Travel

Our month on Cape Cod—day 30

01/05/202311/15/2020 by John

~Sunday~ And our month-long Cape Cod adventure—working really remotely—comes to an end. It was a nice change of pace, with seeing friends and family the highlight, and we’re thrilled to be heading back to our home—with all of its creature comforts—that we love.

We left Eastham, MA at 7 a.m. and pulled into our driveway in Raleigh, NC at 8 p.m. It’s a long time for two gentlemen of a certain age to sit in a car, but we persevered and were lucky with the traffic and the weather.

The timer on our car tripmeter seems to be off an hour, just like it was on the way up. It was almost 13 hours to the minute door to door. We stopped for about a half hour in total, so total drive time was 12 1/2 hours.

Raleigh, NC to Eastham, MA

Eastham, MA to Raleigh, NC

We were surprised and pleased to learn that the George Washington Bridge toll of $16.00 is only due when entering New York, not when entering New Jersey, so no toll for that on the way home. We exited the New Jersey Turnpike at exit 6, for $16.05, and paid just a couple of other—fewer-than-$5—tolls, at least one of which was a pay-by-mail toll.

At home, we didn’t find any invoices for the tolls-by-mail that we hit on the way up a month ago, so we’re not sure what’s going on with those. We’ll pay them if/when they arrive or when we get served a subpoena to appear to pay.

We hit 2 short slowdowns—both due to police handling roadside situations—one for 15 minutes and one for 10 minutes. We pretty much sailed through the NYC stretch of I-95 only slowing down a couple of times to the actual speed limit of 45 MPH in some areas. We purposely avoided any potential fallout of the clusterfuck known as the Million MAGA March in Washington, D.C. this weekend by taking the I-495 inner loop around the city instead of 95 through the city.

We made 2 stops for gas, to use the restroom, and to eat our signature traveling dish.

Our first stop	A welcome welcome sign
Bob making our lunch	Deluxe divider plates for John’s food proclivities

At our second stop, my “dinner” consisted of our last massa sweet bread roll, which I stuffed a hard-boiled egg into. Bob had just a hard-boiled egg.

My concoction reminded me of the Easter massa breads my paternal grandmother used to make. Hers actually had the hard-boiled eggs hidden inside the bread, not visible like the ones in this recipe picture.

When we first walked in, our home smelled “new”—like the addition had just been finished or something—and it looked so spacious!

We unloaded the food and kitchen stuff first, and Bob started putting all that away, while I unloaded the rest of the car. Then, we both enjoyed a successful-trip-welcome-home cocktail—or two.

We both eyed “the beast in the corner,” which we haven’t cast an eye upon in a month, and then we weighed ourselves to shockingly find that neither of us had gained what it felt like we’d gained considering we’d done no rigorous cardio exercise for a month, not to mention the less-than-mindful eating we’d done.

Tomorrow, we’ll get right back to it. I intend to get back into my rigorous, pre-trip routine of daily workouts:

Thanks for following our adventure over the month. Comments are welcome. They won’t appear right away, because I have them set to be moderated to avoid spam and trolls.

Our month on Cape Cod—day 1

12/30/202210/17/2020 by John

~Saturday~ Since I’ll continue working remotely through at least the end of the year, my husband (Bob) and I are opting for a change of scenery. We’ve rented a little place on Cape Cod for a month!

I’ll work Mondays through Thursdays and take off Fridays during this time. For Friday day trips, P-town is about 35 minutes north of us and Hyannis is about 35 minutes south of us—with its ferries to Nantucket and Martha’s Vineyard. You might be renting a place in New England if one of the kitchen amenities listed is a lobster pot!

I also have extended family in Fall River, MA; Westport, MA; Swansea, MA; Assonet, MA; and Tiverton, RI (all within about an hour-and-a-half of us) who we’ll try to safely visit during our month here, since none of them have ever met Bob.

This is the first of daily blog entries I’ll make to remember our experience.

Departing Raleigh, NC

We had our alarm set for 3 a.m., but at 2:20, we both realized neither of us was going to fall back asleep, so we just got up, had some cottage cheese for breakfast, finished packing the very few things we didn’t pack last night, and got on the road some time between 3:30 and 4:00.

Packing

Reason #263 that it’s a good thing neither of us has kids, because there really wouldn’t have been room for any of their stuff. The car was packed to the gills.

Maximum trunk space used

Maximum back seat spaced use

Just enough space for Bob to sit in the passenger seat

Food

Bob had planned food for us to eat en route, and the highlight was peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and homemade banana bread. We enjoyed this at a rest area in Maryland at about 9:13. It seems early for a lunch, but since we’d started out at 3 in the morning, it was apropos.

Peanut butter and jelly sandwiches

Individually wrapped homemade banana bread slices

The trip was fairly uneventful. We did have a little confusion at times between what route Google Maps was telling us to take vs. what our AAA Trip Tik was telling us to take vs. just staying on I-95 North the whole way.

We made 3 stops along the way, and we were surprised, and pleased, at the vast majority of people that were wearing masks at the rest stops and gas stations.

Tolls

The tolls situation was less than ideal. Once getting north of Virginia, there were more tolls than we’d anticipated, and some of them ended up not collecting, some of them had cash-only lanes, and some of them were designated as “pay-by-mail” tolls.

The first toll road we approached had all the signs intact about stopping to pay your toll, but when we got to the booth, it said to just keep on going. We didn’t know if they weren’t collecting tolls because it was Saturday, or because they didn’t want to staff the booth because of COVID-19, or what.

Getting on the New Jersey Turnpike, the “NO EZ-Pass” lane we got in flashed yellow lights (from green) after we’d already chose the lane, and when we got to the booth, it wasn’t staffed, and a digital sign flashed: “No tag scanned. Keep moving.” Our booth/lane looked just like the 2 on either side of it at which we saw a driver take a ticket from a machine as they went through. Since there was no machine from which to take a ticket at ours, we just kept going and no one chased us or stopped us. At the end of the turnpike—I’m pretty sure we went the entirety of it—I told the cashier we didn’t get a ticket, but that we’d entered at the Delaware Bridge, and she charged us $18 and some change, which was the price indicated for a “lost ticket.” Whatever.

There were definitely more tolls than we anticipated. We paid $18.85 to go over that unimpressive George Washington Bridge, on which they could use some of the money they’re collecting to repave, if you ask us.

And a few of the toll booths were pay-by-mail booths where they scanned our plates, I guess. We’re concerned that we’re not going to see our mail for over a month. We need to look up how long you have to pay them before they start accruing late fees or fines. We can’t even ask our neighbors to be on the watch for them, because our mail is being held at the post office until Nov. 14.

Traffic

We did hit a highly annoying snag on I-95N through NY, where we experienced bumper-to-bumper traffic for about 45 minutes to an hour. And it was one of those situations where traffic would just come to a crawl or stop for no obvious reason whatsoever. After some time, it would pick back up—with no accident or any other thing in sight that might explain the slowdown—and then again after some time slow down again for no apparent reason. At what point we said:

Really? Bumper-to-bumper traffic? On an interstate? On a Saturday? During a pandemic?

Arrival

We arrived at about 4:30 p.m., which was 13 or 13.5 hours after we left. I’m not sure how this tripmeter on our car calculates time, but it seems to be an hour or so off. The mileage seems correct, as Google maps estimated between 761 and 821 miles.

Tripmeter

Because we were ready for a celebratory drink after a day on the road, the first thing we did was set up the bar in the place and have a toast to the start of our month-long adventure.

Then we took a short walk to the Cumberland Farms convenient store super close to our place to buy some ice, and we each got an ice cream treat. (Me, an ice cream sandwich; and Bob, a Cumberland Farmhouse black raspberry chocolate ice cream sandwich.)

There were two (frozen, Red Barron, pepperoni) pizzas left in the fridge, and we had one of those for dinner after checking with the owner that it was okay to eat them.

Bob made up our bed, and I laid down on it at about 8:30 and started reading a book on my phone on Libby. The next thing I knew, it was 5:00 in the morning Sunday.

Hopes and dreams for tomorrow

Take a ride to see the area.
Drive to the nearest “big” town, which is Orleans, MA, to its Stop and Shop grocery store and TJ Maxx store.
Bob to unpack and put away everything in our house.
John to set up each of our personal computers and then set up his workstation, including a printer provided by the owners.
John to devise our daily blog entry.

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People to People Technical Communications Professional Delegation to China—Day 12

12/31/202210/31/2008 by John

I met Sherry, Ann, Paula, Kathy, Jeanne and Kirsten at 8:30 for the hotel breakfast buffet. We broke bread together for the last time. And then, off to my ride:

I left Shanghai tomorrow and arrived today in Chicago, ten minutes after I left. Actually, we left Shanghai at 4:05 PM on 10/31/08 and arrived in Chicago at 4:15 PM on 10/31/08. Cue up Cher: If I could turn back time…

I had an aisle seat on the way back, and to the right of me an Indian couple occupied the middle and window seat. She was in her sari and he was in his turban. As soon as I sat down I said to them, “Feel free to wake me up if I’m asleep whenever you need to get out. I won’t mind at all. Just nudge me.”

They thanked me, and the man told me he was “a heart patient,” and so he’d need to get up at least once every four hours to allow some circulation in his legs. Then he said to his wife, who was in the window seat, “Why don’t you let him have that seat?”

“That’s okay,” I said, “Actually, I’d like to keep my aisle seat. I have a bum knee, and I want to be able to stretch it out in the aisle if I need to,” and then added, “This getting old stuff is a bitch.” To which he replied, “It sure is.” Right before we rolled back, he got up and took an aisle seat that was open in the middle section of the plane; in fact, it was right next to Paula from our delegation.

So, an aisle seat with an empty seat between me and the lady in the window seat now for our twelve-hour flight. Sweeeet. I noticed that she was reading Kite Runner, and I said to her, “That is one of my all-time favorite books.” She said she was loving it, and asked me if I’d read the author’s next book, about which I’d heard, but hadn’t read. “It’s even better than this one,” she said. “You must read it.”

At the very beginning of the flight, for between an hour and an hour-and-a-half straight, we had severe turbulence. I’m talking the kind of turbulence that has the food cart rolling around in the galley area, and at one point shaking so much that a huge bottle of water tipped out of an ice bucket and rolled on the floor, while the flight attendants could do nothing but sit in their seats displaying a face that said, “We experience this all the time. It’s not big deal. I’m totally calm, as all of you should be.” Yeah, right.

My final bilingual drink on the plane:

In spite of that precarious beginning, however, after traveling over 6,000 miles, we had the most incredibly smooth touchdown ever.

Most ridiculous thing overheard at O’HARE:

Lady to perfect stranger: “I’ve been traveling since midnight my time.”

Uh, your time? Do you own a time zone? Do we know where or when you started your trip? Thanks so much for your sentence with no meaning.

Immigration was a breeze. In fact I saw three, count them, three, immigration officers actually smile, and the one who processed me said nodding at my t-shirt, “Grammar police. What’s that all about?”

After explaining it, he said, “Well, I’d like to think my grammar is good.” I was impressed that he even cared.

After a ridiculously long wait for our luggage, I retrieved my checked-in bag even though it was checked through to Raleigh-Durham, took it through customs, and then re-checked it without having to go through any kind of line.

After changing terminals, and unfortunately having to go through the carry-on security line again, I got to the top of the escalators by my gate to face a food court. I walked in there to see if there was a place selling “Chicago-style” hot dogs. One of the food stores in there was a Chinese food place, and I said, “Ugh,” and veered away from it.

I ended up having a sesame seed bagel instead, and then went whoring for an outlet, which turned out to be an incredibly fruitless search. There were some outlets here and there that looked like outlets, but when you got close to them they were some weird twisted thing that didn’t except regular plugs. I had to double check to make sure I was in America. The adapters and converters are all packed away.

I found a very inconvenient one by a currency exchange booth, and sat on the floor to recharge my laptop. I think my battery must be dying. All during this trip, including on the plane on the way back, my battery slowly drains as I’m using it to between 50% and 55% power left, and then just like that ( insert finger snap here ) it drops down to 4% in the red zone, displays the message that power is low, to save and power off, and then when I hit shutdown, right before Windows completes closing, it automatically goes into hibernation mode.

My flight from Chicago to Raleigh-Durham was uneventful, if you ignore the four people that came on the plane at the very last minute, who were dressed up for Halloween in bicyclist outfits (one complete with the Lycra shorts and a helmet), and spoke so damn loud the whole way back that I could hear every word of their conversations from five or six rows ahead of them. Thank god for iPods and earbuds.

I had a window seat, 13A (which I chose way back when I booked my flight) and the two women who sat in the middle and aisle seats talked to each other the whole way back.

I was falling asleep, and at one point, I put my seat back, only to have it violently shaken by the guy behind me, who said (after the shaking), “I’m sorry, but my legs are too long for you to put your seat back.”

I’m not quite sure how I feel about that. In some way it smacks of, “My poor planning has become your emergency.” I mean would it be acceptable if an obese person sitting next to me said, as his or her girth was taking up half my seat, “I’m sorry. I’m too fat for you to have your entire seat.” I’m thinking this guy should ask for a seat just behind the bulkhead when he travels rather than denying me the amenities that come with the ticket I paid for.

