China/Korea 2009: day 2 (Shanghai)

Shanghai day 2: Tuesday 9/29/09
Map of my Shanghai stops, this day in red; here are the photos from today. Yellow highlights in the text correspond to flags on the map.

China/Korea 2009: day 1 (Shanghai)

Shanghai day 1: Monday, 9/28/09

Map of my Shanghai stops, this day in blue; here are the photos from today. Yellow highlights in the text correspond to flags on the map.

China/Korea 2009: day 0 (Houston to Seoul to Shanghai)

Here's my map for 3 days in Shanghai: blue for day 1, red for day 2, and yellow for day 3.Mostly written as sentence fragments in a Notes file on my iPod Touch, not so narrative yet.

China/Korea 2009: intro

Being an account of my trip to Shanghai, Beijing, Hong Kong, Macau, and Seoul in fall 2009.

In early 2009 I submitted a paper to an aerospace conference in Daejeon, S. Korea to take place in October 2009. Once it was accepted, I decided that since my company was going to send me to east Asia, I may as well take advantage of it and spend a couple weeks in China as a tourist. I was locked in to whatever my company gave me for the flight from Houston to Seoul, and from there I was on my own. For budgetary reasons it was better for me to see Shanghai, then Beijing, then Hong Kong, before going back to Seoul.

Australia/Hawaii 2002, part 14: California

This is the last entry (which I accidentally left sitting in draft for over a year, oops!). My trip report finishes up the last 2 days of the journey but it's all about wedding stuff in California and what we did in the Carmel area. I arranged my 2002 Australia/Hawaii trip around a friend's wedding; coincidentally, in 2011 I would arrange my 10-week trip to Europe around the wedding of another good friend. Trivia and By The Numbers are at the end of this post; no pictures today of the travel prior to the wedding.

Friday, October 4: Oahu to Los Angeles to San Jose to Carmel
Is Richard Simmons a good omen or a bad omen?

Even if everything had gone exactly on time, I still would have only had an hour to get my luggage from one terminal and check in at another. But at 6 a.m. on a Friday morning, how many people can be at the airport?

I managed to catch somewhere around 3 of hours of sleep on the plane. I practically flew out the door where the Continental flight arrived after I got my luggage, and was lucky that the shuttle bus was right there. And fortunately I didn't have to wait very long to get to the next stop, but it still took time. It was there that I found myself in line at Southwest at 5:50 a.m. asking the gate agent if there was enough time for me to make the 6:05. I got an "are you serious?" look but he said he'd do his best to help me, then he slapped a "late" tag on the bags. Just in case I didn't make it, I had already made a backup plan. Vanessa was driving in from San Francisco to San Jose to pick me up around 7:30, and I'd call her if I didn't make my flight. The next one was only an hour later, so we still had plenty of time to get to Carmel by 3 pm.

Australia/Hawaii 2002, part 13: Oahu (day 3)

I mention below that one of the graves I sought out at the Punchbowl was that of Space Shuttle Challenger astronaut Ellison Onizuka. In 2011, ten years later, I got the opportunity to meet his widow Lorna at a NASA function, and told her how much his death affected me as an aerospace engineering student at the time, how it inspired me even more to get into the job that (as it turned out) I loved, and that it was out of respect for all that that I visited his grave. She was very touched and thanked me for thinking of him like that and for telling her that story. Today's pictures are here.

(Turns out this post has been in draft for over a year, I thought I published them all. Oops.)

Thursday, October 3: Oahu
I can see for miles and miles …

Like all "last days" somewhere, this was the day to think about doing all the stuff I didn't have time for – I wanted to go up to the top of Diamondhead, go snorkeling in Hanauma Bay (both off to the east), go up to the Punchbowl and maybe do some shopping (both off to the west). As usual, I didn't get to do all of that. I quickly decided to blow off shopping and reluctantly pushed snorkeling to the bottom of the list. Yeah, it would have been cool, but I had just gone scuba diving on the Great Barrier Reef and anything else would have been anticlimactic. So with just Diamondhead and the Punchbowl left on the list, I could be somewhat leisurely.

Australia/Hawaii 2002, part 12: Oahu (day 2)

The music I listened to in the car in 2002 was on CDs. Now I would have hooked my iPhone up to Bluetooth, or at worst plugged the phone into the AUX jack and listened to mp3s. But it still would have been the Beach Boys and Jimmy Buffett. Today's pictures are here.

Wednesday, October 2: Oahu
Chasing a rainbow on the Kamehameha Highway

I had decided that today was going to be my day to explore the island outside of Waikiki – get a rental car and just drive, stopping where I want and seeing what there is to see. All within reason, of course, as I had to drop my rental car off by 7 pm, so that left me roughly 12 hours if I picked it up when the place opened. I actually picked it up at 8, and then drove down the H1 Highway to Pearl City to see the USS Arizona Memorial. Tunes for the trip are courtesy of the Beach Boys Greatest Hits and the 4-disc Jimmy Buffett set, "Boats, Beaches, Bars, and Ballads".