13.Oct.2016 Interim Update from Sydney Airport

Anyone who has been flying for a while can't help but notice how much better entertainment has become - although international has always been better than domestic. Without even touching the Kids TV options, Victoria watched several Kids movies (Finding Nemo, Zootopia, Angry Birds, and The Little Mermaid). Those of us who recall one movie on the big screen in flights can't help but appreciate over a hundred options - many with lots of language options. Given that she watched the Little Mermaid, she liked the surprise of a big Little Mermaid book (with stickers,) but we didn't do more than briefly look at it. The entire flight was in the dark with people trying to sleep until the last two hours, so initial plans of firing up the light and reading became impractical or at least inconsiderate.  We were going read here in Sydney until we saw the play zone in the Air New Zealand lounge - don't see that in the US!



She's been a perfect flyer today (or is it the day before yesterday? since it is now Thursday) - no crying, arguing, getting sick,... all the things parents and those seated near fear (and kids around us were doing). She even got some sleep! Unfortunately, we were sitting on the wing, so the views of Sydney were obstructed even though we had a window on the right side.



That wraps things up for now. We'll entertain ourselves for a couple more hours here, fly to Auckland, and drive down to Lake Taupo. Look for more on Friday.

11.Oct.2016 Departure Day

This trip came together pretty fast. Over a couple days, 1) I got a job offer, 2) determined last day of work with current employer (Conversant), 3) requested later start date with new employer (Forrester), 4) booked the flight.  8 days later and we're heading to the airport.  In the meantime, we had to do two things: 1) weekend football trip to see South Carolina (my grad school) lose to Georgia, and 2) press 200 lbs of Petite Sirah grapes. Thanks to a thoughtful hurricane, we skipped step one. Touristy things in Savannah are harder to do in hip-deep water and getting to a game is harder when I-26 is an evacuation route. So on Monday I went in, finished up what needed to be done, got home, and pressed some vino (along with Alex and several friends). As a credit to my friends in Conversant IT, by the time I got home, my work e-mail didn't work. #efficient Let me just say the pressing was fun as it became a meat/cheese/wine inspired improv night, but we went through trace amounts of wine. again #efficient

 

Anyhow, today (as weekdays without work tend to be) has been awesome - wake up late (7am), clean  wine making equipment, head downtown to see my buddy Marc's sendoff at work (things happen in threes - not sure who #3 is), and fine tune the amount of pink princess-themed apparel/toys/books that make the cut before Victoria and I fly to New Zealand. Can't speak about your kids, but if Victoria has some control over things, it all goes better. She picks some toys, some clothes, some stuffed animals, games, and we're good. Also, if you don't bring it up, whatever items are not there will be forgotten - except Mommy because Mommy is always top of mind. I am betting Victoria will melt down wanting my wife on the ferry to the South Island (Oct 16) - you are free to set your own over/under betting odds. We'll see how things stack up.



Where was I?  Oh yeah, getting on a plane for the next few days. I've brought a few surprises to keep her entertained en route. I'll miss October 12 altogether. To save serious money, we get to change planes in Sydney foir 4 hours - long enough to be a long change, too short to sprint down to Darling Harbour and relax for 7.4 minutes - then get into Auckland late on the 13th. Totally worth it. To make up for it, I get a pretty full October 28 at the end of the trip - hang out in Auckland all morning, leisurely mid-afternoon departure, quick 12 hour 20 minute direct non-stop flight home, land in SFO before 7am, and continue to enjoy the day for another 17+ hours. Let me tell you right now what I'll do then: Virginia Tech plays Pitt in football while I am in the air, so assuming I don't have live TV over Tahiti, I'll watch a replay of that the moment I get home.

  

So here we are at the airport.Victoria has said goodbye to Mommy, forgotten her brother, and taken down some chocolate chip cookies and brownies late at night. What could go wrong? She is looking out at the airplanes, evaluating which one we should be in. That seems like a good place to leave things. See you in Sydney (or Auckland)!



  

Road Trip Outback the Sequel: Different Child, Different Outback

Alex has a little sister (Victoria) and I've always thought, "It sure would be cool if I could do a trip like that Australia trip with her." Taking 2 months off is not a luxury one gets too often. No, I am not taking 2 months, but I am taking a little over 2 weeks: I leave my current job on Monday, fly down to NZ the next day, get back on a Friday, and start a new job on the Monday.
He was 2 when we went around Oz, she is 3. While her older brother can't skip that much Middle School, I'm pretty sure she won't fall too far behind in preschool.





