Crowning Achievements

   So I feel like I've accrued several separate heinous (in their own ways) bouts of transportation experience over the last half dozen years; a 3-week road trip with the family at the height of my angst-y teenage years; a cross-country marathon to Utah climaxing in on the road acrobatics that I can't even come close to doing on my snowboard; a 20-hour dirt road jaunt across Mongolia.  Now I can safely say I added another.
   After what ended being possibly my best weekend over here (the Shanghai International Ultimate Tournament, see Facebook for photos), I was faced with a daunting decision.  Due to the Expo trains in and out of Shanghai have been absolutely packed for weeks.  Generally I love taking those trains.  If you plan it right you get a nice bed, get to meet some people and make friends, you arrive at your destination nice and early in the morning, no hotel, it's cheap, if I were to get really excited I might say bliss.
   But that is if you plan it well.  And this time it was impossible to plan well.  We arrived in Shanghai on Friday and the first thing we did was book tickets back to Taiyuan, no beds, not even enough seats, Nick had to get a ticket for Tuesday.  So what ends up happening after a couple long days in the sun on Saturday and Sunday is Nick decides to fly, I will take his ticket and we'll get a new ticket for Matthias (my roommate).  That new ticket turns out to be a no-seater, they ran out of hard seats again. 
   So I decide the best bet is to give the hard seat ticket to Matthias, he doesn't speak any Chinese, and go in search of any possible empty beds (folks that didn't show up) or at least get a seat in the Dining Car.  Turns out everyone showed up, every single bed is full, and they are charging to get into the Dining Car.  I pay and sit and face the following for the next nine hours.  First, I have to pay two more times to keep my seat.  Second, there are two little kids running around the car yelling laughing and screaming.  Initially I welcomed it, two little kids being funny.  Then one of them pees on the carpet at my feet and the other throws up his dinner which sets these two both off to crying at 11pm.  Third, they never turn the lights off in the car.  Fourth, at least three older Chinese men get in arguments with the girl bartending because she won't let them smoke in the car, two just do it anyways.  Fifth we all get woken up and kicked out of the car at 5:30am so they can clean, we aren't allowed back in.
   Now I've said before, I love taking the train.  You get to see the country in a whole other way.  But if I don't have a seat next time, to hell with that,I'm flyin.

Bashing or Advertising?

Finally an entire day with internet!  And so my next installment of Chinese Brand Sniping is on it's way.  We'll keep it short though, pictures always speak louder than words.

It's like the Bulls estranged cousin.

Still can't figure it out?

This one goes much better with jaeger.

Stage 2

I'm skeptical that there are many folks who actually look at this blog, however I would feel remiss if I didn't send a congratulations out to the UVM graduates of 2010, they all helped make my senior year there an exceptionally special time and so I hope their years were equally wonderful.
So best of luck to you all in the future, and if you are one of the aforementioned grads and are actively reading this send me an email sometime, It's been a long time since I've talked with most of you.

Coming to Life

  So I think I've mentioned before that we tend to have an extraordinary amount of free-time here in Taigu; 16 hour work weeks and what not.  As a result the usual ridiculous schemes and ideas that people come up with but never actually pursue tend to get a fair amount of attention.
  Towards the beginning of this semester we started a "TV night" where the American teachers would all get together and watch a select few shows week to week, to get our American TV fix.  One of the early mainstays was Family Matters, which we naturally felt inclined to because of our extremely close knit group here.  That eventually spun off into belting out the theme song while group hugging at dance parties.  Not too long after that Dan and Gerald began getting creative and actually wrote a script for a Taigu spin-off of Family Matters.  From there each teacher was assigned a role and the following is just a taste of things to come.



It's Not Jackie Chan sitcom intro from Gerald Lee on Vimeo.

Actual footage has already been shot and we hope to have a full length pilot episode done by the end of the semester.

Anyways, what started out as a joke has now been fully fleshed out in reality

If I could take it back...

