I can't stop smelling myself???

To my knowledge I have not changed the brand or the flavor (is it a flavor or smell?) of my deodorant since around 1997. I have really liked my deodorant and have not had any particular reason to change, so I have kept it the same. Today, I found out why deodorant brands have such long shelf lives. Renee had bought me some new deodorant during her time in Singapore because I was running out of deodorant here in China (and you basically cannot find deodorant here in China unless you want to pay $12 for a stick). So this morning I tried on the new deodorant and I have quickly figured out why people don't change deodorants. Basically, I had gotten so used to the smell of my old deodorant that I never even noticed wearing it, today I have been smelling the deodorant all day long. Every time someone passes me or every time I move around, I get a wiff of myself and, while it smells good, it is weird. The even weirder thing is, when I go back to my old deodorant, I will also be smelling myself…maybe I should just take the China approach and just not wear any…maybe not.

25 Random Things

One part of being on facebook is that people will do annoying things like poking you, sending you e-gifts (that don't actually do anything) and then send things like "write 25 random things about you." Well I got a couple of them and finally wrote the 25 random things so that I could say that I did it. Here is the list that I posted (by the way the Chuck Norris picture was just a random picture I thought would be appropriate):

1. I love that my kids make me laugh everyday, Jacob and the new things that he says, and Maddie…well she is like me, her thoughts are all over the place.


2. I hope that one day I will able to take a year off of work, pull the kids out of school and travel the world (although living in China isn't a bad start)


3. I love saying, "Renee and I have been married for 6 ½ years (or however many years at the time I'm saying it)…it's been the best 2 years of my life." It hardly ever gets a laugh, but I'm cheesy like that. NOTE: I secretly have loved all the years that my wife and I have been married…wait…secrets out.


4. I wish that more people would understand how awesome the message of the Gospel is.


5. I am obsessed with the NFL Draft; I literally plan my year around the last weekend in April so that I can sit around on Saturday and Sunday and watch close to 20 hours worth of pure football enjoyment. Note that I already have my plans for the 2010 Draft; all I got to say is Damon Hall had better be ready.


6. I am extremely cheap and my favorite gift to give others is a gift certificate to watch my kids for a night.


7. I am happy that I go with the flow; otherwise this whole thing about not knowing what is going to happen when I move back to the US would probably be stressing me out.


8. I have begun to love watching Rugby over here in China. I hate to say that it is getting closer to being my number one sport to watch. Sorry NFL, the flow of Rugby with no commercial breaks, no timeouts, just all out running around and hitting is so much more appealing then watching a 3.5 hour NFL Broadcast that contains less then 30 minutes of action.


9. I still believe that ice cream fills in the cracks after eating…so even if you are full, enjoy, it won't fill you up any more, right?


10. I have no idea where I will be in 5 years or 10 years…my wife keeps asking and I am always able to somehow defer my answer.


11. I would rather watch Ravens' games by myself, mostly because I sometimes secretly try to coach the team through the TV…too bad it never works


12. I think that Buffalo chicken sandwiches are like manna from Heaven.


13. I would love to be able to make MTO runs every night at 1am, but I would probably then be dead after about 1 year.


14. I have really begun to enjoy hiking outside and up mountains, first Huangshan (Yellow Mountain), then Old Rag, then Evere…wait…okay maybe I will stick to mountains less then 10,000ft.


15. I really hope that I can go to New Zealand in 2011 to watch the Rugby World Cup, and oh yeah, seeing New Zealand wouldn't be half bad either.


16. I would love to open a diner that just sells sandwiches made from left over comfort food meals, Thanksgiving Day Sandwich, Pot Roast Hoagie, Chicken and Mashed Potatoes on Pumpernickel, etc. My experiments in this field have slowed during my time in China…still trying to figure out if the Chicken Feet, Pig's Ear, Lotus Root and Fried Noodle Sandwich would be a hit under the "Asian" section of my menu.


17. I love playing basketball in China, I tend to be one of the better players when I'm on the court…in the US I am usually the scrub no one wants.


18. I have what medical professionals refer to as Poop Fright, defined as the inability to go #2 in public or around other people.


