I am probably too old and that’s why I remember Conan the Barbarian, now there is a new movie coming out about Genghis Khan and it’s exactly the same as Conan. A young boy loses his family, trains hard and goes on to conquer the world as was proclaimed by the high priests. How does a movie like this get made ? Are you doomed to see repetitive movies once you are past 30 ?
Everyone is going nuts about twitter which I still think is absolutely useless unless you are in college or have a ton of time on your hands to play with the facebook apps and read multiple peoples twitter feeds.
I getup an hour later, shower and head out to town. Besides a few lone runners and a large group of people decked out in expensive biking gear there is no one around. I find a coffee shop with 2 penguins as their logo and order a hot chocolate. There is nothing better than drinking or eating something while exploring a new town. The sky is overcast and there is a chill wind, Auckland looks nothing like the Shire. I wonder if people would get offended if I ask for directions to the Shire but not wanting to be a jackass tourist I don’t ask anyone. All the gift shops are run by mainlanders from China. I speak to a few and they are surprised at my Mandarin, they don’t give any discount for our shared language.
Auckland is a nice city, nice is a word that you can apply to a lot of things in New Zealand. They have nice sheep, nice views, nice people, nice food…. It’s just all very nice. Can’t complain.
It’s lunch time and I look for the dirtiest kebab shop I can find. Whenever I am on the road I look for the dirtiest, grimiest food vendor I can find. That’s how I keep it real with my homies.
The kebab sucks, I try to wash it down with an equally dirty pearl drink and the pearl drink sucks as well. It’s probably the worst pearl drink I have ever had, I make a mental note not to buy a pearl drink from someone who speaks Cantonese ever again. Or rather I should avoid places that don’t mind cockroaches freely walking around.
I walk by Starbucks, Wendy’s, Dunkin Doughnuts and Burger King. If there is a Shire anywhere around here I am sure it has a McDonalds in it.
Gambling is legal here and there’s a large casino next to my hotel. I walk in and I could be anywhere in the world. Vegas, Atlantic City, … The sounds are the same and the people have the same blank looks as they drop quarter after quarter into the machines. There’s a poker room, I know I’ll be back.
I walk around town and don’t take any pictures. I’ve stopped taking pictures on my trips. There is no point, if you want to see any of the locations just do a Google image search or go on Flicker. Earlier this year I was looking at a friends picture, he had recently been to Japan, he had also gone to Kyoto, he had incidentally also gone to the same temple in Kyoto that I had been to. His picture of the fountain in the temple could have been a copy of the picture I had taken at the same location 3 years earlier.
So I am on strike from picture taking until I figure out a way to make the pictures unique or interesting.
It’s become instinct, something you don’t even have to think about anymore, you just do it. The extra laptop battery, the DVI-VGA cable along with the USB charger. Then you have to look up the region and see what type of power plug they use. Next money, have I been there before ? If so I probably have change left over from the last time.
Next comes the bags, it’s a one week trip, 6 pair of socks, change of underwear, 3 dress shirts, 2 khaki pants, 2 going out shirts and a pair of jeans. Can’t forge the contact lens solution, last time I had to pay $18 for a small bottle of contact lens solution. Taxes are a bitch in Brazil.
Finally the haggling with the airline, this isn’t a real United flight so I don’t get any upgrades, it’s a 13 hour flight I need an upgrade it’s going to kill me sitting in economy but the stewardess is unrelenting.
At least the plane is new, I have a row of 3 seats to myself, normally that would be more than enough but some genius has decided that you can’t move the arm rests all the way up, and I am too tall for 3 seats anyways. Around hour 4 I wake up with a seat buckle digging into my back. That’s going to leave a mark. I switch over to the neck pillow and spend another hour drifting in and out of sleep.
The stewardess shows up with my special meal, it’s Hindi this time, I’ve tried Jewish, Halal and Vegetarian. So far my favorite is Halal, although I am willing to give the Hindi meal another try. I was hoping for curry but it’s just some type of spiced chick peas. I want to order Asian next time but I am worried they will just give me a box of Ramen noodles.
