Lopez Family blog

It seems I only blog when I’m away from home. That’s probably due to not having any time to do so when I’m home. In any case this time I’m in Mexico… Mexico City to be exact. We got here on Monday evening and went straight to the hotel. On the ride to the hotel I had more than enough time to get to know the cab driver. I found out that there are about 20 million people living in the Mexico City metro area. Now that I think about it, that was the only interesting fact that came out of our converstaion. Not a very good return if you think that I spent about one hour talking to this guy. In any case we made it to the hotel which was in a very posh part of town. You know when people think of Mexico they usually think of barefoot kids with a punctured soccer ball playing on a dirt road (well that’s how they show it on TV anyway). I’m sure that still exists but the area we were in was rather nice, there were mostly new buildings with very cool architecture. Another thing I noticed was that the polution didn’t seem to do much to me. I didn’t really notice it and haven’t felt any of the symptoms that people say they experience. The work bit was, well, work. The most exciting part were the cab rides to the office because both days the driver was convinced we wanted to go somewhere other than were we wanted to be. I don’t know how it would have worked out if I hadn’t been able to speak Spanish. Because of work scheduling I get to spend the weekend in Mexico before heading out to San Francisco to see another client. At this point you’re probably feeling really bad for me I’m sure. As exciting as Mexico City seems to be, I’m escaping to a town called Queretaro. I’ll meet up with some friends and see what happens. I can’t remember the last time I had a weekend where I could just wing it. Should be fun! 

I haven’t had to traveled for a while which has been nice. I’ve been able to enjoy coming home in the evenings to play with Natalia and when we’re lucky (i.e. Natalia sleeps more than half an hour in her crib), have some quality time with Lisa.

This time I’m in Dallas, TX doing a new type of gig in which we not only do a performance assessment of the customer’s website but we also do a data analysis workshop so the customer can see how we went about doing the assessment and can in theory do it for themselves in the future. There are other firsts that will/are happening during this trip. My colleague Jean and I are presenting together for the first time, this will be the first customer we do the workshop for and this is also the first time that I will be part of a performance assessment without Stephen. Exciting times.

This, however, is not my first time in Texas. Texas and I go way back, I basically grew up in Texas and have many, mostly distant, memories of my time here.  Ever since I found out I was coming to Dallas a couple of weeks ago, the line ‘All my ex’s live in Texas’ from the song ‘All my ex’s live in Texas’ by George Strait has been in my head.  I’d thought nothing of it until I realized that in fact, all my ex’s DO live in Texas. Granted I never had a huge dating history but the girls/women that were a big part of my life still live here. Wife and daughter excluded.

I’ve never been one to look people up and try to find out what they’re doing and how they’re getting on with life. I’m busy enough with my own life to really give much thought to anyone I don’t talk to or see on a regular basis. This however has stirred my curiosity and I can’t for the life of me get it out of my head. So I’ve set off to find out what my ex’s are up to.

I will, perhaps wrongly so, categorize the ex’s into three types. Ex number one was the high school sweetheart. A bit of a stretch but I’ll roll with it. I do have fond memories of our time together, we both played soccer and I believe that’s how we met. We hit it off and were dating not long after we met. We lasted a good while together and it wasn’t until she started hanging around with a new set of friends that we began to grow apart. Out of the three she’s the only one that I’ve actually had contact with. I believe she found me on one of those websites designed to help you find old high school friends. She’s currently married with two kids and seems to be happy with life. Good for her?

Ex number two was a girl I always wanted to date but she was way too cool for me. This is the movie type story where the geeky guy gets the girl. It wasn’t until long after high school that I ran into her at a party and we hit it off. She actually remembered me and said she’d thought I was alright back then. One thing led to another and we did long distance dating for a while. Unfortunately unlike in the movies it doesn’t all end in happiness (or maybe it does if you consider that I would not have met my wife, had this relationship not ended). She turned out to be nothing like I expected and I became disillusioned with her and where things were going. This I must admit broke my heart. As far as I know she’s nowhere to be found now days but I must admit I didn’t try very hard.

Ex number three was not really an ex at all. She was more like a mega crush who of course like all proper crushes never amounted to more than a really good friendship. This was another stereotypical situation where girl is too cool for geek. So there’s really not much to say about her. I think she’s married and that’s pretty much the extent of what I know of her.

The real treat of this trip isn’t the fact that we walked to and from Chicago O’hare terminal C to terminal B several times but rather getting to know my coworker Jean. You never really know someone until you’ve traveled with them and it turns out that she’s kind of cool and even thou there’s an age difference we’re pretty similar people.

So there you go, I went to Texas thinking about ex’s and came back with a friend.

Over the past few months the amount of travel I’ve had to do has gone up a bit and the novelty has begun to wear off. So when I was made aware that I might be traveling at the end of January I wasn’t all that excited about it until I was told the client was in London. I felt like a kid again, I would get to go to London for a week with all expenses paid.

The first thing I did was to book my flight on Virgin Atlantic, I’ve found their service to be in general of better quality than that of any US airline. You get an amenity kit, wide choice of meals which include wine or beer, and on-demand in-seat entertainment systems. Oh and I almost forgot, there is a bar/lounge area on the plane.

One thing I found interesting was the pre-flight video in which a Virgin Atlantic pilot goes over every detail of the flight that’s about to take place. The video focuses mainly on the noises you might hear, what they are and why you needn’t worry about them. It made me sad to think that people are so paranoid now days that these types of videos need to exist. Nevertheless, with a row to myself and a large collection of Top Gear episodes on my computer I was off to England.

I had arranged to meet up with a friend on Saturday morning at the hotel after I’d had a shower an a change of clothes. We headed to the touristy part of town to walk around and catch up while having a look at the shops. My tolerance for such a place lasted about as long as it took to walk from Piccadilly Circus to Oxford Circus. So we wandered off heading west and eventually found a nice little pub in a quiet neighborhood. Having quenched our thirst with a few pints we headed off again with no particular direction. Eventually we phoned up some friends and ended up at another pub near Leicester square. My night finally ended at the hotel bar where I had a really bad steak sandwich and of a really good pint of Murphy’s.

Sunday morning, hangover and all, I headed off to Oxford to meet up with Daniel again, walk around and pretty much do what we had done the previous day, only in a different locale. But it wasn’t all pubs and fish and chips, this time we made it into Christ Church and I go to see the dining hall where they filmed the Harry Potter movies.

I had to meet coworkers to prep for Monday’s meetings so I headed off back to London relatively early. However with traffic and the fact that I got lost on the tube and getting out of the tube station, I ended up arriving an hour late. At that time we decided there was only time to find food and call it a night.

The next three days weren’t nearly as exciting, we spent all day in an office building, much like I do when here. In the evenings we explored our surrounding area and managed to find some good food and even a pub or two. Wednesday night we were done with our work and had time to stay out a bit later so a friend took us to Brick Lane, London’s little India. It was interesting to watch people up and down the street try to give us the best deal in order for us to eat at their restaurant. We ended up deciding on a place that offered us a free beer and appetizers. We could have had a better deal a couple of doors down since they were offering us a free bottle of wine and 25% off our meal. But we figured that if they had to try that hard to get us in the door, we probably didn’t want to eat there. Our meal was pretty good but it was the people I was with that made the evening rather enjoyable.

Thursday morning I had a lazy start to the day before heading off to the airport where I was fascinated by the fact that the first thing you see after getting through security is what seemed like a mile of duty free shops. The flight back was long but uneventful. I managed to sleep for a couple of hours, I had a row of four seats to myself, and I even managed to get some work done.

It was a nice trip but I’m glad to be back home with the family.