anecdotes

People to People Technical Communications Professional Delegation to China—Day 12

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I met Sherry, Ann, Paula, Kathy, Jeanne and Kirsten at 8:30 for the hotel breakfast buffet. We broke bread together for the last time. And then, off to my ride:


I left Shanghai tomorrow and arrived today in Chicago, ten minutes after I left. Actually, we left Shanghai at 4:05 PM on 10/31/08 and arrived in Chicago at 4:15 PM on 10/31/08. Cue up Cher: If I could turn back time…

I had an aisle seat on the way back, and to the right of me an Indian couple occupied the middle and window seat. She was in her sari and he was in his turban. As soon as I sat down I said to them, “Feel free to wake me up if I’m asleep whenever you need to get out. I won’t mind at all. Just nudge me.”

They thanked me, and the man told me he was “a heart patient,” and so he’d need to get up at least once every four hours to allow some circulation in his legs. Then he said to his wife, who was in the window seat, “Why don’t you let him have that seat?”

“That’s okay,” I said, “Actually, I’d like to keep my aisle seat. I have a bum knee, and I want to be able to stretch it out in the aisle if I need to,” and then added, “This getting old stuff is a bitch.” To which he replied, “It sure is.” Right before we rolled back, he got up and took an aisle seat that was open in the middle section of the plane; in fact, it was right next to Paula from our delegation.

So, an aisle seat with an empty seat between me and the lady in the window seat now for our twelve-hour flight. Sweeeet. I noticed that she was reading Kite Runner, and I said to her, “That is one of my all-time favorite books.” She said she was loving it, and asked me if I’d read the author’s next book, about which I’d heard, but hadn’t read. “It’s even better than this one,” she said. “You must read it.”

At the very beginning of the flight, for between an hour and an hour-and-a-half straight, we had severe turbulence. I’m talking the kind of turbulence that has the food cart rolling around in the galley area, and at one point shaking so much that a huge bottle of water tipped out of an ice bucket and rolled on the floor, while the flight attendants could do nothing but sit in their seats displaying a face that said, “We experience this all the time. It’s not big deal. I’m totally calm, as all of you should be.” Yeah, right.

My final bilingual drink on the plane:

 


In spite of that precarious beginning, however, after traveling over 6,000 miles, we had the most incredibly smooth touchdown ever.

Most ridiculous thing overheard at O’HARE:

Lady to perfect stranger: “I’ve been traveling since midnight my time.”

Uh, your time? Do you own a time zone? Do we know where or when you started your trip? Thanks so much for your sentence with no meaning.

Immigration was a breeze. In fact I saw three, count them, three, immigration officers actually smile, and the one who processed me said nodding at my t-shirt, “Grammar police. What’s that all about?”

After explaining it, he said, “Well, I’d like to think my grammar is good.” I was impressed that he even cared.

After a ridiculously long wait for our luggage, I retrieved my checked-in bag even though it was checked through to Raleigh-Durham, took it through customs, and then re-checked it without having to go through any kind of line.

After changing terminals, and unfortunately having to go through the carry-on security line again, I got to the top of the escalators by my gate to face a food court. I walked in there to see if there was a place selling “Chicago-style” hot dogs. One of the food stores in there was a Chinese food place, and I said, “Ugh,” and veered away from it.

I ended up having a sesame seed bagel instead, and then went whoring for an outlet, which turned out to be an incredibly fruitless search. There were some outlets here and there that looked like outlets, but when you got close to them they were some weird twisted thing that didn’t except regular plugs. I had to double check to make sure I was in America. The adapters and converters are all packed away.

I found a very inconvenient one by a currency exchange booth, and sat on the floor to recharge my laptop. I think my battery must be dying. All during this trip, including on the plane on the way back, my battery slowly drains as I’m using it to between 50% and 55% power left, and then just like that (insert finger snap here) it drops down to 4% in the red zone, displays the message that power is low, to save and power off, and then when I hit shutdown, right before Windows completes closing, it automatically goes into hibernation mode.

My flight from Chicago to Raleigh-Durham was uneventful, if you ignore the four people that came on the plane at the very last minute, who were dressed up for Halloween in bicyclist outfits (one complete with the Lycra shorts and a helmet), and spoke so damn loud the whole way back that I could hear every word of their conversations from five or six rows ahead of them. Thank god for iPods and earbuds.

I had a window seat, 13A (which I chose way back when I booked my flight) and the two women who sat in the middle and aisle seats talked to each other the whole way back.

I was falling asleep, and at one point, I put my seat back, only to have it violently shaken by the guy behind me, who said (after the shaking), “I’m sorry, but my legs are too long for you to put your seat back.”

