US 2009

No Place like it

2009-05-26T20:26:00.000-07:00

Wednesday 27th

Yesterday's flight was not too bad - 7 1/2 hours in the air. The check in clerk was perhaps understating the situation when he said there were free seats. The Busniess class cabin is split into 2 sections. I was in the rear where there are 4 rows of 6. There were on 5 of us there, almost outnumbered by the staff. Needless to say service was very good.

The plane was an A330, the same as used by Thai but the seats were much better. You couldn't quite lay horizontal but the seat did recline to almost flat. I'm not sure whether they were as good as the Qantas sky beds but they were not far off. The best I've had so far are still the Cathay 747s with the diagonal beds.

I watched Gran Torino, with Clint Eastwood. It has been available on every flight so I thought I'd better not miss it. Unfortunately this plane didn't have movies on demand, so by the time I foudn it, it had been running for a few minutes. I didn't try to watch anything else but actually had nearly 4 hours sleep. I was worried that this might have stopped me sleeping once I got home.

Passport and customs was pretty quick and I was soon in a taxi heading home. There was a fair bit of mail waiting and a bit of new email. I looked at the new Mensa crossword and figured out the grid before going to bed. I read the magazine till about 2am and then had a solid sleep through to 8 this morning. I then did most of the crossword before getting up

I'm sure it will be a few days before I've caught up with mail, messages, bills etc. and have got myself fully in sync with the time zone and can start working again. I have a hockey game tonight and a golf tournament on Friday as well.

I'm not expecting to be travelling again till end of september, assuming I go to the Vets Hockey Championships in Hobart. In the last 13months, May to May, I have had a total of 174 days away. This last trip has put me to Gold in the Qantas frequent flyer program.

Sleeping in the wet spot

2009-05-25T22:57:00.000-07:00

Tuesday 26th

I had a decent sleep waking about 7 so maybe my jet lag won't be too bad after all.

It was still raining so there was no temptation to go sightseeing. A leisurely shower was followed by a long breakfast downstairs. Like many Asian hotels this was a buffet with a large selection of European, and Asian dishes plus a cook who did omelettes on demand and waffles. I read the paper, did some crosswords and generally filled in time.

I went backed to the room finished packing (I hadn't really unpacked) and checked out about 10-30.

I sat in the bar reading till they told me the Airport shuttle was ready. We left about 11:10 and had gotten to the end of one of the causeways when the driver got a phone call. There was another passenger. We went back through the traffic and again left on the same route, half an hour after the first attempt. There was one more hotel pickup of about 5 passengers and then we headed through the tunnel to the airport. Traffic was not as bad as yesterday but still slow till we cleared the Kowloon downtown area. It took about 1 1/2 hours all up. I took some photos and movies but again due to the drizzle and overcast skies, they are not as good as I would have liked.

On checking in, I found that my rebooked flight to Perth was yesterday but the plane wasn't full so there was no problem. I wandered around the airport shops for a short time. Upmarket and luxury stores mostly - Cartier and Tiffany if you needed some last minute diamonds, Gucci and so forth for clothes, bags etc as well as the usual electronics, alcolhol, cigarettes and perfume stores. I decide there wasn't anything I wanted or needed and you can't take bottles anyway.

I am now in the airport lounge. I had some noodles and a couple of sandwiches and a drink. They have nice little work areas here with power and plenty of desk room, so you don't need to balance your laptop on top of your lap and run on battery.

A long journey into night

2009-05-25T07:41:00.000-07:00

Sunday 24th and Monday 25th

In a way Sunday disappeared, due to crossing the International date line. I boarded the just before 1 am on Sunday morning and got off about 6am on Monday morning. Last time I had a solid 10 hours sleep and recovered from my jet lag virtually straight away. This time, I had the meal, watched part of the movie "Twilight" and then fell asleep. About 3 hours later I woke up and never really got a decent amount of continuous sleep after that. I did spend a lot of time lying flat on my "bed" with my eyes closed but seemed unable to get to sleep again. I read a book and watched the movie "7 pounds" to fill in time. It is still a long way. We arrived a bit ahead of schedule and I was through passport control quite quickly. My bag took a bit longer than expected and then I still had a short wait for my clubs on the oversized baggage carousel.

Once through customs, I change most of my US dollars(60) to Hong Kong currency. I saw a counter for my hotel in the concourse and decided to take the Airport shuttle rather than the train. The main impetus for this was getting delivered to the door so I didn't have to lug my clubs around. Otherwise I'd have taken the train and a taxi or the MTR. There was a 40 minute wait and then it was rush hour so the traffic was slow. Also we stopped at 2 other hotels on the way so it was 9 before I got there.

I did see a bit more than you would normally in the train, although it was overcast and misty so distance viewing wasn't very clear. The new airport is on another island and you actually drive along some undeveloped hills for part of the way, before crossing a couple of bridges and then a tunnel to get onto the mainland. You then pass some shipyards and get into Kowloon before taking another tunnel to Hong Kong Island. It was in Kowloon that the traffic got heavy and we inched along the roads, as cars tried to change lanes before the next tunnel or clover leaf. At one stage I had a Deja Vu moment and realised I'd walked along the street that we were on, on my previous trip. Sure enough, a short distance further on I saw the hockey stadium.

I took a paid upgrade that gave me Internet and breakfast (and some other perks) and was given a "much larger" room on the top floor, in the Harbour Club. It is a reasonable size but not what I would call large by eg Australian, US or Thai standards. I'm glad I wasn't in the normal room. It even has a small cooking area with a hot plate and a microwave. Not sure how useful this is sicne there are no plates, pots or cutlery. My view is of the mountains, rather than the harbour but I found the window in the hall way gave me the harbour view, and to be honest, with the weather as it is, you could hardly see the other side of the water.

It was great to have a shower as you just can't help feeling a bit grubby after a long flight. The water was hot and the pressure strong. After changing into a skirt and top I headed out and found a supermarket nearby, buying some water, soft drink and chips. For some reason my email program decided to re- download all the mail since about the 20th April so it took a while before I could see if I had anything new.

I then grabbed my golf umbrella, since it was drizzling steadily and headed further afield. I took a tourist map from the hotel lobby, but it didn't cover the area where the hotel is located. (This is important later). I walked some distance towards the CBD (Central area) pooping into various malls for a bit of window shopping but I didn't intend to buy anything. I did stop for some Pad Thai for lunch. Eventually, I decided I'd gone far enough and came back along a parallel street and then on the other side of the road I'd started on. I saw a hairdressers (well lots of them actually) and decided to get my hair cut. The last time it was cut was in Bangkok about 8 weeks ago. It cost about A$11 for a shampoo, cut and dry.

You can tell a bit about the weather by how people handle it. Most buildings had a "device" at the front entrance. This held long plastic bags and you poked your umbrella into them pulled them out and your umbrella was covered and didn't drip everywhere. You don't have those in places where it is sunny most of the time.

Back in the hotel, I lay down on the bed and read a book. It wasn't really sight seeing weather. I dozed off a couple of times to be woken by the staff delivering my complimentary fruit plate. Went back to sleep again and woke up at 6:10. I quickly got dressed and headed out to my meeting with the Hong Kong Mensa group. I had planned to partake of the free happy hour included with the upgrade but it was too late for that. I caught the MTR (underground train) to Central and arrive a few minutes before the 7 o'clock rendezvous. I was clever or lucky enough to have picked the right exit and came up the escalator right next to Mrs. Fieldings Cookies, where Ruby was already waiting. It was a 5 minute walk to the University Alumni building and the restaurant where on of the members was already waiting. Another 3 arrived shortly after and we had a typical chinerse meal with soup rice and stir fry type dishes.

We then headed off for another 10 minute walk to a street cafe where the others had dessert. I didn't see anything that tempted me and the dishes they had looked a bit like tapioca. Although it hadn't rained on this little trip, it was quite warm and very humid out of the airconditioning. After that I headed to the MTR station with the group gradually going their separate ways. Thomas walked right to the station with me but caught a different train. It took less than 15 minutes to travel the 7 stops to my station but I came out a different exit than the one I went in on. I knew I was on the right road because the trams go down the centre but I wasn't sure where I was relative to the hotel. I use a bit of logic to work out where the mountains might be (it was dark by then), and the shape of the road and headed left. After 10 minutes I hadn't seen anything familiar and was looking at my useless map (ie not covering the area). Some one stopped and I got the direction of Central - back in the direction I'd come. 25 minutes after I left the station I was back there again and another 10 minutes walk got me to the hotel. I'm sure I've walked further today than in the entire 4 weeks in the States.

Tge maid had been to my room and turned down the bed and replaced the wet towels and bath mats. As I was getting ready for bed I discovered a little bamboo container with 3 chocolates in it on the bedside table.

I've booked the 11:20 shuttle back to the airport tomorrow. This stopover has really been just about the cheaper airfare, although it was nice to see the Mensa people again.

It's now midnight so hopefully, if I get a decent night's sleep, my body will be back in sync with this time zone, which is the same as Perth.

The final frontier

2009-05-24T00:10:00.000-07:00

Saturday 23rd

This is written in the BA lounge in San Fransciso, so I am at last on my way home. It has been a good visit from both the work and play aspects but as always it will be good to be home again.

I packed most of my suitcase, layed out my travelling clothes and emptied the fridge before heading out. I decided to pick up some more of the hair care products since Tony indicated the golf would be on him and I had taken out enough cash to covber the green fees. I also had to return my library book and DVDs. As I left I noticed a "Friends of the library" shop at the front and picked up a couple of paperbacks for 50c each.

Today's golf was at the Tournament Players Course and this is the last of the Wooidlands Country Clubs courses that I have played. Apaprently way back when Tony first jpoined, the nomination fee was $5000 and the monthly fee was around $300. This was a "junior" membership since he was under 35. Ironic, Women become vets at 35 in Hockey. Anyway This was also the first course I saw since I drove through it between the hotel and office last year, so it was good to finally see those crossings from the opterh point of view.

If you notice a common theme in these pix, it is no surprise. There was water everywhere. The first 4 holes you either hit alongside or over water, also the last 4 and many in between. The course was the host of the Sheel Houston Championship for many years and as Tony said, those last few holes were designed to test the Pros and to give a spectacle to the crowd.

I played with Tony and Andy who played off the white tees and were walking - Tony with buggy and Andy carried his clubs, although he doesn't have a full set. I had a cart. I still played off the blues, one set longer than the whites. We were supposed to hit off at 12:09 but the field was running early - can you imagine that in Australia - we hit off a few minutes before 12 following a 2 ball. We were not held up at all and let anoterh 2 ball through on the 8th. WE finished in about 4 hours.

