Things to do in Montevideo, Uruguay

Typically, when I travel, I don't get the chance to really soak in the culture. For 21 days, I'll be in Montevideo, Uruguay thanks to the IBD project.  I've been staying in Pocitos, which is a nice part of town within walking distance to the beach. A couple things I definitely recommend if you come to Montevideo:

• Go watch a proper football game. We saw an exhibition game of Uruguay v. Israel.
• Go out at night. The night starts at 2AM. Most people take a nap after work on Friday before they head out.
• Eat a Chorizo. Just not at the stadium. They say that there is a reason there are no stray dogs around the stadium. I made this mistake and spent 4 days in the hotel. 
• Try a Milanesa. So much is fried here, just give it a shot. It's a cross between a Tonkatsu and a Chicken friend steak.
• Try Mate, the original wing-maker. It's a complicated process to get some caffeine. But when in Montevideo, you'll see people walking around with a thermos of hot water and a mate at all times of the day.

Venue Discovery with Location Awareness

Foursquare, a mobile social networking game that gets users to "check in" at places they visit in the real world, has experienced explosive growth. While people are acquiring mayorships in droves in the US and the UK, bold users in other countries are marking their territory as well.

While we're all in search of those elusive badges or fighting to retain those mayorships, the real value of Foursquare may be much, much more.  For people traveling abroad, it's been a brilliant source of current advice and tips.

Having travelled a good amount, I'm always cautious of my research before getting into the country. Some sites and listings haven't been updated for years, and its not when you get there that a) the place no longer exists, b) the venue isn't what it was like in 2008, c) the crowd is vastly different.

I always check my check-out list with locals just to make sure.

With Foursquare, I have easy access to local tour guides. The desire to recommend and be "in the know" knows no boundaries.  Each mayor is potential guide. Here are a few new mayors in Montevideo, where I'm currently traveling.

Surfing through their postings, I can quickly find where I need to be on Thursday Nights. Looks like Francisco V thinks I should head to Lou Bizzarro Bar on Thursday night.

3 Days in Basque Country

It's been three days since I flew from SFO to the Basque region in Spain.  Thus far:

• Spent a day in Bilbao
• Took naps on benches in Bilbao
• Went Pinxto hopping in San Sebastián
  
• Had dinner at a Cider House

Here are a couple pics of my trip to far.

My winter vacation...

Cross posted on the Berkeley MBA Student Blog:

"CAL" braving -15°C in the Forbidden City

They say that time waits for no one and it won't wait for me. What seemed like for long weeks have quickly sped by as I start for my second semester at Haas.


Berkeley, CA

A little known fact: Berkeley has a low-cost, fairly broad student health insurance plan (SHIP).  Under SHIP, we not only enjoy $5 copay for eye exams, but also 50% discount on Lasik. Following my last final, I walked across the street from Haas to the UC Berkeley School of Optometry.  The next couple days were a bit dark.



Taipei, Taiwan

A week later, got onto a plane and headed to Taiwan. My wife and I got married right before school started and I wanted to take her to Taipei to meet the rest of my family. While in Taipei, I was able to connect with Haas alumni.  I was amazed at the loyalty of the alumni that they were willing to go out of their way to meet a stranger.  I learned more about what consulting, technology, financial services was like in Taiwan.

Taiwan Alumni dinner with a MBA '11

Shanghai and Beijing, China

On the 5th, I flew from Taipei to Shanghai to meet up with 59 other Haas MBAs (combination of Full Time and evening/weekend) on a 10 day China Trek.  Treks are entirely student run and five of my classmates put together a truly memorable trek.

Read more here.

Crowd-Sourced Mapping [Bing]

I've been a fan of Photosynth since I first heard of it during a TED presentation. While traveling to Jordan, I made a synth of El-Dier Monastery in Petra (Transformer 2). With geotagging, this will help to create a visually stunning and detailed user experience.