  I definitely would!  I believe I've cursed the Red Sox this season by implying that NongDa had a better curve ball than Josh Beckett.  If I had only known the consequences...oh the shame.  Though I guess in terms of my usage of the word the Red Sox still do have a better curve ball.  I expect to be told nothing here, but under .500 after 30 games?!

I'm a man of my word

  So I created this blog so that all of you (4 people) could be kept up to date on my goings on in China.  Lately however I've been off the blog; for like a month at this point.  So here I am, back again!  I could chalk the absence up to having some extremely moody internet (which is half the truth) but it's really been a combination of nice weather and video games that have been keeping me away (I won't go into detail on which of those two has been more time-consuming).

  Anyways, a while back I began a segment on Chinese Brand Sniping (an homage to Brad's old "before the recession" posts, I always got a chuckle out of those) and the Riich company.  Well today I have a special treat for you.

  When looking for these kinds of labels one usually expects well..one knock off, and with this particular item we've found several.  I say "we" because this really became a group effort, scouring China from Taigu to Taiyuan to Beijing, Shanghai and Wuhan.  And who would have ever thought that Oreo's would inspire such admiration (for copying is the highest form of admiration...right?).

 Everyone's favorite fatty snack, apparently popular is Spain as well.

   Anyways, enjoy the pictures:

The Original; it came to inspire a use similar to being punked: "o-copped"

Look closely, yup definitely missing an "O"

My own personal find from Wuhan

And Boom Goes the Dynamite!

  Unfortunately I have no pictures but we also stumbled across "Olino's," or James stumbled upon them in Beijing.

  Don't worry either, I've got others.  All in good time.

NingBo Hold-overs

So there were two gems from the Ningbo Hat Tournament that I forgot to add to my last post.  The first being a wonderful new song, a real pump up beat.  Enjoy...




Next time you're having an outdoor dance party crank this up and wonder about why none of us can make money writing music.

The second was an analysis of the movie Avatar.  One of the guys from Beijing had his Chinese students watch the movie and then discuss it is in class.  To anyone from America or Europe the sometimes overbearing theme of colonization and the oppression of indigenous peoples was obvious.  To one of this guys students however it was not, presumably because China does not have such an extensive history of colonial rule.  His conclusion? If you can get a big bird you'll get a girlfriend and be important and successful.  "Big bird" or 大鸟(da niao)...think about it.

Dave Plays Frisbee

  Yesterday was the Chinese Qingming Festival, where you go to the graves of your ancestors to remember them. It's one of the more important holidays in China so everyone gets a day off, from school and work, all across the country. Due to my job only being half a real job, we get Fridays off, this holiday gave us foreign teachers a little vacation. Some of the other teachers decided to go down to Hong Kong to indulge in some comforts from home, see the ocean perhaps, and in general take a break from the monotony that Taigu can sometimes be. A couple weeks ago Nick let me know about an Ultimate Frisbee Hat Tournament in Ningbo that would be happening Saturday and Sunday. I like frisbee, I wanted to go somewhere warm, so I decided to tag along.

  We decided to first stop off in Shanghai on the way down, catch some friends of ours on Friday, hit up the tournament Saturday and Sunday, spend the holiday back in Shanghai and get some good western food (I've been craving Mexican, we settled for Tex-mex), and then get back to school Tuesday.

  Our preferred method of travel? Train! It's cheaper than flying, you can get an overnight and arrive in your destination with just as much time to putz around as if you flew in the night before annnnd you don't need to get a hotel, + + and +. Plus the soft sleeper cabins are plush, little mini-TV, reading lights, and the ever scarce western style toilets.

  Anyways, we got into Shanghai at 9:30 or so in the morning and began our attempt at meeting Dan (our Shanghai friend). To those who don't know, and I think this should be most of you, Shanghai is hosting the World Expo this year and the Pavilions will open on May 1st. So, just like Beijing for the Olympics, the Shanghai Municipal Government has been encouraging citizens to be extra helpful and courteous to travelers who will be visiting Shanghai in huge numbers next month. We got to get a little taste of that hospitality firsthand.

