Holly visiting

My friend Holly has been visiting us for the last few days. She used to work at Dak (and was my boss in IT.) Now she lives in Beijing and teaches English. She came to visit and we toured the town. Here we are at the Bund.





This is Nanjing Lu - the "Times Square" of Shanghai.

Around Yuyuan Gardens

Traditional red lanterns on the "street of small commodities."

Street food - grilled chicken and squid.

Making bouzi... (steamed dumpling.) Very famous and tasty!

Looking out from Yuyuan Garden

There is one spot in Yuyuan Garden that you can climb up on some rocks and stand over the wall, looking down to the street below. I took a few photos and noticed a guy was watching everything, including me, below. I looked at him, smiled and waved a few times, then finally smiled and pointed to my camera. He gave me the thumbs up sign, so I snapped a photo of him.



I am not sure why I like to take photos of laundry so much. Probably because back home, everyone has dryers and you'd never see someone's underwear outside of their house. It is so cold to leave clothes outside now!

Jing'an Temple

Jing'an Temple is just a subway stop away from our house. Jon and I have never been inside the temple, but I thought it would be a good time to go and take Holly! It wasn't anything too special, but I do like some of the photos I took.




An ad for crazy expensive jewelery is just above the temple. Ironic, don't you think?

Jing'an Temple

Incense sticks burning

Throwing money into the.... thingy.....

Mid-throw!

Paintings

A month or two after we moved here, we finally got around to buying something for our walls.

About 2 weeks ago, we got around to getting them framed.

Now, we finally have them up!

It is really nice to have something on the bare white walls.

Darkness falling over Shanghai

It's not really a sunset due to the clouds and pollution!

Merry Christmas!

Jon cooked a delicous meal consisting of rack of lamb, mashed potatoes, gravy, stuffing, and cranberry sauce. I made an apple pie for dessert. Yummy. (We started looking for a turkey to roast a little too late. The only one we found was too big to fit in our oven!)

Our mini-tree.

Mom, Dad and Jared opened their presents in front of the web cam while chatting on Skype. It is our tradition to open gifts before Midnight Mass on Christmas Eve. It was that time for them, but Christmas Day for me.

My dad. He was just elected to the national Farm Credit Services of America board. His term starts January 1st and will last 3 years. Congratulations Dad!!

More Chinglish from Suzhou

"Friendship Prompt" sounds so much nicer than "Security Warning."

Sake, Wine and Bear. Drink up!

Las Tapas

Last Friday, Jon got some good news so Dan and Sai invited us out to celebrate. (I can't say what it is until it's been announced officially.) We went to an "Entertainment Street" near their new house with lots and lots of restaurants and bars. We ate at a place called Las Tapas and we thought the food was great! The sangria was not made traditionally at all, and not that good, but really potent. Think jungle juice.

More from Jakarta

We were able to see that there were actually mountains in the distance only very early on the last morning we were in Jakarta.

View from the hotel room.

All of the hotels, malls, etc. have security guards in front. They will open the trunk and stick a mirror underneath the vehicle to ensure it's not loaded with explosives. You also had to open your bag or purse, and walk through metal detectors, whenever going into a public building.

Our hotel was just a few blocks down from the Marriott that was bombed in 2003. The Australian Embassy was bombed in 2004.

The companies that I am training are always very good at being with us every moment, and their drivers will take us everywhere so there is no worry about using taxis. Don't worry Mom - travel here really is not as dangerous as the news makes it seem.

Indonesian food

A few of the MIB guys took us to a very local Indonesian place. They brought out about 20 different dishes of food.

These little fish were fried and crunchy. It seemed a bit strange to eat the whole thing, bones and all, but they were pretty good. I also had a papaya shake. One of the best things about the Indonesian food is the fresh fruit. I have never gotten to experience fresh papaya, mango, etc. like I have in Asia.

Perk ordered a drink that had a lot of different fruit, jelly-like stuff and various liquids in it.

I had been making fun of Perk taking photos of all of his food, but I had to do the same when I ordered a fresh strawberry shake. Just ground-up, fresh strawberries. Yum.

