Free Guitar for Flying

Well, okay, not exactly free. But, this guitar will pay for itself and let you keep up your chops on the road by traveling in the overhead compartment as opposed to being checked as baggage (which now can carry up to a $25 fee.)

Weighing in at less than 3lbs it also includes a pickup so you could plug into your headphone amp for some layover practice in the VIP lounge.

Checkout the Traveler Ultra-Light Acoustic at Guitar Center.

Cheers...

The Safest Place In The World!

Well, okay, maybe not the safest place, but certainly in the top ten, has to be shower room "A" in the Travelers' Lounge at the Hong Kong International Airport. I was using this shower during a recent 8 hour layover and I noticed that there were two showerheads in the stall - one in the wall and one in the ceiling. Then I realized that the one in the ceiling wasn't a showerhead but a sprinklerhead as in fire protection sprinklerhead. I guess they're prepared in case someone spontaneously combusts while lathering or in case you've shut off the water to the shower and a fire spreads into the wet, tiled room? And I thought the U.S. had strict building codes.



Cheers...

The Lamb Lies Down on Malaysia

So we're sitting down at our table in the Menara revolving restaurant atop the KL Telecomm tower and I look over the shoulder of the person across from me and see this roasted carcass. We're all pointing at it trying to figure out exactly what kind of animal it started out being. I thought it was a kangaroo but the tail wasn't long enough and besides roo meat tends to be a bit chewy when roasted.

We finally broke down and asked the waiter "Apa itu?"
(which means, "What in the wide wide world of sports is that thing?")
He simply replied "lamb".

Reminded me of another special barnyard foodchain friend I met a long time ago in China.

Cheers...

Power Trip

If you're looking for more than just a printout to hang on the fridge when you leave for your next business trip, checkout TripIt. It's a new kind of online travel service that automatically organizes all your travel plans into one master online itinerary with everything you need for your trip � including travel confirmations, daily weather, local maps, city guides and more. All you do is e-mail your confirmation message from your provider and TripIt stitches all of the info together like your own personal concierge. If you're going to share the itinerary with friends & family, you may want to exclude your frequent flier number lest Uncle Leo jets to Rio with your miles.

Cheers...

Oracle Synchronicity

My wife and I were having breakfast at the Boudin Bakery in San Francisco where I was attending the Oracle conference. The HR recruiter that I had been working with to fill a vacant position on my team called to tell me that the candidate that we had made an offer to had just accepted. I hung up my cell phone and went back to eating my croissant and glanced out the window at the street sign. The bakery was at the corner of 5th & Jessie Street. The candidate's name was Jesse and he was an Oracle database administrator .

Cheers...

Golf Synchronicity (Cont.)

My buddies and I have been going to Gaylord for over ten years to play a 4-man Skins golf game. This year we decided to break tradition and go to Lewiston and a resort called Garland. On Friday we usually try to get in 9 holes before dark so we went to the resort and asked if we could tee off on any of the four courses that were there. They asked us to play The Reflections course. A couple weeks later, I noticed that it had been awhile since I had pulled the pages off my golf course page-a-day calendar at my home office. This calendar has golf courses from all over the world. As I was pulling the pages off, there was a photo of one of the holes from The Reflections course. It was for the Wednesday before we played it.

Cheers...

Manhatten Synchronicity

A golf trip I take every year is with a group of around 16 guys that go to Myrtle Beach. The cheap tickets we buy take us through New York's Laguardia airport. As our plane took off, I started paging through the November 2005 issue of The Atlantic Monthly. I looked out the window as we started to make a banked turned to the South and was treated to a spectacular view of the Manhattan skyline. When I returned to my magazine and flipped the next page there was an article on the statistics around the daily commuter traffic on and off the island of Manhattan. It included a map of the island that matched the overhead view I had out my window.

Cheers...

