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.

One of the complaints that I had with my new PDA-phone is that the volume is actually too loud straight out of the phone. So on top of the headphone port adapter required to use my preferred headphones, I had to get a volume control adapter, which after it was all connected made my headphone cable ridiculously long. This really become a hassle on my latest trip to Asia, as I was using my phone to listen to music and podcasts while traveling.

So while researching a solution, I discovered that bluetooth headphones have become much more common and usable. It was just earlier this year, when I was with Elijah in Hong Kong, we saw some bluetooth headphones in the computer mall, and we commented that we couldn’t see any actual use for them. And here I am seriously considering them.

Some of the advantages of using a bluetooth headphone adapter are that the headphone cables aren’t directly connected to the phone and dragging all over the place and also that as a phone adapter, I can take calls without getting my phone out or taking my headphones off. One of the more recent improvements is that these adapters can also control the music player remotely.

After some searching, I settled on the i.Tech Clip R35 because I could use my own headphones and i.Tech products are much more available in Asia, where I was at the time. I ended up getting them at my second stop in Singapore, because I didn’t have time to search for them in Taipei. Turns out that if I waited to get them in Malaysia, I would have saved a few bucks :p.

Once I got the R35 adapter, I configured it with my PDA-phone and tested it out with different settings and players. Unfortunately, the bluetooth stack that comes with Windows Mobile 5 is not that efficient with the limited memory and the sound quality is pretty bad. I tried some different hacks and eventually got a configuration which required installing a hacked third-party bluetooth stack. The sound quality was better but not optimal (some minor skipping).

For software, I then tried both the included Windows Media Player and Conduits Pocket Player. Pocket Player has better playlist management and saves your ‘last played’ position among other features. But I ended up settling on the included player since it didn’t take up additional memory and the basic operation worked well enough.

As a bluetooth headphone adapter, the R35 itself works pretty well. The sound quality while talking on the phone worked fine, and the battery life is remarkably good. But I guess I expected too much, forgetting to pack the charger on my 30-hr flight back and running out of juice. In the end, the limitation is more with the device that I was pairing it with.

Fortunately, after I got back from Asia, I upgraded my phone operating system to Windows Mobile 6, which has a much improved bluetooth stack, and works as you would expect (good sound quality and no skipping). I still stuck with the included player because for some unexplained reason Conduits Pocket Player didn’t work with the remote bluetooth controls as it did with the old operating system.

One unrelated observation is that I use these a lot more when in Asia than I do back home. The primary reason being that in SoCal, most of my ‘traveling’ is spent in my car where I don’t need to use my PDA-phone to listen to music and I can just connect it to the in-car bluetooth for hands-free phone calling. While in Asia, most of my time is spent walking or in mass-transit and on planes, and with the bluetooth headphone adapter, I have my own self-contained media/phone environment.

Once we got into Singapore, we took an airport taxi straight to our hotel. After checking in, we went looking for food, and discovered that there was a food court in the small mall connecting to our hotel. We got our first laksa of the trip:

[trip photostream]

We then headed into the office which is only a couple of blocks away from the hotel for some meetings. Afterwards, we went to check out Singapore’s latest mall VIVO City. Our manager kept telling us that it was really big, but after walking through it a couple of times, we felt it had nice wide corridors, but wasn’t that big compared to malls in SoCal. The mall did have one nice feature, the top floor was covered with a grassy park and a wading pool in the middle. Oh, and another nice feature was their food court called Food Republic (there’s another one on Orchard Road). Our cousin Leong stopped by after work to join us for some dinner and dessert:

After dinner, Elijah hung out at the hotel, while I headed out for a late night meeting with one of our leaders and a doctor from one of the leading hospitals in Singapore. It proved to be a rather informative and encouraging meeting, but it sure was tiring. Finally got back to the hotel around 11:30pm.

On Saturday morning, we got woken up by our hotel telephone ringing. When I went to pick it up, it was our Auntie Mary calling with a ‘wake-up’ call. She found out from our cousin that we were in town and wanted to bring by another cousin from Kuala Lumpur who happened to be in town as well. They joined us for breakfast in the hotel, which was unplanned but a nice surprise and welcome time of catching up.

In the afternoon, we had a bunch of meetings including taking out some of our Singapore office staff to lunch. And finished off by giving our last speeches in the afternoon. What a relief to be done with that.

We then headed over to Holland Village at the suggestion of another cousin living in Singapore. We went to check out some electronics, but didn’t find anything that we couldn’t get at home for the same price. Turns out, Holland Village is a nice outdoor shopping and eating area where a lot of expats hang out. They even had a Coffee Bean (which are all over Singapore, what a wonderful city).