I started with my usual brilliance with 2 par s and a bogie then put 3 balls in the water on the 4th for an 8. After that my game followed a too familiar pattern of hitting good strokes but not getting good scores.

I did finish withn 2 pars including probably my best shot of the month on the 17th. My drive roll off the fairway and finished in the short rough on a slope just short off the water, with reeds close in front. The ball was about shin high and I hit a brilliant Gap Wedge to just of the green but only about 10 ft fromt he hole, for an easy par. The 2 pix above show where I hit from and to.

On the 18th another great shot from the rough put my ball on the green for another birdie chance that was another tap in par. You can see the mound behind this green where the gallery watches the last hole.

We had time for a drink and then I headed back to the apartment to finish packing. I noticed that one of the 3 bottles I bought in the morning was for a different product despite pulling them all from the same rack. I was ready to go at 6-30 so headed to the supermarket on the way and changed it over. Of course I had to open the case and put it in sicen you can caerry liquid in your carry on luggage.

It was a bit before 7 by the time I headed to the airport and by the time I returned the car, caught the shuttle to the terminal and checked in, got through security etc it was just after 8, so I had only a short wait before we boarded. I chatted with the guy in the seat next to me, a retured Patent attorney and then watched "Bride Wars" on the private screen. I got a short nap in before we arrived.

Only anoterh half an hour till the next boarding. Will upload the pics and then get ready to go again.

Houston, we no longer have a problem

2009-05-22T18:52:00.000-07:00

Friday 22nd

Today was a fairly relaxed day. Most of the serious stuff had been completed and I tidied up the new function by allow different calculations to be turned on and off. There were a couple of bugs that came to light with other options and some minor improvements added. I also helped tracked down some user and data errors.

Tony was back in the office but so busy we hardly had time for more than a few words in passing. We will play golf together tomorrow so at least we will have a chance to catch up then. Ebi and Craig are off doing other things, so I won't get to play with them this last time but Tony's wife Lisa and Andy from the office will make up the 4 some instead.

I went back to the Thai restaurant for lunch. I checked out a Greek one nearby but thought it would be better to get there for dinner which I did.

Various people came to say goodbye as they headed home from work today. It is a long weekend here so nobody was staying very late. I left about 5 and was for once not one of the last to go. A couple of times I've worried that everyone had already left, since I do not have a key.

It has been an interesting 4 weeks here. As I wander around the office I see plot screens from the application that I have been working on for 15 years on most of the engineers screens, coming out of the printer as the bulk of 100 page reports and on posters and power point presentations. Everybody seems to be excited about this new feature which they expect will lead to more work for the engineers. It has been dubbed SPEEDE (pronounced speedy of course) and stands for SPecific Energy Engineering Design and (something starting with E). They used the principals and possibly some of the calculations on the current well and saved the client 3/4 million dollars, so the clients are happy as well.

I have had a discussion with Richard who suspects there may not be much more help from the Osprey group but I expect that, since the VB interface works we can set that up as the live interface and use it to populate a buffer that TAD can read. Not quite as transparent to the user but should do the job. The alternative suggestion from the Internet seem to require an upgrade to the development language and even then no guarantee it will work.

I've put a last load of washing on and will try and get some of the packing done. With a noon tee off time tomorrow, I should be back at the apartment to finish off with time to spare.

There will be more pix of golf course tomorrow but not sure when I'll be putting them up. Hopefully I'll have some time in the Lounge in San Francisco tomorrow night.

A final set of miscellaneous Pictures from the last 4 weeks.

Another view of the water way and boat shed near the Pavilion. A bronze staue of the founder of the Woodlands. He was actually at the concert and was celbrating his brithday so the conductor said a few words and most people stood up and clapped.

A typical over large truck on the freeway. Another shot from the floods from the first week.

A bit of culcha, doncha know.

2009-05-21T16:15:00.000-07:00

Thursday 21st

As my time here (again) starts to run out, I am fairly busy tidying up the calculations so I can leave with a clear conscience. I again spend more time on the differential pressure, this time adding a flow correction, which has improved it and finally added the MSE and down hole calculations which is the point of the whole exercise. I was pleased to see these being calculated in "real time" at least in a simulated import. Still a bit of tidying up for tomorrow but otherwise I think we've done it.

I headed out to a Chinese buffet for lunch. for $9 as much as you like plus refillable sodas. Not sure how they make money. Food was pretty tasty as well.

I checked the exchange rate last week once my Visa advances had come through. I got around around 73c for each A$ withdrawn. My payment from Thailand was deposited yesterday - This cost 78c for each $A deposited. I checked the rate for buying US and that had gone up to 75c, so I lost quite a bit compared to getting paid last week. Shouldn't really complain, it was around 98c when I set the rates so I'm still way in front. Hopefully this will mean I get a few more HK$ for my money once I arrive there.

Tonight I went to a concert in the Pavilion in the Woodlands. This is a semi outdoor arena, with canvas sails providing cover. They have some big name Rock bands there as well, with Styx and REO speed wagon in a week and Lynard Skynard at the end of next month.

Tonight it was the Houston Symphony Orchestra with "Dancing under the Stars". I would not have even known it was on if Andy from the office hadn't told me and I met up with him and his wife Lesley. It was a bit over an hour and they played a broad selection of danced based music, mixing classical, Broadway, film, Latin and finishing with a Rock and Roll medley. There were also a couple who sang and danced and a high school troupe who danced to Westside story. By co-incidence or design they were from Westside High School. Speaking of names, in the program they mention the Ima Hogg scholarships. Poor Ima, she really must have loved Mr Hogg.

The Pavilion is set in park lands not that far from the Mall and has the water way running along one side. Parking was free and we crossed over this to get there. When we left the trees were all lit up with fairy lights. Unfortunately the lighting was such that the sails, which characterise the venue so much faded into the background sky. They are invisible in the shot above right. I took one under exposed shot and have made a composite to give a realistic view of it.

Under pressure

2009-05-20T20:29:00.000-07:00

Wednesday 20th

It seems I did a lot of work today for little progress. The challenge was to get the differential pressure calculations correct. This is the difference between the pressure when the bit is of the bottom and rotating compare with actually drilling. One of the issues is determining when to take the off bottom measurement and we decided to use the flow rate as cut off. I ran the calculation multiple times trying to get a reasonable answer and realised the "old" incorrect calculated values were still there. Eventually it worked out but it was a frustrating day.

I also organised my expense claim which has lightened my wallet of a heap of receipts.

I had Thai for lunch and headed to the Crab places again for some more steamed crabs. I had about half there and then got a box to take home where I finished them off. I was able to clean them properly, wash of the hot spices and dunk them in 1000 islands dressing as well.

I watched the Phantom of the Opera DVD that I borrowed from the library the other day.

Her are some more pix of buildings in the strip mall where I bought my bikini bottoms (That amused someone for some reason) and shoes. The pic at the top is the shoe shop. All the building in this mall pay homage to a particular architectural style (ie they are cheap knock offs) complete with statues, fountains and so forth.

Pretty in Pink

2009-05-19T20:41:00.000-07:00

Tuesday 19th

First a trivia question.

What is the building to the left?

Is it a Church?

Is it a Court House perhaps?

Maybe it's a museum.

Is it some government Building?

Today I sorted out the plotting issues with the live data capture. This is one of the main steps completed. I also add an option to calculate differential pressure if it is not available. Still haven't got a solution to the WITSML problem yet.

I Installed the latest version on Brandon Junior's laptop and we went through a few revisions until we had got all the files required to have a working version. He will be going to a rig in a few days so is a likely candidate for the first real trial.

I went out to get lunch on my own again today and decide to get a take away from the Vietnamese place on the mistaken assumption it would be quicker than eating there. It took nearly 30 minutes, so I wasn't impressed. The food however was very tasty. When I arrived back I found a T shirt on my chair. After few enquiries, Gina told me she was the one who got it for me, which was nice of her. The photo shows us both. You can probably see it's Garfield in "golf gear". The caption says - Three Birdies in a row and I'm still hungry.

After lunch I sat with Brandon senior to sort out a problem that has been an issue for several months. I think we solved it in half an hour.

Stayed in tonight, cleaned out the last bits of bread, avocado and tomato and ate the last Snickers ice cream.

And the answer is - it's a sport store, obviously.

paz-drav-lya-yoo s dnyom razh-dyeh-niya

2009-05-18T19:10:00.000-07:00

Monday 18th

Over the weekend I did some fiddling on and off with the interface that was supplied on Friday. I duplicated a VB test program which was able to connect to the database server over the Internet and download data. Today I was hoping to be able to do the same things in Delphi. However, despite trying a number of different approaches I was unsuccessful. I have posted some requests for help on the net but not sure whetehr that will elad to anything.

I decided to change my focus to the updating and plotting features instead and got the filtering happening and some of the plotting but knock off time.

This came a bit earlier as one of the Russian guys had his birthday today. (The title is "Happy birthday" in Russian)We all gathered at the Ice house across the road from the apartments from about 5 onwards. There was beer and plates of finger food and then some shots of vodka came out. I decided to get a tomato juice and tipped mine in it.

I am also in the money. A week or so ago, there was some discussion about how much the engineers could improve the drilling on one of the wells they are working on. In then end they had a sweep to predict the Rate of Progress for the next drilling run. The winner was the nearest guess that wasn't over the actual value. Mine was purely a guess (with some strategy) but ended up the best 27 vs the actual rate of 28.9. Ewerybody put up $10 so it was worth winning.

Racking up a high score

2009-05-18T11:11:00.000-07:00

Sunday 17th

I played the Palmer course of the Woodlands Country Club today. Tee off was 11am and I was there about half an hour earlier. It was drizzling a bit as I drove there and there was the potential for rain like we had on Saturday. Fortunately, though it was overcast and windy, it never actually rained on us. When I went to check in, I couldn't get a confirmation on the booking. As it turned out it wasn't in Tom's name, although I played with him again but in someone else's. A group of a dozen or so, who call themselves ""The Rack" for reasons that I never found out, play together most weekends and have an internal competition between them. Ebi and I joined them as Tom's guests. The 4th in our group was Lee, who seemed to be running the group. Kirk in the office said he knew him and he was the captain of one of the squads at the club. We were the last of the group to hit off as Ebi was a bit late - got lost I think - and followed a group of 5. We were waiting most of the day, yet still only took about 4 1/2 hours to complete the round.

Unfortunately this was my worst day since I've been here and I was pleased in the end to break 100 (97). My putting was a major problem and I just couldn't get the speed right. A couple of times I was on in regulation and 3 putted. I didn't even get a par till the 11th, after missing a 2 ft putt for my only real chance on the front 9.

