narom’s friendster blog

I sent this message out to all my friendster contacts, but just in case you didn’t get it, I thought I would post this on my friendster blog as well (just in case anyone actually reads this).

"Sorry for the mass message.  This is to let folks know that I have moved all my blogging activity to alivenotdead.com.

I won’t clutter things here, but it’s basically the company that my friends and I started in Hong Kong - a social networking site (like friendster or facebook or myspace) geared towards artists and their community of fans.

You’re welcome to go and check it out (and register!).  Add me as a friend if you do.  I’m signed up under "markmoran at gmail.com" and the full name "mark moran".  You can also view my profile directly at www.alivenotdead.com/?narom

In any case, if you have been reading my blog and wondering what happened to me since whenever it was that I last updated my friendster blog, now you know.  I keep my blog there pretty up-to-date.

Hope to see you there!

- Mark"

I’m a few weeks behind on blog updates but just wanted to post this up since I have a minute or two.

Currently
I’m at Zoka Coffee House next to Greenlake in Seattle, Washington,
U.S.A. I came here to get work done, but lo and behold I can’t do
anything right now. Gmail is down … but for some reason only on my
account. I can access my other gmail accounts, just not the one I need.
I keep seeing this:

Which
is annoying to no end.  I have a crap-load of work to do too.
Hopefully it will be back up soon.  But I’ve been waiting over an hour
so far.

This is a strong argument for me to switch to an email
client for my computer.  I just don’t know if I want to do that because
if my computer kaputs then I’m really out of luck.  So … do I want to
keep all my email on the web where a server might go out randomly …
or do I want to keep all my email on my computer, where my hard drive
my fry randomly.

Meh … Up until now this hasn’t been a problem so I’ll assume
this is an isolated incident. (besides, downloading the current cache
of emails on my gmail account would take the better part of a day, even
with a good connection.)

But .. enough about email.  What have I
been up to?  I went to the Bay Area for 2 days, now I’m in Seattle for
2 days.  Tomorrow I go to New York for 3 days, then L.A. for 1 day, the
Bay Area again for 1 day and then back to Hong Kong.  Very whirlwind.
I’m going to blog more stuff and put up pictures at a later date.  I
have too much stuff to do in the immediate future so you will have to
wait for the details.

Saturday I had arranged to meet up with X-Tina at the Jusco in Tai
Woo around 11 a.m., but I was running late in the morning so we
rescheduled for noon. After we met at the MTR station the first order
of business was lunch, so we grabbed some food at the McDonald’s above
the station.

X-Tina brought her daughter along with her too. It was kinda neat
pushing the stroller around and getting a feeling for what it might be
like to have a kid, but I came to realize something. Well, two things.
First, if you’re a guy and you’re pushing your friend’s baby around,
and your friend is female, most people are going to assume you’re the
father. Second, I have like ZERO energy when it comes to children. I
suppose once you have one you manage to find it, but I get tired just
standing still, let alone taking care of a child.

I realized that at some point in my life my energy levels severely
dropped. I remember as a child that running around wasn’t tiring at
all. And then at some point it suddenly became exhausting to be
upright. What happened there? Is it so gradual that you just don’t
notice it until it’s too late? Or is it just because i’m so out of
shape? Maybe a combination of the two?

In any case, as I was sitting next to two senior citizens (who had
apparently come to Jusco to fall asleep on benches for extended periods
of time), waiting for X-tina and her daughter to finish their "meal", I
realized that, at least this week, I’m in no shape to have any
Children. I suppose that’s a good thing since I wasn’t planning on
having any kids this week.

Maybe next week …
It also made me realize how important it is to stay consistent with my exercise.

Of course, I was super sore most of the weekend too, so that might have something to do with my lack of physical energy.

After we did some shopping (I bought a cheap, but good, DVD player,
as well as a crock pot and a rice cooker/steamer — which will both be
delivered Wednesday "some time" in the afternoon) we headed over to her
home where I saw her hubby and step-son again.

We did our Cantonese vocab session, which is basically where I bring
a list of the phrases that I really wish I knew over the past week and
she shows me how to say them in Cantonese, which I record on audio,
stick on my mp3 player, and listen to all day at work. By the next time
we meet in another week or so (this was the first time) I should have
most of the vocabulary memorized.

