Facebook Photos

We posted some recent photos from our travels in Facebook. We used to upload everything to yahoo photos but then they closed up shop, and we were guided toward Flicker, but we never got into it, so it looks like Facebook will be our destination of choice for photos. We threw the videos in my last post out there as well, as well as the video we have of Chloe walking for the first time.

Kiwis, Hong Kongers, & Us

Here are our friends we met in Hong Kong last weekend.

Kiwis (Brenda, Amber, Richard & Jonathan)

Hong Kongers (Peter & Anita)

Us

We really enjoyed our time in Hong Kong. Peter and Anita, upon hearing we would have one less day than we thought in Hong Kong, took us on a single day's grand tour of Hong Kong like no other. We ate wonderful home town food, with chopsticks of course, and took a ferry from Kowloon, the part of Hong Kong where we were staying, to Hong Kong Island in order to visit the Peak and truly see the town. We made it back to the Kowloon side just in time for the nightly 8 pm laser show which involves at least a dozen buildings in a coordinated masterpiece set to music on our side.

On Sunday, we met up with my friends the Leotas, who just happened to be visiting parents/grandparents in Hong Kong for the first time in four years. They are from New Zealand in case the Kiwi reference got past you. We attended the Hong Kong Church of Christ, which was a very lively and uplifting experience. Then we went out for lunch and did a little shopping but no buying.

So this week, I arrived back in the US late Monday night. Isa, the girls, and Zoz (Marie-Josee, Isa's mother) finally arrived last night (Friday night). My week spent waiting was rather eventful. Tuesday was the inauguration. What a party. Wednesday, I found out that my manager, and my manager's manager's manager were getting laid off in the first wave of Bank Of America's promised 30,000 over the next three years. My manager's manager used to be my manager and is again now. Thursday, news broke that the CEO of Merrill Lynch, John Thain, had been a bad boy. BOA just acquired/saved Merrill in Q4 of 2008. Mr. Thain spent $1.2 million to redecorate his office last year, and he authorized and paid $4 billion in bonuses in December, during a quarter in which Merrill lost $15 billion, so that BOA would not be able to put a stop to it which they would have had the bonuses been scheduled for January which is the customary timing for such disbursements. So Mr. Thain also got laid off.

Friday, the weary travelers arrived, altogether, but their bags, thanks to some changes in the flights they took as opposed to the flights they were scheduled to take, came at all different times. One came on the flight before theirs. Two came on the flight after theirs (which was their originally scheduled flight). The last came on the flight after theirs but then got loaded back onto the next flight to Chicago. So we arranged first for it to be delivered when it arrived, at midnight or so, and then reconsidered and requested that it be delivered this morning after 8. Instead, we got a call at 2:30 am and it was delivered then. This was among Julia waking up to vomit earlier than that, and then to eat cereal later than that. Eleven hours of jetlag is no picnic. I managed to stay in bed until 10 am, though, somehow, and woke up to home made waffles, so I can't complain. Tonight, Julia and Josee fell asleep before dinner was ready at 7 pm or so.

We finally got our pictures on the PC after these many months, so we'll try to post some more of the best of those in the near future.

Hong Kong Amigos

Here we are in our hotel room with Peter and Anita Leung, our good friends who returned here after living in St. Louis. Yesterday they showed us the town, and today we met up with Brenda (Smith) and Richard Leotta, and their two beautiful kids, Amber and Jonathan. No pictures for now, but they are coming soon...

Seoul Man

Please forgive the redundant nature of my post titles, but this one actually sums it up pretty well. I am a man, and I'm in Seoul. There isn't much else to say, as my tank is about empty. It is a beautiful airport, and they told us the temperature outside was about 15 degrees Farenheit but in here there is no way to know. Glass everywhere, Gloria Jean's, Caribou Coffee, and a Smoothies R Us. There's even a food court that promises "western food." I already had a bagel and cream cheese with a coffee from Gloria Jean's as my second breakfast of the day, or maybe it's the breakfast for Sunday that I didn't have since Sunday got swallowed up by the International Date Line. No, I guess it's just a matter of swapping eating for sleeping, since I'll probably double up on at least two meals when I come back and get a 48-hour Monday.