Unlike the previous trip, which was planned to minute detail months ahead of time, this flight was booked 8 days before departure. Look for more improvisation. The only things that are booked are the flight, car, and 2 nights down in Taupo. From there, we'll go to the South Island, see what we can, and get back up to Auckland in time to fly home.

Why New Zealand? Well, it's gorgeous to start with. Unless you count changing planes, I've never been there. If you've read this blog, you know how much I love Australians - what would be the closest to Australians? Yeah, I know, you're not supposed to say that, but let's be real: If you had seen almost all of the US, loved it, and wanted more like that but entirely new, might you consider visiting Canada? Same here. Love Australia, heard nothing but good things about New Zealand, so let's check it out. I may leave that Australian Wallabies Rugby hat at home. I wanted a scenic place big enough to drive around for a couple weeks. All things being equal, it's best not to have a language barrier. To get wifely approval, it also had to be a relatively safe place - 1st world roads, medical system, etc. (ya know - kids). Plus, how often do you get to go to a country where the leader has almost exactly your name? For my many friends unfamiliar with Kiwi politics, the Prime Minister is John Key and yes, he's a conservative. I'll just make reservations under "J Key" and see if I get great service or have abuse hurled in my direction. Actually, I'll bet it resembles Australia in political terms in this way: In Oz the citizenry seem to have figured out that you can a) have strong opinions on politics, b) not bring it up when meeting strangers, and c) not view people through the lens of whether they vote for your person or "the other". They may argue with each other in private, but do not feel compelled to foist it onto you. Oh, and yes, I'll miss more than two weeks of Clinton/Trump coverage too. That's a huge ("yuge") bonus. Among the semi-finalists, Iceland and Costa Rica are just a little too small for half a month. Finalists Ireland and Central Europe are coveted for future family vacations by the wife (and their weather will likely be worse than NZ, which will still be pretty rainy).

So on October 11 we're off into the great wide open.

Happy Australia Day! We're coming back...

Ever since we left, we've been looking to get back to Oz. Well, almost seven years to the day after we flew back from Sydney, we'll be back.
Last we saw Sydney, it was March 24, 2008 and it looked like this:

Well, everyone has gotten older and Alex has a little sister. 

So we'll be back in NSW to see some friends, enjoy the city, and yes, I'll even catch the opening weekend of AFL (Sydney Swans vs. Essendon Bombers in the ANZ Arena).  Can't wait.

Two Years Later- Tundra Roadtrip in the American Midwest

Naturally, I would love to be updating this blog with yet more trips across Australia, but that is not yet in the cards. Meanwhile, I have been doing some travel that may be blogworthy: 16 university campuses in 6 states in 9 working days. Funny that I was in the South this time last year. So this time around I traded the grits and soul food of Charleston, South Carolina and Tuscaloosa, Alabama for a more (ahem) "acquired taste" - howling winds and blowing snow. Picture the Deep North in Queensland and aim for the exact opposite. How did you celebrate Australia Day?

I celebrated January 26 by boarding a redeye flight to Chicago, landing at 5:10am, and driving to Notre Dame, Purdue, IUPUI, and Indiana University. Mind you, I am not complaining. It was time well spent and an agenda that I drew up.

You not might think that a sheer lust for tourism placed me in a rental car, careening across the great icy flat spot that I grew up in and around. In fact, I did. Let me say this, I had a great time visiting more glamorous spots like Barcelona, Madrid, Paris, and London for work trip last summer. The photo below would imply as much (note, I have wifely approval to post this, so don't infer more than I implied!):

The thing is, I really do like everywhere I go and just about everyone I meet. It is admittedly easier to like strolling down the Esplanade in Cairns as the warm humid embrace of an evening breeze joins the up-tempo beat of live music than it is to like hurrying not even

two blocks from your parked car to the Illini Union as the biting wind causes you to lose feeling in your fingers while encouraging altogether too much feeling in other exposed surfaces like your ears, nose, and neck. The thing is, I have heard good things about these places. I fully expected that I would like visiting schools like Indiana, Penn State, and Wisconsin for the first time - and I did.

So what was the agenda? I flew into Chicago and visited Notre Dame, Purdue, IUPUI, Indiana, Washington University in St Louis, Illinois, Penn State, Washington & Jefferson College, Carnegie Mellon, Pittsburgh, Duquesne, Ohio State, Marquette, Wisconsin, U of Chicago, and Northwestern. The map below of the Big Ten (an athletic conference of major midwestern universities and yes, they have had 11 members for about 16-17 years now) gives a nice outline - I skipped the two Michigan schools and the two farthest to the West (Iowa and Minnesota), but spent time at all the others. Specifically, I went to fairs at Indiana, Ohio State, and Wisconsin (the three red ones if you're looking at the map), did an info session at Illinois, and met with administrators at all the schools.

