Moving To China, 2007

This is a raw unedited look at my day. Its around 9 minutes long and if you don't know me this is going to be really, really boring but if you're curious what I'm seeing on a day-to-day basis this would give you a partial idea. Its really of value only to the family ;)

Oh how days can be interesting. On Wednesday morning Diana and I woke up around 9am in Los Angeles, California. Our flight to Hong Kong wasn't scheduled for departure until 1pm and our rental car wasn't due back until noon-ish, leaving us with plenty of time to have one last American meal.

This is my last post from within the United States. Its currently 8:15am and I write this while the morning commuter traffics clogs the 405; which is right outside my window. The sun is bright, shiny and warm as it should be in Southern California. In approximately five hours we'll be on a plane bound for Hong Kong and around fourteen hours later we'll be landing in Hong Kong. The current temperate in Hong Kong is approximately the same as in the U.S so there won't be much of a temperature shock. Culture shock, however, is another thing.

After leaving Los Angeles we headed up to Ojai, California to visit my good friend Markus. Markus' place in Ojai is absolutely amazing and was a perfect retreat from two full days of "talking tech". Its amazing how exhausted you can get from just talking.

Diana and I left Denver, Colorado a bit early and flew off to LA so that I could attend DrupalCampLA. The only person I knew at DrupalCampLA was Crystal, the camp organizer. I wanted to attend because this was the first DrupalCamp in Los Angeles and I'm constantly amazed at how quickly Drupal has grown and, more importantly, how strong the community around Drupal is.

After spending a day at Joshua Tree and another day/night in Big Bear Diana and I headed back to the great city of Los Angeles via the scenic route. This winding road is called "The Rim of the world". I can only assume its named that because L.A believed that they were/are the edge of the world because really.. what's beyond L.A? hhmm. San Diego, Mexico, Central America, South America.... Ok just a few things.

Diana and I are heading out for LA in about two hours. We'll be spending the next few weeks in California meeting friends and visiting my Grandmother. Then we leave for Hong Kong on the 26th. Today marks exactly three weeks before we move to China! Oooh I'm excited I can't wait.

Over Labor day weekend Tony, Deb, Diana and I went up to Mt. Evans in Denver, Colorado to do some hiking. On Sunday morning we drove as close as we could to basecamp which was still about 3 miles away and a few thousand feet below. We hiked up and into the Colorado woods quite literally. After setting up camp, building a nice fire and getting a good nights sleep we decided to do some more hiking. This time we opted to just go up a "little" hill next to our campsite.

I'm not exactly what is going on with me lately but since I left New York I have been unable to hold onto the things I need to hold onto. Less than one week after arriving in Florida I lost a folder that contained all of my important financial information (tax returns, bank account info, retirement accounts, etc. etc.). This caused me about two weeks of daily phone calls to financial institutions to change account numbers, add security passwords, alerts and/or shift funds around.