19. When I cook something I don't trust other people's opinions, I have to taste it on my own to determine if it is good or not, usually I don't think it tastes great…I get that from my grandmother.


20. I don't know how to accept praise from people; I try to downplay important stuff in my life so that I don't have to receive praise over it.


21. I like to secretly give my kids candy…oops…secrets out. I understand this is very wrong on many levels, but it brings a smile to my kids and my face.


22. I am a little bit of a movie snob, I may sit down to watch almost any movie, but I usually like very few movies and they mostly do not appeal to the masses.


23. When I plan vacations, I try to plan them around the meals. Most of my favorite experiences from vacations past deal with food.


24. I basically had never lived outside of a 70 mile radius of where I grew up, until I moved to China…so that was kind of big.


25. I used to be embarrassed to say that my favorite tea to drink is Lady Grey Tea, but I have come to accept that, "I Love Lady Grey Tea!" (but please imagine me saying this in a grunting manly voice, not a spritsy schoolgirl voice)

Wait my kids are???

Many of you know that Jacob was born here in China, so when he goes to the US, it is typically just for a visit, so he really does see the US as being a place to go for a vacation. While Maddie was born in the US, she also really only associates the USA with being a place that we go visit and China being our home. But both took this attitude to the next level while we were back in the US. When someone asked them if they were American or Chinese, Maddie first replied by saying, "I am Chinese!" Jacob then followed by proclaiming the same thing.

First, they are some of the whitest Chinese kids I have ever seen. Second, I think these statements make it so that it will be quite a job convincing the kids that the USA is our home when we get back. Oh well, it should be interesting.

All in Perspective

As a result of all the flying that I have been doing as of late (I guess you can just look through some of my posts as of late and that should give you an idea), I was able to accumulate a bunch of miles. This has enabled me to do trips here and there (like the Tokyo trip) and has also given me some other benefits that include getting passes to stay in the classy airline lounges (for United they are referred to as Red Carpet Clubs). Not being much of a flyer before these adventures, this is the first time that I have had the opportunity to be in a lounge at the airport. I got the airport early before leaving, so I decided to use one of my passes and spend my time in the lounge. I really didn't know what to expect when I went in, but I thought the lounge was nice. It was really big (could probably seat around 1,500 people) and had lots of different amenities like free internet, free food and drinks, and some other things that cater to a traveller. I was actually pretty impressed by the place.

I guess it was all put in perspective when another traveller sat behind me with a friend and he immediately started to complain about how bad the lounge was. In fact all he did was complain about how bad the lounge was for his whole time there. I guess this guy doesn't often sit out with the regular people waiting for the planes because if he did he would see that he has it pretty good in these lounges. Granted he was comparing it to the Singapore Airline lounges (which anything related to Singapore Airlines is going to be 10 times better then anything related to United) so he might be justified, but if compares it to not being in the lounge, I can't imagine someone who would complain. I guess it is all about a person's perspective on things.

WTF = Hilarious

Last week I was involved with a fantasy football draft. I do these things not for the competition, but just for the fun of keeping up with NFL stats. In the league that we were drafting last week, we have 10 teams in the league and only about 4 people showed up for the draft, so the rest of the teams had set up for autopicks, which for those of you not familiar, you can pre-rank your players so that they are drafted in an order other then the defaulted rankings by ESPN. So unless you have pre-ranked your players, you will just get the default players based on the ranking on ESPN.

Our total draft has 20 rounds, which means that there are 200 picks in total. For those of you not that familiar, you typically use the first 4 or 5 rounds to select your skilled positions (running backs, quarterbacks, wide receivers). We are playing with individual defensive players, so we have more starters then the regular teams, which means after you have selected skill positions along with their backups you tend to move to defensive players and move to the kickers and your bench players (mostly because the skilled positions give you most of your points and the kicker only gives you a couple of points each week). In short most people in the draft didn't draft a kicker until well after the 13th round, except for one team.