For dinner, our Co cousins took us to meet up with their parents at Singapore Island Country Club for some delicious chili crab which they had ordered ahead of time just for us. They made us finish every last piece, which was quite a bit of work, but worth every bite.

On Sunday morning, we had one last bit of business. We took the MRT (first time, very convenient) to Raffles City Convention Center to visit a cardiologist conference which we were sponsoring. Didn’t take too long and we headed back to the hotel to check-out.

For brunch, our cousin Phebe picked us up and took us to her current favorite restaurant Brown Sugar. Not exactly sure how to describe the food, kind of like modern casual gourmet. The omelettes we had were pretty good, but what really stood out was the wagyu hamburger topped with foie gras and the two pastry desserts, one made from dates and another from peaches.

We finally headed over to the airport, where we checked-in and did some last minute duty-free shopping. We then boarded the plane for a 4 hour flight to Taipei, a 4 hour layover, and a 12 hour flight back to LA. Fortunately, the business class lounge in Taipei is quite nice and we got to take showers while we were waiting. The flight back to LA wasn’t too bad, slept a few hours and watched some average flicks.

When we got to LAX, the airport was totally packed with a bunch of incoming international flights. We got through immigration after a bit of a wait, grabbed our luggage and joined the customs green line to get out. What we didn’t realize was that we accidentally picked up some first class guy’s luggage by accident, and I didn’t see it until after getting all the way back home. We called the airline but the office was closed by then, so we called them in the morning and ended up having to take the luggage back to LAX and exchange it for our luggage. That is a good lesson to always check our tags before you head out of the airport.

Afterwards, we caught a flight up the coast to Penang. Here’s a shot outside our hotel room:

[trip photostream]

After giving our talk in the evening, Elijah went back to the hotel to rest while I went out with some of the sales people to enjoy some local Penang food specialties:

On Tuesday, we caught an early flight back to Kuala Lumpur for meetings with our Malaysia management for most of the day. At noontime, we took the managers out for lunch. And continued our meetings through the afternoon. Before our evening meetings with distributors, we had to take care of a clothing emergency and made a quick trip to the nearest mall (if you want to know what happened, you can ask Elijah).

On Wednesday, we took another early flight, this time over to Sibu in East Malaysia. Note that Elijah is wearing a dress shirt and long pants. Our sales leaders were meeting us at the airport, so we couldn’t wear our usual casual travel attire:

For lunch, we ate a meal with our Sibu sales leaders in the Chinese restaurant in the hotel. It was passable, but nothing really special. However, for dinner, they took us to enjoy some local specialties like roasted pigs foot. The best part of the meal wasn’t even the food, it was that we were told to wear shorts and t-shirts because the restaurant was very casual and didn’t have air conditioning:

On Thursday, we had some time in the morning before our flight, so our sales leaders took us to enjoy a local breakfast of delicious prawn noodles:

Afterwards, we took a flight to Kota Kinabalu, where we met with the local leaders. They took us to enjoy some local noodles that were made out of fish paste along with a local version of Tom Yam soup. Delicious, unfortunately, I was too hungry and forgot to take a picture. Later in the evening after our speeches, we got back to our hotel and couldn’t remember our room number. I think that was just indicative of the travel and hotel switching that we went through in our second week out.

Our time in HK, albeit short, has been rather disappointing. This is probably due to the fact that we don’t have much time and the time we do have, we don’t know where to go, other than just wander around. There is a lesson there about traveling in unknown cities and the need for referrals and reference points.

We then got dressed to join our company’s Chinese New Year celebration where we gave our speeches. This time the translation seemed particularly difficult, probably because we don’t understand the language we were being translated into, Cantonese. A lesson in cross-cultural communications and the challenges there.

Before the festivities concluded, we had to rush over to the airport to get checked in for our flight to Malaysia. We were able to rest a bit in the business class lounge and even walk around the concourse to look around. The food in the lounge wasn’t very good, but fortunately, we spotted a Popeye’s Fried Chicken at the food court and grabbed some to eat in the lounge.

For the flight to Malaysia, we ended up on a small little plane, but wasn’t really noticeable. At least they let us use our computers this time so that we can could some shows. After arriving in Kuala Lumpur, we got an airport taxi to take us to our hotel and finally got to bed sometime after midnight.

We decided to forego breakfast since we were heading to the airport and we could eat in the business class lounge. Fortunately, the lounge was open and we were able to relax a little bit before our flight.

