I’m back in the U.S.A. after a short trip to Taiwan. I visited Taiwan for the first time in 2000 and have been back more than a half dozen times. My dad talked of Taiwan often, since he visited it several times when he was in the Navy but he referred to it by its Portugese name, Formosa, which means ‘beautiful island’. I mentioned Taiwan in another blog a few times when I was there in January/February of this year.

Many of HP’s technology partners are based in Taiwan and so there are ample opportunities to travel there to meet with them. Lately, I’ve been traveling to discuss HP’s LightScribe technology with various optical drive partners. The Taiwanese people are hard working, friendly, and very gracious hosts. My hosts are often women professionals, and Taiwan is ahead of the U.S. in recognizing the value that women bring to the workplace, promoting them into customer-facing jobs with a lot of responsibility. They are certainly much farther ahead in placing women in these jobs than countries such as Japan, where the only time I saw women in meetings was when it was time for them to serve the tea. 🙁

The first time I was in Taipei, Terri was also traveling in Asia and our stays in the capital of Taiwan coincided. Her trip was for 3 weeks through 4 Asian countries, so it was quite a coincidence to run into her in Taiwan and we were able to share a hotel room which was nice because we hadn’t seen each other in a few weeks by that time. The last time Terri visited Taiwan, she talked about beautiful women in glass booths selling gum. I’d had never noticed these girls or their booths. After she had piqued my interest about them, I began to look around and sure enough it seemed that they were everywhere, at least a few on each city block with the tell-tale neon lights to help you locate them. They sell gum that is made with an extract of the betel nut. The truckers like the gum and are good customers of the betel nut girls. I did a little research on the betel nut and found that people chew it for stress reduction, feelings of well-being, and heightened awareness. It contains three major alkaloids: arecoline, pilocarpine, and muscarine. I recall that in James Mitchner’s Pulitzer Award winning book, Tales of the South Pacific, he frequently mentioned the chewing of the betel nut by natives of the south pacific islands. He made it sound rather unappealing, like chewing tobacco, but I suppose if you can put it in gum form, maybe it makes it socially more acceptable. I didn’t get a chance to stop and buy any of it, but next time I may. It appears to be in the same league as caffiene as far as its addictiveness. I’ll just have to remember not to take it to Singapore with me, where chewing gum is still illegal. 🙂

I was in Pennsylvania last week for my nephew James’ confirmation. I had the honor of being his sponsor. I’m sure if they gave out awards for the farthest traveled, I would have won hands down. It was a short trip, just a few days which we spent mostly with Terri’s sisters. I did get to go flying with my friend John. We rented a plane from the Forty Fort aiport and flew all over the back mountain and as far north as Towanda where we landed and then followed the Susquehanna river back down to Tunkhannock. I got some nice pictures of the Nicholson Bridge, but forgot my camera at Terri’s sister’s, so I’ll have to wait until she mails it back to me before I can post any of them. The Nicholson Bridge, built from 1912-1915 was the largest concrete bridge in the world at the time of its completion and is still in use today.

Bishop James Timlin performed the confirmation cermony and he was a very engaging and charasmatic speaker. I was surprised to see him there because he officially retired in 2003 at age 75 but there he was, in a role it seemed he was born to play. If you were to ask a Hollywood director to cast an Irish Catholic Bishop, he’d have a hard time coming up with one who’d fit the part better than James C. Timlin. One thing that sets Timlin apart from other Catholic Bishops is that he has been a pilot for over 45 years and flies his own Beech Debonair. I remember reading about this a while ago and because of my fascination with all things that fly, I couldn’t help being impressed. Even growing up it seemed that the Catholic priests had some pretty nice pads and cars, despite that vow of poverty…or maybe that was for nuns :-).

It’s hard to believe that it was getting into the 50’s and 60’s for the past few weeks and today we’re getting snow. Even our cat’s pet squirrel is hiding in his nest, trying to keep warm. His sunflower seed feeder is covered with snow. We got about 4 inches last night, but the streets and sidewalks were still warm enough that I don’t think we’ll need to be shoveling any of it today. They are calling for several more days of cold weather though, before it gets back up into the 50’s. This is pretty typical for springtime Colorado. One day you’ll be walking around in short sleeves and the next day you could have blizzard conditions.

It was 22 years ago that I left home, my Penn State engineering degree in hand, to drive across the country and take my first job at HP in Fort Collins, CO. The trip started off easily enough, stopping in Columbus, OH the first night to visit a friend. The next day after a late start, I got as far as Kansas City. On the third day, I left Kansas City and noticed after about an hour that my arm was getting tired from holding the car on the road due to a persistent 30 mph crosswind. The temperature began dropping and it started to snow. Soon, the roads were getting very slippery and I began to see tractor trailers pulling over to put chains on their tires. I decided to pull into Colby, KS and see if I could get a hotel room. It’s a good thing I did, because they had closed I-70 at the Colorado border. I had to wait out the storm for 2 days in the little town of Colby, experiencing my first taste of how fast the weather can change out here in the west.

In some ways, it feels like an eternity since that trip across the country and in other ways, it seems like just yesterday. In the meantime, I’ve worked at all three HP facilities in Northern Colorado, and now I’m back at the place where I started in Fort Collins. HP’s Greeley Division shut its doors in 2002 and the property has been sitting idle ever since. The reason we bought our house in Greeley was so we’d avoid a long commute ;-). My commute was so short I could ride on a bicycle when the weather was nice.

For a period of 7 years we left Colorado and lived in Pennsylvania, but after being away for that time, we missed Colorado and decided to return. Things were growing here and opportunities abounded. Another 10 years have passed and the economy still seems pretty strong here if new construction is any indication, but the high tech economy is still flagging and just hanging on to a job is a challenge.

But I’m sure things will change. They always do so it’s best not to dwell on the negative. In fact, the sun is now starting to shine, I see patches of blue sky, and Mr. Squirrel has emerged from his nest to see what goodies lie beneath that pile of snow.