Happy Easter!!!

While this has become really contrived and commercialized holiday, it is actually nothing like what most people think it to be.

The most important thing to remember is that the Tomb WAS EMPTY!!! What an AMAZING God we have!!!

Happy Easter!!!

A Union of Awesomeness

I'll be the first to admit that I bought The Boxer Rebellion's new CD, Union, on Itunes mostly because it was $5.99, but it did help that all the reviews were really positive about the album. Prior to buying, I listened to the first single released, Evacuate, and this helped to secure my decision to buy the album.

So what do I think of it, well let me modify a quote from the movie Bolt by saying, Union is awesome….Union is soooo awesome…Union is beyond awesome….Union is B-Awesome!!! (By the way, you know you are a 28 year old parent when you are quoting from kids movies.) Yes friends, this is one of the best albums I have purchased over the past couple of years…hands down. For $5.99 I wasn't expecting much (click here to see why the album is sold at $5.99), but what I got was a masterpiece. Yes there are definitely some flaws in certain tracks and certain tracks that are not anything to jump for joy over, but overall this is a GREAT album.

As for specific tracks, the album starts off with not just 3 or 4 great tracks; the first 6 tracks are really solid. With track 4, "Soviets," being the big standout in my mind, the other 5 tracks (including the first single, track 3 "Evacuate") are not that far behind. "Soviets" is one of those tracks that I could set Itunes on repeat for 100 listens and still not be tired of it…it's that good. Out of the 11 tracks there are just 2 that miss the mark, track 7 "The Gospel of Goro Adachi" (a little too Radioheady for me) and Track 9 "Forces" (something just not right about this), these two just don't seem to flow as well as the other tracks. They aren't bad songs; they just don't have the feel of this album. Many of the tracks including "Soviets," "Splitting Fire," "Semi Automatic" and "Silent Move" build up into climatic masterpieces, which adds to the greatness of the album.

Being that this is a band that not many people have heard of, I guess I feel obliged to compare them to a popular band. I think I would say they are a cross between U2 (the Joshua Tree Days) and Radiohead (the good, not so weird Radiohead). What else can I say, the album is not perfect, but it is definitely the best in the past 2 or so years…4.5 out of 5 gerkens pickles.

As a note aside from the CD (some history here), the Boxer Rebellion was a violent anti-foreign, anti-religious movement in China by the "Righteous Harmonious Fists" between 1898 and 1901. They were responding to the growing influence of capitalism, imperialistic influences and missionaries in China and how they felt that these influences were not good for China. Anyway, the rebellion ended, but not after many deaths in China. Not sure if the Band named themselves after this, but I would imagine it definitely had some influences.

What a Great Run

While the National Champion has already been crowned, I feel like I just have to touch on 'Nova's run in the tourney. First, for anyone who doesn't see the benefit of a tourney (i.e, the same organization that puts on the basketball tourney, the NCAA), 'Nova showed what a team that not only plays hard, but plays great can do in a 5 game stretch. Yes, they are from a major conference and yes they were dangling around the top 10 for much of the end of the season, but Villanova certainly does not have the same resources available to them like a UNC, UCONN or MSU. While it was a great team, it was still a huge underdog (even in some games like UCLA and Duke), yet they were scrappy and gritty and with good execution, they were able to make it to the Final Four…WOW…the Final Four…AMAZING. I never thought I would be able to see the day when my boys made it to the Final Four, in fact they may not ever do it again (of course I have faith that if Wright sticks around, we would have a good chance sometime in the future), so I had to cherish this year as a year that the boys did something special.

Thanks for the Great Run and the Fun times in following it (by the way, next time if you could make sure I am in the US, I would appreciate).

Orioles Precition

Even though I said I would be boycotting MLB, I retracted my boycott and am going back to my annual tradition of trying to predict how the O's are going to do this year. Last year I predicted that they would go 59 and 103, they won 9 more games then I thought they would ending the season at 68-93 which really confuses me since it appears they only played 161 games last year instead of the standard 162 games; I guess there was a rained out game that was never made up again, which is probably good so that they wouldn't lose again.

This year I am going out on a limb. They exceeded my expectations last year and while it would be easy for me to continue to predict that they will have a losing season (would be their 13th in a row), I am going to go out on a limb. In order to prevent a losing season the Orioles would have to win 81 games. I know that they basically don't have a starting pitcher capable of winning more then 10 games, but I believe that something good will happen this season. They won't make the playoffs or anything that great, but I think they can get over .500. This year's prediction, 83 – 79; yes that would be a winning season and good jumping off point for the future. I can't wait, I will be back in the US for most of the season and hope to be watching the birds win it up (over half the time).

Nanjing Trip

My family and I are trying to fit in as much travelling as possible before we leave China. This past weekend we took a day trip out to Nanjing. It was a pretty packed day as there is a lot to see in Nanjing, but our day started out at 5:15am when we left our house to go to the Shanghai train station. After about a 2 hour train ride to Nanjing, the family and I left the Nanjing train station and took the #1 tourist bus to head to the touristy area on Nanjing.

After a bus ride in which our bus driver was the least aggressive bus driver I have ever had here in China. To put it in perspective, the driver would never try to go through a yellow light, he would stop at bus stops and read his text messages on his phone and he never once tried to make an effort to get us to our destination with enthusiasm. This is the complete opposite of any bus driver that I have had in Shanghai, so it was a little weird to be riding in this bus.

We started our day by going to Sun Yat-sen's Mausoleum and the touristy area that is around the mausoleum. The Mausoleum (as seen in the picture) has a bunch of stairs that leads you from the entrance area all the way up to the main mausoleum area. My kids were…unusually…excited about climbing all the stairs. This ended up being a great thing because they were really excited about all the activities we had for the day.

After walking around for a bit, we headed back to town for some lunch. We found a place that looked to be similar to Shanghai's Xintiandi, so we assumed we would be able to find a good meal. We ate at a place called Nihero, which is a Cantonese Style restaurant, for Shanghai it was a reasonably priced meal, overall it was a good restaurant…not the best…but good.

With full stomachs we headed over to the Nanjing Massacre Museum. At the time we were not sure if it was a good idea to go to see this exhibit with full stomachs, but it ended up being a good idea. Both my wife and I thought that we had heard that the museum was not for the faint of heart, but it was actually a really well done memorial for the people who died and was my favorite part of the trip. The tone of the place was obviously solemn, but the displays had a lot of taste and the exhibits were really thought through. The Chinese had a chance to do this well or really make it cheesy and overdo it, in this case they did it very well and tastefully.

After seeing the museum, we went back towards the train station and walked around the Xuanwu Lake and Park right outside of the train station before hopping on our train back to Shanghai. Overall, Nanjing is a really cool city with some neat and well done things to say…definitely worth the day trip from Shanghai.