Last Day in Bombay

Today’s our last full day in Bombay. We spent yesterday going to Haji Ali and Siddhivinayak Temple. I’d never been to Haji Ali, so it was interesting to see. Siddhivinayak was good as usual. The security there was the tightest we’ve seen so far. After visiting those two we went to my sister’s office and had a late lunch at Fragipanni at the Trident Hotel (where bullet holes can still be seen in some Oberoi tower windows). Afterward, my sister and I caught a local train at about 7pm up towards Santa Cruz from Churchgate to have dinner with my grandma and cousins.

The train wasn’t as bad as expected since we bought “first class” tickets (which isn’t saying much) for the ride up. People are insane at the train station. As the train starts to move or stop people just run everywhere, jumping on to the tracks to catch their trains. People are getting on to the trains before they come to a stop, and getting off as they’re rolling up. It’s madness. It’s no surprise that 4000 people die a year on the trains by getting hit.

In any case, we made it up fine and took a second class train back around 11 which was nearly empty and we were able to sit down. Today I’m spending the day with my other grandma and having dinner with the family. Then tomorrow we head out Delhi on a noon flight.

Arrived and First Days in Bombay

After 16 or so months, I’m back in Bombay and 20 hours in the air. It’s been a good first day and a half. We went to Vikram’s wedding which lasted all day on Saturday. It was a great time and the food was awesome as well. Today we had a late start (post jet lag and all), had lunch at Indigo Deli then went to Elephanta Island. Unfortunately, we were rushed in the process since we got there quite late, but we got to see everything on the island while avoiding being attacked by the monkeys that live there. For dinner we went for pow bajhi across the street from Chowpatty after which we walked from there all the way across Marine Drive to Nariman Point to work off the butter. I’m off to bed, going to probably go to Siddhi Vinayak and maybe Haj Ali (the latter of which I’ve never been to). I’m not writing much since the internet is painfully slow and I need to get to bed. I’m getting 9 kbps right out off the interface in total.

Two Days in Seoul

It’s our last night in Seoul. Tonight for the first time we had a chance to go see a little bit on the “old Seoul”, on the north side of the river. It seems we’re staying in Gangnam, which is a more newly developed part of Seoul (although if you look it’s just jam packed with people and amazing). In the part of Seoul we went to today, we got a chance to have a meeting in SK Telecom’s T-Tower, their new office building that is phenomenally beautiful. It’s a glass, steel and concrete building that has an amazing LCD that runs across the interior lobby and the actually reception area is a floor below the lobby which makes the lobby this flowing space where people are constantly moving. Very interesting design elements in play.

On the eating side I’ve been having bi-bim-bop for lunch most days and noodles or rice/soup for dinner. The bi-bim-bop here is so much better than what I’ve had in the states. There are tons of vegetarian options, which makes it great to keep trying different ones.

Overall, I’ve loved Korea and Seoul. It’s right in the middle of a spectrum (if one did exist) between China and Japan in East Asia. I love how sophisticated technology here, but it feels like it has a great soul (no pun intended) and heart to it. It makes me want to thinking about living in Asia again. I’m heading to Tokyo (Gimpo to Haneda), where we’ll continue customer meetings and end the week. Kamsamida!

Arrived in Korea

I landed in Seoul today after a 12-ish hour non-stop flight from San Francisco. I’m here in Korea and later this week in Japan to test a couple product concepts we’re working on with possible customers and partners before we begin to get way deep in the product development “cycle”. It’s a process called SyncDev, the premise of which is to test your product ideas before you build the product.

I’ve never been to Korea before so this it’s pretty exciting to be out here. After we checked in, we went out to eat at a hotpot-ish place down the road from the hotel. We though we ordered a hotpot with veggies and stuff to put in to the pot, but instead came out a pile of sizzling meat. Not good. The waitress, who shared a glass of beer with us asked us were we were from in very broken English and it turns out she was from China.

