John’s Blog-o-Rama

Found an interesting article here about introverts. Describes me exactly. Hopefully some extroverts will stop talking long enough to read it and understand :-p

I’m sitting here in JFK airport waiting to board my flight to London, so I thought I’d try blogging from my phone (so far so good). Anyway, Chu, Sam (Chu’s bro), and I are heading off for a 12 day vacation to Turkey and London. We’re on our way first to Istanbul (through Heathrow) for about 8 days in Turkey, then about 3 days in London on the way back. We’re all really excited for what should be a fun trip. Hopefully I’ll get around to blogging more about it when we get back.

Just read a really good article on cnnmoney.com titled “What it takes to be great”. The article says resarch shows that it’s not natural talent that determines great success, but rather it’s hard work and practice. I don’t think this is anything new, but I would say that the true elements of success are at a higher level: namely passion, desire, and discipline. Of course success takes hard work, but what makes someone do  the work ? It’s really the desire to be great, and the discipline to put in the work to achieve that greatness.

A couple of interesting points from the article:

• The notion of the “ten-year rule”: it takes a minimum of 10 years of practice to achieve world-class status
• Just practicing isn’t enough - it’s “deliberate practice”, or intense practice focused on improvement, that achieves greatness
• Constant feedback is crucial in achieving greatness - measuring performance consistently
• Becoming great at business is possible just like with sports, with the right mindset of practicing regularly and deliberately, with a focus on improvement

Friday, May 5, 2006

The Eurostar trip from Venice to Florence took around three hours, so we arrived at the Florence Santa Maria Novella train station around 1 PM. We exited the station and headed straight for our hotel, the Hotel Centrale, which turned out to be very nice. We dumped our bags and headed out for some sightseeing.

First up was some lunch in the touristy shopping district in central Florence. Next we headed over to the Duomo (santa Maria del Fiore), which is the central cathedral in Florence. It has an interesting red-colored roof, and apparently was the first dome built in Italy since ancient Roman times. Next up, we headed over to the Accademia musem. Lucky for us we went late in the day on a Friday, so there was no line to get in. It houses a bunch of Renaissance-era paintings and sculpture, including Michaelangelo’s David and Prisonsers scupltures. Much of the art was very nice, but clearly the most impressive piece was the David scuplture. This is without a doubt the best sculpture Chu and I have ever seen, and every other piece of sculpture we saw in Italy was an order of magnitude inferior to this work of art.

For the rest of the day, Chu and I explored the touristy areas around the Duomo and the Uffizi gallery, including many of the (chain) shops and restaurants. We ended up eating dinner at a place in the Piazza della Repubblica that had good (but greasy) pizza. After strolling some more, we went back to the hotel room and got some rest.

Saturday, May 6, 2006

Today the plan was the check out the rest of the tourist sights in Florence, so we headed out first to the Piazza della Signoria, near the Palazzo Vecchio, and viewed a number of the statues there. Then we walked down along the Uffizi Gallery to see some street performers, but weren’t able to get in (no reservations and the line was LONG). We kept walking down to the Arno river, then took a left turn and walked across the Ponte Vecchio, with Chu window shopping for jewelry. We then continued on and walked up the hill towards the Palazzo Pitti.

In the afternoon we headed over to the Science Museum, which displayed scientific instruments developed around the time of the Renaissance. Chu wasn’t too into the instruments, but it proved to be interesting for me. For some reason they had Galileo’s index finger on display in a jar, which is strange for a science musem, but was Chu’s favorite part. Next, we headed over to the Piazza di Santa Croce to see the Santa Croce Church. The line was long so we didn’t go in, but the piazza was a nice place to sit and people watch.

By now we had grown tired of Italian food, so we found the only Japanese sushi place we could find. We went a 7PM, and were the only people in the place for almost an hour. The food was decent, and it was interesting to see a sushi menu in Italian and Japanese people that spoke Japanese, English, and Italian. It was also really nice to eat something other than pasta.

