Cabin Progress!

We're making progress. Matt and I spent all day on October 18 putting down the hardwood floor. Then yesterday (October 31), Chad (a hired hand neighbor boy) and I worked on it some more. We are now done with the great room! On to the kitchen. The cabinets are being built and should go in before Thanksgiving. Not a lot left :-) Enjoy the pics of the progress.

London...Uh, I mean Slough

I'm back from my trip to London. I arrived on Tuesday morning. My hotel room wasn't ready so I changed clothes in the bathroom and then went to the office.

We had dinner in Windsor Tuesday night (the UK managing director and my four EMEA marketing team members). Windsor is the favorite castle of the queen. She is there a lot. Wednesday she hosted a big dinner for the princess of India, so the town was all decked out. After all these years, I still can't believe she didn't invite me.

Wednesday was a solid day of meetings in a conference room planning for 2010 (our office is in a town called Slough, about 20 min from London. The locals hate it, but I kind of like it). A bad pizza that night and off to bed.

Thursday I worked in the office and then several of us went into London that night to eat at a chuhascaria -- Brazilian barbque. One guy that works for us is Brazilian. He came and so it gives me a chance to practice my Portuguese. Caught the train back to Slough. Off to bed. Up early for a morning flight home. The flight was uneventful (the best kind) and I am so glad to be home! All in all, a good trip.

Final Day of Golf School

Just a few last photos of my wonderful experience at golf school. This first one is the media shot of me with the $45,000 purse I won in the tournament. I'm sure you read about it in the paper or saw it on ESPN, so I won't bore you with all the details.

The second pic is me with Ryan Osgood, my teacher.

This final shot is just a pic of the beautiful course (Dye design). This is the 18th green. You need to cross the water and land on a very shallow green. I usually hate water, but I got along well with this hole the last two times I played it. Nice drive, laid up just in front of the water, then a wedge onto the green and some putts going the right way.

At the end of day three, after watching video analysis, we had about an hour left before I needed to go to the airport. Ryan asked what I wanted to do...I was sore! "I'm good," I replied. The end of a great trip. One of my work friends said, "Man, I wish my wife would let me go away by myself for three days and do nothing but golf." Thanks Robyn. I love you.

Day 2: Another great golf day!

I had another great golf day. We started on the range, hit an impact bag, and they Ryan video taped my swing and we spent time analyzing it compared with the swings of the pros. I learned a lot. Ryan and I then played the front nine and I went on and played the back nine. I finished strong (boggie, par, boggie). Made some good putts. Finished number 18 by putting a 40 footer with a ton of break, within 2 feet. Didn't 3 put any of the holes on the back nine.

For you non-golfers, none of this makes sense, but trust me when I say it's a ton of fun! BTW, I'm sore! :-) and tired :-)

Golf School Here I Come!

I'm here! For my 50th birthday (which is still at least a month away, so for the record I am still a 40-something), Robyn gave me golf school in San Diego. I'm at a private course called Carlton Oaks. School is 3 days. I'll head home late on Wednesday.

My instructor's name is Ryan Osgood. He's about 27 years old and seems to be good at what he does.

We started this morning at 9 a.m. with Ryan asking me questions about my game. We then spent about 2 1/2 hours on the range with him coaching me on various parts of my swing. We then had lunch and played nine holes on the course with him providing instruction. I then went on and played the back nine (shot a 52, not too good, but I'm more worried about fixing errors. The better score will follow).

Back at it again tomorrow morning at 9 a.m. Tomorrow Ryan will video tape my swing and we'll analyze it frame by frame, side-by-side comparing to tour player's swings. I'm exiciting for that.

So thanks for the present Robyn! It's so much fun.

Now before coming to golf school, Robyn and I took Alyssa to San Francisco to see Wicked for her 21st birthday (happy birthday to one of the most wonderful girls in the whole wide world). We had a lot of fun -- riding trolley cars, watching The Blue Angels, cruising Fisherman's Warf and Ghiradelli Square, shopping, drinking hot chocolate, eating a Sear's Fine Food. Robyn and Lyss are now hanging out at D-land.

Off to bed now.

Cabin progress...

Okay, so I failed misserably with my last post from London. Sorry, it just really wasn't a very exciting trip.

So here are pics of our cabin interior. The T&G wood on the walls and ceiling just got finished. Matt and I moved some storage items up yesterday (thanks Matt!). It's coming along!

And this last picture is for my sweet wife, who didn't get much of a chance to enjoy her roses, as she left a day after our 28th wedding aniversary to go to Glendale and take care of Madison for a week so her mommy and daddy could go on a vacation before Jeremy starts school again.

