San Fransico

Some streets in San Fransisco are really crazy steep!



It would be pretty cool to live on a boathouse.

Treasure Island

Dave used to live on this island so showed us around it. The island was created for an exhibition and then used as a naval base. Now everything is basically falling apart, but the views are really great!

The Golden Gate Bridge

On Saturday Jon and I took Dave's car and drove to the Golden Gate Bridge, then all around that area. It was nice to just drive again!

San Francisco is a very healthy town - we constantly saw people running and biking everywhere. At the park by the bridge, youth soccer tournaments were going on. It was pretty heavenly - perfect blue skies, sunny, green grass and a laid-back atmosphere.

The bridge usually has clouds over it, even if the rest of the weather is totally clear.






I read that this is the most popular place in the world to commit suicide.

Alcatraz Island - we tried to go see it Sunday but the tour was sold out until Monday. Next time we'll book in advance.

The Peak

The Peak is pretty famous in Hong Kong. Click on the photo to view it larger - it looks much better that way! I used PhotoShop's photomerge feature to create this from 3 photos I took. It about a 180 degree view.

Jon and Adam - what a clear day. (not. as usual.)

Fire Dragon Dance

Saturday night we went to a "Fire Dragon Dance." We stood and got pushed for about 3 hours and really didn't see much, even though we were up front.


Dragon running through the streets without fire.

There was drumming for over an hour at the beginning.

This girl was good - her belt says "Sexy Bull"! (random?)

The dragon was this thing that had a ton of incense sticks in it. After the drumming, they lit the incense and ran it through the streets.

Weekend in Hong Kong

We had a day off on the 11th, and Jon and I were in Macau and Hong Kong for business, so we decided to stay down there for the weekend. Adam lives in Macau, which is about an hour ferry ride away from Hong Kong.

Friday night we ate at a Greek restaurant, found a new t-shirt for me (from France, I was told), went to a bar called Carnegie's, and then finished the evening at the sports bar in our hotel. The restaurant was great. Jon found a little piece of plastic in his food, but told the waiter not to worry about it. Of course the waiter was worried about it, so gave us all free dessert. I was too full for dessert and I think he felt bad because I didn't get anything, because then he showed up at the table with shots of ouzo. And he ensured we drank them.

Hong Kong has double-decker busses and trams. The streets and sidewalks are very narrow too.

Olympic Venues

Now that I'm in Beijing I wish I would have tried to get tickets for something. Actually, I probably only would be super interested in the opening ceremony. I'm not so big into sports.

But, being here 1 day before 08/08/08, my co-worker Yvonne and I had to check out the most famous things - the Bird's Nest and the Water Cube. Hundreds of other people also had this idea!

The Bird's Nest. The whole Olympic village was blocked off (obviously) so all photos are taken through the fence.

The Water Cube. LED lights behind the bubble-surface make it change colors.

I totally don't get this sign. No exploding cars from 6 AM to midnight? The taxi driver said it was to warning drivers not to bump into other cars, but I'm not buying that. Any other ideas?

Where the Hell is Matt....

I've blogged about this guy before - now he is in the New York Times. I bet I have watched his new video 10 times already. Be sure to click on his other videos and watch them as well.

Everyone who watches them has a different reaction. Matt purposefully doesn't say what message he is trying to convey. Watch them yourself and leave a comment!


2008



2006



2005

Where the hell is Matt?

I love this guy. He's probably been to the majority of the countries in the world, and his last two trips have been sponsored. He makes videos of himself dancing, puts them to amazing music and posts them online for people all over the world to enjoy. His 2008 video just came out.

Go to www.wherethehellismatt.com for his travels and journal.

Tianning Temple in Changzhou

Before Minna's wedding, Mr. Huang took Ning, Jon and I to see a temple in Changzhou.








This is now thought to be the tallest pagoda in the world.

The character for "happiness"

World Travels

This is my travel map from Facebook. According to it, I've been to 155 cities in 27 countries.

Singapore Airport

Daktronics just put a new display in the Singapore Airport for EyeCorp. I was there to do training January 7-10. The display looks great.

We had to get special passes to get through security without boarding passes, and more security clearance to go up behind the display.

I wasn't the only one taking photos of the display! It is always funny to me to see other people taking photos. I have the right since it is a Dak display, but I always thought people would wonder why anyone would want to take photos of a billboard.

Random info about Singapore

The one thing that I did close to site-seeing was go to a mall to eat supper one night. In the courtyard is the world's largest fountain. I managed to catch the laser-light show. It was pretty lame. The fountain was just a light mist - I was expecting massive blasts of water shooting through the air!

Singapore was really hot and humid. One interesting thing is that gum is practically illegal. Yes, gum. As in the kind you chew. They want to keep the city pretty. (and it seemed to be working.) In 2004, they lifted the ban, so now you can chew gum IF you have a doctor prescribe it and you register to buy it at the pharmacy.

