Birthday Celebration on The Road

For the past several years, I have always spent my birthday on a business trip in Asia.  This year was not an exception.  But this one was the last business trip!   I actually had a few pleasant surprises for my birthday this year.  Dan (my succesor) and I were suppose to fly from Shanghai to Bangkok first thing in the morning, but was delayed by heavy fog.  Fortunately Dan is such a nice fellow, and is very considerate and fun to travel with.  So at the lounge of Thai Airway, we had some noodle to celebrate my birthday.  Once we finally arrived Bangkok, and checked into the hotel, I was presented by the Hotel with a lovely piece of birthday cake.  Then Dan and I went to have a lovely Thai meal in this very interesting restaurant near the hotel.  Both the food and music were very authentic.

The New Singapore

I was in Asia from Feb 18 to March 18 for my last business trip before retirement.  Singapore turned out to be my last stop as I had to cancel my trip to Japan from Singapore, due to the horrible earth quake happened to Japen on March 11.  The tourist attractions built by Singapore over the past two years have been quite impressive.  It surely changed my previous view of Singapore being a concrete jungle.  My colleague Ron Shieh took some real good pictures:

https://picasaweb.google.com/rshieh2009/2011316Singapore?authkey=Gv1sRgCOuylYzE5bHrgQE#

The Last Work Week

Today marked the last "normal" work week for my career.  It's a strange feeling.  I wondered what I should do to make this last week "meaningful", but came up with nothing.  I am no longer being invited to any meetings and seldom receive any work-related phone calls.  Today I spent time talking to a few co-workers.  At lunch time, I stopped by McDonald for a McFish and one cup of senior coffee.  The whole meal cost me $1.68.  A couple of times last week I woke up in the middle of the night and found myself dreaming about work.   I guess it will take some time to really unwind from the "work life".  So it might have been a real good idea that I decided to take April as a "vacation" month prior to starting the real "full" retirement.