It's strange being back home. I got back Friday night and since then I've been trying to get re-accustomed to my life here. That may seem strange, but I'm surprised at how long it feels like I was gone. I'm glad I went, no doubt, and the work was extremely productive and promising, but coming home has made me feel like I've somehow missed a month of my life. I can't explain it, but I can easily say that I'm glad to be home.

I've been back in the U.S. for a week, but I'm still jet-lagged. And I think I've come down with something. I've barely eaten for two days. But I don't have a fever and my stomach feels fine. I'm just tired and not hungry, so I'm assuming it's just jet lag. This morning I forced myself to eat, and I'm already starting to feel a bit better.

There were a few gifts waiting for me when I got home:

1) A shockingly clean apartment. I had a housesitter while I was gone, and I had no expectation of apartmental cleanliness when I got home beyond the state I had left it in (clean enough, but not white-glove-clean). But it was immaculate.

2) New HD channels! There are three new HD channels, including one that I'd waited for longingly: Food Network HD. I haven't watched Food Network much since switching to HD two years ago, and my HD snobbery forces me to only watch HD channels (horrible, isn't it?), so having Food Network in HD will finally allow me to start watching one of my favorite channels again.

3) Also on the TV front, I had a TiVo with a month worth of recordings, which I've already proceeded to get caught up on.

It's good to be home. I need to get ready for church now.

Finally. I'm home.

I finally got around to posting my Asia pics:

Tokyo

Singapore

Malaysia

Mumbai

Train from Mumbai to Agra

Agra

Drive from Agra to Delhi

Delhi

This isn't a joke... it's a description of the train ride I took from Mumbai to Agra. We left last night at 7:40 PM and got here tonight at 7:30 PM. Very cool. I'm currently just a few KM from the Taj Mahal and will go to it tomorrow. Right this minute I'm watching cricket... yet again.

While I love Picasa, it won't let me upload right now. I don't know what it is. I downloaded ~450 photos from my camera last night, spanning the whole week. I think there were 250 from Japan, 50 from Singapore and Malaysia, and 150 from India so far. And I got them all down onto my Windows laptop (which I only toted along on this trip so that I could download my photos and post them), organized them, got rid of the bad ones, clicked the upload button........ and it wouldn't let me log in. So now I'm sitting with 450 pictures on my computer and no way to upload them. I'll try it again today.

Leaving tonight for Agra. Will take photos.

Stamps I got on my passport today:

Leaving Singapore
Entering Malaysia
Leaving Malaysia
Entering Singapore
Leaving Singapore
Entering India

Busy day. Still planning on posting pics from Japan and Singapore soon. I have lots.

I'm in Tokyo. All of a sudden the title of this post should make sense. I got here yesterday morning and the first thing I really noticed was the magical toilet in the first restroom I came across in the airport. Let me just say this: Every toilet in Japan is a technological wonder. It's so magical and surprising that the gypsies could've brought one to town in 100 Years of Solitude and no one would've found it amazing. That's how amazing Japanese toilets are.

We took the 75-minute bus from the airport to the hotel and got all checked in. Great view of the Tokyo Tower right out of my window. I took a nap for a couple of hours, then Kim and I walked up to Roppongi to check it out. Lots of lights! We had katsudon in a katsudon restaurant. A few floors up, while wading through a sea of escalators, I found a women's fashion boutique called White Trash Charms. I expected to see flannel shirts and pictures of mayonaisse sandwiches, but instead the shop had normal, trendy Japanese clothes. White Trash Charms! I'll return this evening for a photo.

We went back to the hotel. I loaded my week's worth of dirty clothes into little hotel-provided "laundry" bags and hiked them across the street (actually, there was an underpass) to a coin-op laundromat the concierge told me about (and that I had to hunt for once it got down to it). This was uneventful, with the exception of the vending machine right outside the door. The drink vending machines here are remarkable. Not only do they serve dozens of beverages, but some are cold and some are hot. I went with a "Creamy Cocoa" and had to play "hot potato" with the can for about 10 minutes until it cooled down. The vending machines here are just awesome.

After the laundry was done, I met up with Kim and Susan for dinner, then we went up to the 36th floor and had drinks. They drank, I looked out the window. It was just like in "Lost In Translation." Red lights blinking on the top of every building, cars way down below. Everything since I got here has reminded me of that film. Since all of the other people on the trip love it as well, we decided to go tonight to the lounge where many of the scenes were filmed. It's supposedly the New York Bar on top of the Grant Hyatt. I'll take pictures. "Lip my stockings."

Back to the toilets. Here's an inventory of the magical toilets I've come across:

* In the airport, with gentle spray, pressure control, and a button that emits a "powerful deodorizer."
* In the hotel room, with shower (straight up and broader) and bidet (angled and precise) options, plus a pressure-changing nob.
* At Roppongi Hills mall (the best one yet), with a heated seat, digital pressure changer, and shower option, plus a button for simulating the sound of the toilet flushing.