   This gentle old Chinese man standing in the picture with Nick was our own personal tour guide of the Shanghai Metro system. At first, when he very loudly asked us, "where are you from!" on the street, we were kind of apprehensive. On a separate occasion we were asked the same question by another old man, who admittedly was much more poorly dressed, only to discover when he walked away that his ass was hanging out of his pants. So we kept our distance, but to our benefit he was quite persistent. He squeezed "Meiguo (美国）" out of us, which means "American," then what we were looking for, then which metro line, then our final destination in the city. Eventually he made it his personal duty to escort us into the metro stop, onto the metro, and see us safely on during our transfer from line 1 to 2. But before we departed we had to have a picture with him. I remember a time when my family went to New York City and my brother got stuck on the subway while the rest of us got off, my Mom got quite upset. Well this time I failed to get on the train after Nick because I was too busy putting my camera away. This old man, who we had just met an hour or so earlier, had almost the same reaction as my Mom. He didn't pound on the doors at all but I did have to reassure him several times that I would be fine before he settled down. When the next train showed up we shook hands, smiled and he most likely went off in search of the next pair of un-interested by ultimately happy foreign tourists.

  From there it was off to buy cleats, meet Dan, eat good food, buy costumes, eat more good food and then jump on the Party Bus with the other Frisbee players down to Ningbo and the 2nd Annual University of Nottingham Ultimate Frisbee Hat Tournament. The bus ride was a riot, a couple shirtless shotguns, some "Shanxi Famous Brand" fenjiu cocktails, lots of beer and a general disregard for the next day's games. 

  We saw this guy on the walk to the field Saturday morning. You could honestly create tomes of photos of overloaded trikes in China (see the trike in Shanghai from Gerald's video, posted in early March).

  I can say with certainty that I felt more sore after the four games of ultimate on Saturday than I have in a very very long time, it's gotta be the whole "not in college anymore" thing. You know how if you run for a long time without stretching properly your calves tend to feel like rocks afterward, kinda pushing out on your skin but unwilling to move, forcing you to walk flat-footed. Well that's how I felt from my knees up to my belly button, plus a bit in the calves too. Diagnosis: Out-of-shape, another "round and fleshy twenty something" as my old high school phys. ed. teacher used to ever so eloquently put it. 

  And I plan on going to more of these in the future because despite the aching it was a ton of fun. I got to meet a bunch of cool people, play in some really fun games, see some cool places etc... etc... On the con side however, this tournament has ruined Lady Gaga for me. What was once a stable and enjoyable guilty pleasure has been beaten to death. Between repeating songs on Saturday during the games, to more repeating at the club that night, to an entire neglect of playing anything but Lady Gaga on Sunday at the games I think I've heard Poker Face, Bad Romance, Just Dance and a couple other songs, such as Tik Tok by Ke$ha almost 30 times a piece.

  Here are some choice photos courtesy of yours truly from the tournament.

You Know You Want It Too

That's right, it is a house in a cave, siiiiick.

Startling Revelation of the Day

   So there are two Peach Blossom Trees outside my new house.  To clarify, Peach Blossom Trees are the ones with the pink flowers that you see in all kinds of Asian paintings, also it is the state flower of Delaware.
   So anyways, as I was walking back from lunch today I heard the buzzing of a bee as I walked towards my house, then more buzzing, then a lot more buzzing.  I looked up into the tree and there must have been a couple hundred bees buzzing around all the newly opening blossoms, like a whole hive all in one place.  The sound was like one of those typical swarm scenes in movies, like The Mummy or Wickerman, but without any screaming due to the bees contented pollination efforts.
   I just hope they don't try and take up residence over our porch, I was planning to do some reading and day drinking on a fairly regular basis.

Chinese Brand Sniping

So I'm sure you've all heard of this phenomenon before, either from me or the media, but I just want to reiterate that the idea of a trademark or intellectual property is almost non-existent over here.