Rooftop view of Jakarta

Jakarta is known for its "jams" - the traffic is almost endlessly grid-locked. When you ask someone how long it takes to get somewhere, they always add the disclaimer "without a jam."


The roof of the hotel was pretty cool. The pool went out to the edge of the roof and just disappeared into the darkness. I would have liked to check it out - it looked like you could actually just swim off the edge - but we didn't really have time. Plus, it wasn't a super-warm pool.

Bathroom Chinglish

My boss Dan found these and sent them to me. They are some of the best Chinglish ever, I think!

This was by the sink.

Yvonne translated for me: Don't dump your tea leaves and other rubbish down the drain.

Chinese makes a lot of sense in some ways. For instance, here they use pool. "Pool" to us is only something you swim in. In Chinese, it depends on what word is before pool. They would say "swim pool" or "hand pool" (for a sink.) I can't remember sink exactly - sorry if "hand pool" is wrong!

Washroom (what we call the bathroom) is "xĭ shŏu jiān" ( 洗手间). Word for word, it literally says "wash hand room."

This was over the urinal.

It is actually a little poem: Lai ye cong cong, qu ye chong chong.

And it means..... Even though you're hurried, don't forget to flush!

Hotel Chinglish

Another photo courtesy of Dan, from his and Jon's trip to Chang Chun. They like part of #6 the best: don't go whoring.

Macau

I was in Macau the last week of November again.

These were a couple of the first Christmas trees I saw. The neon is pretty typical for Macau.

Macau was a Portuguese colony for years. They arrived in the 16th century, so the city has a European feel too. This alley was very European and it had a fountain at the end. We ate at a French restaurant near here.

This is a park-thing outside of the Grand Lisboa.

Axel, Anthony, Rosa and Carol in the elevator of the Galaxy. The Galaxy has the worst LED display in the whole world, I think. About half of the pixels on it are dead!

Macau - The Venetian

The Venetian Macau just opened a few months ago. Abram, Yvonne and I went to check it out for a few hours. They Wynn Macau was the first hotel/casino to bring Las Vegas style to Macau, and the Venetian definitely continued that tradition.

We also did go to a Chinese casino for a few minutes because I wanted to see a casino other than the huge, foreign-owned ones. It was small, with only card games, and we were the only white people there. Everyone stared for a while at us and then we left.

The Venetian has four canals with gondolas. I read that they are also going to have Chinese junks floating in them too.

One of the halls. Besides gambling, the place has hundreds of shops and restaurants. Really, the only thing you could do here is spend money.

This is outside where the taxis drop people off. It's an amazingly efficient system of six to eight lanes of taxis.

It has the largest gaming floor in the world. Abram snapped this photo before the security guards told him he couldn't. The place is just massive.

The Venetian also has a few Dak displays! One (double-sided) out front, one at the bus depot and four inside of the arena.

Manila

Last week I went to Manila (the capitol of the Philippines) to do training for Globaltronics.

A few days prior to the trip, a few people in the Peninsula Hotel attempted a coup. Val joked that it had become the latest tourist attraction in Manila, so I made him take us there to check it out. :-)

I'm standing in front of the boarded-up wall where the tank drove through. They have it nicely decorated for Christmas now.

This is what the entrance used to look like (on the other side.) You can see the security guards behind me. Every public place has guards that search you and your bags before you can enter.



Outside of the hotel. It's really nice.

500th post

Wow... this is my 500th post. Half-way to 1,000! If you keep following my journey, I am sure you will see 1,ooo posts someday.

I don't have anything groundshaking to say. I'm still blogging about my life in China. If you weren't interested, you probably wouldn't be reading still. I hope that you are learning about people and places outside of your comfort zone. And, if you'd like to visit, I'd be happy to act as your host someday.

The below photos show just what Shanghai is like now. I took these on the way to a furniture store near our house. A few months ago, this was all old Shanghai - old homes. Now, it's a field of rubble, with squatters still there and within a week or two, huge skyscrapers will be rising from the ashes.