To compete with Google Maps, Microsoft has laced photosynth technology to create Bing Maps. Competition is always good. Both Google and Microsoft have been making incredible improvements to their mapping technology.

You can read more about it at Fastcompany.

I went to the woods... [Outdoors]

“I went to the woods because I wanted to live deliberately, I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, To put to rout all that was not life and not when I had come to die Discover that I had not lived.”

-David Thoreau

Every year, my old college roommate and I get together for a little camping action. Last time I visited him in Texas. This year, it was my turn to put together a mini-expedition.

With the uncertainty behind the future of California State parks, I wanted to get my camping in. Through ReserveAmerica, I was able to reserve a slot at Butano State Park. It's only an hour north of Santa Cruz and the drive down the Cabrillo Highway is absolutely breathtaking. What's also great about the area is the number of must-see places.

Areas around include:

• Pigeon Point Light Station - Best visited during dawn or dusk for your best pics
  
• Año Nuevo SNR - Get there before 2:30PM to get a permit to get up close and personal with the elephant seals
• Santa Cruz - We never made it down there, but it's a beautiful beach town. Check out a google map of potential sites I made before the trip here.
• To Kiss or Not to kiss, the banana slug.
  

There is enough hiking in Butano to keep one occupied for an entire day. We left at 10AM and 6 hour later, looped through the entire valley on a 12-mile hike. Below are some pics I took from the trip, you can get more a more detailed look at the pics here.

The Mile High High Wi Fi Club [Southwest Wi-Fi]

I'm on my way down to San Diego, CA for a couple days. We originally had plans to check out a couple places on the border, but given the current flu concerns, my plans have shifted a bit.

What is exciting, is the fact that I'm currently at cruising altitude writing this. I'm pretty stoked. For an hour flight, that means that I can be connected to all of you for another 45 minutes or so.

I've posted a screenshot of the landing page immediately after connecting to wi-fi. It's a bit busy, but there are a couple gems above the fold.

1. Updated Flight Information - The bar above the map shows your progress. Hovering over it allows you to read ETA, speed, and estimated time of arrival
   
2. Weather @ Destination - 'Nuff said. Always important
   
3. Trip Planner - The rest of the items are dedicated to helping you explore the city. From top recommendations to upcoming events.

I just learned how to perform a screenshot for a mac, but not sure how to add bubbles to highlight the image. Suggestions?

Now, if only they had an outlet for me to charge my laptop...

Update: As I start to descend, I wanted to provide a quick update on the speed. The speed is definitely a lot faster than I would've thought. Mind you, back in 2000 when I was working at a startup in Boston, we had 3 computers sharing a dialup connection. This is significantly faster. I was hoping to get in a hulu test. I was able to clock it via rietta and here are the results:

Start Time:	1240876274630
End Time:	1240876275271
Download Time:	0.641
Data Size:	508.466796875
Raw Speed:	793.2399327223088
KBPS:	6472.8
K BYTES/s:	793.2

First Time Angler [Fishing in Austin]

I'm living through my second Chicago winter and I think two is more than enough. By next week, I'll be out in California.

In the process of moving out, I've started to clean out my e-files. So because of that, I'm going to telling you about a fishing guide by the name of Allen Christensen. Back in March of 2008, I visited my friend Bryant out in Texas. With original plans to check out SXSW, we ended up camping, hiking, and fishing in the area.

On one of the days, we decided to go fishing along lake Travis. Bryant had heard that Allen was pretty familiar with the lake. It was a day of firsts. First time fishing, first time with kettle chips. With a six-pack of beer, thai-flavored kettle chips, and a light tackle rod, I felt instantly like an old chinese man. Loved it.

With my beginners luck, I started to catch fish left and right which left Bryant a bit miffed. But suddenly I realized that my line had snagged on something big. My line was meant to catch 3-5 pound bass. This was a lot bigger. 5 minutes pass by, I'm trying to reel in the fish but at times my line looks like its going to snap. 11 minutes pass by, like spotting the loch ness, we shout as we see a flicker of the fish. It's huge.

