I am writing the beginning of this entry from the plane on the way to Hong Kong on my laptop. A personality trait/flaw of mine dictates that I wake up as late as possible and arrive to the airport with seconds to spare. My free time and sleep is precious. Time is money? I miss the Narita Express for the airport (which comes every 30 minutes) by 3 minutes and have to wait 27 more minutes. What's worse is it was full except for smoking seats, so instead of sitting in my assigned seat in the smoking car, I sit between the cars on the ground on my suitcase where there's no air conditioning (and it's hot and humid in Tokyo since last weekend). It still beats breathing cigarette smoke at 7:30 in the morning. I almost finish reading Moneyball (4 pages short) which Paul mailed me a week ago (about how the Oakland A's use statistics to perform so much more efficiently for a lot less money than any other ballclub and how pig-headed every other club is to dismiss it as luck even though they've done it for 4-5 years straight - it was on the NY Times bestseller list for a while). I got to the airport 55 minutes before my flight (supposed to get there 2 hours early for international travel). 7 minutes from the train to the checkin counter. 10 minutes in line. I finish the book and am so happy. I open my now inspected and sealed luggage that has a sticker covering the zippers. I take out my next book for the plane and put away Moneyball. I replace the sticker. Nobody cares when I check my bag. It's still quite easy to smuggle anything if you need to. Hopefully, when I get to Hong Kong, my bag is there, too. Then, a lady comes around and says anyone still in line waiting for Hong Kong gets to skip ahead because it's last call to make it from checkin all the way to the plane. They process me quickly and tell me that since I'm so late I can't have my emergency row seat with lots of leg room. I get a normal window seat instead. Oh well. Hong Kong's only a 4 hour 15 minute flight. That's nothing compared to the 14 hours to the US I keep doing. Next, another lady proceeds to escort me and another late customer to the gate. She's running and I just walk fast alongside her. She bypasses the probably 45 minute wait line for the metal detectors and we get to use the one for staff and crew with no line!! Next, I fill out my immigration info, which is confusing because when entering Hong Kong and they ask for address and nationality, should I give my Japanaese or American address. And so on. Then I have to walk another 5 minutes on moving sidewalks to the last gate in the terminal. I check the gate and see there's 3 minutes untilt he boarding closes. I duck in the bathroom, then right to the gate with a minute to spare. I get to my seat and see that even though it's not an exit row it is the first row of coach and has no seats but a wall in front with tons fo leg room. Futhermore, there's no one in the middle seat next to me, so I get even more room for my bags and feet and arms. I ate, read, listened to music, relaxed, and now am typing this. See, it all worked out and I even got an extra 30 minutes of sleep! In case, you're wondering, I only missed a flight once from this behaviour. It was a 6:30am flight from Philly to Boston when I had to go every other week for my first programming job. I was so sick of having to do that flight every other week for 4 months and I knew there was a flight every hour. I was about 5 minutes late and was easily booked on the next flight at 7:30am.

About Hong Kong. I was sort of volunteered to go from my group of about 10 engineers. Most of them haven't expressed a desire to travel like I have and don't have the background on the project and for what needs to be done there. The Phoenix (my company) Hong Kong office has a new, big customer that has purchased and needs to install Phoenix's proprietary CSP (Cryptography Service Provider). A CSP has functions that programs can use to encrypt and decrypt data. A normal Microsoft Windows Operating System comes with about 10 built-in Microsoft CSPs. Many other vendors make their own using their own "even-stronger" and "unbreakable" algorithms. Phoenix also has there own CSP. Ours is "stronger" and "unique" and "unbreakable" for reasons I won't go into here. I'm not into marketing and I'm not sure I even believe any of these claims. Anyways, a project I worked on about 1 year ago was integrated with a CSP and used some cryptographic algorithms and so therefore, Phoenix thinks I can help. I really can't. I had no training on this when I used it a year ago and learned everything then on my own by reading webpages. Plus, it was a year ago. I've learned a lot a lot since then and forgotten a lot, too. Plus, installing something and setting up a Windows Server at a data center is very different from programming with it. Not harder, just different disciplines, the latter of which I have no experience. Oh well, I'm am sort of just going for face value, so the Japanese office can say they sent someone to help. I figure out what I need to do once I get there. It should be OK, if I can't get it to work as I will just email guys in the US office that can help. I will basically just communicate the problem abnd solution and be the middleman. The team in Hong Kong I will meet and work with speaks great english so they really don't need me. It's just a nice oppurtunity to get a free vacation to Hong Kong.