That being said I was walking to lunch one day a couple weeks ago and I saw this logo on a car parked in the lot.

Bold and daring.

 

If it looks familiar to you that's because it should.  Whether it's because most of us watched rap music videos on TRL in middle school or because the brand is so synonymous with wealth the Bentley logo is instantly recognizable;see below.

Classic

 

And if that weren't enough the Chinese company has even gone to the lengths of naming their brand "Riich."  What a shameless play at materialism.  The ironic thing though is that the car I saw this logo on looked like this one below, but yellow-greenish.

Hardly the ideal of wealth and fortune.

 

A dinky little two door sedan that looked more in company with a Volkswagen Bug of the 70's than a Bentley.

That is the kind of car I would have someone else drive for me.

 

You be the judge.  Next up Oreo's.

A Taste of Home in Taiyuan

 Our Group down by the locker room, post-game.

 It's been one week since the other teachers, some of our friends from the university and I went to go see the provincial basketball team play their final game of the season and I think my voice and throat have finally recovered. To anyone that has ever watched a sporting event with me, on TV or at the game, can attest I can get very loud and this time was no exception. Our group was mentioned in the local newspaper as being the "main energy in the stadium." The second paragraph is the one pertaining to us if you care to stick it in Google translate.  Gerald has some videos but I'm too lazy at the moment to try and get them from him, maybe later.

The attraction for us was watching Stephon Marbury, formerly of the Celtics, Knicks, Nets, Suns and Bucks, play for the Shanxi Brave Dragons. The Brave Dragons,known in Chinese as the 山西汾酒 (Shanxi Fenjiu) which is the local liquor specialty I mentioned in my last post, are probably one of the worst teams in the league. Before Marbury's arrival 6 weeks ago they were an abysmal 3-13. How they have fared since I don't know. But regardless, on Wednesday night they thoroughly trashed their opponents to the sound of 123-90 someting.

There he is, number 33. Whether he is more fun to watch then Grizzard I don't know.

To say nothing else the experience was well worth the pain of the next few days.  It had to be one of the most fun days I've had since coming here, this semester and last.  Our seats were second row almost right behind one of the baskets so we could see all the action right up close.  Our goal was to cheer loudly enough that any other Americans in the stadium would know that Anne and I (at least) were from Boston, and that maybe, possibly, we could get the attention of and finagle a picture with Marbury.  Sadly the latter was not achieved and we can only speculate on the former.

Our team sans-Marbury sadly getting stuffed.

On a side note, as one of our friends informed me "cheerleader" is translated as 啦啦队(lala dui) for the phonetic sound of "la-la." Though they are more of a dance team since they don't do any actual cheering during the game and their dances don't involve any singing.  During time-outs and in-between quarters they have a performance routine but after those they just sit in their seats on the baselines and wait. Anyways, they were fun to watch.

Getting Acquianted

Who is my new housemate? The term "a character" was most likely invented for him.

I've known Matthias Meyer since the first day I got here. We, with Nick, went to an all you can eat and all you can drink barbecue joint just off campus the night of my arrival on September 3rd, and at 30 yuan a person or roughly $4.50 we've been back frequently. Following dinner we took advantage of the absence of open container laws and had a street party where thankfully I did not meet any of my students-to-be. After the beers for the street party were gone we made our way back to Matthias' house (where I am living now) and continued to imbibe all variations of alcohol. From what I can recall now there were shots of 1/3 Baijiu (the infamous Chinese grain alcohol nicknamed "white lightning" by many foreigners) 1/3 coke and 1/3 Soju (a Korean Rice wine along the same lines as Saki). There was of course more beers, some Fenjiu (a special kind of Baijiu special to Shanxi province) and several concoctions of which no one was really sure what the contents were, juices, wines, what have you. And so on my first night here I was convinced to drink sufficiently enough that on my first morning here I had to throw it all back up. I'll hock that up to a combination of jet-lag, a hang over, and an insufficient diet for the 48 hours preceding the evening, but that's still just an excuse.