My arms are screaming as after 15 minutes the fish gets close enough to the boat for Allen to shovel the fish on board. Turns out it was a 36 pound buffalo.


The stretched line fell back into the water, whereby we felt another tug. By hand, we reeled it in to discover that I caught a bass in the process.

Let me tell you, when we got back to the campsite, we had too much fish with us. Good thing we found people to share in on the food.

Don't Count Your Seats Until You've Sat Down [United Suites]

On my return trip from visiting Egypt and Jordan, I spent many miles to upgrade myself to business class.

United Airlines has been slowly rolling out "the next generation" of business class seats. Shown below, they're like miniaturized first-class cockpits.
These seats have all sorts of bells and whistles:

• Ability to lie flat. True 180-degree seats
  
• On-Demand TV
• Menu designed by Charlie Trotter
• Output for your laptop
• Ipod Dock (you need to buy the converter)

After visiting UA's promotional website and reading blog posts about the new business class chairs, imagine my surprise when I stepped into the plane to find... just seats, no cockpits. I quickly realized that I had been bamboozled. Luckily, I was one of the first to board the plane and got to see everybody's reaction as they piled onto the plane. It was fun.

It was a look of utter surprise and disappointment. Some people looked side to side and probably wondered, is this the right plane? Am I flying back to Chicago? In our section of the cabin, the one and only thing people talked about was on the (lack of) the inquiring how they were expecting something different.

These new cockpit suites are only available on a couple routes (LHR to ORD, for example) and on select planes (21 of 91 planes have been converted).

Business class on a 7 hour flight is a lot better than economy class. But we all felt that we got the short end of the stick. My "single serving friend" had read UA's press release, visited the website, changed his route to fly through Heathrow instead of Frankfurtused a TON of miles to upgrade himself, and double checked that the plane had the new suites, just to try it out. It's an adult version of taking candy from a baby.

Too bad, so sad. I guess I'm telling you this story because I find it fascinating how important it is to manage expectations. We would've been fine with our tattered beige business class seats that couldn't even go "angled flat."

Who knows when I'll be able to fly on an international flight again, but I'll be going in with managed expectations.

Jordan Part Deux [Petra Pictures]

Thusfar:

• Eaten hummus at every meal
• Climbed about 10 miles worth of Petra, Jordan
• Found a Popeyes, 7-11, and a Burger King
• Honored Moses' resting place
• Visited the Dead Sea

A taste of Egypt and Jordan [Pix Preview]

Thus far:

• Climbed Mt. Sinai
• Drove under the Suez Canal
• Rode a camel
• Rescued from the Red Sea
  
• Saw a piece of the flaming bush

If a picture is worth a thousand words, and Internet costs a lot of money, this should be a great preview of my journey so far in both Egypt and Jordan.

Old skool photos

I came across this nifty old site that gives photos an older sheen. Wanokoto is a great Japanese (but with an english version)that adds a couple hundred years to your photo.

What started off like this:

Came out like this:


That's all,
V

Top pics from japan

I've finally sorted, filtered, and uploaded pics from my trip to Japan. There is much more to come, but I've been running around looking for a new apartment in Chicago. I'll follow-up with posts to provide a narrative to the pics. But in the meanwhile, enjoy!

Extended exposure for Japan

Hai, hai, hai. I'm super late on pics for my japan trip. They are coming. Good thing I was stuck at Logan airport for five hours on Sunday. Got most of my pics finished.

Here's a pic taken in a tokyo subway platform as the train arrives...

More to come...

In Boston, three times a charm

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It's Sunday and I'm back in Massachusetts. This will be K and my third trip back to Boston since we've started dated. We came to visit when we first started dating, returned to attend my friend's wedding, and now we are planning our own wedding.

