i've been on this project in geneva for about a month. totally a different airline than the others i've been at. for one, i think they have a rule that you have to be attractive and young to work here. and it's an airline with maybe 20 people in the office. and everyone speaks like four languages. seriously, multilingual-ism is so impressive. seriously.

it's a tiny airline with three planes that serves high-end destinations like st tropez, ibiza, olbia, etc. apparently kofi annan is a frequent flier. but they do so many things manually and ad-hoc and we're trying to bring them up to industry standard. for the first time since i've started working, i actually felt like i had learned a few things from my other projects and that i could see what this airline was missing and needed.

but in my mind, i always wonder when i'll ever feel like more than just a student who's still tagging along and asking "what's this? what's that?"

me on the runway in lugano with one of our codeshare partner's turboprops


we took a car around the country this weekend and went to interlaken. absolutely stunning.

i've been totally convinced by ame and ap that colombia is a beautiful country with lots to offer, and i'm stoked to finally be going after talking about it for so long. but it really is interesting that the first comments and reactions people give me upon hearing "medellin" is "you got a new side job, jenn?" i remember ap used to get so upset at people only knowing about his country from one perspective. it's weird, i guess i just totally feel like it must be safe and wonderful there now because the only people i know are ame and ap and they're so cool. so i guess i'll get to finally see for myself. i hope i have time to go flying with ap. bogota, here i come!

i've been to five weddings in the past three months. but my own brother's this past weekend was by far the best.

http://picasaweb.google.com/jenncw/VickyAndTaylorSWedding

so the results of my 20 days in mexico city have been tallied. loss of 10 pounds. quite scary. i haven't been at this weight since junior year in high school. i wish and wish i can get better. i really want to, so that i'm not just this weak, hopeless girl at work. i remember hearing about how patients who are under chemo don't have an appetite, and i never understood what that meant. i always think- how can you possibly not want to eat? but i actually understood for the first time the other night. i ordered toast and chicken soup, and couldn't even put it to my mouth. like somehow my body refused the food physically and emotionally. like the brain is sorta telling the hand to lift up the spoon to the mouth, but it's like some involuntary reaction where the mouth won't take it in. and then the body won't absorb any of it either and it exits the body shortly too.

i am bringing my own charmin toilet paper for my next mexico city trip.

movies that my life seem to be mirrored after recently:

lost in translation
eternal sunshine of the spotless mind
vanilla sky

Bob: What are you doing?
Charlotte: My husband's a photographer, so he's here working. I wasn't doing anything so I came along.
Bob: What do you do?
Charlotte: I'm not sure yet, actually.

Joel: Constantly talking isn't necessarily communicating.

Sofía: I think she's the saddest girl to ever to hold a martini.

i used the "out of office" assistant for the first time this week. i had such a sense of euphoria to compose that "I am out of the office without access email" line. so giddy. since taking this chunk of my limited vacation time, i have so far:
slept for 14 hours straight, went shopping on newbury street, strolled through the public garden, shopped at whole foods, attempted making indian food, had breakfast at carbury's with christine, had pho with albert, and i will be seeing cindy later today too.

our camping trip up to the white mountains was cut short because of the storm. we hiked for six hours in pouring pelting rain, and when we broke tree line on top of the ridge, there was only a blanket of grey on each side. no view at all. i thought that i would never know the feeling of warmth again as the cold rain drenched me head to toe and the wind kept whipping us. as we got back to the campsite, we found that our tent was entirely flooded and our sleeping bags wet too. so we packed up everything and drove back to boston. i was secretly happy that the tent flooded and that driving back was the only option.