After arriving in Hong Kong, we took the Airport Express train into town, but unfortunately, we got our hotel info a little mixed up and ended up at the wrong hotel. However, our local manager rescued us and took us to the right location.

We then headed over to Mongkok to meet one of our sales leaders at a cafe. The cafe turned out to be a hangout for young people, which was kind of cool and the food was pretty good too. Afterwards, we went over to the office to meet with the staff in preparation for our meeting on Sunday.

With our work done for the day, we headed out to the street to roam around. We found our way to the Mongkok Computer Mall, which was packed full of people (actually, the whole city of HK is packed full of people). After going through 3 floors of the same stores, we picked up a couple small items and went back out to the street.

We came across this shopping area called “Ladies’ Street”, which carried a bunch of clothes, purses and toys. Picked up some stuff for our kids and then went looking for a place to eat. It was kind of overwhelming with all of the people and all the different shops and restaurants. It looked like Korean food was pretty popular now, but I wasn’t into going to a Korean restaurant in HK, when we could do that at home. We saw one place with a bunch of people waiting outside, which turned out to be Pizza Hut, go figure.

We did find a food court, but decided that we would rather find a restaurant to sit down. We ended up going into this local looking place and ordered some rice and noodles. The meal turned out to be disappointing, like eating at a Denny’s at home (should’ve gone with the food court).

Afterwards, we were pretty tired, even though it was still early. So we got on the subway and headed back to our hotel. At first, when we got off the subway, we were a bit lost as to which way to go to get back, but after some looking, we found our way home.

Chronologically, this trip consisted of

• Our company convention in the first week [Day -1 0 1-4]
• 5 days in Singapore [Day 1 2 3 4 5]
• Another 5 days in Taipei [Day 1 2 3 4 5]

This trip started out a lot more stressful than previous family trips to Asia, for the primary reason that we were going back, our company convention in Singapore, which also happened to be on a cruise. And with Juliette starting Kindergarten at the beginning of September, we wanted to let her start with her class to help her with the transition, which meant that we were a bit squeezed for time to get to Asia a day before the convention started, so that I could take care of some last minute preparations.

Once in Singapore, I was very busy with work all through the convention, while Rebecca took care of the girls and enjoyed the cruise. In fact, when people asked me how my first cruise experience went (yes, I’ve been avoiding cruises because of my innate or inert ability to cope with motion sickness, thank God for “the patch”), I try to think back on what I actually remember from the cruise, and it was pretty much all work. So it’s probably safe to say that I have yet to go on a cruise as most people would think of going on a cruise, for the purposes and experience of relaxation and rest.

After the cruise, we stayed in Singapore, on a resort island called Sentosa, where we were able to relax and enjoy time as a family. One thing that we did that was particularly meaningful was to visit our grandfather’s former rubber plantation up in Kota Tinggi, which is just past the border into Malaysia. One of the churches that our grandfather started is now building a new sanctuary on land donated by our grandfather. It was really special to meet with the church coworkers and see this project which has continued as a ministry that our family is involved with. I pray that God gives us the wisdom to be good stewards of not just the assets and property but also the family legacy and spiritual intent that comes with it.

Our final stop was in Taipei, which was a much shorter stay than normal for us, because we had to get back so Juliette didn’t miss too much school. I worked for the first couple of days, but was still able to do some things with the family. And the last half, I spent with Rebecca and the girls enjoying the city and meeting up with friends and family. From my last Asia trip, I already started to realize that I felt the most comfortable while in Taipei, and granted it probably has to do with a much greater familiarity than other locales in the region. But I think that this time, I even started to miss Taiwan, the city, the people, the way of life (one of these days, I’m going to have to figure out where and how to go mountain biking in Taiwan!).

It’s interesting to note and telling that since Rebecca and the girls were with me on this trip, I didn’t make a single post. One primary reason is probably because I use this blog to share my thoughts and experiences and the one person who is most interested in those is Rebecca. And since she was right there with me, there was no immediacy to get my thoughts down (hehe, you thought I was going to write ‘on paper’, but that just wouldn’t make any sense, now, would it?) The second reason is because this trip was very packed with work, and then also helping out with the kids, so that there was not much time left for processing, evaluating or digesting all that was happening throughout the days.

Now aren’t you surprised that I was able to remember all of that one month after?!

I spent most of the weekend with my family, making up for the time that I was gone. When we got home from the airport, the girls were just finishing their naps. So when Elise cried to get up, I went to pick her up and she just looked at me, I think she was surprised to see me. It actually, took a few minutes for her to warm up to me, I think she was reflecting on the past couple of weeks and trying to figure out where I had gone.

