A Rundown of the Ace Hardware Fall Market: 30 Days of Blogging, Day 11

For those who haven't been keeping up with my 30 days of daily blogging, shame on you! If you've got a few spare minutes today and any interest in reading more of my ramblings, have a look through the last few posts, there's been some good ones and some admittedly sub-par ones, but overall I'm decently satisfied with this whole shpeal thus far.

It's been a handful of days since I wrote a blog post strictly about what's going on in my own life without trying to be insightful or thought-provoking, so I'm currently going to succumb to a bit of self-indulgence and simply give a brief rundown of the last few days in my life.

So I'm now finished with day 2 of 3 of my 2nd hardware show. Needless to say, this one has been quite a bit easier, as the amount of learning required on-the-spot was substantially less. There have been a few interesting stories, meals, evenings out, and sales executed during the 2 days here, and I'm sure that tomorrow will be another day of interesting events.

Some highlights have included:

Day 1: I was speaking with a customer at the Wagner Paint booth about an order. I was asked by the Wagner representative how my Spanish was, to which I replied "bit iffy". It was at this point that I realized there was a rather short Hispanic man in the booth looking a bit sheepish. Apparently he spoke very, very little English, so I had to break out my admittedly positively brilliant (i.e. very shaky) Spanish to attempt to take an order from this man. He ended up being a pretty hilarious guy from Guatemala, and I took the entire order in Spanish (an order which, for what it's worth, amounted to several thousand dollars). I was pretty proud of myself, and needless to say the two guys from Wagner were pretty flabbergasted, as up to that point they only knew that I spoke very good Italian and very bad Mandarin Chinese. Other highlights of day 1 included meeting an absolute mad-dog from Louisiana who was wearing a bright yellow LSU shirt, and spoke as though he'd come off the show Swamp People. But seriously, the guy was an absolute hero. Also got to meet a handful of very interesting people from all over the place. Really cool stuff.

Day 2: I had a customer today from Colombia, which was pretty cool. Needless to say, he was pretty freaking surprised when I told him that I'd been there, as in the US Colombia tends to enjoy a pretty horrendous reputation. I happily told him stories of the wonderful time I had traversing the hostal system of his beautiful country while eating nothing but tailandese food, to which he responded by placing a massive order. Apparently I do well with the Latin Americans. Also spoke to an absolute hero of a buyer who came to Denver all the way from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. He was pretty pleased to hear how much I enjoyed his country, and was also quite surprised to hear a few of the places I'd gone therein. A legend of a man overall. Overall an excellent day, which was made even more excellent by dinner, which was at an awesome Thai place nearby the convention center. Got Thai Green Curry with "Thai Spiciness", which was, unsurprisingly, not nearly as spicy as it was in Thailand (which still wasn't THAT spicy). Anyway, fantastic meal washed down with the wonderful Chang Beer, the national beer of Thailand.

One of the evenings of the show was a positively shocking example of excess. My Dad and I had dinner with a rep from GE and a couple of Ace representatives at Elway's, a steakhouse in the Ritz-Carlton owned by none other than John Elway. The place was absurdly expensive, with steaks running ~$50 per steak for about a 10oz piece of meat. Little bit hilarious, really. Ended up being a fantastic meal (as one would expect for such a price), and probably the most expensive of my life up to this point (though there have possibly been a few at the Shangri-La in HK that beat it out... close call!) Anyway, so a phenomenal meal.

After dinner I decided to go for a walk, at which point I ran into one of the mad-dog reps that I'd been hanging around at the Philadelphia show a few weeks back, as well as during this show. He was trying to find a place that a friend of his was at, which was essentially a franchised version of the bar which inspired the film "Coyote Ugly". The place was an absolute madhouse, complete with very scantily clad women dancing on the bar, a handful of people from the hardware show, and...the movie "Signs" on TV. Now I'm no connoisseur of Coyote Ugly style bars, but I'd have to assume that I wasn't the only one who thought that "Signs" was about the most awkwardly random thing possible to have on the TVs there. But who knows, I guess maybe people really enjoy Mel Gibson alien films with their scantily-clad bartenders. No idea.

