Back in Taipei
Hey, I’m in the Taipei airport when lots of other people are here, in the evening. Makes the place downright cosy.
I left Malaysia this afternoon, and wrote this post on the plane somewhere off the coast of Vietnam. I’ll upload it from here, and then it’s on to San Francisco, where I’ll arrive just 4 hours after I left Malaysia, due to the phenomenon known as the International Date Line. (Actual elapsed time will be 19 hours.)
Malaysia is a beautiful and friendly country. Well, I’m sure I could find somebody there who would beat me up or worse if I really tried, but everyone I dealt with was great. The counter people at the airport and hotel were my favorites anywhere I’ve been: smart, friendly, hard-working, and all speaking better English than I usually bother to. And the flight crews on Malaysia Airlines are consistently great, too.
The picture above was taken yesterday morning when I took a long walk near my hotel. It was great having the Microsoft office and convention center within a block of the hotel, and also the 50-acre park right next door. The picture to the right, from my walk back to the hotel last night after the TechEd speaker/MVP party, shows how close it all was.
Speaking of the party … it was at Bosso Nova, and they served churrascaria, the swashbuckling style of tableside sliced-meat dining that’s popular in Brazil. After dinner we had a surprise: drinking games, pitting randomly selected teams against each other. Well, not entirely random — they had a rule that no team could contain more than two Germans or two Australians. As a proud American, I took offense at that rule, of course. I focused my indignation enough to briefly return to 20-something form, but our team (three Americans, a Sikh and a Malaysian) lost in a playoff to a team that just seemed to want it more than we did.
In the puritanical United States, I’ve never heard of organized drinking competitions at a company-sponsored event, unless the company was a bar. So when I headed for the door at the end of the evening, I teased a few of my Malaysian colleagues and told them “in the US we’re taught that Muslims are ascetic and have no vices.” They responded by making me join them for yet another round of drinks. Thanks, Fai, that’s just what I needed. 
Anyway, here are the pictures that explain why this morning I slept a little later than usual (or at least tried to):
This entry was posted on Thursday, September 13th, 2007 at 5:54 am. You can subscribe to comments on this post through its RSS feed.
on September 13, 2007 at 11:14 am Scott B wrote:
I swear I am in the wrong business
Every time i see “tech ed” there seems to be a lot of drunk people!
example:
http://chilco.textdrive.com/~dmahugh/2007/06/06/teched-parties/
Always some one doing the warrior yell too!!
on September 13, 2007 at 1:27 pm Tom wrote:
I am trying to teach myself not to speak superlatively quite so much, but this time it’s appropriate. That elevator picture may well be my favorite picture of you ever (though the Forrest Gump and red shrine pictures from India are very good, too — do you still have those?). It just captures that burpy alone moment in an elevator after a long night better than anything I’ve ever seen before.
Now some would argue that that moment needn’t be captured, but I would disagree. Life is art, baby, and that photo ranks up there with Iwo Jima and the sailor kissing the girl on VJ Day. How’s THAT for superlatives?
on September 13, 2007 at 8:33 pm Doug wrote:
Glad you enjoyed that shot, Tom. I had forgotten I took it, actually, but found it the next morning. I have a bunch of those “reflected in the elevator mirror late at night” shots from around the world, so maybe I need to make that a theme. They’re pretty easy to get, if you remember to do it.
Scott, you’re seeing TechEd clearly: it’s an excuse for a bunch of geeks to get together and drink. I think there are 15 or 20 of them worldwide each year — Megan and I will be going to the one in Barcelona later this fall. And we have an invitation from an Irishman to join the Irish party at that one. Those guys are know to tip a drink occasionally, I think.
on September 14, 2007 at 7:58 am Scott wrote:
…and what a cool place to party!