This one team selected a kicker, Nate Kaeding, for the number 11 pick overall. Right in the middle of people taking the best running backs and quarterbacks, one team picked a kicker. Needless to say, all the people that were participating the draft started lighting up the chat feature in the draft. This is where the funniest moment happened, someone just typed in the infamous 3 letter abbreviation, WTF. Now don't get me wrong, this abbreviation is not a good thing and should not be used, but in the context of what happened, it made me sit back and laugh at my desk. I am not a fan of the texting/internet chatting abbreviations that are becoming more coming (LOL, LMAO, IMHO, etc), but this abbreviation, when used in the right situation, is one of the funniest things that someone can type.

What's that on your lips?

Currently I have a cold sore on my upper lip. In a land that doesn't have Blistex or really any advanced lip treatment; I had to resort to an alternative for the cold sore. After going through our medicine cabinet, I found a bottle of Lansinoh. For those of you not familiar, I was introduced to Lansinoh primarily because they were a client of mine. One of the main products that Lansinoh makes is their patented breast cream for breastfeeding mothers or as I refer to it, nipple cream. It is used to prevent dryness of nipples, which is why I turned to this cream. You see, I am not a doctor, but I know enough that the nipples appear to be very similar to lips, so I am currently using the cream on my lips (as originally advised by the former owner of Lansinoh). I have been using it for a couple of days now and it appears that there is a little improvement, but I will give you guys the final update once everything is healed up. So if you happen to see my glimmering lips, you will know what gives them that special glow.

Shattered Dreams

Okay, so maybe the title is a little drastic. But over the past month, when I've been home, I haven't gotten one full nights sleep (noting that Renee has not either). It has been a while since a little cry in the night has woken both Renee and I, so there is some getting used to it. To the point that I will be in the middle of a dream and abruptly brought away from it by the cry's of a little one.

In fact, I vividly remember having a dream where Jesus was riding a ski lift down a mountain and right before I could find out how there was a ski lift in the olden days, and more importantly, why Jesus was riding the ski lift down the mountain, I pulled out of the dream by a hungry little one. Oh well, maybe the ending of the dream will be revealed to me sometime in the future when I can begin to have full nights of sleep.

It's been a while

Over the last couple of months, I seem to be apologizing a lot for not posting on my blog. I just got back from a business related trip to San Francisco along with now being outside of Guangzhou. I had a lot of prep for my San Francisco trip, so that took up my free time, so again I apologize.

I will try to catch you all up on things going on since my last post. First story related to my plane flight to/from San Francisco. My flight went via Beijing, so there was a small layover in Beijing. While I was walking through Beijing's new terminal (two quick things to note about this, Beijing's new terminal is actually made up of many new terminals and is pretty much a new airport, also I came from Shanghai's new terminal, so I am just walking through all kinds of new terminals...now back to the story), for some reason I was thinking what I would do if someone wanted to switch seats with me on the flight (flight duration is 11.5 hours). I came to the resolution that I would give up my seat if asked. Not sure why I was thinking this or why I came to that conclusion, but thus are the thoughts when you have free time in an airport terminal.

Well, you can guess, when I got onto the plane someone sitting in my aisle seat said that he was sitting next to his friend and asked if I could switch seats and he pointed to the middle seat in the row in front of him. My first thought, 11.5 hours in a middle seat, my second thought was to quickly scan the people who I would be in between....a petite middle aged Chinese women and a red haired normal sized Australian (at least I found out the Australian part during the flight). But I went with my conclusion from sitting in the terminal earlier and said it was okay and sat in the middle seat. Actually it worked out okay, the middle seat is not that comfortable, especially for those long flights, but I had a good conversation with the guy I was sitting next too. Note that he worked for this economist Larouche that I had never heard of, but he had some pretty interesting views on things (not always the right views as you can see from the website, but it made for interesting conversation).

To wrap up this story, it should be noted that on my flight home from San Fran to Beijing then from Beijing to Shanghai the plans were not more then 1/4 full, so on both flights I had a full row to myself. Some may say coincidence, but I am convinced it was because I gave up my seat that the planes home were empty. Actually the person checking me in said the plane is rarely this empty...so there you go.