After that it was time for me to leave. I grabbed the MTR back home
and worked through most of the evening setting up my computer, DVD
player and various A/V equipment to try to get my home entertainment
system in peak, optimal shape.

One disturbing thing was that I saw the biggest cockroach of my life
sitting behind my computer. It was literally bigger than my thumb
(which ain’t no small thing) withOUT the antenna. I left home, walked
to the store, bought about a billion roach poison traps and the biggest
can of Raid I could find. When I got back it had moved to the kitchen
but the Raid pretty much made it the last kitchen he would ever visit.
I also put the little roach traps all over the place. DEATH TO ROACHES!

I took some video and a picture of it, but it was so gross i don’t even want to download the IMAGE of it into my computer.

Anyway, I went to bed kinda late that night and slept in the next morning.

Sunday was pretty relaxing. But mainly because my body was SO SORE
from Friday night’s return to wushu. I got a haircut, and went to eat
dinner at an Indian restaurant just down the street from my home. (Holy
Cow, it was delicious! — no pun intended.) I spent most of the evening
watching my American Idol downloads on my new computer / TV. Oh .. did
some laundry and cleaning too.
And that was pretty much my weekend. More and more I really like just
relaxing at home and not going out. Either I’m introverted or I’m
getting old … but this really is my little fortress of solitude, and
it’s nice to just be here by myself and doing my own thing.

I’m not trying to be anti-social.  It’s just the way things turn out when I stay home all the time.

There are actually no pictures from this entry.  I haven’t been
carrying my camera around as much as before and even when I do it’s
usually in my bag and I forget to bring it out.

Anyway, as I
mentioned before I went back (again) to wushu on Friday evening.  After
the previous week’s observation of Pat’s class I was feeling like I
should get back in to gear with some training so I, as well as Stephen,
joined in on the teen wushu class at Li Fai’s school. 

Li Fai
was actually there too, participating in the class which was being lead
by Liu Yan.  Stephen and Pat did much more working out than I did (I
guess one of the benefits to being thin(ner) is that no matter how out
of shape you are, you’ll never be as out of shape as someone who has an
additional 40 pounds of fat on their body.  But I guess I managed to
hang in okay.  A few times my ankle or knee would give me a little bit
of a reminder that I’m not 20 years old anymore so I’d sit out, but I
would try to make use of that time by stretching or doing wall sits.

I
got to do a bit of nanquan too.  It was a bit embarassing when Li Fai
was using me as an example when talking to this nanquan girl.  Yeah, I
have like 10 years of nanquan practicing under my belt (give or take),
but when it’s your first day back at wushu after more than a couple
months, the only thing I felt like I could be an example for was a
"Let’s see who can throw up the fastest while practicing wushu"
contest. 

It usually happens like this.  At first my muscles
have atrophied and I don’t have the core strength anymore … so all my
waist power and stance work is shot to heck.  After a couple months
there is more snap in my footwork and I can generate more power in my
movements, connecting things together, but right now I’m just happy if
I can hold a horse stance for more than 15 seconds.  Even wu bu quan is
a major challenge right now, so for the time being I’m really going to
be focusing on building up more core strength and leg strength,as well
as flexibility.  That’s what will help my wushu the quickest at this
point in the game.

I was able to push out a lot of sit ups (5
sets of 20) and back lifts (4sets of 20) at the end of class.  That
wasn’t too bad considering my complete lack of core strength right now,
but afterwards it hurt so bad that I couldn’t even cough without having
an abdominal cramp.

After we hobbled out of wushu all we could
think about was food. So we grabbed a taxi to Fat Angelo’s off the
escalators and partook of lots of dense carbs.  It was just what I
needed.  I was severely out of it after that class.  I wasn’t sore yet
(that would be a couple more days yet) but I was certainly "out of
it".  Sort of the feeling you get when your arm is asleep when you wake
up because you slept on it.  Then you try to move it around and you
look like Ed Sullivan introducing the Beatles.