I’m not quite sure how I feel about that. In some way it smacks of, “My poor planning has become your emergency.” I mean would it be acceptable if an obese person sitting next to me said, as his or her girth was taking up half my seat, “I’m sorry. I’m too fat for you to have your entire seat.” I’m thinking this guy should ask for a seat just behind the bulkhead when he travels rather than denying me the amenities that come with the ticket I paid for.

I landed to the newly opened, in fact opened since I left, “Terminal 2.” While I waited for Joe outside baggage claim, a minivan pulled up, out of which two kids came running toward their grandparents, who were just to the right of me. The boy had a bag of Halloween candy, and when he showed it to grandpa, grandpa grabbed it and ran with it, with the grandson chasing after him. I watched, thinking, “I would love to have a piece of that candy.”

After they got the grandparents’ bags in the car, and the grandparents were in, right before closing the door, the little boy ran over to me, opened his bag, and said, “Would you like a piece of candy?”

“I sure would!” I said, and then, “What do you have in there? Ah, Milk Duds. I love those! Okay to take one of them?”

“Sure!” he said, and I responded with, “Thanks, buddy. You’re very kind. Happy Halloween.”

Joe and I headed right to Flex, where it was Costume Contest Night. After that, we made a stop at Legends, and then onto IHOP, with Henry, for a ridiculously late/early breakfast. I had Pigs-in-a-Blanket, and the pancakes were pumpkin-flavored. Killer!

Back to work, a class, scripts filled, a run to MBD, and a drink on the lanai…

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I caught the 8:25 bus today, and Barry, one of my neighbors, and this other sort-of regular at our stop had a little chat. The lady works for the federal government, so was off yesterday for Columbus day. Barry works for the university, as do I, so both state employees, who did not have the day off yesterday. I took a sick day for my trip to Rhode Island.

Since today was the last day that I could adjust most of my benefits (tomorrow is 30 days since my start date), I updated my NC Flex benefits, the Health Care Flexible Spending Account to be exact, to defer $200 into it for calendar year 2008, since I paid a $20 co-pay for my Hep A shot visit, and I’m going to get about $185 in prescriptions filled tomorrow.

I was in a Drupal training class from 9:30-11:30. It was taught by Don, and there were about 15 people in it, including my team, and several of the liaisons representing teams who are about to move content into Drupal.

I grabbed two hot dogs for lunch at Coffee Haven. They were okay, but were those red, red hot dogs that “they love down here.” There was a time during which I wouldn’t touch them. Now, I only eat them if they’re the only kind available, or close by when I’m pressed for time, which was the case today.

I worked on the Drupal Inventory Worksheet, reviewed and commented on our CIO’s proposed Strategic Operating Plan.

The 6:00 bus didn’t arrive until 6:15. I was beginning to think I had missed it.

I got a funny birthday card from Suzanne in the mail today. At some point, probably after my China trip now, I’m going to capture all of my cards in an entry. I like doing that.

I checked in with mom and dad to let them know I had received their birthday call, and was in Coventry for Uncle Frank’s funeral. In her classic way, my mother said, “Yeah, I’ve been doing alright, considering my leg (the one she just had replacement surgery on again), and the car accident I was in a couple of weeks ago…”

I filled my car up tonight—making it to 3-weeks with one tank. For posterity, gas was $3.39 a gallon. Which reminds me, I saw it for $2.79 at a gas station in Rhode Island when I was there.

I stopped at K-Mart, where I ended up leaving my prescriptions to be filled over night.

Back at home, I addressed 50 envelopes for Manbites Dog, and then drove out to Durham and put them in the theater’s mailbox out front. I drove by Robert’s as the moon was full and beautiful, and I thought we might have a drink on “the lanai.”

He generously offered me some crackers with a cheddar cheese and roasted red pepper spread that was delicious, and some ginger ale. We sat on his deck long enough to gaze at the moon, have a sip of drink, and say we did.

Back home I tweeted this:

Back. Bonus: Visited Robert, got fed, had a “drink on the lanai under a full moon” and got a kiss goodnight. 🙂 SWEET! 9:54 PM Oct 14th from web

Bus scrambling, the OIT Expo, a flu shot, and dinner to get China adapters/converters…

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I had intended to catch the Wolfline bus to the Talley Student Center this morning, but remembered—fortunately before I waited at the bus stop—that it’s fall break and most of the NC State buses were not running today, including the one I would have taken.

The city bus I usually take to work—the Method Road bus—doesn’t go by the Student Center, so I quickly checked another city bus route—the Avent Ferry bus—and found that it had a stop practically at the steps of the student center. Sweet.