We land at 4:30 AM, 15 minutes early. I change some money and head over to the cabs. It turns out my cabby went to UC Davis and lived in Sacramento it’s a small world and I have stopped being surprised at running into people who used to share a particular geographic location with me. Last time my cabby in Sydeny had spent time in Belgium and had taken the same bus line as me on his way to school.
The cabby drops me off at the Heritage Hotel, he asks me to double check as sometimes people are booked into the Heritage Tower and instead they go to the Hotel. I check, I am booked into the Hotel according to the American Express travel agent. I go to the check in desk where I am informed that no, my reservations are for the Heritage Tower. I go outside and walk to the Tower, it’s a 5 min walk. I check into the Tower where the clerk seems to take it personally that I am checking in this early. It’s the strangest hotel room I have been to in a while. There is a washer in the bathroom. I can do my own laundry. I just look at it for a few minutes and then try to get a few hours of sleep.
Before falling asleep I message Tina. “Auckland is great, we should think about moving to New Zealand”.
So the blog is finally looking like a finished product, the archives are working the way I want them, the Pandora Radio is embedded properly even though I just want it to display only chill music. Blog software has developed a lot in the past few years but it’s still free if your time is free I have spent hours fixing the theme, the widgets and the various plugins that go into it. But hey it feels like home now 
What is it about the French ? Why do they insist on going out of their
way to annoy people ? Steve has always disliked the French. When I ask why he shrugs his shoulders and says well they are French. I used to stick up for the French, I lived in Belgium for a few years and it’s right next door to France, I speak French. Sure I don’t have a deep love of cheese and wine and that’s probably just a cliche but when I see French movies or an article in English and French I feel a bit smug, oh yeah I speak French it’s cool no biggie.
Well the French suck. There I said it, sure for years I’ve defended them but it’s time to come clean, the French are lazy in addition to being overbearing. I was reading this article which reminded me how annoying the French can be.
A minute later we gave the game over to the French: “Who wins, Coca-Cola or Uma Thurman?”
The French didn’t answer and remained staring out the windows—it might have been Battersea, or Shepherd’s Bush. Then the French director said, “That is not a game.” He started coughing. “It is so Anglo, this game. It is not a game. How do you judge this? It is a soda and a woman. Then how do you decide?”
“One wins, one loses. Just pick,” I said. But he refused: “It is nothing a French person would think is a game. It is so stupid.”
The traffic wasn’t moving. I asked him to suggest a French game instead that we could play. “OK, OK, here is a French game,” he said. “We will talk about something for a little while. It will be about nothing. We will talk and talk and talk about it. Sometimes I will take the other side of the conversation, just to say you are wrong. And then we will stop.”
He resumed his brooding silence. The composer turned to say he agreed, this was a classic French game.
See that’s why people don’t like the French and until yesterday I didn’t care. See yesterday I finally decided that I had enough of carrying around books with me when I traveled. I am one of those people who can’t sleep much on planes and I am a fast reader so I tend to take at least two books with me on every trip and most times that’s not enough. The other problem is that in most destinations and airports you can’t buy any decent English books or if you can they are prohibitively expensive. For example an English book in the Rio airport costs about $22, that’s a soft cover book.
So I decided to invest in an ebook reader. The Amazon Kindle looks like crap, the Sony reader is only compatible with Windows so that left the Booken Cybook. I ordered one 2 days ago and got an email that said they got my order and charged my credit card. Their website explicitly states that the Cybook is in stock and they will ship asap.
Like a kid waiting for Santa Clause I waited and waited for the shipment order. Ok so I waited a day but in our wired age I expected to see the shipment order right away. Except for one thing, Booken is a French company. It is Easter weekend right now and there is no way you could pay anyone in France to work over a holiday. So they have charged my credit card and I will be lucky if they ship the damn thing in the next 2 weeks. After all I am just a customer and it’s easter weekend. This is classic French customer service. I’d complain but then I am worried they’d cancel the damn order.
