And You May Ask Yourself...Well, How Did I Get Here?

It was one of those moments that life brings you sometimes. I'm sitting in a German beer hall in Hanoi with a group of visiting Japanese CEOs, eating fried chicken, potato salad, and fried corn kernels with chopsticks, washing it all down with lots of good Munich beer.

Well, how did I get there?

I was at VietSoftware, in the CEO's office, waiting for a conference call with our banking systems partner in Singapore, and the call got postponed for a couple hours. The CEO said that he had to have lunch with a delegation of CEOs from Japan, customers of VSII. He asked me to join them. There's a great beer hall (a branch of an actual Munich brewery) practically next door to VSII, and the Japanese, having sampled the delicious beer previously, wanted to go back. Needless to say, so did I.

Some of the Japanese spoke a little English, so we were able to communicate a bit. Mostly gulping beer and saying: "Good!" with exaggerated grins. They were impressed that I could pick up the corn kernels with the ohashi. None of us spoke Vietnamese, but our hosts spoke both Japanese and English. Several of the VSII people had been educated in various Russian technical institutes, so at the end of the meal, they ordered a plate of what looked like shoestring potatoes, but turned out to be a very smoky, salty Russian cheese. Very tasty.

On days like this I can only marvel at how my life has led to this, and I remember how glad I am that we're having this excellent, difficult, surreal adventure.

P.