The course itself is very good and so were the greens - I just didn't handle them. Again some lovely scenery, starting with a herd of deer walking across the fairway on the first hole while we were waiting to tee off. Lots of lakes with water birds and some sand traps, although I was relieved a couple of times to find I'd finished in grassy hollow rather than a bunker.

I got my drives working after a few holes, once I'd slow ed down and was hitting the ball well enough but just couldn't score - very frustrating. The 13th hole is a 500 yard par 5. I hit my drive straight down the fairway about 290yards as seen above. The second shot was across a lake or around it. I went for it and cleared the lake but missed the green then chipped on a 3 putted. Even going round the lake requires you to chip over it at the end.The movies at the end show this lake from 2 different view points. It continues down the side of the 14th to the green as seen below.

Ebi also had a shocker, his worst for ages so he said. However, he managed to get paired with a guy who played 4 under his handicap to tie for the money and picked up a skin as well. I didn't participate in their comp becuase of the difficulty of setting my handicap properly - good thing the way I played. It was again an expensive course at $86. I'm just paying up and enjoying the golf. I suspect I've paid a fair % of my annual fees back home for just 4 weeks of golf.

After th game we joined the rest of the group and had some drinks nuts and nachos. It was quite friendly and not unlike the sort of situation we had at Collier Park at the 19th. It was nearly 8pm by the time we left.

I was somewhat stuffed from the nibbles at golf so I skiiped dinner but had an icecream. Watched some TV and fell asleep on the couch again.

Early traditions

2009-05-17T07:14:00.000-07:00

Saturday 16th

I hadn't arranged a tee time so when I got up a bit before 7am I went on the web site for Cypresswood. This club has 3 full courses and a golfer I talked to at Gleanloch a few weeks ago had recommended the Tradition course. The fact that this was more expensive than the other 2 seemed to confirm this was the best course. I was able to book an 8:20 time slot which I felt I could get to. The next slot was after 1pm. I was a bit worried about the weather being hotter later in the day.

I only had time for a few putts before heading to the tee. This involve quite a long drive down a road. When I got there I found anotehr car park, clubhouse and practice green there. There was also a huge group of people gettiing ready for a tournament. Our group was the last off the tee before the tournament started. I was the first to arrive and was told a 2 ball hit hit off before us, but they were already out of sight. My partners turned up shortly after that, 3 guys in their 30s or 40s. We seemed to spend more time looking for balls than in some of my other games, sometimes being for my ball but not always.

This course generally has tall pine trees along the edges of the holes with brambles under them. There are a lot of sand traps and I seemed to find quite a few of them. There were a number of lakes, some quite making spectacular holes.

I started with 2 pars and then another 4 on the par-3 3rd then had 3 7s in a row to go out in 47. I had similar start to the back 9 - 1 out after 3 but 46 in total. I left 4 or 5 balls on the course, some in the bushes and some in water. However, one advantage of not staying on the fairway all the time is the opportunity to find balls lost by others. On on hole we looked for 2 balls in the left rough, finding one of them and 4 others. Then I put my second into a steep banked, but fortunately dry, creek short of the hole. (This wa hidden from where my drive finished on the fairway) There we found another 4 and mine. I managed to hit out and still parred that hole. I probably found another 3 or 4 on other holes as well.

The 17th,(above right) is a short par 4 - 291yards over water. My drive finished inva bunker , safely on the left of the fairway but 2 of the guys drove the green. The 3rd had duffed his drive and put his second attempt on or over, so I decided to have a second shot as well. My ball was straight at the pin but didn't have the carry, so big splash. We had a very good run, finishing in just over 4 hours. . We were not held up at all, until the very last hole, when we caught the end of the torunament field that had hit off the 10th. We also got free (soft) drinks from the drinks cart, I think becuase they were free for the tournament players and nearly had our picture taken by some photographers until I told them we weren't in it.

There have been lots of squirrels on most of the courses we've played, and finally one was close enough and still enough to capture in a photo.

The guys headed straight off after the game but I went to the main clubhouse and had a hamburger for lunch. I did briefly think about whether I could crash the barbeque for the tournament players but decided it probably wasn't the right thing to do. As I was driving home there was a brief spot of heavy rain. By later in the day this had become a real storm so I ws glad I'd played early in the day. If I'd waited for the twilight fees to kick in I would have got soaked.

Ebi had called while I was playing, after I'd left him a voice message saying I'd organised my opwn game. I tried to call him back on and off all afternoon but since he was himself playing hadn't got through. He has organised a game for us at the Palmer course for Sunday.

I had a long bath in the afternnon, falling aslep in it. I got up in time to get to the library where I borrowed some DVDs. It was bucketing down at this time at the apratment but somewhere between there and the library I drove out of the storm into a dry warm day. I headed to some shops after that and was in a sports store (where I foudn a cheap bikini bottom) when the storm caught up. It was very heavy and we were all trapped there for 15 minutes or so. I also bought some ballet flats at a nearby shoe store.

I had dinner at the Red Lobster on the way home - a mixed dish with lobster tail, snow crab and cumbed and garlic prawns. I saw most of the"Princess Bride" on TV and managed to watch some of Saturday NIght Live before falling asleep on the couch.

Stay.... just a little bit longer

2009-05-15T20:05:00.000-07:00

Thursday and Friday

Thursday was spent working on the WITS interface. I was getting data read in and by the end of the day was populating a database. However there were problems along the way, including missing data channels, and trying to restart at the same point the import was finished in a previous run. Numerous calls were made to Han to sort these out.

On Friday I finally had a call from Brandon. Since he is teaching a course its hard ton get hold of him. I explained that although a lot of the pieces for the new feature were pretty much under control, they hadn't been put together into a complete package. I was also worried about testing when I was on the otter side of the world and also exactly the opposite times zone. In addition, while I'm here I can get in around 8 hours a day on their project but at home with all the distractions it would be a lot less. The upshot was we have decide that I will stay an extra week, leaving next Saturday on the equivalent flights. Of course this meant I had to change flights, hotel bookings, extend car rental insurance and accommodation, but I think most of that is done. I also had to let people in Australia know I'm not back for another week. I'll miss another game of hockey and a golf tournament.

The wits html interface had not been supplied and Richard followed up on that. Apparently Sam had got something together but is on leave so it never made it to me. Originally I decide with only 1 day left I couldn't afford to visit the Schlumberger offices again, but after the change in plans headed down after lunch. I've done this trip a few times now and almots don't need the GPS any more. I didn't botehr using it to come home. After 6 1/2 hours of work with Bruce and Cesar we seem to have an interface library that is at least working with Bruce's test program in VB, so I hope I can duplicate the results in Delphi. My attempts to interface with earlier version of the library were unsuccessful.

It was nearly 8 when I left so my earlier fears of getting caught in the rush hour traffic were unfounded. I got some more petrol since I'd done a good job of getting the tank nearly empty before the expected return on Saturday. I also stopped at Pappasito's for dinner. This was the same restaurant where I had my first meal ever in the US. The food was delicious again and very filling. Ideally you spread this sort of meal out over an hour or more in conversations and so forth, but on your own, all you really do is eat your meal.

I have had a few phone calls with Ebi and Craig who are in Waco for Ebi's daughters graduation tonight. Since I'm not leaving I don't need to play as early as I thought.

A meeting of minds

2009-05-14T06:05:00.000-07:00

Wednesday 13th

Today I continued to work on the interface. Although I was able to get the data easily enough last night, there was an issue with converting the binary encoded data into a form suitable for saving in our tables. I work out how to do this today after a number of false starts.

I got my test program reading and displaying the live data feed, converting the date number to date and time and looking up the channel IDs to display the name of the value being displayed.

I left a bit early to go to the Mensa social evening in the city. This was about a 40 minute journey at that time of day. The trip out over the same distance would have been much longer but I was at least going against the main direction of traffic. Even so, there was a fair bit about the closer I got to the central area.

There were 2 freeway exits close together and I got off one too early and found myself on the suburban streets rather than the crossing freeway. Here is where my instincts let me down as I crossed over that freeway so as to get on to the slip road. Once the GPS caught up to the fact I wasn't on the right route and redirected me, I realised I should have stayed on the original side, since I had to recross it. before I could get back on. Embarrassingly, I did the same thing when coming home, I missed the right turn onto the freeway on the near side, because I was subconsciously expecting to make it on the far side to join the left hand lane instead. I then found myself at the other side of the freeway on a one way street with the only turn allowed being to the left, which woudl take me in the wrong direction. I had to stay on that one way street for several miles till I got to the next east-west freeway.

The Mensa dinner is a monthly get together at a grill bar. They kept telling me that the usual turn out was a lot smaller andjoking that they had come to meet me, although, apart from the local secretary, no one knew I was coming, or even who I was, till I got there. As usual, with this sort of gathering, there were a number of interesting people and conversations going on and topics from the trivial and mundane to serious and esoteric. One guy was giving forth on climate change, a topic which he was known to have a passion about. I was told if he had enough beers he'd start singing instead, but that was even worse. I think I counted about 23 people all up, although not all were there at the same time.

I had dinner there. I thought I'd ordered the chicken steak, but apparently I'd order the chicken fried steak instead. It was fine - sort of a crumbed hamburger concoction with a creamy sauce and chips - no Cholesterol of fat there I'm sure. I left about 8 and had some fixes for a client in Australia to do when I got home. I just missed one call in the noise f the meeting and got a second one about 10 minutes from home.

I then worked on integrating the code from the test program into the main application,before heading to bed near midnight. I had a visit from one of the Russian girls earlier who had a problem getting on to the Internet. However as she had a Mac, I wasn't able to help her other than to try a few obvious methods, none of which worked.

I forgot to mention but on Tuesday night, I went to the library after work to return 2 of the books I'd finished. On the way back I called in at the golf course that I'd played that first Sunday and checked the pro shop to discover someone had found and handed in my phone. It was dead, but that turned out to be just because the battery was flat and not because it was damaged in the flood. Once I recharged it, it worked fine, although it had been disconnected. I feel much better about it now.

Russian about

2009-05-13T05:17:00.000-07:00

Monday 11 and Tuesday 12

I have seen a few strange names about including a couple of billboards advertising the "Brown Hand Center". Care to guess what that is?

Monday was mundane. I went to work, had lunch, came home and stayed in for dinner, so no photos. Work was actually reasonabaly interesting as I started working on the live capture module. I set up a similation by reaing and existing data set in,one record at a time and then processing that record rather than reading the entire file and then processing all the records. I also fixed a problem with the ERD database plot. You can add and delete points on this plot when dispalyed in feet but there was a problem when the units were metres.

Only 4 of us went to lunch, but it was a nice meal at a Vietnamese restaurant. I stayed in for dinner and just had toasted sandwiches.

