Happy new year from AEC workgroup, Developer Technical Services team. I hope you all had a good rest over the holidays. (Personally, I certainly did. After rather hectic traveling and lots of talking, I lost my voice toward the end of the trip and I needed to put myself in the recovery mode.)
Last two months had been quite busy with Developer Days tours. Traveling to the cities near equator and in southern hemisphere in November was enjoyable in terms of weather. My second stretch to Korea and Japan in December, on the other hand, turned out to be another memorable experience with a little different kind of reasons; it made me re-think of the power of mother nature. On the day to fly from Seoul to Tokyo, snow started to fall. Our flight was delayed by five hours due to the snow. I ended up being stuck in the airplane for the whole time.
While we were in Tokyo, another relatively big earth quake (magnitude 7.3, I hear) hit Touhoku area and we felt a big, long shake while sitting in Autodesk Tokyo office. The Tokyo office is in a high-rise building built on a man-made island off the Tokyo bay. We were on the 24th floor. The duration felt like 10 min, although some said 5 min. I could hear the building making some noise. It was quite scary even for me who used to live in Tokyo.
What's interesting to me at that time is the role of internet and mobile devices in the situation like this. When the quake is coming, people gets notification to their mobile devices. My colleagues around me all seems to get a message to their phone. (I had a my phone roaming, but it did not help.) One of my colleague was on bullet train when the quake hit. He said he got the notification to his phone. So he knew what is going to happen next, he said. My sister, who is further away from epicenter, also sent me a text to make sure I was okay and not in a trouble or anything. There was a sequence of checking all the employees' safety shortly after that, including our director and myself who were visitors on that day.
I'm now back in Manchester, admiring beautiful icicles and snows from the windows - gentle side of mother nature.
Wishing you peace and happiness in 2013.
January 1st, 2013. Manchester, New Hampshire, U.S.