Different country same result

I must have some amazing blood!  It doesn't matter if I am in the US or in China because mosquito's LOVE me!  I remember back in high school being out in the park for soccer practice getting eaten alive.  Here in Shanghai I don't even have to go to the park, I just go to bed.  While I've got a great apartment, somehow the mosquito's are getting in.  Last night around 2AM I woke up itching my forehead, arms, etc.  Then as I was wide awake the darn blood sucker tried to go right in my ear buzzing away!  Ugh!  The more things change the more they stay the same!

Memorial Day

Well I hope everyone is getting ready to enjoy a nice day, giving thanks to those who have lost their lives for our country, maybe going to a baseball game, BBQ or just drinking some cold ones (have a Miller Lite for me if you will).  Obviously I don't get to enjoy the day in the same way and of course that means I was off to work this morning.  Not a big deal though as with the US on holiday it means things are a bit slower around here.

So for lunch I went to one of the new American institutions...Subway.  Got myself a nice sub, chips and cookie and pretended I was back home.  Here you can check out they have "live TV" to watch the sandwiches being made...

Kind of pathetic but humorous at the same time.

On another note this page now shows me the statistics of how many views I'm getting.  Well it looks like May 2011 I set a new record for monthly views right now at 199.  It's nothing to write home about but I figure I'll see if I can keep updating this regularly and see how many I can get in the future.

Once again have a safe and happy Memorial Day!

One week till vacation...

So it's Friday early evening and that means that I have officially one week left until vacation and it couldn't come soon enough.  Too bad it won't be long enough either.  However a week from tonight I leave for Venice, Italy.  A friend I met while I lived in Shenzhen, China is getting married their.  So it will be a good group of us from all over the world re-connecting in Italy.  Never been and totally looking forward to it.

It's also one week until my company has their twice annual trade show in the states showing off the new fabrics for next season.  So that means it is utter chaos in my office now trying to get production completed and out the door.  Not to mention all the testing that needs to be done.  Or the regular problems.  Or the additional government mandated power outages causing less production time.  Ohhh the headaches...bring on vacation!

Bubba's BBQ Cook Off

Last Saturday was good old American fun in Shanghai.  A local BBQ place simply called Bubba's BBQ had their first ever BBQ cook-off with 20 some teams entering.  Nothing like a day of beer drinking and BBQ tasting, made me feel back at home...The location was over in Pudong on the other side of the river, where everything is a bit cleaner and newer...

 

Some great BBQ although usually portions were small not like you see here.  We all walked around with a toothpick and sampled different items...

Some teams went crazy on the extra's.  Like this booth which took a fondue set and loaded it with BBQ sauce!  Notice the bottles of booze at the bottom, guess this was the special sauce.

Complete with a live band doing covers of music like Led Zeppelin, Alabama, the Clash and so on.  Not to mention games of "bags" or "corn hole" being played adding to the festivities.

Even the kids were jamming out to the live music...

Good times sure to be repeated...

Chinese Fire Drill

Well this was truly a Chinese fire drill.  A couple of months ago our office building ran through the drill and how everyone was supposed to exit.  It was most amusing in some ways but very orderly all in all (sorry to wreck your preconceived notions on this one).

The interesting part was getting downstairs and out in the parking lots.  They had set up barrels with fire in them and had people practicing using fire extinguishers.  This had smoke going all over the place.

The building specifically asked me to give it a try as they thought it would look good in their training manual to have a foreigner doing it.  However no photo of that...

Traffic Jam

We've all heard stories living in various parts of the US about traffic suddenly getting backed up on the interstate because of a horse, deer or some other animal has gotten lost right?
Well how about for a massive goose crossing?  My friend was going to work earlier this year out to some factory when traffic stopped for a while.  So he got out of the car and went to the front to see what it was all about and this is what he encountered - a goose farmer taking the geese someplace.  Anyone up for a game of Where's Waldo???

Race Cancelled!

Nice screen shot of the race website.  Now they have cancelled the entire race thanks to some vague description of a sanctioning body.  My guess is that they never got all required permits chopped (a chop in China is the official stamp put on most anything) from the govt.  Good news is I get that money back and get free entry into another race.  I'm thinking seriously about 4th of July weekend in Korea right now.
Now I just need to get my money back from the race, the hotel and my plane tickets!
Bummer!!!!

http://www2.ironman.com/events/ironman/china/ironman-china-and-ironman-70.3-china-cancelled#axzz1MHj0JNjn

Royal Knock Off

Well you can't say the Chinese are slow to market.  They are nothing if not fast when it comes to knock off's.  Or as they like to say when they hawk the goods they are "original copies." 

This was in the China Daily (the nation's English language paper) the Monday after the Royal Wedding.

Triathlon becomes duathlon

Well if this doesn't stink.  In typical TIC ("This is China") fashion the local government decided not to advise the people who had gotten permits, government agreement, road closures and so on that the reservoir where the swim was going to be held was going to undergo a major renovation...until just recently.  So now three weeks before the only race of it's kind in China the race goes from a triathlon to a duathlon.
 My dilemma was I wanted to do at least one 70.3 (also known as 1/2 Ironman) race each year living in Asia and also to hopefully do it in a different country each time.  Well if it is now a duathlon I guess I can't check off China 70.3 as being completed!
Only good thing is my training has been lax on the big picture but my swim training has been downright horrible!
Now I'm thinking of 70.3 in Korea over 4th of July weekend.
 Link for the full story...
http://ironman.com/events/ironman/china/ironman-china-cancels-swim#axzz1M3ayyt2A

TCM

Another new experience for me to write about.  Recently I had a follow up visit to a hospital.  This hospital is part of the S.O.S. international hospitals.  Simply put it is a hospital that us xpats will use without feeling like we are totally in a different country.
So Friday was a follow up to have fasting ultra-sound done on my upper stomach.  I had experienced some heavy pain like a cramp or stitch on multiple occasions and figured it needed looking at.  Bottom line is the ultra-sound went fine, the technician saw nothing out of the ordinary with any of my internal organs.  So all good.

