A new book “Hunting the world” is coming out this October
A former 3M executive Erwin Brown wrote a new book called “Hunting the world” which will be published in October. The book will be hard-cover 300+ pages covering adventures on five continents over the last 70 years and 130 pictures. The story of connecting with Mr. Brown is a story on its own. The day Mr. Brown came to speak at my business networking group was the day I spoke at a local Rotary club about China. Therefore I did not meet him. However I was very interested to find out what he talked about and I e-mailed him to introduce myself. We made connections right away on common interest of travel and particularly my interest in Asia. Mr. Brown is kind enough to send me an entire chapter of the book on “Transcapspian Urial Sheep in Turkmenistan”. Here is a snippet of the beginning of the chapter:
I am often asked which one of my adventures has been the
most interesting and exciting. It is difficult to answer, as every
journey has suspenseful moments and interesting twists. Life-
threatening experiences aren’t much fun when they’re happening, but
make fascinating stories in retrospect. Sheep hunting is plain hard
work, and there isn’t much smiling and laughing during the process;
but the satisfaction of accomplishment when the sheep is down is hard
to beat.
I had collected the five different species of North
American wild sheep, the European Mouflon, the Barbary Sheep of
Spain, and the Gobi Argali in Mongolia, but had yet to experience a
hunt for one of the Urial sheep specie of Southern Asia. Of all the
species of Urials, the Transcaspian Urial is the most handsome. The
main range of the Transcaspian Urial is southern Turkmenistan and
northern Iran. A hunt in Iran is out of the question, so I arranged a
trip to Turkmenistan for February 1990. Bob Kern of The Hunting
Consortium made all the arrangements.
……
While I am waiting eagerly to see the chapter of “Gobi Argali Sheep in Mongolia”, I can’t wait to share the good news of the book with you.
Lesson learned: price vs. value
Our family spent a 9-day vacation on Canadian Rockies and Montana Glacier National Park. While we totally enjoyed the breathtaking beautiful nature and had a wonderful family time, we also learned a valuable lesson on price vs. value.
Fairmont Chateau located on the world famous picturesque Lake Louise. The hotel room runs from $245 to $1800 per night. After a terrific morning stroll around Lake Louise, my boys wanted very much to stay at the hotel. So we did it for $500 a night with a lake-view suite. However, immediately after check-in, we regretted. It is a huge hotel. It took us at least half an hour from the time we parked the car in front of the lobby to the time we find our room. Yes we had an amazing view from the room, but we did not spend much time in our room after all. In addition, we had to pay $32 for self-parking the car at the garage and a deposit of $100 for property damage just in case.
Compare with our prior night’s stay at Lake Louise Inn for a family suite of $200 where every penny is worth it, we all learned a valuable lesson from this experience. We decided the kids should feel the pain of spending too much money on fame that they each should contribute $100 for the stay.
While you enjoy the beautiful pictures we took on the trip at http://www.flickr.com/photos/25746090@N04/show/with/3775607045, I hope you don’t make the same mistake like we did.
Reunited through LinkedIn
Social media is so powerful. I have recently connected with two of my middle school and high school classmates after 23 years from graduation. You can imagine the excitement and rejoice we had when we finally met in San Francisco half of the world away from Shanghai, China. We spent almost five hours dinning at a Mountain View downtown Chinese restaurant and chatting about our past years. There is so much to catch up. All of us wished we had more time to spend together.
LinkedIn is the one I am using to find my classmates and colleagues. If you have never tried it, you may be surprised by who you can find.
How are you surviving?
In today’s economy, what do you do to keep your spirit up? What can we do to prepare ourselves for the recovery? Do you mind to share your ideas and experience? This is my story “Turning a crisis into opportunity”.
