Company Trip - Amusement Park

So in addition to the paintball outing we also hit the amusement park.  I wasn't sure if they would enjoy this part but they did.  Everyone loved it.  Me?  Not so much.  It's not that I didn't feel safe on the rides, as the whole park was developed and built by a German company so I'm sure it was safe.  But those rides that spin, loop, etc give me one heck of a headache!  I'd rather have a headache from drinking too much than getting jostled around...


Here's the group getting ready to go in the park first thing in the AM...

Now all that said about the loops, spinning and jostling...well I did this ride first!  I thought it was just going to spin in circles, making you think you would crash into the other cars.  Wrong!  It went sideways and eventually upside down, spinning like crazy the whole time.  At one point my entire left side of my face was numb, felt like I had a stroke and lost all feeling there!  Never again I tell ya...

Now this ride I didn't dare do...it had a massive drop as seen in the photo.  But what you can't see is that before it dropped it hung you up there looking straight down for 2-3 seconds and then just unleashed it's furry to the bottom.  No thanks!

Paintball

It's sometimes tough to post on here as often as I would like.  Why?  Well I could use the excuse that I'm so very busy with work, triathlons, drinking or some such other lame excuse but that wouldn't be totally fair.  Reality is worse.  Thanks to China's "Great Firewall" it's a challenge in fact to post.  I have to access this site in other ways which are slow or sometimes don't work.  Plus sometimes it simply doesn't work to upload photos (which is the best part).  So that being said, I think I forgot to post this one before.  If I did it already then...read it again!

So for our company trip this year we stayed just outside of Shanghai.  Did some hiking, hit an amusement park and also played paintball.  The idea of paintball was team building.  Yet I think it turned mostly into a "kill the boss" game!  Here is one of the teams we had...

Sums up life in China...

I'm not a big fan of these e-cards but this one pretty much sums up life in China in so many ways.  The amount of times I say the line "I couldn't make this shit up" is truly countless!

Thanksgiving back in the USA

Last Wednesday afternoon I began the trek back to the US for Thanksgiving.  From Shanghai to Newark, then a connection to Tampa where I stayed at an airport hotel.  Then on Thanksgiving morning I made the final couple hour drive down to the Fort Myers area to be with my dad/stepmom and brothers for some home cooked turkey and football watching!

It's not often that us three brothers get together and this visit was short as Taylor headed back to Chicago on Friday.  However I'll see him again next week as I go to Chicago.  Regardless it is always nice to get together.

On Friday my dad, step-mom, Alex and myself took a boat ride and then went to the beach to check out the sunset.

 It was a perfect evening to see a wonderful sunset in Florida!

After watching the sunset we went inside to have dinner and actually celebrate my Dad and Step-mom's 22nd wedding anniversary.  I can't say it is exactly the place they had in mind to celebrate as it was bar food, plastic plate and cups and even styrofoam glasses for the water!  But we all had a good laugh and a good time.

Middle School

I came across this middle school in Shanghai not far from my old apartment.  What a great name...

According to the dictionary "Bile" is:
1.  A bitter greenish-brown alkaline fluid that aids digestion and is secreted by the liver and stored in the gallbladder.
2.  Anger; irritability

Gotta love it!

Shanghai Daily

I used to subscribe to a daily newspaper here, either China Daily or Shanghai Daily.  I finally stopped when I realized I could get most of the news free on their iPad app's.  However they sometimes don't put everything on-line and often what gets cut out is what I think is amazing, one way or another.

Take this article from earlier this week.  Apparently someone in the city of Wuhan thought it made sense to have a 5 year old girl wear a bikini and a wig while kissing and caressing a car at an auto show.  This is soooo wrong!  Thankfully in this instance the article was done showing that people were highly upset by it.  Honestly it takes more and more to shock me over here yet this comes pretty close.

A great auto-reply

One of my local colleagues set up an auto-reply that kicked in today.  I've never seen one like this but thought it was pretty unique...

