Smoking in China

I found an interesting WSJ opinion article on smoking in China. I like the blend of history and culture. I had noticed many months ago that Panda and some other brands are very expensive. Now I know why. And now they sound so enticing :) I'll have to buy a pack just to hand them out and experience the second-hand wonder.

Sometimes China is difficult

I am enjoying China and I hate when little things like today detract from my life here.

I want to bake some bread, but I don't have a candy thermometer to check the liquid temperature (my favorite sweet dough recipe). I searched and searched. GP has never heard of such an item. The super-Walmart type store (Auchan) had no candy or oven thermometers. Other stores with import items (like loaf pans) didn't have any.

I left the last store and went back to my electric scooter to find someone had damaged the ignition and broken a key off in it. Probably trying to steal it :( This was at 1pm Saturday afternoon outside a very busy shopping center right in front of KFC. Why? Makes me sad.

GP took a taxi to meet me and help me get it fixed, luckily right around the corner from the store. She says they targeted my scooter because it is clean and in good shape. The same reason was used when my bicycle was stolen last year - it looked too nice, a tempting target.

So, the scooter is ok, though I have *6* keys for it now - ignition, top box, front panel, battery, 2 locks. Maybe I'll dirty it up and bash it a few times to keep it from being so tempting.

More importantly, does anyone know how I can check the milk temperature so it doesn't kill the yeast? I can't even order a thermometer from Amazon as they only ship books and DVDs to China :p Maybe this is an excuse for a long weekend trip to Hong Kong ;)

Friday at last

Good morning/afternoon/evening everyone. It's Friday morning in Suzhou and I'm glad to have another weekend on the horizon :)

Last night I got a successful haircut (success = no blood, outcome nonhideous) and then relaxed with some dumplings and Strongbow while waiting for GP to finish class. I fell into conversation with a nice Canadian guy who was showing off his 3 month old baby. Seems he married a Chinese girl (she came in later with mama and baba, very cute girl) and they left Suzhou for 10 months in S. Africa and have recently moved to India. All on expat contracts. Hmmm, very tempting. There are certain aspects of the expat lifestyle that I enjoy.

I could probaby retire in 15 years instead of 30 if I stayed on contracts like this. We will see.

On the other end, my good friend, Jeff, has told me about the wonder that is the PNW (Pacific North West). Oh, we have Starbucks here, too, but he described a place where people drive between the lines and wait patiently for their turn at the grocery store. That could be worth having to pay for my own housing again.

Wednesday Night

It looks like we have all of the paperwork together for immigration. The instructions are vague and conflicting, so wish us luck.

I didn't mention, last week's shopping included a cute little jacket for GP and a couple of decent wine glasses for me. I'm glad to be enjoing a little George Debeouf (?) from one of them now. And I'm wearing my cool, new Chinese pajamas - about $4 at the Auchan (like super Walmart). Too small, but makes me feel cool ;)

And topping it off with Offspring videos in the background.

11.28pm. Must be time to sleep.

A quiet weekend

Once I got through Friday night, it was quiet. The drivers after work Friday were the worst in awhile. I'll take anyplace in or near Philadelphia compared to the main streets around here.

I've become used to have a car alongside me as I make a left turn. Even sometimes a car on either side of me as I make a left turn. (Note: that is three cars, driving parallel, turning left from a single left-turn lane.) Friday reached a new height as I was seeing two buses (big, charter buses) turning left together. One from the left-turn lane, one from the right-turn lane. And the two behind them did it, too.

Some place around Philly you can see traffic laws temporarily suspended when traffic is very heavy and it is all going the same way. The breakdown lane becomes a right-turn lane, etc. But, in these areas of Suzhou, there really isn't that much traffic. Nobody waits for more than 1 cycle of the traffic light.

But, Saturday was relaxing and we made some 5x7 prints of some of our travel photos. Yesterday we put them in the 3-up photo frames I brought from the US. I've done so much traveling, I need more frames :P So far we've framed London, Singapore, Beijing and Taiwan. Still need to do more of China, Israel, Costa Rica and I think I'm still missing a couple. I think we'll change format, though, as we have so many good photos from around China.

Oh, and I started this whole post off to talk about lunch last Friday. One of my engineers left the company so I treated the team to lunch. And I didn't make them eat Western food this time. We went to a local Chinese restaurant where I tried two new things: donkey and frog. It wasn't too bad, though the frog was very spicy and had the prickly ash berries that make your tongue tingle.

Happy birthdays and new photos

It seems like I know a lot of people with all of this birthday wishes. Actually, a lot of people I know are from the midwest where it gets cold in the winter. So a lot of babies are born in September and October, know what I mean? (wink, wink, nudge, nudge)

Happy Birthday to Elizabeth (outside of Philadelphia) and my own jie jie, Natalie. Seems like only yesterday she was beating me and breaking my toys. It wasn't yesterday, it was last July ;)

And now for some photos.

The landscaping guy at our apartments uses hand trimmers (the two-handed, manual variety) for keeping the bushes tame. He spent extra time and showed his talents. Sorry I couldn't get a better angle for the photos.

Bush #1 - the red tips make "中国" and "China" both show up well (中国 is Chinese for China)



Bush #2 - they are very excited about the Olympics in Beijing (北京)next year. (it says 北京 2008)



Finally, we decided to go shopping last week - it was quite fun. Except that the underwear I like from the US costs $35 dollars in China :p GP dressed nicely so I had to follow suit.

Happy Birthday to Ann!

Ann N. has a birthday Saturday, but I was so excited I had to post about it today :)
Actually, I'd probably forget, so I posted now.

The Picasaweb folders are filling up. I still don't know how the upload goes so fast. Maybe their server is in China. Looking at the cover photos, it seems I have a preoccupation with water. The little map of the earth (lower right)is cool - let's you see where you took all the photos. I'll have to dig up Costa Rica prints just to add another point :)

One more work day and back into the weekend. Tonight we take one of my engineers out on a blind date with a friend-of-a-friend.

Photos are going up

Everyone rejoice. I was using and sort of enjoying Yahoo Photos, but then they must have bought Flickr and given up on YP. Flickr seemed not so user friendly and I couldn't see my own or anyone else's photos. Forget that :p

I am now moving to Google's photo storage, Picasaweb. It has a nice interface, intuitive link, and the upload is surprisingly fast. I've been inspired to post a bunch of photos, finally, so you can now check out Israel, Beijing, the last US trip and soon to be much more. One day I'll get around to captions.

The link above has been updated, or you can go through this link (click here - link opens in a new window.). I even got to be vfmatt, so I'm easy to find.

Now it's time to work on my old man problems. My sciatic has been hurting for months. Everything aches in the morning, I wake up early . . damn, I am getting old :(

Jiao Zi (dumpling) day

Lu Yan Hong and Zhang Wei Ping came over to help teach Matt to make dumplings (jiao zi = jow zuh) and won tons (win tin = win tin). My classical training as an Italian chef meant that mine all looked like ravioli. This caused much laughter, and appreciation, from the others.

Yes, they were delicious. Next, we'll do the same with meat and cheese and call them ravioli :)

Then they played poker, but a bizarre Chinese style. Followed by bizarre, Chinese blackjack and then 2 rounds of *real* blackjack, which they didn't enjoy as much.

GP shows us all how it is done.



And the first one is beautiful!


Lu Yan Hong's technique


We didn't too very many, but it was enough



The results. Can you guess which are mine?



And then the poker

Happy Birthdays and Beijing

First, big happy birthday to Kathleen. It's still technically her birthday in the US, so I'm not too late. Happy Birthday, Kathleen!

One excuse for being late is that today (10/2) is my birthday, so . . Happy Birthday me! Even though I've turned 39, GP's says I'll always bee 38 (san ba) to her.

It took a few hours, but I have a select few of the 500 or so photos to put up here. I'm too lazy / busy to add much commentary, so you must see me in person and bribe me with Tsingtao for the whole story :)

*****
Day 0 - A short flight, long taxi, go to sleep
The trip was short, necessary and wonderful. We travelled with GP's good friend, Lu Yan Hong, and her boyfriend, Zhang Wei Ping. Originally, we were going to ride the sleeper train from Shanghai to Beijing, but work got in the way, so GP and I flew from Hongqiao to Beijing.

Many authentic hotels / guesthouses are in old hutongs, an arrangement of buildings enclosing a courtyard. After reading about "shared bath" "quaint" "authentic" "dormitory-style", I insisted on Marriott, Holiday Inn, etc.

I searched online a little and found the Beijing Double Happiness Courtyard Hotel which catered to foreigners and their creature comforts (i.e., beds and toilets). It looked good so we booked it for all four nights.

The hotel was very nice and beautiful. The staff was very helpful and friendly. The Australian teen group was also very nice, but had the misfortune (for us) to arrive at midnight, noisily, and wake up early. After two nights of too much noise, GP asked that we move to the Holiday Inn . The Holiday Inn was not as authentic, but had a nice breakfast buffet :) Also Lu Yan Hong and Zhang Wei Ping were staying there so we got his business rate.

The Double Happiness Hotel















*****
Day 1 - Forbidden City and Tiananmen Square

The Forbidden City is formally called the Palace Museum since the last emperor was kicked out. It was impressive for the size (it's really big) and the buildings were beautifully restored. After the first hour, though, you realize all the buildings look similar and then even the size gets boring.

Two hours was enough for us.
























A nice guy from Minnesota took this photo. Midwesterners are everywhere!













It was a little hot and we were tired, but I still had to insist on spending the $3 to ride a little pedicab to the next stop. It was interesting, especially when Lu Yan Hong and Zhang Wei Ping's vehicle made a U-turn and a woman on a bicycle ran into them. Lucky it wasn't a taxi.



The Tiananmen Square area and leading into Forbidden City has a lot of interesting history and my expectations on what I would see did not come true. For example, I kept looking for the square and finally realized there is NOT a big wall around it. There is a 6 line major road through it and it looks like a large platz in Europe. There was an interesting piece about it on National Geographic last night, but the Chinese poker players in my house were too noisy for me to hear about it :p.


The flag in the square is raised at dawn (too early for us) and lowered at sunset. The ceremony took more than 30 minutes as there were a lot of instances of waiting amongst the marching. I wish I'd had my tripod, though I had to hold my camera over some guy's head as it was. (we sat for 1 hour waiting and this guy just pushed through the crowd. I didn't say much as I can't argue well in Chinese, but I did lean on him the whole time and I bumped his arm every time he tried to take a photo.)

The tour in pictures:




















































*****
Day 2 - Great is not an overstatement
We took the famous 919 bus to Ba Da Ling (no bada boom) to visit the Great Wall.

GP on the bus ride.



It starts with buses and parking lots



There's the wall



You have to run the gauntlet of restaurants and souvenirs to get a start.



I'm not captioning all of them. It was quite a hike and I enjoyed it a lot. The grade was surprising - you can tell from some of the photos how steep the wall is in places. It was about a 2hr walk up and 2 minutes to get down by cable car.




















































*****
Day 3 - The Summer Palace

The Summer Palace was one of our favorites, better than Forbidden City in my book.

















































*****
Day 4 - The Temple of Heaven

It was not only by chance that we stayed at the Holiday Inn, Temple of Heaven. It was also nice and close for our last day and our morning trip to said temple.


The Temple of Heaven was interesting - similar architecture to other sites, but the wide open spaces and concentric circles made it feel old-time religious. Like Druids and Mayans and such.




















































*****
Misc

The random photos from walking around and going out for duck


Message, massage, whatever



Mama helps child with outdoor toileting on a tree



The Chinese are starting to think she is not native. You can see their confusion when she wears her Nike hat (not a copy) and Banana Republic t-shirt.




There were a lot of 3-wheeled motorcycles around. Some with elaborate bodywork for the weather. Most of the bare ones like this were ridden by old men with their wives sitting on back.







She's a natural.



Quan Jude is the original Peking Duck restaurant. Founded in 1864, you receive a certificate of authenticity after your meal. The certificate was also delicious.
GP with hat and duck.



One of my favorite photos. Chinese kids won't smile at me :( They would probably be terrified if I still had a beard.




It was a fun trip and I hope everyone can visit Beijing someday.