I landed to the newly opened, in fact opened since I left, “Terminal 2.” While I waited for Joe outside baggage claim, a minivan pulled up, out of which two kids came running toward their grandparents, who were just to the right of me. The boy had a bag of Halloween candy, and when he showed it to grandpa, grandpa grabbed it and ran with it, with the grandson chasing after him. I watched, thinking, “I would love to have a piece of that candy.”

After they got the grandparents’ bags in the car, and the grandparents were in, right before closing the door, the little boy ran over to me, opened his bag, and said, “Would you like a piece of candy?”

“I sure would!” I said, and then, “What do you have in there? Ah, Milk Duds. I love those! Okay to take one of them?”

“Sure!” he said, and I responded with, “Thanks, buddy. You’re very kind. Happy Halloween.”

Joe and I headed right to Flex, where it was Costume Contest Night. After that, we made a stop at Legends, and then onto IHOP, with Henry, for a ridiculously late/early breakfast. I had Pigs-in-a-Blanket, and the pancakes were pumpkin-flavored. Killer!

People to People Technical Communications Professional Delegation to China—Day 11

12/31/202210/30/2008 by John

Today was our last "professional day" on the trip, and after the usual breakfast buffet, which I ate gloriously alone today, we were off to our morning visit with the Strategic Delivery Organization, Greater China, Accenture, where our Meeting Agenda noted at the bottom: "The washroom at the meeting venue is western style with toilet paper available."

This is the company that one of our delegates, Ann Backhaus—who’s one of my favorite delegates—works for. This meeting was in a somewhat cramped conference room, but we managed just fine.

Accenture is quite famous in China, perhaps globally. It’s one of the "Big 5" in the global consulting industry. In China, they have more than 3000 employees, specializing in four areas: Consulting, Outsourcing, Solutions, and Technical Support.

Our hosts were very gracious, and all three of them, though Chinese, introduced themselves with English names—Simon, Jeff, and Robert. All three were in senior positions in the company.

Simon has about 20 years in I/T and software development. He worked for about two years at IBM in a consulting department. He’s been an executive at Accenture for about a year now.

Robert works in the technology consulting area. His group specializes in solving some of the issues currently faced by China CEOs. He graduated from University of Maryland at College Park. He has worked for EDS, AT&T, Bell Atlantic, and Freddie Mac. Of course, with the recent global financial meltdown led by the U.S., and with Freddie Mac recently taken over by the U.S. government, everyone groan-laughed at the mere mention of it. Someone in our delegation said, "So you’re the one!" Laughter all around.

Jeff was the junior manager in terms of time at Accenture, starting about six months ago. Before that he worked for Unisys on their outsourcing team. He’s a local person, born in Shanghai, lives in Shanghai, and spends his vacations in Shanghai. His specialty area is outsourcing.

The meeting started off with Simon asking us two questions: (1) For how many of us was this our first trip to China, and (2) What have our impressions been of China during our time here? As usual with our group, there was no shortage of people wanting to answer the questions. 🙂

Then we asked them some questions:

Jenny: As businessmen in China, what is your main source of business information?

Linda: When you write plans, proposals, and policies and procedures, here in your office, who does that, and what is their background?

Debbie: Do you get involved with RFPs, and if so, how does that work?

We talked about other topics and observations about the similarities and differences in our cultures:

China’s "learning from a master" culture.

How the long history affects the rate of change in China.

Engaging employees—both their minds and their hearts.

"Creative" and "people" work versus "logical" and "machine" work.

What today’s employees are looking for—not just the salary, but the complete package including the benefits and the company’s culture.

What hiring managers are looking for in potential employees, and how to retain employees once they’re hired.

Hiring professional coaches for executives.

The best way to train, leading to a discussion on visual communication, and "culturally loaded icons." 🙂

A copyright protection discussion, which mostly centered around Microsoft’s actions against piracy of its software in China. It’s estimated that 50-60% of its software is pirated. It has reacted by launching an anti-piracy tool targeting Chinese computer users to ensure they buy genuine software.

At about 20 minutes into the meeting, Jeff announced that free wireless was available in the room, and gave us the SSID and key.

Though I was the minute-taker for this meeting, I did take a few minutes "in the background" to send my final LiveJournal updates to my friend Casey for posting—which really took a load off my mind—as I wanted desperately to post them before leaving, which meant I would have had to either break down and pay the $20 (rip off) that our hotel wanted for a 24-hour period of Internet access, or try one of the Starbucks nearby to see if they offered access cheaper than that.

Casey, thanks again, a million, for helping me out during this trip!

As usual, we concluded our meeting with a certificate presentation to our hosts. Here’s Linda presenting to Simon:

We met our guests—meaning the son, daughter, and spouses of the delegates, who are always having "culture days" with the local tour guides—for lunch, and invited our Accenture hosts along, too. We met at Tai Lake Boat Cuisine Restaurant, and had our by now usual family style Chinese food. Lazy Susan. Beer and soft drinks.

I asked the guests if on the days they met us for lunch, which I think was only two days of the trip, or maybe three, if it was the highlight of their day. No one said no. But, then again, no one really said yes—without sarcasm anyway.

Set straight that it really isn’t all about us, we bid our guests and the Accenture folks adieu, and we set off to our afternoon meeting, which was with HP-China, specifically their Global Delivery China Center (GDCC) in Pudong.

Surprisingly, to me at least, this was the most awkward visit of all of our visits. The room was quite stark, and it was set up theater style—just rows of chair facing a screen, on which was projected a couple of PowerPoint slide presentations. All of our venues up until then had been chairs at desks, in nice conference rooms, often with an audio system so we could hear each other better, and usually with our names in placards on the tables.

The guy that was designated as our host, whose name was Tim, was quite hard to understand, and he gave us a brief welcome in the small auditorium we were in, and then took us into the hall, where he showed us the history of the GDCC from standalone wall boards with all of the information printed on it. He basically would take a moment to read a date-associated blurb (which we all did along with him, as it was in both Chinese and English), and then he would tell us what it said.

After that, we took a short tour of the first floor of the building we were in, where on our first stop, we peered into a room full of machines, which was a server farm. Next, we moved into a big room cordoned off in quadrants where the workers sat at their desks, mostly at laptops. It was a little warm in there, but no where near like the other rooms we’ve seen workers in. I did note one person with a jacket on, however.

After walking around the room, Tim said, "Basically in this complex, we have four building, each with three floors that all look like this one," ending the tour.

We returned to the conference room, where we had a brief welcome and introduction from a VP and General Manager, who actually "got" technical communication. It was a welcome anomaly on our trip so far.

Next Tim gave us a presentation that started off with some interesting facts about their organization, including that 24% of their employees have Master’s degrees and 0.8 have PhDs. He then whipped through about 15 slides detailing the 13 industries they engage in, and each of those had several bullet points listing on the left side of the slide, their capabilities and skills in that industry, and their applications in bullet points on the right side of the slides. The 13 industries are:

Communication, Media, and Entertainment
Healthcare and Life Science
Consumer Industry & Retail
Energy
Financial Services
Manufacturing
Transportation
Government
SAP Service & Solution
Testing Service & Solutions
Standard Service Architecture
BTO-based Service
BQS (Business Quality Service) & Solutions

I’ll spare you (and me) the capabilities and applications of each.

Next, we had a very stilted conversation with the manager of their Technical Competence Center, during which we eventually ascertained that his group was so far up in the design and development cycle that they had no interaction, or understanding apparently, of the documentation used to communicate with end-users, which is what we do. Things that make you go, Hmmmm.

After he left, we were left alone with the three technical writers that work at this location in China HP, and only then did we have a very fruitful conversation. The team consisted of two Chinese women and one "Western white boy" named Terry.

Here I am at the entrance of the building under a sign welcoming us, which you can’t read in the photo. It was snapped as we were leaving:

After about an hour to freshen up after returning to the hotel from our final meetings, we headed out to Yat’s Restaurant for our farewell dinner. From this restaurant, we had a great night view of Pudong, and could actually see it in spite of it still raining. As it turned out, it rained the entire four days we were in Shanghai.

This dinner turned out to be very, very nice, even though for me, it was my least favorite meal. It was more of what I’d call a "high end" restaurant, and a good portion of the dishes involved fish, which I didn’t want to eat so close to our long travel day home. A nice surprise was that at the end of the meal they brought out this unbelievably huge birthday cake for Vaughnea, as tomorrow is her birthday.

We sang happy birthday to her, and then Shawn taught us the Chinese version of Happy Birthday. So, all of us sang Happy Birthday again in Chinese. Then Nadine, who’s French and joined the delegation from Belgium, sang Happy Birthday in French, for which in addition to myself, the Toronto contingent joined in. Then, someone knew Happy Birthday in German, and they sang that. And finally, even though none of us were Spanish or Mexican-American, a few people eked out Happy Birthday in Spanish. It was all quite fun, and Vaughnea absolutely loved it.

The staff cut the first piece of cake, and it was so inordinately large that we made them give it to Shawn, or National Guide, and all around great guy, as he usually didn’t eat with us, and when he did, he ate like a bird.

We had a touching round of thanks to Shawn, who everyone couldn’t say enough good things about. When taunted for a speech he said, "I’m not going to say a lot of mushy stuff, because I don’t want you to think, ‘Yeah, he says that to all of the delegations,’ but this group really was different in that most of the delegations that I work consist of a majority of men, but this group was mostly women. And most groups don’t tease their guide mercilessly, so that’s been a lot of fun." He said it almost with a little sarcasm, but you could tell that he had enjoyed that part of our time together.

Linda thanked him profusely, and offered the floor for others and several people said very nice things to him. I liked Vaughnea’s words, where were to the effect of, "Thank you for your patience, for your wisdom, for your sense of humor, and for being you." Tell it, sistah!

Our farewell dinner:

All the way back to the hotel, I went back and forth about going out tonight. I have been talking about going to a gay bar the entire trip, though Shanghai was the place that I really had intended to do it, as an IBM colleague of mine had been here a few years ago, and had recommended a bar that he’d actually been to and said was nice, as well as safe.

I was using the excuse of it raining yet again as a good reason not to go, when I knew darn well it was the idea of taking a taxi, which I hate, and the only thing worse being, taking a taxi to a place you’ve never been before, and particularly on top of that, doing so not being able to speak the language.

After finally "sucking it up" and "just doing it," I set out. After a few minutes wait in a short line, the bellman called up the next cab and asked me where I was going. I handed him the address, written in Chinese for me on Tuesday by Leo and the concierge, and the bellman told the address in Chinese to the cabbie.

The cab ride was incredibly long, and the only thing that kept me from not starting to get very worried was that Leo had told me that it should be about 21 yuan to get there, which is between $3.00 and $4.00. I’m quite sure this cab ride would have been between $50 and $100 in the States. It was so far, but I kept watching the meter, and when it hit 23 yuan, the driver pulled to a stop.

And then the panic started as he pointed around and asked me a question, which of course I understood not one word of. I looked around where we were and we were not at the front door of a place called Eddy’s, which was the name of the bar I was going to. He veered the taxi off the road into this area that wasn’t a parking lot, but sort of an island between two roads that met in a V, and said something else.

I started getting this sick feeling, and I thought, "If I don’t see this bar before I get out of this taxi, I’m just going to have him take me back to the hotel. This is not the kind of place that I’m going to go looking down side streets or back alleys, which are not unusual locations for gay bars even in a country where they’re not so frowned against."

I got out the piece of paper that was written in Chinese that the bellman had read to the cabbie, but that he hadn’t seen, and I handed it to him. He was so gracious. He looked at what was written, focusing on the 1187 street address I think, and looked all around for me. And then he made a noise of recognition and pointed over to the second business on the right down one of the streets meeting there in that "V" intersection, to a red, neon light in the window that said, "Eddy’s." Thank goodness. I Xie-Xied him profusely, gave him 30 yuan, and walked over to the bar.

It was a dimly lit quaint little bar, not very big at all in terms of square feet, and cool music playing, but actually a little too loudly for my taste. I did what I do in American bars, which is to say, stood along the wall taking in the scene and not talking to anyone. Though it was a small bar, they had two or three guys walking around taking your drink order if you preferred that to going up to the bar, which was in the center, with three sides being seating, and one side containing bottles on display.

I said, "A beer, please," when one of them asked me if I wanted anything.

"Will [some Chinese beer name I couldn’t discern, of course] be okay?" he asked.

"That’d be great," I said, having no idea what kind of beer that was.

"30 yuan," he said when he returned.

I moved around to three or four spots on the bar, checking out the scene. I’d say there were about 30 people in the place, maybe 8-10 westerners, and four ladies, whom I assume were Lesbians, but only because they were in a gay bar, not because they "looked like" Lesbians, whatever Lesbians look like, especially in China.

While I stood in one spot, these two guys came in and they came and stood next to me. One was a white guy, and the other a Chinese guy. The white guy said hello to me, and I just stuck out my hand and said, "Hi, I’m John."

"I’m Jack," he said, "And this is Dean." Jack was from Singapore and flying back tomorrow. Dean was very outgoing, and as it turned out, he knew a lot of the people in that bar, as several came up and said hello to him.

One was a cute, Chinese guy, whom Dean introduced to Jack and me as Carter. We talked for about an hour. He was a young kid, still in university, in a pre-MBA program. He’s never been to the States, but would like to move to NYC next year. His English was quite good, but we were often standing right under the speaker, so I had to ask him to repeat things now and again.