I also seem to have recovered quicker than usual from jetlag. Normally, coming back from Asia (traveling east), it takes a few days before I adjust back to a normal sleep pattern. But it seems that this time, arriving in the afternoon, and trying to stick to my new day/night schedule, it has only taken a couple of days to recover.

I can’t believe that I was in the air for almost 2 whole days. That isn’t including other travel time including in the car, on the train or waiting at airports or train stations. That means for out of the 14 days that I was gone, almost 20% of it was spent ‘en route’. Why can’t they hurry up and get those Transporters working!

This is the first time that I have used my blog to record an entire episode in my life, pictures included [trip photostream]. I hope that it has been interesting, and I’m sure that in the future, I will take the opportunity to look back and and read through my experiences here. For now, it’s back to life at home .

A quick final packing of Taiwanese pastries into my suitcase and I headed to the airport for my trip home. I got checked in without any problems, picked up some items at duty-free, and went over to the lounge to relax before my flight. My flight ended up boarding a little late and was about 30 minutes delayed in taking off, but we made up the time in the air. Here’s a shot of the tarmac:

The flight wasn’t too bad. I got to sit in the upper deck (like on the flight out) and I think it’s actually a little bit quieter or at least there are fewer people walking about disturbing/distracting me. Rebecca noted that we had tried to get the upper deck in the past, but the airline discourages families with young children from seating up there. That may be another reason why I felt it was quieter.

For the first couple of hours, we had some turbulence, so I wasn’t able to fall asleep, but then later, it calmed down and I was able to rest for about 5 hours. I ended up watching a couple of foreign films, since they had the same movie lineup for all my flights since starting out, and I had watched all the other movies that I was interested in.

These two films were pretty good, one was a Japanese film with a title translated into English as “Star Reformers” which turned out to be quite good. It was about a prefecture official who gets transferred to a supermarket to learn about the ‘citizens’ point of view, and ends up gaining a new perspective on his own life and career. I wonder if this film was particularly timely as I have been getting more and more tied up with my own time at work. The other film was a French film with a title translated as “Orchestra Seats” which was about a young girl who moves to Paris to try and get a start in the glamorous life in the ‘city of lights’. Now that I think about it, this movie is kind of like a modern-day “Breakfast at Tiffany’s”.

Here’s a shot from the air prior to landing:

After the plane landed, I moved quickly to get in front of everybody in immigration (I didn’t want to get stuck in lines and then get stuck in traffic on the way back). Fortunately, I moved quickly through immigration, only had to wait a few minutes for my luggage to come out, then walked straight through customs. Rebecca was in the arrival area to pick me up and we headed on home. There was a bit of traffic on the freeway back, but it cleared up after the South Bay bend. Rebecca asked me what I wanted to eat for my first meal back, and I said Fatburger, but then I changed my mind (not everybody appreciates hamburgers for dinner ) and we decided to go to Honda-Ya.

Total Accumulated Flight Time: 45 hours

And a shot from my seat inside:

We didn’t have time for lunch, so grabbed box lunch on the train. Before, I didn’t really mind box lunches when in Taiwan, but I think I am finally realizing that they are really quite greasy and unhealthy. Unfortunately, when working, don’t have much choice.
Gave my final speech, yes, in Mandarin. It’s kind of funny because whenever I am giving my speech in Mandarin and I stumble over a word, all of our sales leaders and company managers will shout out the right pronunciation. I keep telling them that I’m learning Chinese and they are learning English, haha.

We ended with me giving a quick speech at the evening event, and then making a dash for the train station. We got there with just 10 minutes to spare, then we found out that the train was delayed another 10 minutes. Oh well, “hurry up and wait” as they say. At least we didn’t miss the train and have to sit in a cramped bus all the way back to Taipei. Finally got back to the hotel by 11:30pm.

This trip has really been all business. I didn’t get to go shopping in Taiwan at all (I don’t think 7-11 really counts), no night market, no gadget shopping, and didn’t make it to 101 or even to Din Tai Fung! I think without Rebecca and the girls, all my time in Asia gets sucked up by meetings. Definitely need to schedule in some fun. But then again, this way, I get to go back home sooner.

Fatigue is definitely starting to set-in. I packed my bags, because we have an early meeting and then I will leave straight from the office to the airport. My last night in Asia, can’t wait to be home…as I told our managers, I’m not worried about getting back to the hotel so late, because I am just counting the hours until I finally go back home.