My Asia Adventure

As both of my long-time readers can tell you, I normally don’t post much real life stuff. The occasional review, the attempted wry observation, the scarce links to actual news or events of the day. Not that I’m trying to keep it a secret from you both, but time has been somewhat on the scarce side of every equation I’m involved in these days. That and sleep. But after this past week I thought I’d at least attempt to write down some of my adventure in Singapore and Shanghai. When I first started to document these adventures, this was much more timely–the trip took place at the beginning of August. But as soon as I returned I got swamped with an application launch and then pulled back into my old job for a 30-day special assignment that is neither special nor an assignment.

Actually, it is an assignment, but that didn’t sound as cool. Anyway, back to the trip.

My company, for those who know, is all over the world. And my job works with team members from all the major regions. So part of this job involved visiting various team members and offices to see how my project could help. I visited Ireland and England back in March, a hectic 7-day trip where I spent more time in conference rooms than sleeping. So naturally it came time to visit Asia, a hectic 8-day trip where I spent more time in airplanes than sleeping.

Of course, I could have slept on those planes, and I did pass out a few hours here and there. But being in my movie starved mode I couldn’t help but take advantage of the time to take in some flicks. I’ve already posted some reviews and the rest will slowly trickle in, but this was pretty much the order.

Benchwarmers — Didn’t start out well, this was actually the best choice available for the long flight to Tokyo. After watching it, I think staring out the window would have been far more productive.

Underworld: Evolution — After seeing Benchwarmers, the second Underworld movie felt like Citizen Kane. And by that I mean not enough color and way too long. But a good distraction. I brought this with my portable DVD player, because you just can’t trust the airlines to stock up on anything good.

Pit stop in the Tokyo airport. This was a shocker. Japan has a reputation for being on the cutting edge of technology, right? So you’d expect the Tokyo airport to be a shining beacon of glass and steel and technology so awesome you think it’s magic. Instead, 90% of the signs are hand-written on paper and taped or stapled to bulletin boards. A bus transfers you on the tarmac between terminals–not even a covered moving walkway. And the seats on the bus…let’s just say they’re not up to American design standards. I sat across two of them and I think I got a bit of the guy in front of me’s spleen on my jeans. Big surprise there for me. And the business class lounge was very uncomfortable and I had to pay for internet access. Lame! But my flight boarded soon enough.

MI3 — Once inside Asia, the movie selection stepped up a bit. Not that MI3 was a great movie, or even very good, but it’s perfect for an airplane. No plot worries, no concerns about missing a line of dialogue when the pilot comes on to tell you that, yes, in fact you are travelling through the air and don’t intend to land until you reach your destination. Thanks, Captain Bob. Oh, goodie, a translation!

Inside Man — Yet another perfect airplane movie because you can watch the first 15 minutes, take a decent nap, then watch the last 15 minutes and get the entire impact of the movie. I caught the middle section later just to confirm. Yep, didn’t miss anything.

My first stop in Asia was Singapore, which was awesome. Singapore, for those that don’t know (and I was one of them until I landed there), is a small island just north of the equator. This means it is always hot, always humid, and plants get watered just by being alive. Everything is very green, and they’ve done an amazing job of landscaping the entire city without having to pay for a silly water bill that I face every month to keep 4 flowers and a tree alive in the dry Texas heat.

People in Singapore love to do two things: shop and eat. This means that everywhere you go there are restaurants and malls. And malls with restaurants. And restaurants that have their own malls. And I am not making this up: my hotel connected to a mall, which connected to a subway stop that if you didn’t go in but turned left was actually an underground tunnel that had a mall that connected you to another giant mall. I literally walked for 3 hours between these malls and passed 8 Starbucks. Outstanding!

Also, an interesting note, there was a Carl’s Jr in the foodcourt. I love Carl’s Jr, and they were plentiful in California where I grew up but they are non-existent in Texas. I have heard rumors there is one in San Antonio, but I think it’s a cruel hoax invented to torture me. But there’s one in Singapore. So it turns out I just have to go there to get my Western Bacon Cheeseburger on.

The shopping, although plentiful, wasn’t a very good deal I found. Given currency exchanges I found all the prices to be very comparable, maybe a few bucks saved on something as expensive as an iPod. I even went to a 7-story mall that focused on technology stores. Amazing to see so many stores in proximity all selling the same brands, and none of them good deals. I guess the Internet really has changed how I view pricing these days–a much larger marketplace for us to choose from.

The travel clinic I had visited prior to the trip scared me enough not to eat at any local places. I had one nice dinner with some team members at a fancy restaurant around the corner from where the Singapore Sling was invented. I tried one–nice, very little kick. And the various courses were very good. But the rest of the time I was just too chicken to try…well, chicken. So I just went back to the hotel and ate there. Very lame of me, but I didn’t want to catch something like I did on the trip to Europe.

