1/26/2008

stepping out...

My first international trip. Mumbai to SFO, with a 5 hour stopover at Taipei (island territory of Taiwan).
Taipei airport: any comparison with Mumbai's Intntl Airport leaves our desi airport's reputation in tatters.
Clean! (i saw at least 3 batches of housekeeping personnel in different parts, working away)
Fully carpetted walkway, so long it takes close to an hour to walk end to end. there are conveyor belts too. and of course a monorail.

Amazing shopping: liquor, chocolates, delicacies, electronics (laptops, digicams), just about anything you could want actually. except cars i think.

Separate seating areas before every boarding gate (plane bay), lined all along its looong corridor. Orchid garden, prayer room, cultural heritage, poof...

Apart from the airport, couldn't help noticing,... I had no idea Chinese girls were so pretty.
From the air-hostesses in EVA Air, to the rather fashionable lassies sashaying along the corridors. The cute thing about women at Taipei airport was this apparent preference for boots and fur-lined coats, seemed to be 'the in-thing'. Like an MTV affliction! I figure they must have trend-setting veejays on their music channels promoting the doll'-ed up look :)

snaps at flickr (airport only, i was too busy gaping at the lassies to snap them, hehe).

Silicon Valley Jokes

extracted from 'Silicon Valley Handbook' by Martin Cheek, published by Moon Travel Handbooks:

Here's one about Bill Gates and the prostitute. At the end, she tells him, now I know why they call it 'Microsoft'. :))


Oracle folks: (context : LE's fabled arrogance) :
What's the difference between Larry Ellison and God?
* God doesn't think he's Larry Ellison.... :))


and the last, one, god, this brought to mind the, err... alleged preferences of some folks in a certain region (don't think it was the same one either), as alleged by a friend! oh. how I laughed...
This has to do with April Fool's pranks (mind the prank is apparently a true story, though I'm just putting 2 n 2 together about the context):

at Hewlett-packard, once, visitors from HP's Boise facility were greeted at Palo Alto HQ by a live sheep wearing sexy lingerie and black stockings -- local employees had rented the bewildered animal, they said, in an effort to make the Boise employees "feel at home".

ahahahhhaaah...