Whew, what a day of random adventures.  It's funny how a day can begin and end which such a random phrase.

That's right: I'm heading to Japan.  Sounds like a plan to me!  Although I'll admit it, for a super planner like me, this trip has caught me a little off guard haha.

It all started a few months back at a happy hour.  I MAY have had a few too many margaritas at Chevys when we were all discussing going to Japan.  My boss, Steve, mentioned the idea of going to Japan to possibly do some work.  Next thing I know, I blurted out. "Shoot, I'll go in a second!"  Of course, it was true, but I think I kind of surprised everyone, including myself.

Well, drunken (actually, more like buzzed) words are sober thoughts.  Steve later told me I could possibly work in Japan for up to a year.  I thought that was pretty cool, although I was a little hesitant to go to work at a place where I could be working 12-14 hour days and couldn't leave work until the manager left.  Either way, it was the experience of a lifetime.  In the end it wasn't meant to be; one of our designers, who had way more experience than me, was sent to help out the guys over the Pacific.

That was until a few weeks ago.  The topic of simulation work came up, and I was again on the possible travel list, along with my buddy Roger at work.  I'll admit, for a guy with less than a year's time in at the company (one year this week) I was surprised that I'd go, plus Roger had more experience in the area they needed help.  It sounded like Roger would be going for sure.  Then, all of a sudden, Steve let me know last week that I could possibly be going to work in Fuji (Japan) starting wither 7/26 or 8/2, which was REALLY soon.  They needed someone who could help the Japan guys with our environment, and I had quite a bit of testing experience.  That was Wednesday...

Then Steve went on vacay to Florida and we never got confirmation from the Fuji manager, so I just assumed it'd be put off.  After all, I'm heading to Europe on September 1st, so I just figured Roger would go later in August.

Monday rolls around, and I got an email saying I'm all set to go, starting work Monday!  Holy crap.  All of a sudden, I got super excited (and a little nervous, but not much).  Today, it was official: I'm on a flight to Tokyo on Saturday.

I'm still a bit in shock from all of this.  Of course I'll be mostly working (quite a bit it sounds like), but I'm going to do my best to get out and see what I can.  It's great practice for Europe, especially with a 10-11 hr flight!  As Roger mentioned, the language barrier might be a bit tougher to overcome; English isn't as prevalent in Japan as it is in Europe.  Fortunately, one of our SJ guys is already there, plus many of the Japan guys speak English pretty well, so it shouldn't be a problem.  I'm a little frazzled also by the spontaneity, but hey, that's what makes it an adventure right?  It's definitely an experience.

After two weeks, I'll be back, and two weeks later, I'll be heading across the pond to London.  Man, this is my first two international travel experiences, and they're within a month!  Man, I truly feel like a guy in his 20s, exploring the world.  I'm glad I finally got my "random" little adventure, even if I do have to work most of the time.

So, in the meantime, I'm prepping for Japan, collecting info, packing, the usual.  I'll try to post often, and the pictures (and souvenirs) will be coming.  I'm beat, later y'all!

-StM

Well, it's been a week since I've gotten back from MI, but with all the moving hoopla, I'm just getting around to writing this up.  So here's the story:

Last Wednesday was probably the worst air travel day I've had in a while.  However, I never knew how interesting a day of delays in airports could be.  There's a whole world of people with interesting stories roaming our airports.  Next time you're stuck on the ground, you should try to make conversation with someone, you learn the most interesting things.

Alright, so the breakdown: I got up at 3 a.m. (EST) to get to my flight from Detroit to Houston at 6 a.m.  We got on board when the pilot came on and said the fuel indicator for the center fuel tank was broken.  Oops, that's not good.  Fortunately, all they needed to do was empty the tank, fill it and watch the truck's gauge so that they'd have an accurate measurement.  Ten minutes.  We got off the plane, and me being half-awake and naive, I bought it.  Two and a half hours later, the fuel truck still hadn't arrived, and Continental (somehow) shoved us all onto their next flight to Houston.  There went my flight to San Jose.

I arrived in muggy Houston with another 6 hours until my flight to San Jose at 5:55 p.m. (CST).  I had been hoping to get into work at noon and start right back into it, but there went that.  Instead of freaking out, as I normally would, I just found a place for a sandwich, turned on my laptop, and did work through the VPN while watching the World Cup. (Sorry guys for rerouting the video through San Jose!)  It was quite relaxing, sitting in an empty section of the huge terminal, typing away.  In the end, I somehow managed 5 1/2 hours of work, which I must say was quite a feat.  Eventually, the area around me filled up with people.  All of a sudden, a voice over the speaker came on in the gate area, "We will now begin pre-boarding for Detroit."  I looked up, surprised to see that I had sat down right at the gate for Detroit.  It felt like a message, like maybe I should head home.  It might've been a good idea.  People gave me strange looks, wondering why the guy in the Detroit Tigers shirt wasn't getting on the plane.

In the end, I moved to my gate, which had now changed to the opposite side of this cross-shaped terminal.  Gate changes up to this point: 2.  As I sat working away, the skies outside grew dark and it began to pour.  I wouldn't have noticed if it weren't for the clap of thunder that knocked me out of my work trance.  Ah, so nice to see rain again.  It took me a moment later to realize the problem: there's no way they'll land in this.  Gate change...gate change, running up and down the terminal.  Finally, the flight got delayed by an hour.  Apparently the flight from Portland that we were waiting for diverted to Dallas and then to San Antonio because of the weather.

Delay...gate change...gate change...gate change.  It was ridiculous; by this point, I was basically laughing.  Slowly, I realized who was on my plane, since the group would migrate from place to place.  While running from gate to gate, I met an 18 year old girl who was just starting college.  She was in an awful mood; apparently she was flying standby on this flight and never really had traveled alone like this before.  I kinda calmed her down and talked to her about college and stuff.  She had quite a story, moving 17 times in the last 18 years.  Her accent was cool; it was a combination of Florida, California, and Texas, all of which she had lived in at one point.  Finally, we settled down at our 6th and final gate for our flight at 9:30 p.m. (CST)

The flight was now in the air.  Whew.  As for the girl, she got on to the earlier San Jose flight (which in the end landed 1 minute before our flight haha).  In the meantime, the man across from me figured out that I was into computers (dunno what I mentioned to the girl about tech stuff)  As it turns out, he was the previous CTO of Grand Central (now Google Voice).  It was really cool hearing his whole story, especially his description of Google's network and the problem it has with VoIP.  He had retired a few months back, but now was in talks with Apple to work on some sort of data network, possibly for iTunes streaming.  His interview was the next day, but he said if their offer didn't interest them, he'd be starting his own company.  I told him to sign me up if he ever did and needed someone like me!  Luckily, I had a business card, so we exchanged information.  You never know what will happen.

In the end, our flight took off at 9:30 p.m. (CST) and got to SJ around midnight.  Unfortunately, my shuttle ride back had already left, but the guy I had met had a car and was heading for Cupertino, which was right on the way to my place.  He dropped me off after picking up his bag, and I passed out around 2 a.m. (PST).

In the end, I had been up over 24 hours, but I had met some interesting people, and I'm glad that I got to have my mini airport adventure.  Next time I get delayed, I'll actually look forward to it, since you never know who you will meet :-)

That's it for now, I owe you news on my move and new place, keep in touch, I'll see what I can do.

Later!

-StM