California - Here I Come!!!

I went on a business trip to Long Beach, California last week. I have a professional designation as a RPA (Real Property Administrator) and the place that I work for has a membership with BOMA (Building Owner's Management Association). Once a year there is an BOMA sponsored International Conference with people whom come from all over the world to attend. The location of the conference changes each year and this is the third year that I have been fortunate enough to have my company send me. The first year I went it was in Denver, last year it was in Philadelphia, and this year it was in Long Beach. I love meeting people from all over the world who work in the same business line as I do.















Registration for the conference was on the Saturday and the conference itself began with the keynote speaker beginning at 8 am sharp on the Sunday morning. The keynote speaker this year was Ben Stein. I knew that he had hosted a couple of game shows in the past - one being Ben's money where contestants had to answer more questions than Ben and in doing so, they won 'his' money; and the other one that I saw was were they asked beauty contestants (both men and woman) were combined with geeks, and were asked easy questions to see how smart (or not) they were. I think the name of the show was "Are you smarter than a Beauty contestant? One question he said all 6 finalists got wrong was "what language do Australians speak"? They all answered Australian. What I did not know was that Ben has his doctorate in both Law and in Economics, that he wrote speeches for both Nixon and Ford, and that he has taught in University for 35 years. In fact, he said that he will begin teaching again this coming fall. The keynote speech is done in a huge hall, where the speaker has large screens on both sides of him so that the audience can see him (I always sit in the front - if I come from thousands of miles away, I want to be able to see), and also has those clear teleprompters in front of him (like Obama uses) so that it appears that he has his material memorized but the type is going in front of him, invisible to the audience.



















There were courses later Sunday morning and during the afternoon (I took Conflict Resolution and in the afternoon Performance of Green Buildings). Sunday night was a huge welcoming party. Monday was spent attending a couple of more courses (one was Environmental Sustainability) and also touring the trade show portion of the conference. There are lots of draw prizes but be warned, for each one you enter, the company now has your contact information and they hound you for the next year to purchase their products or services. On Tuesday I toured the rest of the trade show portion, then raced to the airport to catch a 12:30 pm flight. I arrived home just before midnight eastern time so it is quite a hike to go from Niagara Falls area to California.
















Speaking of the airport, I did not know that Long Beach is no where close to the Los Angeles Airport. When I arrived in LA, I just thought that I could take a shuttle bus to the hotel. So I searched out where to catch the proper bus, confirmed with the driver that it was for the correct hotel, and rode to the hotel - easy. WRONG. It was the correct hotel but WRONG city. I then took a taxi to the Long Beach hotel - very expensive and when I had to return to the LA airport on Tuesday - same thing - I asked everyone and they all said that they only way to get there was by taxi. If I were to do it again, I may of rented a car.


In the little bit of spare time I did have, I walked the 5 minutes down to the beach. It really is nothing to write home about. That being said, there are a couple of neat things there. There are 3 or 4 islands that can be seen easily from shore. However, they are not islands. They are actually oil rigs dressed up to look like islands so that people from shore are not looking at ugly oil rigs. There are also sea lions on the boys (okay, I know that is not how you spell this). Apparently the sea lions are nocturnal and do their hunting at night and sleep during the day. They prefer to sleep on these objects because if they sleep on the beach, they get bothered by people. The other really surprising thing about Long Beach is that it does not get hot there. I thought for this time of year, it would be swelter there but because it is right beside the ocean, it stays in the low 70's year around. At night, it actually was chilly (and once again, I did not take a jacket!)



















Lastly, from the airplane at about 39,000 feet, I noticed these round circles - extremely huge in nature - first one here and one there - and then lots. I have since found out what they are but do you know?




















Lastly and lastly again (I promise), upon arrival in Toronto, our jet was racing another jet to see who could land first. Have a look.














Tim