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)

I think I may be a part of a cartel....

Last year there were some milk scandals over here in China and many people stopped drinking the milk here locally for a good amount of time. Prior to this scandal, Renee and I had been looking for the best milk available for our kids as we always thought the local milk had a weird taste. After talking with friends, we found a brand of milk named NGF that I believe is produced out of Ningbo. It is the same milk that is used by Starbucks and that Starbucks continued to use throughout the whole scandal last year. This is what solidified it for me that this was the only local milk that I wanted to buy for my kids, if Starbucks is willing to serve it to millions of customers, then my two kids should be okay.

Anyway, there are only two ways to buy the milk, either buy it in the foreign grocery store or from someone (like a coffee shop owner) who already purchases the milk. The price in the grocery store is twice that of what the actual retail price to shop owners is, so luckily we had a connection with a shop owner and were able to order the milk via this owner. So it started with getting milk for my kids and then people started trying the milk at our house and hearing about our arrangement, so they asked us to get them milk and now I think we are getting it for 4 or 5 different families. In fact we take orders for the milk from friends and call it in to our point person and then once we get the milk we call our friends, they come by, we exchange money and they take their milk. I think the basic makeup of this arrangement mirrors that of a formal cartel, if not at least an informal drug dealer on the street corner. I feel like I should get extra inventory of the milk and start selling it for a profit to try to make my business legit, but I haven't taken it that far yet. I also might be under this impression because I have been watching a lot of The Wire lately…this is most likely why I feel like I need to hire some young'ens and hoppers.

Happy Lunar New Year

Happy belated Lunar New Year everyone. I know that it was last week, but I thought I could add it in. I had last week off of work with the Lunar New Year Holiday and I was able to get some good relaxation in with family and friends. I'm back to work now and will try to keep this thing updated a lot more often. Yes I missed blogging about the Superbowl and about the Ravens and their run. I did open a facebook account so that has been taking up some of my time, but I will try to keep up with regular entries about what is going on over here.

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.

Back and, well, maybe not better then ever

So I was really late in posting my stories from Tokyo and haven't really been posting as of late, so let me catch you all up on a couple of things:

• I am very excited for the Ravens making the AFC Championship game…they came a long way from this post
• My family and I were in the US for Christmas and really enjoyed our time with friends and family
• I finally found out that I passed a professional exam that I had been trying to take over the past couple of years, so that is definitely good news
• We got back to China and are in our final months so are starting to make plans for our return back to the US for good

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.

Tokyo Day 4

My last day in Tokyo started early with me heading over to the Tsukiji fish market. The market itself was nothing special (but I should say that regular folks aren't actually aloud into the cool auction part of the market anymore). My main goal for going to this place was to get a nice fresh sushi meal…in the morning. So after walking around for a bit, I found a pretty unsuspecting place that seemed to be pretty popular. I found a seat, got a menu and started at it. For those of you who might only be familiar with sushi in the USA, when I say sushi I am referring to Nigiri Sushi which basically consists of raw fish on top of rice (in the US, Maki Rolls which are rolled together with fish and other ingredients like veggies and other stuff, are much more popular then Nigiri sushi). The first thing that I noticed (and loved) was that the rice was still warm when I took my first bite, usually the rice has cooled completely, but this really added to the intricacy of the sushi by having the cold raw fish combined with the warm and flavourful rice. To be honest I wasn't completely blown away by how good the sushi was, but it is still some of the best I have ever had. Actually there was two pieces that I had that they used a small blow torch to quickly broil the tuna (like 5 seconds) before serving it…this was absolutely one of the best tasting fish related dishes I have ever had…I think I could go to Tokyo and sit down and have this every single meal it was that good.

After getting my fill for breakfast, I headed to the Asakusa areas to see the Sensoji temple. Nothing too special here, but it is a neat thing to see. I then headed over to the Shibuya area which is well known for attracting an interesting crowd of young'ens on the weekends. I walked up through Shibuya and through Yoyogi Park so that I could go see the Meiji Shrine. The best part of the Shrine was the fact that there were some wedding ceremonies going on, so it was neat to see how the traditional wedding ceremonies went. After I back to Yoyogi park where the young folk had started gathering. There were people dancing (some to music, others…well I don't know what they were dancing to), acting out plays, playing instruments, people tapping broomsticks on the ground trying to make some kind of beat and then just a bunch of youths just sitting around hanging out. The one thing I really liked about this walk was you were able to get to see the diversity of the styles that people (of all ages) choose in Tokyo.

After soaking in all the fun of people watching, I headed back to my hotel to pick up my bags and head to the airport. I made one final stop in Ueno at an outside market that had caught my eye before getting on the train to the airport. I was very glad I took a walk through this thing, again, I am not a shopper so I didn't buy anything of worth, but I did find a Turkish Doner Kebab place. So I thought, after eating all this Japanese food…why not have a Doner Kebab. Technically I have only had one once in my life, but I could literally live off this stuff (which is good that I don't live in Europe because supposedly they are all over the place). I ordered one with chicken and I hate to say it, but it was by far the best thing I ate during my time in Tokyo. The Japanese food was good (the best I have ever had), but this Kebab has all the necessities that I love in food, it's got juicy meat, vegetables, great sauce (it was awesome), and the bread that was wrapped around it was perfect. So I was extremely glad to have taking this walk and will go to the place 100 out of 100 times if I ever go back to Tokyo. All in all a great ending to a great trip.