On Tuesday I headed South again for a meeting with Schlumberger in the Sugarland complex. This is a fairly large campus and is used for R&D amongst other things. All of the buildings have blue roofs, blue being the Schlumberger colour, and seem to be limited to 2 stories high. The Forum, which is the building behind the flag poles, has conference rooms and a canteen. There is outdoor seating on the left which overlooks the lake and fountain. Behind the lake is a working drilling rig , used for training. They aren't allowed to actually drill any deeper than they have already so they fill the hole with concrete and then drill it out again.

We met with Han Yu, who is seen walking back to her office in front of the flag poles above. She has a system for interfacing with a WITS data source. This is an older style interface and I wrote and interface for the DOS version of this system back in the 90s. However that was fairly limited and specific and DOS. Rather than re-invent the wheel, we are going to use Schlumberger's expertise to handle the low level stuff and just pick the data from their buffer, similar to the idea for the newer WITSHTML . Unfortunately, despite fiddling around yesterday afternoon and last night I have not yet succeeded in getting my program talking to their library.

Richard took the 2 of us to lunch at a Pappasito's Restaurant. This is a high end Mexican chain and the food was delicious. I took a photo of the platter I shared with Han, with 2 Lobster tails, prawns, chicken and beef fajitas but I won't bore you with it. A different Pappasito's was the first place I ate on my first trip to Houston 12 years ago. After 30 hours or so travelling I was collected at the airport and taken to the restaurant where other Aussies and the Company presidents family met us. A liberal dose of margaritas had me falling asleep the instant my head hit the pillow.

I finished a new report once I got back to the office, which basically combines the remarks from all the daily reports for a well. The guys were cutting and pasting for hours to create the equivalent document manually, so they are quite happy.

Richard had mentioned that the 2 Russian engineers who turned up last week for a 3 month visit had bought their wives, one of whom has a toddler with them. The men are at a course in Calgary and the women don't drive and only one of them speaks English. They are staying at the same complex as me, so I got their apartment numbers and called in after work. They didn't want to go out to eat but were very happy to be taken shopping at the supermarket.

I sorted out some problems for a client back home and started trying to interface with the WITS library but gave up and went to bed about 11.30.

There are a lot of advertisements here for Medical services, compared to Australia, where there don't seem to be enough doctors, hospital beds etc. In addition, to the the bill board I mentioned at the start, there are ads on the radio and TV for hospitals and a lot of drug advertising. The law makes them list side effects, and these can be quite amusing even if the underlying intent is serious, especially when "death" is listed as a possible side affect. By the way, the billboard was for a clinic that specialises in Carpal Tunnel Syndrome, run by a Dr Brown.

Players at Players

2009-05-10T18:28:00.000-07:00

I had another call from Australia last night and we figured out that the problem was caused by mixing data files from 2 different systems, some from one used by one company and some from a different one, which were not compatible. It was then easy to sort out.

Today's game was at the Player course, designed by Gary Player and part of the Woodlands Country Club group of courses. It was again not cheap, at $86 for green fees but was an excellent course. In fact it was ranked in the top 3 in Texas in 2007. Ebi played again and the other were Aleck, who is the deputy general manager for Total in Nigeria and Tom, a local and our host who retired from Total but acts as a consultant. He and Ebi met when they had an argument during a partners meeting in Nigeria many years ago. Tom's house is along side the 10th fairway of this course and he possibly put his drive in his own back yard when we played that hole. Again we were all hitting the ball well and driving similar lengths. I seemed to be hitting the ball fairly well but could not put a score together. I didn't have my first par until the 7th, finishing with a 49 on the first 9. It seemed the good luck I had yesterday was being evened out with bad luck today.

Another major difference was that the course seemed virtually empty. Yesterday we seemed to be waiting for our shots and had people waiting on us most of the time. Today we had nobody in front of us for the whole round. A twosome caught up behind us on the 7th, then played down the 18th while we played the 9th and disappeared while we we taking a half time break in the clubhouse.

A drinks cart turned up at the 8th green and Tom bought beers for the guys and after I opted for a diet coke, insisted I have some whisky with it. Something happened. After a straight but not overly long drive on the 10th, I hit a great 5 wood to a foot from the green, then put the 30 m putt into the hole for the only birdie any of us had for the day. This was followed by par-bogie-par-par to be even after 5 holes. A couple of 7s spoilt the run but I had 43 coming home for an 91 overall. I think this reflected the fact this the course was a bit tighter than yesterday's, more than any change in my game or skill levels.

This course was also very picturesque, though possibly not as pretty as Sweetwater. Again there was lots of water about, sand traps and trees, doglegs and so forth to make it quite a challenge. We played from the blue tees, again the second longest.

This course had quite a few holes where a drainage channel ran alongside or often through them. Often you needed to cross one with your tee shot to reach the fairway, with some really good shots penalised for being slightly short or a bit off line. There was also one hole which had two huge mounds near the tiny green which had bunkers cut into the back of them. I'm sure one of them had a 15ft face so bad luck if you got into it. (None of us did).

Ebi once again had the best score - an 82, with the other 2 having similar scores to me. We finished a bit before 6pm so we took over 4 1/2 hours but we did have a longish break after 9 holes and, as I said, were not held up at all. The bar was closed by then and we went our separate ways.

I came back to the apartment and called Mum again. I haven't mentioned it before but the weather has warmed up considerably with temps around 90 both days. (32 deg C) When I got home, it was warm enough to think about a swim. However, by the time I'd checked email, talked to Mum and got around to thinking about it again, it was nearly 8 and no longer warm enough for me to get in the water. I headed over to Crab Daddies again. This time I had the crab risotto with shrimp and scallop. I was planning to have steamed crabs again but this was quicker and cleaner and was quite delicious.

The scenery on some of these courses has been fantastic, but somehow a single photo doesn't do it justice. I have added a movie above with pan around about 270 degrees. The last photo above, right is the 18th with the club house in the distance and is just a bit further along than where the video ended.

Following yonder star

2009-05-09T21:43:00.000-07:00

Saturday 9th

I worked some more on the scoreboard program for the golf club and wrote some instructions for it. About 10 I headed to the super market for some breakfast supplies and other bits and pieces before heading out for my golf game. This was in the Sugarland and took me 50 minutes. It is less than 1/2 mile to the freeway and I stayed on freeways except for the last 4 miles at the other end. The club house here is huge with a number of dining areas as well as the bar, pro shop, etc. I wasn't sure of the name of the member we were playing with but eventually got through to Ebi so I knew I was in the right place. I went to the driving range and hit just 3 -5 balls with each of 5 clubs. I didn't want to risk straining my arm again like I have done before when I overdo the practice. I was going to practice putting and noticed Craig was already there. Ebi and Tunde turned up about then. I had only time for about 4 putts before we headed off to the tee. This time I shared a cart with Ebi. All 3 of them are from Nigeria. Tunde was initially introduced as Chief and he owns an independent oil company there.

The course is very, very nice. We played at 12-20 so there was no discount and it cost over US$90. The fairways and greens were very good and it is extremely pretty. The lakes are neatly sandbagged at their edges and there is quite a lot of water about. Like many of these courses, it winds its way between houses but in this case Mansions would be a better description.

I started with a Par then a disastrous 9 on the par 5 second but after that played fairly well to have an 89. Ebi was on the card after 8 but then fell in a bit of a hole and finished with 82. I actually beat him by one stroke on the back 9. There was a fair amount of luck involved today. I hooked a long approach shot on one hole that hit a bridge across a creek and finished on the bank on the other side and on another a lob shot from a fairway bunker hit a tree some 10 or 15 metres to the side of the green and was deflected to within 5 m of the hole. I was disappointed to miss my par putt by a few inches after that. I seem to be quite consistent with my putting and again had 32 for the round. It seems to be my chipping that needs the most improvement, since I was again driving well.

After the game we went to the upstairs bar for a few drinks. It has a lovely view over the putting green and driving range. We only stayed in the bar for a short time and Tunde invited us to his house for dinner. He gave me the address but I had trouble putting it in the GPS so I just followed him. He was in a Mercedes S550 and I was never very far from that 3 pointed star on the back. We actually travelled quite a long way from the course, back on the freeway towards town for some distance before exiting. I had mistakenly thought the house was fairly close to the course. I noticed we crossed San Felipe Road and headed through Tanglewood, where I went after the meeting with Schlumberger on Thursday. On the way, I had my first call from Australia, a client wanting some help with DIPS.

Tunde's house is also pretty impressive, even more so when you realise that he is only in Texas about 4 times a year. Obviously owning your own oil company is not a bad thing. It has 7 bedrooms and 10 bathrooms, a nice pool at the back and even a chipping and putting area with artificial turf. His wife Seyi was out when we arrived but returned after a while and cooked dinner. She is a general manager for one of the divisions of Exxon Mobile in Nigeria and was a reservoir engineer before that so she a fairly talented and successful woman in her own right.

Craig turned up in time for dinner but had run some errands in the meantime. The food was traditional Nigerian fare and I tried a bit of everything. I liked the fish and the rice was also OK even though it was a bit spicy and there was some fried banana that wasn't too bad although quite sweet. I think some of the other dishes are an acquired taste. Craig's American wife arrived about 10, just as Ebi was leaving. I stayed another 30 minutes or so and it was well after 11 by the time I got home. It was a very pleasant day both on the course and afterwards.

I had a look at the email about the DIPS problem once I got home and hopefully my reply will sort him out. I then called Mum for Mother's day. She was on the road to see my brother and his family. It's after Midnight now so I'll finish here. Ebi has booked us in for 1pm tomorrow at the Gary Player course in the Woodlans, so at least the travel time will be quite short.

Your money's no good here

2009-05-08T20:05:00.000-07:00

Friday 8th

I have put in all the refinements to the down hole calculations and everything seems to be running properly. Unfortunately this has only highlighted some problems with the data collection. hat is a different issue for someone else to sort out but it does illustrate the GIGO principal.

I realised I was running low on cash and with the weekend coming up I decided I'd cash some Aussie dollars I'd bought with me. I was in Thailand just a few weeks ago, where you can hardly walk 50 m without tripping over a foreign exchange booth and I know you can change foreign currency into $A at any bank in Australia, so I didn't expect this to be a problem. I asked some of the girls where I go go to a bank and one of them offered to call up the Nearest Chase bank and check if I could do it. The short answer was No, if you don't have an account.

