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

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

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!

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.

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.....

Nice 2 Meat You

Steve, I expect a full review this summer of this burger that will be sold at Canal Park. Canal Park is in Akron, home of the Akron Aeros (the AA-affiliate of the Tribe).

"1 ¼ lb. hamburger, stuffed with a ½ lb. hot dog, and ¼ lb. of bacon, cheese, and onions.". That makes a good jingle.


It looks so bad...but I want one.

US Geography lessons needed

So the main airline I fly here is China Southern. It's a partner of Delta's, so I get to rack of the miles flying from Guangzhou to Taiwan, or Guangzhou to Beijing, etc. The miles are actually being credited, so that's good!

I was flipping through the route maps in the back of the airline magazine on one trip. One purpose was to figure out all the cities in China that I have heard in conversations, but have no clue where the location is. (Urumqi? Ha'erbin?)

I stopped at the section where it showed all the internation flights - especially the flights from China/Asia to North America. As usual, it showed two "colors" of flights - one in blue that were actual China Southern flights; the other was in red, which were codeshare flights. Apparently, Delta and Continental hubs were included.

The one "blue" flight was the non-stop from Guangzhou to LA.

There were a few reds to the middle of the US - to Atlanta, to Cincinnati, and to Cleveland - all hubs for Delta (the first two) and Continental.

The map had no borders - it was just a picture of the North American continent but with no countries shown.

So, now picture yourself as the person that needs to put the city dots on this map. How would you describe where Atlanta is?
"Just north of that peninsula in the lower quadrant of that mass in the north".

Done -Atlanta was pretty well placed.

Cincinnati? "Well, just kind of north of Atlanta"
Cincinnati looked like a suburb of Atlanta on the map, but ok.

Cleveland? "Well, it's on the south shore of the Great lake."

Well, unfortunately, the Great Lakes did not appear on this map. So Cleveland, on this map, is seen at the southern tip of Hudson Bay. At least 1200 miles north of the Cincinnati-Atlanta metroplex.

I'll have to get a picture of this to show it. I don't think I am doing the map justice.

Clothing Blogging

OK, trying to resume blogging after a layoff. I need to make sure I take my VPN login information when I travel so I can blog from hotel rooms in China (when I seem to have the time).

Two quick notes on clothing:

1. How much clothing should one pack when moving to another country?

Now, before answering...

How much clothing should you pack if you knew that your laundry would be done every day?!?!

The answer is that I packed way too much. Don't need to have 15 pairs of underwear when they are washed every day!

I have too many pants, dress shirts, golf shirts, etc......many haven't been touched yet. And why not? When you have a rotation of 5 favorite work outfits - why change if they are all clean and rady to go?

2. When did you all say: "Where's my winter coat?" for the first time this season? November 17th? December 2nd?

For me, it was last Sunday - and that's only because I had to travel to the north of China. It's nice living in the tropics! It may get to 70 next week! :)

The first of many?

I wonder if next year, at this time, I will be freaking out....

I'm celebrating by going over a friend's house tomorrow morning (still technically my birthday in the US) and watch the National Championship game. I'll be munching on a bag full of Sausage McMuffins with Egg.

Game Time beverage

During our trip to Taiwan, I needed to get a pop out of the vending machine.

Here was one of the multitude of choices in that machine. It was hard, but I had to pass on "Root SARS".

By the way, this is the beverage that most Browns fans drink every Sunday from 1999-preseny.

Let's not make any rash decisions

Hello everyone. It's been a while since the last post, and I have a ton of topics to cover. So there will be a big posting dump over the next 5-7 days or so.

Hope everyone had a good New Year's. My parents came in for Christmas, which was very nice. They left on New Year's Eve and got to the airport well ahead of their scheduled departure time. Dad was feeling a little queasy that morning, so we gave him some medicine before taking him to the airport.

As I was riding home after dropping them off, it occurred to me that they have no way to reach me! Dad's blackberry wasn't working, and his email stopped working for the last 2 days of the trip. The paranoid person in me started worrying - what if Dad gets sicker? How will they reach me? Do they even have my number written down?

I was playing with Martin in our apartment's children's area later that afternoon. I looked at my phone and I somehow missed a call 2 minutes ago - from an unknown number. Now I started to worry a bit more. Who is this? Did Dad grab a cell phone from an unknown Chinese person in the airport to get a hold of me?

I dialed the number back. It was a recording - all in Mandarin - and as I heard it, I could pick out a lot of numbers in the message. What exactly is this?

I texted our driver to see if he could call the number and tell me what the message is.

His response:
"Just harassing phone calls, promote gambling"

Hey now! Just wait a minute! Let's not rush to judgement on those recorded phone calls!

I may have to give that number another call once the NFL season is over!

Deli Sandwich

Went out Christmas shopping last week....stopped at a Deli to get some lunch. Yes, I will have the black pepper ham sandwich. It cost 30 yuan - just less than 5 dollars.

This is what I received.

That is one slice of meat on the sandwich.

