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Showing posts from January 27, 2008

Expidite the expidited

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I am headed to the passport office this AM to get a new passport. I didn't have time to do the expidited renewal after getting back from Japan. So I made an special expiditing appointment with the passport folks in Atlanta. I am glad I ony have to drive into Atlanta, not fly up to NY or Washington DC. It seems I have had to do some expiditing everytime I have renewed my passport. Passports are good for 10 years. When you get a new passport it is a time to ponder where you will be and what the passport will look like in 10 years. The pic belows shows the wear on my now cancelled passport. it was a 50 page book (the extra pages version) and 46 pages are fully used. Many countries require 3 empty pages to enter their country. So, I got full use of the larger size passport. If you need more pages, you send the passport in and they will "sew-in" more pages. The thickest passport I ever saw was at the Uzbekistan-Turkmenistan border. A truck driver I saw had a Uzbekistan passpor...
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I am back from California. It was a good trip. It was a good rest. I visited Santa Cruz where I met someone from Chenango County. The visit to the Big Basin Redwood forest was a great experience. The world is so incredibly small these days. I have some more travel coming up. I will be in Raleigh NC in a couple of weeks. I have some other travel lining up for the next couple of weeks as well.
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I am out in California for a few days. I spent most of today in Los Gatos. The California experience is just what it is. I ate at a place my friend from the ice recommended. It was excellent. People are asking me why I am learning Chinese. The reply is straightforward. The language of 4 billion Chinese could be wrong, but since there are 4 billion Chinese communicators in the world it seems best to prepare.