Speaking of vacations, it goes like this. I left this morning Monday. I get to Hong Kong at 1:30 pm (which is 2:30 Tokyo - just an hour behind). I have that whole day off and don't have to report to the Phoenix office until Tuesday morning. I will walk around, checkin to my hotel, get something to eat, read, use the pool, explore more of Hong Kong, use the internet in my hotel room, etc. Tuesday and Wednesday I will work and have time to go out at night with the Hong KOng office staff (maybe 5 of them?). Then, Thursday I have my flight back in the morning (not horribly early I don't think). I get to Tokyo Thursday afternoon and will then take Friday off of work and then have the weekend as well. I could do this schedule every week. I just need to learn how a CSP works.

I will write more and post some pictures once I get to Hong Kong.

I am writing this from my apartment in Tokyo. I was too busy to post anything.

I arrived to Hong Kong, was driven to the hotel and checked in. While checking in, the guy at the desk hands me a phone over the counter. It's my contact in the Hong Kong Office. Apparently, he asked the hotel to call him immediately upon my arrival. He asks if he can come to the hotel now and pick me up. I ask him for one hour to relax and get settled, shower, and prepare my stuff for work (laptop, papers, etc). That hour sure went fast. I had been up since 6:30 with only that food I ate on the plane. We went the office. I met everyone (only 5 of them - it's a small office), all really nice. We started working on 1 of the 2 problems I was there to help with. We ended up working until 12:30 am (1:30am Japan time). I was useless after 8pm (which was 9pm Japan time). I was so tired, still hadn't eaten. I was so angry inside my head. The only good news, was we fixed the problem so we had the next two days to do the other one and it probably wouldn't take all that time so I would have some time to relax. That night around 1am Hong Kong time, my the one guy and I went to a soup shop and got some milky rice and fish and eel and octopus in bowl of watery soup (they usually eat this for breakfast), and some good fried rolls of dough with sauce on top. Then for desert, some sweet beans in sweet soup. Anything would have tasted good at that point and it did.

Next morning, got up, went to breakfast with the main guy at a French fast food place with eggs and croissants - not bad. Went to work, had a good day. We solved the second problem. I promptly alerted the head office to get the Kudos so I can advance in the corporation :) Lunch was a Thai restaurant. Of course, after that they found plenty of other things for me to work on sicne we stil had a day and a half to go. I discussed a bunch of other issues, relayed things the Japan office was doing, demonstrated other setups we had, etc. We actaully left the office in time for dinner that night around 8pm. It was an upscale Chinese resturant and I went with two main guys in the office. It was very good.

Next day, they found plenty of other stuff for me to do. The leader of the Beijing office arrived for other meetings and was anxious to talk with me and find out about the Japan office. We went out to eat at another Chinese resturant that night with almost every in the Hong Kong office.

Next morning, at 6:30 in the morning, I arose and got my car to the airport, and waited in the terminal for an hour to board the plane. My laptop has a wireless network card so I can get on the internet without a connection. You just need someone to supply it. For instance, all Starbucks in America, for like 4$, you can connect to the internet that way while sitting in there drinking your coffee. Most of the airports are offering the service, too (for like 5$ an hour of course). While waiting in the airport, I scanned the airwaves for the avilable internet connections of found one from Virgin Atlantic where you didn't need to pay to get on (they are assuming only people sitting in their little waiting room suite, usually business class, could get access, but I was able to get the signal from the normal terminal. So, it was quite nice to be viewing live baseball games via the internet while waiting for my plane. That's pretty much what I'd have been doing if I were in my aprtment (minus the cereal of course).

They have a lot of pending sales and business in the Hong Kong office. They are currently hiring. They made it known that if I wanted I was interested, I could transfer there. The cost of living is definitely better than Tokyo. But, all in all, I like Tokyo better for many reasons (even though I hardly experienced Hong Kong). But, I'll think about it.

I didn't get out at all (except the two nights we went to dinner), but here are some shots from my hotel room. My 5 second opinion is - All the buildings are very distinctly un-unique compared to Tokyo. Plus, it rained everyday I was there and even at noontime it was practically dark due the heavy clouds. How do those people get their Vitamin D? Orangina? However, it feels nicer than Tokyo due to all the water/coastline and al the green from the surrounding mountains.