He told me that I looked like the actor on The King of Queens, which of course I’ve never seen. He couldn’t remember his acting name. Anyway, he said that he thought that the actor was very handsome, which was very sweet. (Turns out it was Kevin James.)

He asked me how old I was, and I when I said 51, he said, "No way. You look 35." Who could not like this kid? 🙂 He asked me how old I thought he was, and I said, "Oh my god, you’re just a kid. You can’t be more than 21 or 22."

"21," he responded making a very brief facial expression that said, "I’m not that old!" as if 21 or 22 was way off and so much older than he actually was. Ah, youth.

I asked him if this bar had ever been raided or if there is ever any trouble with the police here. He assured me that there wasn’t, as the bar pays the government to make sure it stays that way. Pays them monthly.

I was glad to have ventured out on my last night in China to end up having a little time with people like me. Gay people all over the world having similar experiences. Carter talked about not being out in his life, his wanted to be assured that he can "pass as straight," and his plans to tell his family only after he has graduated, has a job, and his own place to live.

There’s always that fear of being disowned, which is most likely heightened in China due to the one birth rule. After all, you know the parents who have been lucky enough to have their male offspring, are probably not going to take to well to the fact that their son is probably not going to produce the heirs they want, and need, to perpetuate the family name.

People to People Technical Communications Professional Delegation to China—Day 10

12/31/202210/29/2008 by John

Our wake-up call was at 7:30 today, and this was the first time on this trip that I was in an incredibly deep sleep when my phone rang.

The breakfast buffet in this hotel, Le Royal Meridien, is unfreakingbelievable. I started off with twice slices of toast, eggs Benedict with a hard-boiled, instead of soft-boiled egg, a slice of bacon and some coffee.

After some watermelon and fresh pineapple, I still wanted something sweet, and scouring over by the waffle and pancake stand, I saw beside the peanut butter, a bowl marked dulce de leche. I took two teaspoons of the sinfully delicious looking and tasting goo, and spread it on a croissant. OMFG.

On the way down to the lobby, the background music in the elevator sounded like a babbling brook. When I first heard it, I thought, “Oh no. My stomach is not making that noise.” Discussing it once we all got in the lobby, every person who noticed that sound thought it was their stomach. How funny. I guess knowing you might have to use a “Chinese toilet” really makes you stay in tune with your body.

Today made three-for-three with regards to our “cultural days” in each city being overcast and rainy. What a bummer. It rained the entire day, more some times than others, and getting dark rather early because of it.

Our morning was spent at the Shanghai Museum. Here I am at the entrance:

The museum used to cost to get in, but now it’s free. As you can see by the lines, it’s quite the popular place:

Might I suggest, “Visitors 70 and over” instead? I’m just saying…

There was a good diversity of people visiting the museum today—from the aforementioned elders, to white people, to this black cowboy, who was a part of a group of very, very dark-skinned people presumably from somewhere in Africa:

I’m just going to shake my head with regards to the bathroom situation. This sign was on the back of the door to the stall in the men’s room. And yes, this means toilet paper used for that. Men don’t use toilet paper for the other thing. It’s just hard to understand. And this was a “Western toilet,” not a “Chinese toilet.”

Please put used toilet paper in the waste basket

There were four floors of exhibit halls in the museum, and we were provided with recording devices in English, on which we punched a code shown at a particular piece to hear its history. Here I am listening to the background on these boats:

It’s me again… this time communing with the coins:

Yep. Me again. Hanging out with the old guys:

A couple other of my favorite piecesa “belt tail piece with dragon design” made out of jade and a ceramic “Heavenly Guardian” statue:

On the bus ride from the Shanghai Museum to the silk rug factory that was next on our agenda, I read these headlines over the shoulder of Richard (of Richard and Nadine) in the paper that he was reading in the seat in front of me:

10 stand trail for money grows on tree scam

At the Shanghai General Silk Rug Factory, we started off with a tour of the factory during which our guide showed us how rugs are made from start to finish. And it all starts with the moth cocoons, from which the silk is derived:

Nothing up my sleeve… presto… silk!

Next, our guide explained a few things about a rug that a lady from Los Gatos, CA ordered a few months ago, on which the lady in this next picture is working:

This young lady has 6 years experience making rugs, and she’s considered an expert. Even as an expert, and working eight ours per day, with 10 minutes break every hour to give her eyesight a break, she hooks only five rows of this rug per day. At that rate it will take her eighteen months to finish this 6 foot-by-8 foot rug.

The lady who ordered it is an older lady, in her seventies, and she said that she couldn’t wait that long for a rug, so the factory said they would put another girl on it; that is, add a shift and have it done in nine months—to which the lady agreed.

The guide asked our group what we thought a rug like that might cost. Someone said, “$10,000,” and the guide said, “Sold! If you’d give that much.” It’s going for right at about $6,000.

Of course, the tour ended up in the retail showroom of the place, in which several people were hounded until they purchased a rug. I picked up one that caught my eye, and it was small, something like 3 feet-by-1 feet, and the price tag said 3300 yuan (about $532). “Specially for you, 20% off, so 2640 yuan (about $425). I don’t think so…

As far as I noted, Kirsten, Debbie, and Jenny and Bob bought a rug. Kirsten and Jenny got these little squares, maybe 1-foot by 1-foot for $320, and Jenny and Bob got a bigger one, I’m guessing in the $1000-$2000 range.

I really liked this one with the pandas on it. This one probably cost two- or three-thousand dollars, if not more:

Right across the breezeway from the silk factory, we had lunch at Dim Sum Restaurant, which was very good. Chinese food. Lazy Susan. Wash. Rinse. Repeat.

After lunch a couple of people stopped in on the second floor of the silk factory, where they were making cashmere items, mostly sweaters. There was a window through which you could see the workers making the items. They were all standing up at large, loom-like machines working away.

For a reason not understood by me, at least, in the hallway of this area, there were three goats (not alive) grazing in some grass (not real). I began to sing, “High on hill, was a lonely goat herd, yodel-odel-odel-odel-ey-eeh-ho…”

We made a quick stop at The Bund, which most people in our delegation had heard of, though I hadn’t. That could be because I did zero reading about China before I came. Things that make you go, “Hmmmm.”

I’m sure the view from this place would be phenomenal if it weren’t as incredibly foggy as it was during the short fifteen minutes or so we were there. However, from this point, you can see across the water, what’s called Pu Dong. Pu Dong is the financial center of Shanghai, which is the financial center of China. So, Pu Dong is to Shanghai what Manhattan is to New York City.

Pu Dong is also where we will be visiting the Hewlett-Packard office that we’re visiting tomorrow afternoon as part of our professional day. HP is also the company our leader, Linda, works outin the United States, of course. Here’s a picture of Pu Dong on the other side of the water:

Right on the corner near The Bund is the famous Peace Hotel—also a place of which I’d never heard.

A few other interesting buildings viewed from The Bund:

Our next stop was at Yu Garden, which was beautiful in the misty, and sometimes harder, rain. This used to be a private mansion, and the man built this garden for his mother and his family. However his mother didn’t live long enough to see it finished. Here are some shots from within:

I really like that dragon’s tail “slithering” along the top of the wall.

This tree was in one of the squares in the shopping bazaar we had about 45 minutes in after strolling through the garden:

I finished shopping in about ten minutes, and treated myself to a Dairy Queen (yes, our Dairy Queens!) small vanilla cone 5 yuan—about $.80. Cheap.

Dinner was on our own tonight, and I walked through a square near our hotel, during which I was three times offered sexonce with a massage, once without, and once by a woman who actually touched my stomach and said, “Mister, you lonely?”

Uh… no.

I made my way to a Pizza Hut, where I used their 3-step menu-pointing procedure to order my dinner: (1) Put to either Pan Pizza, Think Crust Pizza, or Stuffed Crust Pizza. (2) Point to the size 9, 10, 11, or 12. (3) Point to the variety of pizza; I chose the one called “American Style,” which had a picture of a well-populated pepperoni pizza.

“That’ll be 15 minutes,” she said.

It arrived in 10 minutes, and I guess most of the pepperoni population had moved to the suburbs. There were about three pieces on my 9-inch pizza. At any rate, it was freaking delicious, and I ate the whole thing, minus the crusts. I got a Pepsi Cola with it, and my total bill was 68 yuan (about $11.00).

A couple of things were interesting about this dining experience:

When I ordered, she said, “That’s it? Just pizza?” As I waited for my pizza to arrive, I watched the other tables, and all of them had at least two, and most three, other dishes that they bought in addition to their pizza. A lot of them were Chinese things that you’d never see on an American Pizza Hut table. They involved noddles and soups and shrimp… stuff like that.
They put an itemized receipt in this little box that was affixed under each table to hold it. As each item was delivered to the table, they pulled the receipt out and marked a line through that item indicating that it has been served. My 12 yuan Pepsi got marked out right away, and when the pizza arrived, a line went through that 56 yuan item.
I was unsure if they tip here, or if it’s included in the price of the food. All of my food on this trip until now has been provided by People to People, except my outing to McDonald’s the other night, where of course I didn’t tip. I ended up leaving a tip here, something between 10% and 15%, just in case.

On the way back from dinner, I stopped into the Hershey’s store, where I just couldn’t bring myself to pay $10 for a package of six thin, plain, milk-chocolate Hershey bars.

Beyond the Hershey’s store, but before my hotel, was a Starbucks. I stepped in, just to see if they had wireless access. Normally, I’d never pay for access, but if they did have it, it would have had to have been cheaper than what the hotel is charging, so I would have considered using it. I didn’t see anyone with laptops in there.

There was another exit to the place, and in taking it, I found myself in a multi-level mall. I walked around just to see what kind of stores they had, and when I reached the third floor, I looked up from the escalators to see that there were seven stories in all. Excessive.

At the top of the escalator, where I had decided I would just turn around and head back down, there was a bookstore. I took a stroll through there. 98% of the books were in Chinese, but there were two bookshelves whose label said, “Imported Books,” so I took a quick gander through them.

One of them was “The World is Flat,” which had been mentioned in one of our professional meetings this trip, and which I’d heard of. There was also Covey’s “8th Habit,” and of all things, a book by coach Dean Smith, the former basketball coach at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Strange.

I had planned to go to Eddy’s tonight, but the weather was so nasty, and I’d heard someone say that it was going to be impossible to get a taxi tonight, presumably because everybody would be using them, so I decided to stay in.

I finished up another batch of post cards, for which the front desk charged me a dollar a stamp instead of the fifty-cents they were in Guilin. Rip off. I hate when hotels do that shit. And that’s what this hotel is doing with Internet access, too. Not only is it not free, it’s outrageous. It’s 5.25 yuan for each minute for the first 20 minutes, and then it’s 1 yuan an hour after that, up to 24 hours. So, it basically comes out to just under 20 bucks a day for access. Highway robbery.

After that I was going to start right in on my blog for today, but I decided to reward myself with a break and flipped on the TV. A movie was on that caught my attention for two reasons: (1) the main character on screen when I turned it on had just said that he was an obituary editor, and (2) the actor playing that character was Jude Law. Yummy.

As the movie went on, Julia Roberts came into it, and then it started seeming familiar to me. Within a few more minutes, I realized that I’d seen it before, but of course I couldn’t remember the name of it, but I watched it to the end.

After that, I devised this blog entry, finishing at about 1:00AM. Tired.

People to People Technical Communications Professional Delegation to China—Day 9

12/31/202210/28/2008 by John

Our wake-up call was at 6:30 this morning, and our bags had to be outside the door by 7:00. I got mine out at 7:10, and then went down to breakfast where I joined Nadine and Richard, and Paula joined us a few minutes later.

While I was getting some fruit, this man next to me missed putting the top of a water container back on securely, and it fell crashing to the floor taking a coffee cup with it. It made an absolute racket, and the whole place looked over. Glad it wasn’t me.

We left the hotel at a little after 8:15, and I had these fleeting thoughts fleeing Guilin:

This city was so beautiful. If I were to ever come back to China, I’d probably spend a week here.
Tan, our local guide, told us that she’s had seven bicycles stolen, so she’s stopped buying them.
She also told us, though, it was on Sunday when we arrived, that they paint the building fronts every two years, to “keep up appearances,” so they look good on the outside even if they’re run down on the inside. “It’s such a shame. We could use that money on so many other things.”
Tan told us several stories during our time here in Guilin, and she told her last two on this bus ride to the airport.
1. After talking a little bit about Mao, and how he is viewed very differently by different people in China—that the older generation tends to revere him and the younger people, not so much. Well, it was her mother’s life dream to see Chairman Mao (at rest in his mausoleum in Tienanmen Square), and when she retired she (along with Tan’s dad) took her first train trip, from the south of China and rode 42 hours, standing up, to Beijing to see him. And then, 42 hours back, starting off standing, but eventually getting a seat after some people got off at one of the stops along the way. Tan had told them to stop in Guilin to visit her on the way back, which they did.
  Her mother had seven bags of souvenirs that she brought back from Beijing. She wanted to get something for everything in their family, which is large. When her parents were getting on the train to leave, Tan was handing the bags through the train window to them to get them all on. And somewhere during that trip, it was so crowded on the train, that her mother got a few cracked ribs from the pushing and shoving. When she got home, she said, “I don’t ever want to travel again. I’ve seen Chairman Mao.”
2. She told us about the first time she saw a westerner. “I was in grade school, and our teacher told us that a westerner was coming to our class, and that he wanted us to show him how smart we all were when he arrived. So, we studied and studied for weeks and weeks, and when the day finally came, I remember thinking when I first saw him, ‘His hair is a different color. He’s so tall. And his nose is so big.’
  When the westerner asked them the question, “What were the four greatest inventions of ancient China?” I was fortunate enough to be called on, and I was so proud to give the right answer. Later on, we found out that the man was a ‘fake’ westerner. He was a very tall friend of the teacher, whom the teacher had asked to put on a wig and a big fake nose and come to class.”
  