Update: Ok the cybook arrived today, I take back everything I said about the French, even though they never responded to my email to customer support.
So I am back in Rio, that’s Rio de Janiro in Brazil for those people who are not cool enough to know where Rio is, or so I imagine I would tell people I met in fancy cocktail parties. Except I don’t go to fancy cocktail parties and so I never get to casually mention that I am in Rio again, you know no big deal it’s just a work thing.
A few things about Rio that you probably don’t know, it’s been raining ever since I got here. Another thing everyone speaks Portuguese and there aren’t that many tourists around. Finally it’s dangerous, not in the 007 sexy women want to kill me with their toned thighs dangerous but rather in they hey that geek that has a laptop and is a gringo we should rob him right now way. Which is not as cool.
You might say to yourself, Asad is a pussy I bet Rio is not that dangerous, I bet me and my Lonely Planet guide would have a blast in Rio. You’d be wrong, feeling a bit confined with having our Brazil team drive me everywhere a few nights ago I decided to walk back to my hotel after dinner. Now it took at most about two minutes to walk back to the hotel. I was by the beach on one of the biggest roads in Rio, it was well lit, toned hot girls were running on a path by the ocean and police cars were parked nearby with the lights on. By the way Policia sounds a lot cooler than Police is there any word that doesn’t sound cooler by adding a to the end of it, says Asada.
So I felt very safe and walked back to the hotel thinking that hey maybe I’ll take the bus next time or try taxies on my own. The next day I hear that someone was kidnapped on that same road and taken to an ATM so that he could withdraw money for the robbers. *sigh* with my luck I would be kidnaped by robbers who would not speak any English at all and so it would end badly for all involved.
Business travel is more about tolerance and enjoyment. You tolerate the wait at the security line, you tolerate the old ethnic lady with 4 bags and a crying baby, you tolerate the custom official who makes you wait even more. Then you tolerate the hotel who has lost your reservation, for some reason has no clock and the room that smell of cigarettes even though there’s a big sign on the door that says no smoking.
Most of all you start to hate everyone else who is not a frequent flyer. You hate that they didn’t realize they had to take their laptop out, you hate that they brought too many carry ons and now they are arguing with the stewardess and delaying the take off. You hate that they want to take over the arm rest which is clearly yours.
That’s not to say that it’s all bad, the girls in Brazil live up to their reputation and the steak is amazing even though they serve it for lunch and dinner on most days. You also get to build up your miles for when you go on a personal trip somewhere although I haven’t had the time to do any of that this year.
So now I am back in Frisco, San Francisco for the people who don’t travel in my imaginary cocktail party. I’ll let you guys know how it goes, so far I am still waiting for a spontaneous game of baccarat to break out. Apparently even in imaginary cocktail parties I am disappointed.
Wow, it’s been a while, I could tell you that nothing has been going on but it would be a lie. Life in general has been very busy, part of the reason I have put off posting. Every time I sat down to write something it seemed like it would take forever and so I Put it off again until another time feeling a bit more guilty each time someone reminded me to post.
As you guys know I got married in 2007 (by the way is it just me or does it still feel like it’s 2007 and not 2008). Our wedding ceremony was very simple, just me, my wife, my sister and a friend of my wife. Two of my friends were going to attend but one forgot about the wedding and the other didn’t think of buying his airline ticket until he was on his way to the airport at which point he decided to call me and see what time the wedding was. My friends rock!
So we had planned on having another wedding or weddings this year. We were going to have a wedding in Taiwan so that our families could meet, then have another one in California where my friends co-workers could come as well as the rest of my family in the US who didn’t make the trip to Taiwan. Talking to my dad and cousins in Iran I decided to have yet another one in Iran.
If you are keeping track at home that’s 3 weddings, I kept asking my wife why was spending so much time on the food, flowers,… She reminded me that she was taking care of the Taiwan wedding and that I was responsible for the US one. Here was my plan for doing all the work. Have a super simple wedding at the beach, everyone can come in jeans and flip flops. Hire a wedding planner for 5k, and a Persian bad from Santa Barbara. The Iran wedding my dad would take care of.
