The Incredible Renee

One of our main forms of transportation over here in Shanghai is the taxi. Some taxi's are maintained well, others seem like they are about to fall apart every new mile they drive. Just the other day, Renee and Maddie had finished some grocery shopping and were attempting to get into a cab outside of the store. Renee attempted to open the door once by pulling on the handle, but the door didn't open. She tried again, and again, no success. The final time she really put her back into it and, in a Hulk like fashion, ripped the door handle right off the door!!!! Yes my wife has found her inner strength and was able to dumbfound the taxi driver into thinking that maybe she is some sort of covert Olympic Weightlifter. The taxi driver had to climb into the cab to let them in from the inside, a nice jester since Renee had just destroyed this guy's only source of income…I mean how does a cab driver make money if people can't get into his cab?

I was wrong…hopefully way wrong

I am very happy that I was wrong about my good ole O's. They have eclipsed my prediction of only winning 59 games this season by winning their 60th game yesterday. While still sitting in last place (in last place in by far the most competitive division of the majors), they are only 3 games away from being .500. They have not been this close to .500 this late in the season in probably 9 or 10 years, so this makes me excited. So much so, that I hope I am very wrong in my prediction and I hope that they can be right around .500 this season, that would be a major success for a team with basically no names (for those non-O's fans).

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.

One World, One Opinion

Just in case you didn't know, the Olympic slogan is "One World, One Dream," so now you know the play on words in my title.

With just over a day before the Olympics begin here in China, I'm sure that all you readers out there (wherever you are) are being inundated with articles about Beijing, the Olympics, pollution, human rights issues well basically all the different publications are all saying the same thing. Actually, the most interesting thing about it, is most of these media outlets have sent a couple of journalists out to China and after only spending a couple of days in China, they seem to know everything about the whole country. Now don't get me wrong, is Beijing polluted? Yes. Does China have some human rights issues? Yes. But for all you people out there who have never been to China and are just getting your opinions of things over here based someone's article after spending 48 hours in a country of over 1 billion people and which is, area wise, significantly larger then the US, I would ask you to take a step back and think about who is authoring that article. I mean, my opinion of what China is like has changed significantly over the course of the 2 years that I have been here and the bottom line is that even what I think is only based on my limited experiences and the things that I have seen.

If I told you there was someone from Europe who visited America for the first time, specifically New York City for 2 days and then started writing an article about what America is like and what Americans are like, I think you would agree that there is no way that he/she can write a half decent article about what things are like in the US or what the people are like in the US based on their 48 hours of experience.

Again, I am not denying that there are things wrong with this country and how things work, that is obvious by all the articles that are coming out and saying the same things. But it is probably in your best interest to take some of the highly opinionated articles with a grain of salt because most of these journalists are not really experts. Actually, just keep to the sports reporting and I'm sure you'll be okay.

Thems Be Fighn' Words

Basically, in the first two years of being here in China, I rarely saw fights break out (actually I can't remember ever seeing on). Then, all of the sudden, over the past couple of months I have been seeing fights breaking out in various different places. I have already mentioned in a previous post the fight that broke out on the subway.

The next fight that I witnessed was at a bank when I was trying to pay Renee's taxes. This was between one of the guards at the bank and a customer. It got to the point that the customer flicked the hat off the guard and then punches began to fly. It was actually pretty interesting because all the people in the place seemed to keep minding their own business even though these two guys were going at it. Finally another guard and the guy's wife were able to break things up, but not before choice words were exchanged.

The next fight I was witness to was in between some real estate agents that were trying to get customers. This was actually the most interesting fight of them all. To give some quick background, landlords can list with multiple agents and they can list their properties at different prices, so actually it is even more of a competition between agents here to get the places rented or sold because you don't just list with one agent. Moving on, it appeared that one group of agents standing on one corner of the street took offense to another agent passing by them and the 3 agents at the corner began beating on the 1 agent passing by. Seeing that he was outnumbered, the 1 agent ran off into his office. I started to ride off thinking that it was over when all of the sudden the one agent emerged with 5 or 6 other agents from his office. This is when the brawl began. Now that the 3 agents were outnumbered, the 5 or 6 began doing some WWE moves on these 3 guys including one of the agents picking up their portable white board and slamming it over the other guy's back (classic) while two other guys stomped on one guys back and face. Renee and I had bought some groceries so we had to get home to get them in the fridge, but the fight was breaking up as we were leaving.

I am not writing this to say that China is becoming more violent, it could have just been that I was in the right place at the right time, but more then anything I am just noting how weird it is that in 3 months I have seen 3 fights, whereas the previous 24 months I saw 0.

Prediction

Do you all remember my prediction for the Orioles? Well if you don't (and you don't know how to click the link), you might remember that I predicted that they would win 59 games this whole season. As I write this, they have won 52 games thus far in the season and with 54 games left in the season, I am pretty confident that they will crush my prediction of 59 games. Note that if they do end up only winning 59 games this season, not only will it be one of the worst second halves that a team has ever played, but I will have to begin actually doing this prediction thing on a more regular basis. I am not planning on quitting my day job though because they will most likely get to around 70-75 wins this season if they keep pace with how they have been doing this whole season. Believe it or not, this will be an accomplishment for these guys and I will be very happy to be wrong.

UPDATE: I wrote this while the game today was going on, just in case you wanted to know, they now have 53 wins, so only 6 away, looks like my title of being an idiot is still in place.

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.