Today was the culmination of a lot of work that has been done in the almost month now that I’ve been working at NC State. Our organization is called the Office of Information Technology, and today we held OIT Expo ’08, where we had booths of a bunch of the services that our organization provides to the university, including those for faculty, staff, and students. We had tons of drawings for door prizes—two real nice ones that included a GPS system and a Sony digital camera. Unfortunately, the staff was not eligible to win those nice prizes. 🙁

I spent most of the day taking pictures of the event, and standing at booths whenever the booth owners had to step away, either to attend, or present at, one of the many workshops that went on throughout the day. From 11:30-12:30, I attended the keynote address by Dr. Marc Hoit, the recently hired, and first ever, vice chancellor for information technology and chief information officer.

I attended one workshop in the afternoon. It was on the features of Contribute, Adobe’s Web authoring, reviewing, and publishing tool.

At about 2:30, I slipped over to Campus Recreation, which is just across the street from the student center, and got my free flu shot. 

I met Steve H. at the Borough tonight for dinner and to get his adapters and converters for my China trip. Liz stopped by our alfresco table, and welcomed me back to the Borough and comped my bourbon and diet, which I very much appreciated.

I had their “Which Came First?” salad with balsamic vinegar, which I loved as much as the last time I had it, which was actually the first time I’d had it, too.

Which Came First?    $7.00
Marinated chicken, egg, tomato and red onion over mixed greens, served with a choice of dressing.


After dinner, Dave (singer of “Come Monday” at karaoke) joined us, with a friend of his named John, who was an absolute stitch. He was a real young kid (probably still is, it’s only been a day), and was talking about being in Spain with his parents, while his dad was there on a business trip.

“Yeah, their national team had just one some huge soccer final, and the people were going wild. They were all out in the streets and shit. And talking all that Spain shit. And they knew I was an America right away.”

I retorted, “Yeah, probably because of all of that American shit you were talkin’.”

I updated our People-to-People “Who’s Flying from Where” file, adding folks’ cell phone numbers.

Some cards, negative money numbers, a couple brochures, and “bundle packing”…

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First thing this morning, I wrote, by hand (that ancient art) in three greeting cards: a sympathy card, a “just because” card, and a thank you card.

En route to my morning coffee, I dropped them off at the post office that’s two blocks down from my office. Having such things around me is one of my favorite things about working for NCSU.

During lunch, I walked to the State Employees Credit Union, two blocks in the opposite direction of the post office, and I entered into a long line from which I saw two tellers clicking and typing away at stations that have “Please Use Next Window” in front of them. Evidently, they were doing credit union business that was more important than serving customers who were waiting in line. But I digress…

Of the two stations that were open, both had customers doing more than a quick transaction. One of the two tellers of those two stations was having a conversation, loud enough to hear in the line, with a young college kid. It went something like this:

Student: So, can you tell me exactly when I overdrew?

Teller: Well, on October 3rd, you electronically moved $1.83 from checking into savings. And then, you wrote a $3.00 check.

Student (with attitude): So you’re telling me—$1.17—that’s what made me overdraw?

Uh, what part of negative numbers don’t you understand? It’s as negative at -$0.01 as it is at -$2000.01.

To be honest, he lost me at the $1.83 transfer to savings, not to mention the $3.00 check. Get it together. You’re a young adult now.

I had a productive day at work today, finishing up an OIT Expo ’08 handout for Dan and the AVTech/ClassTech teams, and getting halfway through a similar handout for the Security and Compliance team.

I attended a Drupal information architecture-type meeting with Jude, Jen, and Alan (one of our customers), and I got started folding my 100 copies of the OIT Services trifold for the expo on Thursday. I took the rest home with me.

I listened to some NPR podcasts both to and from work today, including one called, “1000 Essential Recordings You Must Hear;” another called, “Covering San Quentin: A Behind-the-Scenes Look” at how, among other things, the gymnsium has become one massive cell; and a gem called, “How to Pack Everything You Own in One Bag.”

Of course, with the one bag, 44-pound limit for luggage on my upcoming China trip, my ears perked right up on this one! After listening to it, I posted this to our delegation Yahoo group:

This investment of 5 minutes and 13 seconds might be the only chance most of will have of even coming close to packing what we need with a 44-pound weight limit.

It’s a podcast, but you can listen to it directly from your laptop or desktop. Doug Dyment, whose Web site onebag.com is devoted to the art of traveling light, is planning an international trip to both India and Russia, two places with very different climates, and he’s doing it all in one CARRY ON bag.