Hmm .. I wonder how many people reading this will actually know who Ed Sullivan is …

Anyway,
after we ate I went over to Pat and Stephen’s (and Boon’s at the
moment) to check out their Wii game console.  It was pretty fun.  We
played some Tennis, bowling and boxing.  It helped me get my mind off
my body’s lack of energy and also kept me moving, which probably helped
a bit with the soreness.

After a few hours of hanging out with
them I decided it was time to go home, so I grabbed a cab down the hill
to Kennedy Town (or "Gi nei dei shing" for you Hong Kongers) and called
it a (very painful) night.

Of course, now that I’ve started
again, I really have to work to make sure I stay consistent.  I don’t
have to train once a day like I was doing in China, but at least a few
times a week to maintain would be a good idea.  If not wushu, then at
least go to the gym to do a bit of strength and stretching work.  But
yeah … I guess we’ll see what happens.  Right now I just want to
enjoy the process of doing wushu with friends again.  After that we’ll
see what develops …

Over the weekend I did a lot of catching up on my sleep. Friday
night I got about 13 hours of sleep and Saturday night I got another 12
hours of sleep. It did WONDERS. Saturday I spent the afternoon in the
office working.
Sunday I spent the afternoon cleaning up my home and also bought a TV
and microwave for my home. The TV is nice as it has VGA-in as well as
the standard other inputs. It’s a flat screen and is 20", which is a
perfect size considering the size of my living room.

In the evening Boon came by and looked at some units in my building
and met with Bon, my property agent. There was a really nice unit on
the other side of the building on the 43rd floor. GREAT view of the
water and sunset and while it would get some summer sun-heat, you can
actually see the fireworks from HK Disneyland around 8 p.m. every
night. It was even the same price as mine! I learned from Boon’s
experience that I should/could have haggled a bit more on my price, or
I could have held out for a better unit.

But I don’t mind my place at all, and it’s nice to have a home. Pat
and Stephen’s couch isn’t a bad place to stay for a few days, but any
longer than a week and you start to need your privacy.

Boon and I also got some dinner nearby and then he grabbed the Tram
back to Central. I went back to my home and around 9:30 p.m. fell
asleep. I think the benefit of catching up on all that sleep is that my
body adjusted itself and went back on a good schedule. So I went to bed
at 9:30 and woke up at 7:00 a.m. the next morning. I even got in to the
gym to do some exercise before eating breakfast (at 8:30 even!) and
heading in to the office by 9:30.

I did a few things during the week (besides buy the TV and microwave) which helped me settle in to my home a bit.

First, with Christina’s help, I was able to get my internet and
cable TV hooked up on Wednesday morning. I can now catch up on American
Idol and The Amazing Race. Isn’t technology wonderful?

On Thursday morning I had a new desktop computer delivered to my
home. I have it on during the day, but thanks to LogMeIn.com I can
access it from my laptop at work and I have it downloading bittorents
and doing miscellaneous tasks while I’m busy at work. By the time I get
home I have my programs downloaded and prepared. I also hooked up all
my hard drives (except the one I use for work) to the desktop so I can
access all my media and files from just about anywhere.

For example, let’s say I’m at work and Pat says "Hey Mark, could you
burn me a copy of Inyork Wong practicing Long Fist at Wushu West in
2000? Just like that I can FTP it from my home computer to my server
and download it in a jiffy. I could do file transfer too, but I just
haven’t set it up yet.

The best thing is that I have a wireless keyboard and mouse and my
TV is also my monitor, so I can relax on my couch, with my feet on my
footrest, the keyboard in my lap and the mouse by my side, doing work
on the computer in the most comfortable position possible. I’m quite
happy with the set up. And as soon as I get a few last pieces of
furniture in my home, I will take some pictures so you all can see what
my place looks like.

During the week my sleeping hour got later and later. Monday night I
went to bed at 10:30. Tuesday night at 11:30. Wednesday night at 12:30.
by Friday I was sleeping at 2:00 a.m. It was looking like I would need
the weekend to recover from the week again.

Oh, another milestone this week — my return (AGAIN!) to wushu
practice. It’s been 2 months (since just before Peter visited me in
Shanghai) since I’ve practiced wushu and it was … well … painful.