Sunday, May 7, 2006

We had seen enough of Florence by now, so Chu and I decided to take a train trip to Siena for the afternoon. We grabbed a train late in the AM and got to Siena around 11 AM. Siena is an old medieval town in Tuscany about an hour from Florence that sits atop a hill, and was once a fairly powerful city-state in Italy. Once we arrived, we decided to walk up the hill to the center of the old city. 45 minutes later we were walking through very old city streets…it looked like it hadn’t changed much in a long, long time. Siena is known for its famous city center “Il Campo”, so that’s where we headed first. It turned out to be a pretty nice open space, but also very touristy. We had lunch at a place right on the campo, and for some reason there was some big motorcycle rally that day, because the next thing we know around 500 motorcycles converged on the campo (very strange). Next, the men of one of the city’s neighborhoods dressed up in some kind of traiditional outfit and paraded around playing drums and waving big flags. Again…very strange.

Next, we headed out and explored the city streets some more, and ended up at the Catedrale di Santa Maria, also known as the Duomo. This was a very interesting church, primary for how colorful it is. The floor, ceiling, and walls were all very brightly colored. Even the outside walls appeared to have green horizontal stripes. Next was more exploring , and we ended up at another church, this one the Church of San Domenico, dedicated to St. Catherine of Siena. Overall, this church was very plain. However, one of the chapels inside the church had the actual skull of St. Catherine in a nun’s habit hanging on the wall for people to pray to. Very interesting yet very gruesome at the same time.

By now we had seen enough, so we headed back to the train station. I almost got us lost on the way back (which I would never hear the end of from Chu), but luckily we made it to the station just as a major downpour started. An hour later we were back in Florence and eating dinner at a Chinese restaurant. Again, very strange seeing “Kung Pao Chicken” translated into Italian, but all of the food tasted exactly the same as it does here in the US.

Monday, May 8, 2006

This is the day Chu had been waiting for the whole trip: a trip to a designer outlet mall! 20 miles south of Florence there is a factory outlet mall that houses stores from major designers like Gucci and Prada. Chu had been waiting all week to buy a lower-priced Gucci purse, so she ready to go when the mall shuttle picked us up. However, once we arrived, she was very disappointed in the selection. Unfortunately, Chu wasn’t able to find anything she liked at any of the stores, so the whole side trip turned out to be a waste of time. Fortunately Florence had two Gucci stores, so once we returned to the city we went straight to Gucci so that Chu could buy a purse each for she and her mom. Since the mission for the day was accomplished, we headed over to the train station in the early afternoon and caught the Eurostar to Rome.

Next up: Part 4 - Rome

Links: Florence Map, Italy Map, Florence Pictures, Florence & Siena Videos, Siena Pictures

The honeymoon videos Chu and I took in Italy have all been edited and uploaded, and can be viewed here.

Wednesday, May 3, 2006

So we got on the Eurostar heading for Venice, but had a little trouble finding our seats. We were supposed to be in First Class, but couldn’t quite figure out where that was. We got on a car and tried to sit down, but there were people in our seats. As it turned out, we were on the completely opposite end of the train from where we were supposed to be, so we were a little embarassed, but at least we knew where to go after that.

As we got to our seats, I grabbed our bags to put them up in the luggage rack above the seats. As I did that, I saw someone out of the corner of my eye sitting in front of us that looked familiar, so I looked at him once, looked back, and then looked again. Turns out it was actor James Spader on vacation in Italy, which was certainly a surpise. Didn’t end up talking to him, but heard some of his conversation with people sitting next to him, and he sounded like a pretty personable guy. He was also taller and a little heavier than I thought he would be. Other than that, the rest of the 2-hour trip went smoothly and was uneventful, and we finally arrived in Venice in the late afternoon.

After arriving in Venice, we headed straight over to our hotel, the Hotel Ai Mori d’Oriente, which was in the Cannaregio district in Venice. The hotel was fairly nice and in a relatively uncrowded areas of the city (mainly because it fair distance from the main sights). We unloaded our bags and freshened up, and headed out to explore the city.

