Colleagues from Japan

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We had two colleagues from Japan join my team for two weeks. It was a great expereince to share cultures, workflows and real work expereince for comparison between the US and Japan. We did lot of activitys outside of work and had some fun. Angie joined for on the weekend activities. It will be a very memorable time for all involved.
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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 only 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 passport that was well over a centimeter thick, lots and lots of extra pages.

We are about to head out on this year's Christmas adventure, the Greater and Lesser Antilles. Dominican Republic, Dominica and Antigua and Barbuda. It is a geographical tougue twister. They are three seperate countries all with other similar geographic locations or closely related spelling and/or pronunciation. We are hopeful that the cruise ships won't dampen our experience. My research has indicated that there will be approximately 7000 cruise passengers on two of the islands when we are there.

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