We made our move from Seattle to Portland last night. Saturday involved rushing around maniacally to get a rental car before the agency's noon closing time. Enterprise apparently doesn't "pick you up" on Saturdays if you live in Seattle, so I needed to extract Mr. Wong from his hotel a little early and have him drive my car back to my home.
The demo in Seattle went reasonably well; apparently the publicity from the Seattle P-I, Seattle Weekly, Northwest Asian Weekly (twice), Seattle Chinese Post, and even some internal Microsoft message boards brought in a few people. We definitely attracted crowds, especially at the Seattle store. I hope that this event translates into a long-term boost in sales and also helps build the brand image in the US.
Originally we planned to return from Portland to Seattle tonight, but on Friday the Portland Fox affiliate asked us to be available for a morning TV show this Tuesday, so we decided it would be simpler just to stay in Portland and continue directly on to San Francisco from there.
We are traveling in a small van, but the amount of luggage needed for supplies, personal effects, display material, and so on makes the space pretty crowded. I almost think we would have been better off dragging a small trailer behind my Camry. I feel comfortable, but the passengers themselves must feel pretty cramped.
Tomorrow is our first relatively unstructured day. I'll be taking the Wongs around Portland to do some market research, the specific mode of which most people simply call "shopping." We'll go to downtown Portland again and maybe a few other areas. I'm not looking forward to waking up at 5am on Tuesday or driving for 10-12 hours afterward, but I think it will be interesting to see what happens in the Bay Area.