I headed out anyway and saw another bank on the way. Same story but it took 15 minutes for them to find out they couldn't do it. I could hardly believe it. While I was waiting for one woman to check this out, I was showing the teller the $50 notes I was planning to exchange. She was fascinated, so I showed her a $20 and some Hong Kong money as well. She asked if the aboriginal portrayed on the back of the $50 was a president and why you couldn't just spend US$ in Hong Kong. We all know Americans are famed for their Insularity and ignorance of anything outside the US (and a lot of what happens inside as well) but this is a bank teller asking those questions.

I then tried the Amex office nearby who at least were quick to tell me the only place I could do it was at the airport. Fortunately My Visa card worked without any problems at the drive in ATM (who wants to have to get out of their car just to get money!).

I wrote up all the stuff I'd done on the calculations and sent the report off to various people who would be interested in it, highlighting problems and potential areas of improvement.

I left around 5 tonight, and I was still nearly the last to go. Their are a lots of POETS there apparently.
Last night I had a call from Ebi and he called again today. He has organised a game at Sweetwater, a private club in Sugarland (yes that is a real place!). It where Schlumberger has one of it's offices and Richard was saying it was about 60 minutes away.

I spent the evening working on some software for my golf club. I had done a bit last weekend and some more this morning since I was up early. I was asked to do something so that scores could be displayed as they come in. The club has an overhead projector that you can hook a laptop into, so I have worked on a small program to record scores, display them on a separate screen and scroll through the results slowly.

I didn't go out for dinner and have just had an ice cream tonight. I have been putting on weight steadily since I got here. It was not unexpected, it happened last time as well.

The photos were the ones I took last night.

Not that kind of party, but I still get connected.

2009-05-07T19:52:00.000-07:00

Thursday 7th

When I arrived at the office today I noticed a pile of car keys at the reception desk. I was reminded of the proverbial "wife swapping" parties of the 70's and made some joke about it. As it turns out the keys were there because everyone was getting their car washed and vacuumed. Another little perk, so I chucked my keys in as well.

I did some further work this morning and took my own car to lunch, with my laptop already packed. Some of the crew had left earlier so 3 of us headed to a Chinese. I had some lemmon chicken and fried rice. I left stright from there for my meeting at Schlumberger. The GPS helped me get there with minimum fuss although there were some occassions where I was changing lanes to follow instructions. It was over 30 miles but most of it was on freeways. The I45 to town is 5 or 6 lanes wide in both directions.

It gets slower once you get off the freeway and there was road works on one of the streets I used so in the end I had only 5 minutes to spare before my meeting time. I checked in , got my badge and waited in the foyer. A classy one at that with lots of marble and a grand piano. Outside is a bronze statue of a flock of geese. There's a sign saying, Please do not sit on sculpture. A bit unnecessary, since nobody wants to be goosed.

Sam came in from getting his lunch, guessed it was me and took me up with him. About 120 minutes later he got the message that I was waiting for him downstairs. The meeting was quite promising. The proposal is they he develops a plug in library with a limited number of calls that handles the interface between out program and their connection library, which in turn does the actual communication with the data feeds. He thinks he'll have it finished by tomorrow or if not will have at least identified the problems.

I drove across the road as I left into Tangle wood to see how the other half live. A lot of big and impressive houses there, but like the second little pig, they are built of sticks, not bricks.

Back on to the freeways and even though it was only 3-30, they were already starting to get filled up. I have mentioned the big trucks here and I saw a couple of them you just don't see in Australia, pick ups with extended rear wheel arches and double wheels on the back.

Here's something else you don't normally see on the road in Australia.

I was almost the last to leave the office tonight and after a brief period at home headed for the Mall. I haven't been there before this trip but after wandering around for only a short time decided I wasn't in a shopping mood anyway. I did spend some time browsing in the bookshop but again no sale. By then it had started to get dark and the lights were on so I took some photos. There is a canal development that runs along the edge of the mall.

I ate in a slightly up market "Tuscan Grille" - they had cloth serviettes for a start - and had shrimp and lobster fettucinne and a caesar salad.

A little bit of bull

2009-05-06T16:30:00.000-07:00

Wednesday 6th

Another day at work, continuing to work on raw data processing. Today I realise the depth was only defined to the nearest 0.1 ft and when it jumped to the next 0.1 ft the rate of progress was only being applied to that 10 second period. I have developed an algorithm to average it instead. Finally getting some reasonable values.

We headed off to Rudy's BBQ for lunch - 6 of us again. This is in a truck stop but was surprisingly busy even at 11-30. A big queue before we got to the counter. Food is served on squares of grease proof paper rather than plates. I had a stuffed potato.

For dinner tonight I wondered across the road to a bar in what looks like a big pink tin shed. There is a sign I see all the time that Wednesday is steak night and one of the girls at the office also mentioned it. They just have a BBQ going but the steaks were OK and again I had a stuffed potato and some salad.

There's a funny commercial on for some mini burgers at one of the fast food places. As usual it's on You Tube so I have included a link. Enjoy.

We agree on the date

2009-05-05T20:28:00.000-07:00

Tuesday 5th (or 5/5/09 whoever is writing it)

Another day of solid work. I am working on the raw data automatic filtering and downhole calculations. Once this is working we will try to interface with a live feed. I set up a meeting with the Schlumberger experts for Thursday.

I have also finally got my email working at the office. Incoming was OK from the start but I couldn't send any out. After some fairly long conversations with 2 different support people, a solution was found. I could send email via the web browser but it involved about 5 steps rather than just clicking on Reply.

Lunch today was at a Mexican restaurant near the mall. An aproriate choice for Cinco deMayp, which is the Mexican independence day equivalent. 6 of us piled into Ramon's Aviator which is a fairly up market people mover - leather seats etc. the restaurant was of course part of a chin, but the food was good, a big burrito with steak, rice, salsa, sour cream, guacamole, cheese and lettuce. It is also common in restaurants here to be able to refill your cup from the soda fountain. Since you can refill as often as you like, I'm not sure why they need to sell 2 sizes of drinks, and why anyone would pay extra for the larger cup.

The photo is of the office building and car park showing a couple of the big trucks. There are 10 cubicles where the engineers work in a large room at the back of the office.

Tonight I just stayed in and had a couple of toasted sandwiches. It was also a chance to put the sheets and towels through the wash.

You may remember reading in my Thai blog that I popped a button on my pants after landing at the airport. I found thebutton and sewed it back on. However, when I went to put them on a few days ago, I discovered I'd sewed it on the inside by mistake. Duh!

The only good Indian...

2009-05-04T19:47:00.000-07:00

Monday 4th

Work has settled into a steady routine and I got some more items from the to do to the done list today. Chris is offshore at the moment so we were able to go to an Indian Buffet restaurant for lunch today. Food was good and there were 5 of us there. You will not be surprised to hear that I have not been losing weight since I arrived.

I had a brief shop on the way home, watched some TV and then headed out for dinner, filling the car with petrol on the way. I went back to Fridays and this time had the sizzling chicken and shrimp. Garlic chicken, shrimp in a tomato/onion/capsicum sauce and mashed spuds in a bed of molten cheese. Very healthy no doubt. I also had another Electric lemonade, which I quite liked when I was there last time. You can tell not much has happened when the only photo I've taken is of food.

A (wind)rose by any other name

2009-05-03T19:56:00.000-07:00

Sunday 3rd (night)

I left for Windrose golf course about 1-30 and despite missing one turn off arrived about 2pm. Despite the storm warnings, I saw only a few drops of rain as I was driving there and none for the rest of the day. In fact it was warm enough while I was waiting to tee off that I was wishing I'd worn a skirt or shorts.

Range balls were not included at this course so I started with some putting practice instead. The greens were much better than yesterday by the simple fact that they hadn't been cored. I then went to the chipping area, where there were lots of balls. I bought 4 back and drove them off the driving range just to get my eye in, then did some more putting. I was putting pretty well with the new putter but this didn't quite get reflected on the course.

When I checked in I was told I was in a 3 ball with the Craig party but just before we were due to hit off another guy joined us. Craig and Ebi were African or African-American and Jaleel was Indian so we were a mixed bunch. Craig is an Art valuer and Ebi is a geologist with an oil company. Jaleel was only 15 and still at school. None the less he was hitting them up with the rest of us. In fact, were were all playing fairly well and had only a few times when we had to look for balls. Unfortunately the group in front weren't quite so consistent and every time we got to the next tee, they seemed to be playing their seconds after a short and crooked drive.

After a bit of a wayward start, my drives settled down and I again hit a lot of fairways. I only had 32 putts today which was also satisfying and had 87 in total which again is around my handicap. Ebi was the best of the rest with 78.

This course wound through a housing estate and had many more picturesque holes than yesterday. There were quite a few where you had to hit over water but I finished with the ball I started with. There were also a number where the trees came into play making hitting the fairway essential and there were a lot of doglegs as well. The 16th and 17th went around a swampy area, with the 16th a par 3 and 17th a short par 4 with the temptation to try and drive the green. After I parred the 16th, I admit I was trying to do this but pushed my drive to the right a bit and was safely in the short rough, through the fairway. I chipped on and got my par. Jaleel went for it and finished in the pond just in front of the green. I wasn't even aware that was there. I did have 1 birdie today on a par 5. After a great drive, I duffed my second but hit a brilliant 3rd shot to within a foot of the hole.

It took us nearly 5 hours today and was about 7-45 when we finished and put our bags in the car. The club house was closed by then, so Ebi, Craig and I went to a Japanese steakhouse nearby and had some drinks there instead. There was a very personable barman there who made a number of suggestions. I had a strawberry Daiquari and then at his suggestion a different iced cocktail called heavenly paradise or similar which was in fact very nice. While were having drinks we exchanged numbers and will try and play next weekend, probably Sunday. Brandon is trying to organise a game on one of the private course where his father is a member for Saturday, I think. Ebi is working in Nigeria but has about a month off before he goes back and is planning to play a lot of golf.

I stopped in at a Chinese buffet place, a few blocks from home, for dinner.

Weather to play or not.

2009-05-03T08:37:00.000-07:00

Sunday 3rd (morning)

The weather reports have changed since last night, now they are predicting the storms will pass through earlier and be clearing up by 3, which is when I have my tee time. Supposedly there were heavy storms already this morning some what to the north of us but when I went out for a paper about 9, the weather was warm and dry, although overcast. The weather web page rates today as a 5 (out of 10) on the golf index. Tomorrow is a 9 and the rest of the week through to Saturday are 8's.

Earlier I had made a couple of fixes to the TAD program that Brandon (senior) had requested in an email. I've now read the paper - mostly rubbish and heaps and heaps of advertising pamphlets. A bit like Sunday papers everywhere. As long as there are comics and the TV program anything else is a bonus. The paper here is a weird shape. It is really tall and skinny so not easy to read unless you have a table to put in on.