I called in my Discover Card as lost since I used it to get Burger King in St. Louis but then couldn't find it to pay for a chili-cheese hot dog in LA. Between those times, I was turning my backpack inside out looking for headphones which I did not find. However, I did find my blue-tooth headset which has been AWOL for most of the last year. Then while waiting for the Korea flight, I decided I wanted to take another peek at my passport and the China visa therein, and what do you know but it had swallowed the Discover Card at some point.

So I guess it has been a relatively eventful trip so far, for just being in airports and on planes, and the wins and losses are about canceling each other out. We will see how things go once we're on the street in a Chinese city the size of Paris...

Dubai Girl, China Boy

I survived Christmas and New Year's apart from my girls. Dad came by from December 24-29 and we had a North Dakotan bachelor Christmas. It was fun. We watched movies Benjamin Button (bleah) and Crash (wow!) and played cribbage and darts.

Today at 5, I will be leaving for the airport to fly to Guangzhou, China, via LA, and Seoul, Korea. Isabelle arrived yesterday in Dubai, UAE, and she will be leaving there and meeting me in Guangzhou on Monday. She is staying with her cousin Sarah Jane who has been living in Dubai for a couple of years. Tonight they are on a safari and they are apparently having a wonderful time. Isabelle told me she wishes I was there, as do I.

After Guangzhou, we will make our way to Hong Kong. It's a second honeymoon for us. And it's a chance to visit friends who are living in or visiting Hong Kong. That's right, the kids are staying with tante Medge and ton-ton Jacque in Mauritius. In Hong Kong, our good friends Peter and Anita Leung will be there. Peter went to the University of Texas, lived in the US for 20 years, and became a US citizen, but soon after they got married they decided to move back to Hong Kong. Also, a friend I met in St. Louis whom I've visited in New Zealand will be visiting in Hong Kong while we're there. Richard and Brenda (Smith) Leota and their kids Amber and Jonathan will be visiting family.

On January 19, I will be heading back to St. Louis, and Isabelle will be heading back to Dubai. Then she makes her way back to Mauritius to pick up the kids, and her mother. They will leave Mauritius on January 22 and arrive back in St. Louis on January 23. We hope.

Alive and Thriving

David Allen Harrison is not the kind of name you want to try to track down on the internet. When his AOL address, MTMDavid@aol.com (MTM = Marvin The Martian), went defunct about 9 years ago, I lost touch with him, a former college roommate. At the time I last saw him, in 1998, he was about to get married.

I went to great lengths to try to connect with him again, even signing up at Classmates.com for his high school class with the name Marvin Martian. No luck.

Well, this spring, after I had given up, another former college roommate of both Dave's and mine at different times managed to track Dave down via Linked In, the social network for career professionals. So we found out that he was living in Beaverton, OR. Isabelle and the kids and I were already planning to visit my sister Courtney in Cottage Grove, so we worked in a visit with Dave and his family. Yesterday he and his wife Cindy celebrated their tenth anniversary, and their five-year-old twins, Leah and Samantha, start kindergarten today.

We just got back from the trip yesterday. Here are some photos.

Chloe and Julia on the beach

Us at Crater Lake

Aunt Courtney and Her Nieces

Our Little Flyers

Well, we made it to North Dakota and back, but not without a mishap or two or three.

As usual, we were scrambling to get out of the house to catch our plane. I was collecting the packed bags and putting them in the car, the same bags we took to Florida in May for a trip one day shorter in duration. To my surprise, our carry on bag was empty. Isabelle claimed we didn't need it. It was getting too late to argue but I did express my concern over whatever was in that bag for our May trip that was not coming with us for this trip.

We made it to the airport, and to our plane bound for the Twin Cities. Everything was going fine, Julia by the window, me holding Chloe in the middle, and Isabelle on the aisle with her tray down for the three drinks we had just been served. Then I noticed a two-tone effect in Julia's jeans that I hadn't noticed before. Remembering that she had guzzled down the contents of her travel cup which had been full of sugar-free lemonade rather than water, I quickly surmised what had happened.