Anyway, that's about the gist of the show thus far. I'm currently watching TV in my hotel room, and would like to note that just now, at this very moment, the St Louis Cardinals have clinched the National League Pennant and will be advancing to the World Series. Which, as a Cubs fan, would be a huge bummer if I didn't absolutely HATE the Milwaukee Brewers. As in, despise more than anything else in sports. The only person I know who hates them more than me is David Jamal Chauncey Tumnus Guildford III. He sure does hate them.

More news to come as it develops, tomorrow could be a bit iffy on the blog front when you consider that I'll be at the hardware show at 8:00am, and won't be getting out until like 10:00pm at the earliest, but we'll see how that goes. If not, maybe I'll try to write 2 the next day to make up for it, but I can't really promise anything.

Colombia, Reflection of 8 Months, and A Change in the Nature of This Blog

So this blog post is meant to indicate a change in the purpose of the entire blog, but first, let’s have a brief catch-up on the transition from Netherlands to Colombia, and the return to the US of A, including the first 2 weeks of university and some assorted updates of that nature.

Anyway: so I left Holland early in the morning on August 16 and the long chain of flight connections went without a hitch. Apart from the rain that accompanied my walking to the bus stop with a huge suitcase. But that's typical Holland, that. It was a struggle being in Miami overnight for like 12 hours, but eh, it’s been done before and I’m sure I’ll spend another night in an airport fairly soon. Upon arrival in Colombia, I took a cab into downtown Bogota to hang out there for like 7-8 hours before Madlien arrived from Monterrey later that evening. Hung out around downtown, went to Plaza de Bolivar (huge square in Bogota which is surrounded by parliament building, mayor’s office, etc.), La Candeleria (rather historic neighborhood with a really cool vibe to it), and some other interesting places. Headed back to El Dorado International Airport in the evening.

Interesting story about the process of getting there: so I decided to be a local and take the bus. With my large backpack on. Not speaking very good Spanish. So I headed to ask some guy where I could catch a bus to the airport. He said “over there” pointing towards a street corner. The street corner was pandemonium, there were like 40 people, and the busses would sort of slow down to about 10 MPH, at which time you’d literally hop onto the bus and pay your 1,400 pesos (about 80 cents). I had no idea which one went to the airport, but I decided to get on the one that said El Dorado something or other, as that was the name of the airport. I asked the driver if this went to “El Dorado”, and he said yes. About 30 minutes or so into the bus ride, I was told by someone that this stop was the airport, so I hopped off, quite grateful for such a friendly local. I got off and found myself on what was basically the side of a busy highway, with a building off in the distance looking airport-ish. Asked around a bit (and mind you, at this point it’s pitch-black out and I’m totally lost), and a friendly local did end up directing me towards the airport. Finally found my way there, but quite the experience. I can honestly say I was thinking I’d be robbed on the side of that highway, given that I was white, 6’ 1”, and with a huge backpack on. Practically a local.

Anyway, took Madlien like 4 hours to get through customs (really about 40 minutes), so we left the airport at like 9:30pm without a hostel (or hostal) or anything of that sort. We found one fairly easily, and decided to explore the neighborhood around the place, which was surprisingly safe. The next day we explored Bogota a fair bit. We got to see the Gold Museum, some parks, a few interesting neighborhoods, etc, and that evening we took a night bus to Medellin. Medellin was nice the next day, it was definitely by far the warmest city that we encountered in Colombia, with daytime temperatures at like 85 or so. It was fairly clean, though to be honest there wasn’t an overwhelming amount to do, so we decided to take a car to a small(ish) town called Manizales, in coffee country. We ended up spending several days there, seeing coffee plantations, climbing Nevado del Ruiz (17,000 feet), and enjoying the young, hip culture of the place. They also had some really nice parks that we walked around a fair bit, many of which offered incredible views of enormous mountains and valleys with farmers growing their assorted crops therein. Really picturesque place overall. So anyway, we took a devastating bus ride back to Bogota after a good few days in Manizales. It was particularly devastating due to how bumpy it was, the fact that the driver was making hairpin turns at 60mph, and the fact that it was just a generally uncomfortable bus. But that was still fine…ish. I spent the night in the airport, as Madlien had a late night flight to head up to Montreal to visit Rachael, and I left the next day for Miami (and another overnight layover… joy). I finally got back to O’Hare the morning of August 25. It was a bit of a surreal experience in Miami that morning, just sort of realizing that I’d finally be heading back to Chicago after 8 months abroad in 13 different countries on 3 continents. So I arrived in Chicago at 9:30am, got through customs quite quickly, and was whisked from the airport by Mom and Grammy. We flew by the house, I took a quick shower, grabbed a change of clothes, then headed to ISU, determined to make my 2:00pm class. Made my 2:00pm class, and had some meetings in the evening. Had some classes the following day, pretty standard.

