Feb 23, 2011

Dancing in the streets

This is a typical Saturday night in a little public square next to our apartment.

It seems that someone sets up a CD player as night falls, and couples (or singles!) gather to dance - and even learn new dance moves.

Learning new dance moves? Something for you to think about, Eric! -ed

The age of the participants here vary widely, from about 25 to 70. Just cool to see.

No, I have no interest yet in joining this fray....

3 weeks away

Yes, it's that time again - 3 weeks until the tournament. As many of you know, I am still planning to be in Vegas with a business/personal trip; however, there are rumors of travel restrictions coming....we are in the middle of plan B planning right now.

Anyway, here is our look at some projected games for this year's tournament, from ESPN's bracketology. It's less fun to do this when Maryland or Clemson (or Dayton) are not projected to be in.

The Kampen Game
(2) Purdue vs (15) Vermont

Layup's 5-12 Lock
(5) Syracuse vs (12) Belmont

Eric's Ohio Underdog game
(5) Vanderbilt vs (12) Cleveland St

Layup's $1000 on the Money Line game
(4) North Carolina vs (13) Oakland

The 7-10 game no one cares about
(7) Washington vs (10) Georgia

The Paul Goydos Game
(2) BYU vs (15) Long Beach St

The Jay Memorial 9 am on Thursday first upset game
(7) Missouri vs (10) St Mary's

Wiz's ACC Lock
(6) West Virginia vs (11) Virginia Tech

Virginia is for Lover's game
(7) George Mason vs (10) Alabama

The game only Eric cares about
(1) Pittsburgh vs (16) Miami-OH

Mike's Philly Cheesesteak Game
(7) Temple vs (10) Old Dominion
(is Bucknell in Philly?)

Leland's Dino Gaudio Memorial Game
(8) Illinois vs (9) UCLA

Feb 17, 2011

90s Baseball Nostalgia

Had some time tonight to surf a bit, and landed on Joe Posnanski's blog at si.com. I like him and most of his writing on si.com (and not just because he grew up in Cleveland).

In January, he put some posts up about the Hall of Fame balloting for this year. One post focused on 12 players that were on the ballot this year. The only qualification to be on the ballot for the Hall of Fame is that you had to play 10 years in the majors.

Those 12 players listed - wow. If you are any sort of baseball fan, you can't help but say "Oh yeah!", "I forgot about that", and "I remember him!" multiple times during this piece.

Take a read, and remember what innocence was like around 1990-1998.

(and how about name #1 on that list! I'll have to tell you the story sometime of when Janice (not Steve!) and I saw history at old Municipal stadium....

2011 Hall of Fame Voting

Feb 12, 2011

Taiwan Blogging part 2

The next day we took the boys to the Taiwan Science Museum. Great place. The kids spent 20 minutes outside the museum to start watching one of those "marble roll" things - where 30-40 marbles follow all sorts of different paths. Why spend any money going inside when all the entertainment is for free outside?

We went in, anyway - the cost was a whole US$2.50 per person - and it was pretty impressive. Four floors of science and math exhibits. DNA, Physics, Chemistry, Math.....pretty neat stuff. There was even a full display on LaVoisier.


(I think I've heard of him in the past......maybe.....what's he famous for again?)

We got to one section in the biology area - and it was a section on the digestive system. And let's just say the Taiwanese are not subtle. They wanted to make it as realistic as possible.









You pretended to be food, and you enter the exhibit through the mouth and exit the exhibit - that's right - through the anus.

Along the way, there are signs to point out different parts of the digetsive systems. The signs were comic strip-like in nature, with three kids asking different questions. Here's two of them. I know we are prudes in the US - but really? 10 year olds in Taiwan can handle this without giggling?

Taiwan Blogging, part 1


Lot of picture dumps coming. So we dook a three day trip to Taiwan right at the start of the (Western) New Year. We landed in the afternoon, checked in and went right to Taipei 101, the big landmark in the city.

We first ate dinner at the food court in the basement of the building, which was a 4-story mall. The boys saw a Subway and insisted on that. I ordered noodle/soup dishes from two other stands in the food court. Janice wasn't that hungry, so she touched maybe 1/3 of hers.

Of course, so I ended up eating mine and most of the rest of hers.