The hotel food was actually decent, and I had two important discoveries. First, I tried their asparagus risotto and it was bad. This made me feel pretty good since risotto is a dish I’ve been working on for a while now and feel I have it down–and I also feel like mine was much better than the mushy stuff they served me.

The second discovery was Chicken Kway Teow. This is a Singapore dish with thick noodles and amazing spice combinations and is quite possibly the best non-sushi asian dish I have ever had. I had it one more time the next night it was so good. Amazing, amazing stuff. Various recipes are online, but they’re pretty complicated. Still, may have to try soon because it rocked. Yeah, that’s bold type, baby–rocked!

So after some good meetings in Singapore I went to the airport to catch a flight to Shanghai. I’d heard two rumors about Singapore travel. First, that the airport is the best in the world. Second, that Singapore Airlines is the best in the world.

Both are true.

The airport is yet another mall, but we’re talking high-end stuff and lots of it. Not sure if there were good deals or not, since I’d had enough of stores for a couple years. But the airport also had a movie theater (other terminal, so I didn’t go), and a rooftop pool. A pool? A pool. Plenty of flat-screen TVs to catch the news and probably a lot of other cool stuff I could have seen if I didn’t go into the business class Singapore Airlines lounge.

{cue heavenly music}

Now this is a business class lounge. Plenty of comfortable chairs and tables and workstations with free wired and wireless internet. Free. Not charged extra like in Tokyo. And the standard juice/drink/snack bar has some hot dishes including…Pork Kway Teow. Not quite as good as the chicken version at the hotel, but still damn tasty. I only had one serving…at a time.

Eventually I had to leave the comfortable confines of the lounge for the flight itself. Here was another surprise–I was so out of it when I checked in that I didn’t realize that I hadn’t gone through security. Someone had checked my boarding pass, but no X-ray machine. The X-ray machines and metal detectors are actually at the gate. At first I thought this was strange and inefficient, but then I realize that if every gate has 2 X-ray/metal detectors, then with 50 gates they have about 100 entry points to service all the passengers. Compare that with an airport like Chicago which also has about 50 gates but maybe 4 entry points to service all the passengers. Brilliant! The line sped through and in no time I was on the plane.

{cue extra-heavenly music}

I am not going to talk about the super comfortable seats on Singapore airlines. I am not going to talk about the amazing 5 or 6 course meal I was served or the chefs they hire as their executive council (including Gordon Ramsey who inspired my current risotto kick). Instead, I’m talking about entertainment. Singapore Airlines has 80 movies that you can control–start, pause, rewind, fast forward. Yes, 80. They also have 100 TV shows. And 150 CDs worth of music that you can create a custom playlist from. And about 40 games, 10 of which are multiplayer so you can compete against other passengers on the plane.

Singapore Airlines is #1. All other airlines are #2 or lower.

The flight wasn’t long enough for me to watch everything I wanted, so I picked my top 2 movies (and they were both movies I had really wanted to see).

V For Vendetta — Awesome.

Thank You For Smoking — Awesome.

Sadly, the flight was over before I could get a third movie in. The wonders of Shanghai awaited me. As in, I wonder what I would have thought of Shanghai if I hadn’t gone to Singapore first. Shanghai is much more industrial, far less green (although not noticeably cooler or less humid), and I felt less comfortable walking around then I did in Singapore. Maybe it was those strict Singapore penalties (I think you get your privates attached to a battery if you jaywalk), but I far preferred Singapore.

Shanghai is also an interesting city to walk around in because you can see it’s still very much in development. I walked an entire mile and passed only two Starbucks! Honestly not sure how these people live.

But being accosted in their shopping malls was not a lot of fun, I must say. Their style of selling is to grab you by the arm to hopefully lead you to their stall. It isn’t violent, it’s just a big culture shock from the “look but don’t you dare touch or I’ll sue your butt so fast you’ll think I have a lawyer on speed dial, which I do” approach taken in America. I had my arm grabbed repeatedly by people trying to show me various items. Also, people in China must be very punctual given their enormous surplus of watches, as I was frequently asked if I wanted to purchase one of these extra timepieces.

Overall, I found Shanghai to not be as much fun as Singapore in terms of a city built around commerce. There may be some more interesting tourist destinations like Beijing, but I guess I’ll have to wait and find out. One thing I do know–the Chinese visa in my passport looks very cool.

Best tourist shopping in terms of comfort and convenience was actually in the Shanghai airport. Some neat stations where craftsmen carve a name stamp in miniature detail–but if you ever get one skip the ink they sell because the containers leak. I found this out the hard way. Fortunately the ink only got on the stamp and it washes off.