Apparently, I'm the government

I still have my office telephone number for my phone in the US, thus if anyone calls, they are greeted with my message telling them that I am overseas and if they need anything that they should contact the receptionist. I have yet to get any voice messages through my first year and half here in China, until this past week. I guess even having an away message will not keep the idiots away.

Last week I checked my US email (which, if you are not up to speed with technology, our voice messages in the US get sent to right to our email inbox, if you didn't know that and you live in China, I understand, this is the same place where I don't even have voicemail at my place of work) and found the following message waiting for me.

"Hello….is this the government? I want to thank you for the good work you did in the community and this is Dennis Prince and I want to compliment you. Thank you very much, goodbye."

Not sure who this Dennis Prince guy is, but I guess he thinks there is some general number out there that you can call and give compliments to the government for all that they do. Either somehow my number was confused with that fantastic sounding phone number or my number is actually that number people should call. While I want to believe that it is not the latter, I can believe that in my 5 years of working at my Company that there would only be 1 phone call complimenting the government for their work in the community, so my search for an answer goes on.

E-motion-less

Another fun Halloween Story takes me back about 6 years to when I was in college (uh oh, it was 6 years ago, man oh man I am old). I was up in Pittsburgh visiting my beautiful fiancee, now wife, Renee, and I was staying with a buddy of mine, let's call him Hamon Dall. Now Renee was actually working and I was up there on fall break, so I had absolutely nothing to do, so one day Hamon and I went to Target. As it was close to Halloween, the store had all its fine decorations out for all to see and buy, so we went looking through all the various pieces of junk that people could buy to make their house look "creepy." With Hamon's parents out of town we figured that we should buy some junk to make his house look scary, so we went down the aisle that had the lights and stumbled upon the "motion lights," such characters as a motion pumpkin and motion bat. These lights would show a pumpkin becoming scary or a bat flying, but what really caught our eye was the tag for a motion ghost, just think of the possibilities a ghost flying through the air, how much creepier can you get (note that in our minds the motion ghost looks nothing like the picture above, just thought I tried to scare anyone who is reading this with the not so common blow up ghost decoration).

Noticing that they were out of the motion ghosts (noting that they had a plentiful supply of the other motion lights) we asked if they had any more motion ghosts in the back, the worker went back and could not find any. Knowing that it was our destiny to find one of these things, we went to the next store only to find the same thing, plenty of motion bats, but no motion ghosts. We started to suspect that either they had to pull all motion ghosts or that they were actually trying to have motion goats, and made ghosts by mistake (why the whole motion goat thing would work for Halloween is, in itself, a spooky mystery). So we decided to spend the rest of our free time during my week up there looking for motion ghosts, we probably visited about 4 or 5 Targets and even called a couple, of which, they all mysteriously were out of theses ever elusive motion ghosts. We finally came to the conclusion that the motion ghosts probably too closely resembled a KKK member and Target decided that having a "motion racist" would not fly during Halloween.

What are you roasting?

I listen to the Relevant Magazine Podcast each week and it is by far one of the best podcasts out there. As Halloween approaches, it is only appropriate for me to give the relevant podcast people some credit for one of the best "alternatives to Halloween" ideas. One of the hosts of the podcast lived near a church that would put on the Holy Ghost Wiener Roast as an alternative to Halloween. The name is pure awesomeness, I really think that all churches should host a Holy Ghost Wiener Roast, I think it could be used a great evangelizing tool. So really, if you want to take the idea (as I did to write this post) go ahead.

One more year...one more year...

So after months of discussions between Renee and I and our families, we have made a big decision in our life. Drum roll please…we decided that we would extend my contract here in Shanghai for one more year, so we are now contracted through April of 2009. We are working through the logistics of what apartment we are going to end up in (probably going to stay in our same apartment), but we are happy that the decision process is over and we are very happy with the decision that we made.

Just to note, we are definitely going to go home after the 3 years are up and will definitely be looking forward to home after the 3 years, but we will be enjoying the next year and a half here.

Gotta love the flavor of breakfast....