Matthias, Anne and Daniel at Golden Hanz, the German microbrewery, Brazilian barbecue,Chinese buffet restaurant in Taiyuan.

Since after our initial debaucherous encounter Matthias' character has continued to evolve. He is German and as my first night would elude he loves his beer. He regularly asks Nick or I to order him 90 or 120 or even upwards towards 200 beers at a time from a local shop. These he drinks himself as well as grudgingly parcels out during his many parties. Part of his teaching curriculum is to invite his classes to his house (almost every night of the school week) to eat and drink and converse in German. I say he asks Nick or I because his Chinese is extremely poor, despite the fact that he has been here for a year already. From what he told me he used to attend Graduate School in Australia but was repeatedly failed on papers and the like because his English was not good enough. He was then told by a friend about the program in Taigu and decided to come here to teach German. Since then ironically he says his English has improved tremendously.

He is rather eccentric. Aside from the 200 bottles of beer, at 600 ml each, stacked across a wall in his kitchen he also has 20+ McDonalds hamburgers in his refrigerator. He has boxes of t-shirts to market his product the "Cuddle-Beer" which is essentially a thin beer koozie with a smiling face and pillow hands for the over sized Chinese bottles. He has an enormous beer belly, upon which he rests his cellphone which he slings around his neck on one of those key-chain straps that bro's in high school used to let hang out of their back pockets. When he isn't texting he enjoys using it to play loud German techno music every once in a while, at home or at a restaurant. He has over 300 people on his QQ lists(a similar program to MSN Messenger or AIM) that he has divided into 5 tiers which you may ascend if you talk to him enough, I'm unsure which one I reside in. He is 36 and has been in the military, worked as a nurse, managed a nursing home, managed his own hotel, has written 3 books and is now working with us in Taigu and calls himself the only real "taigu ren" 太谷人 or person from Taigu. At a whim he'll tell you how in Germany he would regularly drink, boot, nap for 20 minutes (sometimes under park benches) and then rally. I am extremely excited to see what this next month or more will bring to say the least.

I think in the future the other fellows and I will be making "Jesus Matthias" shirts and the next German Party is this Monday and I don't know how many more beyond that.

Post-house-move

So as I said in the last entry I've been asked to move into a new house to allow the school to make repairs on my old house. They are planning on completely re-doing the roof and the interior to make it a suitable work-place for one of the school Vice-Presidents. And so today we moved all my junk out (which has brought to my attention the fact that I have way too much stuff) starting at around 2:30. To give you a sense of how direct and to the point people over here are by 3:30 our director already had guys in our house demolishing our kitchen and bathrooms while we were still taking bags over to our new residencies.

So lets look back on the timeline so far.
1pm on Thursday : We get calls saying we need to meet with Xiao Fan at 5pm.
5pm on Thursday : Xiao fan tells us that we need to move out of our house.
2:30pm on Friday : We start moving our stuff out.
3:30pm on Friday : Demo begins.
5pm on Friday : Gerald and I are completely moved into our new houses.

For what it's worth Xiao Fan shared with us the entire plan that the school has in store, the renovation of our house and our relocation is only a tiny piece of a much bigger move. All in all the school is planning on razing some 20 buildings, most of which look like the house on this blog except they are gray and in poorer shape, including our dining hall (which the administration has not found a new location for). Once the buildings are gone the trees will be removed and then the earth dug up for a brand new lake. It's a grand new vision for Shanxi Nongye Daxue 山西农业大学 （Shanxi Agricultural University).

Better than Josh Beckett

So Taigu has thrown us yet another curve-ball today. My housemate Gerald and I were told, in true Chinese last minute fashion, at 1 this afternoon that we needed to meet with Xiao Fan (the director of the Foreign Affairs Office) at 5 this evening.