Nothing too good on the flight back in terms of movies:

Goal – The Dream Begins — Okay, but predictable.

Earthsea — Watched on portable DVD (another Netflix). Not worth it.

End result: exhausted and then having to work off a huge backlog (as evidenced by it taking a month to finish this post). Hope to one day return to Singapore with the family, since that’s really the perfect way for a not-very-adventurous traveller from the US to first visit Asia.

Irony is just so…well, you know…

Didn’t strike me until I was back to my desk, but today’s flavored coffee at the coffee store in my building was Kahlua. I ordered it and was sipping away before I realized the irony.

What’s the point?

So I’m driving home yesterday in one of those permanent construction zones, two narrow lines surrounded by those concrete barriers that make you feel like your driving in the light-cycle game from Tron. I’m going the same speed as the other cars around me, 45, which is the limit, when this giant delivery truck barrels in front of me and then darts to the other lane. People honk, he speeds away, probably doing at least 70.

I notice he has one of those “How am I driving?” bumper stickers with a 1-800 number and a code for that vehicle and for the first time I’m tempted to call. But how am I supposed to call when I would have to drive just as unsafely and maniacally as this lunatic to catch up and get the number and the code, then either write them down while I’m driving or fumble around to get my phone and call. So what’s the point?

I think it’d be cool to have suction-cup darts equipped on our front bumpers that have flags saying BAD DRIVER that we could shoot at these cars. Like Spy Hunter, but with a positive social influence.

Data is fun

So I’m shopping at Target last night when I come across Yoplait Light yogurt. This is the fat-free stuff. I’ve bought a box or two at Sam’s Club where you get 15 cartons divided among 2 flavors: the very good strawberry and the okay rasberry. It’s about 7 dollars for the 15 cartons, so that’s a very good per carton price. Compare that to my neighborhood Randall’s which has 20 flavors or so but the cartons cost 70 cents. So I was surprised to see that Target had cartons for 52 cents. They didn’t have the variety that Randall’s does, but maybe they were just a little low in stock that day.

Anyway, since this is the sort of thing I do on a daily basis, looking for efficiencies and tracking data, I did a little graph. Not very scientific since I estimated the number of flavors for Randall’s and Target, but there’s a definite curve to the price of cartons depending on selection. You can click on the graph to get a larger, easier to read version.

Somewhat interesting the the dramatic decrease in selection and increase in number of required purchases that go along with the far left data point (being a bulk seller) doesn’t give you a dramatic benefit over the Target data point in the middle.

In other words, I won’t be buying yogurt at Sam’s Club anymore. And I have a chart to show you why. So nanny nanny boo boo.

Love the Drafthouse!

So some readers may have noticed a lack of regular content these past few weeks. While work was certainly a factor (having 50+ one on one meetings in the past two weeks tends to grow difficult), the other area taking up a lot of time was the final details of Mrs Hose’s surprise birthday party. It was something I’ve been working on for at least 7 months, probably longer, but haven’t been able to say anything about because she sometimes hops onto this blog.

In any event, my original plan had to be scrapped given our travel restrictions, and I’m not going to mention what they were because I may be able to use that plan in a few years. Instead, I went with Plan B–rent out our favorite movie theater and fill with family and friends. And use that to show a fun little birthday video that I made without her knowing it.

The party was this past Saturday, and it went very well. The Drafthouse rocks, as anyone who’s ever been knows. There’s a reason why Entertainment Weekly declared Alamo Drafthouse to be the #1 movie theater in the country. And of the various locations, I think the South Lamar spot (the one we rented a theater in) is the best–stadium seating, fun events, fairly close to a lot of access points.

Mrs Hose isn’t exactly in the condition that you want to spring a massive surprise on her. So I planned on easing her into the party. I had previously told her something was in the works, just not what or when or anything else. So on Saturday morning when I asked what she wanted to get done, she listed a couple of errands and wasn’t too surprised when I said that none of those were going to get done. She knew something was going on, just not what or exactly when. A bit later I told her she needed to shower and get ready to leave, because we needed to leave the house–I said we were having a party at home so she needed to get ready before we left and when we came back there’d be people here.

Now, knowing that she would not want people coming to a messy house, I padded the fib with a story that cleaners were coming first. Of course, what I (stupidly) failed to anticipate is that Mrs Hose always cleans up before the cleaners come over. Why she wants to do this is unimportant–it’s universal and I should’ve anticipated. So when she asked me to clean some things up, I kicked myself for that part of the fib, but ultimately gave in (including rolling up a carpet to put on top of a couch–no, I’m not kidding).