Singapore was the place where Michael Fay was caned for spray-painting cars in 1994.

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.

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.

Digital Content Training

On Monday, Yvonne and I flew to Jakarta, Indonesia to give digital content creation and management training. Perk and Victor from LEDtronics were also there. The local company is called MIB.

Ira, from MIB, like the training the first morning so much that she called a guy who works at this billboard magazine called B&B.

This photographer (who was also the editor-in-chief) actually took about a million photos of me for this magazine. He told me they would put me on the cover, but I’m not sure if he was joking or not. In one issue, they had a 4 page spread of a new LED billboard in Bandung (which happens to be a Dak ProStar.) 4 pages is a little excessive….. it wasn't a very large or unique display. On Thursday, two journalists interviewed me.

Perk and I during V1500 training.

Gabriel (photographer) took 181 photos the first day, and 86 during the interview. I think that is a little excessive!!!

Gabriel gave me all of the photos too. I don't have so many of me on the blog so I thought I would post a few.

The Great Wall of China

Jon was in Beijing last week for work, so I came up on the weekend. Saturday morning we went to see the Great Wall. It is all rebuilt where we went. It was cold and rainy and of course I didn't bring my sweatshirt. Conveniently, there were about 100 different people ready to sell a "I climbed the Great Wall" sweatshirt to me.


We saw hundreds of people going to the right on the wall, so we went to the right. And we discovered why there weren't so many people going that way - it was super steep!! We climbed a part of it with steps that were more like a ladder.

Three Gorges Photos

I finally got all of my Three Gorges photos uploaded. They are all here. http://www.emilyminor.com/ThreeGorges/index.html I'm going to post some of my favorites occasionally though.

This is going through the dam. It is the largest dam in the world now, and we read that the amount of water that it is holding back will actually change how the world rotates on it's axis. Crazy. It has a system of 5 locks. A bunch of ships sail in, they shut the rear gates, water floods in incredibly fast, they open the front gates and the process is repeated. It was weird sitting at the front of the boat knowing how many tons of pressure was pushing on that gate!

One of the gorges.
This is in Yichang. We spent a night there before getting on the boat. They had a bungee jump over the water! We decided that there's no way we'd trust a bungee jump in China - especially since we are not slender Asians!

This happens to me all of the time, and I finally got a photo of it. I look up and people are taking photos of me with their camera phone. Yes, I am really white. But there are enough foreigners in Shanghai that I would think I am not so much of a novelty. I've seen people trip over things cause they were staring - if they pass me, some people will turn around again several times to look. Jon gets it too. A big guy with bright blond hair attracts a lot of attention. Also, staring is not considered rude here. We've found out that if you make eye contact and stare back, they will not look at you again!

The people with my photo on their phones.... I just wonder what they do with it. I mean, would you really put it in an album and say "and this is a white person I saw on my vacation"? Or do they show it to their friends? Look at it for a laugh? Tell their friends they know me?

I do take photos of Chinese people too, but I think they are doing something interesting, like sleeping sitting up on the street or ridng a bike piled high with furniture or something.

The Three Gorges

Jon and I went on a Three Gorges cruise during the October Holiday. I'm still working on uploading the photos. It was pretty good. A cruise isn't really our style - we felt like we were herded like cattle most of the time. We got woken up at 6:30 each morning and got a call saying we had to come to dinner when we were 10 minutes late on But, it is really the only way to see the Gorges.

It's pretty interesting. The water in the Yangtze River has risen a lot due to the construction of the Three Gorges Dam (the largest in the world) and will rise a lot more when it is finished in 2009.

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!

Travel Blogs

I found an interesting article about "The Lost Girls" - three girls who took a year off from work to travel around the world. They have a very popular blog. http://www.budgettravelonline.com/bt-dyn/content//article/2007/02/28/AR2007022801647.html Check out # 7 in the article. In Myanmar, they discovered Blogspot was blocked (just like in China!) They went around to the shadowy alleys, asking for a hook-up! And found it. I haven't seen their site yet but hopefully will check it out Monday. http://lostgirlsworld.blogspot.com. Some of their photos are amazing - I'm sure their blog is too.

http://current.newsweek.com/budgettravel/2007/06/are_you_the_ugly_american.html Today driving home from work, Dan was talking about going to dinner at a nice German restaurant last week and have a group of Americans who were extremely drunk, causing a huge scene. It not only Americans that make mistakes traveling to other countries (though perhaps we exhibit these behaviors more than others) but the list is a good thing to review from time to time. I just try to look at everything as though it is just different. For example: We think Western toilets are great and squat toilets are disgusting. In China, Western toilets aren't seen as clean - I believe it's because you touch the seat. (not 100% sure though.) Is there some way to really tell which side is correct? Nope - it's just a difference so you just deal with it.

