Humor speech contest

Last Tuesday was my Toastmaster's club humor speech contest. I was one of the 5 or 6 contestants from our club. Peter and Bill are known as the funny guys, and they placed 1st and 2nd as expected. I did get 3rd.

The speech I gave was called "Age Discrimination" and was about the many times Jon has been mistaken for my father. I gave it almost a year ago to the Daktronics Brookings club and they suggested that I polish it and enter it. So I did! I think I would have done better back home where they understood my humor a bit more.

Delphy put the contest on her video blog. http://www.eyesfront.net/info.asp?articleid=57 I am the first contestant so you don't have to watch the whole thing to see me! :-)

This Saturday I am the contest chair for our Area contest.

Just for fun

Jon and I have been sitting on the couch on our laptops, as usual. This time it's been fun though, not for work!

Funny kitties.


This site is even funnier if you work with digital billboards every day.

Use Firefox!

I discovered today that my blog doesn't look the best in Internet Explorer. My profile and links are all the way at the bottom of the page!

They should be at the top. It looks just fine in Firefox.

Kelly and Gadling.com

I had written a couple weeks ago about my last failed trip to Australia and meeting a cool fellow blogger named Kelly. Well, she just posted her final story about her travels in China, which just happened to be our crazy airline adventures. Be sure to check out www.gadling.com and her version of the story! Her other 19 posts about China are also very interesting.

Moving domain names

Tonight I finally took the time to figure out how to change my blog from the blogspot.com domain (which is blocked by the government in China) to my own www.emilyminor.com domain. Yay!!

This means that all my friends everywhere can now read my blog! Please let me know if you have any issues with the new domain.

Update your favorites or bookmarks with the new address now. http://blog.emilyminor.com.

West Lake

I think these are the three best photos I took from the boat. See the post below for a bit more about the trip on Saturday.

West Lake boat trip

Saturday, Mr. Huang (left) took Maggie (middle), Minna, Nancy Bohlen (visiting from the US) and I to Hangzhou. It is considered the most beautiful city in China. West Lake is the most popular tourist destination. It is quite nice, with the lake and the mountains. We took a small boat around the lake.

Nancy and I.


Taken from the van - a worker in the field.

The only brooms you can get in China are made of branches. That is all you see anywhere!

Temple in Hangzhou

The second stop in Hangzhou was a Buddist temple. Before going in, there were a bunch of caves with Buddas carved into the walls.

Cool lighting on the steps in a cave.

Buddas outside carved in the rock.

Maggie tries to light incense - the fire was really hot and blowing around. Minna and Maggie lit incense at all five temples, prayed to each Budda, and did some other ritual things.

Inside one of the temples, monks were gathered and were singing and chanting. I really wish that I had a photo, but there is no way I'd be so disrespectful as to take photos during a religious ceremony.

Chinglish in Hangzhou

I've wondered about this for a while. Do you have to enter a lottery to get on welfare? You get welfare if you win this lottery?

Actually, it is a regular lottery, like the scratch games at home. The "welfare" part means that the profits go to various programs, such as health care or school for people who can't afford it.

Be very careful! Slip!

A day in the life of Boots

7-7:30 AM - Meow and paw at mom to wake up and feed me.
7:35 - Scarf down food.
7:36 - Lie in the window overlooking the pool, in the sun and nap.
12:30 - Xiao Huang arrives. Meow at her and pretend to be starving so she gives me a snack. Watch her and lie in the window some more.
6:00 - Parents arrive home. Begin meowing the moment I hear the key in the door. If I'm lucky I get fed right away.
6:30 - Inspect what they are eating and try to help myself, but only if it's tuna, ice cream, milk, yogurt or any other fishy or dairy thing. I am a gourmet, you realize!
7:00 - Lounge around for the rest of the evening. Perhaps on the balcony, the rug with all of the shoes, in a lap, or on top of a computer keyboard. It's been a long day - I need some rest!

Chinglish

On my way home from Toastmasters, I spotted this sign in the subway. A perfect example of Chinglish. Or Engrish, whichever you prefer. Chinglish happens when the languages don't quite translate properly. There are hundreds of examples around of this, and I'm going to try to catch the most humorous ones. It's with my camera phone so it's not so clear. It's from Shanghai's Public Transportation Authority.