  We all laughed, and then of course, wanted to know the answer to the question: gunpowder, the compass, paper, and printing.
We passed a man riding one of those tricycles hauling live chickens, in cages, as his payload.
All along this trip there have been “love” stories told in context of the history of China, and I’m always struck how they’re all always about straight peopleor animals. Tan told this drawn out story about two panda bears that were mates, but the male died, and so they had an elaborate search for a new male to be brought to Guilin. When they finally found one, it was such a big deal, that people from Guilin met him at the airport, and they had a big celebration of his arrival. They put him in with the female, and after a few weeks, they were getting along so poorly, fighting even, that they had to build the male a separate room. I’m thinking that male panda is gay as hell. It is possible you know; there is homosexuality in the animal kingdom. This doesn’t seem to even occur as a possibility to any of the straight people.
Several of the stories disengaged me right at the beginningthe emperor’s daughter was looking for a husband… Were any of them ever possibly looking for a wife? Bitter. Party of one? Your table is ready.
I’m not saying it was humid in my room, but this morning my postcards were all in an arc on the desk.
I think I said this in an earlier entry, but pedestrians absolutely do not have the right-of-way in China. It was true in Beijing, and it’s certainly true here. It’s incredibly precarious trying to cross any street.

Our bags for this flight were taken care of from our hotel door all the way to Shanghai. That is, we didn’t have to collect them at the airport. Shawn had the porters take them directly to the airline check-in, where they did a group check-in for us.

While we waited for all of that to happen, and for our boarding passes to be delivered to us, I took some pictures in the Guilin airport. We all had a good chuckle about all of the things you had to be in order to take one of these seats:

Your choice of Chinese bathroom or Western bathroom in this airport:

Chinese

Western

I didn’t take a picture of the sign that said, “Civilized Airport,” which I’m quite sure was supposed to be “Civilian Airport,” but I did get this one reminding you to save your baggage for the personal columns:

I got my first aisle seat of the trip so far. Paula was going to be in the middle seat next to me, but when we got to our row, some switching had taken place, and I took my aisle seat next to James and Kathleen. Paula took the middle seat on the other side of the aisle.

The two hour or so flight to Shanghai on China Southern was uneventful. We had a quick meal, Chinese food, and I read a little and then nodded a little. I’m reading the book Katherine gave me right before I left. It’s called “Lost in Planet China,” and it’s by the same author who wrote “The Sex Life of Cannibals,” by J. Maarten Troost.

I’m glad I waited to start reading this book a little ways into my trip, instead of at the very beginning. I laughed out loud several times, including while reading these two relevant passages:

And so, as I arrived at the airport to begin the long flight to Beijing, I practiced the few phrases of Mandarin I had memorized. Yes, the Chinese language, every variant of it, would be unfathomable to me, but that didn’t mean I had to arrive completely unprepared. “Qingwen. Wo buhui dun zhege cesuo. Youmeiyou biede cesuo keyi yong?”

“What does that mean, Daddy?” asked my four-year-old son, Lukas.

“It’s Chinese for Excuse me. I am not proficient at squatting. Is there another toilet option?”

And this one:

It was after crossing a street that I came to my second observation about life in Beijing: Do not play chicken with Chinese drivers. Even if they see you, they will not slow down. Even if the pedestrian light is green, they will not slow down. So do not play chicken with Chinese drivers. Or you will die.

A moment later, I made my third observation about life in Beijing: Do not play chicken with Chinese cyclists. See observation 2. Same applies. You will die.

So, so true in our experience, too!

When we arrived in Shanghai, we met our local guide, whose name was Yao Qian, “but you can call me Annie,” she said.

The ride from the airport to Le Royal Meridien in downtown Shanghai immediately confirmed Shanghai as the financial powerhouse of China. The roadways looked like L.A. and the high rises like NYC.

On the ride, Annie introduced us to Shanghai, intimating over and over that it is the most Westernized city in China, and the Chinese people here like that about it. It’s all about the excitement, the Western stores, and the financial and technology markets here.

We talked a little bit again about the “one child per family” rule here, and how if the first child is a girl, after four years you can try again, for a boy. If the second one is a girl, that’s it. She then pointed out that Chinese families actually can have more children, they just have to pay what amounts to a “fine” to have them. In Shanghai, you have to pay 58,000 Yuan (about $9350.00) per parent. In Beijing, it’s double that 116,000 Yuan, or almost $20,000, again per parent!

I asked if there was an issue with abortion here. “No, there isn’t. It’s legal. And since China is not religious, it’s not really an issue.”

Annie pointed out that an issue they do deal with is that some people who can afford to have more children (because they can afford to pay the fine) don’t want them, and some people who do want more can’t afford to have them.

Our outrageously opulent hotel rooms were definitely “Western” style. Here’s some shots of mine:

We had a couple of hours to unpack and freshen up before meeting the bus for our evening out. I got some help in the lobby with directions on how to get to a gay bar named Eddy’s that my friend Adam from Atlanta told me he went to while he was here.

It was kind of funny, as the same thing happened here when I asked where a gay bar might be. Obviously the way to do that with the “underground” gay life here is to invoke a lifeline and “phone a friend.”

When I showed the lady concierge the name of the restaurant, she shook her head to indicate she didn’t recognize it.
“It’s a gay bar,” I said.
Her face lit up, and she said, “Let me call my friend.”

She phoned Leo, who also worked in the hotel and ended up coming down to help me. He was Filipino, is gay, lives here, and has a partner here. He was very, very nice, and wrote the address down, and then the concierge translated it into Chinese so I could just hand it to the cab driver.

Leo told me it would be about 20 yuan for a taxi there, which is cheap, and that a lot of people stop there after work on their way home, so between 6:00 and 8:00 would even be a good time to go during the week. I asked him if people there would speak English, and he said yes, and that the owner and his partner actually lived in NYC for a time.

Most people agreed that tonight’s dinner was our favorite so far. Yes, it was Chinese food again, but again, being that Shanghai is so westernized, several of the dishes were like those you might find in a good Chinese restaurant in the U.S.

The most interesting thing about this restaurant was that it sold the most incredible embroidery tapestries, which were hung on the walls of the entire first floor, where that’s all there was, as well as on the second floor on the walls all around the restaurant.

Expensive. We’re talking Madonna-can-afford-them expensive. I think the lowest one I saw was $980. A majority were between $12,000 and $25,000—yes dollars, not yuan. Here are few of them:

The last thing on the agenda of our long day was attending, “ERA: Intersection of Time,” a most incredible Chinese acrobat show.

It started off with this guy setting down a large cylinder, on top of which he places a flat board and stepped onto it, rolling back and forth and balancing. Then he added what looked like four cans, one in each corner, and then another flat board, which he stepped up on, and a third layer and a fourth layer.

As if that wasn’t precarious enough, he then balanced on one foot and putting the other one in the air, put a bowl in the crook of his foot. Then he kicked the bowl up in the air and caught it on his headno hands of course. Then he took two bowls and did the same thing, as they began to stack on his head. Then three more bowls, then four more bowls, then a teacup, which landed in the top bowl, and finally he flicked a teaspoon up in the tea cup. Just amazing.

A bunch of kids, they’re all young Chinese kids, except their “mentor,” and one of the finest Chinese acrobats around, jumped through a bunch of hoops, first stacked on top of each other, and then facing each other from four directions, and then rotating. They did various other acts with two people jumping onto one end of a see-saw type thing, flipping the person standing on the other end up on to shoulders and a chair being held high up into the air.

The mentor guy did an act with this quite large vase that he tossed in the air and caught in various wayswith his arms, legs, the back of his neck, and eventually his head. He spun it around on his head, turned at a 45° angle, and moved his head to switch it to the opposite angle, and that sort of thing. Then he took one perhaps twice that size and did the same kind of things. Quite amazing.

There was this huge contraption in the air that looked a little like a ferris wheel, and the gymnasts climbed in it and on it, and did crazy things while it rotated high into the air.

The final act, which was the most amazing as you would expect, involved driving motor scooters into this hollow sphere. First one went in it, and drove all around it first horizontally, then vertically, and then in ovals in various directions. Then a second scooter got in there, and then a third, and a fourth and a fifth. It was absolutely mesmerizing and incredible that they did what they did without crashing into each other.

After that three more went in, and this thing wasn’t that big, that’s what was so incredible about it. The last three weren’t in there very long, though, and they mostly stayed around the bottom third of it, while the other five went wild above them.

I remember sitting there at one point, totally engrossed, and thinking, “I am in freaking Shanghai, China, watching this incredible entertainment.”

People to People Technical Communications Professional Delegation to China—Day 8

12/31/202210/27/2008 by John

I had breakfast with Kathleen and James this morning, both of whom I really like. They are partners and they live in Seattle, Washington. Kathleen is a delegate, and James is her guest. She’s a user experience specialist.

Our morning professional meeting was with the Guilin Hunter Information Industry Limited Corporation. I like how the Board Chairman and General Manager of the corporation, Mr. Jiang Tai, asked us to give him our thoughts on what their logo meant—smart to take an advantage of a free international usability test or focus group.

Unfortunately, we didn’t notice that the logo formed a sort of “H” (for Hunter), but probably mostly because we weren’t expecting it to be something English-related. He talked about how, basically, they’re big on the H—three of them, for: Hunter (as in hunting and gathering), Highway (as in going/moving forward into the 21st century), and Hero (what they want to be—heroes).

Next they covered their goals, their historical milestones, and their main businesses, which are software outsourcing and product development. Their main product is RFID, known by lay people as barcoding technology.

They had 12-15 people present, and here’s a shot of them. Mr. Tai is the guy second from the left. (Notice the nice banner on the wall.)

Here’s a subset of our delegation. Linda, our leader, is in the middle of the picture in the brown jacket, and Shawn is sitting to the right of her, partially hidden by the plant.

Shawn is our People to People “National Guide,” which means he travels throughout the trip with us to the three cities. He’s also our translator during meetings, and today I made this note when he was translating some extremely technical stuff: “Shawn is fucking brilliant.” Mind you, he is not a technical communicator, or even a computer person, so his job is very, very challenging; especially when people go on and on with a technical response and then he has to translate it.

In addition to having a great personality, he had superb language skills, both in speaking and translating, and uses shorthand as well to capture main points in long responses.

Their delegation asked us two heavy-duty questions:

What impact do we feel the subprime mortgage debacle is having in our industry, and
What are the implications to our profession on outsourcing technical jobs?

We groveled through that with various perspectives from our widely diverse delegation. I gave the specific example of the impact of a technical writer being outsourced by noting that in my job as an editor at IBM, I edited for one outsourced writer, a lady from Bangalore, and the impact that I experienced was that, at the beginning, I spent more time on copyediting her work than on doing a technical edit.

Earlier when Mr. Tai was speaking, he mentioned that he had spent six months working NYC, and he found the biggest obstacle for him to be not understanding the American corporate culture. I asked him, “Can you articulate what about the American corporate culture that was so confounding to you? Was it the capitalistic mindset? The professional and social interaction of the employees of the company? The language itself? Or something other than that?

After our usual group photograph consisting of both delegations together, our exchange of gifts, and exchange of business cards, we headed off to Yuxi Lou Restaurant, which was in the midst of a beautiful park, in which we had some free time to roam after lunch. Here are some pictures from the park.

It had a cute little bridge in it, and here I am on it, compliments of Konrad’s photography work:

Here’s another angle showing the mountainous rocks in the background. On the bridge is Jeanne (a delegate) and her daughter (Kirsten) a guest:

A couple of shots of the flora:

And, as always, there’s always a pagoda lurking surreptitiously:

And, of course, a couple of sign pictures:

I actually didn’t find any grammar issues in this one:

Nor with this one. I just liked it:

Our afternoon meeting was with the Department of Electronics and Computer Science at Guilin University of Technology. We actually met with a programmers’ club of theirs. The folks were all programmers, two women, and the rest guys. Here’s a picture of most of them:

And our delegation—this is a better picture of Shawn, our guide:

You remember earlier, part of the plant covering Shawn’s face? These folks are very fond of plant life down the middle of conference rooms. As you can see in this shot, it was also the case here:

This meeting was by far our best one so far, for a few reasons:

None of these programmers were sure what technical communicators did. And when they found out we were coming, the googled the profession, and even after trying to read up on it, still didn’t quite get what we did.
They were students, so they were tonally open and forthcoming about their questions and answers.
As a result of that, it was very informal and comfortable.

Back at the hotel, I spent some time writing out postcards and putting the $.50 stamps on each one. “They” say they take 5-7 days to arrive in the States. I’ll probably beat them home.

