In the earlier part of December, I went on another business trip to Asia. This time together with my dad. It was a meeting-packed couple of weeks, with a few Christmas parties, and even one wedding banquet. Suffice it to say, there was plenty of eating going around. As usual, most of the pictures that I grabbed with my phone were of tasty food items.

Keeping with my latest travel posts, here are some things I learned this time around:

• If your suite doesn’t have a wall/door partition, it doesn’t really make a difference (knew this already, just a reality reminder).
• Extra large binder clips work great to close curtains tight to avoid annoying light distractions (particularly when overcoming jetlag).
• Charismatic Methodist churches do exist, and yes, they do speak in tongues.
• When a morning meeting is scheduled, confirm if food is involved, otherwise, you WILL end up being a hobbit and eating two breakfasts.
• When shopping for clothes in Asia, try EVERYTHING on. You may be of Asian descent, but it doesn’t mean anything will fit like it is supposed to.
• Earthquakes in Taiwan are common. What’s annoying is when they disrupt the HSR schedule and you are stuck in another city away from your hotel room and luggage.
• I involuntarily (see previous point) confirmed that I still get violently dizzy when riding on Taiwan’s bus commuters. Next time, can we just get a room for the night.
• I may be wimpy, but Yong Kang’s beef noodles are too greasy and spicy for my taste.

This latest business trip lasted 12 days and was a little different from past trips. Instead of conducting meetings in multiple cities in each country, we had centralized training camps in Malaysia and Taiwan. The result was that I did not have to spend as much time traveling from city to city and still got to meet with our managers and top sales people from each country.

Here are some things I learned:

• Take a picture of your hotel room number, because you WILL forget after a day of meetings.
• Laksa in Malaysia is not the same as in Singapore.
• Google Maps, especially Street View, is your friend. I saved so much time by looking up locations ahead of time and not having to wander around.
• Meeting up with friends (outside of work) keeps me grounded and accountable.
• Sulfur hot springs smell like durian, and now I know I don’t care for either.
• Traditional Taiwanese breakfast places are disappearing from Taipei Downtown.
• Google Translate can’t help you translate offline documents (at least not yet), particularly restaurant menus and subway maps.
• Next time I go to Yangmingshan, I bring a bike! Whether it’s paved or dirt, it’s bound to be a good ride all the way down.
• Ximending is worth checking out, especially for hard-to-find Japanese mecha models.
• New favorite dessert place, MeetFresh, tasty old-style shaved ice.
• Jetlag is more than just the physiological adjustment, there’s also the social, emotional and psychological.

[Asia.0710 photoset]

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.

This last day was literally all travel. I woke up a little earlier, got packed and skyped Rebecca before I left for the airport. I decided not to go down for breakfast, because to put it quite frankly, I was sick of hotel breakfasts, so I just ate a mojo bar which I had brought for just such ‘emergencies’.

We got a cab to the airport and checked in for the flight to Kuala Lumpur, the first leg of our trip home. I caught up on a couple of TV shows that I had downloaded. The thing was our first flight left a little late so we were a bit rushed to pickup our bags and traverse up to the check-in counter for our connecting flight to Taipei. Fortunately, our bags came out pretty quick, and we were able to hangout in the airline lounge for a few minutes while I charged my notebook for the next flight.

After boarding, I was happy to see that this plane had power outlets, so I didn’t have to worry about my notebook battery life (I had brought my spare battery just in case). Also, I noticed that the in-flight entertainment system was booting up so I took a picture of the Linux penguin on the start-up screen (picture above, yeah, I know, geeky). I actually ended up watching one of the in-flight movies, Bizan, which turned out to be interesting. I tried watching another in-flight movie, The Go Master, but it was just too slow and boring.

After arriving in Taipei, we took the tram over to our outbound terminal and got settled into the airline lounge for a four-hour layover. The lounge has some nice shower rooms, so I got to wash-up before our final long flight home.

On the last flight to LA, the airline didn’t switch out the planes on us like they did on our way out, so we had one of the newer planes with power outlets. There wasn’t any other movies that I wanted to watch on the in-flight system, so I watched a couple of movies on my notebook, The Last King of Scotland and Election (Hak Se Wui). I also got to sleep for about four hours.

Rebecca brought the girls and Zeke to pick us up from the airport. After dropping off my mom and Zeke at their house, we picked up a late dinner from In-N-Out (I always like to have In-N-Out or Fatburger for my first meal home, probably because you can’t get good burgers in Asia).

For my last day of work on this trip, we started by leaving early for the airport on the way to Kota Kinabalu (KK). I had a stomachache (maybe from last night’s dinner), so I didn’t eat that much in the lounge for breakfast. Fortunately, it went away after a couple of hours.

After we landed in KK, a bunch of our distributors met us at the airport and drove us to our hotel where we were staying and also where we would be holding our training. We had a quick lunch meeting with our top distributor in East Malaysia, and then went to get ready for the training session. This turned out to be the only time I had to wear my suit for the entire trip. That was a big plus. I was commenting to Rebecca before flying out that the only time I ever wear a suit is for business in Asia, and weddings and funerals.

