Jetlag is my friend.

Jetlag is my friend. At least, that's what I am telling myself as I sit here in my living room completely annihilated by my recent trip to Europe. It seemed like such a good idea to go, even if only for a short time, since it was basically free - after all, our flights and most of our hotel and meals would be paid for by Haas in exchange for our attendance and presentation at the London Business School CSR conference. But nothing is ever free and what we saved in money we are now paying for in puffy eyes and near narcolepsy.

But it sure was fun.

AMSTERDAM
Libby and I set out from SFO on a direct flight to Heathrow, where we hopped a quick flight to Amsterdam. We met Gigi at the train station and set out to find our hotel. This would be the first of what turned out to be many declarations of, "You can't miss it!" from the friendly Dutch and us, in fact, missing it. So our hotel was a less than five minute walk from the train station and we finally found it after 40 minutes of walking.

Amsterdam was loads of fun. We stayed at the Hotel Terminus, which I highly recommend. It was clean and spacious and our beds were insanely comfortable. The Europeans do beds right, that's for sure. It was also on the same block as the police station, so we felt really safe, especially when we rented bikes and locked them overnight at the station entrance (incidentally, as we were locking up our bikes we saw three people being arrested!).

While in Amsterdam we did all (well, almost all) the tourist-y stuff. We visited Ann Frank's house, which was an incredibly moving experience for me; we rented bikes and rode all around the city; we ate "frites" with mayonnaise; we walked through the Red Light District and ogled the hookers in the windows. And we got lost. Often.

We did not, however, do any drugs. But we did go out dancing at a bar called, "Amsterdamned." How could we pass that up?

One of the most interesting things we saw in Amsterdam was the Homomonument. "What's that," you ask. Well, it is what it sounds like. A momument for homos. No joke. It is a dedicated monument down the street from Ann Frank's house that is dedicated to gays and lesbians. The Homomonument. Surprised? So were we..

LONDON
After a whirlwind three days in Amsterdam, Libby and I said goodbye to Gigi and headed to the UK. I was really excited for London because I have never been. I had heard much about it, including that it is just like New York, and so I was really eager to get there. We tried to find lodging while we were in Amsterdam but time got away from us and we ended up having to wait until we got to London to find a hotel. This, as it turns out, was a HUGE mistake. In fact, it was this mistake that almost had them turn us around at the border. That's right, we almost did not get into England! I will take the responsibility for this, as it was my snickering as the agent questioned us that led her to say, "It seems you find this all very amusing." Then she gave me some anti-American diatribe about how if she showed up at our borders with the story I was giving her they would send her on the next plane back. I wanted to much to tell her, "Come on, we hate our president, too!" but I refrained. Then Libby stepped in and calmly explained everything, somehow convicing the woman that in fact we did not have any interest in moving to the UK illegally. Thank goodness one of us was mature enough to handle this potentially serious situation!

London was awesome. Our hotel was staffed with the most imbeciles I have ever experienced in one place. But it was comfy (even if our room did smell like rocks) and it was in a pretty great neighborhood. Every meal we had was (surprisingly) tasty. The weather was (surprisingly) perfect. We even went to the theatre in London's West End!

Oh yeah, and the conference. The conference was pretty good, I guess. It is hard to tell how it went because we really were suffering from sleep deprivation - it took us forever to get our presentation finalized and, after one loooong night in Amsterdam, we were catching up on our sleep for days. Our presentation, in which we discussed the findings of our phenomenalogical research analyzing the link between corporate social responsibility and women, was not particularly well-attended (go figure, a bunch of stuffy professors don't care so much about women and CSR!), but we got pretty good feedback from Kellie and the audience and are planning on shopping it around to some other CSR conferences.

After the conference Libby and I took a many-hour nap and then hit the town. For a couple of hours and then went straight back to sleep. On Saturday we spent the day exploring London, hitting all the must-see sights - the Globe Theater, Big Ben, Parliament, Westminster Abbey, Buckingham Palace - as well as some smaller, neighborhood establishments, like the Borough Market - a Farmer's Market to rival our own here in San Francisco. Saturday night we went to see Avenue Q at the Noel Coward Theatre and then, after much big talk about hitting some nightspots, went back to our hotel and right back to sleep!

We flew home yesterday and I am writing this now in an effort to stay awake and conquer the jetlag.

UN(DER)EMPLOYMENT UPDATE
I am still underemployed though I do feel like I have some momentum on the job front. But clearly I have too much time on my hand, as evidenced by this overly lengthy description of such a short trip across the pond.