But I’ll write about that one in another entry.  In the meantime, here are some photographs that I took this week.

Construction worker as only seen in China and Hong Kong

The Police Station featured in the film "Sha Po Lang" which I pass everyday on my way to work.

Inside the Tram

The Tram at night

Pat when he’s hungry

This is Pat’s nutritious meal.  This is also what happens when a man doesn’t know how to order food for delivery.

And this is what happens after the sugar high wears off

Our Chinese editor, Siu But Dim

Stephen working hard

When I got out of the Airport Express with my 4 pieces of luggage I
decided to just take a taxi straight home and unload all my stuff
before heading in to the office.

When I got to work Boon was
there! For those of you who don’t remember, Boon used to work at Design
Reactor and Rotten Tomatoes as a designer, and he’s moved to Hong Kong
to work for AliveNotDead as our Creative Director. It was nice to see a
familiar face again.

Work was good.  It was work — not much to write about.  I stayed later since I got in later, and then went home and crashed.

The
next day work went pretty normally but the evening was the interesting
part. Earlier in the week Pat had found the new location for Li Fai’s
wushu school, which turned out to be just down the street from our
office, about 5 minutes away. But what is REALLY interesting, is that
the coach for the wushu classes is none other than Liu Yan from the
Beijing Wushu Team. Here are a few photos in case you don’t remember
who I’m talking about …

Yeah .. he was a little drunk towards the end of that night. Those were
taken in the summer of 2005 in Beijing, just a month or two before he
left for Hong Kong.

Pat had talked with Li Fai about classes. It
turns out that they don’t have any adult wushu classes — only
kids/teens wushu and adult taiji. But he was persistent and she said
that he could drop by the Friday evening class to train and talk to the
coach. Of course I wanted to go as well.

I didn’t actually
realize about the training part though until Pat came into the office
with his bag of wushu clothes and shoes. Just as well since my left
ankle and knee are being problematic this week.

We headed over
to the school and Pat warmed up while I sat there for a bit. Liu Yan
showed up and we chatted with him for a while. The class was fairly
standard and the level of the kids/teens in the class was around lower
intermediate. I was mainly impressed with Pat. For someone who hasn’t
trained more than a few times in the last 5 years he did really well.
I’m sure it was quite painful for him, but it was still pretty darn
good. He did a lot more than I would have my first time back to wushu

Li Fai on the left, Liu Yan in the pink

Li Fai’s Sign Board

Patrick stretching with some kids

Patrick’s back and Liu Yan on the right

After
class we talked with Liu Yan about classes and pricing and then we
talked to Li Fai as well. We’re hoping to work something out, but I’ll
refrain from giving details until we actually know what we’re going to
be doing.

Probably one of the biggest pieces of news is that Liu
Yan isn’t the only Beijing Team Member teaching at Li Fai’s school. I
saw a DVD for sale on their counter that had Liu Yan on it .. and I saw
another DVD with someone else who looked really familiar. I swore I had
seen her before so I asked Liu Yan. It turns out it was (drumroll
please …..) Liu Juan! That’s right! Blast from the past! But she
looks older now and not so much like the little, round-faced wushu girl
she used to be. For those of you who don’t know who she is, just head
to Raffi’s website, beijingwushuteam.com, and she’s the girl in the title image in the empty stance.

After
class Pat hobbled to the 7-11 to get a drink and then caught a cab
home. I did the same and spent some time in the evening attempting to
unpack, but really all I did was watch some "Sliders", copy over a
bunch of files between my various hard drives, and then go to sleep.

And
boy did I sleep. I ended up sleeping over 12 hours. I really, really
needed it because I hadn’t been getting nearly enough sleep over the
past week or so.

The flight was delayed, but I still managed to arrive at a
relatively decent time. The main problem was the line for the taxi.
Granted it goes relatively fast, but it was REALLY long this time. I
ended up waiting about 40 minutes for the taxi. I guess if you factor
in the taxi waiting time, then it’s almost the same as flying to Pudong
airport. If I took the bus from Pudong for 20 rmb then it’s actually
cheaper from Pudong.

