Day One: Me at my Desk in Berkeley

I am going to rack up a few frequent flyer miles this summer. For the next 14.5 weeks I will be spending time in Bolivia, Peru, Singapore, and other random nations. So, for those of you whom I haven't talked to in awhile, and those of you who I feel like I have seen every waking hour for the past few months, welcome to the first installment of my "Summer of Yes" blog. This blog will be used to update my friends and family of my whereabouts as I travel through and work in South America and Southeast Asia this summer. If feel that it is easier to maintain this blog than call each of you at four in the morning while I am bored at work. Additionally, each of you can decide when you want to take an hour out of your day to read my random, occasionally incoherent travel ramblings.

So the blog...I would like to think of this as analogous to the taste test that one can get at the supermarket on Saturday mornings. The store is willing to give you a chunk of fried chicken on a toothpick in hopes that you will be interested in purchasing a box of that frozen crap to take home. In a sense, I am hoping that this "chicken" of a blog will at least be more appealing to each of you than the alternative, which is real, live, actual work. We'll see if it works. So join me on my adventure through rural South America and cosmopolitan Singapore. And...if you are really lucky, I may allow you to help me pick out my business casual clothing for work!

Five Things I Hope Happen:
1.) Capture some amazing photos of things...whatever those things may be
2.) Have some fabulous "Kurt Huffman Productions"-ready suits made in Singapore
3.) Tap into the Singapore expat community and meet interesting travel buddies
4.) Learn a little bit about working internationally for a multinational company in a multicultural city with nationals from many countries...does that make sense?
5.) Complete my long awaited research project on the similarities and differences between office parks, strip malls, and cubicles between the United States and Asia.

Five Things I Hope Don't Happen
1.) Get caned in Singapore
2.) Come down with CheGuevaraSimonBolivar'sRevenge in Bolivia...also known as food poisoning
3.) Get caned in Singapore
4.) Get too many paper cuts from administering thousands of surveys in Peru.
5.) Forget to return to Berkeley for my second year...and get caned in Singapore.

In a few hours I will head to SFO for my flight to South America. Along the way I will stop in San Salvador, Lima, and finally into La Paz, Bolivia, tomorrow night. From there I will have an overnight bus ride to Uyuni in order to spend a few days at the salt flats. Alright. Everybody in and buckled up? Let's go!