. Anthony wants to use his good offices to formalize these exchanges into a two year cycle between Brooklyn and Inuyuama, which are similarly situated to cities such as New York and Nagoya. He is up for re-election next year, and he looks like he has a good shot – he’s done all of the right things and brought transparency to the way government works in his area.

  • Firefighting and the thing everyone has….

    Been a really tough week.  Long hours and late nights … hard to keep the eyes open.  We pretty much finished up the final round of divestiture of our area business unit.  Was so mentally fatiqued that I lost my mobile phone and some minor computer accessories that I’ll get the next time I’m over there in HK.  Although not sure when that’ll be.

    During these times of clean up and being new, you see stuff that just is all wrong and need to fix it up ASAP.  Joking with my team, I don’t mind wiping people’s asses as part of my job, but please… please…. one ass at a time rule, TYVM!

    From now on, that’s going to be my SOP rule, “One Ass at a Time”

    Starting next month, I’ll be on the TPE -> KUL, TPE -> SIN shuttle more often as my roles and responsibilities shift to other areas.  I should be flattered but the time cost is pretty high.  I just hope is going to pay out for me in the long run.  I just want a retirement home somewhere ….

    Relax today, get my new phones, maybe play some hoops and then teach English tonight.

  • On the road, jack….

    Just finished packing for a 2 day trip to HK for another set of meetings. Before that, had dinner with some Canadians, one Minnesotan and one Croatian at TGIFs. Talked about a lot of things like jobs, future, careers, exit plans, life in Taiwan, life after Taiwan, retirements, pensions and all the things “adults” worry about in life. Gee, I’m an adult now and before that I was thinking I could just play and run around the world, pretending I’m responsible and working.

    Funny how one gets to a certain age and “parental” topics come to the fore. I guess play time is over. Time to figure out how to live one’s life over the next 25 years because…. well, that’s what I’m working for now. 65, retirement, what’s it gonna be?

    Happy Easter everyone.

  • Airport living

    No, it’s not that bad.  But it seems that I’ll be maintaining the 50% flight time over the next couple of months.  My KL trip is concluding with this little blog from the KLIA Plaza Premier Lounge, courtesy of EVA.

    It’s been a good trip: managed to get a lot of work, socializing, meeting new colleagues, reacquainting with old friends/colleagues, and enjoying all that KL has to offer.  A few comments from new colleagues have been amazingly supportive and complimentary.  I dunno, when people are this positive, I always wonder when the other shoe is gonna drop.  Meanwhile, I take it one day at a time and enjoy it as much as I can.

    Going back to Taipei then flying out again to HK for two days then we’ll see what happens.  Next month, back to HK and KL again for sure.  Moving to a new apartment in early June.  About the same size, slightly more $ but it’s fully furnished and has new fixtures.  A huge upgrade over my current conditions due to the major leak damage from upstairs pretty much ruined the apartment I’m staying at. 

    I think my goal is to get 100,000 miles on Asia Miles and Evergreen (EVA) this year.  I’m just about half way there on both and I still need to follow up on the AA Gold/Plat Challenge to see that they awarded my AsiaMiles to OneWorld/AA.

    Luckily this afternoon the weather is clear, but typically at this time and next month, lots of rains come right after lunch hour.  Get on the ground, meet up with my friend Steve from Maine for dinner when I touch down.

    You go get them FC.