Dinner this evening was yet another Chinese restaurant and yet another Chinese meal. (I’m not sure what I expect. I am in China afterall.) I really didn’t feel like going, though, and almost bowed out, but in the end said, “Go. You don’t have to eat very much. Just go, be social, and take advantage of the opportunity and experience.”

It ended up being a very enjoyable evening. I sat next to Richard, Nadine’s husband, whom I really hadn’t had any interaction with on the trip so far, and whom I really liked immediately. Nadine is a hoot, and they seem like a fun-loving couple. They are always off to find a bar to have a few drinks in wherever we go. They are from Belgium.

Back at the hotel, I walked around the city taking snapshots of its beauty and openness. First, I stopped at a coffee shop that Tan, our local guy had told us about, where they sell cheesecake. At first I thought maybe they were all out, because the only thing I saw that looked like cake slices were slices of Tiramasu and what was labeled Mocha Chocolate Cake.

Eventually I recognized the cheesecakes, by the little sign on them that said “Cheesecake,” but they were in round ceramic bowls, much like you get creme brulee in in the States, only much bigger. It was way more than I wanted.

We had joked at dinner earlier that maybe the dessert was going to be chocolate cake. That being on my mind, I bought a slice of the Mocha Chocolate Cake. As I counted out the 50 Yuan for it, the cashier pointed down to the little pad on which she’d recorded the sale, where it said 15 Yuan.

Thank goodness she was honest, as $8 for a slice of $2.50 cake would have been a bit much. Okay a lot much, if you know me.

Here are some of the pics from around the city. People just seem to break into exercise along the river at night. Someone commented that it was leftover from before the “opening up,” when the citizens were required to exercise:

“Foot Massage” on the left and “Body Massage” on the right:

This is the view from the bridge, looking down over the main street running around the lake. The neon arches are on this side of the street, and that building in the background is on the other side of the street.

This is the view of that bridge from which I took the previous picture:

Here’s a shot of “The Nine Horses,” except that I only see five. Tan told us the story of them, and I’m pretty sure that there were nine as that represented a lucky number of some such superstition, which the Chinese are big on. I’ll have to google this when I get back.

And finally, a few of the local eateries:

People to People Technical Communications Professional Delegation to China—Day 7

12/31/202210/26/2008 by John

I was up before the alarm and wake-up call again today. I logged in, and since there was no response from Kevin M., and since I’m the impatient person that I am, I forwarded a copy of the note I’d sent to him yesterday asking him to post my entries, to both my friend Casey and my friend Kevin R., both of whom are also LJers, so would know how to post for me.

I was just afraid that since I only had Kevin M.’s work e-mail and had sent my request to it, that he might not see it until Monday, and I didn’t want to wait yet another two days to get that stuff posted.

Another huge breakfast buffet at this hotel, and as in the Swissotel in Beijing, containing both western breakfast choices as well as Asian. Let’s see. Today, I chose two pieces of toast, two hard-boiled eggsof which I ate the yoke of only one, two slices of bacon, one inch-long sausage link, and a waffle.

Along with my coffee, I chose watermelon juice, would you believe, which was good, but not as cold as I wanted. I supplemented all that with a fruit plate consisting of fresh cantaloupe, pineapple, and of course, watermelon. That watermelon was cold, and most delicious.

I ate with James, Kathleen, and Konrad. At one point, a woman approached our table, nodded at my “Grammar Police” t-shirt, and asked, “Are you an English teacher?”

I explained that I was a technical editor, and she said, “Well, I’m an English teacher and I could use one of those shirts to keep my kids in line.”

Today was our Li River cruise, our only cultural day here in Guilin, and not unlike our first cultural day in Beijing, it was totally foggy with the added attraction of rain. To that end, our 3.5-hour cruise didn’t yield the beautiful pictures like you see at the website advertising the river cruise, but here’s a sample of some of them:

At one point on our ride, these guys pulled up to the side of our boat and latched onto it, as you can see here:

Then they got up on that very narrow ledge of the boat, and proceeded to try and sell their wares from the other side of the glass:

Debbie Davy ended up buying that purple amethyst from them. They wanted 200 Yuan, but she offered them 100 Yuan, which they promptly snatched up. They rode the boat quite a long ways down the river with us, I mean in terms of them having to get back up to where they came from, that is.

Hey, I got an idea. Let’s pay beaucoup bucks to take a cruise down the Li River in China and then do this the whole way:

What could be more expensive than that? Why, taking the children along, of course:

And, of course no river boat cruise, no river boat cruise of mine at least, would be complete without capturing one or two amusing signs.

The only thing better than warm beef tips is just plain warm tips:

And this gem of a conversion thermometer. Evidently it converts Centigrade, to well, Centigrade:

[This is an inside joke for technical communicators.] And now for an excellent example of that ancient, much loved, rhetorical device—the ordered list:

Among the limited alcoholic selections on the river cruise, Snake Wine was to be found:

Once off the boat, we had about 40 minutes in this little shopping area, where the vendors absolutely hounded everyone to death. This one little woman, she couldn’t have been much over four-feet tall kept tugging at everyone’s clothes begging for money. At one point, she rubbed my stomach like a Buddha belly, with the obvious message being, “You’re not starving.” Not a good way to win friends and influence people.

It was raining a little more than a steady drizzle and every other person walking around there tried to sell us an “unblella.” I found this pronunciation very interesting, and they all did it, including our local guide.

I ended up buying that same bottle that I’d earmarked back at that place near our hotel for 280 Yuan, when I saw it here for 68 Yuan.

“I’ll give you 50 Yuan for it,” I said.

“That’s too low,” the lady said, “I’ll give it for 60 Yuan.” Ten dollars instead of the forty dollars back by the hotel. Yay.

I’ve been itching to buy some post cards, too, and the standard price for all of them has been 10 for 10 Yuan, which is about $1.50. I picked up a pack and asked the guy how much, and he said, “25 Yuan.”

“I’ll take two packs for 20 Yuan,” I said, and he immediately said, “Okay.” Who’s feeling sorry for whom here with a 150% markup (at least) on these goods?

We stopped at a local village on the way back to the hotel, which was a very, very interesting stop. We went inside a local person’s home, where it was immediately and profoundly obvious to all of us how lucky we are. Here’s a shot of one of the rooms, all of which were just open to the outside.

There were a couple of corn fields in this village, and as you can see by the surroundings, it really was a beautiful, beautiful place. I can just imagine it in the bright sunshine.

Here’s a kumquat bush:

And walking a little ways further into the village, we came across this bride and groom getting some professional photographs taken. I know she was cold, in addition to being wet.

All in all, an idyllic little village.

On the drive back to the hotel, some folks made plans to meet for dinner. Tan (pronounced Tahn) made some recommendations of nearby restaurantsall Chinese, of course.

I just tuned out everyone, because there was no doubt in my mind that I was heading right to the McDonalds or Pizza Hut in the center of the city. And that’s exactly what I did. Western food night, thank you very much.

Before I left, of course I checked my e-mail, and was delighted to read that Casey had taken care of my blog entries. Thank you so much, my friend!!!

While I was walking to the city center, at least three, if not four or five, people (all women, but one) approached my obvious white self with hairy legs exposed by shorts, and said, “Massage, mister? Massage?” And then one of them added an extra word…

Now, whenever the two words massage and sex are mentioned in the same sentence, something’s up.

Thinking about how I hate my feet or body flab kneaded, I thought, “You are barking up the wrong tree, ladyin more ways than one.”

I got the “#1 Big Mac Meal” for about $3.40. Good price. The place was teeming with young people.

Since I’d looped around a different way than the direct route from our hotel to the city center where the McDonalds was, I wasn’t sure how to get back. I asked the young boy who had sold me my food, and was now cleaning the tables right around me, “Do you speak English?”

“Yes, a little bit,” he said with a smile.

“Can you tell me which way is back toward the Sheraton?”

“Uh, we don’t have a Sheraton in Guilin,” he said.

“Yes, I’m staying there,” I said. “It faces the lake.”

This couple sitting next to me overheard me asking, and the guy of the couple, who was adorable (another Swede or Norse type man), gave me directions in a totally sexy accent.

Back at my room, I devised this very long blog entry, and I’m tired.

I’m now only one afternoon and evening behind, and that’s Friday, the day we visited with CRD in the morning, and then the Forbidden City in the afternoon. I’m both pissed and putting it off, because I typed a good portion of what’s missing and must have saved over it or lost it somehow.

I absolutely hate having to recreate stuff. I keep doing searches on my laptop in hopes of finding the text somewhere.

People to People Technical Communications Professional Delegation to China—Day 6

12/31/202210/25/2008 by John

We had to have our bags outside our doors at 7:30 AM, which I did and headed down to breakfast. When I returned at 8:15, my bag was still outside my door. I just grabbed it and brought it downstairs with me assuming they’d missed it due to my room change. I’m certainly glad I went back up to my room before leaving.

Since we were unable to visit Tiana’man Square yesterday due to the beginning of the Asian-European Summit starting here in Beijing, we drove by it this morning on the way to the airport. We had only about 40 minutes to walk along the side of the square, basically for a photo op. Here I am with Chariman Mao hanging over my head, well on the wall of the building in the background to the right of me:

As I reflect on my time in Beijing as I depart these things come to mind:

I never saw the crowding that I expected to, as almost everyone I talked to before coming who had been to China talked about. I expected always to see people walking shoulder-to-shoulder in the streets, but this was never the case. The only places that were what I’d even call crowded, were the toursist spots, which is no different than in the States. Perhaps it’ll be different in Guilin or Shanghai.
And that made me wonder about when people say things sometimes just to let you know they’ve been to a place, which then made me wonder about what I would say when and if I wanted to make the point, “Oh, I’ve been to China,” in the future. Though, I really try not to do that, it’s quite difficult to resist especially if it sounds like the other person is just mentioning their anecdote to let you know they’ve been somewhere. It’s a good exercise, however, in not making their story be about you.
Pedestrians absolutely do not have the right-of-way in Beijing, and that may be in all of China. And it might be rooted in possible arrogance of those who have cars. Car drivers have to pay up to $5,000 (a one-time charge) to get a license plate in Beijing. This can be almost 50% of the price of the car!
I was struck not by the number of cyclists in the city, and not even by the number of three-wheeled cycles, but by the variation in payload on these tricycles. I saw them hauling: jugs of water, pile-upon-pile of multipack toilet paper rolls, tools, street-cleaning tools, and even people. Here’s a couple of shots of some:
The providing of condoms in the bathrooms of a 5-star hotel room is an interesting juxtaposition. They’re festive boxes, I’ll give them that. Perhaps this is related to the limit on births in the country. That and other interesting cultural things in the room:
The day before yesterday, I asked our local guide about whether there was a gay bar nearby, and I was surprised by several things in his response: (1) He didn’t bat an eyelash about the question. (2) He thought that the Coco Banana (gotta love that name) near our hotel was gay, or at least a bi place, so called a friend of his to make sure. The friend said that it wasn’t, but that there was a gay bar right across the street from it called Destination. (3) That our guide didn’t give any indication that it might be unsafe or that I should be careful going there, and (4) That the bar was only about two blocks from our 5-star hotel. Gay bars are notoriously in bad parts of towns and cities.
A blurb in a Beijing paper said, “The presidential race may be close in America, but in China, Barack Obama enjoys a significant lead over John McCain75% to 25%.”

As we approached the airport Shawn collected our passports to do a group check-in for us. I asked him if the toilets on the plane were going to be “Chinese-style” or “Western-style.”

While we were waiting for Shawn to check us in, I asked Linda if the foot massage thing had ever been settled, and she said as far as she knew it was still on and it was going to be easy to bow out without a problem.

At the gate, we had only about a 20-minute wait, and I sat on the floor in front of a plug and plugged in my laptop while I used it. My adapter wouldn’t fit in the socket, but the plug on my regular power cord did, so I used that. After about 10 minutes, my battery had gone from 95% down to 89% and I noticed that the power indicator was green, not yellow, which means that it’s running off the battery.

Our flight was fairly uneventful. I sat between Sherry and Paulaobviously it’s my trip for middle seats. We had a spurt of conversation about Sarah Palin and her inanity, though it was mostly between Paula and Sherry.

We had a nice enough meal on the three-hour flightat least you still get meals on intra-China flights. A small, hot tray container held rice and some beef and vegetables. I think it was beef any way. The container was accompanied by a box, which contained a roll, a most delightful mixture of some vegetables and ham, and some dried cherries, which tasted more like raisins, for dessert.

I picked the ham out of the ham and vegetable medley and put it on my roll for a little ham sandwich. I was jonesing for some mayonnaise, but it didn’t happen.

The three hours just flew by. Badabump. Bump. We’re here through Halloween, folks.

It was quite warm in the airport, and after receiving our bags, we received tags to put on our big bags, which were carried directly to our rooms from the bus.

All of our rooms were in the same area, and there were about four of us in the hallway sticking our keys in the door only to find them not activated. Linda got on a house phone in the hallway, and as she connected, I flipped the key upside down and tried and it worked. As did all of them. We Americans are so set in our ways. Gotta think outside the (locked) box, sometimes.

As soon as I got in the room, I saw a card that said that there was free wireless Internet in the lobby area, and free wireless in the rooms “for our Club Level members.” I immediately took my Starwood Gold Card down to the lobby, and after being an obviously appreciated customer, I was offered a nice, decorative tin of tea, and promptly moved to a room up on the Club Level.

