Happy Thanksgiving All!!!

Well as most of you will be stuffing your faces full of turkey and all the good things that go with it, I will be spending my Thanksgiving and Black Friday Climbing a mountain (Yellow Moutain to be exact or Huangshan for those Chinese speakers out there).

Anyway, this adds to the posts that I still have on my agenda to do, which include a summary of the Bahamas trip, my Xian trip, and then of course there will most likely be some stories from this trip. For those of you keeping tabs, I leave for Japan next week for a 3 day trip to Tokyo and its surroundings, so yes, in addition to work, I am staying pretty busy.

Be Thankful for all that you have!!!!

Morning Exercises

So I still have to update you all for my trip to the Bahamas and my trip to Xian. Don't worry its coming, but I had to get this video up as I think it is important for all the world to see. I have told many people of the wonders of China, but unfortunately many people do not believe some of the stories I tell. So I was lucky enough to be able to take this video in Xian with my camera (yes it is a Matt G Original Production), it is some morning Tai Chi exercises that may seem a little unusual to those of you in the US (although I have been told that his technic is flawless...whatever that's supposed to mean).

14 Airports in 6 Days

Thus is my life over the past week. There are many people that have not visited 14 airports in their lifetime let alone in less then 1 week. If you're wondering why I did this, my younger sister got married in the Bahamas over this past weekend, so with some intentional stopping along the way (we stopped and had an overnight in Narita, Japan, then had an overnight in Baltimore before heading to the Bahamas) I got to roam around in various different airports. Yes you can get from Shanghai to the Bahamas without visiting different airports 14 times (note that I am not saying I visited 14 different airports, there were some repeats), but if you want to do some stopping along the way, it becomes harder. So as I write this I am back in Shanghai and right back into the groove of things. I actually got a good night sleep last night (I was pretty exhausted from my days of travelling into different time zones). Here are some interesting things you might also want to know:

-My first time in Japan was only a brief taste, but Japan is a pretty amazing place based on what I have experienced. I have an upcoming trip to Japan so will get to experience more of it and will get back to you on whether it is truly as amazing as I first thought it to be.

-I flew a total of 17,973 miles in the 6 days that I was flying, yes it really is a little insane if you think about it.

-I am still consistently disappointed with Washington Dulles airport, next to JFK and Shijiazhuang, it is one of the worst airports that I have visited in the world.

-I was most surprised by the Detroit airport during my trip. It seemed new and clean (at least the terminal that I was in) and it offered a lot of those good ole amenities that you look for in an airport (clean bathrooms, good shopping and food selection, functional airport space). Detroit is one of the worst cities in the US, but its airport is one that I would be happy to fly into in the future.

-US domestic airline carriers are some of the worst in the world and it will just keep getting worse. I avoided having to pay any baggage fees on my trips, but will most likely have to in the future. No meal service on domestic flights, no beverage service on domestic flights (except for NWA that they did have free beverages), no real in flight entertainment (at least not the good seatback entertainment you have on Asian airlines). By the way airline executives, by making consumers pay for the little things you are putting a bandaid over a very large wound, you should really look into ways of changing your businesses around to actually begin to make money instead of doing these short term not working solutions.

-I will talk more about the Bahamas in a later post so I will keep you updated.

Dawn of a New Day

As a part of my assignment here, my US Company has asked me and the other US people in China to begin to put in blog entries together about our experiences in China. As such, here is one of the entries that I put together:

People would say that I am a morning person, mostly because my alarm tends to sound sometime between 4:30 and 5 in the morning and I can jump out of bed without needing to hit the snooze and leave the house wide eyed without the aid of any caffeine.

It is at this hour that, in my opinion, Shanghai is at its best. My apartment is close to Shanghai's famous Century Park so many mornings I like to get up and go for a bike ride around the park. It is at this time that I get to experience a side of Shanghai that many people don't get to see…mostly because they aren't up until after 6:30 in the morning.

As I start my ride, the air is cool and thick in early November. I pass by the taxis lined up outside my apartment complex with a group of taxi drivers all out smoking and talking with each other hoping that their first customer of the morning will give them a good fare (maybe to one of the two airports here in town). As I get going I pass by the morning street sweepers, people in orange coats sweeping the sidewalks and streets with their brooms made of bamboo shoots and tree branches. A friend of mine once compared Shanghai to Disneyland because the trash and leaves that are on the ground one day are mysteriously gone the next…I guess this friend is never up as early as I am to see the army of orange coated people sweeping away the previous day's mess.

As I approach Century Park there is a group of ladies on the side of the road near a construction site cooking up some various different breakfast foods for all the workers as they will be coming to work within the hour. The pungent smells of their cooking radiates through the morning air. As I start my ride around Century Park there are groups of elderly Chinese coming together to start their morning Tai Chi, a very traditional internal martial art that is practiced for health reasons. As I go over bridges there are old men standing at the bridges yelling out at the top of the lungs, I am not sure exactly what this does, but I guess it brings some sort of balance to that person. I also pass by elderly people who are walking backwards and clapping their hands, it almost seems like they do this because they feel like maybe they can turn back the hands of time…and in the calm of the morning it really does feel like one could.

As I round the last turn I am met by a man on a motorbike with two freshly killed pigs strewn over the back of his bike delivering the pigs to the local market to be butchered and sold later this day. As I finish up my ride, the city seems to be finally waking up with various laborers heading off to work on their bikes and the sun cresting over the horizon. It's exciting to know that in these mornings I get to experience so much of China…before most people have even opened their eyes to start the day.

Election

So today millions of Americans are going to be heading out to vote. In fact if you are thinking of not going out to vote, think again and just get off your butt and do it.

Maybe you are not a fan of either candidates…well note that there are not just two candidates and as an American you can write in anyone's name.

Maybe you don't think your vote will count…I think after the incident in Palm Beach County Florida in the 2000 election proves that every vote counts. Even if you live in a State like Maryland that has voted for the same party since 1988 (but 1988 and 1984 were an exception because the democratic party candidates in these elections were awful and no one with a sound mind could vote for them), it still counts.

Finally, it is a privilege that Americans can vote in their next leader. There are places in the world (including the place that I live) that don't even have elections, the leaders are chosen by the leaders in power and if you have a bad government, the problem is just perpetuated. And don't forget that many people fought and died for this freedom. Its not just about filling out a ballot (or electronically pushing a button on a screen), it is more then that, so just get up and vote no matter how you feel about the election.