Back in jolly 'ol England

I'll warn you these next few blog posts might be a bit boring. I forgot my camera, so no pics. I arrived in London this morning (Monday) about an hour late at 8 am. I slept a bit on the plane. Nobody in the seat next to me, so that was nice. Got checked into my hotel. Came to the office and met with an eLearning company, then had a review of 1H progress by our UK PR agency. All pretty standard stuff. I'm tired and looking forward to a good night's sleep. That's about it. Doesn't sound very exciting, does it? :-) I'll try and post again tomorrow. I love you all.

Berlin -- Your photo tour

It is Sunday night. Yesterday I did quite a lot of touring. I took a bus tour as an addition to all the places we walked the day before. Today, my highlight was going to church. It was an hour walk, but what a great walk. I left about 8:20 a.m. for a 9:30 meeting. The city was nearly diserted, which really made it cool. I spent the rest of the day in my room until our partner reception tonight. Oh, BTW, I do come home Friday, not Thursday.

As you'll see I took a lot of pictures. Below, I try and give you an explanation of what you're looking at. Enjoy!

Love,

Dad

This is the Belin wall -- or what is left of it. There is about 400 feet of the wall still in place. Prior to it coming down it was 150 miles long. When did it come down? 1989. All our children except Kenzi were born and at that time East Germans still could not travel to freedom. Many escaped through tunnels and being smuggled across.

This is the houlicaust memorial. A couple thousand large concrete blocks.

This is Brandendurgh Gate, which was built in 1791 as an entrance into the city. It is one of the most famous landmarks in Europe.

This is a cool picture (I think). It is a reflection of the Brandenburg gate from the back window of a Mercedes van.

This is the Berlin dome. It is next door to our hotel. It was built in the 1700s, nearly distroyed in WW II, then restored. We toured inside.

Inside the Berlin Dome.

I climbed the 200+ stairs to the top of the Berlin Dome and took this picture of the city.

There is a crypt in the basement of the Berlin Dome -- 97 bodies. Most of them royalty. Still kinda creepy.

That is me in the old Eastern Germany, looking through a hole in the Berlin wall toward Western Germany.

This is part of a church left standing after being nearly destroyed by allied bombers in WW II.

Me with a soviet soldier near checkpoint charlie -- which was the paggage between east and west Berlin.

A nice mix of old and modern -- a church steeple and the modern TV tower.

The is checkpoint charlie -- me with a U.S. soldier.

This is the Russian embassy. Very nice. Very fancy. Compare it to the U.S. -- very plain.

This is the most famous hotel in Berlin -- the Hotel Adlon. Many famous people have stayed here. Remember when Michael Jackson held his baby over the balcony a few years back. This was the hotel.

This is the U.S. embassy. Plain, but very large.

The LDS church!

See, I was really there. It was all in German.

This is what East Germany architecture looks like. Very bland and boring. You'll see there are a lot of windows -- that is because that made it easier for them to spy and listen in on the residents. Residents were told where they could live and how large an apartment they could have. Women would have a baby right after they got married, because then you got a bigger apartment.

The stretch of the Berlin wall still standing. You can buy small "parts of the wall." But they estimate that three time the length of the wall has been sold to the public. So somebody must have a factory making pretend parts of the wall and selling them to tourists.

This cute little lady on the street played her accordian for tips. She even gave me a nice smile.

The Berlin Dome at night.

There is a huge aquarium in the middle of our hotel lobby. It is about 4 stories tall. That is a diver inside cleaning the glass.

Another shot of the aquarium.

People escaped in many different ways from East Belin to West Berlin. This car was filled with concrete in the doors and the driver just crashed through the gate. Three bullets hit the car. They group made it across.

This is a Buggatti (Italian car). The production run is 330 cars. Price tag for one? $1.3 million.

This is the sign at checkpoint charlie when you were leaving the American sector and moving into the communist/Soviet sector.

I'm in Berlin!

A couple pictures to start out ...The first is a picture of two Thai musicians that play each night in the hotel in Bangkok. The second is a picture of Gary Blough (VP of sales), me, and Juliet Lim (the marketing coordinator for Asia). I included the second picture so you would all remember what I look like (I'm the guy on the right).

So I arrived in Berlin about 7 a.m. this morning. This 3-time zone stuff is wierd. When I landed in Berlin it was 7 a.m. here, 1 p.m. in Bangkok, and 11 p.m. -- the day before -- at home in Salt Lake City. My body is so confused! The other body confusion -- going from 93 degrees to 35 degrees.

Berlin is cool. Lots of history. I'll get some good pictures. I'm going to work in the morning and then go see some sites in the afternoon.

Back in Bangkok...I had a lengthy gospel/church discussion with a partner from the Philippines. A couple of funny things that happened to me:

-- I sat next to a partner from Vietnam at dinner. I told him I was from Utah. His question, "how many wives do you have?"