The first thing I did was connect to the Internet, and wade through about 150 e-mails, looking for anything important. We only had about an hour before having to be in the lobby for dinner, and I spent the entirety of that time online. I wrote Robert a quick e-mail telling him how much I’ve missed him, and that I’d be on AIM in a couple of hours after returning from the restaurant.

Dinner was, let me see, oh yeah, Chinese food. A plethora of dishes, all served family style from a huge lazy Susan. Beer for drinks. The highlight of this meal for me was the fried bananas, which were a first for these lunches and dinners we’ve been having, and which I love.

We had the most delightful 10- to 15-minute walk back to the hotel. This city is just beautiful, so luch and green, full of natural wonder, and open. It’s a nice break after the big city of Beijing, and from which Shanghai will be more of the same.

I stopped in a shop and found a bottle that I earmarked for my collection. I was thinkiing I would rather get it in Shanghai, but will at least wait until tomorrow night, our last night here, to buy it here if I do. Debbie Davy bought one. It was 280 Yuan, which is about $45 with the 6.2 to 1 exchange rate.

We passed some people doing exercise by the river, complete with a leader up front with one of those microphones on her head like tour guides use.

Back at the hotel, I was the Internet whore that I am at home and spent nearly four hours online. I had the most wonderful instant message conversation with Robert, and shared a couple of pictures with him, one of which he forwarded on to his mother, who loved it so much she made it her computer wallpaper. I told Robert that that touched me, and that touched him. Bless our messes.

I uploaded the pictures that I want posted to my blog to my personal web space, and then sent an e-mail to Kevin Myers attaching text files of my blog entries for the first four days of my trip, asking him if he’d be kind enough to post them on LiveJournal for me, since I can’t access it.

I got to bed at somewhere around 1:00 or 1:30.

People to People Technical Communications Professional Delegation to China—Day 5

12/31/202210/24/2008 by John

Though our wake-up call was set for 6:30 this morning, I was up at 5:30 after a full night’s sleep. I went ahead and SSSed, and got down to breakfast at about 6:10. The restaurant didn’t open until 6:30, so I sat outside the entrance until then.

This totally Type A man came down at 6:20, and kept grunting and pointing to his watch, trying to let the world know that he had to be somewhere soon, and couldn’t be bothered with something as mundane as opening hours of a restaurant. They kept ushering him off to the side and near the door, as they rushed about getting things prepared for their opening. A (Western) idiot.

Speaking of Western idiots, at some point in the day I was waiting for the elevator and when the door opened for me, this businessman, and I’m guessing an executive, stepped off with two huge pieces of luggage that he was wheeling, and as soon as his bags got past the elevator threshold, he just let go of the handles and kept on walking, over toward the bellhops.

“No, really. Excuse the fuck out of me. I’ll just accommodate you and walk around your bags so that I can enter the elevator.”

I sat with Jeanne for breakfast this morning, but it was quite rushed as I didn’t leave as much time today as I did yesterday for getting dressed afterwards.

Just as we were about to leave, I noticed some people in dress clothes, for our meeting, but with tennis shoes on, and other people carrying a change of clothes. That’s when I remembered that we were going directly sightseeing after our morning business meeting today. Oh well. What I had on wouldn’t be uncomfortable, but I sure wished I’d remembered to at least bring my tennis shoes.

Our meeting this morning was great! We visited the Digital Industry Development Base at Shijingshan District. This building was very cool. Lots of tunnel halls. We received an introduction to the building and their work, and then went to an awesome conference room, where the meeting began after five minutes of time to have some tea and fruit.

When Linda was invited to the podium to introduce us, they played some star wars sounding music. This place had a very playful ambiance to it. After her introduction, she gave her short presentation on the STC.

Professor Lai spoke nextby now he’s a big fan of ours, and he really seems like a pleasant man. I really like the young man who was interpreting on their behalf today. He was the one who gave us the introduction to their office, using a huge wall display in their lobby area.

What I liked about him was that it was obvious that he wasn’t translating word-for-word, and not only that, he injected language that you were quite sure the person speaking didn’t use. For instance, one time he said something like, “We’re happy to have you guys here.”

Next we watched a video introduction to the Cyber Recreation District (CRD). Though the work in the video was very, very interesting, from a technical communication perspective it was quite ineffectivewith all due respect. It was in Chinese with English subtitles, which I very much appreciated, but the subtitles went by so fast that even if you could finish reading the one on the current screen, you absolutely did not have time to look up and see what was happening in the video.

I missed a couple of them, and I know from going to Foreign films, that I read the subtitles much, much faster than the average bear, so I would say, in general, most people were not going to even be able to get through the subtitle before the frame changed. Unfortunate.

Kent Taylor, from our delegation, gave a presentation here on a product his company sells to help in ensuring quality technical information. It basically is a text analyzer and reporter.

After his presentation, we had one more short presentation, because time was limited, which was about outsourcing, but those in our delegation who I asked about it didn’t understand it either.

The meeting ended after that, and we were treated to a tour of the building, out of which several companies that are part of CRD; that is, who got their start and some funding from CRD, run their businesses. We visited a company that develops and sells games for mobile devices. They have quickly become China’s leading gaming company.

In the first room we visited, after a brief introduction from the manager, we were ushered to the back of the room to see a demo. This room housed about 18-20 programmers who sat at very close-quartered desks. The temperature on the wall thermostat read 26° C (79° F), and the blasting heat was the first thing I noticed when I walked into the room. My successive thoughts were:

My god it’s hot in here.
I’m surprised all of the computers can keep running in this heat.
These workers must be so hot. I could never work in this heat.
My goodness; that guy has a jacket on. And the guy next to him, a sweater. And the guy next to him, a long-sleeved turtle neck shirt, with a coat, but the coat is hanging on the back of the chair.
This is both a figurative and a literal example of a sweat shop.

I’m guessing the employees were comfortable, as it’s not like anyone was making them keep jackets or sweaters on.

We could see their computer monitors as we moved about the room. Some were programming. Some were testing programs, and one guy was drawing an animated figure on an electronic pad on his desk, and it was rendering up on his monitor.

After the demo of a game on a monitor in this room, we visited another room across the hall where a different game by the same company was being developed. In this room, the manager (the same one who had told us what was going on in the other room), did the same here, and then downloaded the game that this group was developing onto the cell phones of a few folks in our delegation.

The final office area we visited contained programmers who were either working more collaboratively, or were getting ready to go to lunch, as several had gathered around one desk. The manager explained that this group was writing the code that differentiates the different levels of games as you become more proficient in them and move to higher levels.

We actually did our gift exchange outside by the bus, as we hadn’t really alloted time for it inside. From there we drove to The Forbidden City, where we had lunch at the Xinyi Palace Restaurant, right at the gate of the city. Chinese food, lazy Susans, and chopsticks. What else did you expect?

Oh, this was different: our hostesses were in traditional Chinese garb:

Richard, the local People to People guide who’s been with us all week, also acted as our Forbidden City tour guide. Here I am overshadowed, literally, by the Forbidden City. (As I should be.)

Richard explained things like the significance of the stone dragons (a symbol of power) at the entrance:

Most of the structures in the Forbidden City were restored last year. I was struck by the vibrant colors in that area above and behind the dragon and got a close-up shot of it:

I loved this sort of tortoise dragon mixed breed:

We exited through the garden of the Forbidden City, where there was this stunning pagoda:

Dinner was on our own this evening, and I actually skipped it. Earlier in the week, Shawn mentioned that there was a show on in Beijing right now called “The Legend of Kung Fu.” It was like a Broadway play and it had 7 scenes:

Scene 1. Initiation: The little monk arrives at the temple, and is initiated into the monastery and given the name Chun Yi (the pure one).
Scene 2. Learning: The little monk is studying Zen and Kungfu very hard, years have gone by, the boy becomes a man.
Scene 3. Casting: After many years of hard training, our monk Chun Yi’s body turns to iron.
Scene 4. Illusion: Chun Yi chases the beautiful fairy he has created in his mind, and hence cannot continue with his Buddhist practices.
Scene 5. Remorse: The monk Chun Yi loses his way of Buddhist practices, and suffers from great remorse.
Scene 6. Temple Gate: Passing through the temple gate is a glorious ritual for a monk, Chun Yi must accomplish this final task to become a warrior monk.
Scene 7. Epilogue: The old master passes on the stave, and Chun Yi becomes the Abbot.

Here are a couple of pics I snapped before the lady said to me, “No photo.” (Shawn had told us we were allowed to take photos as long as we didn’t use a flash. Oh well.)

People to People Technical Communications Professional Delegation to China—Day 4

12/31/202210/23/2008 by John

I didn’t sleep at all last night. I got out of the bed at about 2:30, as that’s what “they” say you should do if you’re not sleeping. I went over my presentation again a couple of times, and then tried lights out again. To no avail. I think the fact that I can’t get this room cool enough is not helping at all.

In spite of my alarm set at 6:00, and our wake-up call set for 6:30, I got out of the bed at 5:45, shaved, and showered. By about 6:05 I headed down to breakfast only to find that the restaurant didn’t open until 6:30, so I just hung out down there.

I didn’t have any healthier a breakfast today than I did yesterday, but I rationalized it by saying, “Well, I didn’t have dinner last night.” That’s my story and it’s sticking to me.

As it turned out, only 8 out of our delegation 20 ended up eating dinner out last night, and they got caught in an awful downpour on the way back.

After breakfast, which I ate in shorts and a t-shirt, I went back to my room and put on a suit. Then, I went back down to the lobby and actually stood outside for a while even though it was on the chilly side.

We left the hotel at about 8:15, and we headed to Peking University. When the bus pulled into the driveway it found itself face-to-face with a huge banner across the drive welcoming our group to campus. Unfortunately, it was hung too low in order for the bus to pass. We had to wait just a minute or so until someone came to cut it down. Cheers all around, as we entered.

Once we pulled up to the entrance of the meeting, about three men were rolling out a red carpet, but weren’t yet done. We were all very forgiving and saying things, while still on the bus, like, “How nice. How thoughtful.”

As we got off the bus Shawng said to us, “The Vice Chancellor of Indonesia is visiting today. Sorry guys; the red carpet is for him.” Busted.

All of the people we met, spoke with, and had discussions with at Peking University were so nice! It really was a great morning there. Professor Lai (Maosheng) presented first on the research and practice of technical communication.

Our leader, Linda Oestreich, presented next on the state of the technical communication profession in the United States. She had a rough start trying to show her information on a Mac using Word, but eventually got it situated well enough from which to present.

After a ten-minute break, which included a group picture out in front of the building, I gave my presentation on the MS in Technical Communication at North Carolina State University. From the feedback I received afterwards, it went well, with my favorite description of it being that it was “concise.” I mean isn’t that one of our goals as technical communicators?

Unfortunately, I took all of the pictures of the presenters with the flash off so as not to distract. And for some reason, that made them all come out blurry. Here I am, as good as it gets:

Debbie Davy followed me with her prevention on her MS in Technical Communications, a distance learning degree, from Mercer College. We had quite the Q&A session after her presentation, where “Fred” (which he offered up as an “American name”) asked some good questions.

Next up was Mr. Yao Le, who talked about how CIOs conduct technical communication in China.

Mr. Jin Jianbin talked about “Selling IT to the Organization.” And that was followed by a young, female PhD student filling in for Dr. Zhang Haoda on the Scientific and Art Digital Museum in China.

At the close of the meeting, the delegations swapped gifts, and we received shirts that say “Peking University” on them.

I walked over to the bus and rode over with Fred to the dining area. We had good conversation, and talked about how I might get some free WiFi access, though it never did come to fruition. We could both connect to the university free WiFi, but neither my iTouch nor his iPhone would render a browser page. Here’s a snapshot of “Fred”:

We had lunch at the university, with some very interesting food art. Here’s one of the main dishes. That pagoda is carved out of a very fat carrot.

Another piece of cool carrot art was on another dish:

This place had “Chinese-style” toilets and had the “added feature” of being an “Ally McBeal bathroom” (a.k.a. unisex), which I didn’t realize until after I came out of the stall (which basically contained a hole in the ground, so does it really matter) a picture of a woman on the door. The men’s area was straight to the back of the place, which I didn’t even notice, because I assumed I was in the Men’s room, and I usually use a stall anyway.

There was incense burning all up in this bathroom, too. I think we all know why.

At the end of our most delicious and filling meal, we took a final group picture in front of the offices of most of the Chinese delegation members, and then boarded the bus to head to BASTBeijing Association of Science and Technology.

The meeting with BAST was much more formal feeling than the one at Peking University. Our national guide, Shawng acted as interpreter for our delegation, and the Chinese delegation had one of their own, a woman. It was quite amazing to watch and listen to both of them taking notes during especially long sentences and then regurgitating everything back in the other language. Impressive.

Paula Ludmann from our delegation presented here, and the title of her presentation was: Technical Communication: A Prescription for What Ails Online Medical Content. There was lots of interest in this topic and some good questions and discussion.

Once back at our hotel, I changed rooms from 1026 to 1236, where as it turned out the air-conditioning didn’t work worth a squat either. Oh well. I just took Jenny’s suggestion and opened the window, which was the deal. It’s quite cool here in Beijing, especially at night, and the breeze just pours in. Life is good.

