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.

some movie redemption

Let the Right One In

Had heard about this one a while ago but never got the chance to see it. But glad I did - quite good.

Kind of a sweet love story. But certainly kept my attention. I liked the Swedish setting.

Apparently Hollywood will attempt a remake. I do not see why they feel the need to do this; aside for money. I doubt the remake would be as good.

punishment of self in movie form

After a very long, exhausting week, and some misadventures in an attempt at camping on Saturday, we ended up back home at 11pm, tired, dirty, smoky, and in need of a drink & a laugh.

So, decided to try out our netflix on-demand & see some comedies.

I should have known better with these titles, but part of me was holding out that these were un-noticed gems. I was wrong.

1. Almost heroes

Chris Farley & Matthew Perry star. Christopher (Spinal Tap & Best in Show) Guest directs. Sounds like it should be awesome on paper. Something seems to have gone awry. Each scene seemed to be a setup for some little gag, and sure enough, some super cliched and obvious joke comes in. And that's it, onto next scene. I gave it a full 10 minutes and then decided to move on.

2. Bob the Butler

Tom Green. Post 90's Tom Green. Again, I was hoping for something brilliant/inspired to happen...but after 20 minutes, I just saw Tom Green being awkward, Brooke Shields being a corporate bigwig that was really busy for some reason, and then some kids that were brats around other babysitters but yet got along with the misunderstood non-conformist laid-back Tom Green. Again, waited for something inspired (Freddie got Fingered style) to happen, but instead a lot of tired sight "gags".

We weren't laughing, so we went to bed.

Maybe will have better luck with something else.

hiking today

 

Went up to the first lookout point on Rattlesnake Ridge outside of Seattle. It was good. Went up with a group of people and had good converstaions all the way up and down. Dim Sum for lunch.

Going to see "The Hangover" later. Solid weekend so far.

random note - geeky again

Started watching "Death Note" on Hulu. The series seems okay, aside for that it (hulu) is a little taxing on the Atom-powered box that I have hooked up to my TV. I should really try getting my older motherboard & graphics card hooked up in a working case again...just have been bad at justifying a reason to go to spend money on new equipment that I don't really need and don't really have room for.

Should do an update - so here goes...

Haven't updated blog in a while. So feel like I should. Now I'm getting re-acquainted with it, like a friend you haven't seen in a while.

I've been a little better about doing a Twitter post every day or so, but lately have been slacking on that too.

The thought process behind doing a 160 character tweet vs a potentially unlimited blog post is certainly different, and I guess I feel like it's time to balance out the super-brief posts I had been doing with something that offers, well...at least 300 characters. :)

Some thoughts:

1. Getting sick - not sure how this happens, but it's crazy how one day you can be feeling pretty good and the next day suddenly run down. I think the wife was stealthily contagious.

2. Apple Keynote today - I admit, I was quite interested with news concerning the latest iPhone (and potential significant firmware upgrade for people with the 3g). Contrasting it with the flurry of attention around the Palm Pre has made for some interesting podcasts to listen to. My take: Palm Pre may have the more compelling OS & software but it needs to quickly gain a lot of adoption by customers and developers in order to remain viable. I really hope it works out for them, but I'm currently only 4 months into a new 2-year contract; I'm not about to go anywhere from that. Apple has shown that they've been really good at pushing new functionality onto their iphone platform and keeping upgrades steady. I figure that they're a safer bet. The iphone will also be getting a version of PlecoDict at some point, which is still my personal "must have" app. Hopefully I'll be in a position sometime in the next year or so where I will need to use Chinese more often during work or travel.

(Also, after living in China and dealing with the convenience and freedom of using GSM phones, the prospect of becoming really locked down to a CDMA provider with gimped phones like Sprint & Verizon offer seems very unappealing...yeah, I know that the iPhone is locked down too but it's still trivial to unlock should you wish to travel with it and not be tied to "the man").

3. Conan O'Brian making fun of Twitter - I'm a fan of (but not obsessed with) Twitter. I found the recurring jokes last week at the expense of Twitter to be very funny. A good contrast to its treatment in mainstream media otherwise, which tends to be fluffy, fawning, or dismissive by people who don't quite get it.