The best part of most travel involves things that go wrong, so let me start with the rental car: the "Check Oil" light was blinking the whole time, so I never saw the odometer except when the key was in but the engine off. Shortly into my trip a fuse went out, so I am not sure what other indications I was supposed to get on the dash. The window takes about 15 seconds to go down and when it goes up it does not close properly, so at highway speed it was as if I had my window down by the smallest possible amount. The folks checking me in were a

little surprised to see I'd put 2687 miles on the car and despite these many but minor flaws, I certainly got good value for the firm (less than 10 cents/mile).

My confidence in the Dodge Avenger was never terribly high, so it did not surprise me when the Dodge's perception of my speed did not equate to that of the Illinois Highway patrol. It's not as if I don't ever speed, I just can't abide by getting caught for speeding when I am not. Fortunately, much like in Western Australia, I was pulled over for speeding and I was given a warning instead of a ticket. In Oz, the oncoming policeman did not see where the speed limit had been raised leaving a construction zone (nor did he notice the car tailgating me, the driver of which was apparently frustrated that I was doing the speed limit). In Illinois, I believe the radar granted me the credit for the speed of a larger vehicle passing me. To complete my vehicular lawlessness, I was given a parking ticket for parking

where I thought the Illinois Business School people told me to go - "we've reserved some spots with the hoods on the meters - park there (pointing)." I did, but I apparently picked the wrong hooded meter, reserved by some other department, so I got a ticket that was subsequently waived.

Before I start singling anyone out for being exceptional, please know that they are all lovely schools and if/when I am back in the area I will surely visit all again (except Duquesne).

Indiana is known as being a nicer campus in a classic college town, Bloomington. It had a broad selection of restaurants in town, a quaint town square, and an all-limestone campus that was somewhat reminiscent of my alma mater, Virginia Tech. Looked like a pleasant place that would be really attractive if I had visited when the trees were green. Nice folks and a ton of students studying foreign languages. It is unusual to find college students who speak foreign languages in bulk. Even those elite, foreign-affairs skewing schools tend to be small. This was a huge school with lots of foreign-language-speaking US students (good for business).

Several folks who graduated from Illinois are friends of mine - a neighbor who played on their '83 Rose Bowl team, a childhood friend who went there and now lives out here in the Bay Area - so it was good to go there. We did an info session and I was impressed how many students attended. Thursday nights are notoriously heavy drinking nights on college campuses, yet despite limited advertising, quite a few students fought the cold and eschewed (or at least delayed) the social temptations to listen to me talk about how they could pay to go abroad. I dropped in an Irish place to get something warm and I realized that after having Irish food about once every other year for most of my life, I had just been to Irish restaurants three nights in a row: Bloomington, St Louis, and Urbana/Champaign (OK, that last one was more of a tavern but the first two were definitely restaurants, not just bars).

That reminds me, in the first one, some guy wanted to strike up a conversation. Now I am a social guy, traveling solo, so I am normally game to talk to passing strangers. Hit it off with a guy at the airport when I flew back, but this is not one of those stories. The first night, I had gotten into Bloomington with almost no sleep the night before, I'd had a long day and driven to four schools, and I just wanted to eat and go. Additionally, even fully rested, this was not the kind of person I would want to talk with too much. He starts in with some weak, pointless poem. 30 seconds? 2 minutes? I couldn't say.

I was kind of tuned out and did not want to encourage him. It was delivered as if it was a pearl of wisdom and I thought "just don't look at him, he'll get the point." Having received no feedback and presumably thinking he should elevate his game, he paused about 2 minutes then said another one notable only for having a few rather unambiguous lines on politics - I had concentrated on not listening closely, but even for those who sympathize with his views it would be a best practice to not make what he said the second thing you say to a total stranger. The better you know me the less you can probably picture me saying this - but I turned and asked, "Are you going to do this all night or are you about done?" Within about 2 minutes he picked up his stew and his beer and moved to a different seat. Solid.

Some older buildings on these campuses are just really strangely laid out. One at Penn State had these odd, sort of House of Escher drawing half floors, but the most unusual was at University of Pittsburgh (known as Pitt). Try to follow these directions: "Go to the third floor, head down the hall that way (motioning East), at the end of the hall, go up a few stairs to room 209". So you go up from the 3rd floor to room 2-something? Yeah.