After not much time at all, we were back on the bus and off to the Beijing Wang Fujing Roast Duck restaurant. This was a festive night, complete with “Western-style” washrooms. That always makes us happy.

When we first sat down, and Paula took off her jacket and hung it over the back of her chair, they immediately covered it up with this slip cover that went over her coat and the entire back of the chair.

After many different entrees on the traditional lazy Susan, the Peking Duck dish was served. You took this flat, very very thin, what looked like a soft tortilla, put a couple of pieces of duck on it, added some thick, black sauce to it, and a couple slices of scallions. Fold and eat. Yum. Yum. Yum.

Every once in a while, you’d hear this loud scream come from a table, which was when they threw a cooked scorpion onto the lazy Susan. I believe someone at a table near us actually ate theirs.

Our group was separated into two tables and after a good while into the meal someone started telling jokes, Jenny I believe it was. I think the first one she told was a pun. Little did they know how that would get me started.

I told the “Why the long face?” one, the cannibals eating the clown one, and the Juan and Amhal one. Jenny had some very funny musical instruments jokes.

We had so many entrees come and go, and at one point when a second soup came, Nadine later told me that they weren’t quite sure if it was another kind of soup or a finger bowl to clean their fingers.

Due to sleeping only in a nap between 7:30 and 9:30 last night, and then being awake all night, I was absolutely exhausted when we returned from the restaurant at about 10:00. I jotted down just a couple of blog notes before dropping dead in the bed.

People to People Technical Communications Professional Delegation to China—Day 3

12/31/202210/22/2008 by John

I woke up at 2:00 after 4.5 hours of sleep. I got up for about a half hour as I wasn’t falling right back to sleep. Once I lay back down, I slept until about 6:30. I had the most vivid dreams at some point during the night—not exactly sure if they were during the first hours of sleep or the latter hours.

Two of the dreams where about having gone back to the U.S. to attend a local STC meeting, and then realizing when I was back there, that I was supposed to be in China. I panicked wondering how I was going to be able to get a flight back the same or next day, and how incredibly expensive it was going to be.

The first time I dreamed it, it was so real that when I woke up I was so overwhelmingly relieved to already be in China. When I feel asleep again, and it started happening again, I actually said to myself, in the dream, “I know this seems so real, but I know I’m just dreaming. Wake up.”

I have been able to do this in the past with dreams that are so scary that I want to wake up from them. However, it did not work this time, so once again, when I woke up I was incredibly relieved that it was a dream. Weird.

One of the first things I did this morning was to spray, a very small amount fortunately, some hand sanitizer into my mouth instead of the Zicam I had with me for my cold.

Breakfast this morning was a complimentary buffet, as it will be each morning we’re here at the Swissotel in Beijing. I overate, and I overate bad things—way too many carbs. It was all good, though, and I hope to make better choices the next two mornings. We’ll see.

There were two incredibly hot men in the area of my table, both Swedes or somewhere of that origin, so not dark-haired and hairy like I’m usually attracted to. They both had on jeans that made me think of the lyrics from that country song Badonkadonk: “Lawd have mercy how’d she even get those britches on?”

I had good mornings from Paula and Kathy, and then Linda stopped by my table to tell me that people are having a hard time accessing livejournal.com (for our group blog), which stressed me out. Nothing could be worse than having recommended a blog provider, and then it not work. Especially since the blog provider Linda wanted to use was blogger.com and she said she had no problem posting to her personal blog on it.

I may have to break down and pay $14 to access the Internet in this hotel, and see if I have any problems posting. Grrrrr.

We had an “In-Country Briefing” this morning from 9:00-11:00, in which we were filled in on what to expect throughout our entire trip. Alexia took a couple of pictures, since she was our blogger for today.

Shawn introduced “Richard” who will be the guide for the guests in their touring while we’re in meetings. We covered how to say hello and good morning.

The rest of the briefings covered the following topics. I’ve put the details behind a cut. Click on them if you’re interested in reading them.

People to People Technical Communications Professional Delegation to China—Day 2

12/31/202210/21/2008 by John

We arrived in Beijing at about 4:15 in the afternoon, about an hour later than our originally schedule 3:15 arrival time. I stood in a long line for immigration, and when I got to the front, the attendant asked for my immigration card, which they had run out of on the plane, so I didn’t have one. She just pointed to the back of the cavernous room, and sent me away. No offer to come back to the front of the line when I had it filled out.

I waited again through another long line, and eventually got through, after having to get my boarding pass out, because I had guessed at the flight number to put on the immigration card, and had gotten it wrong. Haste makes waste—as do laziness apparently.

I walked with Paula toward baggage claim, which as it turned out was accessible only by train—a train that took way too long to come for my impatient self.

After about another quarter-of-a-mile walk (not unlike the one in Chicago), we retrieved our bags, and then met the People to People representative at the exit of baggage claim. The rep that met us was actually the National P2P Leader for the Ground Water folks, with whom we were tagging along as we were all staying in the same hotel, and the rest of our Technical Communication delegation was already there.

We learned a few things on the bus along the way:

The tap water is not potable. We each got a bottle of purified water on the bus. He told us we could wash our faces, shower, and even brush our teeth with the tap water, but just not to drink it.
Everywhere they can exchange money in Beijing has the same exchange rate, so it doesn’t matter if you do it at the hotel or at a bank or at an ATM machine.
Beer can be ordered pretty much everywhere. It’s like soda here. There are no age restrictions on its purchase or imbibing.
There are 17-18 million people in Beijing. Mind the traffic when you’re walking. The traffic signs and signals are treated more like suggestions than anything else.
Though Beijing has a low crime rate in terms of homicides, prostitution, and drugs, pick-pocketing is not uncommon, and with as many people as there are, it’s always crowded, and the pick pocketers are very, very skilled.

At the hotel the Ground Water National Guide turned us over to our Technical Communication Guide, who I liked immediately—a younger guy, named what was pronounced as Shawn, but whose formal names was Mr. Huang Shunqiang with a part of his email address being shawnhuang.

While Shawn checked us into the Beijing Swissotel, which in order to do he needed our passports, our delegation leader, Linda Oestreich, came over from the bar and introduced herself and welcomed us.

At about 7:00, after a quick shower and outfit change in my room, 1026, I made my way down to the Swiss Cafe on the first floor, where the rest of the delegation (who had been there since around 1:00 PM) had started eating at 6:30. Paula and Kathy (the other two delegates who had arrived with me from Chicago) made their way down after they freshened up as well.

Linda introduced me to everyone, who were spread out at various tables for four. I joined Kathleen Linscott and her guest James Raptis, and Kent Taylor, another delegate. It was nice to put faces to all of the names I’ve been reading about and from for several months now.

Tonight’s complimentary meal was a buffet, and I chose a Chinese beef dish—I’m so tired I already forgot how it was prepared, I just remember that it was delicious—some baked macaroni and cheese, and some mashed potatoes, both starches of which were killer.

I had two slices of multi-grain bread with some butter on it, to top of the starch-fest, and then two rounds of dessert, the first consisting of three slices of watermelon, a chocolate cup with some whipped mocha and a coffee bean on top, and some strawberry mousse with a cherry on top.

That was going to be my complete dessert, but Kent went to an “ice cream bar,” which I hadn’t seen, and when he came back with pistachio ice cream, that was it. It really was a very little amount though, one small scoop. I commented, “In the States this would so not be a portion of anything. It would be mounding over the top of the glass.”

Linda stopped by to check in with our table before heading up to her room for the evening. She quickly reviewed Thursday’s meeting agenda with us, during which she noted that my presentation is scheduled for 10 minutes instead of the 15-20 earlier set. That’s awfully quick. I’ve got some paring down to do.

She reminded Kent of his presentation on Friday, and he said, “Oh? Really? I never received any confirmation from P2P that my proposal to present had ever been accepted. He has 15 minutes. I’m not bitter. (I’m really not. The least amount of time I have to present, the sooner it will be over. I’m not a fan of presenting.) Kent said that the presentation he’s doing is usually 30 minutes of delivery, with 30 minutes for questions afterwards. Guess he’ll be doing some paring, too.

We all retired fairly early—at a little after eight. I unpacked, and was delighted at the little-to-no wrinkles in my clothes, particularly my suit jacket and the two dressiest shirts that I brought to wear with it.

I turned on the TV, primarily to see how much of it would be in English, and was actually surprised at how many options there were. However, they were mostly news-type shows. On one station, some speech of Barack Obama was being broadcasted. I don’t know, and didn’t watch long enough to ascertain as to whether it was live or not.

Interesting, all the way on this side of the world, in the about two-minutes, literally, that I had the TV on, there was a short blurb about an incident at Western Carolina University on the news. I think it might have been CNN. And if I heard it currently, someone had burned a head of a black bear, or something like that, and stuck it on the shoulders of an Obama effigy. Something like that.

That just happened and I can’t recall it for sure. I’m so tired. I’m closing for now.

People to People Technical Communications Professional Delegation to China—Day 1

12/31/202210/20/2008 by John

I was up at 3:30, and after showering called Joe at 3:45 to make sure he was up. He arrived at 4:15, and dropped me off at United in Terminal C at 4:30. There was a very edgy woman directing people to the kiosks and helping them check in. She was a little abrasive, but at least she had it going on.

“Bobby” worked at the terminal behind the kiosk, and tried to help me complete my check-in, since my leg from Chicago to Beijing was booked separately by People to People, and I couldn’t get access to it. After at least 15 minutes, he let edgy lady try, and she wasn’t able to do it either.

This is one example of how her edginess manifested itself:

After taking over from Bobby’s dismal failure, every time she pressed something he nodded his head, and said things like, “Yes, that’s what I did. Yes. It’s not going to let you do that. Yes, I tried that.”

She interrupted him and said, “Stop talking out loud while I’m trying things!”

“I’ll just pick up my bag in Chicago and check it on that next flight myself. I have a four-hour layover,” I said, and that’s what we ended up doing.

“I’ll put a priority tag on it so it’ll be unloaded first for you,” she offered. I’d never heard of such a thing.

The 6:00AM Chicago flight was pretty full, and let’s see, whose face can I put a look of surprise on that the luggage situation is just out of control now that they’re charging to check a bag.

As the last 15 or so people were coming on the plane, the flight attendant from the back said, “Ladies and gentleman all of the luggage space back here is full. Please start looking for somewhere to put your bag at the entrance of the plane as you head back here.” Half of them had to plane-side check their bags.

I drifted in and out of sleep all the way to Chicago. I was worried about sounding like I had a cold, as people on planes really don’t go for that sort of thing, but the first thing the girl sitting in the middle seat next to me did when she sat down was sniffle.

I had to walk at least a half-mile in the Chicago airport to get to “Baggage Claim Area 3.” The first thing I saw when my Chicago to Beijing flight came up on the check-in screen was, “Flight Delayed One Hour.” Make that a 5-hour layover.

After that, I stood in a Disneylandesque line for security. It wound back and forth five times, so I got to see a couple of hotties several times in passing.

At the beginning of my layover, I found some booths along the wall with outlets, fired up my laptop, attached my iPod to my laptop to save all of my battery power for the upcoming 13.5-hour flight, and caught up my blog.

I looked for a free wireless connection, and actually saw one that said, “FreePublicWifi,” but it wouldn’t connect. Bastards.

I checked in with Robert by phone, and caught him just before he got into the shower before heading to work.

As it turned out, the Beijing flight wasn’t delayed, and during the three or so hours I had to wait, I had breakfast at McDonald’s and rehearsed my presentation, which made me look like a bag lady talking to herself in the terminal. Who cares? I’ll never see these people again.

When it got to be within an hour of departure, I headed to gate B16, where I found several other People to People (P2P) people (how redundant), although all of them were with the other P2P groups, and not the other two people traveling from Chicago with my Technical Communication group.

The other two groups were Ground Water folks and nurses, and the nurses had a specialty, which was neurothopy, I think. One nurse was very, very heavy, which is never something one likes to see. There was only one “ground water guy,” and he had a very talkative (to the group) wife, and made several comments about her husband as if he weren’t sitting right there listening, and I was constantly checking out his reaction to see if he was thinking, “There she goes again,” which is certainly what I would have been thinking had it been me. He seemed not at all phased.

An older couple (and you know they were old if they were older than me) sat next to me, and I had a fun exchange with the husband, who was totally into gadgets, especially any kind that you can get free service with, which is exactly how I am. Like me before I saw someone with one, he was not aware of the iPod Touch, and like me, the fact that you use it to access the Internet free without having to pay for a service, such as AT&T with the iPhone, appealed to him immensely. I predict he’ll own one within the next few months.

One of the nurses was the super-organizer type, and she interacted with everyone across groups, so pretty much knew all of us. I kept looking for the other two people in my group, both womenPaula and Kathy. I’d seen a picture of Paula online, but I’m horrible about recognizing people from online, so had no luck.

At one point, I got out my list of “Who’s Flying From Where,” called her cell phone number, but reached her voice mail. There was no cell phone number listed for Kathy. A little while after that, the head nurse (head as “in charge,” not head as in “fellatio”) met Paula, and when Paula mentioned she was with the Technical Communication group, the nurse said, “He’s a technology guy over there; the one with the shirt,” and sent her my way.

