Keith's Amusing Musings

Here are some of the photos we took while visiting Prague, Eger and Budapest over Thanksgiving. Microsoft Silverlight is required to view this gallery. Navigation is as simple as flipping through the pages of a magazine (i.e., drag the bottom-right corner).

For Thanksgiving this year, TB and I decided to take Owen on his first international trip and make our first visit to Eastern Europe. We departed Seattle Saturday, November 21, flying Lufthansa to Prague via Frankfurt.

Sidebar:
Hungarians and Czechs would take offense to their countries being classified as “Eastern Europe” however, for my purposes, I consider everything east of Berlin and formerly under Communist rule Eastern Europe.

After the 10-hour flight from Seattle to Frankfurt, 3-hour layover and 1-hour flight to Prague we were all exhausted. Owen is still a great travel baby and several flight attendants and nearby passengers commented on how happy he was throughout both flights. He had smiles and lots of chattering for anyone who looked his way and slept about 5½ hours during the 10-hour leg. TB grabbed 2 hours of sleep but I stayed awake the entire time reading or pacing with Owen.

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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).

Between September 12 and October 19 I will be traveling to 7 cities in 6 countries on 4 continents. In order, I will visit Orlando, Tokyo, Munich, Portland, Buenos Aires, Sao Paulo and Madrid. The only personal trip in the bunch is to South America to celebrate the 10-year wedding anniversary of some of our closest friends from school. We are also planning a vacation in Thailand around Thanksgiving.

Remember how I was worrying whether I would attain United 1K status again for 2008? Umm, let’s just say that will no longer be a problem with the travel planned between now and the rest of the year.

If all goes as planned, by the end of the year I will have increased my Countries Visited list to 25 — adding Sweden, Japan, Argentina, Brazil and Thailand between May and November this year. Woohoo!

Hi everyone. I wanted to let my faithful readers know I am still around and getting some much-needed and much-deserved rest and relaxation over the next couple weeks. Along with catching up on the many projects and chores that have piled up on my things-to-do list, TB and I are also attending a wedding in Philadelphia and visiting my family in Dayton.

I also have quite a few things to blog about to make up for the silence enveloping my blog these last couple months. Three posts in three months is embarrassing so I will endeavor to write several posts before the end of the month. Let’s start right now…

Last week I was in Orlando for Microsoft’s annual sales conference, MGX. MGX is a massive event with over 16,000 employees from all around the world all congregating to review the last fiscal year and prepare for the upcoming fiscal year. We took over most of the world of Disney spanning the Orange County Convention Center (OCCC) to Amway Arena and all the hotels in the vicinity. It was quite an amazing experience witnessing how truly diverse and multi-national the company is, and just how hard sales & marketing folk can party. I attended MGX to present a 75 minute session to our worldwide audience marketing managers about how to increase satisfaction, adoption and revenue of Microsoft’s Web platform & tools.

I stayed at Rosen Centre Hotel which is adjacent to OCCC. The hotel is average but in an excellent location for conferences at OCCC.

Lowlight: The keynotes were definitely blah lasting about 9 hours from start to finish. Exec after exec got on stage and said almost exactly the same things. It was my first time attending this event so I am not sure what, if anything, I can share in this forum. Coincidentally, Microsoft reported 4th quarter and FY07 earnings the same day as the keynotes so a lot of what we heard regarding the state of the business was also reported to financial analysts covering the company that afternoon.

Highlight: I was able to have dinner with one of my first cousins who lives in Orlando and his son. That made the humid, hot & unbearable July weather in Orlando worth the trip.

Air travel is getting tedious and cumbersome with each trip. Security screening is still woefully inefficient even though passengers and TSA agents should know the drill by now. My flights were all delayed. My connections were all too tight. The combination of the last two resulted in me having to run to catch connecting flights in both the Los Angeles and Denver airports. I made my connections but arrived in my seat smelling a bit ripe, I’m sure.

I did experience a first on one of my flights: I got a shout-out (along with 2 other frequent flyers) from the purser on my United Airlines flight from LAX to MCO (Orlando) on my way to MGX. She said each of our names and thanked us for our continued business and loyalty to United after completing the flight safety review. I felt special at least for a moment and it cost the airline nothing to make that simple gesture. Well done.

I attained United Mileage Plus 1K status this year which means I accumulated at least 100,000 Elite Qualifying Miles (EQMs) in 2006. I just checked and I’m only at ~42,000 EQMs so far in 2007 and it’s almost August! Either I won’t be 1K again come Feb 2008 or I have some serious flying to do in the next 5 months. Talk about a lose-lose. I guess returning to my regular old Premier Executive status won’t be too bad.