Hazen-san posts this incriminating evidence that I ate horse in Japan.
Alas, poor Trigger, I knew him well
Month: July 2008
Where’s Dave? Travel this week 7.14-7.21
Cotuit this weekend
Monday through Wednesday — Raleigh.
Thursday through whenever — Cotuit. One more NC trip on the 24th, then maybe some vacation before August 5 flight to Beijing for the Games. Getting excited.
A little Tokyo randomness
I love random-list posts. They are the lazy blogger’s key to productivity – lots of loosely linked stuff in one fast post.
1. In a few hours I depart Tokyo to return to Cape Cod. I leave at 4:40 pm on Friday and I arrive at 7:30 pm on … Friday. I should hit Cotuit by nine pm in a complete state of dysfunction.
2. Very productive round of meetings here. The Lenovo interactive team accompanied me.
Jim Hazen, Nicole Estebanelle, David Barbara
3. I ate well. Very well. The Japan team took us out to dinner last night and I ate some interesting dishes. Let’s say the highlight was the fat from the back of a horse’s neck.
4. No time for sightseeing. A quick stroll around the hotel gardens and that was that. I want to write a book on how to be a power-tourist for business travellers. If you have three hours to spare in Tokyo, here’s the deal. I am serious. I am the master of milking the most out of a city in the shortest amount of time. First rule — you ain’t going to see anything in your hotel room. Get out and walk.
5. Very interested in the role of newspaper in Japanese marketing. That, in a nutshell, is the challenge that brought me here.
6. Jumping rope is the best form of travelling exercise I have ever discovered. I’m using a “hyperperformance” speed rope from Buddy Lee.
7. Dress code. Pretty funny. The Japanese dress well in the office.
That’s all for now. Big post to write on the flight about our Olympic blogging program which is on fire and taking off better than expected. So — next week Raleigh for some meetings, then back to the Cape for a little breather before Beijing.
Welcome to the Internet
Dell blogs that the company has opened up social nets to its employees.
Um. You mean they couldn’t before? Sorry, but we’ve been YouTubing and Flickring from the get-go at Lenovo and haven’t felt compelled to honk our horn about it. The Lenovo segment on Facebook is huge. Welcome to the social ……
Dell Opens Up Social Media Sites to All Employees
Thu. Jul. 10, 2008Several weeks back, Dell as a company made a decision to give our employees access to social media sites. Todd Dwyer blogged about Facebook being open to Dell employees, …..
Making the frontpage with my gastro-intestinal issues
Pretty sure they are talking about me — except they got my age wrong by a year. Slow news day on Cape Cod when the lead item is about my anonymous butt.
“Officials at the state and county level declined to comment on the Cape town that has reported a salmonella case, or the individual who was affected, citing privacy laws. The only detail provided was that the sickened individual is a 49-year-old man from Barnstable County”
I want a set of the dead bug ear rings.
Fortune 499
Lenovo makes the Fortune 500 — at 499 — for the first time.
That makes it official — I now work for a big company.
Lively ….
In Tokyo and I started to mess with Google’ s virtual world: Lively.
First impressions — not bad. At least the client is a browser. I’ll play some more and opine later. It seems to be organized around a “chatroom” model, the nav is pretty basic. And somehow I ended up on a couch in the sky.
Tokyo arrival
{insert usual travel rant here]
Made it to Tokyo. Lots of street security (G8 meeting is happening to the north). Hotel gym is demented. Has one of those butt-shaker strap machines like the Jetson’s used. No weights. No erg. Brought my jump rope. Just punished myself for 14 hours of limbo and feel good about it.
Two, not one, but two crying babies adjacent to me. So no sleep, or what sleep occurred was nightmarish.
Other than that — this time yesterday I was sitting in my mom’s backyard eating ribs, now I am in Japan thinking noodles.
Cellphone does not work. So this will be a Skypish trip when I can get connected.
Tokyo in the morning …
I am in a semi-state of packedness — the killer these days is shoes. Now that I am the workout monster I feel compelled to fly with my trail running/gym shoes and have to ram a pair of loafers into my duffel bag (I never check a bag, I refuse to use a wheeled sarcophagus). And I am old and wise enough to anticipate forgetting something.
The big thing is the laptop sleeve and insuring it’s four little pouches contain:
- Laptop
- iPod and headphones
- sleeping pills
- ear plugs
- contact lens case and wetting solution
That’s all I need for inflight amenities. The other big need is books. Inflight reading this time will be Landing Page Optimization by Tim Ash (a good book and relatively up to date) and The Wind-up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Mirakami (at the suggestion of my son Eliot, and a book underway long before Tokyo came into focus).
I downloaded a Maria Callas rendition of Tosca from the early 50s, I think it is a very classic performance from Rome on BMI. Anyway, waiting for iTunes to download it, then will synch it onto the iPod.
My drill is to settle in, shoes off, noise-cancelling headphones plugged into the music, read and eat for a couple hours, then get up, stretch, perform my ablutions, pop out the contact, stick in the earplugs (with the headphones over it, unplugged but on and cancelling the engine noise), take the pill, blanket, pillow, seatbelt loose as possible around the outside of the blanket ….
Then 12 hours of restless limbo — never sleeping because I am exactly two inches longer than the allotted space, but not motivated enough to clear out my inbox and arrange my desktop icons into some clever shape ….
I’m taking the little point-and-shoot Canon, so no big honking Nikon shots, I just can’t abide hauling that such a long distance only to spend most of the time in my backpack in a conference room. So, some blogging from Tokyo, hopefully more fruitful than my last expedition there in September 2006.