-- I golfed with a partner from China. We are driving the cart along the course when he said, "I only prayed twice this year." My thought, "hmmm...does he want to talk religion?" Then I realized he only "played" golf twice this year.

-- The same Vietnamese partner kept telling the waiter, "I want my pear." The pear never came and it was because they didn't know what he was asking for. Finally, he stood up, went over to another table, pointed at the other guy's "beer" and repeated, "I want my pear."

-- This last one had me biting my lip. In a meeting with a partner (can't remember where he was from, I think it might have been Korea), in a very serious tone he said, "My plan has four farts. Fart one....Fart two....Fart three..." You get the idea:-)

I can only imagine what I sound like to others when I try to speak other languages.

I hope you are all safe and doing good. I love you and miss you. Oh good news...I come home next Thursday, not next Friday! Yeah!!!! Watch for more blogging tomorrow.

Morning on the last day in Bangkok

Yesterday was a good day. I didn't blog last night because I was so tired. Our conference lasted all day. I presented twice and those went well. Then we had a group dinner (there are about 75 of us at this conference -- a conference that we host for all of our resellers in Asia Pacific). I would definitely lose weight here. I had white rice and moved just about everything else around on my plate. I also had a serious allergy attack to something in the air. It was bad. Now after a benedril and a night's sleep, I'm fine.

Today we have one on one meetings with the resellers, our awards dinner, and then I fly out to Berlin just before midnight.

I was talking with someone yesterday. Bangkok has 15 million people (7 times the number of people in the state of Utah). We talked about how the enjoyment of living here would be completely dependent on how much money you made. The disparity between the people is so stark. There are beautiful modern malls and hotels and then there are tiny dirty slums. There doesn't seem to be much in between. There are a lot of street vendors. They work seven days a week, 12 hours a day, for very little money. It is sad to see. That said, I admire them greatly. They aren't begging, they are working. I'm sure just to make enough to feed their families.

I saw an elephant in the road last night. Weird.

Here are three more pics (I haven't done a very good job at taking pictures to share).

The first is the hotel. It is very nice and very modern. The second is the Thai woman who works on the hotel at the guest lounge. She opens the elevator for you, says good morning, asks you if you need anything, etc. (man, I sound spoiled). She didn't smile in the picture, but they call Thailand the land of 1000 smiles. The people are always smiling. The third pic is the busy Bangkok street.

I need to go get ready. I love you all and miss you!!!!

Bangkok -- Day 2

Okay a quick post then I'm off to bed. Today was the golf tournament. We finished second -- but there were only four teams. It was fun. I'll post some pics later. My foursome had a guy from China, a guy from Taiwan, and a guy from Malaysia. A nice cultural mix.

Tonight was one of those "smooze" dinners that I hate so much. The funniest part was the band. Cracks me up to hear Asians singing 70's pop songs in English:-) I'll bet I lose weight on this trip. Just not a lot of Tai food that I like. So I typically find something that I do like and I fill up on that.

Tomorrow I present twice. Both are easy subjects, so it should go fine.

One final thing. When you go to blogspot here it is all written in Tai. It took me awhile to "guess" what to click on to get logged in. Pretty weird.

Well, I guess that's it for now. I miss you all and love you. Have a great day!

Bangkok -- I've Arrived!

Wow. Quite the trip. Door to door, it was 30 hours and 40 minutes. Time in the air was just under 22 hours. Something just isn't right when you have two nighttimes during a single trip. Almost 3 hours SLC to Cinncinatti. 8 1/2 to Frankfurt. 11 to Bangkok. I think I slept for about 4 hours on the way to Frankfurt (had a row of three seats to myself), but no sleep to Bangkok. Slept for a couple hours here at the hotel. It is now 5:30 in the afternoon and I feel pretty good!

I got here early enough that I thought I could get to church. I found a ward that meets at 1 pm and it was english speaking. But...it was 45 minutes away and getting around Bangkok is not easy. Plus I wasn't sure I could get back. So I had to miss it.

The one thing I'd forgotten about Bangkok from my last trip is how friendly these people are. They are always smiling and are just plain nice! The hotel is one I've stayed in before. It is beautiful and the service is amazing. To check you in, they take you to your room, show you everything, make sure it is all acceptable.

This trip was certainly hard to pack for. It will be 93 degrees in Bangkok tomorrow. I fly to Berlin on Wednesday night. It will be 30 degrees there. :-) Tomorrow is going to be a really hard day for me -- it's the golf tournament. I know, rough life, but you just have to make some sacrifices.

So for some pics...

This is one of two large statues at immigration. It is about 50 feet tall.

This is a gift the hotel presented me with when I arrived. It is made out of flowers. It is really cool. Not sure what you do with it, but it's cool!

These last three pics -- the first is downtown Bangkok, from my 32nd floor hotel window. The next is the city market. Finally, a tok-tok, which is a form of taxi.