When I was in Seoul last week, I had a great evening with our awesome Microsoft MVPs (Most Valuable Professional). (Joe - my VP - and I actually met with MVPs in Taipei, Seoul, and Beijing.) These guys (and they are almost all guys, unfortunately) are volunteers who are super enthusiastic about Microsoft products and support our users in newsgroups and via their websites and blogs.

Anyway, as you might guess, much of the conversation was around geeky stuff, but we had a great conversation where they discussed how to best sneak a cigarette on a trans-Pacific flight. Apparently, almost all these guys smoke heavily and find it difficult to make the long flight to the US with a smoke.

So, the strategies that seemed most popular were:

• Wait until the flight attendants eat. There's usually only one on duty then, so it's easier to sneak the cig.
• Find a charitable soul among the flight attendants, one who will take you into the baggage hold to let you smoke. (There might be other good applications of this location with certain flight attendants...)
• Smoke in the bathroom and then apologize profusely when you're caught (beware the bathrooms with automatic fire suppression systems, though.) Apparently, the flight attendants don't typically want to bother with the paperwork of arresting you when they land, so if you don't bug them again, they'll let it go.

It was a surprising but fun conversation. It was nice to get to know these guys as people, something I wouldn't have been able to do in the newsgroups or on email.