Also – turns out my Financial Markets professor is Kazakh. Consequently, I went and shot the breeze with him about Kazakhstan, the workforce of Kazakhstan, their political situation, history, etc, all because of the knowledge I gained from my internship at SES WORLD SKIES, so if anyone from WS is reading this, please, please, please give Ludmila a special thank-you for all the knowledge of Kazakhstan that she passed down to me. Seriously, big thanks to Ludmila, for not only talking to me about the Kazakh satellite market, but about their government, history, etc. It allowed me to impress the hell out of a native with a Ph.D. in finance. Good times. So yeah, bit of a rundown of what’s happened during these first few weeks:

1) Student Export Project: despite the fact that applications aren’t accepted until October, I’ve already been accepted for the program as a member of the group going to Africa. It will either be going to Senegal, Ghana, or Kenya. Will be going there from early May until sometime in June.

2) International business club has been good as well. We got 22 new members at our new member meeting Tuesday.

3) Ran into Herr Z. at LZHS the other day when I was home for NIU’s family weekend. He offered me an internship in Nittenau, Bavaria, Germany this coming summer just after the export project, so I may very well do that. I’d be working for a company that makes machines for breweries.

4) I’ve started writing a book about 2010. I don’t want it to be a collection of journal entries, I’d rather it be a legitimate novel with recurring themes, an overall message, etc., so we’ll see how that challenge progresses.

5) Turns out the USA is kind of boring. Kind of struggling with that.
This coming weekend I’ll be riding my bike from ISU to U of I as part of a bet with Dan. It’s about 60 miles and I have a day to do it, should be a decent time, I may try and make a show out of it by perhaps trying to raise money by turning it into a “Ride for Senegal” or something, we’ll see. Certainly I don’t mind attention. Other than that, things have been progressing as per usual, looks like I’ll be hanging around ISU until May then graduating and figuring out what I’ll do from there (after 2 potential internships). Should be fun.

And now, a bit of a summary of this entire 8 month world tour. I guess I’ll go with the 10 most breathtaking, amazing, spectacular sights I’ve seen or things I’ve done, attempting to not do too many repeats from each country, and in no particular order:

Borobodur Temple, Yogyakarta, Indonesia: The world’s largest Buddhist temple, and we saw it at sunrise on the island of Java. We hung out with locals there, and it was one of the most truly amazing, mystical places I’ve ever seen.



World Cup Final, Museumplein, Amsterdam, Netherlands: The world’s biggest sporting event, and I was in the center of the capital of one of the participating countries with 150,000-200,000 Dutch people going mad. Even though NL lost 1-0, it was still the experience of a lifetime.



Petronas Towers, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia: I’m not one to really be taken away by hugely spectacular buildings, but the Petronas Towers, their unique architecture, and the sheer scale of them was incredible.



Hong Kong Skyline, morning of May 24, 2010: Our last morning in Hong Kong, we hiked to Victoria Peak to see the skyline one last time. It was the clearest, most perfect sunrise of the entire semester, and was absolutely like something out of a movie. The three people I was with will be friends of mine for many years I think, and it was a beautiful and appropriate way to end the semester.



Sugar Beach, Sipalay, The Philippines: The most picturesque beach I have ever been to. Our hut that was about 200 feet away cost us $6 per person per night, and the mix of locals and tourists was perfect. Definitely found a little slice of paradise.



