tug of war

Usual-kind of day today...up, then to work, then busy at work.

Was happy to hear that we had to change training plans around because of a team office activity.

I had not received that memo.

Apparently all the different groups in the company that are responsible for different vendor partners got to team up against each other for a tug of war. It turned out to be pretty fun, and my colleagues were kind enough to get permission for me to join in as well.

Unfortunately, our team didn't do very well - we got slammed after the first round. :(

Still, it was a cool experience. I put lots of pictures of the event up on facebook; I really should get around to updating this post with helpful and illustrative pictures once I am free of the Great Firewall's blocking effects.

Had Japanese-style curry and sushi for dinner, then subway home, then picked up some laundry detergent, soap, and cheap-ass wine. 

Then visited gym.

Now back home, updating posts. 

It should be noted...in this case, $3.75 did not get me a very good bottle of wine (should I be surprised)? It's watery and has some weird funk to it. It is probably not a good sign that there is no visible label denoting the year it was produced. 

If I was cynical, I'd guess this is water + formaldehyde + red coloring + sulfur + "wine flavour crystals". 

ipad?

So, saw the news concerning the new Apple tablet.

After reading through the keynotes, it seems interesting - a nice toy.

I'm not sure who is really going to buy one at first; probably just the mac faithful initially.

Considering myself...my old laptop (overhwhelmingly used for couch-based web surfing) is doing just fine...but if I needed a replacement, maybe this would be good enough; it is certainly cheaper than a new Macbook.

Then again, they are asking $499 for the base model that is basically a glorified/bigger iPhone...decent laptops (if not Macs) are available for that much if you shop around. Doesn't matter for me anyway; I'll figure that out when my laptop eventually (but hopefully not too soon) dies.

Regardless, I think it's too early to tell how successful it will be. Certainly could get some support, but I'm not sure if it will gain mass-market acceptance as quickly as the iPhone did...probably not; could be more of a slow/steady growth.

Could do some neat things, but nothing's striking me quite as much as the iphone did.

on the train today

Was a pretty average day, all in all.

Rainy.

Took subway + bus to office, as usual; during transfer to bus I picked up some kind of fresh dough + egg + sausage thing on the street for 7 RMB (just over 1 USD, for those keeping score at home).

Not a bad breakfast, though it sat in a small plastic bag dangling from my hand for 15 minutes as I stood on the crowded bus winding its way to the software park where I'm working for the time being.

Work was fine; boss is returning to US after a brief stay here, and I extended the time on my return flight - looks like I'll be coming home later. 

(Missing the cats already thinking about that)...Marsha may or may not make it back home before I do.

The train was fairly empty on the way back, after transferring to Line 1 to cover the last 3 stops before I got out to walk home, there were plenty of seats available.

Guy across from me took out a book, and a pen, and started sneaking furtive glances at me while scribbling.

I was a little unsure what to make of it until I caught a glimpse of the pages in the book...he was making a sketch.

This does not often happen.

So I tried to stay still, all the while knowing that I had only 2 train stops left.

I got up to leave, and the guy showed me the sketch he had made; maybe 1/2 done. Certainly recognizably me, but with a wider face, more jowls, and less hair than I would have liked to see. 

I suppose that in this sketch, and as in life, the truth is not necessarily as flattering as I would like it to be.

I hit the gym after heating up left-overs from the weekend.

some news from today

This post would be better with pics, but I'll be sideloading them onto facebook for the time being; with the Great Firewall of China in full effect it's hard to do any blog updates beyond pure text.

Rather than try & fill in everything that happened in the past few weeks+ the unexpected sojourn to Korea, I'll just say a few things about my experiences today.

Morning was warm - pleasant even. I guess it was around 10 C (or 50 degrees F).

Not sure why, but the trains seemed busier than usual; there was no room in the transfer concourse for the nice old ladies that collected people's used newspapers (I assume to resell as scrap).

Work was busy, and ended up staying way late; so co-worker and I ended up going out to eat. 

The place was called "The Spicy Joint" (辛香汇...if I pick & choose from dictionary it's more like "hot fragrant convergence"). 

My colleague, who is originally from Sichuan, says that most Sichuan restaurants in Shanghai need to tone down the heat in order to gain mass market acceptance. Even so, he said that this place was still pretty good.

Decor was super modernish; lots of curvy fishtanks with orange-reddish fish, shiny lights and post-modern furniture. 

Apparently it's very popular; if one shows up without having made a reservation a month in advance at peak hours (6pm on), it's safe to expect a wait.

