Keith’s Amusing Musings

TB and I spent six days in Belgium. We flew from Seattle to D.C. (Dulles) to Brussels on United. We stayed at the Sofitel Europe located in the outskirts of Brussels and did a couple day trips to the center of the city and to the Flemish town of Bruges. French is the primary language followed by Flemish/Dutch and German. Most of the people we encountered spoke enough English to communicate with us and a couple times my semester’s worth of high school French paid off. For example, TB was all amazed when I was able to request two 3-day train passes from the agent who spoke no English. (Shout out to Madame Duffy who taught us to écouter et répétez. )

With the significant French and Italian influences, Belgian dining was sublime. Of course the chocolate and waffles were top notch but so too were the frites, pizza, sandwiches and smoked salmon. The most memorable heavenly dining experience was the scoop of Belgian chocolate ice cream from a shop that was literally a Häagen-Dazs combined with a Godiva.

I took a couple dozen pictures during our trip a few of which have been scattered throughout this post. The black-and-white image is of a Brandenberg-esque monument located in a colossal public park a few blocks from the Sofitel in Brussels. The park is over 1 1/2 miles around its perimeter which made it a perfect spot for doing a six mile run. There were a few moments of showers while we were in Belgium but it never rained long or a large amount. The temperature ranged between mid-60s to upper 70s and we were fine with light jackets.

Overall, Belgium is a fine place with fine dining, mild weather and friendly people. I would go back as part of an extended trip that includes a couple of its neighbors (France, Germany, Luxembourg, the Netherlands).

Here is a Deep Zoom gallery of the photos I took during our Memorial Day trip to San Diego. I made a few changes to this gallery to make it easier to navigate. This includes a full screen mode and dedicated buttons for zooming and resetting the gallery to a default state.

One gotcha you should know is your mouse wheel will not function in full screen mode. I’m not sure if that is a bug or security safeguard. You can still click and shift + click to zoom or use the nifty buttons at the bottom.

Enjoy!

TB and I spent Memorial Day weekend in San Diego. Neither of us had ever been to San Diego and she was able to find a last-minute discounted package on Expedia, Wednesday evening, with us leaving Seattle on Saturday morning, returning later today.

The only downside of the package is it required us to fly Alaska Airlines—we’re both United Airlines Mileage Plus members. The flight down was fine, however, and we had the miles applied to our American Airlines frequent flyer accounts which we seldom use. The package includes a rental car from Advantage whose car inventory and customer service is what one would expect from a discount rental car service. Our economy class, bright red, Chevy Aveo has “speck” written all over it but it does a great job zipping us around the city while keeping our fuel costs down—regular unleaded is $4.25/gallon in San Diego…yikes!

We are staying in La Jolla [pronounced ‘HOY-a'], north of San Diego, at the legendary Lodge at Torrey Pines. The Lodge just happens to sit on the Torrey Pines golf course where the 2008 U.S. Open Championship will be played June 9-15. In fact, our room, 317, overlooks the 18th hole. We had the, umm, privilege to see and hear the grounds crew building the spectator stands and getting the green in championship condition. Frankly, I find it silly how much time and money is wasted on golf course maintenance. Regardless, course care is as much art as it is science.

The service at the Lodge at Torrey Pines and the accommodations are both excellent. The food situation could be better—given our limited diet there aren’t many options available at the Scottish-themed restaurants on premise—but the Village of La Jolla is just a short drive away. We drove down to the Village for lunch on Saturday at The Spot. We liked their “build your own burger” menu especially since they had garden and turkey patties. We returned to the Village on Monday for brunch at Brocktown Villa and had their famous “Coast Toast” French toast. The French toast had great flavor but it was too soggy in the middle for me.

We also joined thousands of parents and their children at Sea World. We used our two-day passes to visit on Sunday evening and Monday morning. We did the Shamu thing and spent way too much on food. Parents, beware. Don’t take your kids to Sea World. It’s not worth the money and they begin fleecing you the moment you enter the paid parking lot.

We spent most of Memorial Day visiting several tourist sites around San Diego including Old Town, the Gas Lamp Quarter and Coronado. We also just sat on the water watching the boats, bikers and other tourists enjoy the sunny, cool day.

Memorial Day was capped off with massages back at the hotel. Today, before returning to Seattle, we are going to visit Torrey Pines State Reserve and the San Diego Zoo.

Despite all the tourist activities, it has been a surprisingly relaxing trip so far; exactly what we both needed. The days have been cool but sunny, the gas prices have kept the crowds relatively small and traffic non-existent.

I would count San Diego among the cities I would revisit in the future though I’m not sure what we would come back to do. We will have already done the tourist thing and we don’t have any family in the area.

