I realize that people are just trying to be friendly, but I hate answering that question. The fact is, I don’t know. I don’t know how anyone can get a handle on what this country is all about.

India is one of the fastest growing economies on Earth, but the new skyscrapers exist next to abject poverty.

India gave us such incredible thinkers the Buddha and Gandhi and Indians are rightfully proud of that legacy, but the country is still cursed with tremendous discrimination and suffering.

The people I get into conversations with are evenly split between those trying to aggressively cheat me and genuinely warm and friendly individuals.

I don’t mean this as praise or criticism. You have to understand something before you can praise or criticize it. It’s just how I see it, and it’s the reason I feel idiotic when I have to answer the question with the insipid “It’s very nice.”

Killing a few hours in Bangkok before my flight to Delhi. Angkor Wat was amazing; beyond what I had expected. Cambodia itself has problems, but in many ways it reminds me of Thailand 20 years ago. I hope they do as well.

It always turns out the only time I can take a lengthy vacation is between engagements. So now that I have the chance, I’m off to Cambodia and India. Places I’ve been meaning to get to for years, but never got around to it.

This is the last of my posts about my 2010 goals. I’m hoping my friends will help encourage me and hold me accountable.

Area Three: Music
I what now seems like another life, I was a professional musician. It was without question the hardest, most time-consuming, and lowest-paying job I ever had, and I had a love-hate relationship with it. I loved the music, and hated the profession. I don’t care it I never working in that business again, but over the past few years, I have not been spending much time on my music, and thats not good.

In fact, that gap between my abilities then and now is so large it can get really frustrating when I start up again. So some simple, modest goals that I’ll enjoy.

By the End of 2010 I will:

• Learn at least 60 popular songs
• Sing on stage at least twice
• Agree to go to karaoke when my friends ask
• Practice until I can recognize all chords and intervals again

I’m continuing to post about my 2010 goals hoping my friends will help encourage and hold me accountable.

Area Two: Japanese
I’ve been living in Japan for over 20 years. Twenty long, stinking, painful years. No, seriously only about three of those years were long stinking and painful. The rest ranged from “same as the old year” to unbelievably challenging and fun. I’ve married into a Japanese family, served on the board of a public Japanese firm, negotiated the sale of a company, given countless of business presentations, three hiroen speeches and not a few public presentations; all in Japanese. But you know what? As far as I’m concerned my Japanese stinks. I must be getting my point across using some combination of facial expressions, hand gestures and telepathy, because I lot of the time even I don’t know what I just said. That changes starting now.

There are three areas of my life that I plan on improving in 2010. My goals are modest when I look at them individually, but achieving all of them would make life at the end of 2010 a bit better than it is at the start of it. I’m putting my goals up here on my blog in the hope that my friends will hold me accountable vie encouragement, gentle prodding, shame, mental abuse or swift and blinding violence as they deem appropriate.

Area One: Health
I don’t think I ever fully recovered from the trauma of my seventh grade gym class. You see, I was a fat kid (not chubby mind you, but 30-inch-inseam and a very tight 36-inch-waist rotund) and had a crew-cut sporting gym teacher with a who liked to call us fat kids “jellybeans” and make snarky remarks when it was our turn at the chin-up bar. Even though I eventually dropped the weight and got pretty good at baseball and the martial arts, I (shamefully) never managed to do more than three chin-ups.

Truth be told, last year was supposed to be my get in shape year, but things didn’t work out. A nasty back injury led to a knee injury, which shut down all exercise for much of the year. Thankfully, yoga and stretching averted the surgery my doctor suggested, but 2009 was a step backwards in health. This year is going to be different.

By the end of 2010 I will:

• be able to do 10 perfect pull-ups
• run 5k in under 30 minutes
• have a 90 cm waist as measured across the belly-button
• do a downward dog with my heels on the floor

I’ve been listening to comedy albums on my iPod during my daily commute recently. I arrive at the office in a much better mood, and I end up getting more space on the train than I normally would.

Since its considered rude to laugh out loud so I try to suppress it, and everyone stays away from the scary gaijin giggling to himself in the corner.

Bill Hicks is a riot!!

I was in LA yesterday and took Ami to Pink’s — the best hot dogs on the West coast! A month back, she begged me to take her, but when we actually picked up our order, Ami sat there staring down at her 12″ Jalapeno Dog with a mixture of shock and disgust. After some not so gentle prodding I got her to try it.

For the next several minutes Ami expressed her amazement that Americans could eat such things, at which point she realized that she had finished her dog and reluctantly admitted that it was pretty good.

Another Pink’s fan is born!

WIth all the friending, tweeting, and facebookin’ there is so little time for logging. Such a shame. I’m back on the blog today — with some help from Sajjad — because today is my mother-in-law’s birthday.