By the time we arrived it was already 20:45, and we picked a number and were group number 149...but the restaurant was calling number 108.

The restaurant was located in the 5th floor of a mall/high-rise, there were lots of western brands (real products, not fakes) on sale, even at some discounts. 

Had some time to walk around, then made it back when they happened to be calling for group number 144.

I cannot speak for what happened when I wasn't present, but groups 145-148 were all real people; no one seemed to be taking a ticket number and running.

So anyway, it's probably around 21:15 and finally time to eat.

At that point, rational ordering of what could feasibly be consumed was forgotten.

We had 口水鸡 - literally, "mouth-watering chicken" (or "drooling chicken" if you'd prefer an ugly translation) - in either case, not meaning that the chicken itself is drooling, but rather that you are so excited upon seeing the food...was kind of like cold white cooked chicken drowned in a savory oily spicy sauce, and a few peanuts. Excellent.

Some sort of Sichuan noodles - pretty common at most Sichuan restaurants and available stateside as well. Not much of a kick to them here.

Suanrong you mai cai - garlic & oil stir-fried veggies...token something green on table not covered in peppers.

Some type of Lamb dish - was almost like a lot of foods from Hunan, but with lamb. Decent.

Some kind of Bullfrog - Similar to 水煮牛 or 水煮鱼, but with the meat of choice being frog instead of something less bony. Was pretty good as well...though having misheard my colleague I was convinced that I had been eating some obscure portion of a cow for half the meal, until he clarified the name of the dish again. (the same word for beef or cow - 牛- is also used in "bullfrog" - 牛蛙...makes sense, right?).

Anyway, being stuffed, ended up taking the subway home and very much enjoying the walk back, perhaps burning some fraction of the calories consumed.

Temperature at night was just about freezing. Not that cold in the grand scheme of things, but a shock compared to this morning...may need a sweater tomorrow.

proposal for anti-rascism bill in south korea - I sincerely hope that this goes through

Great story here; I sincerely hope for the sake of Korea's continued cosmopolitan development that this bill is embraced.

Although it is certainly debatable if racism can simply be fixed via legislation (how's that working out for South Africa? It's complicated...), I think that bringing the issue into the open within Korean society might start discussion and cause people to start reconsidering their attitudes.

http://www.aliran.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=1088:my-tryst-with-racism-in-korea&catid=90:2009-8&Itemid=45

I personally cannot recount many instances of racial discrimination towards myself while I have been in Korea. This is probably due to me being a white male from the US.

In some cases, I have experienced the "foreigner seat of death", where no one will sit next to me on the train until there are no other existing options. 

I have seen this happen as well with people of Southeast Asian decent.

However, such stories are trivial compared to what the person who wrote the article above had to deal with. His is not the first such story I have heard along those lines; the author of this blog - http://metropolitician.blogs.com/ - has had his share as well.

I am not holding my breath that these attitudes in Korea will change overnight; I have hope that the younger generation handles it better; they mostly seem more tolerant and worldly to me.

In a larger context, such stories like this have been and will probably continue be repeated across the world in nations that were traditionally of limited ethnicity soon have to deal with an influx of immigrants.

The US, Canada, and perhaps Australia and the UK could offer some examples for how to better integrate immigrants, though countries newly in this situation will have to be willing to learn.

back in Shanghai, back to blogging

It's been a long week, and I was actually quite behind on providing any blog updates.

I'll try and address some of the happenings from my first weekend in town, since those were fun:

Friday - 

Met up with Lisa, a friend originally from New York but who has been living in China for the better part of the last decade. Doing pretty well at the moment, also a mutual friend of my good friend Taichi, who I've known since I was an exchange student in Beijing in 2000.

Had Hunan food for dinner. Excellent dishes; spicy and the flavors were awesome. Pictures were uploaded a while ago. Odd in that the restaurant clientele was entirely foreigners...I guess that was more due to the location of the place than anything else. 

Tried to go to a bar in the Renmin (People's) Park. It was undergoing rennovations, so no luck...ran by the nearby movie theater where we saw lots of people milling around and waiting for tickets to Avatar in Imax 3D. The shows were sold out through Sunday evening, when we looked in.

Met up with Taichi at some central hotel (can't remember the name). Went to bar on 64th floor or so. Great view, drinks were priced at ~$10 USD each. Had a couple, moved on.

At this point I'm hitting the sleep deprevation / jet lag wall...but I break on through!

Unfortunately, it's only 12 am or so, but many bars are shutting down for the evening already. Not sure if it was some freakish weekend thing or we were going to the wrong places or people in Shanghai go to bed early (UNLIKELY). 

