1993

Suddenly, a memory from about 30 years ago came back to me.
In 1993, the small company whose HQ was located in Massachusetts I had been working for since November 1988 promoted me to a technical manager responsible for the entire Asia Pacific, recognizing my contribution as a project manager for a client in New Zealand. That project started in October ~ November in 1991, and I was obliged to get involved and eventually led a team due to a reason I had better not mention. Anyway, after tremendous difficulties caused by immature products (both software and hardware) for crazy work style such as daily conference calls in the middle of night, I could finally leave the project in summer of 1992 with "successful" production launch, though it was effectively repairing airplane engines during a flight.

Without this project I would not have been appointed to the aforementioned regional position. It was a management direction to build a new regional team from scratch using engineers in Singapore and Sydney in order to respond to demanding Japanese customers. The idea was very interesting. Unlike Japan, there were no giant IT companies in both Singapore and Australia, therefore hiring would be much easier, and also the team had to be in close contact with the development team back in US.
I started recruiting engineers in both Singapore and Sydney, which was a brand new experience. Needless to say, I travelled frequently.

In March 1993, according to my record of flights, though less accurate, I went to Singapore and Sydney for recruiting. (The picture of my Australia VISA was issued after that trip.) After coming back to Japan, I went to see my parents who lived in the same apartment in a different floor, and my mother fell unconscious in front of me. It was only temporary and she recovered after a while. But I called a hospital where my wife worked as a nurse, and managed to let my mother admitted. I don't recall the detail any longer, but the cause of her problem remained unknown.
She would pass away 10 years later in 2003 after suffering from Alzheimer for 3+ years...

Looking into my record of flights since 1987, I had a meeting near Boston, MA after a meeting in Singapore in October 1993, which caused the following itinerary:

Tokyo ~ Singapore ~ London ~ Boston ~ Tokyo

It was before formation of Star Alliance and One World, one would probably not come up with such an itinerary nowadays. According to my record, I would repeat similar trips with irregular routings for the next 14 years.

After 2 years in the same position (1993~1994). due to the regional role of the position, I was asked if I could move with my family to Hong Kong, which I followed.
Living in Hong Kong is totally out of question these days due to an obvious reason...Then a new life would start in 1995 having Indian engineers reporting to me while reported to a Chinse director in Hong Kong. (To be continued, hopefully…)