We actually went out to run an errand, since I thought we had enough time. And we would have if there hadn’t been an ordering snafu and the slowest cashier in the world. So as we left the shopping center, I realized we were about 5-10 minutes later than I wanted to be, but not a big deal. I told her I was in a rush because the next part of our day was seeing a movie–since the party set-up at home wouldn’t be done until 2, we needed to kill some time. She asked what we were seeing and I responded Capote, since she wanted to see it.

Now, here was another mistake. A co-worker knew of my plan, so he had wisely suggested I check to see what was playing at the movie theater. Which I did. On Thursday. Forgetting that they’d change their line-up on Friday. Doh! So as we pull into the theater, she sees the boards and realizes Capote isn’t playing. Knowing I had to reveal a bit early, I replied, “Oh yeah–we aren’t seeing Capote. And the party isn’t at home.”

She was a bit stunned, not really knowing what to say as I parked and led her into the theater. She kept asking, “Then what are we seeing?”, not really realizing what I’d said. I remained silent, walked her into the lobby and asked the usher where the party was located. We walked to theater #4 (with a digital sign reading Saw II: 12:30–too funny!) and she was surprised to see 50 of her family and friends all seated in the theater.

After the hugging, the laughing, the shock of it all, we started the presentation at about 12:35. First up was a ten minute movie I made with footage of family and friends wishing her a happy birthday. There was a slight technical glitch in how I made it that made some of the captions appear off screen, but I’ll re-edit for a final version. Don’t know if it’s small enough to post on here–I’ll look into that later. But the movie went well–people seemed to like it and at one point I counted nine Drafthouse employees in the entranceway watching the movie, which was very cool.

After that we showed her second favorite movie–something I hadn’t told anyone about (I just said we’d show one of her favorites without telling them what). It was the 1998 remake of The Parent Trap, a fun little movie and completely family friendly since it was Disney. Good for all the little kids running around. Her favorite movie, The American President, actually drops the f-bomb 3 times in it, so I switched for the kid-safe flick. People really liked it, I think.

We also had a giant pizza/salad/spanikopita bar. Lots of drinks and cookies and brownies and cake (which my mother-in-law and I cut and served about halfway through the movie because the movie is a little long and I was afraid if we waited until the end we wouldn’t get out in time–I only had the theater for 3 hours). When it was all over people hung around and chatted–I had to start getting people out because I didn’t want to go over our time–they had movies to show!

But all in all it was a great event. A lot of planning, but all for a great cause. And now, I suddenly have a lot of free time.

Mint Mocha Frappucino

You know what’s wrong with Mint Mocha Frappucino?

Nothing.

Recovered comments:

greg: November 17th, 2005 11:57 amI have heard this is a great product. We get free pepsi product every month, and we get 3 mocha, vanilla, and coffee, but we never get mint. Does it really taste like Ice cream?

Hose: November 17th, 2005 4:27 pmIt takes like what you get at Starbucks–and that’s good. But how do you get free Pepsi stuff?

Northbound: November 21st, 2005 7:07 amWell, it does have coffee in it.

Hose: November 21st, 2005 8:43 amYeah, it has coffee in it. You have a problem with coffee?

Random dialogue excerpt of the day

Said yesterday, while driving around Mrs Hose’s old neighborhood.

Mrs Hose: “I do know the area. This used to be my hood.”

Me: “No. You did not have a hood. You’re whiter than bleach.”

Random Thought of the Day

I know a clown who’s a big shoe guy.

When pythons and crocodiles fight, we all win

Apparently the top of the food pyramid in the Everglades has room for two. A recent story detailed a battle between a 13-foot Burmese python and a 6-foot crocodile. Who would win in such a fight? Both. Neither.

Sure, first round went to the python, as it swallowed the crocodile. Whole. But second round went to the croc, who actually sliced open the python from the inside. End result: both valiant warriors dead. And one awesome picture.

But one mystery remains: the snake was missing its head. Could there be a third species vying to top these two? Is it a trophy for Emeril, after his attempt to cook pythodile failed? Only time will tell.

About comments…

I welcome comments on this site, since it lets me know that people are actually reading this blog. But recent traffic (due to the various Lost Sucks posts like here and here and here) have brought a number of, shall we say immature posters to the mix. While I attempted to control their inane drivel through monitoring and deleting the stray posts, this apparently isn’t enough, so I’ve had to turn on moderation for site comments.

Just to be clear, I will approve any post so long as it doesn’t use offensive language and it isn’t spam. Disagree with me–that’s fine. But if you can’t find a way to express yourself without resorting to name-calling, then, frankly, I don’t care to keep you as a reader.

Hopefully this will make the place a bit nicer for the rest of us.

And, yes, Lost still sucks.