I'm coming to you live from the Bangkok airport lounge, on my way to India. This is my first visit to India, where I hear the food is good..........
(and that's about it).
I still don't feel too comfortable posting here from work more than once a week, so postings will be sparse until we can get the external VPN set up in China.
Some quick updates:
1. I had some nice pictures to share on the topics below - but then Martin (our 2 year old) went and deleted about 20 pictures from my iPhone. He's too nimble with my phone. He sent a mail to Freddie's baseball coach in Cincinnati saying "I scored 459 on Doodle jump! Can you beat that???"
2. Should I be offended, part 1 (of many?): So the beauty of going to an international school is that the classmates are all......international! Freddie was invited to a birthday party for a classmate, who is French.
The invitation came. It had Uncle Sam on it. It said, and I quote:
"I WANT YOU......FOR MY ANNIVERSAIRE"
Um, is that legal? Can you use an icon of the USA and put a French word on it? Should I go to the consulate to complain?
3. Wednesday, Thursday and Friday were holidays* here in China. On Wednesday, we took the boys to the 7 story shopping mall, which was complete with a mini amusement park and arcade. Freddie met up with a friend - so Warren and I went off together. He loves those silly carnival games where you put the token in and try to win tickets. Of course, those tickets are worthless.....80 of them will buy you one of those Chinese finger-jammer things.
Anyway, so he plays this one game where you drop the token, it lands on its side and rolls toward the edge of a rotating circle - and if the token knocks over the bar, you win! The larger the bar, the smalelr the prize, of course.
He dropped it - it rolled - and knocked over a bar about the size of a toothpick.
JACKPOT!
350 tickets came spilling out of the machine. One CHinese lady came over and wanted to take a picture of Warren. He said ok.
I expect - somewhere - that picture to be framed somewhere as part of a "Winners play here!" advertisemnt that every casino has...
"Warren Z., of Guangzhou! - 350 ticket jackpot winner!"
*4. Well, we can debate if Wed-Fri were truly holidays. The offices were closed - but, to make up for it, the office was open the Sunday before and the Sat/Sun after the holiday. You don't just get a free day off, you know! We will plead ignorance if someone asks why we weren't in the office on Sat or Sunday.
5. I locked out my ATM card in July when I was trying to set up online banking at HSBC, which is centered in Hong Kong. How do I get a new PIN? Well, I have to mail a form in! To Hong Kong!
I sent the form in on Aug 20. As of Sept 17, there has been no reply yet. So I called HSBC.
"Yes, we sent the new ATM PIN on Sept 2."
To what address?
"To the address you wrote - in China."
I put down my office address. I would hate to have it sent to the US,and then somehow get lost....
Anyway, I told them I haven't received it yet.
"Oh, you should shortly."
But you sent it on Sept 2!
"Yes, that's right".
How long does it take to mail something?
"You should expect it to take 10-15 business days."
OK - This is a mail sent from Hong Kong. It is literally 100 miles away from my office. Given the holidays, I should expect my ATM mail to be received.....next week sometime. That's about 25 calendar days.
Is this what the Pony Express was like back in the day?
No comments:
Post a Comment