It says, "If you are stolen, call the police at once."

new photo

Harriet Swedlund, the former international program head at SDSU, asked if she could write a story about Jon and I for a Global Studies brochure. We needed a recent photo so we tried this. We don't really think it says "China" though.

Maybe we will become the poster children of SDSU's "You Can Go Anywhere From Here" campaign. :-)

Saturday Shopping

Aileen, Maggie, Louise LV and I went shopping. Aileen is looking for a qipao to get married in, someday. She lives in the states now and works at corporate, but is learning project management here for 5 months. I thought these things looked interesting, so Aileen bought some and showed me how to eat them.

The outside has a peel and is a fleshy. When you apply pressure opposite directions, it tears open. The inside is like a white mandarian orange. It is very sweet.

More balcony photos....

I am going to have millions of photos from our balcony. The view changes so much when the weather changes though!

This week the sky has been blue! We're not sure what happened, but we're glad. Taken August 17th.

During a storm - August 11th.

More photos from Macau

I am really playing catch up tonight. These were from about a month ago.

Dan, Geoffrey (Macau senior project manager), me in my qipao (traditional Chinese dress) which I had made at the fabric market, and Axel (sales guy that lives in Hong Kong.)

Rosa, an intern with a Japanese name (sorry I can't remember) and Veronica.

Andy, Pete Egart (Keyframe manager from the USA) and Abram.

Mr. Ning's Holiday

Abram likes to send out something fun each Friday. Last time it was Dan's face on Mao. This time it is Ning, a head engineer, on Mr. Bean's body.

Lane's trip - July 15th

Lane Munson was at Dak Shanghai for about a week. On this day we took him to Yuyuan Gardens, which has lots of traditional architecture and tons of little shops selling mostly to tourists. We had some jiaozi for lunch. They have beer girls that walk around with a cart of beer too. The girl is always covered head to toe in that beer's brand.

Unfortunately, about 3 days before he left, he got food poisoning. Really bad. After an IV and multiple shots and pills of antibiotics at the Worldlink clinic, he was doing a bit better. He is pretty sure it was from some chicken. I've noticed they don't cook chicken here like we do at home. If you are eating a leg, there is almost always red meat by the bone. (I've stopped eating chicken if it is still on the bone.) Poor Lane. What a way to end his trip.

Jon and Dan could probably live on jiaozi. They are steamed dumplings and there are many different kinds. It's the food that had the big story about how someone was making them from chemicals and cardboard in Beijing. The government jailed him for false reporting.

Dan thought we should attempt a Chairman Mao pose. I think we just look silly. But - Dan is the chairman, if you had forgotten. Scroll down to July 13th for that post!

Chinese guys playing a game, probably Mahjong. Very common. (photo credit belongs to Lane)

MSN articles on China

MSN has had tons of articles on China lately. http://articles.moneycentral.msn.com/Investing/TheChinaSyndrome.aspx?GT1=10328 Economic growth, growing pains, Walmart, and tons of other topics. Check out the link if you are interested in learning a bit more.

Living Matrix-Style - now??

I'm on the New York Times email list, so I get links to stories every day.  This one is a bit odd to think about.  http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/14/science/14tier.html?th&emc=th  Basically, it looks at the possibility that our lives are actually not true lives but a computer stimulation (think The Matrix.)   Very interesting.

 

 

Catch-up blogs

I think the Chinese censors are slipping, because I got onto Blogger tonight! So I caught up with my posts. This means that you need to read back all of the way until July 9th so you don't miss anything. Sorry, but it makes more sense to put everything on the day that it happened.

The past couple of weekends we have been going to the Fabric Market and having clothes made. It's great! Having clothes custom made to your body makes everything look good on you! and it's so cheap. I'll post some photos sometime. Any visitors, please note that we should go there right away to order some things. Suits run about $70 USD. Crazy, huh?

