leaving for high altitude

In the morning, Ewan, Nini and I leave for a 10-day trek in the Annapurna region of Nepal. I'll be offline until we return. It should be quite an adventure, starting with a 7-hour bus ride that only goes 70 km - so that alone should be an adventure. We'll be hiking up to over 4200 meters - pretty high for a guy who lives at sea level, but not half as high as things can get in Nepal.

The goal is to end up at Annapurna base camp, which is situated in the middle of 10+ mountains over 6000 meters - exciting.

Tonight we were invited for dinner at our manager's place - Nandu. He and his wife had us for dinner and it was really nice. He grew up in Burma and she in India, but they're both Nepali - the food was great, and they told us we can consider their place a second home. They have a beautiful house outside the border of the ring road that surrounds Kathmandu, and we could see the mountains very clearly from their roof. We talked about business and other things. About the business, we talked about how the tarbato has vibration problems, and we need to do some serious work before it's a viable product. It struck me how this will be the first time that I'm designing something people's lives rely upon. The second order equations we put together to analyze the vibrations will need to done right - seriously right. It's quite a bit of responsibility, but I think Ewan and I are up to it.