I stayed down in LA after the TD concert and was then scheduled to fly on to foreign lands with ARM for a couple of weeks. But it was not to be....
Initially I had decided try and compress all my planned trips into one mega trip starting in the UK for a couple of days, then onto Seoul in Korea where I was to give a presentation at a seminar and finally on to Japan for another couple of days of meetings since I was "in the area".
Given the length of time in Asia and the fact that my suit seemed to have shrunk in the closet I headed down to suit store to have it altered. The salesman in the store politely told me that while their suits were designed to be alterable to accommodate some of the changes of later life, they weren't *that* alterable, and that I was going to need a new suit (if I didn't want to look like Alexi Sayle). It's nice to have a stabilized thyroid and all that, but I do wonder what to do about my current shape. I've been going to the gym now almost every day for several weeks until I got the flu but nothing seems to improve. Sigh! I don't like suddenly waking up finding that I am middle aged.
Anyway suitably convinced that the suit that I had was insufficiently elastic I agreed to get not one but two suits in the special "two for the price of one sale" that magically seemed to be happening at the suit store that day. I figured that given that I was going to be in Japan and Korea and giving an important presentation in front of several hundred people I deserved a nice business suit and an even nicer business suit for on-stage and my presentation to our board of directors in Cambridge UK.
As I left the store I felt good that I was going to be so smart in my new suits with their additional accessorizing trousers (oh yes I bought some of them too), but also bad that I spent over $1000 on clothes. Still for nearly 2 weeks on the road I reasoned it was worth it.
It was about this time that thing started to go wrong with the trip.
Firstly it cost too much. Air travel ain't cheap no more and when the trip was costed out it was $6500 of plane rides. So my presentation to the board of directors in the UK went out of the window.
I then analyzed the trip to Korean and then Japan. It turned out if I went to Japan first and then on to Korea this was cheapest way to go. So I plumbed for that and sent out an email to my Japanese colleagues explaining why I was coming at the beginning and not the end of my trip.
The reply I got back was polite but short.
"I cannot make meetings for you at such short notice [just over 1 week] so please don't come to Japan."
OK. So the guy asked me to come but can't change the meetings at such ¨short¨ notice. Fair enough. Scratch another few days in a suit.
It looked like I was getting down to around a 1 week in Korea which suited (sic) me fine.
However another guy from ARM was going to be in Korea at the beginning of the first week and was keen for me to attend meetings with him rather than after he left. So I said Yes. I said yes because these were import folk to visit, he was a good guy and I was keen to understand how I could help. What could go wrong? My trip length went back up to 2 weeks- now all of the time would be in Korea. (Dena was furious!)
The next day I got email telling me one of my meetings on the first week had moved to the day of my presentation in the second week. The big presentation, in front of several hundred people. The one I was working on so hard. The one that really was going to be a big Wow!
If you haven't seen me before a presentation then you probably haven´t seen me stressed. I do get stressed and I mean really stressed. I need every minute beforehand to prepare. So the idea of meeting some company before I went on stage in my nice new suit really didn't appeal: I politely reminded my Korean colleague that he had moved the meeting to the day of my presentation and I really didn't want that distraction. I just wanted to be able to focus from 6:00am until the minute I walked on stage in my new (and it would be very new because now I wasn't going to wear it until that moment now I had no board meeting or trip to Japan) suit and talked about ARM and Web 2.0.
The email reply I got was somewhat surprising ¨Ẅe don't want you to give the presentation. We have found another company to do it.¨
This was a turning point in the trip for me. Now I had very little reason to have burned $1000 in clothes and no one had bothered to tell me. I figured this was a low point and the only way now was up... I was wrong.
As the taxi arrived at LAX airport at 6:45am I was concerned. My meeting schedule was a mess, I had two key meetings on Monday and Tues of the first week and a committee meeting for 3 days on the second week and one other meeting in the middle of the committee meeting. And to top it all I was still trying to get a demo together for the second week. I approached the kerbside check-in with my almost overweight suitcase bulging with Ethernet hubs, development boards, and suits with accessorizing trousers.
"No record of you on this flight sir." was the checking agents puzzled response when I presented my paperwork.
"You'll need to go inside and sort it out. I can't do anything for you here."
Inside, but that meant queuing for over 30 minutes with other travelers. Still I had no choice.
"No record of you on this flight sir." was same response I got from the check-in agent inside.
"But I have confirmation numbers, record locators and e-ticket confirmation slips I protested and presented an impressive array of paperwork that I printed out before hitting the road.
"Yes, but this trip was voided last Weds sir."
I wasn't amused. In all the years Amy has been my travel agent she had hardly ever done me wrong. But this time something had gone seriously off the rails: I was now stuck in LA with no ticket with no way to get one in time to get on a plane to San Francisco to catch a plane to Seoul. At this point I would normally have told my travel agency to put me on *a* plane (any plane) to Seoul immediately but the whole trip seemed so doomed I decided not to fight it any more and gave up and got my travel agency to buy me a ticket back to San Jose.
I figured that I could maybe have my meetings after the committee meeting and just spend a week in Seoul.
However that was not to be, as my colleague in Korea wasn't able to re-arrange any of the meetings I missed the first week and my manager decided that it wasn't worth me going to Korea just for a committee meeting. So now here I stand on the day I was due to leave for Korea (the second time) looking at my nice new wardrobe wondering if I will get to wear it any time soon.