Isabelle reacted with greater surprise than I expected and even disbelief. Uh oh. You guessed it--no carry on bag, no change of clothes for Julia. So we made the best of it. I held Isabelle's tray with our drinks on it while Isabelle squeezed out of the seat and stood up in the aisle. Now I had to figure out how to get Julia over to Isabelle while holding Chloe. So I decided to put Chloe in Isabelle's seat. As I did that Chloe straightened up and managed to kick the full cup of Pepsi all over Isabelle's seat.

Things were getting desperate. I had the only dry seat left. We cleaned up Isabelle's seat, and put down a couple of blankets, got Julia out of her wet jeans and sat back down and drank our remaining drinks. Gladly, we were in the second row from the back. But, the flight was almost over and Julia's jeans were still soaked. We decided we had to put them back on Julia while we went through the MSP airport looking for toddler clothes. As I was putting Julia's jeans back on her, she saw that they were wet and began repeating, rather loudly, "It's dirty...It's dirty...It's dirty..."

We did find a nice Elmo outfit for $12 in the airport and got Julia all cleaned up and changed. Then, at the gate for our next plane, just as we heard the first boarding announcement, we discovered that both our girls needed their diapers changed, pronto. I changed Julia there on the floor, without any trouble. Then as Isabelle changed Chloe, Julia observed the obvious, and began repeating, again quite loudly, "It's yucky...It's yucky...It's yucky..."

As might be expected, from then on our flight experiences only got better.

Trained! (And A Travel Reprieve)

Ah, training! Nothing scratches a technologist's itch quite like a week of on-site, pertinent, challenging, and thorough training. Our Database Administrators at my workplace (Bank Of America) were thoughtful enough to include us developers in a course called "Microsoft SQL Server 2005 SSIS for Administrators." For those who are technology or acronym challenged or both, SQL stands for Structured Query Language (a standard across all databases) and SSIS stands for SQL Server Integration Services.

Another interesting connection here is that a friend of mine since I first arrived in St. Louis, Gerald Hinson, was on the SQL Server 2005 team at Microsoft, and here I was learning all about it. Pretty cool. Gerald can be found among my friends in Facebook. Gerald has since moved on to the Microsoft Zune team.

And, great news about our upcoming trip back to Mauritius. We had been told by Air Mauritius that they had closed their US office. Instead they upgraded, moving from New Jersey to New York. And when we checked, their prices for tickets from St. Louis to Mauritius via London were the same as the last time we went. Whew! No Euros or Pounds required, apparently. Who's coming?

The Trip!

Well, whatever could be next but some details around our upcoming trip back to Mauritius. We're looking at leaving at the end of October, and I'll return in mid-November, probably visiting our missionaries in Marseille, France on the way back. Isabelle, Julia and Chloe will be staying in Mauritius without me until they return in January.

Ticket prices have gotten really expensive, but we discovered some tricks that are easing the pain. Frequent flyer tickets have become more valuable than ever. We have found that it works out to be better to buy miles for a frequent flyer account even if you have no miles, in order to redeem for a ticket, than to try to buy tickets directly. But you do have to get them early.

So, who's with us? Springtime in Mauritius! And a visit in the south of France!

The Minnesota Giants

Actually, from our perspective, these are the Minnesota Second Cousins (of Julia). And they are brothers but not twins. They are the sons of my first cousin Anne Byrne, who lives in the Minneapolis suburbs. We were able to visit them during our recent trip.

Michael, on the right, is 6'10" and studying engineering (we forget what kind) at the University of Michigan. Matthew is 6'6" and stockier that Michael, and he has just entered Duke University as a freshman.

Their dad Pat has decorated their rec room half in Michigan's colors and paraphernalia, and the other half in Duke. Home Depot carries school colors, in case you were wondering.

So, let me fill in some details on our recent trip so it starts to make some sense. We had three weeks, so we decided to take a train across the northern US, since many from my family live on the route of the Empire Builder. We flew to Portland, Oregon, and visited my sister who lives in Cottage Grove. Then we took the train to Williston, North Dakota, to visit my grandmother, aunt, uncle and cousin. Then we continued and visited my aunt and uncle in Fargo, ND, and cousin Anne in MSP, and then finally we visited friends in Detroit, before flying home from there.

Anne knew how to play a lively pattycake which kept Julia enthralled.