A humpday update

Happy anniversary to the Fullers and to the Ebys. I hope you all have/had a good celebration.

Did everyone have a good holiday weekend? Everyone in the US, that is? It was hot here on the East Coast (and in the Midwest), but I still got out to enjoy the blue skies and sunshine.

Saturday and Sunday I moved dirt, planted flowers, sowed grass seed, sweated buckets. It was nice to clean up the front lawn so it looks nicer. I'm glad that big hedge is gone in front of the house. Oh, also hacked a full lawn bag of forsythia from the bush in back. All the damned bushes have been overgrown for some many years that they just need to come out and start over. But, it's not my place so I'm not worrying about it.

I rode the CBR in for the first time today. The TBR exhaust is pretty loud, so I usually shifted <4000rpm. Since it redlines at 12krpm, it'll be fun to get someplace more open and really wind it out :) I want to get it in good shape and get Maura some seat time on it in parking lots/quiet streets so she can ride it while I'm gone.

I leave Jun 6 for China again, so put in your orders for souvenirs soon.

Holiday weekend and a correction

Ok, my parents have only been married for 43 years. I wasn't there, so I can't keep track of how long it's been. I know they've got me beat by 33 years, but I've had twice as many spouses.

Looks like thunderstorms Friday and Saturday. Good time for cleaning the house, doing laundry, etc. If it's dry on Sunday, I'll be planting flowers to try and stave off the erosion in my dirt-only areas around the house. Also need to visit many friends this weekend - friends! where are you? What are your plans?

The cartoon below has a personal connection with me. I once dated a woman with children and made the same remark.* How embarrassing



*Just kidding.

Birthdays and Anniversaries

Happy birthday (May 8) to Erin and Trevor's little girl. She is, uh, 0 years old. In China, she'd be 1 as she's had one birthday. I hope to see her in the next few days.

Also happy birthday (May 24) to Ray and Abbie's little girl. She is 0 years, 0 months, 1 day old. And pretty cute from the photo.

Happy birthday (mmm, don't know the date) to Curt and Mindy's baby girl. She's a couple of months old now. What's up with all the girl babies?

Finally, Happy Anniversary to my mom and dad. It's been (counts fingers, toes, needs more toes) a lot of years since they got married. Makes me a little jealous. Congratulations, you two.

an accurte (IMHO) description

I have a new comic I enjoy.

http://www.wigu.com/overcompensating

I found this description of modern music and found that I agree:
"When you get to be a certain age, everything that is cool seems to be a lot of nonsensical, idiotic jibberish. The music that blares from the pimp rides makes no sense; it all sounds like a man with severe autism halfheartedly explaining human sexuality to a parrot, while in the background a dangerously unqualified Caribbean contractor rhythmically installs an automatic garage door opener. Bollocks."

I'm not good at coming up with good stuff, but I know it when I see it (and I steal it and post it here).

more news of the weird?

I wasn't going to post some more news from the local newspaper, but then I thought "screw it". Nobody cares. Hell, I don't even care.

Everyone try to work up a little enthusiasm, ok? I'm going to try and get myself up to apathy tomorrow. Or maybe I won't. We'll see if I feel like it.

Epiphanies and news from China

I had an epiphany about jazz music last night. Good jazz (Stan Getz and Astrud Gilberto, specifically) not that crap they have nowadays. It came to me while I was getting a massage. Ten seconds after I had it, it was gone. Probably best as it would be stupid now.

I had an epiphany about relationships earlier on the way back from dinner. I lost that one, too. Maybe it's just me.

I went through a stack of Shanghai Daily newspapers after work. Read the comics, did some Sudoku and crosswords. Found that the MotoGP was about 1/5 capacity - maybe I should have tried harder to attend :( Oh, well. It was a good weekend to rest.

My tour guide (GP) has been sick, too. A reader told me I mention her a lot. One reason, dear readers, is that I am a stranger in a strange land. When you find someone willing to show you around, you tend to spend time with them. It makes for a quick friendship. Remember that when people visit you from out of the country. Especially if they speak the language and you don't.

More from the news:
An airport worker at Harbin airport (Heilongjian Province) was sucked into the engine of a 737-800 Friday afternoon. That had to be a bad day for everyone. His day ended very quickly.

Also, a China Eastern flight landed at Pudong Airport (the main Shanghai airport) and twelve tires attached to the undercarriage blew up. Plane landed safely. I bet it was very exciting there for a minute or so. A340-600 from Seoul. Hmmm, I hope the 777s aren't having troubles next week.