i understand that being in an IT support kind of job must be really frustrating. but i wish those people had to pass a more stringent "Patience Test" before being hired. i mean, i know i'm not tech savvy, but i seriously ask very nicely for help, and i surely don't deserve the huffy "well, without me standing over your shoulder and looking at your screen, of course i don't know what you're doing wrong" or the "well, i don't know what you're doing and why you're doing that, but i've never seen that error before"

i have a strange reaction to these situations. i become nicer and nicer as the person on the other end of the line becomes more and more irate. i start explaining that it's the first time i've tried installing the software and i haven't tried logging in before, and will you please help me figure this out?--i'd reeeeally appreciate it...

in the end it gets resolved, and i merrily tell the other person- you're so wonderful! thank you so much! have a great weekend! and the other person sheepishly wishes the same to me.

kauai is what i always imagined hawaii to look like. lush green. mountains. wide expansive beaches that go on forever. coconut palm trees. powder white sand. valleys of taro crops. two lane roads with local fruit stands and seafood restaurants along the side.

we did only a short part of the kalalau trail along the na pali coast, but the views are much more spectacular from the ocean or a helicopter. i think i'm going back this weekend

norman and i went to fenton's for breakfast this morning. i think it was their first day of serving breakfast at the restaurant and we were their first customers. such a funny feeling to sit in this creamery/diner that is so often packed with people and being the only customers there.

i saw one of my berkeley professors earlier this week who said that he never forgave me for going to mit for grad school. i bet he would he would have felt differently if he realized how bad of a grad student i really was. funny man. his office still smells the same. some combination of old books and incense and cleaning solution.

i realize that at each client i end up at, i develop a sense of loyalty to each of them. a lot of it has to do with the people i've been fortunate enough to work with. i guess there was a lot of texas hospitality at southwest, and now at aloha, there's an island culture. i remember being intimidated by these big men in maintenance and operations, and how i felt that every question i asked was stupid. but now its just big fun. they are still totally crass and make really dirty jokes around me in the ops control center.

the other night we went out for dinner, and i was saying how i never get to see my boyfriend because of this job and how he's a poor grad student and i can't expect him to fly out to hawaii to see me. randy looks pensively for a second and then he says to me- you know, i have free passes that i never use, and you can have them to fly him out here. it was the nicest thing. and he invited me and alejo to his house for a bbq and said that they would make sure to get the fresh shipment of poi from kauai off the cargo flight on friday.

and pat told us that he actually commutes to honolulu from maui every single day. the idea is kinda crazy to me, but i guess it's just a 30 minute flight. he invited us to his house on maui for a weekend and said he would take us spearfishing. don't think my vegetarian boyfriend would be up for that, but it's quite a nice gesture.

go! airlines just announced even lower fares. $59 fares roundtrip interisland. i have this bummy feeling for my new friends at aloha and how the airline will have to participate in this fare war even though they can't afford to. keeping my fingers crossed for them.

i remember last year, j9 told me about the myriad of weddings she had to go to, and i just thought it was funny. heck, i didn't know anyone who was getting married. just some acquaintances who had gotten engaged. everyone i knew was far off from it, i was convinced. and then a couple months later, my wedding invitation receival rate has increased by 300%. unbelievable. i wish people would put fun stuff on their gift registries though. i mean, i know it's super practical to put silverware and bathroom towels on the registry, but i want to buy cool stuff from rei. even if they don't hike.

Talk about a bummy day.

I bought U2 tickets earlier this week for their last show of the Vertigo Tour in Honolulu. Just found out the show is postponed because of a band member’s family member who is ill. I’m really really curious. But also bummed because I’m only here till the end of April, and they postponed 10 shows in New Zealand, Australia, Japan, and Honolulu, so there’s no way they’ll be able to reschedule for something before the end of April.

The cleaners ruined by favorite white shirt. (aren’t they supposed to clean the shirt and not dirty it?)

