Shanzhai Lu

In the days following Susie's suicide in 2004, I felt like finding a quiet place to hide where I could just cry my fucking eyes out, scream at the world, blame myself for not saving her and feel sorry for myself for the rest of my life -- all at the same time. But there was no time for that. My parents were completely devastated. There was a funeral to plan and there was no way my little sister Diana and I were going to put them through that so we got to work.

You learn a lot about the business of death when you're planning a funeral for the first time. For starters, it's a very profitable sector. There are different funeral homes to choose from offering different package prices and a la carte options. You learn that caskets are like cars. They come in all makes and models and the funeral director is well versed in the art of the upsell. Before you know it, you've been upsold on a really nice cherry colored wood casket. You choose a service package that's all planned out for you because you don't want to deal with the details. You even opt for spending the money for an upgraded tombstone. And you also find yourself shopping around for a cemetery plot and feeling the pressure to pick out the nicest final resting place you can afford. And you have to make all these decisions and spend all this money in the span of a few days.

When we decided on burying Susie at Rose Hills, we thought it'd be as simple as making an appointment at their office and taking a look at some map of available plots, choosing a few to see and picking one all in the same day. Not quite. It's just like buying a home. There are real estate agents who have access to cemetery plot inventories in a second hand market where someone decided - rightfully so - that it was a good business to buy up a bunch of plots at prime locations and resell them at a higher rate. Their prices fluctuate by season and are negotiable. Oh, and of course the funeral director you're working with has a list of "preferred sales agents" they work with and everyone makes money at the end of the day off referral fees for your grief. Who knew right? Diana and I didn't.

The first agent we met with was a nice woman who looked and acted like a real estate agent selling a house. In a suit. Very professional with her list of inventory on hand with different prices and selling points on why one plot was better than another. Diana and I looked at a few and found one we liked (the one above that i took a shot of today) but there was some parts of Rose Hills she didn't have access to and we felt the need to shop around and compare prices and plots with another agent.

I really don't remember how we got the contact info for the second agent. These memories are five years old and it's of a time I would rather forget so details get lost. But there we were. Day two of shopping for a cemetery plot for Susie and we're told to wait at a certain section of Rose Hills. So we're sitting in our cars waiting. And it sucks. And cemeteries really suck. And we're tired. And we're quiet and just trying to process the grief that we've been trying to hold off on feeling for the past few days so we can do this one last favor for our sister and make sure she has the best casket, funeral and final resting place that she deserves. And we're sitting in this car and an old white pick up truck pulls up. And a tall old guy with a ponytail and beard gets out of the car wearing worn out jeans and a ratty t-shirt with a piece of paper in his hand. Diana and I at this point are giving each other the WTF look. Yup, this was the other agent showing us another group of plots to choose from.

He was totally weird. Even more so because the first thing he did after introducing himself to us was go to the back of his pick up truck and take out a big freakin' shovel. Again, Diana and I are giving each other the WTF look. So we follow this guy around and he's staring at his piece of paper and trying to locate the plots he's supposed to show us. Walking all over the tombstones with his dirty boots and shovel in hand when we've been trying to be respectful and walk around them. It turns out the shovel is used for digging up a bit of grass that grows over the numbers of the cemetery plots.

But seriously. Imagine two Chinese girls following this old bummy looking guy around who's carrying a shovel and digging up  random little parts of the cemetery while other people around us are paying their respect to other grave sites and giving us weird looks. Totally weird.

So it turns out this guy didn't really have any plots we really liked compared to the one the first agent showed us the day before. No big deal. Just another day in his life doing his job really. So we walk back to his pick up truck and our car and he's scribbling notes on that piece of paper for us to keep in case we change our minds and Diana starts elbowing my arm as we're standing there saying "look at his license plate. So I looked at his license plate and OMG I wanted to laugh.

So this dude gets in his pick up truck and drives off. Diana and I get in our cars and for the first time in the days since our sister died, we started laughing out loud. Seriously. Just cracking up in the car at this weird guy who sells cemetery plots for a living driving around in a white pick up truck with a license plate that said:

DIGHER.

Don't knock it until you try it.

And if you try it and still don't like it

...then give it to me, I'll finish it.

photo courtesy of Pacific Aviation Musem

A core part of what makes GeeksOnAPlane tours memorable are the access to places we don't often get to see and the shared experiences we don't often have time for in our day to day environments. It kind of takes me back to the days of school field trips where you wake up super excited because you just know it's going to be a cooler day because it's different from every other day.

