Day 2

We had a long day today. First of all, I didn't go to the gym. Sleep was more important to me. Then we gathered at 7:30am to get on the bus to the Microsoft campus. We had our breakfast there, and the conference started at 8:30am. On the whole, I think the speeches were too general. They were more for alliance partners who didn't know the operation of Microsoft. As a LAR, I already know about most of the engagement model of Microsoft. I was expecting more about things like market share, go to market strategies of each solution, competition, pitches, etc. I hope the coming sessions are more useful.

Jet lag/lunch coma/plain tiredness kicked in hard at around 2pm. I had such a hard time keeping myself awake. Even IM'ing with friends didn't help me stay concious. We went to the Microsoft store during lunch. The store was pretty neat. There were selling stuff like Vista, Office, mouse, keyboard, Xbox, and other souvenir at staff price. It was a good deal but I wasn't very interested so I didn't get anything.

We had a boat trip on the Seattle Harbour to arrive at some island (I later found out it's actually a peninsula that could be accessed by cars). The boat trip was very nice. The weather was gorgeous. I met more people this evening. People are pretty friendly. I had a lot of fun. It seems a lot easier to meet people on this trip than my other such networking events in HK. I wonder if I'm really more adapted to the North American type of conversations. I'm always uninterested in the conversations of the HKers and have a hard time keeping a conversation going. There were a lot of stars. I saw the Big Dipper, Cassiopoeia, and the North Star. Orion wasn't in sight yet. The ride back to the Harbour seemed long but the chats were interesting.

We finally got back to the hotel at 00:30. It was a long day. And we have to meet again at 7:30am tomorrow morning. Ahhhh... Logged in to find that my boss has left the whole team some emails, expecting us (yes, me included) to hand in our business plans and stuff. I suppose he's expecting me to check my email and do work as well. Man, my typical day here is a lot longer than my regular day in HK. And I'm still expected to do more work at this time of the day?! Forget it... Not tonight!

I'm really rushing to go to bed... My writing tonight is horrible but I'll let it be. I'm not even spending time to play with my new, free bluetooth headset and my Microsoft eStore login. Anyways... G'nite!