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What it's hard to STFE

Liz sent me this link earlier today and I thought it tied in nicely with Mike's latest blog posts about dieting and not eating.

Compulsive Eating Resembles Addiction

I like how it says that the rat needed constant stimulation from tasty food to avoid a state of persistent negative reward. Wouldn’t having to always eat untasty food be a state of persistent negative reward? And that must have been some really tasty food if the rat was willing to take an electric shock to get it!

Home again!

When last we talked I was in the airport in Hong Kong. Since then, I've made it all the way home. Here's a recap of the rest of the trip and the recovery so far.

The hop over the Pacific wasn't too bad. I think I got about 5 or 6 hours sleep from Hong Kong to Vancouver. It wasn't great sleep since my head kept falling down and waking me up. I was doing the dead man on a horse sleep.

The plane landed in Vancouver to refuel and we had to deplane and take all our stuff with us. Canada wanted to inspect the plane as it came into the country and any personal belongings left on the plane was going to get thrown out. Funny thing is that we landed in Vancouver before we took off from Hong Kong. We left Hong Kong at 12:15 AM on 9/20 and landed in Vancouver around 9:15 PM on 9/19.

We waited in Vancouver over an hour before we got back on the plane and headed to JFK. That flight was fine. It was only 5 hours. Better than the 12 over the Pacific. I only slept about an hour on this flight. We landed in JFK around 7 AM on 9/20. Had no trouble clearing customs and re-checking my bag for the flight to RDU. I got a cup of coffee from Starbucks to try and stay awake.

Our next flight was scheduled to leave at noon, but we looked at the board on our way to the gate and noticed there was a flight heading to RDU that left at 8:30. We decided to hoof it to the gate and see if we could get on that flight to get home earlier. This meant I had to sacrifice the ginormous coffee I bought because I couldn't gulp it down in time to get through security. It was a necessary sacrifice!

We were able to hop on the earlier flight to RDU but there was no way our baggage was going to make it. But getting home earlier was well worth not getting my bag. I've got plenty of clothes at the house. I didn't want to sit in the airport for 5 more hours if I didn't have to! I called Liz and told her I was getting an earlier flight that was going to come in around 10 AM instead of 1:45 PM.

The flight to RDU was uneventful. Except I was very anxious to land and finally be home! I got a text from Liz when I landed that Johnny was asleep in the car and I should come out after I landed. We decided to hang around baggage claim just to make sure our bags wouldn't make it. Sure enough, just like the dude at the gate in JFK had said, our bags weren't there. We talked to somebody in the baggage claim area to see if we had to come back that afternoon or if the bags would be pulled and we could claim them later. She said the bags would be pulled and we could come back later or even the next day. By this time Johnny was awake so he and Liz came into the baggage claim area. It was awesome to see them again!

We got back to the house around 11:30 Sunday morning and I had a shower. For the first time in over 2 days. I was grungy. A shower felt awesome! Then we went to Smithfields and I got a BBQ platter. Yeah, pork! You know, I don't eat that much pork, but when you're in a majority Muslim country and you can't hardly find pork, I find that I start to crave it!

Sunday afternoon I took a nap when Johnny did around 1 PM. And I fell dead asleep. Liz came in at 3:00 to wake me up and I did not want to wake up. I felt groggy all afternoon. Liz, Johnny, and I walked down to the park in downtown Fuquay and had a picnic Sunday evening. That was really cool. Instead of all the toys we brought, Johnny ended up playing with the plates we were going to eat on! He had a pretty good time and we feed him some green beans while we were there. We came back to the house and I gave Johnny a bath and a little bottle and put him to bed. I called my parents and talked to them for a while and then it was about 7:30 or 7:45. I crashed and slept hard. Until about 3:00 AM. Then I slept fitfully the rest of the night.

Monday I stayed home from work to recover from the trip. I kept Johnny home with me and we had a good time. I got to see all the new tricks he learned while I was away. He learned to sit up on his own, pull himself up, and has begun to crawl. These developmental spurts are amazing. I took a nap when Johnny took his afternoon nap. That may have been a mistake because I feel asleep hard again. I was pretty groggy the rest of the afternoon.

To keep myself awake I went to play softball last night. I don't know if you can call what I did "playing" softball. I felt like I was in a fog bank out in the field. I missed a ball down the left field line that turned into a homerun for other team. I also misplayed a high fly ball that went off the fence. I should have had enough time to get back and catch the ball, but I couldn't find the fence and turned myself around. Oh well. I did hit the ball OK. Funny how the ying and yang of hitting and fielding work. At least for me anyway. It's rare that I have both a good game in the field and a good game hitting. Usually one is better than the other and they even out.