We found one place, and the bar looked like it was closed, but a party was raging upstairs, we turned around but a western girl came down the stairs, stopped us, and said,

"Hey, I'm leaving this party but you can have my wristband...just go on in!"

We thanked her, and asked what the party was about.

"It's a joint birthday/farewell/debauchery party. My name is Juggalicious."

Her name certainly did justice to the cleavage spilling out of her top. Still recovering from jet lag, I was not in the presence of mind to take pictures.

"You can get a discount on beers with the wristband!"

So we went up and checked out.

Full bar; but weird in that it was 95% foreigners there. We got beers, the "discounted" price was 35 RMB, or about $5.50 USD. 

(the pricing, layout, and clientele - nothing remotely 3rd-world about the place)

We stuck around a bit, had beers, pretended to dance a bit, and then left.

Now ~3 am, not much was open...so went back to my place, got beers at the convenience store across the street, then some BBQ lamb on a stick and fried rice from our local street food vendors and then hung out at my place to chat. 

In bed at 4:30...

update on updates

Well...if I'm blogging strictly in a chronological order, then I'm already running a week behind or so.

 

Lots was going on during the past week.

 

I find myself in Korea at the moment, for personal reasons. Should be back to Shanghai Wednesday night.

 

I hope to resume normal posting then.

 

So with the google news in china

Just wondering how long I'll still have email access... :)

quick recap of weekend events

late night(s).

Juggalicious.

Din tai feng food.

Wine bar.

Will recap in more detail later.

Shanghai, another day another post

Woke up with a sore-ish throat - was concerned that it would plague me through the rest of the day.

After finishing a pot of coffee in the morning though, that went away.

Commute to work is staying consistently a pretty solid 1 hour and 15 minutes from door to door. However, my jet lag is wearing off - I'm staying up later and getting up later, so will probably have to start making an effort to get up & leave on time as things progress.

Work was fine - more training co-run with our colleagues in India. 

Met up with a friend who has been living here for 4-5 years. Was nice to see; we caught up a bit - he's had some interesting developments both personally and professionally, but after our conversation it became clear to me that we are both getting older and as such some of the things that held your interest when younger do not have the same appeal now. Some still do. Coincidentally, we both recently had people in our extended families affected by cancer, so certainly something to give one pause for reflection.

Also discussed a bit about the British national recently executed here; comparing local biases. The Western media is playing up the unreasonable nature of the government and the executee's history of mental issues. The media here questions why the mental issues were only drummed up at the last minute. Seems that the truth of the matter is almost irrelevant between opportunities to push propaganda on both sides. 

 

Dinner was fried spicy frog. It was pretty good. Similar to crab and crayfish in that while you pay by the pound, the amount of edible content in the food is disproportionate to the weight that you pay for. Unlike crab, frog is still pretty cheap.

Was good, though probably not healthy (deep fried and all). Restauarnt was across from a recently re-gentrified area on Nanjing Xi Lu (Nanjing West Road). The old area has so much character (and reasonably priced food, by western & chinese standards)...probably will go the way of the wrecking ball soon. 

The new mall across the street probably shows a taste of what is to come - do we really need another combination of Stone Cold Creamery, Starbucks, and Pizza Hut?

Took the train home, was going to try a new route, but unfortunately the new trains are only open from 8:25 - 16:25 every day - weird hours, not sure why.

Was happy to find someone selling lamb on the stick very near where I'm staying. The seller struck up a conversation in English with me, and so then I was moved to buy a few...(I love lamb on a stick, the slightest excuse to get some is good enough). His boss then came by, who talked with me more - interesting to hear sort of Arabic-English with an American accent from someone who is technically Chinese.

(Most lamb-sellers in Chinese cities are people from Xinjiang, the ethnically turkish/musilm part of the country)

Anyway, I guess the guy has been here for 5 years and has set up a business selling snacks to people after they leave the bars. Having a lot of American clients, he's picked up some English, and now speaks pretty decently. I do not doubt that I will buy again.

more on Shanghai

First thing:

I notice that some people are commenting and/or sending responses to me. 

Unfortunately, facebook is one of the sites currently blocked by the Great Firewall of China. 

I have a method of posting & updating my notes here, and I can see if there are comments, unfortunately it is difficult for me to reply directly. Forgiveness please.

Anyway - this trip is going okay thusfar.

I'm struck by how modern most of Shanghai is; once you get past the difference in language and urban density compared with the US, it doesn't feel particularly foreign. 