Outside of our hotel there was this advertisement for some "Breakfast Flavoured Milk." Now I eat many things for breakfast, oatmeal, yogurt, eggs, cereal, so I am not sure what breakfast flavour tastes like, but this really could not be good. As you can see you have Malt flavored and Walnut Flavored milk, I have never had walnuts for breakfast so that would not be a breakfast flavour that I would be familiar with, but maybe they should next invent Eggs Benedict, Oatmeal or Toast and Jelly…..yummm toast and jelly flavored milk.

#100, Typhoons, and Slingn' it

Celebrate Good Times!! Yes, I have finally made it to 100 entries, and I know that the 3 readers that have been following this blog are so excited. Anyway, I want to thank my family, my friend Ttam Kergens, and the big man up stairs (no really, we live on the 20th floor apartment and there is like a 400lb guy on the 21st floor, he really inspired me to keep on writing). So yes, hopefully I can make it all the way to entry 101 without getting writers block.

In other Matt news, Tyhpoon Wipha came whipping through Shanghai, actually by the time it got through Shanghai it was only a tropical storm. This would otherwise be just another tropical storm with the exception that I had to fly to Singapore today. Last year I flew into a typhoon, now I am flying out of one. Well I got out of Shanghai without a problem, luckily the typhoon headed farther inland then originally expected and weakened, or else I might have spent a lot of time at the airport. By the way, I flew on Singapore Airlines, which is by far the best airline in the world, their planes, service, food, and entertainment trump any other competitors.

After calling Renee to tell her that I landed safely, I wasn't quite feeling sleepy so I headed down to the bar in the hotel, conveniently named, The Bar, they actually have live jazz music, and it is quite the classy place. Anyway, I went in, listened to some jazz music, and had myself a Singapore Sling (a drink famous here in Singapore, if that wasn't obvious). It was my first sling and it was pretty good (a little girly, but that's what I like).

As a final note, I took the subway from the airport into town and at one of the random stops I was looking out the window and noticed a neon sign that said BJ Massage, I mean can you be anymore obvious as to what goes on at that joint?

I am not rich

Renee came with me to Hong Kong last week when I was there for business. On the first day she had done some travelling and then came to the office to go out to lunch with me. Unfortunately, myself and a US partner went out for an early lunch so we missed each other. Right before she left she asked the receptionist where would be a good place to go shopping. Now, I must say that it is pretty widely assumed that white skinned westerners have a good deal of money to throw around, so of course, when she asked, they just responded with the fact that there was a lot of great shops in the same building of our office along with surrounding buildings. Just to clarify to you all, the shops that I pass on my way to the office in the Hong Kong building include Louis Vuitton, Tiffany, and Armani Exchange, so the assumption by our receptionist was that my wife would have enough money to throw around in these very high class shops. Now we are very blessed, but we certainly do not have the funds to go shopping at the same shops that millionaires shop at (I don't even think I can afford the cuff links at Louis Vuitton). Anyway, when my wife was asking abut the bargain street market, she got some weird looks, but eventually made it to a place where she spent about 1/1000 of what she would have otherwise spent. I guess that's the tough life of us richie riches.

I have a...I have a...

So the other day I was in my Hong Kong office and I was washing my hands in the really nice bathroom. Actually, it was one of the nicest lit bathrooms that I have been in. As I was washing my hands I looked in the mirror to peruse my face and noticed something that shocked me. You see, I am 26, and while I am not the most fashionable guy, I do pride myself on at least looking like I can put myself together in the morning. To my surprise and dismay, when I was looking in the mirror at myself, I noticed what looked like some hair follicles that connected my left eyebrow to my right eyebrow, this would otherwise be referred to as a UNIBROW. Yes, somehow I have missed the fact that I had developed a unibrow. What comes even more surprising is the fact that my wife has never told me about it or that one of my friends never pulled me over to tell me (or at least use it as a butt of a joke). I just can't believe it, I mean I have kept track of hair growing out of nose, ears and other crevices....as much as I can. When I mentioned it to my wife, all she could do is laugh in my face, which by the way, didn't make me feel any better about the situation. Oh well, get out the wax.