The picture is of my rental car outside HEB, which is a reasonably sized supermarket, a la Coles or Woolworths. The Chevy Impala seems to be a bit bigger than a Camry and has a 6cylinder engine. I've had very few problems driving on the "wrong" side of the road and have hardly even tried to get in the passenger side by mistake, which happened a lot one trip here back in the 20th Century. Also it has only one lever, with the wipers controlled by a turn ring rather then a separate lever so I have avoided the problem of turning on the wipers when I meant to indicate.

Better (all) round

2009-05-02T17:24:00.000-07:00

Saturday 2nd

This morning, after a long soak in the tub, I headed to the supermarket again to restock with breakfast stuff and a few other items. I was back in time to go to the Residents brunch at the club house. This is apparently a monthly event and today they had eggs, bacon, sausages and sausage gravy. There were only a few people there at that time but when I checked in later there were a few more people.

I had booked a tee time at Lake Windcrest for just after 2 so decided to check out another local golf course on the way - Gleanloch Farms. This was south and west of where I live and about 12 miles away. It looked ok, quite a large area for one of the courses with 4 or more adjacent fairways. However their discount doesn't start till 4pm which is a bit late. I headed on the the course I was playing which is also east but North of the apartment, arriving just after 1. This gave me time to hit some balls on the range as well as practice chipping and trying out my new putter. Unfortunately the greens had been cored so were all a bit rough.

There was also a problem with the tee time. When I booked on Wednesday, the twilight rates started at 2pm so I booked for 2:12. However on the 1st may(ie yesterday) the time slipped back to 3pm so I was initially going to be charge full rates. In the end they compromised and charged us the member's guest rate which was in between - just under $60.

The carts have a quite fancy GPS based system which shows you where you are on the course, distance to various markers such as the front and back of the green and the hole but also to sandtraps, creeks and so forth. It even shows you the locations of otehr carts and their distance from you, so you know whether to hit up, even when you can see them becuase of a hill or trees. It also stops you driving into the carpark and too close to the greens.

The course is quite good with occasional water along the edge of the fairways but none that you hit over. It is pretty without having any really spectacular views, although we did see 8 or so deer crossing the fairway on one hole.

I played with Brandon, who was on scratch as a junior and still plays pretty well. We hit roughly similar distances which makes the game interesting. I was happy enough with 44 on the front 9 with a couple of pars near the end but had 21 putts. This was more a reflection of the greens, I think, than the new putter. My driving was again very good and consistent with only the last hole actually getting me into trouble when I lost my ball in a small creek on the left.

I started the back 9 by pulling my 3rd shot in the par 5 into the edge of some really thick rough, got out of that but into the sand trap and then got out the sand but only by a metre or so. I was too lazy to go back to the cart to get a different club,so chipped with my sand wedge. The ball popped up, hit the green and rolled in the hole to save the bogie.

On the next hole, my second was over the back but 3 metres and I chipped in again, this time for a birdie. In the end I only had 11 putts on the back 9 with no 3 putts for an 86 all up. I was pretty happy with this as it was certainly playing to or better than my handicap. We again played off the Gold tees. Brandon had a 78, showing he's still got it.

I thought I'd booked a 3:06 tee time for tomorrow but with the cored greens I thought I try a different course instead. I booked a 3pm slot at Windrose for $39 plus tax. This course is also South and west of the apartment. When I rang to cancel the other course, I didn't seem to have a booking after all.

I ate at TGI Fridays near the mall. I felt like a steak and had a sirloin with Caser salad and Oinion rings and a nice electric lemonade - vodka and Blue curacoa.

I agian tried to watch Saturday night Live but fell asleep during the news before it started and woke up about 1 am and stunbled off to bed. They are predicting storms again tomorrow and in my area these are expected to happen in the afternoon.

Clubbing

2009-05-01T18:32:00.000-07:00

Friday 1st May

I was up a bit early today so I did some work on the hockey club site. This took me to a bit after 7 at which time I thought I'd better get moving. I was planning to go to the opening of the new golf shop at 8. After breakfast, shower etc.

I arrived there about 7-45 and there was a huge queue. I got on the end and started chatting with the guy behind me, Daniel. He thought we were more than 100 back in the queue and was as surprised as I was that there was such a big queue. The brochure said the first 100 would get $25 vouchers and the next 250 free rounds at a Canongate course, but only for Mon to Thur. Daniel made a comment about only being able to get 1 round so I suggested that I would be happy to swap a voucher for a round for the $25, if we missed out and he was eager to accept so he could take his friend with him.

As it turned out they still had the $25 vouchers available but I took the free round anyway so he could have 2. No skin of my nose to be helpful and because we were both short of change he finished up giving me $27. I grabbed a putter and headed to the check out counter. The 15% voucher reduced it to $144, tax put it up to $153 so it cost me net around $126 (under A$180). That seems a very good price for an Odyssey putter. This particular one has been compared with a Klingon starship.

I am looking fiorwrad to trying it for real tomorrow. I am being joined by Brandon junior (the main engineer is also called Brandon) who was a scratch golfer at one time.

When I arrived at the office, I found they guy whose desk I'd been using was back, so I moved to the only unoccupied one left, since Louis is away. There are about 10 engineers in the office at the moment and all other cubicles are occupied. Work today was mostly finishing off the work from yesterday by tidying up the edit screens, hiding fields not required for different scenarios and, at the end of the day, adding a number of automatic plots to display the new data. There were 7 of us at lunch today at an Italian restaurant. I had Lasagne.

I left work about 6 and most of the people had left well before then. One of the girls had given an open invite to join her and a few friends at Wolfies bar for Crawfish and beer. The GPS helped me find it and Brandon (junior) was just leaving as I got there. Shonda and her 2 girlfriends and Chris, one of the engineers, were still there and already several beers ahead. I had a couple of Dos Equis, which is Spanish for 2 X. I told them that in Australia we had a beer that was twice as good.

It turns out one of Shonda's friends was having a birthday get together and they had reserved a room there. I had a pound of crawfish while the 2 girls had 4 lbs between them and then they ordered another 4. They were quite tasty but there is even more waste per pound than crabs. These were also heavily peppered so your mouth started to burn. I think it's a ploy to get you to buy more beer. I was still a bit peckish so I had a half serve of chicken nachos. I decide this was enough and headed home. There were 15 to 20 people there by then and the majority of them were smoking.

I get bit crabby - a lot actually

2009-04-30T21:14:00.000-07:00

Thursday 30th

A lot was achieved today. The MSE calculation, which was one of the main enhancements was completed, tested and loudly appreciated. Some other minor and more serious bugs were fixed as well. A group of 5 of us went out for lunch at a sub place and I learned from my last trip not to go for the large size. It was different being part of a discussion (mostly passive) that covered topics like trucks and guns.

I had told Bonnie about the lost phone and today she gave me a replacement. I'd better not lose this one! I also had a call from the Apartment management people about the Internet. I'd already managed to get connected but they gave me the name of the ISP and I can at last, reply to and send emails from Thunderbird, at least at the apartment.

After work I headed towards the new golf shop. It is officially opening tomorrow but has actually been open a week or so already. I noticed the sign early on in my visit and there was an advertising insert in the Sunday paper. I was looking at new putters and will probably buy one tomorrow. I tried out a number and really liked one of the new Odyssey putters - XG teron. At US$170 0r around A$240 it would be a bit on the pricey side. However they are having an opening special with 15% discount on most, but not all, brands and the first 100 people get a $25 voucher. If I get there before work and get that voucher, it'll be around A$170.

I'd spend a considerable time trying various putters and then different lengths of the Teron before heading home. I returned with my old putter to check the length and also compare the new and old ones. It was nearly 9 when I left and after visiting the Phone shop where I was again unable to get my Blue tooth headset linked to the new phone, I started looking for a place to eat. I stopped at a bar and grill called the 19th hole but only took 3 steps inside before turning around and leaving, it was so smoky. I eventually finished up at Crab Daddy's seafood place. There was a live band playing soft rock, which wasn't too bad.

I opted for the steamed blue crabs, which are similar but not quite the same as the blue mannas we get at home. The claws are a but chunkier and the "triangle" flap on the underside is very narrow. Still taste great and are just as messy to eat. For US$19 I got 6 small to medium crabs. It was described as steamed crabs with corn and potato, and strictly speaking that was accurate - one small piece of corn and one small potato were there. It looked like a lot but I managed to finish them all. It was nearly 11 by then, the band had packed up and left and most of the tables had their chairs upside down on them ready for cleaning.

A couple of bigwigs from Schlumberger are visiting tomorrow so we have been warned about dress standards. Still seem pretty casual to me. Brandon assured everybody they weren't visiting to lay people off.

I get booked

2009-04-29T20:00:00.000-07:00

Wednesday 29th

It was 5 am when I woke up this morning. Still too early and too little sleep. It did however allow me to get a load of washing done and dried before work.

No rain today and most of the water from the last 2 days seems to be disappearing.

About 9, Richard and I head off to Schlumberger headquarters in Tanglewood. From the 18th floor meeting room, I could look across the road at the mansions. George Bush sen lives there and the head of some evangelical church I'd never heard of. These are in the $3-5 million price range I was told.

The meeting was with the group that handles the interface with live data feeds. They do the hard work so the rest of their software can plug in these modules when they need access to live data. It looks promising that we will be able to do the same. It was an interesting and useful meeting.

We headed back just after 12 and had to order in lunch as the afternoon meeting started not long after we got back. I wasn't directly involved in the discussions and my jet lag caught up with me. I was struggling to stay awake, let alone alert. After it was over I fixed a couple of bugs that had come up during the day, but other wise didn't do much programming.

After work I headed to the library near the Woodlands Mall and, armed with the letter from the apartment company and my driver's licence, joined the library. I borrowed a couple of SF books there but the one I wanted was only available at another branch. I headed there covering more or less the same route as yesterday at about the same time. The traffic however was much lighter and I had no trouble travelling along at the speed limit. The library turned out to be somewhat further than I had thought but I did get the book. From there I headed out to the other golf course owner by the company that owns Panther Trails and the Oaks. This was again further than I expected but I did book in for Saturday. The guy in the Pro Shop told me the other 2 courses were closed due to some tournament, so it was lucky I wasn't trying to get a game there.

According to the GPS its 17 miles from the course to the apartment, but my game is at 2pm so that won't be an issue.

On the way home I stopped for dinner at Landry's seafood restaurant. I ate there last year and had trouble finishing my meal so tonight I just had an entree - shrimp and crab fondue - and Key lime pie for dessert. I also had a Blueberry Mojito, since I'd enjoyed one there last time.