And just one headline. "Court says penis was mistakenly removed" Search the internet if you are interested. I've heard of cutting off the wrong leg, but, what were they aiming for to *accidentally* remove the penis?

Six days left on this trip. Next trip in planning.

Friday in china

It's Friday here, but still Thursday night in the US, so I'm not late in wishing my good friend, Trevor, a happy birthday! Sorry I'm not there to buy you drinks and lap dances. Perhaps when I get back.

Besides a nice cough and some continuing lethargy, I'm over my flu. Eight more days to go in China and then back in the US. I'll finally get to see my new office which has been waiting for me for 2 weeks.

Happy weekend all! Watch the MotoGP races on Sunday and remember that I *wanted* to be there in person (too damned hard to buy tickets over the phone in Chinese).

Two trends in illness and medical care

As I lay in the hospital bed with an IV yesterday, I realized I have two trends going over the past 9 months or so.

#1 - I keep getting this damned flu. First (I recall) was last June or so. High fever, headache, etc. I was seeing a nurse at the time and she took good care of me (luckily temp started falling before she stuck me in a bathtub of ice water). Then I got sick on each China trip including this one. For one of them, I was in the US and it turned out I had strep throat.

#2 - My limits on who gets to stick needles in me is changing. Last June, I let the pretty nurse give me a shot for my big headache. Then in December, I got another IM shot in Singapore at the hotel doctor. Yesterday, I let a nice Chinese nurse set up an IV to pump all kinds of goodness into me for over 3 hours. And it seems to have worked as I feel much better today.

Either I need a new immune system or I need to travel less :( I think this time it was the train back from Nanjing.

I didn't even need a haircut

With prices like this, I was willing to put up with the shampoo and haircut.



I forgot to mention the beggars on the sidewalks in Nanjing. A guy and his daughter, she was probably 3 or so. He sat there with a cup and she went up to people asking for money. Cute girl, but very dirty. She grabbed at my pant leg and finally hugged my leg and sat on my foot.

GP yelled at her and she left us alone. Even the next night, she came at us, recognized GP and scurried off.

it's like Bizzaro hotel!

I spent 3 weeks in a hotel room (very nice hotel) in room XX02. Went to Nanjing for 3 nights, returned to the Suzhou hotel and got room XX01. Right next door. That's ok, I can remember 01 instead of 02.

However, it's a mirror image of 01. Everytime I reach for a towel, toilet paper, alarm clock, it's on the opposite side. It's like someone came in during the night and switched my apartment around. I'm sure I'll get used to it quickly.

Last night I had a new guess thrown at me as to my nationality. I was walking in downtown Suzhou to the massage place ($7.50 massage, remember?) and said something. An older couple behind me (late 50's? early 60's?) with Eastern European look asked if I was Russian. I think they asked in Russian. I told them US (note: I'm doing the same thing I did when I first came to China. When I started learning Chinese, I'd say something in German when I got stuck. When I was learning German, I did the same with French which I'd studied in HS. Now I almost answered these people in Chinese as it is my "foreign language for all peoples".)

Turns out they were Uzbekistani (Uzbeki?) and I looked/sounded Russian. So, English, Canadian, Russian.

No one yet has guessed I'm actually Korean ;)

Now, to bed. A sore throat and body aches have begun - time for my China trip illness :(

some photos from Nanjing

China celebrates Labor Day in early May. My company was closed May 1-3 and I decided to use the 5-day weekend to see more of China. I'd been to Shanghai and thought Nanjing would be very interesting. It's only a couple of hours up the road and a friend from Nanjing agreed to show me around a little bit.

My friend (GP) was going to get train tickets via her friend, but, alas, they were all gone. Pretty much *everyone* in China travels for the May holiday, so they went fast. Instead, we caught a bus. I'm going to save some time and finger joints by pasting in an e-mail with details which I sent to Maura. WARNING: long and boring.

Saturday I did some shopping around Suzhou. Just relaxed a little and picked up a few things. My tour guide said the train tickets were sold out, so we went to the bus station early Saturday to get tickets. There we were told you can only buy tickets for today. Uh oh!

GP is resourceful, though, and she found another place where you could buy tomorrow's tickets today. And there was no line to wait in :) And we took a bicycle rickshaw (pulled by a tiny, 60+ yr old man) to get there. The bill was 10RMB ($1.25) to take us about 20 minutes with some nasty hills where he jumped off and pulled his bike (and us) up the hill. I gave him a 40RMB tip on top of a 10RMB fare. Sheesh, $7.25 was worth it.