Now that I've made fun of it, let me note that - surprisingly - one of my favorite campuses was Pitt's. It's surprising because I grew up in Pittsburgh and even took a Spanish class one summer at Pitt, but I was not a fan of the campus at the time. Partly because I live in a city I'm a bit more amenable to city campuses and partly because I've been to 63 campuses in the past year and a half for work, Pitt measures up much better.

There are several architecturally interesting buildings, but the signature building is the Cathedral of Learning. The outside looks like something from perhaps one of the Batman movies, some envision a dreary Eastern European monstrosity from the communist era, I've always felt that it looked a little like it was melting. Some people describe the inside of the Cathedral of Learning as something from Harry Potter - I can't really say, but it is unique (here is my poorly filmed 16 seconds of the Cathedral of Learning at Pitt).

Madison, Wisconsin, home of the University of Wisconsin, is another classic college town with a great reputation. It's this cool college town set between two (frozen) lakes and it is also the state capital. Turns out the reputation was well deserved. All the schools were I met students had very good ones: Indiana, Illinois, Ohio State, and Wisconsin. I did not exactly hang out at the frat parties, so I saw the business game face for most. The quirk here was that the fair ran until 8pm. Mind you I have no "bar stories" from the Australia portion of the blog because I was touring with my son (pictures of whom make the blog readable, I know). I got back to the hotel, dropped off my things, and headed out around 9pm expecting to be crushed by thousands of drunken Badgers. Nothing of the sort - I'm grabbing a quick bite and a brew in this mildly crowded place near my hotel called the Nitty Gritty. Then a few minutes before 10pm students start queuing 5 deep on either side of me but not ordering. There's a quick announcement that 10pm is the Power Hour, everything is $1, and it was on - mass mayhem as everyone orders something on the order of 4 rum & cokes and gets change for their $5 bill. Even in the best of places, acquiring and consuming large volumes of mixed drinks is a recipe for, shall we say, people becoming inconsiderate. That just was not the case here: people could not help but bump you (and I did move to the side behind a pillar for faster drink processing for the others), but they all apologized as if it was their fault and a few struck up conversations (vastly superior to the aforementioned Bloomington bar bard). I left within 20 minutes, so I can't say what an hour of high volume, low cost distilled beverage did for their collective considerateness (is that an adjective?) at the end of the hour, but their reputation was certainly in tact.

Wrapped things up in Chicago visiting two premier universities and our language school. I've left out the more personal meetings because travel is usually about discovery - I am not sure I can make meeting up with an old friend in Chicago, another one in Pittsburgh, my mom in Pittsburgh, or alumni of our program in Indianapolis, Bloomington, and St Louis all that interesting. They were interesting to me, but I am not sure that they are to you. Good times and I'll wrap it up with a photo of the cute kid and the very cute wife that I saw when I got home.

A year later - Road Trip Southeastern US

Well, here we are a full year later and I still love thinking back on my 2 months in Oz. About this time last year, a charming young lady in Perth walked up to me and Alex and offered to buy him an apple juice. Next thing you know, we are in the middle of the Friday evening starter bar experience with about 7 folks just escaped from their place of work. Since then I have had a fantastic year - still happily married, still happily fathering, and happily employed.  So the last couple of weeks for work, I went on an epic tour of universities in the Southeast. First off, I took a 3-day trip to Colorado in December. Love that place. Here's some Colorado State imagery to keep you warm. I need to go to a different continent to get any snow on this blog. On the plus side, I have pretty good access to this continent, so I've got some more snow for ya. If you look at our spring tour, you'll see I'm hitting several college campuses (is the plural of campus campi? maybe Campari?) well, here's the list (not all me, thank goodness) http://www.intraxinternabroad.com/locations - I did some work in case it looks like I just hung out and ate food. First thing I did on this trip (like Colorado in December) I found more snow in North Carolina. Here's snowy NC State University. 

 

Then for the first time since I graduated (1992, for any keeping track), I saw my alma mater Virginia Tech play basketball and it happened to be the #1 team in the country, Wake Forest. Nice timing - for the 3rd time in history Virginia Tech beat a #1 team in basketball and I was

 there.  Sometimes you're just on a roll. Next thing you know my home town Pittsburgh Steelers won yet another Super Bowl. 

Then I went down to my grad school alma mater South Carolina. It was a wonderful homecoming. I must confess to being a bigger fan of Virginia Tech sports and I go back there more, but my 2 years at Carolina were maybe more fun than my 4 years at Tech (OK, all 6 were good, but it was more concentrated at Carolina).  The graduate business school at South Carolina treats me very well and they even highlighted this blog in the alumni magazine. So going back to South Carolina was wonderful. Good for work, good in general. 