As Julia Roberts said..."That's a mistake. Big Mistake". I could see people running around our dinner tale with red flags, yelling "Warning! Warning! Don't eat too much!".

Of course, I got sick that night.

Went to the conveinence store to get something - anything - to try to settle my stomach down. My first thought was: "Shasta....what I wouldn't give for a Shasta right now!"

And lo and behold, my prayers were answered!

Feb 7, 2011

Super Bowl XLV


Well, as you can guess, I am very, very happy in the result of the Super Bowl. The thought of the Steelers winning another ring and their fans becoming that much more arrogant.....ugh.

Also, this is the second year in a row where I did have a winning wager on the player to score the first TD. Thanks, Jordy! I don't think I will hit another one of those for the next 20 years.....

It was nice to watch the Super Bowl in the morning. Super Bowl Sunday usually is interminable - the pregame shows are unwatchable, and you just want for 6:30 to come around. Not here - I went to sleep, set the alarm for 6:45, got ready and went to the Sports Bar with the boys to watch the game.

The bar was about 90% Packers fans - or, I should say, 90% of the people there were rooting for the Packers.

We did not have the Fox feed - Freddie was disappointed that we couldn't see the commericials. We had the feed from the "ASN" network, which took the NFL network feed. The annoucners were Bob Papa and - wait for it - Joe Theisman. Argh.



However, at half time and at the end of each quarter, a trio of Chinese broadcasters would pop up and provide some analysis. To my knowledge, there is no NFL equivalent of a "Chien-Ming Wang", so these were not ex-players. The guy in the middle seemed to be asleep and completely disinterested in commenting. Picture a blackjack table with me on one side, Don on the other side and Layup in the middle - and Don and I recounting, in great detail, our golf from earlier that day. Layup's look in that conversation mirrored what our middle commentator looked like all game.

Feb 4, 2011

Hello from Boracay


As I said in the last post, we are vacationing this week in the Philippine Island of Boracay. This is an island about in the middle of the Philippine chain, and is about 6 miles long and 1-2 miles wide. The main part of "town" is a pedestrian mall that is attached to a boardwalk-type of walkway that runs parellel to the beach. There is no "boardwalk", however, the path is just a trample path of sand. This part of town, obviously built for tourists, is very much like a miniature version of the Ocean City boardwalk.

Many different types of cultures here - a lot of Koreans and Japanese, a healthy dose of American ex-pat families, and a surprising amount of Germans.

The Philippine people are very nice - but service may not be there strong point. There are people everywhere eager to help, but nothing gets down. It took 6 people behind a bar a total of 5 minutes to get a Sprite. And I was the only customer.

Walking on the sand, there are boys - maybe 7-12 years old - that make these works of art in the sand, obviously hoping to attract the eye of tourists and to get a donation. A sand bowl is made next to the drawing (sometimes labeled, "Tip") for these donations.



Warren tried a similar tactic with his sand drawing of a fish - but no money appeared. I wonder why.

Gong Xi Fa Cai


Hello there! Happy New Year! I've had to go to work for three weeks in 2011, and now it's time for another holiday - Chinese New Year! The whole country pretty much shuts down for 5-7 days; we've been advised to get out of the country. So, right now, I am blogging from Boracay Island in the Phillipines. 85 degrees every day. More blogging on that to come.

When we get back, we have to hand out red envelopes to people that wish us Happy New Year. These people include:
- driver and nanny (of course)
- doormen
- the girls that work in the conveinence store in the building
- direct reports/secretaries
- any unmarried people
- children

The amount in the envelope will vary; before we left on vacation, I had the chore of filling about 150 envelopes with various amounts of cash. We bought these envelopes from a department store; some of the envelopes had a acetyl-alcohol kind of smell. I was feeling very much like Susan in "Seinfeld". She dies before the wedding with George because George bought the cheapo-envelopes. I felt I would suffer the same fate with the fumes I was inhaling.

Anyway, I'm so behind on blogging - got a lot to talk about, especially reporting about Taiwan and our 3-day adventure there. But one more item about life in China - we are living in an apartment complex with about 90% Chinese and 10% foreigners. They try to translate all apartment complex notices into English - but it looks like they need help. This is an actual sign posted by the elevator going to our apartment. The general idea is conveyed, I guess.....