We wanted to get an evening view of the main sights, so we took a nice walk down through Cannaregio down to the San Marco district, which took us to the Piazza San Marco. After exploring that area some (and watching the birds chase Chu around), we continued exploring the San Marco area and the shopping areas. Then we headed over to the Grand Canal and the Rialto Bridge for some sightseeing, crossed the bridge over the canal, and then explored all through the San Polo district. We were pretty beat by this time (probably walked several miles), so we headed back to the hotel for the evening.

Thursday, May 4, 2006

We planned Thursday to be our in-depth viewing day of the sights, which included Frari Church, the Correr Museum, St. Mark’s Basilica, the Ducal’s Palace, and the Dorsoduro district. We woke up a little late (11AM), got a quick lunch, and then headed over to the Frari Church.

The Frari Church is an old Franciscan church in the San Polo district containing the works of many artists from the Renaissance. We spent over an hour touring the church, viewing the art and sculpture that adorns the walls and ceilings. Next, we headed over to the Correr Museum in Piazza San Marco, which houses art and artifacts from Venice’s history. Here we were able to get a good idea about the rise and splendor of Venice from around the 14th-19th centuries.

Next up was St. Mark’s Basilica, which is at the opposite end of Piazza San Marco from the Correr Museum. This cathedral had a number of old mosaics and artwork, but overall wasn’t particularly impressive to us. We then headed next door to the Ducal’s Palace, which was the historical home to the rulers of Venice. It also contains a meeting room for the Venetian senate, an armory, the huge Hall of the Grand Council, and a prison (which is connected to the palace by the famous Bridge of Sighs). After the Piazza San Marco itself, the Palace was truly our favorite sight in Venice.

We decided to spend the rest of the day walking around and exploring, so we headed over to the Dorsoduro district to have a look. We walked down past the Gallerie Dell’Accademia and walked along the Giudecca Canal for while. The sun was out and the sky was clear, which made walking along this canal extremely enjoyable. We then spent the rest of the day just walking wherever the streets and alleys took us, had dinner in the Campo Santa Margherita, and then headed back through the San Polo district to our hotel.

Friday, May 5, 2006

By now, we had had enough of Venice and were ready to move on. Luckily our plan was to leave early in the AM on the Eurostar to Florence). We got up early, ate our complimentary hotel continental breakfast with room-temperature milk (why don’t Italians like cold milk?), and headed out to the train station to catch our train.

Next up: Part 3 - Florence

Links: Venice Map, Italy Map, Venice Pictures, Venice Videos

The honeymoon started in the afternoon of May 1, as we left on American Airlines from Austin-Bergstrom International. Our flight itinerary was to connect in Dallas, then through London Gatwick, and into Bologna. Why Bologna? Chu and I used our frequent flyer miles to purchase the tickets for free (more or less), and flying into Bologna was the only destination that had open frequent-flyer seats. Obviously not our first choice, but at least it got us into the country cheaply.

All of the flights were exactly on-time, so we arrived in Bologna at 6 PM on May 2 and went straight to the hotel. When booking hotel rooms, my main goals were to a) get a hotel not too far from the train stations, and b) to try to stay somewhat near to the action in each city. Unfortunately, somehow I managed to do neither in Bologa. The hotel (a Holiday Inn) ended up being outside the city, some 15-20 minutes by taxi from the train station. Not sure how I managed that, but we were stuck with it.

The next day we were heading off to Venice, so we got a good, long night’s sleep, and then headed over to the train station early in the afternoon of May 3. We wanted to get to Venice quickly since we were getting a late start, so we purchased some first-class reservations for the Eurostar, grabbed some McDonald’s for lunch (they were everywhere), and got on the train to Venice.

Links: Video From Bologna, Italy map, Bologna Map

Since Chu and I returned from our honeymoon 3 weeks ago, I’ve wanted to post a recap of our honeymoon adventures here on the blog. I think I have now sufficiently motivated myself to get it going, so over the course of this week I’ll be posting entries of some of our experiences from traveling throughout Italy for 12 days. I have already posted the pictures from our trip in a previous post, so please review them again to get a sense of what we saw as I tell our tale.

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