After exactly 25 hours and 14 minutes of travel (of which about 16 hours were in flight), I collapsed on my hotel bed in Anaheim, California. In the US of A for the first time. I am on a 10-day trip: 5 days in Anaheim, CA to attend a higher education conference, and the rest in NY for some other work and a little play.

The conference in Anaheim was huge in terms of the number of participants (a little over 8,000) but was organized without a hitch. It is an annual event organized by a large higher education administration software provider. There was a gazillion daily sessions and classes to attend, and you eventually get flummoxed by the information overload, running from one session to the next. A combination of the busy conference schedule, jet lag and just plain laziness led to me not seeing much of Anaheim. In fact, I was staying across the road from Disneyland and didn’t even bother to go check it out.

On my last evening in Anaheim, I called up a friend who lives in Los Angeles, who was cool enough to drive down and pick me up to show me a bit of L.A. We drove through downtown L.A. for a while (lots of homeless people), and ended up queuing in a 40-minute line to get a hot dog at Pink’s. Apparently, a chilli dog from Pink’s is sort of a big deal in L.A. It was pretty good, but I wouldn’t queue for 40 minutes again for another one.