Waking Up Where?

View Crazy Travels, Jan-Apr 2009 in a larger map

Work sure has cramped my blogging style. Perhaps not work per se, but the recent deluge of travel associated. Yes, I've recently exited Work Phase I (Sit at Desk Reading & Learning) and entered Phase II (World Travel To Visit Customers). These are exactly the phases that I anticipated after accepting this job, and called them out as such during the interview. Also as predicted, Phase II is starting to tax me ever so slightly, especially having to show up in Lausanne whenever I'm not otherwise flying around. I've refrained from saying "I told you so" to senior managers, as conventional wisdom dubs this a not-often-career-furthering move. And when I'm not traveling for work, we seem to be jet-setting on vacation. That's a nasty one-two punch to blogging, no doubt.

Since my last half-finished blog entry regarding my ten days in Miami and Houston in early April, I spent a week in Belgium for work (Belgium rocks!), London over a four-day Easter holiday for vacation (shopping, shopping, shopping and a Meal of the Year candidate!) and then ten fantastic days vacation in the Caribbean, flying into NYC for an afternoon and evening, then to St.Thomas and sailing the British Virgin Islands for a week on a catamaran (every bit as fantastic as it sounds, run don't walk and book your trip for 2010), a quick overnight at the Ritz-Carlton St.Thomas, and finally flying out of San Juan, Puerto Rico, after finding the undoubtedly best mofongo (fried plaintain) and Argentinian-style churrasco steak on the island. Now I'm headed for work again to Korea (no worries, the southern one) and Singapore for the next ten days. Because I like to calculate such things, I've calculated over 70% of my days spent on the road in one form or another since starting work in December. Tugging your heartstrings yet?

Ah, it breaks my heart how mightily the blog has suffered. It's a fun method for us also to recall our various crazy experiences. Since I've slacked off, Steph has visited Duchanbe, Tajikistan and Johnnesburg and George, South Africa (the map above shows our travels so far in 2009, yellow for Steph, red for me, blue for both). I never finished our skiing stories from St.Anton or during the World Economic Forum in Davos. We squeezed in weekend trips to Paris (yet again!) and Colmar, France. We've seen Oasis (surpisingly so-so), The Killers (surprisingly awesome) and The Gaslight Anthem (surprisingly loud) in concert. I'm continuing studying German--my abilities now steadily approaching the scant edge of decent--and I ate tongue for lunch at my beloved work French-cafeteria (tastes like beef, oh wait, it is beef). And since my income after four months now appears dependable, we've subsequently bought wine, furniture and garden patio supplies like crazy. Most excitingly, we welcomed my wonderful nephew into the world last week, the first child of my younger brother!

We have been collecting a decent number of pictures over the past months, hopefully I'll have some downtime in Korea to caption and post those with a quick recap. That wouldn't be a bad review of the year. Wish me luck!