After the game I ran some errands for Liz and went to the airport to pick up my bag. By the time I got home it was after 10 PM. I was falling asleep driving around so I had to stop and buy a Mountain Dew before I got home. I showered and got ready for bed and didn't get to sleep until almost 11 PM. I slept good until about 4:00 and then I woke up and had trouble going back to sleep.

Today has been interesting at work. I've got a whole lot of work I need to do, but I'm having trouble staying focused. One of the reasons for this blog post! I hit the wall around 3:30 and have been struggling to stay awake ever since. I'm definitely going to bed earlier than 11 PM tonight!

The end of ClubMed and the trip home so far

I finally got out of meetings around 3:30 PM yesterday. We decided to go over to this trapeze bar they have set up. If you're going to do something like swing on a trapeze and somebody asks you if you've had any alcohol, say no! I had a beer right after we got out of our meetings and before I changed clothes and headed to the trapeze. After everybody figured out you couldn't go based on my response, they all just said they hadn't had anything to drink. Oh well, no trapeze for me. I went to play basketball instead. The courts were right beside the trapeze setup.

After playing basketball for a while I was ready for a dip in the pool. The problem is the pool water is so warm that it hardly cools you off! I hung out in the pool until almost 7:00 PM. I ended up playing with some Australian kids that looked to be between 8 and 12 years old. I would throw a little football up in the air and then they would have a huge scrum trying to fight for the ball. Pretty fun! I also saw what had to be the worst mojito in the world. It had so much mint it looked like a salad in a glass. A salad sitting in a glass of swamp water.

ClubMed went all out decorating the place up last night. The dress code was "White Elegant" (whatever that means!) and they put white covers over all the chairs. The show was pretty good. Lots of dancing. They had a big runway setup by the bar and the chefs got to parade up the runway with everybody cheering for them. That was pretty cool that the club recognized the people who work so hard making all that food. I started falling asleep on a couch by the bar so I called it a night around 11:30. I went back to the room and packed.

This morning I woke up around 6:30 and talked to Liz. Then it was checkout time. To checkout, you just leave your bag outside the door. I had to go to reception and turn in my key. Then I headed to breakfast before our shuttle left at 8:15. Our bags were sitting outside the bus and you just had to point out your bag and they loaded it up. We had no problems at the airport in Kuantan. In fact, the guy at the ticket counter said that he could check our bags all the way to RDU. I let him do it so we'll see how that turns out! I'm betting my bags end up lost somewhere in Southeast Asia!

The flight to KL was uneventful. We had a long layover there so we bought access to a lounge. For $36 USD we got food, drinks (including beer), wi-fi, and a massage. It was worth it for a 6 hour layover! I ended up working on a prototype and whitepaper I have to have complete by Wednesday, the 23rd. By the way, if I don't ever drink another Carlsberg beer, it won't hurt my feelings. I don't know what it tastes like in Denmark, but in Malaysia, it tastes like Busch Light. But, it was free at ClubMed and this lounge, and it was the only beer they had. Even though free beer tastes better, I'm still tired of Carlsberg.

When we got to the gate in KL we found out that we had been upgraded to business class on our flight to Hong Kong! It was awesome! BusinessClass on Cathay Pacific is amazing! The seats are like little lounge chairs set up obliquely so that the chair will lay completely down. Yes, I tested it! The food was very good and I can't tell you what a luxury it was to be able to completely stretch out my legs. Had a nice glass of shiraz with my meal and some Haagen-Dazs ice cream for desert.

Now I'm sitting in the airport in Hong Kong enjoying some free wi-fi and waiting for my next flight, the long hop across the Pacific. If only I could have been upgraded to business class for that flight!

ClubMed, Day 6

I didn't get out of meetings yesterday afternoon until about 5:30. I grabbed a beer at the bar and then went back to my room and changed into my swimsuit. I hung out in the pool until 7:00 PM. I was a prune by the time I got out!

After supper, I played some pool for a couple of hours. There were 7 of us in the room here that has the pool tables and the poor air conditioning could not keep up. I can't begin to communicate how hot and humid it is over here. I thought I'd experienced humidity, but I haven't seen anything like this.