Sounds great in theory until the actual wedding in Taiwan happened. It turns out that weddings have a lot more drama/work than you would expect. The Taiwan wedding went well and everyone who has seen the pictures keeps telling us we look very happy, I suppose that is in contrast with other peoples weddings who seem pissed off and unhappy ?
So here is my solution for CA wedding, I am canceling it. Nice and easy, if you were planning on coming to my wedding sorry guys it’s just too much work. I’ll be happy to come to yours or you can organize mine for me and let me know how it goes :). A much better idea in my opinion is to just meet and have some good food. So I will owe you guys a meal, let me know when you are in the bay area and we’ll go out.
As for the Iran wedding well our honeymoon was planned for Greece. It’s a hop away from Iran and instead of a wedding I think we’ll just meet more family members and eat.
More wedding pictures
Now there are scientists that say the same thing, you know the whole raw food craze ? Turns out cooking your food is good for you.
And you believe cooking with that fire spurred the development of modern humans.
Here’s the way I tend to ask the question: I tend to think of the advent of cooking as having a huge impact on the quality of the diet. In fact, I can’t think of any increase in the quality of diet in the history of life that is bigger. And repeatedly we have evidence in biology of increases in dietary quality affecting bodies. The food was softer, easier to eat, with a higher density of calories—so this led to smaller guts, and, since the food was providing more energy, we see more evidence of energy use by the body. There’s only one time it could have happened on that basis; that is, with the evolution of Homo erectus somewhere between 1.6 [million] and 1.8 million years ago.
It’s hard to describe the differences between Europe and the US. Once upon a time you could just say you have a higher quality of life in Europe and you give that up for the ability to make more money in the US. That’s what I used to believe as well but spending time in Europe has made it clear that the reality is far from what I used to believe.
Quality of life really fails to describe the huge difference between life in Europe and US. Here’s a simple example I get 15 days of vacation a year, most people get 10. My counter part in Europe gets 28 days of vacation a year and that’s 2 down from what most of his friends get. That’s 28 working days not counting sick days. Imagine having that much time, being able to plan long vacations ahead of time, you know all those places you always wanted to visit ? You could visit them before retirement, tours in Africa, biking in Vietnam, diving in the red sea,…
I am not going to mention health care, I am just not. I looked over how much my PPO cost for me and my wife for the past year and immediately changed it to an HMO. When I had my diving accident in Palau I saw a Dr in Taiwan, the visit along with the medication cost me a whopping $12. Let’s not talk about this anymore. Europe would have been even cheaper.
Next up food, I ate well on this trip, really well. Nomad in Amsterdam was amazing, one of the dishes was so outstanding both me and my co-worker tried to re-create it to no avail. Later on Biblioteket in Copenhagen was outstanding. I am lucky enough to live near San Francisco which has a great selection of restaurants but still your average San Francisco restaurant doesn’t stand a chance against the average restaurant in Antwarp or Amsterdam or … The nicest thing about eating in Europe was the time, I don’t think we had a single dinner that took less than 2 hours, while McDonalds and KFC were everywhere “grown ups” eat in sit down places where your food takes time to prepare and cook and tastes like it took time as well.
Last but not least the women, we though the women in Amsterdam were hot but they looked downright plain next to the women in Copenhagen. Imagine hundreds of supermodels walking around and riding bikes. I walked into a bench as I couldn’t help but stare, my co-worker almost walked into a car yes the women were that good looking and this was in the middle of winter where everyone was wrapped up in jackets. My marriage would have been in trouble if I was there during summer. By the way if you are a single female living in the bay area enjoy it really there is no where else in the world quiet like it. If you are a single guy living in the San Francisco bay area, move out, it’s not worth it. Almost anywhere else you move to will be better. Don’t believe me ? Take a look at the pic below.
Convinced ? then enjoy the rest of your life. Part II will be coming soon.