Jon has been in Beijing all week. Today he kept having to push his flight off later and later, but he is making it home! Tomorrow our master bedroom furniture will be delivered, so we will finally get a king-sized, soft bed! yay! :-) China is still a cash-based society, so we need to have the furniture balance in cash when it is delivered. It is about 13,000 RMB. The largest bill is 100 RMB, and you can only withdraw 2,000 RMB from an ATM. It is like having to pay for something in $20s. Since the rainy season just started, the stain on the office furniture isn't drying as quickly as usual so we have to wait until next week to get that delivered. Or at least that is what the company told Judy!

The Bellagio

John (from Border Billboard) and I went to the Bellagio Tuesday evening. The water show was pretty cool and it also has a conservatory inside. I was a bit disappointed in that - everything is Vegas is so huge and grand. I thought the Sioux Falls butterfly house was better than the conservatory. But, I got three photos that make pretty good wallpapers. Email me your screen resolution if you want one.

More casinos...

I spent all day in the Las Vegas office today. After a conference call and lunch, Krista took me here to see a few of our boards. This is a "locals" casino and it still had tons of people on a Monday afternoon. That's so weird to me!! Inside, they have a 6 mm board in their sports/racing betting area that they just use as a TV. That is a REALLY expensive TV. They have a second one being installed, and have just ordered a third.

Las Vegas

I'm in Las Vegas this week for training. Monday I'm training in the office here with a keyframe account manager, which will be my job in Shanghai. I had Sunday evening to check things out a bit. I have a lot of photos of signs... kinda sad. I also stuck the $5 Curns gave me in a slot machine. He won't $5 right away but then lost it all. :-) That's probably the extent of my gambling here. I cannot believe how many slot machines there are, and how extragavant the hotels are. All from gambling... seems so strange to me! I can't stand sticking my money in a stupid machine that doesn't give it back!

Fountain in front of the Paris hotel/casino.

The Effiel tower and some video boards (not ours.) They look pretty bad close up.

Sony PSP board (top right) which is ours. It happened to be frozen so I had Dave restart the sign service. I like the light spilling onto the sidewalk here, but the photo isn't that great.

Anyone else see the irony here?

Quaker Square

Yesterday morning, I flew into Columbus, Ohio with another account manager to meet with Clear Channel Outdoor. They currently have a digital network in Cleveland, and ones are going up in Columbus and Akron too. It's been nice to meet the people we will be working with daily.

Jon is a Priority Club member, which means he earns hotel points at the Holiday Inn and affilates. He is platinum so we get any available upgrades. Last night I got a jacuzzi suite and tonight I have an executive suite. The hotel here in Akron is really cool - it was a mill for Quaker Oats, and they've turned all of the silos into the hotel! Everything is round. You can see some photos here. The Clear Channel Office is about 2 blocks from here so it is very handy. I like being in a downtown area; they are usually pretty interesting.

V7000 Training at Shreveport

Tuesday through Thursday I was in Shreveport, LA. Their new convention center purchased a ProAd (pictured for those of you who aren't up with Dak products) and two ProStars (video boards.) I trained Michael (advertising) and Chuck (IT) on the displays and our Venus 7000 software/control system. I really like getting out of the office and meeting clients. These guys were super nice and they loved the displays. Comments they wrote on their training surveys included: Everything was clear, concise; Great job! Very professional - an asset to the company; Emily was very knowledgable about the system and explained things in a logical progresion.

It was SO warm there! Beautiful. Shreveport seemed to be known for the casinos - there were several big ones there and everyone kept asking me if I was going to try my luck. (No, not really any time for leisure.) I did go to the Lousiana Boardwalk one night for dinner at a place called Sushiko. I sat at the sushi bar and talked to the chef and a guy named David from Taiwan who owned a deli here. Somehow we got talking about traveling and David was absolutely amazed that I'd backpacked. He said he'd be too scared. Well... he moved here from Taiwan! I thought it was kind of funny he'd be intimidated by traveling in Europe. The sushi was really good, but I did order one thing that I didn't really like. It was salmon eggs (the big kind, not the tiny ones) and quail egg. Somehow when I ordered I didn't realize how big quail eggs are - the chef cracked them open like chicken eggs and they sat on top of the other eggs, bright yellow yolks and all. Lots of big raw eggs. I won't be ordering that again. The eel was the best I've ever had though; I think eel is my favorite!

Happy Birthday(s)!

Happy Birthday Jon!

And mine is tomorrow - such a funny thing that we were born exactly a year and a day apart! The photo was taken by Inge when we were in Amsterdam, July of 2003.