I’m now back to a lovely fall day in Albany, after 3+ weeks overseas, and some time in Chicago, and back in Michigan. It’s been quite a ride, with more than a few air miles. I’m not going to archive the whole trip here, but I will have some posts over at Todd.Malicoat.org. Mostly, I wanted to take a bit of time here to thank all the great people who helped out on the trip in various capacities. The lovely vivacious Viva, and her sister Happy toured us around Manila and showed us their awesome Fashion Art Gallery deemed, of course - Fart. Anton Sheker, who helps to run a company based on custom order furniture.
I was a speaker for SEMcon which was put on by Norlyn, Marc "the man" Macalua, and Anton and did a 45 minute presentation on linkbaiting and social media. The audience seemed pretty receptive, and I think it came out pretty well despite the fact that I was fighting off a bit of a cold. I got to meet a few cool Philippino SEO’s including Benj Arriola (who I was made aware is the SEO world champion), Elymar Apao, and quite a few other cool gents (who didn’t give me cards;). I also met a few ex-pats hanging out including Hans, and Ken. There’s a pretty solid SEO community in the Philippines, and they’re obviously learning good new stuff by the day. Thanks for having me guys. The Philippines rocked.
In Hong Kong, we got to spend a brief evening with Shri, and were toured around by a friend of George’s - David (send me a mail man- and I’ll get you linked up). Hong Kong was a brief trip (2 nights), but we made the most of it, spending one night out until our dawn flight.
China was definitely an interesting country. We were lucky enough to get a couple great tourguides - the friendly and beautiful Reshma (a Beijing expat who often helps foreigners navigate the city of Beijing) who hooked us up with a guidebook we probably couldn’t have lived without (not to mention a cellphone to use while we were there!) We also got to have dinner and hang out with our new friend Jerry (who does search marketing in China), who spoke pretty solid english for not having practiced in well over a year.
Finally, we visited Japan, where we got silly with a sneaker head from Staten Island and his crew, and got to kick it with webmasterworld mod Bill (dude - get your own site so I can throw you some link love) - who had an excellent understanding of the culture, and was kind enough to pass it on to us. We ate and drank like kings, and had a blast seeing temples, and the awesomely clean cities of Kyoto and Tokyo. Japan rules.
Overall, the trip was amazing, and we were very lucky to have the awesome guides that we did. More than anything, I wanted to throw out the shout outs and say a proper thank you. I’ll probably post a more full trip recap on my personal site one day for those interested, and I have some pictures up (if you really wanna see, shoot me a mail).
Back to business now. Not sure when I’ll get around to a post again, but these folks definitely deserved the proper thank you. I’m nearly fully recovered from jetlag and detox, and getting back in the swing of working.
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Some folks in Omaha go all out for decorating. Here’s one house that we drove by over the holidays:
