waiting for a full day of travel

i thought i'd do a travel log of my trip to kuala lumpur.

my flight from houston leaves for los angeles at 9:30pm; which will begin a 26 hour and 4 minute journey to the opposite side of the world.  it's 6:00pm here on a friday night, while it is 7:00am there on a saturday morning.

i've got my bags all packed; i've got two books ready to read - my goal is to have them read by the time i come back - 1 book for the trip over and 1 book for the trip back.  the first book is the savior generals - the latest from victor davis hanson.  the other book is david mccullough's 1776.  i'll (hopefully) post a book report on them when i return.  i've got one other book i need to report on - peak performers by charles garfield.

while i'm in kl, i've got a full schedule of meetings and one-on-one and all the various teams and groups ... pretty much everyone in the company that works over there.  i've been working with some of these people for years, and i'll finally get to meet them in person.

i'm staying at a really nice hotel: the mandarin oriental.

handling jet lag should be interesting.  i'll get into my hotel around 12pm sunday afternoon, but my body will feel like it's 11pm saturday night.  i've been told that when i get to the hotel, to NOT take a nap or anything like that - rather, i should start walking around.  the hotel is right by a large park and a large mall - so i was told to go walk around the mall.  i figure if i can stay awake until around 7:30pm sunday kl time, then i have a chance at beating the jet lag fairly quick.

while i'll be plenty busy with meetings all day, reading email at night as well as having evening meetings with houston people, i still plan on keeping up with my chess goals.  i will have all day saturday and sunday next week as well.  i'm behind on my 52 game quest this year, so i'll be trying to get several (at least 10) games in (30 5 time).

i'm a little leery of going outside the city for sight-seeing.  the one thing that really interests me are the batu caves and it is just north of where i'll be staying for the two weeks.

well, that's about all for now ... just dumping some thoughts for now.  next post (hopefully) will be when i get to kl.