To say that the news we were given was surprising to us would be an understatement. We were told that our house would be undergoing repairs to the roof before the rainy season and that we would need to move out annnd that we needed to move out by this weekend, this is Thursday by the way. Then after the repairs are finished we won't be able to move back in, the house is being given to a Vice-President. We're being relocated to another house that is already undergoing renovations. So we'll be moving almost every month this semester. If this were happening in the US we would be up in arms about it but over here what can you do? Quitting would be an option, except for the $1500 price tag that comes with it to get back home, plus I wouldn't want to to begin my professional life as a quitter. Being part of this system and in this environment you just have to learn to roll with the punches.

Silver lining? The house I'll be staying in for the next month will have wireless internet. So that's something I guess.

Recap

So I know I only started this little blog at the beginning of my second semester here in good ol' china but fortunately our gadget guru Gerald was genius enough to document our first semester with a couple videos. He's compiled them into a nice short, entertaining recap that sums up Fall/Winter in Taigu pretty well.

Here is the result of his labors.

China Winter 2009 Highlights from
Gerald Lee on Vimeo.

Courtesy of Spence

Just a little thing to get through the day.

It's just different

After living in Taigu for a while you have to come to understand that things just work differently over here, people think differently and act differently. You'll have to come to grips with the idea that you have no idea why all this stuff happens and there is no sense in trying to explain it. Even if you ask another Chinese person they'll just tell you it is because it is.
To give an example we recently took a trip up to Taiyuan on the school shuttle bus. After an hour of passing on the left into oncoming traffic and triple lane changes in front of semi's we were treated to a very special sight (for us). Parked in front of a toll (like the ones you'll find on the mass pike) right in the middle of the highway was a big red travel bus, the kind you would have taken on a middle school ski trip. As we passed by it I noticed there was no one inside, no passengers and certainly no driver. So where the hell was he? Taking a piss? Possibly. Yelling at or with someone about money for the toll? Probably. Is anyone bothering to get the bus out of the way? Nope. And business goes on as usual.

The Lantern Festival

So the holiday turned out a little bit lack luster for us. As is the way if things at SAU (NongDa) our hopes were at once lifted and then dashed in one definite stroke. When I arrived in Taigu last week the weather was warm, comfortable, even shorts worthy. It was the beginning of a new semester, the North Yard was being re-opened and the dream of a bright and sunny semester seemed within reason for once. We even played frisbee on Saturday afternoon.
Then, of course, Taigu laid a big dump on us. 20 degrees on Sunday, the day of the Lantern Festival, heavy wet snow all morning, it was less than pleasant. But we decided to make the trek into Taigu regardless for the sake of seeing how the town was celebrating. The plan was to find a place for lunch, walk around, take our time, pick some things up at the grocery store and make an afternoon of it. That's when Taigu tricked us again. Whether intentional or not, the restaurants we tried to eat at told us there were no seats available, we had to go somewhere else. I distinctly remember an one open table, though it did not have a table-cloth so I'll give the benefit of the doubt. So this, in the end, meant our only feasible options would be to either eat at one of the outdoor stalls in the snow, or go to DICO's, we chose the latter.
DICO's is like a Chinese version of KFC, but without the slaw, potatoes and corn. Now in December I was itching for dico's at times, fried chicken sandwiches were a welcome departure from our predominantly vegetarian meals, but on day five of my return I had not yet sunk into such a mindset. The sandwich however found it very easy to sink into my stomach and rumble around for a good while, giving me a nice nauseous feeling when we finally made it back outside.
To be sure, the Lanterns that were hung were very cool. There were hundreds of them lining the streets, and they ranged in shape from apples to rabbits to maps and characters. Had the snow not been blowing so hard it would have been nice to actually look up and enjoy them.
But that's Taigu.

Testing…testing

And here we go, my first attempt to blog while in, as Lou Dobbs so eloquently put it for me, Communist Red China!

