Sojourner - Traveling with the “Canman”

  View from hotel room at Milan Malpensa Airport, Italy Back to Italy in December to attempt to complete flying on the last F-35 jet of the year, despite the snowy, foggy weather and resurgence of COVID in Europe.  This deployment was different than others during this COVID year. We stayed sequestered in our Milan Malpensa airport hotel rooms unless at work. All restaurants were closed except for takeout.  The stay was punctuated only with weekend roundtrip commercial flights to Amsterdam and back to comply with Italy's 120 hour stay limit. Our team surprisingly got it done! But "the thrill" is missing without the opportunity to enjoy the la vita bella di Italia.  One bright spot was meeting a brilliant young waiter while dining at the Schiphol Airport Marriot hotel in Amsterdam.  He saw me working on my Stanford Machine Learning homework while waiting for my meal and amazingly recognized the Coursera content as he is planning to take the same course (for fun)....

Two months in Nagoya, Japan. Long enough to transition from warm monsoon days to crisp autumn days.  Its a wonderful season to visit Nagoya a bustling growing metroplex but still intimate enough to be able to run into friends and play guitar at a club and bike around the city.  After a 9 month COVID induced hiatus we are finally back-albeit with special invitation from the Japanese government that restricts our movement and places we can frequent (no bar hopping).  Masks have always been the norm here, so nothing looks particularly unique in that regard. All around the city construction is happening with new skyscrapers throughout.   It's great to experience the unique foods of Nagoya again (French, Thai, Indian, Japanese, and best ribs and apple crisp in the world (Weekend BBQ).  My favorite?  Thai softshell crab peppered and covered in garlic at Pei Rei (see first pic in link above).  Restaurants have reopened but the clientele is still sparse....

29th floor Looking at Tokyo Tower and Covid Screening at Narita Airport On last day of a 14 day quarantine on the 29th floor of a nice very silent Tokyo hotel.  The odyssey starts in Dallas on an empty jumbo jet.  Again less than 15 passengers! And when you land at Narita, its a 2 hours COVID testing screening process right at the airport before taking a shuttle directly to quarantine.   This means one does not come out of one's room, food is placed outside the door and the only person one sees is a temperature taker twice a day.  So how did I feel going in?  Excited to have some "me time"!  I brought my guitar, books, and a Wi-Fi speaker. Time to catch up with my Artificial Intelligence Machine Learning course (of which I'm still only halfway through after 6 months), time to read and reflect (including many books I have started, Churchill's Trials, The 5th Discipline, The Hero with a Thousand Faces, The Name of the Wind).  Time to reach out to al...

I was giving my children some long term investment advice, but caveated it with my growing unease that it could be moot.. I am reading a book my son gave me titled, "Churchill's Trials" In the book, I learned Winston Churchill nearly 100 years ago wrote some things, that I believe may unfortunately be quite prescient. In his 1924 essay, “Shall We Commit Suicide?” Churchill states, “the story of the human race is war. Except for brief and precarious interludes, there has never been peace in the world... From his propensity to slaughter man has been saved so far only by his incompetence"...As the years passed, Churchill hoped science might be an antidote that elevated mankind, over time lost that hope.” Churchill over many decades observed technical superiority rather than virtue or social virtue was the determinator of which society ultimately triumphed in war and that science could also lead to moral degeneration. In 1931 Churchill wrote, “Science and organi...

 Flying an empty jumbo Boeing 787 airliners to the Amsterdam was a reminder that COVID is still weighing heavily on the world's economy.  What does it mean when only 15 of the 300 seats are filled?  Certainly great service, but a day of reckoning is coming.  For some of the airline staff unfortunately sooner than later... Because Italy will only let us stay for 5 days until we satisfy a 14 day quarantine, we must spend the weekends in Amsterdam.  Darn the bad luck :)  The food and people don't disappoint.  The hotel's are virtually empty, but the staff is so appreciative.  My favorite new bartender Andrea taught be all the tricks for making a marvelous cucumber muddled gin cocktail (e.g. peel the cucumber and use an egg white) and I discovered a delectable new citrus liquor from Spain '43'! Ah, but I digress, not far from Amsterdam's Schiphol's airport is a marvelous French restaurant,  Bij Qunis .  It occupies what for a 100 years was t...