I do realize that it's been an inexcusably long time since my last post, but I've decided that I need to start blogging again and what better place to do that than somewhere I've already created content. I've actually been saying "I need to start blogging again" for quite some time, but my upcoming surprise trip is what gave me the extra motivation to start now.

Surprise Trip:

Alex and I like to play a game we call "Surprise Trip." The idea is to plan a trip (transportation, accommodations, etc.) giving no clues as to where you're taking the other person. The one piece of information you can reveal is the departure date and arrival so the other knows which days to take off from work. Years ago I was thinking about what it would be like to be dropped off somewhere in the world and I wondered how long it would take you to figure out where you are. What kind of clues would lead you to figuring it out? When you know your destination, there are things that you wouldn't necessarily be paying attention to that you would when you don't know where you are--it's like the sounds a blind person hears that the rest of us are oblivious to.

Rules:

1. Passports are always used for identification so as not give away whether it's a domestic of international destination.
2. The destination has to be a location where the surprisee has never been.
3. The surpriser packs the suprisees luggage so as to not give away the climate of the destination.

Other Important Considerations:

1. Sense of sight: I don't think going through airport security with a blindfold on would go over too well--I've heard that they're not fond of hostage-looking situations. So what we do is wear a pair of sunglasses with black paper taped to the inner lenses that way you can only see the ground and the worst security can think is that you have some kind of strange eye condition.

2. Sense of hearing: Listening to loud music in the airport, at the gate, during the flight and, when need be, crunching on crackers to muffle loudspeaker announcements.

What's the plane ride going to be like?:

Because of those two things, I'm afraid I'm going to revert to being a child on the flight with incessant questions like "Are we almost there yet?" Then Alex is going to have to give me the same patronizing, meaningless answers you give to children who have no sense of time or distance, "Almost, honey."

The Clues:

It's a 6 day trip leaving roughly around 1:00 in the afternoon PST today.

Where am I going?:

Quite a few of my co-workers have contributed to an office pool of where they think I'm going. Some family members have also weighed in on their guesses and here's what some are guessing pre-trip:

Costa Rica, Peru, Florida Keys, Brazil, Hong Kong, South Africa, Ecuador, Argentina, Mexico, Thailand, Papua New Guineau, Fiji, Korea, Singapore, and many others I can't remember at the moment.