After playing pool, we went back up to the bar area. The nightly show was over and they had set up some gaming tables. There was roulette, a couple of black jack tables, and a couple of poker tables. There was no money involved. They just gave you a bunch of chips to go have fun with. I played roulette for a while, but sucked it up. After I left the roulette table, my old boss called me over to play poker with him. I ended up beating everybody at the table in the poker game. I got lucky and got some good cards. That and 60 year old drunk Australian ladies are terrible poker players!

Brian had run into a couple from Canada while playing blackjack so we hung out with them for a while. It was cool to talk to somebody from our side of the world. Not many people from the US come over here. Many times when I tell somebody where I'm from they'll say that they've never seen anybody from the US come here. The Canadian couple are on there honeymoon. They're taking a 3 week trip around Southeast Asia! I ended up staying up way too late last night. It was after 1:00 AM by the time I went to bed. We had to wait for the rain to stop to walk from the bar back to our rooms. It started pouring a little before 1:00.

So far today I've been sitting in meetings. This afternoon we're supposed to get out at 3:00 PM and have some free time. I sure hope that happens and we don't have another 2 hour breakout session like yesterday!

ClubMed

Day 1
Sunday at ClubMed was a completely free day. We didn't have anything planned and meetings didn't start until Monday. We had a late breakfast and then found a pool table! It was more expensive to play here than at Berjaya. 10 RM (~ 3.33 USD) as opposed to 3 RM (less than 1 USD). We played pool for a couple of hours until lunch and then went back to the big buffet to eat more. I'm getting spoiled (and fat) eating a buffet for each meal!

After lunch, we headed down to the beach. There are 2 beaches here. You can't go swimming in the one closest to the resort and the pool. Apparently the currents are very strong at that beach and they won't let you swim. So, you have to take a shuttle or a 10 minute walk to get to the beach where you can actually swim. The water here is very shallow for about 150 feet out and then it gets deep quick. The waves are not good for riding at all. But they do have kayaks and sailboats you can use. We went swimming for a while and then took some kayaks out. There is a buoy that marks the "boundary" you're supposed to stay in with the kayaks and we rowed out to it. It's about half a mile, maybe more, from the shore so it took a while to row out there. After all that work, we deserved a beer at the beach bar.

Sunday night we went to dinner and then there was a show at the pool we watched. Every night here at ClubMed the staff put on a show. It's usually dancing, some sort of comedy skit, an acrobatic act (trapese, ropes, etc.), and more dancing. The shows are pretty good. After the show, I went to bed to get ready for the first day of meetings on Monday.

Day 2
Meetings started at 9 AM Monday. I enjoyed another large breakfast at 8 AM. I've been eating big breakfasts every day since I have a buffet available to me! Our meetings lasted until around 3:30 PM on Monday, but I had to stay late and demo a prototype. I didn't finally get out until after 5 PM. I took a quick dip in the pool and then went to supper. After supper, we went to play basketball. This was around 9:00, but it was still unbelievably hot and humid. The rims here at the court are bent pretty bad so it's hard to make a bank shot at all. We played a game of 3 on 3 to 10 by ones and it took forever. I was pretty much drenched with sweat at the end. The people at the bar enjoying there drinks after the show looked at me like I had 3 heads when I walked up all sweaty and asked for a glass of water!

I slept good Monday night!

Day 3
Tuesday's meetings went from 9 AM to 5:30 PM. Even though we got an hour for lunch and a couple of breaks, it was a long day and I was ready to get out of there by the end! I went swimming in the pool for a while and then went to supper. I found out I could swim the length of the pool (25 meters) under water in one breath! Yes, we had a contest.

It was Arabian day at ClubMed on Tuesday so all the staff was dressed up like they were in Aladdin! We had a few drinks after supper and then went to the belly dancing show. It was pretty good! After the show they had some hookah pipes set up so I smoked out of one of those for the first time. Tuesdsay was an interesting day!

Day 4
Wednesday was a team building day. I found out on Tuesday that I was supposed to organize that! Basically, I couldn't keep my big, fat mouth shut. Somebody suggested a ping pong tournament, but then I took it to an extreme and said we should make it like a decathalon where there were 10 events to compete in. So my boss told me to plan everything. Serves me right, huh?

We were under some time constraints (other people had meetings in the afternoon) so I ran our event from 9 AM to noon. We had a ping pong tournament to start things off. We had 16 participants so I just ran a standard bracket. At the end, Chun Siong who is the director of the Malaysian staff (and the CTO at SchoolDude) won the tournament. He was very good at ping pong. He held the paddle in a weird backhand way that took a while to get used to. I played him in the second round and he beat me 21-11.