In less than 5 months, Dave McClure has convinced a group of entrepreneurs and investors to drop their routine in exchange for a bit of trust that he know's what's good for them. Some of these shared experiences off the top of my head:

• Fast pitches from Japanese startups in a basement bar in Tokyo.
• A bunch of geeks tweeting and twitpic'ng their way up a climb on the Great Wall of China.
• After party in Shanghai with Halle Barry and Clive Owens
• Landing in Shanghai and frantically reserving our Facebook vanity names while waiting for our luggage.
• Bringing a Silicon Valley voice to the White House to spark immigration reform in support of innovation
• An action packed schedule via planes, trains and buses in different cities throughout Europe

What you see is an orchestrated series of events planned well in advance. What really takes place in the planning is a chaotic itinerary often thrown together, edited and added to right up to the last minute. GeeksOnAPlane Hawaii is no exception and we've learned to embrace this as part of the DNA of what makes this worth doing. Why? Because trust me. What finally results are all the conversations, connections and friendships formed in between the stuff that's scheduled in, tweeted, blogged, filmed and shared.

So having said that... really appreciated the Pacific Aviation Musem in Pearl Harbor reaching out to us for an insiders tour of their museum at Ford Island. Thanks to the awesome Anne Murata for understanding "geeks on a budget" and inviting us to another opportunity to get together for a shared experience we're looking forward to. I don't know about you, but having cocktails under the wings of a B-25 Bomber after touring a battlefield hangar and stepping off a flight simulator sounds pretty "GOAPy" to me.

Stay tuned!

Update: GOAP Hawaii was awesome. Enough said. See for yourself here.

I spent an amazing 10 days in Hawaii back in June for the Hawaii Tourism Authority that gave me a chance to go beyond the beautiful brochure version of the islands and see and share it from a perspective that only those who live there could share. I met some really amazing people there who I now call good friends.

I flew back to LA and was still in love with Hawaii when 3 days later I threw my stuff back in a suitcase and set off on a whirlwind 10 day sleep deprived GeeksOnAPlane tour of Tokyo, Beijing and Shanghai with a group of amazing tech investors and entrepreneurs that I had helped Dave McClure co-organize. By the time we got to our last city, Shanghai, we all were friends thanks to conversations in a Tokyo subway, on buses stuck in Beijing traffic, in an afterparty following Startup2Startup, on a dance floor in Shanghai, a geek trek to the Great Wall of China, Barcamp Shanghai, TEDxShanghai and a lot of shared meals, conferences and meetups in between.

A month later, I attended my first TED conference and they’re not kidding when they say it’s a life changing event.  TED takes that a step further by bringing together people from different countries, sectors and areas of expertise …the conversations and connections I made during those 4 days in Oxford were amazing. So much so, I spent 10 hours on a flight back to Los Angeles …rethinking every aspect of my life. I know you've been there. If you haven't, then you will and be sure to let me know when you do.

Making real connections. I don’t think experiences like this should be reserved for chance conversations in the hallway of conferences already scheduled. Nor do I think we can sustain our need for a shared experience with each other via tweets or comments left in an archived blog post or passing Facebook newsfeed.

Then there are times when you want to disconnect altogether. If only for a few hours. Hawaii has a way of doing that to me each time I visit. I wanted to create an experience that would allow my friends some time to do the same.

As we go into the final stretch of 2009 with 2010 around the corner, the goal is simple.

At the core of this, it's about bringing good people together.  On the surface, we all bring a level of experience and expertise to share with each other. It's a week where good people and ideas will intersect technology, sustainability and entrepreneurship. Conversations will be sparked. Partnerships will form. Projects will develop. Yes. I know. Hawaii. It may be hard to put on the line item of an expense report. But then again, that's not how this started to begin with. I hope this makes sense.

When good people get together, great things happen. <--- really. this is what it's all about..

...see ya next week Hawaii.

Everything connects if you let go and pay attention to the opportunities that come from not trying to control things that are meant to be shared.

Eight months ago someone gave me an idea and a few much needed words of encouragement over lunch in Santa Monica. That idea became TEDxShanghai. That day in Shanghai inspired TEDxMidAtlantic. It opened a door to TEDGlobal. It sparked an idea for TEDxHonolulu. It inspired an opportunity to help TED bring a delegation from China to TEDActive next year. The world just got a lot smaller for many people in as little as eight months.

It started with an idea and a few much needed words of encouragement in my life from someone i've come to admire, respect and appreciate. For that, I'm buying that someone dim sum tomorrow in NYC. It's the least I can do. Thanks Jim!