Russ Karaoke Night, Causeway Bay, Hong Kong: Not only was this the night that more or less led to the coupling of Elliott Sandaver and Paris McKey, but it is also a night that is sure to go down in the lore of Hong Kong exchange students, and the lore of the karaoke bar that we demolished.

Nevado del Ruiz, Manizales, Colombia: While there was nothing particularly splendid about the view, the hike, or anything else, it was simply an incredible feeling to be 17,000 feet up, and it was my first experience at that high an altitude, which led to a bit of shortness of breath, etc.



Seoul, South Korea: My favorite city in Asia that wasn’t Hong Kong, Seoul was an absolutely perfect combination of size, cleanliness, outdoor activities, history, chic-ness, etc. Amazing food, amazing people, just an absolutely great place.



Little India, Singapore: One of the most fascinating places I’ve ever been to. The fact is, while the rest of Singapore is grey, rigid, structured, etc., Little India is pandemonium, alive, vibrant, and just completely unlike the rest of Singapore. This contrast made it one of the truly special places I visited.



Lan Kwai Fong, Central District, Hong Kong: The granddaddy of them all. The greatest place on the planet. Lan Kwai Fong was undoubtedly the most wonderful place I went to. Nowhere else in the world can you simply walk down the street with a Tsingtao and run into 25-30 of your friends in a sea of people. The layout of the district made it almost a homey feel, in that it was large but had smaller alcoves and nooks where you could simply hang out with a few friends to avoid the ruckus. Particularly during Rugby Sevens, Lan Kwai Fong was the most electric, energetic, and just plain fun place I’ve ever seen.



These 10 things were life-changing. This 8 months was life-changing. The people I've met, the cultures I've experienced, the things I've seen have all been truly brilliant. As an old teacher of mine told me the other day, "you now have enough coffee table fodder to last a lifetime". I was asked today by a friend of my grandmother's if I'd do it all again, to which I replied an immediate "yes, and I wouldn't change a thing". Going into study abroad, everyone who had previously done it was saying how life-changing it is, how it was the greatest thing they ever did, etc., which I never really bought in to, but I can say without any reservations that it is all true. I miss Hong Kong an incredible amount, and it kills me that many of the people I met there, I'll never see again, but at the same time, it's all in the nature of studying abroad I suppose. And besides, it was one incredible ride, and it's safe to say we enjoyed it while it lasted. My outlook on life is completely changed now (and it turns out, after returning stateside, I really can say in all honesty that I hate America), and I have brought back many saying, mannerisms, and cultural quirks absorbed from the people I've met. Overall, it was the greatest experience of my life, and I want to thank every single person I met on this 8-month journey for simply taking the time and effort to have a conversation and forge a friendship, no matter how brief, as you've all contributed to what was the most monumental thing I've ever done. Hats off to you all, hope to see you all again someday. Also, big thanks to the family for being so supportive of me traveling all over creation in all sorts of dodgy third-world countries. Not that you could've stopped me from traveling to Indonesia from Hong Kong, for example, but your support made it much more fun. Big thanks.

So the question now is, what to do about the blog? I’m done traveling (for now), but I feel like as long as I continue to live a reasonably interesting existence, I’ll keep updating this periodically so as to let people know what I’ve been up to, as I now know people from all over the world that I will never be seeing regularly, so I feel like this is a fine way of keeping them informed (that was a long sentence). Consequently, we'll see a change in the nature of this blog. Having said that, I still acknowledge that this blog has a readership comparable to the memoirs of Steve Buscemi, but I don’t really care. I’m self-absorbed enough to keep on writing about myself, but again, as long as I’m living a moderately interesting existence. If anyone really has a problem with that, email me (bvcurci@ilstu.edu), and outline your complaints, maybe I’ll stop writing. So for the time being, expect this blog to contain info on the following, as they develop:

Student Export Project
Nittenau Internship
Book’s progress
Quest to keep off the weight I lost while traveling despite being back in the states (and I will be trying some interesting diets I think, so we’ll see the effectiveness of various ones!)
Other assorted musings

So that’s about it for now. Sorry for the really long post, but eh, I had to summarize the trip and other such things, so yeah. Also, if its choppy, it’s because this was written in 2 parts, about 4 days apart, so yeah. Big thanks if you’ve read this, and please, if anyone from WS did read this, do send a big thank-you Ludmila’s way for the Kazakhstan info. And a general hello to everyone in the office, miss you guys!