I wanted to share the pictures from my first trip to China (Beijing, Xi’an, Shanghai) and Korea (Seoul). I decided to employ the latest hotness in Web-based, high-resolution image visualization: Silverlight Deep Zoom. It is something you have to see to fully appreciate. Here’s what you need to do to get started:

Installation

1. Install Silverlight 2 (currently in Beta but it’s safe and will auto-update).
2. Return to this page and hit F5 to refresh.

The above steps only need to be done once. If you see the images below, you already have Silverlight installed.

Navigation

1. Pan around the image by click-dragging (like Live/Google Maps).
2. If your mouse has a wheel: Use the wheel to zoom in/out for more/less detail.
3. If your mouse does not have a wheel: Left-click to zoom in, hold down Shift then left-click to zoom out.

I hope you enjoy the photos and Deep Zoom. Let me know what you think.

I made it back home after dropping off the grid for about 10 days traveling around China and Korea for work. The business side of the trip was very productive. I kept a dense agenda meeting with colleagues from the three main regions (Japan, China, Korea) in addition to press, customer and partner briefings while in Seoul. The leisure portions were few and far between. After working 12-16 hour days, I generally would return to my room to work an additional 2-4 hours to sync up with my team back in Redmond. There was a lot going on last week with the launch of Expression Studio 2 which we have been gearing up for since MIX.

I found a few hours on a few days to do some sightseeing, take some pictures and get a glimpse of the Chinese and Korean cultures. In fact, I achieved the tourism objectives I set at the outset of the trip. I have added pictures I took of the Terra Cotta Army in Xi’an, the Shanghai skyline, and the Great Wall, the Forbidden City and Tiananmen Square in Beijing.

As an added bonus to you, my faithful readers, I also recorded some video during my trip using a handy Flip Ultra that I bought from Amazon right before the trip. I’m now a big fan of the Flip. You just can’t beat its combination of price, convenience and video quality. I’ll post some videos from the trip once I’ve finished editing. Stay tuned…

Some unplanned but immensely enjoyable experiences include biking along the Xi’an city wall, dancing until the wee hours of the night in a Sanlitun club, and in Tiananmen Square taking pictures with Chinese couples (and their children) who clearly hadn’t seen a Black American person up close before. The White coworkers I was traveling with had a ball with that last one, walking around telling the locals I’m a famous basketball player. Thankfully, English literacy is relatively low throughout most of China.

Though I’m suffering from some serious jet lag and recovering from the long days, it’s great to be back home. There is so much to catch up on and so much I’ve already missed (a birth and death in the family, for example) making the trip to Asia even more surreal than the countries, their histories and their people. TB left for Chicago early this morning to meet our newest niece, Abria Lynn, born to her twin sister and her husband on Cinqo de Mayo. While being home alone is, generally, no fun, I’ve been around people non-stop for ten days. The peace and quiet is sure to be therapeutic. Speaking of being therapeutic, the Chinese foot massages are amazing. For only $16, you can get a 90 minute foot, leg, back and neck massage at a high-end establishment. I had two in ten days. I fell asleep both times. If you’re ever in Beijing or Xi’an, ask your concierge or tour guide for the nearest “Massage & Spa” franchise—you won’t be disappointed.

So, what about Seoul? It definitely ranks in the top 3 of places outside the States I would like to live—Cape Town, South Africa is still #1. Seoul is a new New York done right. The city uses technology in ways that blow away a techno-gadget geek like me. For example, their automobile GPS/navigation units provide real-time traffic avoidance and display broadcast TV on 7” widescreens…for free…no monthly charges! The units even warn the driver of nearby police cameras to avoid speeding and parking tickets. Yes, the police department scans the streets for parking violations using cameras mounted throughout the city. I must admit, it was eerie knowing our actions were being monitored at all times—there are cameras everywhere in Seoul.

I also had lunch in the touristy Itaewon district home to many American stalwarts including McDonalds, Burger King, Subway, Outback Steakhouse, Cold Stone Creamery, etc. I didn’t get a chance to visit the Korean DMZ but I did eat kimchi and partake in an authentic Korean barbecue, as planned. I stayed in the posh Park Hyatt while in Seoul. The service and rooms both eclipse the Tokyo Park Hyatt (reference) in terms of ridiculous opulence. Below is a panorama view of the city I shot from my 22nd floor suite—the highest floor for guest rooms. (Maybe Park Hyatt will hire me to shoot panoramas from all its hotels.)

By the way, I kept running while on the road and have surpassed the halfway mark of the “108 miles in 12 weeks” goal set back on March 29.