This trip was 10 days long, and as always, packed with meetings both internal and external. This was my first time giving longer presentations from 1-3 hours. My dad and I tried a different format on a couple of the talks, more in the form of interviews or a dialogue which seemed to invite the audience to participate more. For our company, we are making a strategic shift in focus towards customers and specifically consumers. It’s going to take some time since this is a big change from what we have been doing and teaching for the past 5 years, but it is ultimately more consistent with who we are as a company and the products that we develop and sell.
One big gadget plus this trip was my new GSM network compatible PDA phone, which worked quite well. The SIM unlock worked in every country. The only down-side is that pre-paid SIM cards don’t allow the use of the data networks, so I could only go online with my phone on available wifi networks. This worked well enough since most of the time I was stuck in meetings at our local offices. However, I am considering whether it makes sense to get a subscription plan with data in one country, maybe Taiwan, and just roam in other countries. Have to see how much the roaming costs would be for voice and data too.
Another part of traveling in Asia that has improved is that all the hotels and all but one of the airline lounges that we visited had a working internet connection whether via hardline or wifi. In past trips, some of the more remote locales had non-functional or no connections available. This certainly made it easier for me to stay in communication for work, but it also made it possible for me to keep up to date on my news feeds and to download the latest episodes of my TV shows for offline viewing.
One observation that I made during this trip is that I seem to sleep better when I am in Taiwan as opposed to other countries like Singapore or Malaysia. One reason could be that I feel more comfortable in Taiwan having spent more time there and being more familiar with the city beyond just the hotel and our office. This makes sense since Taiwan is the only country that I spend any extra time in, whereas the other countries are usually just quick trips with all my time spent in meetings, and little time to relax and explore. This is unfortunate since for the most part, all of the major cities are similarly accessible via mass transit and taxi.
Lastly, thanks to those of you that replied with the brain-assist and reminded me that the above picture is of The Grand Hotel in Taipei.