More news to come as it develops

More Holland, South America Plans, You Know, The Usual

So it’s been about a week since I posted anything, and given the swings experienced when adjusting to a totally new culture, a week is a fairly long time to go between posts, so here we go:

Where we left off from last time, I was struggling a bit to adjust to things in The Netherlands, and longing for HK. I’m glad to report that since then things have changed significantly, most of that change taking place in the last 48 hours or so. That being said, let’s backtrack to right after my last blog post:

Last week was fairly uneventful. Henning was out of the office for a few days, and I just sort of did my own thing at work. The work week was rather long, but I learned a fair bit more about the industry, key customers, the setup of the company, etc. Last weekend was also the planned “970X run”, i.e. go to a major public transport hub and try and catch the next mode of transport to somewhere. Anyway, so the plan was to take off Friday and go somewhere, but Henning preferred that I did not take off Friday, given that I took off a few days a couple weeks ago to head down to Italy to meet with the family.

Perfectly understandable, so Friday night I decided to head to Amsterdam Schiphol Airport and attempt, knowing that it was a long shot, to just ask a KLM ticket agent if there were any not-full flights departing that evening that I could possibly fly out on for a discounted fare, given that odds are, if the flight isn’t full 2 hours before takeoff, it won’t be full. Given that Europe is the “land of high prices and unfriendly people”, they would have none of that, so I got nowhere fast from Schiphol. From there, I headed onward, relatively undeterred, to Amsterdam Centraal rail station, assuming that there’d have to be a train going somewhere Friday evening. Upon arrival, the international ticket office was closed for the night. Massively deterred, I tried walking to Amstel St. Bus Terminal, which I only knew to be “about 2km South of Centraal Station”. So naturally, having no real idea of where I was going, I just walked in a direction I knew to be South. Thankfully, Amsterdam is not a maze of a city, otherwise I might not have found Amstel St. Station. That was sarcasm. I absolutely didn’t have a chance at finding the place, by this time it was about 10:00pm, and I really didn’t feel ambitious enough to hunt down the station. Had it been HK I’d’ve taken a cab, but in Holland (or anywhere in the west), cabs aren’t retardedly cheap, so I just went back to The Hague Friday evening.

Upon waking up Saturday morning I saw that Marije (a friend of mine that I knew in Hong Kong that is Dutch, and lives in Amsterdam) had attempted to contact me via facebook regarding my plans for the big Netherlands-Japan World Cup match Saturday afternoon. I got a hold of her and she told me to come to Amsterdam to watch the match with some friends of hers in some random bar. I certainly couldn’t turn down such an invitation, especially given that I hadn’t seen Marije in like a month, so I took the train back into Amsterdam Saturday morning and met up with her and her boyfriend, Juriann at AMS Centraal. From there we went to drop off some things at their friend’s apartment, and I was able to see how Dutch students live. Not too surprisingly, it was a pretty standard, American-ish apartment. The one thing that would have looked very out of place in an American apartment was a huge soccer trophy, but that’s about it. And all the orange stuff all around. Speaking of orange, Steve Guilford (Stinen Guildford to those who know him well) would have loved the match. The bar we went to had about 60-70 people fit into a place that was about big enough for 40, and every single person there was wearing orange everything. Bright. San Francisco Giants style. Orange. Everywhere. Holland scored early in the 2nd half, and my God, did the place go absolutely nuts. Absolute pandemonium, the likes of which I can basically only compare to like, maybe the pandemonium I experienced when LSU blocked an Alabama field goal at the end of regulation to force overtime at a game I was at in 2008. But even that might be pushing it. Anyway, so that was electrifying, and Holland ended up winning 1-0. After the match we went and walked around Amsterdam for awhile, with Marije and Juriann pointing out interesting sights. I also bought a Dutch sim card for when my old European phone from last summer arrives in the mail from the parentals. With said sim card came a free orange vuvuzela in celebration of the world cup. Welcome to Holland (or Europe, for that matter) during the world’s biggest sporting event. So now that the random tangent about vuvuzelas is over, back to Saturday. After hanging around for a bit I headed back to The Hague Saturday evening and watched more World Cup.