In the afternoon, I held a three hour training session, I think this is the longest business talk I’ve ever done. It went pretty well, and most of the audience stayed awake, J/K. Afterwards, my parents and I ditched the hotel food and walked outside to a nearby seafood restaurant which was quite good, and incredibly fresh.

After dinner, I still had to make one short appearance at the distributor meeting, and then I was done, no more meetings for the rest of the trip! Now, all I have to do is pack for the long trip back.

Today started off with a breakfast meeting in the hotel lounge, then off to the office for a full day of management meetings. We did take a break in the middle to go to a lunch meeting, and then it was back to the office for more meetings. We finished after 7pm, and finally headed off to dinner with one of our managers. She took us to our best meal of the trip yet at this local Malaysian restaurant called Melaka Street. They have a website, but doesn’t seem to be working, so I found this great review.

Once again, I was too hungry to take pictures of all the dishes, but here are a couple of dessert. Anyone who can name these local desserts, must have been to Malaysia or Singapore before.

Last night I was just too pooped to post, so this is a combined post from the last couple of days. Tuesday, Day 6 started with some more meetings in Singapore, then after lunch, we headed to the airport to fly to Penang. After checking into our hotel, we went straight to a dinner meeting, and then to a talk which I gave with my dad. It was a pretty good crowd and the meeting went well. But it did go kind of late, we didn’t get back to the hotel until almost 11pm.

The above is a picture out my Penang hotel window, which I took Wednesday morning. Penang is quite beautiful and relaxing compared to the rush of Singapore, but that sure wasn’t exemplified by our time there which was less than 24 hours. It might be nice to actually come back just to relax and enjoy the island one of these days.

In the morning, we had another breakfast meeting in the hotel. Then it was off to the airport to fly to Kuala Lumpur (KL). At the Penang airport, I finally got my first Coffee Bean of the trip as shown in the picture below. The great thing about Singapore and Malaysia is that they have lots of Coffee Bean’s as opposed to Taiwan which is flooded with ‘the burnt coffee place’. Unfortunately, I don’t always have the time to stop and grab a drink.

After arriving in KL, we went to check-in to our usual hotel, and then off to a lunch with our Malaysia managers. In the afternoon, we were back on the ‘meeting treadmill’, and finished off the day with a full course Chinese dinner with our senior managers and their families. One of our managers has 2 girls about the same age as our girls, so it was really cute to watch and talk to them during dinner.

After looking at the bill, I was quite surprised by what a great deal dinner was considering all the good food (although the service was ridiculously slow). Here’s a shot of the delicious roasted suckling pig:

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Here is a customized Google Map of some the places that I’ve been to in Singapore.

Wow, I can’t believe it’s already the halfway mark for this trip. Every day is so packed full of meetings, that I can barely keep track of the time. Fortunately, I can still remember my hotel room number by the end of the day so I don’t have to go to the front desk and ask. We’ll see how I am doing by Day 10.

Today started off with breakfast in the hotel, then over to our Singapore office for meetings upon meetings. At lunchtime, we came back to the hotel for yet another meeting in the Thai restaurant, which had some pretty good food, but it’s so hard to enjoy food when you’re talking business with people you are meeting for the first time. It was then back to the office for some more meetings, and then over to the Mt. Elizabeth Medical Center to talk with a doctor.

We finally finished our meetings and got to eat dinner after 8pm. We were too tired to go out, so we just ate at the Chinese restaurant in the hotel, which has some pretty good Sichuan food. Here’s a couple shots of the potstickers and the beef noodle soup:

Today, we got up early and headed for the airport as we left Taipei for Singapore. I took this picture of the famous hotel in Taipei (can’t remember the name at the moment) as we were driving to the airport. After a quick airline check-in, we went through immigration which had long lines, but fortunately were moving pretty quick. We had about an hour to grab some food in the lounge before our flight started boarding.

Fortunately, today’s flight was on a newer plane with power outlets, so I could use my notebook without worrying about battery life. I actually started off watching a Japanese film on the in-flight entertainment system called Tokyo Friends. And after that, caught up on some episodes of The Unit.

My aunt picked us up from the airport and gave us a ride to our hotel. And then it was straight into back to back meetings.

For dinner, my uncle took us out for some chili crabs and curry fish head which was all delicious, of which I completely stuffed myself silly. Feeling a little guilty, I hit the gym before bed for some stationary cycle action.

Today started off a bit rushed since I didn’t realize that our staff meeting was starting at 9. Got ready quickly and rushed out the door to grab breakfast on the walk into the office. I picked up a breakfast sandwich at a shop that I had taken the girls to back in July and surprisingly the shopkeeper remembered us and asked why I hadn’t brought the girls this time!

After a morning of staff meetings, we headed back to our hotel picking up some dumplings at Chou Pang Zhi along the way. Unfortunately, once again, I was in too much of a rush to take pictures of the delicious dumplings (you’ll just have to imagine them). We then headed out of downtown to Shenkeng where we were having our business training. The training went pretty well. I did two sessions which lasted about an hour. Check it out, I have my own placeholder:

Once we got back to downtown, my mom and I went to Dun Hua Night Market. She got some clothes for the kids and I got some fried pork ribs (I thought it was chicken :p, should’ve read the sign more closely).