Do you remember your first cell phone call? Or perhaps the first time you used a wireless remote for the VCR- yeah there was a time when a long snake like cord tethered itself to a brick of a remote to ensure that the Play button on the remote really did launched the latest movie you had on your VHS tape. Well, I am going to mark Saturday Aug 15 (7:17 EST to be precise) as THE moment when I first used wireless Internet … on a plane flying X thousand feet above ground, somewhere over the Midwest. Wow! This must have been how Edison felt when he saw the first flicker come alive … only that I obviously did not invent this thing called GoGo on American Airlines … but you get the idea. So to capture this moment and record this excitement for posterity, here is a blog entry at 7:22 p.m. EST … I figured let the moment linger before it soon becomes as passe as my wireless remote control. Way to go American … GoGo rocks
PS: And Thank you American for a free passcode to try this ‘new thing’ out … I dont think $9.95 per trip is worth it but that’s a story for another day. Right now, its time to surf … 30,000 feet above the sea!
I felt a vague sense of familiarity – almost like the feeling you get when you meet a distant cousin of yours who you stay in touch with gutso at random intervals only to find that when you actually meet that person face-to-face you don’t have much to say!
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80 degrees in the sun. 70′ish perhaps in the shade. 5 days with some of your best friends on an island paradise. If this is not an ideal post-finals, winter time getaway I dont know what is. We just returned from sunny San Juan where 13 Kellogg MBA students and 1 MBA spouse descended on the Carribean paradise. Over 4 nights and 5 days we ATV’d on a dust beaten track through the rainforest, swam in a tropical river, had our faces painted like the ancient Native Indians, kayaked into the bio-luminscent bay, rapelled down a precarious looking canyon, zip-lined down a couple hundred feet, hiked up a dense forest, jumped scores of feet off crazy ledges into a waterfall-fed pool and even swam headlong into a second raging waterfall.

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The latest Newsweek article on Dubai brings forth some interesting information, and a personal sense of sadness in the grains of truth in the article: http://www.newsweek.com/id/172641
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Travelers who fly Jet Airways in India (not to be confused with Jet Blue here in the US) enjoy what I think is a throwback to the glory days of aviation. Warm face towels as the engines revv up, cold drinks served on a platter as we taxi out of the gate, followed by candy in a basket just in time to save our ears from popping. Given the current cost structures for airlines, will we ever see a return to the glory days of aviation?
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Baymont Inn is a small, non descript hotel / motel that one can easily miss if you drive a couple miles faster than the posted speed limit. The building has nothing special about it, their neighbors include a Subway shop and an mini-industrial complex that could be straight out of rust-belt USA.
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