Did the first commute from where I'm staying to the office; after a 10-minute walk to the train station (and then I stopped for breakfast at Starbucks), it took around an hour to get to the office via the subway.

Rode two stops, switched lines, rode for ~10 more stops, then exited, caught a bus, rode for ~10 minutes, then was there.

8:30 am is prime rush hour; you're truly swept up in a sea of humanity that half pushes you along at a fixed rate as one shuffles out of the train into the escalator that takes you to the level where one walks to the next train.

Kept things in my front pockets and my bag well in front of me.

The office is in a large, but non-descript office park on the newer side of town. Not a lot of small shops around in walking distance...just more office complexes.

One of my co-workers has a car, we drive ~5 minutes or so to an area that has a few little restaurants. The food is decent and priced for working people....individual meals are usually between 10 - 12 RMB (so under $2). 

Work is busy, though slow...not a lot of new projects coming in, so I get to focus on training...but at some point I know I can't just talk at people, they need to be doing things too. So adjusting to that; have to put my manager hat back on and start thinking of projects & tasks in the sense of delegating rather than simply just getting them done myself.

Didn't do anything too crazy last night as I was pretty exhausted. Had some beer. And wings. 

Sorry to say it, but my first dinner in China this trip was at Hooters Shanghai...(friend was taking client out, invited me to come along, client insisted on western fare) They did serve wings that were very spicy in the Sichuan style - my stomach took its revenge on me this morning. Comparing Hooters in Shanghai to the US locations (not that I go all the time) - well...it's safe to say that in Shanghai there's clearly a lot more Chinese women working than at the US locations. Service was with a smile. 

I will do my best to stick with Chinese food for the rest of the trip - this excludes breakfast though, as a lot of restaurants aren't open until 9 or 10 in the morning. Breakfast options tend to be focused around convenience store food, some street vendors if you can find them, and some bakeries. I could cook at home if I bothered to get ingredients.

The ever-declining US dollar vs the RMB is causing some minor havoc on my internal understanding of pricing here...I was used to the ~1 USD : 8.2 RMB fixed rate of my student years, but now the rate is more like 1 USD to 6.8 RMB. Not a devestating change, but it feels like prices are creeping up.

Shanghai is one of the most expensive cities in China; rents here do seem pretty high compared with what I remember in other locations. One could probably live fairly economically if one made the effort to do so, but it seems clear that in other cities you could get a lot more for your yuan than you could here. I guess large-scale urbanization in a tight space tends to push prices upward.

Anyway, that's about it for now. Will try for some more adventures.

Quick plane movie reviews

District 9 - pretty awesome.

Public Enemies - pretty good, though it was a little different than
what I thought it should be based on the commercials.

Extract - really solid comedy from Mike Judge

 

The cats were in good form to greet me when I came home today! :)

Travel notes from the road/plane - Should have been tweets but I have no mobile internet at present

Wi-fi is not proving to be very ubiquitious (yet), so I haven't posted much of the thoughts collected on the trip thus far.

So I'm doing a dump of everything now:

1. The experience on Korean Air puts my flights on Northwest/Delta last week to shame. Lots of wine, friendly service - makes me feel like I'm really on vacation!

2. The Korean air commercials of a lone male model visiting various spots in the US and posing, having amazing adventures is quite a bit cheessy...and it's the same commerical before EVERY movie that you pick.

3. On the other hand, it's very good that you can actually choose exactly what movie you'd like to watch, whenever you want to start watching it, and can pause on demand. I guess I usually fly crappy US airlines that don't normally offer this, so it seems like a treat.

3. Terminator Salvation - Not bad, though I found myself checking my watch several times during the course of the movie.

4. X-Men - Wolverine - Glad that the comic book story translated so well to the big screen. But, hard to believe that Van Wilder is a a bad-ass super soldier killing machine of death.

5. Angels and Demons - hilarious that a "Symbolgist" (does that line of work really even exist) talks like a hard ass and the choose your own adventure/encyclopedia brown storyline is treated with immense gravitas.

6. I think in 160-character tweets now.

7. Jerusalema - South African crimelord/gangster rise/fall movie. Great! Had not heard of it before, but really cool - the South African setting was a nice twist on the usual "hungry crimelord moves his way up, wins it all, then loses it" gangster movie story.

8. Safely landed. On the bus now to Marsha's neighborhood. There's a TV on the bus, and it's showing some program with monkeys dressed up in various professional outfits (policeman, fireman, student, soccer player, soldier) and they're either doing tricks or smacking their trainer around. This is possibly the greatest thing ever.