Sunday involved some (shocker) World Cup watching, bike riding (found a very decent little Japanese restaurant in downtown Wassenaar), and talking to the Old AlanKey via Skype on his cell phone. I didn’t even know that was possible, but apparently AlanKey is able to talk into his cell phone as though he’s making a call, but have me be on the other end on Skype. What an age we live in, and to think, S.E.S. World Skies is (maybe) involved in the transmission of that info, given our involvement in everything (including World Cup broadcasting to North and South America). AlanKey was in central Hong Kong, and the sounds of the city could easily be heard in the background, making me a bit nostalgic for the old place.

Also Skyped Madlien for a bit in the evening to further discuss the possible trip to Bogota. It is looking decently likely that Blaine Curcio will be making his first appearance in South America sometime in August, an event that will surely be met with fiestas, siestas, and other “estas” immediately upon my arrival. So yeah, again, the plan would then be to arrive at O’Hare at 3:15pm on a flight straight from Dublin and leave for a flight to Miami at 6:55pm same day, have an 11 hour connection in Miami, then get to Bogota the next day, on the verge of mental and physical collapse from having travelled for something like 40 hours. However, if nothing else, I had decent training for this sort of thing on December 26, 2009, when Dan and I missed a connection in Minneapolis due to snow and ended up doing Chicago-Minneapolis (4 hour layover)-Amsterdam (10 hour flight followed by 11 hour layover)-Tokyo (10 hour flight)-Aiko Ichida (3 hour train ride). So if I can handle that (and, for the record, I felt great upon arrival in Tokyo), I can certainly handle Amsterdam-Dublin (3 hour layover)-Chicago (9 hour flight 4 hour layover)-Miami (11 hour layover)-Bogota (probably about a 6 hour flight). Now that all 3 readers are spinning from too many flights and cities and layovers and such…

This week was a good one at work. Monday and Tuesday were pretty standard, and Wednesday morning I decided that I ought to catch up with Henning on my work thus far, and on a gameplan for the last 7 weeks of the internship. The conversation went very well, with Henning and I exchanging some very interesting ideas and insights.

After that I worked out with H.R. my tax rate and other such things for my pay for this internship. Basically because I’m not making enough money to live off of, I pay very low taxes, as it turns out. That’s a win, that. I also am considering pulling the old tax fraud when I get home and not reporting my meager income here to the I.R.S., given that I can’t be bothered doing that, and they won’t find out about a few thousand US$ that I made here… hopefully. So yeah, good week at work overall.

Also, last night I figured out how to order pizza for delivery despite the fact that the whole website was in Dutch... I thought it was a decent accomplishment, at the very least.

This weekend the plan is to really explore The Hague on Saturday. I’d like to visit the place where Milosevic was tried and jailed and died. Given that it’s literally right across the street from my office, I figure I should go sometime… Friday night is the company summer beach party, which goes from like 2:00pm-late and includes, but is not limited to, volleyball, limbo, samba, Dutch people, food, beverages, napkins, and sand. Word is there’s going to be a beach there as well. Sunday I’ll likely go to Henning’s, as he and his wife are having some people over to watch England vs. Germany in the World Cup round of 16. The weekend after next, Iain McMahon, the man, the legend, the Aussie, will be in Amsterdam, so I’ll be going to visit and hang out with him and, presumably, Marije as well. That’s more or less all at the moment. It’s crazy to think that next week is already July, and that I’ve now (having just realized it) been here for a month. Time flies when you’re having fun… or working 50 hours a week.

To those who have read this far, a big thank you, and I hope that you enjoyed the hyperlinks I decided to put in, some obviously being quirkier and less useful than others, but all being lovingly placed for your reading enjoyment and enhancement. If you’re reading this then you’d probably be characterized in the statement “I miss you all!”

More news to come as it develops.