September 2007

Where in the World is Kelly?

In the past 3 weeks I have been from Singapore to SF to Nashville to Charleston to Chicago back to SF, weekend in Yosemite, back on a plane to Singapore, then to Phuket, Thailand last weekend, back to Singapore, fly out to San Francisco tomorrow and fly to Mexico, Puerto Vallarta, on Friday. Total hours in the air this month = approximately 75.

In Nashville I visited my friend Samantha. We had time for a nice dinner in her new home and lunch on the Vanderbuilt campus. Her neighbor took me on a fantastic bike ride through the Nashville country side, past Minnie Pearl’s old home, the CEO of Shoney's mansion, and many country music stars’ homes that I did not recognize the names. It is a beautiful area! Sam is still recovering from knee reconstructive surgery.

Charleston too was astounding and I will now stop making fun of people in the south for their accents and relations to siblings. I was very impressed with the culture in the colonial town. Even my taxi cab driver back to the airport, Billy Bob, was reading a book on Islam. His views on religion were quite enlightening and I was happy to experience people in the Bible belt who accepted different views on life.

My purpose for going to Charleston was to see the other half of the building in construction. They are building the process manufacturing skids for the project in a former gas sphere warehouse, along a river near Charleston. They will put this half of the building onto a barge, then into a container ship at the port, and sail it through the Panama Canal next February all the way to Asia.

Phuck-et

This weekend I went to Phuket (pronounced poo-ket, not f*&k-it), Thailand for a little break and to inquire about a wrinkle treatment I read about on the internet called FPL. Fluorescence-Intense Pulse Light is an anti-aging wrinkle removal technique that produces results without any need for surgery, anesthetic and with no side effects. If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.

When I met with the dermatologist, I was happy to find out that my wrinkles are not from aging, but from a muscular contraction caused by smiling too much throughout my life. Not a bad problem, right? Well, the down side is that the only known treatment for it currently is Botox. I never thought I would become a Botox patient, but after traveling so far to find my fountain of youth, and for a quarter of the price as in the US, I gave it a try and let a Thai woman inject my face with Botulism.

Botox was not my only reason for escaping to Thailand for the weekend. We rode over 30 miles on a mountain bike to Patong Beach and went sea kayaking through the limestone islands off the coast, all the way to James Bond Island, where Goldfinger was filmed back in 1974. Craig was with me on this trip and we got some much needed rest and relaxation for the weekend on the beach.

Head Hunters

Last night we did a tour of the Asian Civilizations Museum in Singapore by a woman who is also an architect and once worked for Genentech. They moved here from Berkeley a year ago and her husband in the head financier for the National University in Singapore. She spends her time as a dossier at the museum and taught us about the mélange of cultures represented here in Singapore, from the head hunters to modern business men. They have an amazing collection of silks, jewelry, swords and human skulls. It is fascinating how the Chinese, Indian, Middle Eastern and European countries are all represented in one country. Even more fascinating is that Buddhists, Hindus, Muslims, Christians, etc. can all live in peace on one little 40-mile island.

Que Pasa

Upon my return to SSF, I spent 20 hours at home before departing for a trip to Puerta Vallarta, Mexico for a board meeting for the SF chapter of the International Society of Pharmaceutical Engineers, ISPE. It is a great group of people that I have been working with over the past ten years on numerous committees to network and educate people in the biotech industry. We do a Board of Directors retreat each year to help plan the next year's events, while bonding over tequila and tacos. Unfortunately, this year I did not make friends with a Playboy Bunny to hang with our group, similar to two years ago in Cabo where most the men in the group were appreciative of my personal networking skills.