Obviously, I took advantage of this and was able to explain to her in Chinese that I needed some veggies and rice and other good stuff. Who knew knowing some Chinese would come in handy in Korea? Instead of starving, I managed to get a good tasty meal in.

We start our customer meetings at 10am tomorrow, so I’m of to bed but I’m looking forward to seeing Seoul in the day light.

QSF Airport Code

While this not a travel blog (yet), I just found that the Bay Area has an airport code that covers all three area airports: QSF!. Add that to the list like NYC (for New York area airports like LGA, EWR and JFK) or LON (for the London area airports). How cool is that?

Continental Upgrade and Standby Lists

Ever wondered where you stood on a standby list for a flight? How about what the inflight amenities were? Or where you were on the upgrade list? Well, if you fly Continental, look no further than their PDA (e.g. mobile) web site. I’ve never found this information elsewhere, but on this one specific Continental site, you can get all that information! Just plug in your flight number, the day of travel and you know where you stand. I can’t believe they make that info available, but if you travel a ton it’s super-useful. Yes, yes, two travel posts in a row but when you’re on the road this stuff is invaluable.

Northwest Gold/Platinum Elite

This year is the first time in two years that I’ve been a Silver Elite on Northwest WorldPerks. With all my Shanghai travel in the past years, I had managed to be either Gold or Platinum for a while. There are a ton of benefits for being any level of airline elite, the one that I’ve found that I miss the most is the dedicated phone number. Calling the Gold and Platinum line, you had a live person on the phone within 15 seconds. The Silver line? A phone menu, then a three or four minute wait to reach somebody. Alas, life is so hard.

Stateside

I made it back to the states on Thursday. Vacation was great — far too short though. It was great to see a bunch of the old Shanghai friends, hang out with my SF peeps in Tokyo and Shanghai, and get up to all the same mischief that I used to. Having just 3.5 days out of the office wasn’t enough. I can’t wait until my next vacations: Burning Man and India. Here’s to a four day week!

Back in Shanghai

However brief, I’m back in Shanghi. Landed here Monday night and ate at Vedas (delicious), then on Tuesday went around to the old office and dropped in on folks and had lunch, then Pablo and Maya arrived from Japan. Drinks at People’s 7, then dinner at South Beauty, then went to this new place called Richy’s (an offshot of Babyface it seems), then had some food at City Diner. Always a good place to end the night.

Today, we woke up late, had lunch at Din Tai Fung, cruised around Xintiandi and I also went to Shirtflag and bought two shirts that are pretty awesome. Then it’s off to dinner at M then probably a bar or something like that. I fly out tomorrow morning at 11am, so it’s a quick saunter through Shanghai but I’ve had a chance to see who I wanted to see and do what I wanted to do, so success overall.

Last day in Toyko and in to Shanghai

Our last day in Tokyo, we made our way to the Tjisuki fish market to go browse a ton (or really, many tons) of fish. Given the time of the day, we met the crush of the run hour crowd. It wasn’t terribly bad via Ginza line, but everywhere the line intersected the JR Yamanote line, the mass of people moved in and our of the train. The worst it got was at Uneo, where people just pushed themselves on the the train.

I took a bunch of pictures, and there were really expensive fish – the most impressive were the tuna. These things were huge, something like 6 or 7 feet long, and the care in which they were cut and packaged was something else. It was fascinating seeing all the trucks and lorries transporting the styrofoam-ed boxes of fish for delivery all over the world. We also saw a box of fish that must have been an inbound delivery from Norway of some other fish. Lots of fish everywhere.

With the spare time we had before our flight, we dropped in on Ginza and strolled the streets there, then headed back to the ryokan to get our bags and check out. We caught the 12 noon Skyliner from Ueno to Narita. Given our slightly off timing, we made it to the airport with only an hour to spare for the flight. I was a little concerned, but the speed and efficiency that we made it through that airport to our gate was shocking: 23 minutes from train arrival to at the gate, including outbound passport control.

So it’s off to Shanghai on another JAL flight, from which I’m writing this blog post. On the agenda for tonight is good food and good fun.