Sunday, we got to the bus station early and sat in the hot, stinkiness of unwashed people. My language skills are picking up, so I can make responses to things, ask for certain things and even understand people, especially when it comes to restaurant bills (lots of practice there). The bus ride was good, about 2.5 hours.

Cooling towers


Arrived in Nanjing, found the hotel (very nice) and got the option of a nicer room, higher up for another 100RMB. Uh, $12/night more? Ok, the company doesn't mind :^D Walked around the area - downtown - full of shopping malls, restaurants, etc. Cleaner and wider roads than Philly or NY, also nicer than Shanghai that way. Not as cozy downtown as Suzhou. I think it reminded me most of London. But only by comparison - isn't *that* much like London.

Jinling Hotel, Nanjing


Wandered around a little bit near the hotel. Saw and photographed some cute and/or wacky signs.

The ad photo makes it sound good, but, i dunno . . .


Aw, a cute kitten. Wonder what they are advertising. I hope it says "love your pets"


Went to a big, big Confucious temple. And stopped at McDonald's for a soda. Hah!






GP, the tour guide.


One of the few China photos where I am *not* wearing my BMW jacket.



The area is famous for crawfish. (note: lobster are "dragon shrimp" and crawfish are "little dragon shrimp") So, first night was some good Chinese eating with a big bowl of crawfish in some spicy stuff. They give you plastic gloves to break them open, though, after a couple of rounds of gloves, you just start picking them up with chopsticks and biting the tails off. Then spit out everything that isn't food. I'm getting used to it.



Unfortunately, they had no TsingTao


Across from the hotel


View from my room


Monday we met GP's parents at the big mountain area in town (Zhongshan - "central mountain") and saw Sun Yat-sen's mausoleum and similar historical stuff. Also met GP's 12mo nephew as he was along for the fun. Hot and many, many people. I think I saw 3 other white faces at the mountain.

GP with nephew (can't remember his name)


Looking towards Chang Kai-shek's mausoleum


Looking away from Chang Kai-shek's mausoleum


I really wanted to ride the "electromobile"


Soong Mei-ling's bathroom


A picture of Jesus. Don't know why, but it is in Chang Kai-shek's house.


Monday night - more crawfish (better than the previous night) and other tasties. Chicken soup in which I couldn't recognize the chicken at first. thought it was oyster shells - the black ones. Yeeeeck! But tasted good.

Tuesday morning we went to the "Memorial for the Victims of the Japanese Invasion" aka the Chinese Holocaust Memorial. Wow. I had read a little about it, but the stories, photos, placques, etc. were emotional. Very sad, very angry. The memorial is on top of a ten-thousand person grave, so they cut a little section so you can see
the skeletons. Young, old, men, women. Nine-year old with iron nails driven into his/her arms and shoulder. I'm told the Japanese aren't too welecome at the memorial.

I have some photos, but they are less entertaining. I'll put them on my regular Yahoo photos page later.

Needed some cheerful, so we went to a big green area on the map. Turned out to be a nice park with kids' day going on. Local TV station had games and contests set up. So many photos of kids rolling hoops (or trying) and skipping rope (winner did 150+ in one minutes). Also have photos of this to be put on Yahoo later. Once I figure out where I backed them up.

I begged for Western lunch so we hit Pizza Hut. Yummy! Just like the US . . where I never go to Pizza Hut :) Lazed about after lunch then went to the game room in the hotel and played ping pong for an hour. It's been a long time, but I picked it up pretty well and almost won a match.

I splurged on dinner to thank GP for the tour and we had lobster and crab (lobster = $40US, crab = $7.50) with a bottle of Chinese red wine. Whole dinner was about $70. The wine was't bad, but it took a long time to order. 7 wines on the menu, all in Chinese, and *nobody* could tell me the difference. Two bottles, both cabernet, both same vineyard, both 1999 - 50% price difference.

Wednesday morning I checked out of the hotel, connected with GP for lunch and caught the train back to Suzhou. The train was cheaper, more comfortable and faster. I'm not sure how the bus service survives except that there are a *lot* of busses. Train ticket was 55RMB for a 200km ride. That's just under $7US.

I need to get photos of me in my new glasses. Bought some in Nanjing and it appears the prescription is pretty close. Maybe not perfect, but only $70 including eye exam. Bwahahaha! I'll see if I can get contacts for $10 or such.