Well, this afternoon I hopped onto Northwest #7 to Tokyo en route to
Shanghai for just under two weeks of fun in the sun! Or good Chinese
food, at any rate. Seriously, it’s off to talk to the extremely poorly
named MSN CDC… China Development Center in Shanghai, followed by a
quick hop up to Beijing to get some face time with our pals at Microsoft
Research Asia. The first leg to Tokyo isn’t bad, but hard to sleep…
you leave at 2:30 PST, and even though they turn off the lights at 6:15
PST, you’re not even close to being ready to take a snooze. For
Shanghai, you get in about 8:45 PM (the next day from when you leave…
love that date line), so it’s just a matter of staying up until 10 or 11
and then crashing quickly.
Here’s an interesting factoid about flying out of SeaTac airport. About
half the time, you’re going to be sitting next to another Microsoft
employee that you don’t know. Or at least that seems to be the case for
me. Last time flying to Tokyo, the guy next to me was a business
development guy in the music group going over to see some clients, and
today I’m next to someone working on MSN who is based in Tokyo. It turns
out it’s pretty easy to spot Microsofties on the plane… look for the
standard issue Toshiba M200 tablet or the AudioVox 5600 Smartphone.
They’re always out, and it just yells Microsoft. At any rate, it’s just
one more cool thing about this company… you just find new colleagues
all over the place.