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year from China! Yes, there is plenty of Christams decorations and music here in China. For about a month now, Christams carols - all in English - have been playing the malls. There have been many religious songs included in that collection. The Merry Christams theme is much more prominent here than in the US. There is no "Happy Holidays" sentiment here.

Of course, Christmas for most of the Chinese was a normal day. Our gas went out on Christmas morning - we apparently used up all our hot water and our account was at $0.00 on Dec 25. So our driver went out to the office, recharged our account, and gas was restored later that morning.

We are in the middle of a Monopoly phase here at the house - both boys love to play both the real board game version and the Wii version. They are starting to love the trading aspect and building up the hotels right away. There have been a few games that end in crying when one lands on New York, or Illinois, or even Park Place with a hotel.

It reminds me of years gone by with the Monopoly tournaments in the backyard and - more recently - a cut throat game 15 years ago when I was in Dayton when I held up the game for 10 minutes because I wanted Reading Railroad as part of a 3-way, 12-property trade instead of Short Line, which was being offered.

But I was right!

Learn English!

Found this book at a bookstore in Guangzhou.

Must.....resist......joke.....about......teleprompter.......

Sports Market

Went to the tourist shopping market today, called "Beijing Lu" - Beijing Street. Bought some Elmo's World DVDs for 25 yuan (about $4) each. Not bad.
One section of the market was dedicated to sports apparel/equipment - Nike, adidas, Converse, etc. No sign of Stadia, however.

Anyway, two questions for the group from this trip:


1. I need help from Craig, Mike, or others that have a vested interested in the EPL: Should I shop in this first store, or teach my sons to run away?

(and in the Venetian at Macau, there was the "Manchester United Experience" store in the plaza. Again, avoid or jump in?)




2. I would love to purchase multiple copies of this banner (the second picture) and give to our Univ of Maryland readers.....How profitable could I be if I bought 10,000 of these and marketed to every non-Duke ACC fan in the age range of 30-50? This would make a great background for rifle target practice, to put on a punching bag, in a urinal.....

Lost in translation

This sign appears near the entrance of the grocery/supermarket we visit. This is a European chain - Metro - so it's not a "real native" Chinese market. However, the translation here leaves something to be desired.

What was the real intent of this sign? To point out where the Electronics are? Auto Parts? Road Runners?

Now I understand how disasters occur.....

Some of you may have known that the 16th Asian Games were hosted by Guangzhou in November! The Asian Games are one step down from the Olympics - but it is still a huge production. 2 weeks of activities where the city almost shuts down - we got the Opening Ceremony day as a holiday. Fireworks and skylights galore.

I took the boys - with another father and their sone - to see the Track and Field events one night. I have to say, it was a lot of fun. The women's 10,000 m final was that night - you can see the action shot in the picture here! Can't you feel the excitement? The gun went off, the ladies started running - and then the boys asked how many laps there were.

25, I said.

"Oh....." they were disappointed. But it was clear that one of the ladies - in the final! - was much worse than the others. By lap 3, she was more than 1/2 lap behind. The boys were fascinated by the main runners "lapping" her - once, twice, three times.

The shot put and hammer throw were going on at the same time as well. We were all fascinated by - how do I put this - how amateur the participants were. At least 33% of the throws ended in foot faults. The hammer throw took place on the right of the picture - you can see the poles and the netting set up so hammers aren't thrown int the track. It's a good thing they were there, too - there were more than a few throws into the net, and sometimes we heard a loud "ping" - when the hammer hit the pole.

But I have to say our experience at the entrance of the stadium was the first time I felt in danger of physical harm. At the entrance on each side of the stadium, all spectators had to go through a metal detector and put any bags on a conveyor - exactly like an airport security check.

On our side of the stadium, there were about 25 or so detectors set up. But there were no lines.

We got there - and there were police standing about 30 feet in front of all the detectors. The policemen formed a human chain - and this chain was at least 300-400 feet long to cover all 25 detectors or so. Every once in a while, the police would open the chain at a position in front of the detector - let a few people in - and then close the human chain.

When we got there, there were people 15-20 deep along all 300 feet. So imagine a rectangle, 300 feet wide by about, oh 20-25 feet deep - and that rectangle was jammed full of people.

What happens when the police opens up the chain? Of course - a mass push to the opening. This was kind of fun when you are in the back - but once you are in the middle of the rectangle - holy hell.

This all occured outside, on blacktop - so even though it was not particulary hot out (maybe 70-75 degrees), just the heat coming from the blacktop was very noticeable. And I am about 6 feet tall. Freddie and Warren were really feeling it being 4 feet tall or so.

And we had to create room for them. They weren't getting much space at all. They were half amused and half confused.

As we got closer to the front, a grim thought hit my mind - what if Freddie or Warren - or I - tripped as we advanced to the front?

I ended letting them be ahead of me allowing me (and my larger-than-your-average-Chinese-person body) to try to force-create room by holding people back.

It was scary. We got through it in about 20-25 minutes, although it seemed a lot longer. Now I understand how people get seriously injured - or even killed - in stampedes. This was the qualification rounds of the Asian Games, for God's sake! What if it was something more important?