Free at last, Free at last.....

So I won't take this statement all the way because it really has meaning and let's face it, this blog doesn't have much meaning.

Today, just about 1 ½ weeks after breaking my little toe, I was able to rid myself of the modified cast and crutches that I was given what I have been calling a "geisha" shoe. Even though I move slower then a 90 year old Chinese woman, it is 100 times better then going around on crutches, those things just become a hassle mostly when it rains (which it has been for the last 3 days) and also because I mostly use Public Transportation with lots of people on it, so that has not really made it easy getting to and from work.

Anyway, the geisha shoe its not the most fashionable thing in the world, but it definitely is good since my toes is not totally healed. The doctor did say that I have to avoid running marathons for the next couple of months, which ends up not being all that bad because I have not even ran a marathon and the broken toe is an added incentive to avoid it in the near future.

Is there something wrong here?

I stumbled on this picture from the consumerist.com website. Even though I am not in the States, I do know that Christmas decorations began to come out basically after summer was over. I love that they are having a pre-holiday sale and they can include like 3 or 4 different holidays and be ambiguous about it. Actually there is a small part of me that misses the whole consumerism that Christmas has become. Don't get me wrong, being able to avoid all that chaos that comes with the Christmas Holiday is not fun, but there is something about walking around my neighbourhood with houses all decorated for Christmas and seeing the interesting Christmas commercials that come out (including the classic old ones like the Folgers commercial from the 80's where the guy surprises his family by coming home on Christmas), anyway, I am somewhat looking forward to experiencing that for the first time in a couple of years. I'm sure I will be over it quickly, but in the land of tacky Christmas-esque stuff, a little down home Americana will be good.

Dr. Nick, is that you?

For those of you that might not of watched the Simpson's (yes I know that the show is still on TV with new episodes, but let's face it, it's run was over like 8 years ago), the reference to Dr. Nick is Dr. Nick Riviera as pictured above. He was the quack doctor that would always show up when someone needed cheap medical aid and he was always the one who would say something to the extent that he had no idea what he was doing.

That being said, I reference him because my orthopaedic doctor yesterday reminded me of Dr. Nick. I go into his office and he takes about 10 minutes to figure out how to turn on his computer in his office (I know that doctors do not need to be techies, but they should know how to turn on their computer). He shows me the X-Ray of my fractured toe looks at it and proclaims that it is a total fracture and that it will need to be repaired. Then he turns to me and asks what I want to do. Well not being a medical expert, I said, "I have no idea, whatever you think is best." At which point he sits back in his chair and thinks for a while without a response. He then runs out of the room and comes in with a finger splint. After examining the finger splint, he noted that my small toe would be too small so he sat thinking for another couple of minutes. Then he looked at me and said, "What do you think we should do?" Typically if a doctor asks this question I think he is asking it in a rhetorical sense, but for some reason I think he was actually asking me what we should do. I suggested that we do whatever heals the fastest and he agreed.

In the end I am not sure if he decided or if I decided on the final treatment (as I was kind of giving him suggestions), but we decided it would best to try to pull the toe back into a position of where it would heal faster and then put a modified cast/splint on it so that it would not move or be able to have weight on it. So in the end he pull it back into its original position as a toe. My toe was numb, but he did keep pulling and tugging on it and kept looking at my other foot, almost like he had never seen what five toes together should look like. Anyway, he got it back into place and says that I will be on crutches for 2 weeks. I hope my toe is still there after the 2 weeks, I am waiting in anticipation.

It's Broked

On Sunday night I was getting out of bed to get a drink of water when all of the sudden my right leg gives out from under me. Since I was in a haze I didn't notice that my right leg was asleep, probably from sleeping on it the wrong way. So I collapsed much like a newborn calf would do when they are first trying to stand. Again since I am only half awake, I start getting up and notice that there is a throbbing pain coming from my right foot. My wife woke up in the same hazy state and was babbling words that I had not idea what she was saying as she was still waking up. I just told her to not worry about it and she rolled over and went right back into her REM sleep. After icing it overnight, I woke up and I could hardly walk normally on it so decided to go to the doctor in the morning.

Come to find out that I broke my pinkie toe last night. In the grand scheme of things, it is not a big deal, but it is pretty annoying. My first doctor's appointment just confirmed via an x-ray that I had a broken toe, the next appointment as described in my next post, was an interesting one with my interesting doctor finally deciding to put me in a cast, so I've been sidelined for 2 weeks on crutches. Now I am not a crutches expert, but after going like 200 feet on those things I am quite winded, it either shows that I am really out of shape or it shows that crutches are not as helpful as they were designed. Oh well, it will be a good workout during these next couple of weeks.