"I will out of the office from Nov.19 to Dec.3 for waiting my baby coming. If you need immediate assistance please contact Jackyding."




That's a nice break waiting for baby coming!

End of an era

Well today, Nov 15, 2012 marked a milestone and end of an era for me here in China.   I had to say goodbye to my driver, Cash, who has been with me the past three years.  Unfortunately we had to not renew his contract as we had someone move back to the US which put us in the situation that we didn't need the extra van.  So I will still have a driver, in fact one that is probably a better driver, faster and also speaks English, yet it won't be the same.  Cash is loved by one and all and has become like a father figure especially to some of the younger employees.  It was truly a business decision and thankfully he totally understood.  I gave him a couple of nice bottles of Chinese whiskey this morning and he was very appreciative of it.

As an FYI I probably told the story before but his name, "Cash", has a humorous story.  In Chinese his name sounds like "Mr. Jew."  Well my company is a Jewish family owned company and I simply didn't think that was right to call him that.  So I asked what his name meant, translated to English.  Unfortunately it was "Mr Pig."  Again didn't think that was proper name.  Another colleague of mine said "that new driver looks like a Chinese version of Johnny Cash."  And right there folks is how his name came about.  I'm sure he also equated Cash with money so all in all it was good.

He will be missed but hopefully we will see him for a dinner or something down the road.

Taiwan 70.3 - last race of the season!

Well this past weekend was my 3rd and final 70.3 distance race of 2012 and 4th overall race of the year.  This race taking place in Kenting, Taiwan basically at the far southern tip of Taiwan.  I knew heading to the race that it wasn't going to be a great one for a few reasons.  First and foremost since the early August race in the Philippines I had really not trained much other than continuing to get a good number of bike rides in.  Secondly I had tons of visitors, colleagues, customers in the 3 weeks prior to the race which further limited training and probably had me eating and drinking too much.  Lastly the weekend before the race I was down for the count sick.  Probably had to do with all the entertaining the past few weeks in fact.

In any event about 35 folks from Shanghai attended this race and all flew on the same flight.  20 of us had rented a bus to take us and our bikes to the hotel about 2 hours away.  Well it became a 3 hour drive as our driver was nice and slow.  Upon arrival Thursday night the group at my hotel decided to go find dinner.  There was about 12 of us in my group plus maybe 8-10 others we saw also heading for dinner.  The hotel said walk down the street 5-10 min and you will find lots.  Well we walked 30 minutes and found nothing!!!!  So we came back and literally 20 of us ate take away from 7-11.  So a not so nutritious start to the weekend.

As a side note the next day we found a restaurant called Bossa Nova.  It was a little beach front restaurant that served a variety of Asian and Western dishes.  I fell in love with the bacon pasta!  We ate at this place lunch, then dinner, then dinner the night after finishing the race.  Great little place all in all.

OK so race recap quickly.  Swim (1.9k) I had a TERRIBLE swim.   Not sure of the reasoning but a mass start of 1,600 bodies made it a hectic start, I had a wetsuit on for the first time in a while, no chance to warm up, etc.  All in all I didn't feel good, had to slow my heart rate down early on by hanging on a buoy which I had previously NEVER done in a race.  Bike (90k).  This went much better.  My biking has dramatically improved this season as I've gotten out on a regular basis.  All in all my bike was completed in less than 3 hours so I'm happy.  Run (21k).  I expected problems here going into the race, I just didn't know when to expect them.  One problem everyone had was there was no mileage/km notices until the 14k mark.  That made it tough on folks.  I think my first 8-10k was good.  After that I lost the "motor" in my legs and they turned to jelly.  This was expected with my lack of intense training so no problem.

All in all the race time was a bit better than others this year.  But I know with a bit of training I could have reduced the time drastically.  Well there is always next year!  My season is over now and I'm going to enjoy a social life and some different exercises, like Cross Fit which has opened up here in Shanghai.  And while doing all that, I'll be planning on what races I want to do in 2013.