Chicago, USA.

Crashing a major event is all about confidence.

You head ninety six stories above the city.

You walk in like you own the place.

No eye contact, no storytelling.

Soon, you're drinking free Pinot Grigio with the most beautiful woman in the place.

Soon, you're getting random corporate strangers to take your picture.

Soon you're "that new guy in corporate from Tulsa" or "Jose from Mexico City, I hear he doesn't speak English."

Si Senor.

Chicago, USA

I spend hours watching this.

It is the crack cocaine to my Whitney Houston.

It goes on and on.

You've been warned.

Rotterdam, Netherlands.

Tourism is the strangest animal.

I can't really understand why people go to far away places just to look at how they don't live.

I say that, but I do it too.

I wildly snap pictures of things as I walk from meeting to meeting.

Snap! Snap! Snap! Snap!

How do you say hypocrisy in Dutch?

Amsterdam, Netherlands.

Beyond fascinating.

It's hard to describe the wonderful human geography of this town.

The overwhelming sense of life.

London, UK.

The canned "bye bye".

It comes in different forms, always moderately sincere and always right on time.

As you exit onto the jetway, they stand at the front of the plane....

"Bye bye" "Good bye" "Byeeee" "Thank YOU" "Bye bye"

I usually just stare blindly. Occasionally I'll engage in some mindless banter.

It's strange though... it actually makes my day better.

The clouds part and the sun comes out.

I can feel them staring at me... trying to usurp my happiness.

Or perhaps it is because I am standing in the middle of the interfaith chapel at Heathrow, praying aloud to Zool.

This is neither here nor there.

New York City, USA.

I check into the hotel room, open the door. The television is on. The bed is ruffled. There are odds and ends sprawled around the place.

This is someone else's room.

I guess that the keys work on all the rooms. I dunno.

An interesting start to an interesting day.

I read this line a little while back....

"New York has two million interesting people in it, Los Angeles has maybe 75."

It couldn't be more true.

Madness in the East Village.

A spectacular display of human character.

On the flip side, I'm consistantly fascinated with Gregory Levey and his bag of tricks.

Santa Monica, USA.

Eventually being in constantly changing surroundings becomes a game in itself.

You have no idea what time it is, ever. Yet you always wake up at 6am.

You rarely see the people who "live" in the same city as you, and you spend your time constantly in 'introduction' mode.

You become charming.

A master of the three minute conversation.

You're always the out-of-town guest. Anywhere. Everywhere.

Because no one lives on the same schedule, it ends up being quite lonely.

You cannot imagine what it's like to spend a month straight in one place.

You cannot imagine a world without a check-out time and a wake-up call.

If you leave the towels on the floor, they miraculously reappear on the racks.

It's surreal.

New York City, USA

New York disappears when you close your eyes.

A place where you don't even have the time to blink.