Anyway, I had a list of things I wanted to
do before I left the next day so I had the taxi driver take me to the
HongMei Lu shopping place (he wasn’t too thrilled since I guess he
waited 2 hours to pick up his fare — but then I waited almost an hour
to get the taxi so I could have complained as well … ) where I picked
up a new laptop bag or two and then grabbed another cab back home.

I
was hoping to get my hair cut but the person I usually see wasn’t
working so I opted out. I went home and started a bit of packing, but
decided to go get some DVDs and food. But whoops! I had locked myself
out of my apartment. I asked Zhu Wen Jun to come help me out which she
was nice enough to do.

When I got back inside she watched "The
Protege", Dan’s new movie, which I caught glances of from the desk
where I was working. After that she went to sleep and I did some more
packing.

Zhu Wen Jun and my neighbor Sherry

In
the morning I did even more packing and then was picked up by the taxi
around 10:30 for my flight out of PuDong. It was actually a great
flight. Customs was super quick with no lines at all, and my flight had
a total of 19 people on it. I slept most of the flight, but it was neat
having it so empty.

I got back to Hong Kong without too much trouble, but again I’ll keep the next location for another entry …

We arrived, safe and sound, at Jinan International Airport and
grabbed a taxi to the Shan Yin Da Jiu Dian (the taxi driver laughed
when he saw it and said "it’s not a da jiu dian! It’s a xiao jiu
dian!". Waiting for us in the lobby was Lu Laoshi (a.k.a. Wang Wei’s
uncle) who helped us check in and get settled in our rooms. He helped
us talk to the restaurant people and also confirmed that practice was
at 8:30 the next morning in the wushu guan. He had to take off for a
meeting so he left us to our own devices for the evening.

The first thing we did was grab some dinner in the hotel restaurant.
What did we eat? Northern food, of course! Beijing Roast Duck and Sweet
and Sour Pork. It was delicious!

Sweet and Sour Pork

Tiffany at dinner

While we were finishing up our meal I got a text message from Ding
Hai Juan who said her and Yuan Feng Ling would come over to say hello.
I met them in the lobby of the hotel and then the four of us went to
the grocery store down the street to pick up some things for Tiffany
(shampoo, tea, etc.). Then we grabbed a cab to go to the Bank of China
ATM to get some money for Tiffany but she was having problems with her
card. (But that is something I’ll save for later in this entry … )

It was nice hanging out with those two again. They’re super nice. It
made me regret that my trip was so quick since they invited me to go to
a hot springs over the weekend. Ah well …

Ding Hai Juan next to the ATM Machine

Yuan Feng Ling

After that it was back to the hotel where we spent a while looking
at wushu videos but then they had to go back to the dorms and Tiffany
and I had to get ready to hit the sack (in our separate rooms, of
course).

The next day we got up early, grabbed some breakfast downstairs
(yummy bing) and then went to the wushu guan. We showed up just a bit
after class started so Tiffany warmed up on the side and then joined
in. Lu Laoshi came in and talked to the coach (who’s name I never
remember) about Tiffany and then had to take off for a meeting (he goes
to a lot of meetings). I watched the class which was mostly basics and
nandu, and I took a lot of pictures too.

Athletes doing basics

Ding Hai Juan watches Tiffany practice after class

After class we were told that they were having some big-wigs come to
the afternoon class so Tiff wouldn’t be able to train. We were also
invited to Lu Laoshi’s for dinner at 5:30 so we decided to just come
and watch class and then head to dinner right after.

For lunch we grabbed some bing-type-stuff in the street food, but my
favorite food item was no longer there, which was sort of a bummer. But
it was still yummy. We took the food back to the hotel to eat in our
rooms. We also rested a while before the afternoon class.

Making delicious food

Tiffany is very very hungry!

I went first and showed up in the wushu guan to find just a few kids training and not much else.  The kid’s coach
(who used to train the women’s team) came in and said "Hey Mark! You’re
back!" to which I thought "She remembers my name???". She went on to
tell me that the team was training in the weight room up the hill so I
said thanks and made my way to where they were.

