Sweden, HSBC and Condoms

The plane leaves at 10pm tonight. Newark non-stop to Stockholm, Sweden. Right now I'm sitting in front of my laptop waiting for Diana to get out of the shower so that I can pop in, shower, shave and put my brand-spanking new contacts in. It has been well over a year since I last wore contacts and I'm excited to have them again.

This morning I did Laundry, finalized our sublet agreement with Nicole (nice girl) and coded. Yup I coded. The geek tracker is back! Although I still have more coding to do it is a start. Now you can track our progress as we make our way across Sweden, Finland, Denmark, Estonia and who knows where else (we really don't know where we're going). We found really excellent people on couchsurfer to stay with and show us around town. I'm really excited for that.

Go check out the Geek Tracker!

Yesterday both Diana and I were extremely busy. She ran around town getting errands done and I spent hours at HSBC setting up our Chinese bank account. Seriously. I went into HSBC to setup a US based account (held in US Dollars) and to finish up the paperwork, photocopy passports, etc. that is being sent to China to setup our China based HSBC account (held in RMB). Mainly we're doing this to get our money OUT of the US and into Chinese RMB because the exchange rate is falling as the dollar becomes weaker.

It is a tricky game that you have to play. Once money is transferred to RMB and held in a Chinese bank account it is next to impossible (as we've been told) to get it back out agan. On the other hand the dollar is getting weaker so we want to buy RMB now, ASAP. So... what do you do? Transfer it all and buy more RMB and hope you are able to spend it all in the country OR leave it in US and transfer as needed (which means you'll spend more in the long run on the exchange rate). OOooohh foreign currencies why do you taunt me so?

I have to say though that HSBC is awesome and I don't know why I didn't switch over early. I guess now is the time. Bye, Bye BoFA hello HSBC (hhm.. 4 letters.. coincidence?).

Everything is pretty much set now. While we're away the Chinese bank account will be processed, I have new contacts, geektracker is back up and running and we're all packed. The last remaining item was gifts.. hhm.. What do you get people in a foreign country when you're from the US? Because of our crazy capitalist culture every product from the US is quickly exported to anywhere/anyone that will pay for it. Its hard bringing gifts to another country when the foreigners can buy everything you can buy at home.

A dilemma indeed..... so what did we get?

NYC Condoms!!!!

and

Halvah...

I can't think of two other items that are distinctly New York! (I wanted to bring beer but the stupid TSA would've had fits, since we're carry on only for this trip).

The next time I write I'll be in Sweden. Check the Twitter yo!