Then we moved to the archery range and had an archery contest. I ran into the guy who runs the range (Nic from South Africa) Tuesday at lunch and then after the belly dancing show at the hookah pipes. He hooked me up with a "crazy archery" tournament. We paired up into teams of 2. For the first shot, the shooter stood on one leg and his partner held the other. The shooter shot 3 arrows into a target and then we calculated the number of points they hit. The other person then became the shooter and stood on one leg. For the second shot, you had to sit on the ground and shoot at the target. For the third shot, you had to spread your legs wide and then squat down until you're thighs were parallel to the ground. It was pretty fun!

For the third event, we had a free throw shooting contest. The plan was for everybody to shoot 10 free throws and whoever made the most would win. In case of a tie, all those that tied would shoot 10 more until there was a clear winner. Everybody practiced for a while, but nobody would step to the line to start the contest. I went ahead and stepped up to the line and hit 10 for 10. I'm not the greatest free throw shooter in the world so I will say that the line was only about 10 feet away instead of the normal 15 and the rim was lower than normal because it was bent. My 10 for 10 ended up standing and I won.

After free throws, the CEO wanted to play some "lazy" pickup games. Well, those lazy pickup games turned into full scale wars in the blazing noon day sun. There was a lot of hacking and fouling as people got tired. Horatiu, the team leader from Romania, got black eye when the CEO accidentally hit him with an elbow!

Wednesday afternoon we were free to do anything we wanted. I went back down to the beach and went kayaking. A group of 5 of us rowed out to the buoy again. Around 4 PM, they had a grill on the beach and cooked up some hot dogs and beef and chicken satay. It was tasty!

I came back up to the pool around 5:30 and hung out there for a while. We did some racing and then played "cup" games. We took empty cups and would put them on the bottom of the pool and let them go. The person's cup that came up first would win! It's amazing the games you can come up with.

The show on Wednesday night was right beside the bar. After supper we had a few drinks and watched the show. Then it was karoke time! There were some good and bad singers last night in a lot of different languages. I heard a lot of Japanese karoke last night! That was probably the language that was sung the most.

Day 5
Thursday morning at 9 AM, it was back to meetings. I had to give a presentation Thursday morning. The presentation went well and it was short enough that we got out for lunch a little after 11 AM. I went to play pool for a while before lunch.

After lunch it was more meetings and they're still going on now. I better start paying attention again to the meetings because we're getting ready to move to a breakout session where I'll have to participate. I just wanted to finally get out of some of what's been happening at ClubMed.

9/11 and 9/12

The dinner cruise on Thursday night was OK. We got rained on for about 30 minutes in the beginning but then things cleared up. By the time we were on the way back into port the sky had cleared up enough that you could see the stars. And there were a lot of them! We had some grilled beef, chicken, fish, and shrimp on the boat. Food was pretty good, but nothing to write home about.

Friday was the last day of classes. We had a keynote in the morning and then a team building exercise until about 2:00. After that, we were free until a social hour at 6:00. I went to the pool and the beach (and I wore sunscreen Liz!) and had a good time. I even took a nice little nap on the beach at one point. The social event at 6:00 included heavy appetizers, cocktails, and beer. It was a good time! We got to hang out with the KL crowd after a little social lubricant and it was like a whole new world. I think we've made some breakthroughs in terms of relationships and communication this week and I hope they carry through after we leave Malaysia.

After the social event we found a place at the resort that had a pool table. How in the world I was there a week and never found the pool table is beyond me. I had a great time playing some pool and drinking some Guinness! Yes, something other than Carlsberg!

Today has been a travel day. Our shuttle was leaving Berjaya at 2 PM to take us to the airport. Before we took the shuttle, we rode a cable car to the top of the mountain at Langkawi. It was 710 meters to the top, so that puts it at roughly 2,200 feet. The view from up there was amazing! We were lucky because it rained right before we went up and the sky was clear by the time we got up there.

The flights were all right today. Everybody made it safe and sound to ClubMed so far, although a couple are still coming in later tonight. The resort is very nice, at least from what I've seen so far. The place is all inclusive and the food is very good so far. I don't think I've ever seen a bigger and more diverse buffet than the restaurant here at ClubMed Cherating.

Off to take a shower so I feel less grungy.