I’m currently sitting in the waiting area of Shanghai Hongqiao Airport, I just checked my email after 24 hours of traveling and I’ve got some downtime before my final flight to Taiyuan in a couple hours.  But it doesn’t end there, I am staying the night in Taiyuan with a friend because the buses and the train to Taigu won’t be running by the time I get there.  So it’ll be another hour or so tomorrow of either a standing room only train or a cramped commuter bus.

If there is one thing that I can say I have definitely improved during my stints in China it has been the ability to withstand what I would once have considered excruciatingly long days of travel; 18 hour flights, 20 hour bus rides, and 16 hour train rides still aren’t what I would consider ideal but they’ll do as long as the prices stay low.  Though I have heard horror stories, previous students in Kunming once took a 54 hour hard-seat train ride to Urumqi or Kashgar, or somewhere up in the “Western Frontier” of Xinjiang, I believe they mentioned blisters…

And my battery is about dead.  This Sunday is the Lantern Festival which commemorates the end of the Spring Festival (which begins on the Chinese Lunar Calendar new Year).  So hopefully I’ll grab some pictures and have a post up about that in the near future.

Brown/ Walsh Dinner Party Musings

So to anyone who knows my family this may not seem so strange, but I feel compelled to share it anyways. My brother and my dad love to scrutinize and theorize over big picture problems and issues and they enjoy boiling them down to the most entertaining solution. So this evening's dinner conversation meandered through the normal small talk, weather, schedules, lofty plans for the future, and so on. And as per the norm the conversation made its way round the political sphere and began to delve into the darker seedier aspects of international relations, a la the cyber attacks on google and other multinational companies, the suspicious and alleged murder of a hamas official in Qatar by Jason Bourne-esque, for lack of a proper nationalism, white people, and other similar recent happenings "that had to be going on." For a few moments the topic seemed to shift off into more practical areas, namely the recent Toyota recalls; hopes for a cheaper mid 90's Tacoma by summer and friends and acquaintances that had been afflicted with the Toyota problem. But in true Brown form everything came full circle.
The reasons behind the problems began being speculated on. Was it really a Toyota problem or was it more likely that all of this inefficient manufacturing and poor design stemmed from designers in the United States, American professionals hired by the Japanese and their sub-par execution. With a track record like Toyota's that had to be the issue. But in today's world, anything could be possible and with a push of encouragement from Uncle Joe Dad and Spence were only too happy to make the jump; what if GM, Chevrolet and Ford had somehow infiltrated Toyota's production line and performed some sinister and terribly effective corporate espionage? What if the business plan required by the Obama administration before their bailout had actually included this as a way of helping the President revive the American economy? Oh the possibilities, how much crazy secret spy work was actually going on?

Anyways, for anyone who is curious here is the video of the Qatar Hamas Irish Nationals that don't exist thing.


REAL SECRET AGENT ASSASSINS

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/dubai/7250217/Dubai-Hamas-assassination-Irish-citizens-not-involved-Ireland-says.html

Dubai Hamas assassination: Irish citizens not involved, Ireland says - Telegraph

The three Irish citizens who the Dubai authorities allege helped to assassinate a Hamas official do not exist, according to Ireland's Department of Foreign Affairs.

One way

So this is a photo of the entrance to an exhibit at the Science and Technology Museum in Shanghai. It's of the digestive track. I'll see if I can get ahold of my friend Geralds videos of the ride. To give you an idea of what to expect you ride through all the organs of the human digestive system...alllll of them.

Testing

Just a test to see if the Microsoft program works…

Greetings

So I've gone ahead and created this with the hope that I'll be able to get around the firewall somehow once I get back to China, fingers crossed. The idea is to be able to put up photos and observations, and all that good stuff. Laughably I don't think I'll actually be able to view my own blog directly, I'll be posting photos with Picasa and writing entries with the Microsoft live journal program, so forgive any odd looking formating or seemingly random clumps of postings that may occur.
That being said I hope I can offer some degree of entertainment or interest over the next four months. Enjoy!