The cable Internet is now working in the apartment. The only thing I did was make sure the cables were screwed in tight. Mind you it could have been the fixed IP address problem that affected the office connection that was stopping it working on the weekend. I did a speed test and it is very fast.

Wet, wet, wet

2009-04-28T20:51:00.000-07:00

Tuesday 28th

The storm that started yesterday was still dumping rain on the Houston area today. I heard some place had 11 inches and the TV news was full of reports of flooded streets and traffic delays. One of the K&M guys took 2 1/2 hours instead of his usual 45 minutes to get to work. Fortunately for me, it wasn't actually raining when I left around 8-30.

However, it did seriously rain later in the morning and the yard outside the office was completely awash with several inches of water. We headed to lunch around 1 and, although the rain had stopped by then, the water was still there. I went with Chris in his F350 truck. This is so tall you get a nose bleed just climbing into it, but it was the right choice for the conditions. As you can see, the water was several feet deep in parts of the road.

Chris doesn't do Asian food so Indian and Thai were out and we finished at a BBQ place, with a western theme. (Surprise! - it is Texas after all). The 3 guys in the photo - Chris, Mao and Brandon junior - are all new since my last visit.

I have been working on the new features as well as fixing bugs, trouble shooting registration problems for someone in Philadelphia and answering questions from the new guys.

Tony had invited me to dinner but we had noticed the road passing the office had bumper to bumper traffic for ages. Even at 6-45 when we left, it was still steady, although fortunately, we got out fairly easily. Once we got to a major road, it was bumper to bumper again for a long time.

Tony and Lisa have done up there back yard a bit since last time, as they'd only moved in a short time. WE had a couple of drinks, some cheese and crackers, roast lamb and then chocolate pudding. Conversation was free and easy. Tony seems to be holding his own with the cancer and despite having chemo earlier today stayed up till about 10, when I went home. They are off to Italy, then Aberdeen in a day or so and may not be back before I leave so it was good to catch up socially.

I still haven't found that phone. I bought my golf bag in and dialled the number to make sure it wasn't in it and have dialled it numerous times but it always rings out. A bit embarrassing really. I only had it 1 day. It seems more likely than not that it's somewhere on the golf course. If I keep ringing, someone may be close enough to here it some time. However it was fruitless today as nobody in their right mind was outside, let alone on a golf course.

Work begins.

2009-04-27T16:35:00.000-07:00

Monday 27th

I was up about 7-30 after a reasonable sleep. I was ready for work soon after 8 but couldn't find my phone. I suspected I might have left it in the golf cart last night, so headed back to the golf course. They had a big tournament but I was able to locate my cart fairly easily. Luckily, I had made a note of its number -144. However there was no phone to be seen. I have also searched the bag itself without finding the phone. Nobody I talked to there had found it so I gave up and went to work.

It took a bit of time to set up. First I had to get a different cable to connect the extra monitor to my laptop. The office has docking stations in most cubicles but they are connected via a DVI cable and my laptop only has the VGA port. Then I couldn't get onto the network or the net. There was a computer tech working on someone's PC, so he was going to help me when he finished. However, I was soon in a meeting, starting to work through the bugs and enhancements. This continued through to lunch time when we took a break in our discussions and virtually everyone in the office (16 in all) had a lunch time meeting to discuss time sheets and expense claims. Earlier, we had been asked what we wanted for lunch as they were ordering in. I had a Chicken Caesar salad and some fruit.

Once that meeting was finished, we resumed our discussion till about 3pm when I started to work on some of the issues. The tech finally came and although he didn't fix the problem he helped me remember I had set a fixed IP address in Thailand. Once I changed that to automatically assigned, the network and Internet came up in a few seconds. Still can send emails from Thunderbird but at least I can get them.

It became very dark outside and then a heavy storm came through. It was still bucketing down when I left just before 6 and there was a lot of lightning about. I got a bit wet just getting to the car and then getting to the flat from the car park. The weather report on the TV is telling us there is a risk of tornadoes in the area and at one stage that there had been over 500 lightning strikes in the last 10 minutes. They are saying that most places have had 2 to 4" of rain and some over 5". I'm not exactly racing out to find some dinner.

There are quite a few people in the office that I hadn't met before. Some have come in from Schlumberger, the company that now owns K&M and others recruited from outside. A number of these had been in touch via email before so it was good to put faces to names again.

In the end I just had sandwiches for dinner and stayed in and watched TV.

3 in 1

2009-04-26T21:47:00.000-07:00

Sunday 26th part 2

I headed out after lunch, going to a second hand book shop and a golf shop before arriving at the golf course. I didn't buy anything at either of them. I did find a putter that I was sort of interested in, but I'm not really convinced that I putt any better with it than with my current one that I've had for over 20 years.

This course provides free balls on the putting green, chipping green and driving range, so I deliberately arrived early to get some practice in. I had booked for after 3, because the price drops from $85 to $45 at that time. When I got to the tee, I was told I was on my own. I decided to play off the Gold tees today. This course has 5 different tee placements with gold being the second longest after black. I think I played off the blues, which are the middle distance, last time. This was the 3rd country in fact the 3rd continent that I have played golf on this month.

I started driving well enough but didn't putt or chip as well. By the 3rd hole I had caught up to the two young guys in front of me and a few hole later when I was waiting with them to tee off on a par 3 and they didn't ask me to join up, I waited for the pair behind me and joined with them, Eddie is a consultant drilling engineer and he was playing with his 12 year old son Scottie.

After a slow start, I had a run of pars to finish the front 9 with 46. I then had a birdie and another par to start the back 9. However, the last few holes had a lot of water and I seemed to find most of it including one hole where I putt 3 shots into 2 different lakes and a stream. The signature 18th with its island green took about the 4th ball that I put in water and couldn't recover. I did see a beaver sitting just by this green. I played most of the round with one of my fingers rubbing and although I put a band aid on it, that didn't last very long. It wasn't till I finished I saw how badly blistered it was. At least I had an excuse for my bad shots!!! I manage to break 100 but not by a whole lot.

Despite seeming to wait almost every shot, we actually finished in just on 4 hours. I guess with everyone using carts, you move between shots and between green and tee very quickly. They have daylight saving here so it was still still light after 7pm. The course was in fairly good condition but the sand traps all seemed to be or have been flooded and the ones that didn't still have water in them had a hard muddy circle in the middle. The greens weren't too bad for putting but were quite hard so you couldn't throw your chips at them and have them stick but had to allow for a bit of roll after landing.

The restaurant and bar at the course were closed by this time, so I headed back towards the flat. I decide to have Mexican for dinner and stopped at a restaurant on the way. While you wait for your meal, they bring you complimentary chips and dips as well as iced water. I had a fluata with refried beans, salad and rice, which was tasty and quite filling and a Daiquari. At home, I started watching TV but fell asleep within 30 minutes.

A drive to set up a drive

2009-04-26T08:21:00.000-07:00

Sunday 26th part 1

I didn't have too bad a sleep. I woke briefly about 5am and then drifted off again before getting up about 7-30.

I had my cereal and checked the local news and weather - 20% chance of rain apparently. I went for a stroll around the complex. The welcome centre still wasn't open but I got some shots of the pool with its BBQ and outdoor dining area. The 3rd photo shows the welcome centre and the building where my apartment is located.

About 9 I headed off to the Woodlands resort to arrange a game of golf. The Oaks course, which I played last time is now private but I have booked for 3:19 on the Panther Trails course. There are a number of public courses around but I decided at this stage to stick to one I know.

I then headed to the Woodlands shopping area, which I am familiar with. Most shops didn't open till 10 but the supermarket is 6am to 12pm, almost like home (joke). I picked up some stuff for a sandwich, a paper and some of the Nioxin hair product I use. I'd bought some last time because it's $9.99 here compared with $27 at home. Even with taxes and exchange rates that's about half price. I also bought some ice cream, so I had to go home before doing any more shopping. Woudl you beliveit - they have Snickers ice cream cones (drumstick shape).

On the way home, I passed a scene out of so many American cop shows - a posse of cars with flashing lights, this time outside a bank. I say a posse because they were actually from the Sheriff's Department.

I checked out my car on the net earlier and its a V6. Its seems this is a full size car so it's actually 2 levels higher than the Corolla I ordered. The check in girl asked me if I wanted to upgrade to a larger vehicle for a few dollars more a day. I declined but I seem to have got the same car anyway. Wasn't that clever? I guess they are trained to ask those questions to try and get as much as possible from you.

It seems I didn't need the cable after all. I am connected via wireless. I suspect I may be jacking a neighbours connection.

Flat out

2009-04-25T21:54:00.000-07:00

Saturday 25th part 3

I thought of the catchy title because I thought once I'd got to the flat, I'd be out like a light. It didn't quite happen that way.

The flight from LA to Houston was full, no empty seats in first class and I heard just 1 in economy. I had a window seat for a change, usually I like an aisle, so I can get up easily. The seat next to me was occupied by an elderly Asian man who managed to sleep most of the way, so when I did need to get up, it was a bit tricky. The meal was surprisingly nice - soup, shrimp salad and fruit. I also was able to take some photos from the plane, although they never come out as clear as what you can see yourself. LA itself is reasonably green but once you get over the Rockies the land is quite sandy, with some obviously irrigated green patches.

Houston is once again very green from the air, although it was cloudy which made it hard to get any shots. It was actually drizzling when we landed.

It was a particularly unsettled flight. I'd seen the movie that was playing and I couldn't concentrate to read my book for very long. However, I couldn't really get to sleep either. We again left late - just took so long to get everyone on board and seated but arrived more or less on time about 4:45. It took about 30 minutes to get out of the terminal, even though my suitcase was literally the first off the conveyor belt and the golf clubs followed soon after. It was not too difficult carrying all the stuff and it was a 5 minute wait for the Rental car shuttle bus. The driver helped us get our luggage on and off the bus - nice to get a bit of service.

I have a Chrysler Impala. I ordered a "Corolla or similar" and this seems a bit bigger so I may have got the next size up. It has more than enough room for case, clubs and laptop bag in the boot. I think I picked the wrong choice for "Route" in the GPS, trying to avoid the tollway. It keep telling me to turn off the freeway. I ignored this as I knew I needed the I 45 but when it told me to take the first exit, I pulled off and reprogrammed it. It was after 7 by the time I got to the flat. This was 6 am Perth time so it had been 32 hours door to door.

The flat is very nice and has one bedroom with a big walk in wardrobe, a bath room with a deep oval bath, a sitting area, dining area and kitchen on an open plan and a utility room with a washer and dryer. It's on the first floor and has a balcony that has a view of the balconies of the building opposite and the road between them. I guess you can't have everything.

