Thursday, January 18, 2007

The Pros and Cons of Travelling

I just got back from a whirlwind couple of days in Philadelphia meeting with one of our parent companies and two of the other software joint ventures. I always view travelling on business as a dichotomy of good and bad. I thought I'd outline some of the specific good and bad things from this trip:

Good

  • face to face contact with partners results in better understanding of each others problems and concerns
  • putting a face to a name you've heard before, or spoken with, or emailed back and forth adds a dimension to the relationship
  • all food and drink will be reimbursed (especially good when travelling with my boss who picks up the expensive meals)
  • finding a pretty good jazz club in Philly that had two great bands on consecutive nights (a tuesday and wednesday, no less)
  • no screaming kids in the middle of the night in a hotel
  • meeting the bouncer in the aforementioned club and realizing what a great guy he was - Philly truly is the city of brotherly love (also - see below)
Bad
  • Leaving the family is stressful on both me and my wife
  • A hotel that is under construction is not much fun - the power to the alarm clock went out both nights
  • The TSA and the stupid 'enhanced searches' I always seem to receive
  • Canadian Immigration screw-ups....it's still not resolved so I got hassled getting back in to my own country
  • Mesaba Airlines operates the NWA airlink between London and Detroit - they have the worst planes I've ever been on. The seats are really uncomfortable
  • Rushing to get a conneting flight when the first flight is late
  • Sitting on the runway while your plane is de-iced
  • Walking to the hotel and seeing a large homeless man masturbating while lying on the sidewalk - I said it was the city of Brotherly Love.

2 comments:

Tammy said...

yikes to the last one!

Kimota94 aka Matt aka AgileMan said...

Would it be reasonable to assume you were thinking of a certain Roger Waters album from the 80s when you chose the title for this particular entry? Keeping, albeit loosely, with the Floyd theme, that is...