After a while Tiffany showed up too. It turned out that they had
rescheduled the big-wig class observation for another time so they were
working on physical conditioning for the afternoon. Tiffany quickly
went back to the hotel and changed into her workout clothes to join in.
Yang Laoshi was there for the afternoon class and they put all the
athletes through their paces. Lots of strength conditioning, stance
conditioning, sprinting, stretching … it was nice to watch. And, of
course, I took a bunch of pictures.

Tiffany uses chakra to keep herself from falling

Nice drop stance.  Believe it or not she’s 17!

Sprints conditioning on the hill

More sprinting

Stretching on the wall

Stretching on the wall

   
The girls stretching on the wall

 
Guys stretching on the wall

Athletes listening to the coach after class

Listening to the coach

After all of that we had some time so we went back to the hotel so
that Tiffany could change before dinner. Then it was back to the School
to meet up with Lu Laoshi for dinner. On the way to his place we ran
into his daughter, Danny (Dan Ni), who keeps looking older and older
each time I see her. She had a new haircut and it made her look like
she was 17. She’s actually 12 though. And now she’s taller than me too.
When I first met her in 2005 she didn’t even come up to my chin. Time
sure does fly.

We went to their home and partook of Lu Laoshi’s cooking. He really
made a ton of food — way more than we could have eaten between the
four of us (his wife was working late so didn’t join us) and we spent
some time looking at his collection of tea pots, flipping through old
photo albums and listening to a bit of Danny’s piano playing.

Danny at dinner

Another picture of Danny

Tons of food

Danny playing piano

Danny and Tiffany discussing Naruto

Lu Laoshi

Around 9:00 we said goodbye and then grabbed a taxi to another Bank
of China to try out the ATM. This one didn’t work either. It turned out
later that Tiffany’s card had a stop-hold put on it. Here is the lame
part:

Before she left the U.S. she called her credit card company and told
them to put a travel alert on her card since she was going to be in
China. They did so. Then after she was in China and used the card a few
times they apparently put a stop-hold on it. She called them from Jinan
and asked why there was a stop-hold. They said it’s because of activity
from China and said that she should put a travel alert on her card. She
told them she had. They said "Oh, right. I see that here."

Long story short, the travel alert doesn’t actually do anything
because the computer is the one that determines whether or not to
stop-hold the account. And it does it on pre-defined parameters (i.e.
lots of charges from China) without having a human check before hand,
and without checking for travel alerts. The whole purpose of the travel
alert, it would seem, is just to pacify people into thinking that they
are doing something pro-active about their card. In fact, the travel
alert doesn’t do anything at all. Even if you have one on there, but
still charge things from China, they will put a hold on your card.

Isn’t that lame?

Tiffany asked them "So, even with a travel alert, once my card is
okay to use, it’s just going to get another hold on it once I start
using it again?" and they said "Yes, most likely".

I guessed I lucked out because my Credit Union calls me whenever
they have "suspicious activity" (which is pretty much whenever I use
it) and since I have my skype-in number forwarding to my HK or China
cell phone I am able to tell them that the expenses are legitimate
before they put a hold on it.

Anyway, she found that all out in the evening when we got back to
the hotel and she called her bank. I spent the evening watching some
"Sliders" on my computer and then went to bed.

The next morning I slept through breakfast and then got up and went
to the wushu guan to watch the practice. A little bitter-sweet since I
was leaving after that for Shanghai. I got some good footage and this
time they were doing more forms practice which was nice to watch.

Crazy felxibility

Tiffany gets stretched

Ding Hai Juan

Splits pose

The athletes

After class Tiffany and I grabbed a cab for the technology center /
computer store that I visited last trip up. We had 3 missions: First we
needed to use the ATM machine (now that her card was unblocked), second
we needed to pick up a power strip for her to use, and third we had to
go get some bing-type food in the street behind the building.

All missions were accomplished without too much fuss and we left
with some food in hands back to the hotel where I quickly ate and
packed for my trip back to Shanghai.

Delicious Bing-type food

Very crowded food alley

Tiffany walked me down to the lobby and I grabbed a taxi to the
airport. I also spoke quickly with Lu Laoshi before I left and thanked
him for everything. My flight from the airport was delayed so I sat in
the terminal with my laptop and wireless modem chatting on trillian
with various people. Thank goodness I had the extra battery.