My friends from the NOC sent me a care package! It was amazing. It was a bunch of things I said I missed. For instance, I miss the smell of warm clothes when they come out of the dryer, so they sent me Bounce dryer sheets! Febreez, hand sanitizer (today I actually found a bottle here. It was $4 for the tiny purse size), a big packaged of Reece's peanut butter cups, a scrapbook (made in China so it's been around the world), a flag decoration, etc. And the invitation to Jessie and Seth's wedding - sorry we can't make it guys!!

Today we went to the Portman grocery store, which is where you can find international foods. The prices are outrageous!! For a jar of Fat-Free Mayo, it is $10. No kidding. They even have frozen foods like Weight Watchers meals or pizza - for about twice the price. Campbell's soup is $2.50 per can. We paid $4 for a small bottle of vanilla so Jon could make a cheesecake. We'll use it for other baking so it's OK though. We looked for Graham Crackers for the crust, but none were to be found.

Storms in Shanghai

We've had some storms that have scared the crap out of me (just the lightning, actually.) It cracks so loud sometimes - we're sure it hits things all of the time. Yvonne and I were going downstairs at work when a huge bolt hit. It sounded like it was on the building next to us and I swear I saw a yellow flash come in the window. We both actually screamed because it scared us so much!! I normally don't mind storms at all, but for some reason it is really different in a big city.

Sometime maybe I'll get some cool lightning photos. It rolls in so quickly and then the skies just open and buckets of rain pour down. Every time it happens, I think of how thankful our parents would be if they got rain like that right now. I wish I could send it to you!

The 2nd failed trip to Australia...

I don't think I wrote about the first failed trip. About 2 weeks ago, a Dak sales guy wanted us to come to Sydney to take photos so we could create a proposal for a potentially HUGE client. Abram and I jumped on a plane the next day. And then we sat on the plane for 3 hours. We did finally take off, only to be turned around 45 minutes into the flight. We couldn't get on any other flights so that was the end of the trip there.

So, it was planned that I would go this Wednesday. My flight was supposed to leave at 6:00 PM. Then... after hearing it was delayed for a few hours (no takeoff time given) a notice was put it. It was a fill-in-the-blank notice, which was pretty funny. The main part was that flight CA 177 will be delayed due to mechanical issues. We sat at the airport for hours. Time went pretty quickly because I met a girl from NY, Kelly, who had been visiting friends in Shanghai and was next visiting friends in Australia. It was pretty cool - she told me about how she had went to school for Journalism and now wrote for blogs... (sound familiar?) and the things we had in common just went on and on.

Then, the airline said we had to go to a hotel. I would have rather stayed in my own bed, but you had to stay at the hotel so they could wake us up and bus us to the airport when the plane was fixed. We were taken to a Super Motel 168. No joke. It is a rip-off of Super 8 and Motel 6!!! We had to share rooms so Kelly and I were roommies for a night.

One of the funny things about China is all of the incorrect English translations. I've started taking photos. There is a book called Chinglish that has been published - maybe I'll do a Chinglish II. The following are from the hotel flyers.

Breakfast, Bar Coffee & Tea and Snake. For when you are just a little hungry.... (we haven't had snake yet. I'm sure we'll come across it sometime though.)

Thanks for all of the warnings. The 5th from the bottom is by far the best.

Follow no strangers to the fun places. What fun places would those be? And if the person isn't a stranger, can I go to the fun places? :-)

For more great laughs, go to http://www.engrish.com/. Some of the best are in the adult section. Look for the toddler with a pacifier and a shirt with the f-word. Seriously.

We put on something to sleep in (I was lucky because I did just carry-on so I had everything) and turned around to discover we both had pink pants and a black tank top. Too weird.

We were woken up at 6:30 AM and hustled onto a bus, taken to the airport, and then we waited some more!! At this point we discovered yet another coincidence - she was in seat 23K and I was in 24K. Crazy.

At about 10 AM they started loading the plane, but a bunch of people were furious because they were only giving 500 RMB ($65) for our inconvenience. Then they were claiming that the plane wasn't safe because they hadn't test-flown it yet. At this point I gave up. I'd totally missed my meeting and would have had about a day there and it just wasn't worth it, especially if the plane really was unsafe. I took the payout and left. Kelly later told me that the plane didn't leave until 1 PM.

I don't think I'll be trying to go again anytime soon. At least not if I don't have 2 or 3 days down there before any meetings!