I need to be in Dallas for training the week after next, which blows my entire plan to be in Boston. Booo.

i was watching boston legal yesterday night and found this quote interesting

"the older you get, the more compromises you are willing to make for the possibility of love"

of course, the character who said this was like a 50 year old man, but a lot of the time i feel like i'm getting old and i always wonder if things apply to me. i starting thinking about whether i agreed or not...still haven't come to an intelligent conclusion.

what's the difference between a compromise, or actually accepting someone for who they are and looking beyond the fact?

sometimes i feel like relationships get all the more complicated when you think about them and try to apply a right and wrong to the situation.

The Queen Mary 2 is docked at the port outside our office. I’ve never been excited by seeing ships, but the sight of this one was just quite overwhelming. So humongous! It's so imposing in the small port. Looks so out of place.

http://www.honoluluadvertiser.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060301/NEWS01/603010341

What’s even more interesting is how much it can cost to be a guest on this ship. $31,000 for a six-day cruise!

last friday night, i picked up naveen at sfo and took him back to the marriott where the conference was being held. we were supposed to hang out saturday, go to the farmer's market, go for a walk along crissy field, go to tartine bakery, all these fantastic wonderful things...but his speaker rehearsal occuppied him until early evening, and the only bit of time i had with him and the gang was at dinner for greek tapas sat night.

sunday morning i flew to honolulu. worked worked worked. my room at the sheraton overlooks waikiki beach, and there are hula dancers and ukelele players till late at night. i tried to go to bed at 10, but the singing and dancing at the poolside just drove me crazy. i wanted to step out on my patio and scream. but i didn't.

tuesday night i flew back to california.

wednesday night, i took a redeye with naveen back to boston. when i picked him up at the marriott, i sank into the same chair i had sat in four nights before. i felt like i had been around the world and back.

i stayed in boston thru the weekend, just working the entire time. part of me just gets so upset and frustrated when i go there and find myself so loaded with work. the storm was magnificent.

took the first flight back to sfo this morning. back to honolulu sunday again.

google's quote of the day

Most people would rather be certain they're miserable than risk being happy.
- Robert Anthony

must have read my mind. maybe it's telling me something.

but once again, i have made my life so reliant on google. i rely on google for too much. to find me everything i need, from recipes to diagnosing why my back hurts. to keep all my emails and correspondence with people i really should just pick up the phone and call, to help me figure out what freeways to take to get from a to b. it goes on. there was an article in mit's technology review recently about this dependence on and trust we have in google. very interesting. it brought up the point about how we use gmail because of all the storage space and ease, but there's nothing preventing us from one day trying to log into gmail and finding that all our email is gone. which is actually kinda scary when you think about it.

so yeah, maybe i shouldn't take the quote of the day so seriously then.

it's not every day that herb kelleher plants a kiss on you! i was in the lobby at southwest chatting with eddie, and all of a sudden herb appears and kisses me! he says he likes to kiss and run. i guess he must have been really ecstatic about the 54 percent jump in fourth quarter profit. man, i wish i was the one who secured that fuel hedge. i could have retired by now.

every week, the project managers submit a status report of their onsite client activity and interaction we have had at the C-level (ceo, cfo, cio, cto, etc.) stan's making fun of me that he's going to put this in the status report, but that this was not the type of c-level interaction he was expecting.

by the third week onsite at the client, we're always so very restless. it's been frustrating. so much to learn, wondering if i'm even adding any value to the client, wondering if the project is going to be extended, wondering what the implications are of each business requirement, wondering if i'll get to stay in boston for more than 1.5 days this weekend before having to come back. and i really wonder how long i can sustain this lifestyle with all the uncertainty. i knew long distance would be hard, but didn't realize how erratic my travel would be... or that my erratic travel schedule would make it all the more difficult.

i'm in vancouver visiting naveen's family for christmas. it's funny how the littlest things have the biggest effect on me... they hung up a christmas stocking for me!

---from jenn li---

"The whole world's mixing. There's nothing you can do about it. Eventually, we're gonna become some sort of hybrid mix of chinese and indian. It's inevitable. They're the two largest populations in the world. So you can run from us now.. but sooner or later we're gonna hump you."