One Day in Macau

As I already mentioned, I had a chance to spend one day in Macau a couple of weeks ago. This was my first visit to the small island, and most likely my last, not because I was disappointed, but more because I think I got to see it all. Macau is now famous for being the gambling mecca over here in Asia, but not being a gambler, I was more interested in seeing some of the sights.

After arriving, I headed right for the most famous landmark, the ruins of St. Paul's Cathedral. It was a decent landmark, but I was by far more blown away by the architecture throughout town. Macau Island is very small and so is very conducive to walking all over the place. This is good because it gives someone a chance to check out the different architecture around town. Macau was run by the Portuguese which contributed to the Mediterranean/Portuguese architecture that is found all over town. It is really cool to think about the fact that you are in China, but you get to walk down streets and feel like you are in the middle of Europe.

After checking out the sights, I went to the Venetian Macau, which some people suggest to go see as a tourist since it has so many cool aspects to it. The inside of the Venetian was nice, they did do a good job of putting in all the gaudy things to make it look like an old school Italian building, but it was a little too fake. I did get a chance to try Fatburger that has a location in the Macau, and it was just alright. This is one of those US West Coast Burger chains that have been really hyped up to me and to be honest, I was disappointed. There wasn't anything too great about it, in fact I'll take my US east coast Five Guys over anything that Fatburger puts out. It could be the fact that I was in Macau having it, but I probably won't be making a return anytime soon.
Overall, this is a nice place to go if you have an extra day after hanging out in Southern China or Hong Kong (which probably many of you don't have), but probably not a place that you need to go out of your way to go see on an individual trip as there is just not enough stuff to do (my total time on Macau for all the stuff I talked about above was less then 5 hours).

Planes, Trains and Automobiles

My family and I have been in China for just over 2 ½ years and as of yesterday I had taken basically every form of reasonable transportation offered by China, car, subway, short ferry (across a river), long ferry (from Hong Kong to China), bus, bicycle, motorcycle, airplane and magnetic levitation train. The only things left on my transportation agenda was the ever so famous rickshaw and then the not as famous regular train.

Well today, I was able to knock one of those things out. Today I took a train from Shanghai to the Changzhou; the trip took a little over 1 hour. The ride was good and smooth, we took one of the new D trains that is a little higher speed (and slightly more expensive) then the regular trains, I think our top speed was around 175 km/h or about 115 miles per hour. For just under 8 US dollars, I got to sit in first class, which was nice…for a train. Anyway, now that my Chinese train virginity has been taken away from me, I hope that my family and I can begin to explore the areas around Shanghai via train as it is by far a much cheaper alternative to having to hire a driver for a day. By the way, Changzhou is not a place to really put on your itineraries if you ever come to China, it really has nothing going on with the exception of one large pagoda in the middle of town and a temple on a hill, but you can see those things almost anywhere.

Where Have I Been?

Okay, so I have not totally given up on this thing, I promise. I have been around, we have had people in town over the last month and it just makes it hard to put some entries into this thing. A quick update of the past month:

• So my last post had to do with getting up to watch football, well since then the Ravens won two in a row…and then lost 3 in a row. This team is still going to struggle to get to 6 wins even with 2 already under their belt.
• I had some meetings in Hong Kong and Southern China, and was able to do a short day trip to Macau. This was my first time there and I will share a little more with some pictures on a later post.
• We celebrated Maddie and Jacob's birthdays…3 months after the fact. Actually, most of their friends were gone when their birthdays happened in June, so it was a good time to have it in September. We had a clown that made balloon animals and a magician, which is something we could never afford in the US, but over here the price is insanely low.
• Our niece came to visit us from California. She was here for 10 days and both Renee and I had a chance to show her around. It was fun, she was willing to try new things like a motorcycle ride and some street food, so it was good to have a visitor who was open to trying different things (like most of our guests)
• We had a week long holiday the first week of October. We were taking care of a little baby during this week, so that is what kept us busy despite the fact that I had the week off.
• The baseball season is over, I was wrong with my prediction for the Orioles, they actually ended up winning 68 games, although they played the last month of the season the way I thought they would be playing the whole season. Oh well, at least they beat my prediction.
• We had some good friends from the US visit us this past week, even though I had to work, it was a lot of fun. Renee and them got to go to Beijing, this was Renee's first time and from what I heard they all had a great time. We had some great conversations with them and got some good hang out time.

All in all, this is one of the first weeks that Renee and I will be without a guest staying at our house, so while things have not been really busy, it will be a little more normal not having non-family members hanging around the house. There have been a lot of stories that I have missed out on putting into this blog, so I hope that I can remember them and add them in, otherwise I will keep you all up to date with the goings ons over here.