my woman from tokyo

I am feeling v. nostalgic for sales conferences of yore -- it was all so much simpler and more exciting when I was young, the world was fresh, we spent extravagantly on useless items like bringing David Hasselhoff in to sing to us, and I had absolutely no responsibilities other than finding my way back to the bus at the end of it. The past few conferences have been gradually less fun for me, partially because I am jaded and realize that they all contain the exact same content, partially because my closest work friends (of whom I have many) are almost all in other organizations within the company and so no longer attend, and partially because I've either been managing a not-insignificant portion of the attendees or planned the conference itself.

For this conference, I wasn't involved in the planning, but I'm responsible for the big boss's slides for her speech tomorrow, and so I couldn't get raucously drunk at the party tonight because I have to do another version of her deck sometime between now (10:30pm Wednesday) and tomorrow (8:00am Thursday). So, I had a glass of wine and a glass of champagne, chatted with some of my friends who have relocated to Tokyo, stayed just long enough to get a ringing in my ears from the speakers, and then came back to my room to work on slides. I'm far enough along that I think I should go to bed now and take advantage of my sleepiness; if the past two nights are any indication, I'll wake up at 5am anyway, so I might as well get some sleep and finish up in the morning.

However, it wasn't all as gloom and doom as I may be making it sound -- the speakers today were good, I've reconnected with several people whom I like quite a bit, and I'm feeling good about the slides I'm making. It's just hard to feel super psyched about this conference when I compare it to the old four-day sales conference/ski trip extravaganzas that I used to go to (one of which was immortalized in my incredibly drunken blog post from January, 2005). But, I shall persevere, and my trip is already moving quickly towards its conclusion. The weekend will be really fun, though; Taylor (a girl from California who is visiting Tokyo) is going to take me to her favorite stationery shop, I'm going to have brunch with Shawn on Sunday, and I'm planning to do some serious wandering and sightseeing on Friday evening and Saturday. I will be sure to post pictures -- but for now, it's time for bed. Goodnight!