9. Dumplings from Marsha's mom. There's vermicelli, pork, and kim chi inside. Delicious.

info about Korea day 1

Korea seems pretty nice so far.

Haven't really done all that much though; we arrived at Marsha's house around 8 pm, and so we had a little food with everyone, then went for a walk around the area near their apartment. The little park near their house has been upgraded, so we had to see everything (and disturb the various young couples looking for some moments of seclusion/privacy).

Slept okay but were up (for good) at ~6:45 am.

Had some fish/kim chi/ soup for breakfast. Marsha's mom scheduled a facial for her, and then she's going to get her hair done. I will run around with Marsha's mom to take care of a few things.

There's mosquitos here! Totally forgtten.

Also, a little warmer and humid than Seattle weather led me to believe. Didn't bring many shorts...but I think we'll survive.

giving the show "lost' one more try....

So - I've never gotten into the show "Lost", but at the repeated praise of many other people, I'm trying to give it a shot, again.

But man, season 1 is slow.

Time for a post - reviews from this weekend

Haven't been in a blog-posting mood for a while, unfortunately.

However, I guess something feels different now and I again am in the mood to post some thoughts; certainly more extensive than what I've updated on twitter recently.

The 1st day back at work after the long weekend was mostly positive, nothing new of mention there.

The weekend, despite grand plans, did not amount to much; but was ultimately relaxing.

There was a lot of rain on Saturday & Sunday, which ultimately did not put us in the mood to go to Bumbershoot - 2 tickets at $50 each + parking to sit out in the cold rain?

We did, however make good use of netflix.

Some thoughts:

1. Aliens vs Predator: Requiem - In other terms, this is Aliens vs Predator, the second.

We've been on a kick of seeing everything in the Aliens series, and after seeing this, we're pretty much caught up. Man, the Aliens never get to be the good guys, do they?

I guess it's best summed up as a "b"-movie, and left at that.

(We liked the original "Alien" the best, with "Aliens" coming in second)

There's a scene involving a helicopter rescue that seemed just like a moment in the game Left 4 Dead...perhaps a designer at Valve borrowed liberally? (Or perhaps most rooftop helicopter rescue scenes look the same)

2. Say Anything - I had never seen this before. But then I did. Not bad. Seems to have held up well over time; and generally seems smarter than other coming of age love stories.

3. I'm Through with White Girls - Low-budget indie flick; perhaps it could be considered "post-racial". The protagonist is a black guy, but his issues are really more related to a fear of commitment rather than anything in specific about women (of any color). Done smartly and with some good humor.

4. The IT crowd (season 1) - UK comedy series about some socially inept IT workers in the basement of a large company in London. Goes for fairly standard office sitcom plot setups, but then veers into the wonderfully absurd. Apparently the next seasons are better; I'm looking forward to them

5. Mirror's Edge (PC game)) -tried this out and really enjoyed it; the graphics are spectacular and the gameplay basically involves you jumping from rooftop to rooftop in a futuristic city that reminds me a lot of Shanghai. The game is priced pretty competitively now, so worth a try if you were on the fence before; the demo is still free.

6. "The system of the world" (book by Neal Stephenson) - had been working on this tome for several months now, and had started the trilogy (or series, really) back when I still lived in China. Nearly 3000 pages later, I have finally finished it. I was satisfied by the ending (not always one of Stephenson's strengths). The epic scope of the book was well-done too.

Anyway, this will be a quick week, and then it's off to Madison, WI...and a week after that, headed to Seoul. So, should have a few more things to post about in the not too distant future.

Treading water?

It's a slow-ass day at work for me; probably due to the often uneven
nature of project timing.

Get the feeling that so many people are sitting through their day just
to get the check and hope that a better opportunity will present
itself later.

Truly, one tends to need economic income to survive, and if one is not
born into wealth, then it's necessary to earn something.

Still, I want to be really doing something, not just treading water.

Life is short, and sitting around waiting for more orders or projects
isn't helping me learn much.

WTF are they thinking?

I am pretty sure that the point of this ad was not to use Transvestite-looking women to sell free online war gaming to young males. Or was it?

(Not that there's anything wrong with that)

Not a bad day, all things considered

Mostly busy and productive at work, despite some nagging technical
issues.

Back home, the wife made taco lettuce wrap things that were tasty and
perhaps not too unhealthy.

Took care of some mail and personal eval stuff, ran to store and came
home with a week's supply of yogurt.

Watched an episode of the Tudors, shared a bottle of wine, now time to
do some reading.

Can't complain that much.

Still have songs from "Hedwig and the Angry Inch" in my head, and am
still thinking about my China days.