We've secured the venue, a manor just outside of Connecticut, so it's finally time to check out what we've purchased.

I spent the day with K's familly exploring Boston. It was an eating tour of key boston places:

• Coffee from Dunkin Donuts (It tastes better when you're in Massachusetts),
• Dim Sum from China Pearl
• Cannoli's from Mike's Pastries
• Clam Chowder from Joe's
• Oysters and Lobsters from Union Oyster House

I think we hit all the bases. There were definitely digs from my old Jumbos that we didn't get a chance to check out.

• Quesadeilla from Anna's Taqueria
• Ramen at Porter Exchange
• Dac Biet Large from Pho Pasteur (Allston location)

Stats from my trip back from Japan

I got back to Japan last night. Here are some stats:

Total time spent on a plane: ~25 hours
Number of really bad movies I watched on the plane: 5 (Jumper, Vantage Point, The other B girl, to name a few)
Number of good movies I watched on the plane: 1

Times I ate sushi: 7
Pieces of Uni: 11
Times I ate Yakitori: 1
Times I ate at an western establishment: 1, a KFC eggs benedict breakfast sandwich
Times I wanted to stop by McDonalds and try the "latin flava" burger: 2

Number of Drinks purchased from a vending machine: 21
Number of beers purchased from a vending machine: 1

Times I said, "Hai hai hai": 105
Times I said, "This Sh*t is Bananas, B-A-N-A-N-A-S" while in Harajuku: 5

Number of pictures taken: 648
Pictures I'm actually going to upload: 2

A different side of Tokyo

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I am about to get on a jetplane to go visit the land of the rising sun: Japan. K will be meeting me at O'Hare to head to Tokyo!

I'll be going for family, friends, and food. The last time I visited Tokyo, it was the world cup and Korea was duking it out with Turkey for fourth place. After the game, Wayne and I ended up on a random night out in some small club listening to the producers of Pizzicato Five spin. We made the obligatory visit to a convenience store at 5 just as the sun crept up before we got back to the hotel.

I've learned that when you're traveling, make sure you have a place to sleep. The rest of the time, play it by ear. However, those who know me, know that I'm a researcher at heart.

I present to you, my tokyo notes. These are points of interest beyond the normal touristy spots that I'm eager to check out.

I'll report back what I ended up doing...

Brooklyn Science (Nihongo Style)

The past few weeks I was back in DC working at my company's headquarters. Over the Memorial Day weekend, I went up to NY to visit K. Sunday morning, we went to go check out the much talked about Brooklyn Flea.

What does one do at the Brooklyn flea? EAT! After waiting for just about an hour for Popusa's from Red Hook, we browsed the wares at the flea market. I gotta admit, I am a self-acknowledged geek. I bought a t-shrit--the print below. Can you guess what it is? It's taken from a Japanese science textbook for children:

If you guessed anthropomorphized water, you were right! To see more of Kari's work check out her etsy site.

sighting

Dob seen in brooklyn

(Taken by my HTC Touch)

The Yeh Code - The Secret of Motivational Speakers

While in NY this past weekend, I had the privilege to catch-up with a friend of mine. We've both moved out of DC to new cities to start new chapters of our lives. Amidst this change, its reassuring to know that there are some constants in life. As I've gotten to know DY, I've noticed that he is a highly principled individual. It is not to say it's anything as formal as Ghost Dog's samurai code, but I've noticed that he seems to live by a few guiding tenets.

Call it his personal ten commandments or a code, he lives deliberately. Not only does he have these "rules" thought out, he makes key decisions in life to link back to it. I remember when I was a about eight or so, I told myself that I would never lie again. Ahhh, youth... Unlike me, he has the remarkable ability to follow his own principles.

Be on the lookout Tony Robbins, Stephen Covey, Zig Ziglar, Deepak Chopra, James Arthur Ray... The Yeh Code is coming and there's a new speaker in town.