I arrived in Busan this morning. I will be here for 10 days working at the APEC Summit. While it’s a great opportunity for me, I will be staying here solo, without my family. That’s unfortunate–my son and I had a wonderful time yesterday, and I hate to be away from him for so long. It’s never easy being apart from your spouse, either. I will also work a lot of hours while I’m here. I worked nine hours today and will work even more tomorrow, even though tomorrow is Sunday. APEC gears up on Tuesday and winds down on Saturday.
Events such as APEC are rare, as are the opportunities and requirements for an event of such magnitude. Thousands will descend on Busan by early next week to attend a variety of APEC meetings. Much has happened since I last wrote, as you can imagine. I don’t usually miss two days of blogging in a row, but preparations for my trip to Busan and other circumstances drew me away. I will try to keep writing as much as I can while I’m here. I’m glad that I have an Internet connection in my hotel room, although the room itself isn’t very nice and it’s much too hot (they turned off the air conditioning). It’s not nearly as nice as the room I stayed in when I was in nearby Haeundae for a couple days in late September. It is closer to where I need to be during the APEC Summit. I would prefer a better location over a better hotel.
Tonight I met up with a World Adventurers fan and some of her coworkers. Monique has been reading my blog for awhile, and I’ve also been reading hers, Quemino’s World. Her blog is great. I’m lobbying for it to get a "Best of MSN Spaces" nod. I call hers the "literary blog," because she posts far more literary references than I do. If you haven’t checked out her MSN Spaces blog yet, have a look. She is here in Busan now as part of the APEC delegation. She is just as nice and congenial and thought provoking in person as she appears to be through her blog–what you read is what you get. (She’s reading this, so I need to write nice things about her! Seriously though, she is a great person.) One of her coworkers asked about how to make a successful blog. We told him that you need a "hook," something unique that sets your blog apart from other blogs and keeps people coming back for more. Really, you can blog about just about anything, even something you know nothing about. That can be even more fun, because then you can write an expository and be blissfully ignorant about the subject matter.
Monique and her coworkers will spend the next week here too as APEC delegates. I will work behind the scenes. Tomorrow night I will backtrack and tell you all about the exciting things that happened while I was away.
aw shucks.