tbaroundtheworld

Inquiring minds wanted to know, so here it is - Chinese TV.

What the heck is this? I don't know, but I thought it was picture worthy. The trip from the airport was memorable - a taxi with 3 of us in the back seat, two bags in the trunk which would not close and the rest of the luggage stuffed in the front with the driver. The meter didn't work, we agreed to a flat fee that I haggled down by 50 RMB and off we went - at 85 MPH. In and out of the traffic all the way across Pudong. At the end, he took us to the wrong place, an error we obviously had to correct with a combination of "no" and a lot of hand signals. First impressions of Shanghai - it's Guaymas multiplied by 100x and with all the signs in Chinese. Even saw some pobrecito palm trees along the road. Here's a shot of the baggage claim area - clear, spacious, new. Once we sorted out the arrival, we got to our rooms. As a measure of electricity conservation, you need your room key to turn on the lights. It stays plugged into the wall, and when you take it, the ligh...

The first day on the road started with a jolly wake-up alarm at 4:30AM. One of the problems with living in our little corner of the world is the difficulty one has in getting to anywhere. Yes, we can pretty much hop a flight out of Albuquerque and connect to another heading off in any given direction. But, it comes at a price. In order to satisfy the airlines requirement of a 2 hour advance on international flights, I had to take what was available. And what was available was a 6:30AM flight to San Francisco. Knowing the big leg of the trip was going to cost me 13 hours sitting in a tube, having to rise at 4:30 to meet the 6:30 departure seemed nothing more than insult to injury. But, we do what we do, and so I did. The airport is a funny place at 5:45AM on a Sunday morning. Albuquerque is not New York, so one might not expect crowds and amenities. Yet both were there, scaled down to our provincial size of course. Checking in was painless, and only interrupted momentarily when my agent...

Yesterday was mine, and as always it was grand. Nice bike ride (well, going south anyway, the gusty north wind on the way back home was not so nice,) great to talk to all my loved ones, good dinner, the Super Bowl and some great presents. All of it adds up to ease the sting of notching another year. Spent some more time today preparing for my trip. I'm having a real tough time understanding how I'm not going to lose my mind being locked up in that aluminum tube for 6 hours. I have the iPods loaded, I have a good book of travel stories, I have Solitaire on my Blackberry, now all I need is a drug to extend my attention span. My brilliant flash of last night was - crossword puzzles! Since I'm still 8 months behind in my Sunday Times puzzles, I copied a dozen of them along with the answers and stuck them in a folder along with my handy Chinese phrases and my "take me to this location kind taxi driver" printouts. At this rate, I'm going to need a suitcase just for ...

Here's an old favorite of mine - Christmas cooking in a pakol with my two loverlies.

Here's a shot of my Vamoots sporting its shiny new pink saddle and bar tape. Lots of interesting responses to this combo out in the bike forums - people love it, people hate it. When it comes to bikes, I think many are far more comfortable with red-green-blue-black-white-orange and not so with accessories that violate that zone. Oh well, I think it looks pretty cool.

The President stopped by today to talk about strengthening America's competitive advantage. The event took the form of a panel discussion, in which there wasn't much discussion. The other participants - our Board Chairman, some local success stories - each were allowed a couple of minutes to tell their story. What struck me was just how "regular" GWB is. It dawned on me that the SNL crowd really has him down . Mannerisms and all, which I'd apparently not really noticed in the few staged performances of his that I've seen. Impromptu - he's a bit of a bumbler. Tries to use humor constantly, often self-deprecating and at relatively inappropriate times. I'm glad I got to see it, it was interesting to hear him say, "Nanotechnology" a half-dozen times. ;-)

For today's blogging exercise, we'll try putting an image in directly instead of using Hello . This one is taken from my weekly NASA satellite photo update and it shows the Aurora Australias shimmering over Antarctica. I have to say, this method is far more friendly.

Princess and Aidan. Nothing sweeter than a miniature Pinto!

The bosque path on a nice November day, this being my first attempt at publishing via Hello . Some apps are intuitive, some apps aren't. Like this one, which wasn't but I figured it out anyway.

Well, here we go. Spending some time today trying to find the location of the hotel for my upcoming trip to Shanghai. Interesting thing, boomtowns - too much going on to accurately keep track of it. Searching the web for maps results in finding that the place I'm looking for is in any one of a dozen different locations. Which of course is anathema to a geography nutcase such as I. When traveling, I have this notion that I like to know where I am, and discovering that even mapmakers don't know where I'm going to be is not a comforting feeling. So, a with a couple of orders on their way from Amazon and ITM, I'm expecting to resolve it to my liking. But, when it comes time to get in the turquoise taxi at PVG, is the driver going to know? Lots of associated sundry fun too, like navigating Microsoft to learn how to install simplified Chinese characters on my trusty laptop. That done, I have to wonder what the heck benefit they offer. (The characters that is.) For all the se...