I had my Eye-Bee-M shirt on today, and the charge nurse kept referring to me as “the guy with the shirt,” which I thought was cute. What I did not think was cute was how she kept calling our group “the technology group,” when we clearly said “technical communication” whenever we referred to ourselves. But I digress… a tad bitterly I guess…

Paula and I had a nice chat while we waited to board. She has been working really hard at learning Chinese, and it showed. I’m going to stay in her shadow as much as possible, when it comes to English not being a viable option. I’ve also decided that I’m going to try and hang out at the end of our delegation whenever we’re altogether, so that as we’re leaving for instance and everyone is saying goodbye, by the time it gets to me, perhaps I would have heard everyone say something enough that I can just repeat it. Lame. Between that and my point-and-grunt LingoLook, I’m not going to impress anyone in China.

On board, walking toward the back of the plane to my 36D seat, I locked eyes with a woman whose were locked on mine, and we both smiled. “Kathy?”

“John?”

Evidently the charge nurse had alerted her to my outfit as well.

Speaking of the charge nurse, once in my 36D seat, she stood up about four rows ahead of me in the middle seat, 32E, and yelled to me, “Would you mind switching seats with me, since you’re in the middle anyway, and my friend is sitting right next to you?”

I did and moved up four rows and to the right one seat, where I ended up between two American sisters traveling together to the left of me, and a Chinese husband and wife traveling together to the right of me.

We ended up leaving about an hour-and-a-half late, so at around 2:00 instead of 12:30, due to a “mechanical problem” that had something to do with some valve that controls the air-conditioning on the ground, and then is used as back-up power in the air. It got very warm on the plane for just a little while, since they had to turn off the air-conditioning to fix the problem.

A watched a little bit of a Sogourney Weaver movie, the name of which I never caught, but after starting to join in the middle of two other movies that I also didn’t know, it was the only one that was compelling enough to keep my interest. And that’s mostly because I like Sogourney Weaver, though I couldn’t recall her name, but did know “she was that woman from Alien.” Eventually I asked the sister sitting next to me what her name was, and that’s how I know it was Sogourney Weaver. I want to Google her movies when I have Internet access to get the name of it. The actor that played her son was hot.

“Lunch” was served about two hours after we left, so around 4:00. The flight attendant asked, “Chicken or beef?” and I chose chicken, but as soon as I opened it, I thought, “Glad she asked; I got beef anyway.” However, it turned out to actually be chicken, but it was in a dark brown gravy that made it look like beef. I thoroughly enjoyed it. The gravy was soy-based, and the chicken was mixed with noodles and vegetables. It also came with a salad with 1000 Island dressing, which is my dressing of choice, a roll with butter, and a most delicious thick, chocolate fudge brownie for dessert.

After dinner, I tried to run through my presentation again for timing, but I just wasn’t into it, so stopped. From the map option on the individual screens on the backs of the seats in front of us:

Distance to Destination: 5125
Distance Traveled: 1513
Ground Speed: 562 MPH
Altitude: 32,000 Feet
Outside Temperature: -72° F
Head Wind (not to be confused with the head nurse): 64 MPH

About halfway (6 hours) through the trip, I was struck by being “betwixt and between”:

The map on the video screen on the back of the seat in front of me, showed me between the eastern and western hemispheres.

I was in the very middle seat of the middle section of the planeAB CDEFG HI.

I was between two “families”sisters to the left of me, a husband and wife to the right of me.

I was caught between meals—was it cereal or soup. (Turned out to be soup.)

I was between English speakers and Chinese speakers.

What’s bad about being in the very middle seat, between people you’re not traveling with on either side, is that you always have to bother someone you don’t know to get out. I tended to favor the sisters, as they spoke English and were nice, although I did slip out once to the right, when the husband of the couple spilled some water and got up to tend to that.

Later after we finished our soup, I looked over his way to find his upper teeth in his hand, slipped back in shortly after. To be more accurate, I think it was a partial.

I slept, albeit restlessly, for about four hours waking up about an hour before landing, when we were offered “Lasagna or a Turkey Sandwich?”

I chose the turkey sandwich as I didn’t feel like messing with hot food, but the sandwich turned out to be hotcovered with melted cheese on a killer kaiser roll. I’m one of the few people I know who likes airline food.

It also came with a small container of Strawberry-Banana yogurt, and a “Raspberry Knot” shortbread cookie. I dislike rasberry, so I ate all around the knot.

Since we’ve passed the International Date Line, and it’s Tuesday, October 21^st now, I’m closing today’s entry, and will pick up here in tomorrow’s entry.

Uncle Frank’s Memorial service, a lunch recption following, and my birthday…

10/13/2008 by John

Though my alarm was set for 9:00, I was up at 8:00 after about 10 hours sleep. Felt good.

Aunt Annette and I had coffee and cinnamon toast, while we talked about the updating of her will, which she wants to do soon. She expressed concern about not having a co-executor to name, and I told her she was welcome to list me as the co- or contingency executor, if she wanted to.

She seemed incredibly relieved and grateful.

Karen and Joe arrived at about 10:00, and the rest of the crowd trickled in between 10:45 and 11:15.

One family member, Gail, after saying she remembered me when “you were this high,” asked, “How old are you now?”

I wasn’t thinking and started to say 50, and then stammered, “Actually, 51, today. Today’s my birthday.”

Uncle Frank’s memorial service was in a little catholic chapel, and everyone—around 15 of us—sat, what reminded me of, on “the bride’s side.” That is to say, we were all on the left side of the church.

Ironically, in retrospect, the “guest of honor” was up on the altar on the other side of the church—the box, and small bag of cremains.

I had so many mixed emotions sitting through mass. It’s been forever and a day since I’ve been, and I’m pretty sure the last time I went was for the funeral of co-worker’s daughter ten years, if not more, ago. Some of my thoughts, not necessarily in the order I had them:

I can’t believe I remember all of these responses… “Thanks be to God.” “And also with you.” “Through Him. With Him. And in Him. In the unity of the Holy Spirit, all glory and honor is Yours, Almighty Father, forever and ever. Amen.”
I’m surprised these people behind me know the words, too. I’m quite sure most of them do not attend mass regularly, if ever.
What is it about humans that they would choose to return to a place, from which so much pain has emanated, for some “closure.” “The catholic church” was a huge reason that my aunt and uncle gave up their daughter for adoption. It’s never been kind or welcoming to me as a homo.
Did he just say, “…our parishioner, Frank…”? He wasn’t a member of this church.
I wonder if that priest has ever done or said anything inappropriate to that altar boy.
That’s all that’s left of a life. That box and little bag over there.
Should I take communion? The “rules” say I shouldn’t. Will there be so few people taking it that it’ll be embarrassing?
Oh my. There are only kneelers on the first row. I wonder how many knees we’re going to hear creaking as everyone kneels, most of us all the way down to the floor.
When the priest said, “Can I impose on someone to bring the gifts to the altar? My first thought was, “Oh no, they are not going to pass the basket.” and then “Do they mean move the cremains to the altar from that table?” then, “OH, he’s talking about the water, wine and bread for the transubstantiation!”

After mass, we caravaned to the Hong Kong Buffet, which was one of my uncle’s favorite restaurants, where our party of 13-15 enjoyed a nice meal over the course of an hour or so.

We had just about an hour back at the house, just the four of us: me, Aunt Annette, Karen, and Joe.

I said my goodbyes to Aunt Annette, and Karen and Joe graciously took me to the airport.

I carefully guarded three books that Karen gave me that my uncle (her father) had written for her, and which I’m going to try to put on DVD.

My flights back were uneventful, albeit unexpectedly crowded for a Monday night. Perhaps because it was Columbus Day, a holiday for many business travelers, who were perhaps doing their normal Sunday night travel on Monday night.

I’m fifty-fucking-one.

Flying up to Coventry and hanging out with Aunt Annette, Karen, and Joe…

10/12/2008 by John

I was up at 4:45, and at the airport by 5:45. I parked in Lot 3, the “Purple Lot,” and was in line at U.S. Airways by 6:00.

I had my laptop, a suit bag, and a small bag that I’d normally take as my carry on bag, but was checking today, since I had three items. I was absolutely annoyed that I had to pay $15 to check that little bag.

Retrieving my stuff at the end of the security conveyor belt, I had walked around to the other side, since it was so crowded and shit was spurting out and piling up at the end of the belt, but within about a minute, Brunhilda came toward me, “Sir, I need you to move back around to the other side.”

There, I put my suit bag on the stack of empty containers, while I gathered my shoes, laptop, and the gray bin with my wallet, cell phone, watch, and change in it. “Sir, I need you to move your bag off the empty bins.” (There were two piles of empty bins, and no one was trying to put an empty one back on either pile.)

I made a face, and grabbed my bag, and then she began to wheel that stack of empty bins, which was on a dolly, and she ran over my toe. She knew that I had just about had it with her by then, and she said, “Oh, excuse, me. I’m so sorry, sir,” and went around me.

On my way to my gate, I stopped for a bagel, where the cash register had just “gone down,” and where the two people working there were trying to manage math in their head, using English as a second language to boot.

Overall, not a great start to my day.

We had an uneventful, on-time departure for my RDU to LaGuardia flight. The plane was small—two seats on each side of the aisle. The guy next to me was hot, but slept the entire time.

I devised my Thursday and Friday blog entries en route, and listened to Eva Cassidy’s Songbird CD on my iPod Touch.

I had seat 7A on both of my flights today, and my gate out of LaGuardia was Gate 1, with a 45-minute layover. I started on my PowerPoint presentation for my China trip while I waited, and pretty much got the first five slides done.

The flight from LaGuardia to Providence was on a tiny plane, nine rows total, and propeller-driven. Of the 36 seats, only 13 were occupied, so we had plenty of room to spread out.

That flight arrived 30 minutes early in Providence, which I still can’t quite figure out. Something was wrong there. The flight time I had in my Palm Pilot was from 9:30-10:54, which is nearly an hour-and-a-half, but I’m quite sure the flight attendant (and later the pilot) said that it was a 45-minute flight. And then we landed so early, which was more in line with the 45-minute announced flight time, than the time I had in my records. I checked my printed flight reservations and sure enough, it stated the flight time as one hour and 25 minutes.

I don’t know. Who cares. It’s said and done, and I arrived safely.

After retrieving my bag, I found Aunt Annette and Karen, and after tearful hello hugs, we headed back to Coventry.

Before we unloaded my stuff from the car, we walked across the street to Annette and Frank’s three-car garage, which Frank was going to make into a little retirement house for them, where Karen’s husband, Joe, has done a phenomenal job in going through.

My uncle had an incredible collection of all kinds of things for stone masonry and building. Piles of hammers, piles of chisels, piles of trowels, and piles of a lot of other such things. All kinds of leftover wood, wires, drills, saws, huge buckets of nails, screws, four or five gas containers, four tool boxes, and a huge stone cutting machine with diamond-edged blades on it.

Joe is such an incredibly nice guy and has been working over the last several weekends clearing out and straightening up the amazing collection of clutter that the place had become.

I took a compass that was laying on my uncle’s work table. It’s one of those old compasses that used to be used in math classes—V-shaped with a steel point on one end and a little pencil stuck in the other end.

I also took a key chain that says “Açores” on it, and has an eyeglasses screwdriver hanging on it. Both my uncle’s and my dad’s heritage is from the Azores Islands of Portugal.

After checking that out, Karen, Annette, and I came back across the street, where I unloaded my stuff, and the three of us enjoyed cocktails and some snacks.

Uncle Frank’s cremains were on the table, most of it in a good sized black box, and a little bit in a red draw-strung bag. The box was for Annette. The bag for Karen.

Around the next May timeframe two things will happen with them: (1) Most will be buried at a local cemetery, and (2) Karen and my aunt will go to Arizona, and spread a bit of them in the Grand Canyon.

Karen and Annette brought out a stuffed quahog with a birthday candle stuck in it for me, and I said before blowing out the candle, “To my favorite uncle in the whole world,” to which we all smiled through tears.

An hour or so later, Joe came back over, and we had Bacalhau—a delicious Portuguese cod fish dish that my aunt made, along with some mashed potatoes. Yum. Yum. Yum.

For dessert, we had some most delicious pistachio cake, made by Karen, also served with a birthday candle in it, and all of us sang happy birthday to me. 🙂

After that late lunch, we walked back across the street to see the work that Joe had done while the three of us were drinking and snacking earlier, and it was incredible how much he’d gotten done in that little bit of time!

We walked around the back of the place, and checked out the piles of stone back there, and talked about what the little house that my uncle had planned to build was going to look like. He had it all thought out, of course. Karen kept saying, “Every time I see this, it just breaks my heart. He had this all planned out, and it would have been done, too, if all of this hadn’t happened to him.”

Back at the house, we sat around the table upstairs, and Annette and Karen detailed the final week with my uncle. It was an incredibly taxing week on them, extremely painful for my uncle, and left him so sad in the end as Karen was the only child that visited him during his time in the nursing home and at home under Hospice care. Heartbreaking.

Later in the evening, Karen and Joe, especially Joe, told a lot of funny postal stories, most of them about dogs, as they both work for the U.S. Postal Service—Joe still a letter carrier, and Karen working in human resources now, but having been a carrier for eleven years.

Karen and Joe left at about 8:30, and by 9:00, Aunt Annette and I had both retired to our rooms.

I checked in with Robert by phone, finished this blog entry, and then worked for about an hour on my PowerPoint presentation for my China trip.