High School Mattical

I had dinner plans the other evening and was leaving the apartment at around 6pm for a friends house. Upon leaving my apartment building, I saw one of our neighbors coming towards me so I waved and said "Hi." She was taken a little back when she took a double take at me and said, "Oh, Hi Matt." She went on to explain that she thought I was a new teenager in the building and didn't think it was me. Now I know that most adults are trying to keep their youth and look younger, but I don't think I do this (if you disagree tell me). I am not sure if I should take being called a teenager a compliment or should I be offended by it. Clearly it tells me that I still have my boyish good looks (note that these boyish good looks, when I was actually a teenager, landed me one girlfriend, so they were not that great), but it also confirms the fact that as a father of 2 kids at 26, I am a little out of place here in China (most expat dads are in their late 30's or 40's). I look back and am glad that I still appear younger then I am, since most people assume I am in my mid-30's (2 kids and in Shanghai with a Company is how most people come to this conclusion).

I didn't expect that

One story that I didn't mention from the trip home happened in the parking lot of Walmart (come on now, get your heads out of the gutter). My wife, a cousin of mine from Curacao, and I were sitting in our car waiting for our other cousins to finish shopping at Walmart. While waiting I was just doing some people watching. I noticed a couple (probably in their mid 30's) walking to their car and the man was wearing jorts (jean shorts for all of you who are not in the know), I noted to myself that jorts have been out of style (sorry to all you jorts readers out there)...well they were never in style and chuckled to myself over this. I looked away and then all of the sudden heard a man say unusually loud, "Oh!" I looked over and noticed that the man's jorts had fallen completely off of him and onto the ground. Now the man had a bag in each hand so he couldn't immediately catch the pants when falling or immediately pull them up. While this was hilarious in itself, it was also funny to watch as his girlfriend started to crack up and laugh at the guy. It was at this moment I told my wife and cousin to look and I couldn't have picked a worse time. The guy puts down his bags, bends over, only to reveal that he was not wearing any undergarments. It was then that my wife let out a scream that resembled something of laughter/terror and I was speechless. Note that this would have been an opportune time to let a "hey good looking" whistle, but I totally missed the chance....oh well I am ready the next time it happens.

I always wondered how gravity always worked in favor of jorts. I mean I have seen so many people that wear baggy pairs of jorts and yet have only seen a falling down incident once in my life. There must be something in the combination of cotton and denim that makes them defy gravity...maybe NASA should look into this for all astronauts, eliminating many of those embarrassing space walk incidents of the past.

The Good Ole US of A

We are heading out of China (me for a couple of weeks and my wife and kids for a month) going to America. We leave today, so there might be less and less writing on this thing over the next couple of weeks. So for all 3 of you out there that wait and wait for updates, I just wanted to tell you that your lives can go on for the next couple of weeks until I get back, then watch out, this thing will be bigger and better (is that a good cliffhanger to leave things on?? Will you really come back?)

Soooo Sooo Tang...y

Being here in China, I have been reacquainted with a drink from some years ago, Tang. The original Tang is an orange-like flavored drink that was typically made from powder form. Here in China they have both the powder and they have it in liquid form. Man, when I am in the mood for some sweet treat, I turn to my liquid Tang. Tang in the bottle is so over the top Tang compared to any other Tang that I have ever had, after drinking one glass I actually have to check to see if all my teeth are still there. Tang in a bottle here is kind of like when the directions on Tang powder say add 3 scoops to 2 cups of water, but you end up adding 6 scoops to 1 cup of water, that is how potent it is, and it is a complete culinary delight that causes your tongue to jump for joy (and your teeth to beg for mercy). I have already asked my wife to stock up on Tang for me so when the family is in the States and I am here I can go on Tang binges and run around Shanghai on sugary Tang highs, I especially can't wait to try that chewy meat on a stick with my tongue still tingling with that orangy Tang flavor.

As a side note, when my wife and I first got married, she would create a drink called Tang-quila's (copyrighted by the Gerkens family, so if I see it on a menu anywhere, we get royalties). For the drink you just add some Tang powder to some Tequila and one other liquor that will remain nameless for secrecy, put some ice into a blender and watch the magic happen, it is quite the tasty and refreshing drink.