His two biggest tricks: Don’t let any space go unused, and wrap your clothes in bundles. I’d never heard of the bundling technique, and really didn’t get it until I looked at the diagram on the NPR website:

Click on image to enlarge.

Listen to, or read the transcript of, the story: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=90297199

Best,
John

At home, I had dinner, folded the rest of those trifold brochures, and had instant message conversations with both Robert and Joe.

I got to bed at a decent hour. Yay.

A transgender podcast, cheap coffee, memorial service travel arrangements, and writing an article…

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I listened to a fascinating podcast on the bus on the way in today: Two Families Grapple with Sons’ Gender Preferences. Each family is dealing with the situation in totally opposite ways. Each is working with a professional, each of which has a totally different philosophy about the issue.

Dr. Diane Ehrensaf… Dr. Ken Zucker…
“If we allow people to unfold and give them the freedom to be who they really are, we engender health. And if we try and constrict it, or bend the twig, we engender poor mental health.” “Suppose you were a clinician and a 4-year-old black kid came into your office and said he wanted to be white. Would you go with that? … I don’t think we would.”

The mother and father of the boy being treated by Dr. Ehrensaf now use “she” to refer to their son Jonah, and mom had this to say about that fateful day when they finally allowed Jonah to buy a dress:

“I thought she was gonna hyperventilate and faint because she was so incredibly happy. … Before then, or since then, I don’t think I have seen her so out of her mind happy as that drive to Target that day to pick out her dress.”

It’s a 22-minute podcast, which you can listen to (or read the transcript) here.

Remembering that the coffee in the NCSU library coffee shop was $1.35, as opposed to the $1.60 and $1.70 in the coffee shops on Hillsborough Street, I walked that way this morning after getting off the bus. In order to get to the library entrance where that coffee shop is, you have to pass the student food court area just off the Brickyard. I said to myself, “I wonder if the coffee is the same price in here. If it is, it’s a little bit closer, and will save me some time.”

Ducking in, and helping myself to what I would call a medium size cup of coffee, as opposed to the small I usually get at the other places, imagine the smile on my face when the cashier said, “That’ll be $.85, please.”

Not being a coffee connoisseur, and being the financially savvy guy that I am (sounds so much better than cheap, or even frugal), you know I’m going to be all over a “50% off” deal on coffee whenever I want some.

I spoke with my manager this morning about taking off Monday, October 13th, to attend my uncle’s memorial service in Rhode Island. She assured me that we could work something out—first with potentially taking work to do remotely with me, but later remembering that I could use sick leave for this purpose.

I used my U.S. Airways frequent flyer points to get a $400 ticket for $35 instead. It was supposed to be $50 more due to booking inside of 14 days, but the website hung up while I was making the reservations, and by the time it was all said and done with a representative on the phone, that $50 charge was either missed or waived. Either way, I’m not complaining.

I had lunch at Mitch’s Tavern with a co-worker, Garrison from “the admin team,” my boss, and my boss’s boss. We talked about the potential use of social networking applications, specifically Twitter, in our work.

I had their Super Garden Melt, which consisted of sautéed eggplant, tomatoes, zucchini squash, onions, melted provolone, and served in a large roll. It was most delicious, and came with a side order of potato salad, which was also quite good.

My afternoon was consumed with two “customer” meetings, in which we talked about information architecture with the liaisons of two groups who are going to move their Web content into a new content management system into which our overall organization is migrating.

Late in the day, I got into a services brochure that I’m working on for a booth at the upcoming OIT Expo ’08.

I caught the 7:15 bus home.

At home, I made a run for a number of greeting cards, including three sympathy cards, one birthday card, and one anniversary card.

I also stopped at the Hardee’s nearby to use a “buy an order of our bacon cheese fries, and get a soft drink free” coupon, for which I was promptly told, “We don’t even sell bacon cheese fries any more.”

Back at home, I wrote an article about my upcoming China trip for the October newsletter edition of the NCSU student chapter of the Society for Technical Communication.

Red Robin, some work meetings, eat-in lunch, meeting with Katja, and a little shopping…

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I forget to capture this about yesterday: We had a luncheon for a colleague who is getting married in a couple of weeks. It was at Red Robin, a place that I’ve always wondered about, but had never been to. I didn’t realize that it was basically a burger place. Obviously, I’ve never noticed their tag line: “America’s Gourmet Burgers & Spirits.”

I got their “5 Alarm Burger,” the name of which they’ve taken the trouble of trademarking. Too bad they didn’t take as much care with their grammar. There should be a hyphen between the number 5 and the word alarm. But I digress…

Anyway, I loved it. Its description on the menu was as follows: “Crank up the heat with Pepper-Jack cheese, jalapeños, fresh tangy salsa, sliced tomato, crisp lettuce and Chipotle mayo.”