Now, for those of you with an attention span longer than a tweet, I’ll explain. I’ve decided that the perfect gift for the woman who has everything (and those of you who have met my mom-in-law know what I’m talking about) is her very own blog.

All well and good provided I don’t get suck doing tech support.

A number of people and articles have recommended multi-day fasts for health reasons. As strange as it sounds, I don’t think I have ever even gone a single day without food, so I decided to try a 32-hour “mini-fast” just to check things out.

I was really surprised that I did not fell particularly hungry at all. No strong desire to eat or anything. I did feel a bit light-headed, but not in a bad way. Think I’ll try a few more of these mini-fasts before committing to a three-day affair.

P.S. I’m not even bothering to give any excuses for not blogging for so long. Please feel free to make up your own. They will undoubtably be much more interesting than the truth.

Had my Japanese wedding reception last Saturday. I’m glad it’s over, but was delighted that so many of our friends turned out for the event. It’s been three days, but my face still hurts from smiling so much for the cameras.

New we get to do it again next month in Virginia.

Just finished cleaning up after another home party. (It was a blast. We really have to have more of those.) Other than a mysterious green stain on the rug, everything looks just like it did last night. Quite a difference from the parites I used to throw in the US. The last one I threw there I woke up the next morning to find an enire pizza stuck to the ceiling. At least it made my breakfast choices easier.

I’m back in Cluj. (It’s pronounced like “kludge”) Yes, it’s an ironic place to locate a software company. They know, They’ve heard all the jokes. I think this place is probably beautiful in the spring and summer when the trees are full of leaves and the winter grime has vanished from the streets. At the moment, however, I am faced with dead trees and filthy cars.

Actually, much the same is true of the Romanian women. From the glimpses I catch, there seem to be a lot of cute girls in this town, but during the winter they are buried under four layers of clothes and fur, so I can’t really be sure.

I have to come back when it’s warm.

Last night I discovered that I like Turkish food. I never knew I did. (And no, I’m not talking abut the cloyingly sweet desert for which this post in named! Can’t stand that stuff.)

In fact I always considered Turkish food to be either too heavy and greasy or too spicy and greasy like like those damn street kabobs. Turns out I only dislike bad Turkish food. I just hope I can find good Turkish food somewhere other than Istanbul.

Now, it’s back to cold, cold Romania.

I thought I was going to be in Romania on business today, but the Transylvanian winters are cold, so my two colleagues and I caught a plane to Turkey for the weekend.

It’s early morning and I’m stilling in a hotel lobby in Istanbul waiting for my two friends to go sight-seeing. Ilker’s a Turk, so the two of us are relying on him not to get us too hopelessly lost.

If you don’t hear from me for a few days, send reinforcements.

Or I suppose “Barbarian Back Up” is more appropriate.

So much has changed (and all for the better) since my last posting, I don’t know where I would start or when I would stop. I’ll just let the info trickle out over the coming posts. (Yes, they are coming. I’ve been quite delinquent in my posting for the past few months, but that will change.)

For me the New Years Holidays are a time I sit down and write down my goals for the coming year, and look back at last years goals to see how I did. It’s amazing how things always work out.

They never work out like I expect them to, but they always work out.

I hope we all are going to have fantastic 2008!

Call off the search parties. I made it back alive. Found some nice clubs, met some cool people, got home at 4AM and am now in desperate need of some strong black coffee.

There are plenty of hot Bulgarian girls wandering about Sofia on a Saturday night, but they really need to smile more. A note to women of all nationalities. You are all much more beautiful when you smile. You don’t even need a reason. It’s OK to just be happy.

I’ve got to run. Housekeeping wants to make up the room, and I am off in search of caffeine.

Why is it that all the things women do to relax and look beautiful sound so painful? My female friends are always talking about things like hot-stone therapy, chemical peels, and my personal favorite the “lava bath”. What the hell is a lava bath?

I’ve long held held a theory that all little girls at one point in their lives dreamed of marrying a handsome prince and living in a castle. Most women will confirm this, although occasionally begrudgingly. The other day my friend surprised me by insisting that she never held such dreams.

“No. When I was a little girl I wanted to take over the world and make all the men worship me.”

Ah yes. Well your friends have always seen that in you.

Researchers in England have concluded that entrepreneurship is primaraly a genetic trait rather than a result of the environment a child grows up in or the kind of education he receives

I find this interesting on a rather personal level. I am a serial entrepreneur, a trait I share with neither of my brothers nor my parents. I was raised in a typical and traditional manner. My father was employed by the federal government for his entire career and my mother stayed at home and took care of us kids. Today both of my brothers have good, steady normal jobs.

I’m adopted, and last year I met my birth parents for the first time. It turns out both of them are entrepreneurs who have started their own companies.