I should note that all the toilets I've seen are Toto brand.

Yesterday we finished our meetings at 6 PM, then went to the Christmas party for the Farnborough office. Very fun. Photos here:

http://picasaweb.google.com/boisvert/2007DecemberWorkTripDay7FarnboroughOfficeChristmasParty

Today I slept in, then Gary and I went into London and walked around all afternoon. Pictures:

http://picasaweb.google.com/boisvert/2007DecemberWorkTripDay8WalkingAroundLondon

Tomorrow I leave for Tokyo.

Here are the pics from the other two days in Munich. First there are pictures of my hotel room; my dinner with a bunch of our European marketing folks, plus a few other people from the Munich office; my night walk around the old part of Munich; finally some pictures I took in the Munich office.

http://picasaweb.google.com/boisvert/2007DecemberWorkTripDays3And4Munich

I finally was able to upload my pictures from the first couple of days. Actually, it's pretty much just the trip to Salzburg I took on Sunday.

http://picasaweb.google.com/boisvert/2007DecemberWorkTripDays1And2MunichAndSalzburg

OK... Sunday I went to Salzburg, as previously mentioned. It was beautiful. Gary and I drove down there and walked around the old town for a while, then hiked up the stairs to the fortress. I took some great pictures... it was so beautiful from up there. Such a great view of the city and of the Alps. Just awesome.

Anyway, then I drove us back to Munich. On the Autobahn. Very quickly. We were just in an Opel Astra or something, and we were getting burned by Porsches and BMWs, but I still managed to keep it at 170km for a while. That's about all the car could handle. Then we took the car back to the rental place and took the train to the hotel for dinner.

Monday we got up and went to work. We had meetings all day. By 7:00 PM last night it was time to go meet co-workers for dinner at our hotel, so we did that, had a decent meal, some good conversation, then I went to my room and was up until 1:30 AM working on some notes and slides for today's meetings.

Today's meetings were good. Whereas yesterday's meetings were directly related to one of my projects, today's meetings were for a project that I am just here in support of... there is another business analyst assigned to the project we met for today. So we were done by about 5:00 -- we really had to rush it at the end -- and my team members left pretty quickly to get to the airport. They are meeting in Paris tomorrow with a few Red Hat folks, and it just wasn't as important for me to be at tomorrow's meeting, so I had decided to stay in Munich for another day. Tomorrow afternoon I have a meeting with one of operations leaders here in Europe. I'm looking forward to that. Then tomorrow night I leave for London. The Paris folks will arrive in London at the same time, actually, so we'll be back together for the rest of the trip.

Tonight I was invited to go to dinner with a group of marketing people in town for a meeting, as well as a few other people. I rode there with our director of pre-sales engineering for Europe, and he pulled up to the hotel with a nice little Porsche... again, I experienced the pleasure of the Autobahn... this time I wasn't driving, however. But still, riding at that speed is just breathtaking. So on the way we were driving into the city to meet with the marketing folks, and I asked if he (Lars) knew anything about whether Munich had suffered heavy damage during the Second World War. First I told him that I didn't really know how Germans felt about that kind of question, but that I was just curious from a historical perspective, not an American perspective. He told me what he knew about the city in WWII (he's from Stuttgart, so his knowledge on Munich is relatively limited, he told me), then I asked him how people in Germany generally feel about the war after all this time. He responded with something interesting: "I guess people here in Germany just accept that we started the mess, so we had to pay for it." That was the end of the discussion, and it was a great response.

After dinner, I took a taxi down to Marienplatz and walked around for a bit. It was dark, but I took some pictures. Beautiful architecture. I really enjoy this city.

Tomorrow I'll be at work all day, then London. Hopefully I can get my pictures uploaded soon. I will try to get that done now.

I've been working on sifting through my notes from today's meetings and trying to get it all organized. We've finally got it done after several hours of work. So now I'm going to bed. Tomorrow night I'll be here in Munich by myself (my associates will be heading to Paris for a Wednesday meeting before we meet up in London on Wednesday night... I have another meeting here in Munich on Wednesday afternoon), so I'll use that time to go around and see the city a bit. It'll be night, yes, but I should be able to see some cool things still.

What a beautiful city. I'll write about it tonight. Today we're in meetings all day.

Made it to Germany with no problems. I slept a couple hours on the flight from DC. Getting ready to head down to Salzburg, Austria for the afternoon. Hopefully I'll get some good photos.

This month we had some beautiful sunsets in Raleigh. One evening I took a few pictures like this one:



Check the rest out here:

http://picasaweb.google.com/boisvert/2007NovemberSunsetOverRaleigh