I saw several other things I’d like to try there including their Asian Chicken Salad and their Banzai Burger, which is described as: “Marinated in teriyaki and topped with grilled pineapple, Cheddar cheese, lettuce, tomatoes, and mayo. Dude, you’ll be like, ready to ride the pipeline on O’ahu’s North Shore after you chomp on this.”

I attended two meetings today, fairly close together with a half hour break between them. The first was the OIT Web Core Team meeting, at which the topic of an—at times heated—discussion was a form that I created to be used in a process that is still being worked out. Lots of frustrations aired, but overall a good hashing and thrashing through issues that must be resolved in order to move forward.

I really appreciated that one person on the team, later in the day, dropped by to make sure that I understood that the discussion wasn’t any reflection on my work on the form. And while, I’m pretty clear on not taking things personally, I very much appreciated the humanity of the gesture.

I had a delicious ham sandwich, made by yours truly, for lunch, with a side order of fresh baby carrots dipped in a thousand island dressing combination of:

½      +     ½

I got to the bus stop at 4:55 to catch the bus that is supposed to stop at 5:00 at the stop two or three stops before my stop. By quarter after five, it still hadn’t come, leading to the conclusion that I must have missed it. It really is going to get annoying if the standard deviation of the bus arrival time is going to be large. That’s all I’m going to say about that.

And with that said, I caught the 5:30 bus instead.

I met with Katja in Durham about my grant writing and investigating work on the board. She is just an incredible person in so many ways, and after each interaction with her I leave feeling valued as a person as well as incredibly lucky to have had the opportunity to get to know her a little bit better.

On the way home, I stopped at the outlet mall. It was a quick run in and out, as it was 8:50 and the mall closed at 9:00. That place was absolutely dead, and I made three quick stops:

  1. At the Samsonite Luggage place, where this incredibly helpful and knowledgeable person helped me with an adapter and converter decision for my China trip, and
  2. On a whim, after seeing the “75% Off Everything in the Store” window ad, I dropped into Geoffrey Beane, where I bought two pair of blue dress socks, and a 3-pack of t-shirts—one gray, one white, and one black.
  3. A discount bookstore to see if they had any small books, postcards, or anything else with local topics that I might bring to China as “host gifts.”

Just as I got back to my car to head back to Raleigh, the Vice Presidential debates came on public radio. I listened to the moderator ask the first question of Biden, listened to his two-minute answer, and then Palin’s first 60-seconds of her 90-second allowed response, of which the only thing I remember was, ‘If you were to ask a couple of moms at a soccer game what they think of our economy right now…” Click. Done with it.

According to a lot of the tweets on Twitter, the rest of her responses are pretty much summed up here:

Getting it together, porn moves to 2nd place on the Internet, no Russia for Sarah…

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I managed to bring in a sandwich and some carrots today—slowly getting it all together and formulating a bus “routine.”

I had a meeting in the conference room in which I interviewed for this job on August 15th. Awww.

Blurbs—one funny, the other interesting:

A New York lawyer has failed in his effort to deduct from his taxes the $322,000 he spent on prostitutes, pornography, and sex toys. William Halby, 77, told a state tax court judge that he had used “sex therapy” to help battle depression, osteoarthritis, and erectile dysfunction, and the deductions were therefore legitimate medical expenses.

In his ruling, against Halby, Judge Brian Friedman noted that not only is prostitution in New York not recognized as a medical necessity, it’s a “violation of penal law.”

Halby says he’ll appeal.

“Americans are now more interested in social networks than pornography,” said Robert Cringely in Infoworld. “No, that is not a typo.” For as long as there has been a World Wide Web, eyeballing porn has been far and away the most popular activity on the Internet. No longer.  Read the whole story: Facebook and Twitter: The New Pornography.

—From The Week Magazine 10/03/08—

Speaking of twitter someone pointed to this article yesterday: CNN: Sarah Palin Has Never Seen Russia From Alaska. It seems that there’s only one place in all of Alaska from where you can see Russia, and a man on the 150-people remote island said no governor has ever visted there. LOL!

Dancing pretty much sucked tonight. I’m just going to leave it at that. Neither Carl, Bill, nor Geromy were there. Well, Geromy got there in the middle of Sordid Lives, for which we stopped dancing tonight, and almost everyone left shortly after it was over, at about 10:45.

At the site, Play Palin Bingo, there are some cards to use at your VP Debate Party tomorrow night. I love what they’ve done with the square that would normally be the “Free Space.” LOL!