(FYI - I published this post from my Verizon Treo 650. To learn more, visit go.blogger.com)

Synchronicity (cont.)
I have some friends that were celebrating their 40th birthday so we found ourselves at a local restaurant enjoying good food and fine wine until someone, in fact it might have been me, decided to order a round of "jagerbombs" which is essentially 1 shot of Jagermeister and 1/2 can of Red Bull. Although I had heard of Red Bull before, this was in fact the first time that I had ever tried one. Nine days later, I found myself on vacation with my family touring on a bus to the shooting locations used in the movie "The Sound of Music" in Austria. On our way to one of the remote lakes used in the opening scene, the tour guide says "If you now look out the right side of the bus you will see that we are passing the headquarters of Red Bull in Fuschl am See (pop. 1,344)."

Okay - here's a candidate for technology at it's best - Remote Chicken Petting.

Here are two movie related synchronicity events of late:

1) On Friday, May 6, I booked 4 nights at the Hilton London Hyde Park Hotel as part of our summer vacation. On Sunday May 8, I watched Moonlight Mile. In the beginning title sequence there was a splash screen for the film's production company - Hyde Park Entertainment.

2) On Thursday, May 5, I received the DVD of Pollock from Netflix. I ended up watching it on Wednesday, May 18. After watching the movie, I Googled for more info on Pollock and came upon a story from NPR that on May 10 it was announced that a friend of Pollock's had discovered 32 of his paintings in an old storage locker back in 2002.

I have a couple of synchronicity updates but first here's the coolest thing I've seen this week. The gang over at Google have a new beta for maps. It's the closest thing to using paper. Okay so here are 3 updates:

1) My son and I went on a campout the weekend after I posted the Wizard of Oz/Pink Floyd thing. On Sunday morning, the camp director was telling us how breakfast was going to work and she pointed to the cooks in the kitchen window of the dining hall. One of the cooks was a young guy wearing a Dark Side of the Moon t-shirt. I thought long and hard about whether or not to ask him if he knew about the whole Oz/Floyd thing and came up with what might have been his responses:
a) "I have no idea who Pink Floyd is. This was my brother's shirt."
b) "Why no, I haven't. Thanks for letting me know - I'll have to try that."
c) "Duh. Everyone knows that you can watch the Wizard of Oz and turn the sound off and play Dark Side of the Moon and have the music match what's going on."
d) "Dude, my friends and I did that last night!"

It was answer "d" that I was afraid of so I reluctantly avoided asking him although now I wish I had.

2) My daughter and I decided to go out for Valentine's dinner rather than attend the Daddy/Daughter dance this year. We went to one of our favorite restaurants, Rose's, and as we were walking in the door, we noticed a brass plaque that had engraved on it "In Memory of Jack and Emma Rose." While we were eating dinner, a family came in and sat next to our table. They had two girls and were on their way to a different Daddy/Daughter dance after dinner. One of the girls was named Emma and because she was going to the dance, she was wearing a flower on her dress - it was a rose...

3) I was asked to help interview two candidates who had applied as a Jr. High coordinator at our church. I found out prior to the interview that one of the candidates was named Christian and I knew him very well from his time in High School when I helped lead that group. So during the interview, I told him I always ask 3 questions; "What are your strengths, your proudest achievement and your passion?" Following his answers, another leader said that his boss has a question he always asks candidates because it reveals a lot about the person. He asked Christian what his favorite movie was. He answered "The Shawshank Redemption" because he said it was the first movie he watched that made him realize that movies could be more than pure entertainment but could actually have a profound affect on the rest of your life. Someone else asked when he had made the decision to focus on youth ministry and he said it was during his last mission trip to Trinidad in 2004. So a couple days after the interview, I get an e-mail stating that Christian has been offered and accepted the job. I started composing an e-mail to him to congratulate him and let him know I looked forward to working with him when I glanced at the picture on my desk next to my computer. It was taken during my second mission trip to Trinidad in 2001. It was taken from the 2nd floor of the church we were building looking down at me and a bunch of high school kids digging a drainage ditch in an old cow pasture. It's raining very hard and when we saw we were getting our picture taken, someone yelled "Do the Shawshank Redemption!" So we're all standing with our backs arched and our arms spread out and our faces catching the huge raindrops. And standing next to me in the picture is Christian...