International Travelogues
For six of the last seven years that I worked for IBM I was assigned to the Information Technology Audit Group. This audit function was a 100% traveling job and had responsibility for auditing organizations that had responsibility for the security of internal systems and networks. I joined this group in February 1993 for what was to be a three year assignment. However, realizing that we would again be making a trip to Tokyo, which is one of my favorite places on the planet, I volunteered to extend my assignment for nine months to the end of 1996. I then returned to my previous department and a staff job. I never anticipated how much I would dislike sitting at a desk again after having traveled 100% for the prior four years. So I contacted the manager I worked for in Audit and asked if I could get back into the Audit organization. She went to bat for me and got me back in, although it took until April 1998 before I could rejoin the group, partly due to a loyalty I felt to the department I returned to after my first tour in Audit.
The second tour started in Germany and this time
around I decided to
start writing travelogues of our travels. Diane was then at a point
that
allowed her to travel with me very often, and eventually 100%, when I
was
out of the country, which was about half the year. I wrote the
travelogues to
share our adventures in other countries with family and
some friends
. The list grew over the two
years
that I worked in Audit prior to retiring in February 2000, which is
when
Diane and I implemented our longtime plan to join the full-time RV
community.
As we have traveled around the country over the past several years,
folks
who have learned that we did extensive traveling around the world
showed
an interest in the travelogues. I have also had requests from family
and friends who wanted to reread them. So I have decided to
format them and put those travelogues
up on our website for anyone who is interested in reading about travel
adventures in other countries. They follow the same format as the
travelogues I write
for our RV travels. However, I make no apologies for
any problems with tense or grammar, although I have spell checked
them. These travelogues were mostly written in the evenings after
dinner when I was back in the hotel room and were sent out "as is".
As for the photos, we didn't own a digital camera
during the time we were doing this traveling. I was more
interested in taking video of our travels and have over 45 hours of
video that provide lots of good memories for us. However, Diane
always carried a small camera and took pictures that were developed the
old fashioned way - on paper. We now have a
printer/scanner/copier, so the photos are scanned from these paper
photos.