I was going to meet up with a guy I've known of since high school but only recently got around to liking - he's a prof at Carolina. Unfortunately he was sick this trip, but I'll be back. So the tour was good and I realized - just as I would find vegemite within a day or two of arriving in Australia - that I really wanted some grits when I was in South Carolina. I had grits every day thereafter. If you live in the South, you take Waffle House for granted. If you don't, you realize that easy access to grits and hash browns that are splattered, smattered, smothered, covered and diced is a luxury to enjoy. Anyhow, 15 years after graduating from the place, I still enjoy going back to the University of South Carolina.  

Moving on, I drove down to Charleston - arguably one of the most beautiful cities in America - and continued on to Savannah. Wow. I just love this section of the South. It is hard not to love the place. Charleston and Savannah both have so much history and beautiful architecture. Not a bad couple of places to wander around, either. 

Next in line I saw Florida, Florida State, Auburn, and Alabama. No complaints about Florida and FSU, but I must say I liked the Alabama schools better. Tough to say exactly why - good folks at all the schools - but the Alabama schools were almost universally helpful. 

Here are some images of Toomers Corner (popular spot in Auburn- decorated with toilet paper) and the Delta Zeta house at Alabama. Why are you taking a picture of a sorority house, amigo? 

Good reason: my Mom was a DZ at Alabama many, many, many years ago so I took a photo of the current version of the place. Toomers Corner is where Auburn fans celebrate big wins. They saved their toilet paper by not winning many football games, so they are using their stored up celebratory rolls on other sports wins. Folks around here love every sport, but none as much as football. The dollar goes a little farther here: I put a quarter in the parking meter and it gave me an hour. In San Francisco, a quarter buys you enough time to legally put in the next quarter. 

Virginia Tech was wonderful as ever and the University of Virginia - our mortal enemy - was pretty darn good too. I might start liking those guys if I'm not careful. I got Alex a Tyrod Taylor (VT) jersey.  At least nobody else at the Steelers Super Bowl party was wearing a Virginia Tech jersey. The students at Tech - who had no idea I was an alum or in any way worthy of extra effort - were simply the most polite, thoughtful people I met on the trip. Much like Carolina, the people at Tech certainly make alums feel welcome. Great to go home again. 

Good times in the South. I think I'd still rather be in Queensland or Western Australia (or Darwin or the Barossa or Southbank or Darling Harbour), but it was great to go back to the South and see all the highlights. 

Helping Folks get their own Australia experience...

You may be wondering what I have been writing lately. As promised in an earlier post, I am now doing marketing on a global scale. Gotta love actually achieving a dream - I work at a great place with multilingual people who promote cultural exchanges. I am the Director of Global Marketing for Intrax Cultural Exchange. That means I am promoting Study Abroad among American & Canadian high schoolers and Intern Abroad among North American university students. Pretty fun, all in all.  Net net, if you like my writing style, you can get the homogenized version at intraxinternabroad.com and to a lesser extent at intraxstudyabroad.com.  While the nature of the job is to promote cultural exchange rather than explain my travels, I am still talking about the same sorts of things: few things can change your life for the better like immersing yourself in another culture.  I've been to 30-some countries and you can be sure that I am helping people get to experience their own, personal version of Australia (along with about 20 other countries).  With any luck I'll get back to Australia for work next year.  A year ago I told my old employer that I was leaving in January '08...man, I am so glad I went.  

Oh, one thing I re-wrote in our overview of Australia was that the national sport is cricket - I wrote that the national sports are cricket, Aussie-rules football, and (in deference to NSW) rugby.  Half of my visitors are Australian, so if you believe that cricket is alone atop Australian sports, let me know.  If cricket, AFL, and rugby are the main sports (in your mind) let me know. Rarely does one have the option of directly influencing how foreigners write about you, but you have it here. 

Also, this post would be incomplete if I did not thank the many folks who have visited over the past year.  Along with visitors from Iran and North Korea, I've had visitors from most of the US,  Europe, Canada, NZ, and Australia. To those of you in the Southern Hemisphere, I jealously wish you a lovely summer. As for me, not only do I have enough vegemite in the office to keep me going, there are co-workers who also eat it. 

Last point, I just just got back from my 20th high school reunion in Pittsburgh. If any of you are thinking about going to your high school reunion but are not sure, go. It was a great time.  The people you liked are still friendly and the people you did not like have evidently forgotten why they disliked you. I am not sure if all the annoying people changed or if I changed or if the only people who went were the ones looking to enjoy themselves, but everyone there was all set to have a good time.