There was a big snack basket waiting for me - chips, chocolate, biscuits, coffee etc. and a new phone. I was only planning to get a Sim card, but perhaps they aren't available here like they are in Thailand. There was also a cable modem sitting on the bench but no cord to connect to the laptop. I headed out to buy a network or USB cable and the GPS directed me to a supermarket. I think it just found the start of the road. Anyway, I bought some cereal and milk, soft drink and half a snow crab for dinner. I then was heading for Walmart where I was told I could get some cables, when I saw a Radio shack, so stopped there instead.

The Internet was up pretty quickly once I'd made the connection and found the right network. There was an email from Tony, welcoming me and inviting me to dinner on Tuesday. I call him up on the new mobile. By this time I was more than ready for a shower. I put on the Qantas PJs afterwards and had a brief stroll around the grounds. The gate to the pool was open and that area looks really nice. I then went to the Welcome centre next to it and found the door was locked. I tried to go back to the pool but that gate was also locked ( from that side, even though I'd been able to go through it out of the pool). I had to climb over the pool fence to get out. There is a small gym there as well.

Back in the room, I started to watched TV. There seem to be about 16 or so channels available so I channel hopped, watching bits of different shows for a while, then fell asleep. This happened several times before I got up and got the crab organised and had it for dinner. Further dozing then continued. I was trying to watch Saturday Night Live.

Its after midnight now so I am hoping that once I get to bed, I'll be able to sleep through and get myself in synch with the time zone. To say it's been a long day would be an understatement.

and a long day

2009-04-25T21:51:00.000-07:00

Saturday 25th part 2

This is being written in a Ruby's Diner in LA airport. I have a bit over 2 1/2 hours till my flight leaves. There is an earlier flight leaving in 25 minutes but I was not able to get on it at check in, despite deliberately carrying my bags across from International, just in case. Once I'd got inside the terminal, the girl at the gate counter said I could wait list but my bags wouldn't get on the same flight. Last year, I was in a similar situation and when I arrived in Houston, I found my bags were already there.

The flight from Melbourne was long. It left a bit late but they caught up and we arrived more or less on time. It was still nearly 14 hours, leaving at 11 am and arriving at 7am the same day. Dr Who eat your heart out, Qantas can time travel too. Because you leave and arrive in the morning it really stuffs up your body clock. I watched 2 filmes and had lunch before trying to sleep. The films were Slumdog Millionaire and Transporter 3. After my sleep I watched The Curious case of Benjamin Button. I slept from about 3 pm to 7pm Melbourne time. This equated to 10pm to 4am LA time. So That's about 7 hours total sleep since I left home 24 hours ago.

I was upstairs again, which I prefer. It seems a bit more intimate and friendly. Also you are always in pairs. Downstairs even the business class seats are 3 wide in the centre section. It was a 747, so the seats were those capsule types that are standard on Qantas Business Class. They haven't upgraded to the diagonal seating that is used by Cathay and British airways and the new A380 isn't used on this route. Still you can lie stright, if not actually horizontal and get a more comfortable sleep than on the 330 such as on Thai or the flight from Perth.

Once again we got a pair of PJs and the usual tooth paste, socks and skincare pack. I took the skin care and tooth brush but left the rest. I have more than enough of those travel packs and didn't really need the extra stuff to squeeze into my bag. The meal was good, some tarragon chicken for entrée, rack of lamb for main and Ice cream for dessert. I also had some lindt chocolate and hot chocolate drink in the middle of the night once I'd given up sleeping.

Being in Business we were off the plane first and got through passport control with little queuing. Despite registering on line, we were advised by the staff to fill in the visa application anyway, since the on line system isn't always working properly. In fact it was the paper application that was processed. I suspect on the next trip the on line system will be up and running. My bags were off early and even my golf sticks arrived quite promptly.

It was only 11 degrees here so I kept my PJ top on but put the pants and my 200ml whisky bottle into my main case. That can be a bit of a trap. You can't take your duty free onto the domestic flight because its over 100ml, so if you don't repack, you lose it. I got a trolley and took my case and clubs across to the domestic terminal, as I said hoping to get the earlier flight. A young guy helped me check in but said the early flight was overbooked. He did carry my golf clubs over to the X-ray machine for me. I could have just put them on the conveyor belt at international, as it turned out.

The security here is still strict. I had to show my passport before going through security in the domestic terminal and you have to take of your shoes and put them through the x ray as well. However I didn't get the special search that happened last time so I was through reasonably quickly.

A first class ticket doesn't get you into the airport lounge here. You need to join the club or have a platinum Amex card. Hence my sitting in the diner. This has killed 30 minutes - only 2 hours to go.

While I was wandering around the terminal I noticed this vending machine that sells Ipod accessories. None of this bag of chips, chocolate or can of drink rubbish here.

A short night

2009-04-24T14:06:00.000-07:00

Saturday 25th April (Part 1)

Here I am in Melbourne airport, on my way back to Houston for a 3 week stint. To get there from Perth you basically fly to one of the cities on the East coast of Australia and then to LA. From there you take a domestic flight.

The flights to Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne all leave about midnight and arrive about 6 or 7 in the morning. You then have to wait till the international flight leaves at a time that gets it to LA around 7am local time. Whichever flight I took, I'd finish up on the same internal flight, so I opted for the connection that gave me the shortest stay in LA, since from my experience last year, I won't have access to an airline lounge.

This turned out to have one disadvantage. The overnight flight was only 3 1/2 hours and although I pretty much dropped off to sleep as soon as we were in the air, I've only had 3 hours or less sleep. The Brisbane connection time is longer but so is the flight so you could actually get more sleep on it.

I didn't do much work yesterday, although I did do some debugging for a local client. I had to get the washing done, update the laptop with all my emails and program changes for the last week I made on the desktop and organise money. I also bought a new laptop bag - one with wheels. And of course, I had to pack again. I had thought I might get to play in the Twilight comp at Gosnells but in the end I decided it was too hard, and the weather wasn't the best.

The kids came over for dinner, the first time we've seen each other since I left for Thailand over a month ago. They did meet up over Easter, which pleased me since it means I don't have to actually be here for them to get together. I decided to get some T bones and David cooked them on the BBQ. It was good to catch up and it'll be another month and a half before we do it again. Penny and her boyfriend leave for their US holiday the day before I get home.

They all left about 9 and my taxi arrived at 10. I estimate it will be 31 or more hours from the time I left home to the time I get to the apartment in Houston. Last year I stayed in a Marriott Residence hotel, which was a small suite with a kitchenette. This time they have booked me into a serviced apartment, which from the brochure looks ok. They have also bought me a local Sim. The idea was to leave that number on my answering machine, but I realise I have forgotten to do that. Ho hum.

With all those flights the lounge in Perth was quite full. We flew from Perth on an Airbus 300, which is the first time I've flown on that aircraft on a Qantas domestic flight. The Thai flights from Bangkok are on a similar plane and the seats on that plane are bigger and further apart than the Qantas one. It was still comfortable enough to get some sleep and the Business section was a bit over half full.

We landed in Melbourne about 6am so I have a 4 hour connection. I've had breakfast, at least I had a bowl of cereal. There's an array of food still available - Pancakes, quiches, pastries, toast etc. It's now coming up to * and the lounge is still pretty empty. There were only a couple of other people here when I first arrived.

I have prepaid for the rental car and this time I've deliberately gone for a smaller car - supposedly a Corolla sedan "or similar". One of the things I had to do in my brief visit home was to get last year's taxes done. I have been quite slack on this, normally I get them done in the first couple of months after the end of the tax year. However with my travels, it got delayed and then I started travelling again. It was quite urgent since my Super tax return, in particular is due before I get back from this trip.

One of the points raised in my discussion with Debbie, my financial planner and accountant, was that I should consider a new car. There are some government incentives to invest in plant and supposedly a new car qualifies plus my current one, although going well, is now 10 years old. I had thought it would be a simple enough choice - get a new Corolla hatch to replace the current one. I took a bit of time on Wednesday to look at the current models at the different car yards along Leach Highway. I had my golf bag and buggy in the car and one test was to make sure they fitted in the back of any prospective car and the lid could be close on the hatch. I was quite surprised to find that neither the current Corolla hatch or the equivalent models for other brands actually have a big enough boot. It may be that I have to buy a sedan to get a car that I can fit my golf gear in. Obviously a Corolla will be on the list so I will have a chance to test one out before I get home.

Back in the USSR (delete SR)

2009-04-17T07:49:00.000-07:00

Friday 17th April

There had been some suggestion of a return visit to Houston,in emails earlier this year but the definitive approval came while I was still in Thailand. I arrived home Wednesday morning and within 10 minutes of unpacking my suitcase was at the travel agents at the shopping centre across the road. The only reason I unpacked first was so that I could drop my library books off on the way.

After a number of discussions and decisions I am heading off next Friday around midnight, technically Saturday morning. Saturday is Anzac day, taking to 3 the number of public holidays I've missed this month, with Easter spent working in Thailand. Because of that our golf course is closed Saturday morning so instead of travelling Sunday as usual, I'm heading over a day earlier and possibly will get a game in once I arrive, before buckling down to work.

In order to get the cheaper Circle Pacific flight, I have to return via Hong Kong. They have asked me to allow 3 weeks so my plan is to fly out at 9 on the Saturday 3 weeks later, getting to San Francisco about 11 and then straight on to Hong Kong at 1-20am. This is the same flight as last time but without the day in SF playing tourist.

I had discovered that Cathay, who are part of the one world group that I can fly with on the ticket, also has a flight direct from HK to Perth. last time I flew that leg with Qantas which is an overnighter. The Cathay flight is much better, leaving at 3pm and getting in about 11. This means you are not trying to sleep on the plane and also you don't have to kill so much time between check out and departure. Originally I was planning to leave Houston at 9 on Sunday morning and take a day flight from SF to HK but this did not meet the require 24 hour minimum stopover.

When I got the quote, the international flight was about the same as last time but the domestic cost had gone up dramatically. I was raising this with the travel agent who had noticed it as well, when we realised that the cost was US$ based and the difference just reflected the exchange rate changes since last year. That does mean, in US$ terms the rest of my expenses have dropped by a third. It was till around $15k on my credit card with insurance and car hire added in.

I have also been giving a fairly clear message that if we are to continue these trips in the future, we need to get the enhancements completed in a timely manner to justify the costs. It may be a busy time once work starts.

I also got advised that dress codes have smartened up in the office but that jeans were OK but not shorts. I'm a bit confused about what I need to take to wear. I have also received some info on accommodation which will be in an apartment rather than the motel where I stayed last time. It looks ok from the brochure I was sent.

I'm looking forward to catching up with the people I've met before anf\d there are some new people that have joined since then. Should eb an interesting few weeks.