4. Hiking - when the weather is nice in Seattle, there's really no acceptable excuse to be inside. There are so many trails & hikes to do around here (for very cheap), it's a shame to not see them. So Marsha and I are finally getting started with that.

5. Long days - one benefit of living in a very northern location is that the summer days last a long time. Still having twilight at 10pm is just fine by me.

geeky note - star trek & other things

Haven't posted about something fairly geeky for a while, so here goes:

1. Star Trek (the new movie) - saw it, liked it. Pretty well done, respectful to the original yet making it fun & approachable for people new to the series. No big complaints about it at all...good start for a summer movie season (and it seems like there's a few more movies worth seeing later on...Terminator & "Year One" are looking potentially quite sweet).

I like the fact that in the film, Iowa is a center of interstellar ship construction. Why not?

2. What is up with people applauding in a movie theater when they see scenes that they like? (Get off my lawn, you damn kids!)

I just don't get this.

Not to say I begrudge these other people the right to enjoy their film - just wondering what effect applause is intended to have when in a theater at a 3:30 matinee showing and no bigwigs or actors are there and only a smattering of die-hard fans are in attendance.

It's not the Rocky Horror picture show; it's not an interactive experience. It's not like when there's a comedy & something funny happens and people laugh.

It's like they have to let people know they are happy someone famous is on screen? It escapes me.

I'm glad that they're happy Leonard Nimoy makes an appearance, but if their applause is drowning out dialogue...lame - their behavior is encroaching on my enjoyment of the movie.

So yeah, again - get off my lawn, you damn kids*!

(*ignoring the fact that many of the fanboys attending ranged in age from 18 - Fiftysomething)


3. Wii games

Just saying, it's somehow much more fun playing a video soccer game when your whole team is made up of big-head versions of your friends and random characters/celebrities.

 

saw the 2008 movie Appaloosa

Interesting movie.

At first felt as if it was a cliched western; but it took a turn off in another direction altogether.

Pretty good. Feels pretty timeless; it's not a re-invention of the western; just a well-done story - clearly with love for the genre.

I appreciate the attention to historical detail; didn't seem like they glossed over too much.

Felt like it was almost going to be epic, but felt almost more like a character study.

Not a bad film; Ed Harris, Vigo Mortensen (sp?), Jeremy Irons, and Renee Zweliger (sp?) are all pretty solid too.

getting adjusted

So, have been back in the US for just over a week now; after a 10-day trip to China.

I guess the re-adjustment period coming back this time was not too difficult; culturally or in terms of jet-lag.

Starting a new job probably added some extra complication & motivation.

I'm not used to getting up at 6:15 am every day (not to whine, just sayin').

But that + jet lag + all day training sessions where I'm doing a lot of listening & not so much talking/doing is a little strange.

Culturally, the new company is a little different than where I worked before (not a surprise or anything). While there still are people in the office who enjoy video games, just seems like that's not as common a topic for discussion as before. Also, I get to wear "real" work clothes. Real business casual. Not so much of the sandals+shorts+t-shirts that were quite tolerated before. Will take a little getting used to but not that big of a deal.

The "novelty" of ironing my pants & shirts has worn off though.

New office is pretty close to the place we're renting. Depending on how favorable the crosswalks are, I can walk there in 15-20 minutes.

Being in China was really good...good to see & feel the energy there and meet & talk with so many ambitious people. Heartening to see that things are being done.

Back home, it seems like people are tired (fatigued, even) & constantly running in damage control mode. I suppose that's necessary, given the hemorrhaging of the US financial system & the nasty complications that have ensued. I hope that, despite everything, people over here do not lose sight of their ambitions, goals, and plans to grow and thrive.

To put it bluntly, although the situation is kind of a kick to the _____ (nuts, face, stomach, pick one), we as a nation need to dust off, pick our selves up, and keep moving onward & upward. If we choose to sit idly and whine on by, then we will fade - there's lots of people out in the world who are keeping up with the keeping on, and it is not our time to rest yet.

Meh.

BTW - this swine flu coverage is annoying. If you're sick, stay home. If you're fine; go out & live. Wash your hands often. End of story.