Larry and Joanna currently live in New Hampshire

Engineer/Consultant Electronic Systems

Work Work Work

Well, my work routinely takes me to: China, Malaysia, Singapore, Brazil, Mexico, Scotland and France. I’ve racked up around 150,000 airline miles so far this year and will probably end the year with around 220,000 or so.

Last week I was in the Amazon region of Brazil. We have three facilities in that country, with one in Manaus near the headwaters of the Amazon where the Rio Negro and Solimões  rivers meet. This is the regionally famous “confluence” where the dark waters of the Rio Negro run alongside the chocolate colored water from the Solimões for almost 3 miles before they mix and blend into the Amazon. The river at this point is about two miles wide. (You should look at Manaus on Google maps to see the satellite view of this unique area, it’s pretty neat.)

A couple of weeks before that I was at the Paris Air Show. This is the Boeing 787 that flew in during the show, arriving early on a very wet morning. (The universal weather rule for the Paris Air Show is that it will either be hot or raining, and occasionally it will be hot AND raining!) We have an exhibit at the show every two years and, being a plane nut, it’s always a lot of fun to be there.

This is the American Ambassador’s residence in Paris. He always hosts a reception for American business folks who come over for the Air Show. I had to wander way back on the beautiful back lawn to get the whole place in the picture. (Your tax dollars at work! J )

In both January and April this year I was in Shanghai at our facility. This is a picture from my hotel room of Shanghai during January’s three day snowstorm.

This is a picture from the tallest building (Shanghai World Financial Center – SWFC) in Shanghai that I took last year. The smog in Shanghai is HORRIBLE and it is frequently much, much worse than what you see here.

This is a picture of the SWFC as it was being built (2007) which I took from the Oriental Pearl (the odd shaped tower with the ball-shaped structures above). The SWFC is called the “bottle opener” as the top has a very unusual open design.

One of the things I like best about Asia is the fresh architecture that you see in their buildings. The below shot is from Hong Kong this last February.

This is the Singapore skyline from their HUGE Ferris wheel, the Singapore Flyer, also on the February trip. Singapore is my favorite Asian destination because you can speak English, the folks are extremely friendly and all the food (even that from street vendors) is safe to eat. As a colleague once put it, it’s Asia Light. (If only it weren’t so far away, the flight I take is 18 hours, 45 minutes non-stop from Newark to Singapore!)

Note from Larry: 9/2007 - Here's a couple of pics of the bikes the day they were delivered at our house. (And, we do wear helmets when we go anywhere off our street.)



born to be wild!