My Life In Focus

Taipei Airport, Taiwan
Local Time: December 23, 2008 – 6:30AM

I thought that I was going to be able to countdown the days to the trip, but time sure did pass me by… The last three days prior to the trip was a blur with lots of last minute errands that had to be run and before you know it, we found ourselves at the airport and before long on the plane. Just when I thought that things were going smoothly – we hit our first roadblock…

We had an unexpected detour on the way to Hong Kong since there were volcano eruptions in the Pacific Northwest around the Alaskan waters. So here I am sitting on the plane as we wait for them to refuel, restock, and clean out the Boeing. The flight was surprisingly OK. I was able to sleep for more than half of the flight, the food was pretty darn good which makes me wonder why people are so critical of airplane food. I was able to watch three movies in the time that I was awake… a luxury that I haven’t been able to enjoy for quite a long while. Makes me wonder why I waited so long in the first place to take a vacation.

Anyhow, I digress – we are waiting for the plane to refuel so that we can get to Hong Kong where we have about 30 minutes to catch our connecting flight to Beijing. I sure hope that we make it out of this OK – stay tuned…

Four days to go and the focus is on transitioning my workload and finals…  It’s been crazy!!

Work has been mellow because the client demands have gone down in terms of meetings, but now it’s been about getting all the models completed before the end of the year.  My days are spent trying to figure out how to prioritize things and hunting down the leads on our client’s side to get us the resolutions that we need in order to complete our work.  I have an awesome team though and they have all been diligently working and getting things done in record time.

I’ve completed four finals so far and I have one more to go tomorrow morning and the juice is starting to run low.  My motivation level hasn’t been completely there because my finals were spread out wayyyyyy to thin.  In any case, it’s been a pretty decent semester and I’m glad to see it come to a close now so that I can start my vacation.

I still haven’t officially begun packing yet and I have a feeling it’s going to bite me in the but as the next couple of days is sure to fly by a lot faster that I am anticipating.  I still have quite the to-do list to get completed and lets hope that I can accomplish it all before I go.  One more thing that is about to be checked off my list is that the theme on my little corner of cyberspace has been given a new facelift, but not without help from my dedicated boyfriend.  I can now post pictures in my own photos to share and embed videos from YouTube, so many thanks for that!  I love you!

Four days to go… stay tuned!

PS – Those of you who are interested in my approximate whereabouts while I am gone, check out this map that one of my travel buddies put together for us:  http://www.tamminguyen.com/2008asiatripmap.jpg

Five… Four… Three… Two… One!!!

The excitement of starting my trip is starting to kick in.  I can’t believe that there is only a few more days until I board that plane and make my way to Beijing.  All of it seems so surreal because this has been such a long time in the making.  I’ve always dreamed of having a vacation like this and now I get to live it.  It’s such an awesome way to end the year — and a long year it’s been.

My friends and I have been keeping tabs on the weather reports for the various areas we will be traveling to… it’s snowing on the Great Wall!!  I was hoping for snow at the Great Wall because all the beautiful pictures that I’ve seen of this historic structure (can it even be considered a structure?!) has always been on a bright and sunny day.  But snow or not I can’t wait to see it for myself and take it all in.

My room is a mess – as is my sister’s room.  I’ve been using the empty space because she isn’t back from school until Thursday night and I am using the space to sort out all the stuff I plan on packing.  I’ve been terribly busy but one thing is for sure, I need to clean everything up before she makes it home for the holiday break.  I’ve been told to pack light, but it’s been challenging because I have to pack for extremely cold weather to balmy tropical weather.  In any case, I hope to get it all cleaned up by Sunday morning because I don’t want to come home to a messy room.

For those of you who have been dropping by my page – you’ll notice that after the next couple of days, the site will be going through a slight facelift as I retrofit it for the trip.  I’ll be adding in new feature as to share pictures and other things while I am on the trip so stay tuned.

Anyhow… the countdown has officially start… I’m five days in counting until the big trip!  I can’t wait!

For all the Chinese folks out there – today is a big day so go and buy your lottery ticket… you may just get lucky… make sure your ticket is filled with 8′s!

Tonight is the start of the long anticipated Summer Olympics hosted in none other than Beijing, China – how’s that for good luck and good feng shui?  I’ve been waiting for this all year long and it will mark the first time that the Olympics will be aired with extensive HD coverage.  I can’t wait to see all the swimming heats on my nice big flat screen in HD, it’s going to be awesome. 

The best part in all the Olympic excitment is that all that I will be seeing on televsion in the next 2 weeks that is being aired in Beijing, I will get to see at the end of this year — except that it may all be covered in snow.  Beijing is the first leg of the Adventures in Asia saga and our time there will be very limited because we will be a part of an actual tour group, so I want to be sure to take note of all the sites and be very selective about what it is that I want to see when I get there and have the time to go roaming around outside of the designated tour times.

135 days left until my adventures begin!