So now for the new experience.  Since I was at the hospital and had some time, I asked if they had a doctor or physical therapist that was available to check out my lower back?  I seemed to have pinched something or tweaked a muscle maybe will over-doing a bike ride last week.  It had gotten extremely painful and therefore since I was at a doctor's office....Well it turns out the only doctor that was in and available was a TCM Doctor (Traditional Chinese Medicine).  I said what the heck, if she can heal the back then good deal.
The exam started with questions about the pain, then to a look at my tongue (basically same as most doctors so far).  From there she spent probably 5-7 minutes checking out my hands, although I never found out what she was looking at them for.
Now without even showing what was causing the pain she had me get up on the exam table face down.  It was here that the acupuncture needles went in!  I didn't realize that was going to happen so it was quite a shock.  She probably put in 8-10 of them.  Honestly they must have been super small as I really didn't feel anything.  Then she turned on some sort of heat lamp and pointed it on my back and told me to rest for 20-25 min.  When that time was up, out came the needles.
She then said she would now do the cupping.  I wasn't so sure about this one as I have heard it can be very painful, almost like your skin melting off.  But I finally said yes.  She only put two of the cups on - one on my lower back right in the middle and one on my right hamstring.  Here is an image of what the cupping looks like.  It's basically a suction cup that pulls up your skin...

You can literally see on this the skin getting pulled all the way into the cup.  The feeling for me was more of pressure than anything else and just a weird sensation all in all.  These stayed on for about 10-15 min I think.  The normal result is bruising almost like a hickey if you will.  Here is an image of what it can often look like...

Thankfully neither of mine produced much of a bruise at all.  Not sure if that was of the location they were placed or because there were only two.
After this was complete it felt like the doctor ran some sort of stone over my back up and down over and over to get the "chi" flowing in the right direction or something like that.
Then it was done.  I stood up and immediately noticed a difference!  My back felt great.  There was still some pain but probably 90% of it was gone.  The doctor requested one more follow up but so far I haven't done it simply because I couldn't get an appointment when I had time.  But given the success I'm sure I will do the TCM route again in the future.  Pretty cool.

Kobe in bad advertising

So what does this ad make you think when you look at it?  That Kobe is "Smart" and actually drives one of these cars?  Really?  Because I have a hard time thinking that Kobe at 6'7" or so could actually fit in this car.  Nice that he wants to save money and be more environmentally friendly and all but I'm not buying it. 

Police bike

I am not sure what this police bike is doing.  It was probably nearly midnight and this bike was just sitting there with the lights flashing as some sort of deterrent.  To what I'm not sure.  Just thought it looked find of funny sitting out there....

English names for Chinese folk

As I'm sure most of us would agree pronouncing Chinese names, let alone remembering them is next to impossible.  So for years the Chinese have used Western names for business practices or when in university and those names carry with them in addition to their Chinese name.  I've even been involved in naming a few people myself.  I've thought about doing something outrageous but never quite pulled the trigger.  That doesn't mean someone else hasn't though, there are some seriously funny ones.
For instance last night I was in Guangzhou for the Canton Fair.  We were at a hotel having dinner and I couldn't help from laughing out loud when I read the waitress's name badge.  She was none other than "Uranus."
So this got me to thinking about some of the other funny ones I have heard or met.  There was a woman working at the Renaissance Hotel in Shanghai on the club level lounge.  Her name surprised me so I asked her how she got it?  Often it is given to them in school so I figured maybe a teacher did.  She said no that she picked it all by herself.  Why? Because as she said nobody would ever forget it.  Well she was right, I haven't in these years and still tell the story.  What is the name you ask?  "Internet."  Enough said!
So after the meeting of "Uranus" last night I decided to post on Facebook a question to my friends of some of the other humorous names that we have run into over here.  In short order I got the following and anticipate to get plenty more:
Peter Pan
Ima Ho
Beer
Swallow
Grizzly
Smallhole
Romantic
Dolphin
Apple
Seven
Trainee
Chewing Gum
Charlie Shin
Yu Ok
Phuc Vu
Dick (was a woman's name)
Sky (as a boy)
Dream
Hibiscus
Natural
Casual
Bunny (for a guy)
Wendy (for a guy)
Morgan Freeman Ho
Superman Wong
Billboard Kwok
Zero
And the all time winner that was a late entry is "Semen".

Bin Laden one last time

Thought I would share these...

Bin Laden

While today was a holiday (May Day) and our office was closed, I still had a customer so I was in around 10AM.  Around 11AM this customer, who is Canadian, says to us that he just got a text from his mom stating that the US gov't had killed Osama Bin Laden.  Really?  It had been so long that I, like many others, simply thought it was not something that was ever going to happen. 

As soon as i got home a couple hours later I started watching a ton of news on it.  There already were impromptu celebrations going on at The White House and where the World Trade Towers had been.  I get most of my news here on CNN.  And I genuinely think they do a pretty good job reporting on a world wide basis using their crews out of Hong Kong.  However it was also most interesting to watch it unfold on BBC and an Australian news network.  It appears obvious to me that this was not just a US incident but rather a world-wide incident.  Even reading it online here in China either on Shanghai Daily or China Daily gives a pretty good view of the events.

Now lets hope we can all put this behind us and move forward.