I was only back in Shanghai for a day, but I’ll save that for the next entry…

You can view more pictures from this entry here

I arrived in Shanghai around 9:00 p.m.-ish, made my way through
customs and grabbed a cab for my apartment. Waiting for me there was
Tiffany who, as you know, has been staying at my place while she’s
training with Yang Laoshi and Zhu Wen Jun. We caught up for a bit and I
watched a bit of my downloaded torents on the computer.

The next
day I went to watch her practice. The school had moved the wushu
athletes to a new wushu guan, which is just across from the rhythmic
gymnastics hall. It’s nice to see all the athletes in one place
training together. It’s more like the courtyard scene from Shaolin
Temple. I observed Tiffany’s practice for a while and talked with Yang
Laoshi a little bit.

After class it was our intention to do some
shopping before we had to head out to Jinan the next day, but after we
got back to our place, ordered some lunch and settled in a bit we ended
up just chilling out at the apartment most of the afternoon. In the
evening we did end up going shopping on nanjing lu at one of the
bargain places and we both bought a bunch of stuff from Jack the
jewelry guy. I took Matt Wong, Matt’s aunt and a few other friends
there so that guy probably really likes me by now. He gives me good
deals, at least.

After that it was really pouring outside so we
walked a bit and found a taxi to meet up with Tam at the Korean BBQ
place. But the place had closed down! So we spent the next hour or two
looking for a new all-you-can-eat-meat type of place. We finally found
a great one not too far from my old home and got our fill of
all-you-can-eat tenpanyaki. It was awesome.

After that Tiff and Tam went clubbing so I headed home and went to bed.

Earlier
in the day I had called Lu Laoshi in Jinan and he said that Sunday
wasn’t good for us to go up north. It turned out that they all got back
to work on that day and were super busy in meetings, so we rescheduled
our flight to leave on Monday instead. That meant we had an extra day
for shopping!

Sunday morning the three of us woke up late,
missing a lunch appointment with Zhu Wen Jun at Ding Tai Fung. We
headed up to Hong Mei Lu for some shopping, but everyone was quite
hungry so we deicded to get some food first and then come back.

Ding
Tai Fung wasn’t open yet so we grabbed a quick bite at a Korean
restaurant and THEN went to Ding Tai Fung (when you gotta have it, you
gotta have it). Dumplings were good as always. Then it was back to the
Hong Mei Lu shopping place where I picked up some luggage and a few
odds and ends. Tiffany and Tam also picked up some stuff.

After
that it was back to home for some TV and shut-eye. My internet was
problematic the whole time I was in Shanghai too. I tried skyping my
mom for her birthday but couldn’t get through, and attachments to email
gave me problems too. Not sure why, but since I’m not really in
Shanghai that much I didn’t look in to it.

The next day it was
time to leave for Shandong. We spent some time packing and then caught
a taxi to Hongqiao airport where we boarded our afternoon flight to
Jinan. I’ll write more about that in the next entry.

Oh, and
since most of my pictures were taken in Jinan I don’t have anything to
show here except this quick one I snapped in the cab on the way to the
airport …

Tiffany in the cab on the way to the airport

During the rest of the week my illness continued to slowly improve.
I spent pretty much the whole week either at the office or waiting for
furniture to be delivered. Ikea was supposed to come on Wednesday,
which was written on two different receipts I had from them, but for
some reason it was put in their computer for Thursday. So I had to wait
two days for the furniture to be delivered.

It was worth it though. It’s nice to have things to fill up my home.
My favorite item was the table, which I really like. But since it was
delivered on Thursday and I left Friday for my trip to China I didn’t
have much time to enjoy the new stuff.

Thursday night I was invited to Dan’s for a poker night thing with
the guys, but since I was leaving the next day and had just gotten all
my furniture I bowed out and went home to arrange my stuff and pack for
my trip instead. Sounds like they had fun though, but it’s probably
good that I did the "responsible" thing and took care of what I needed
to take care of.

On Tuesday I went to the China Travel Service at the Macau Ferry
Terminal building. It was quite convenient. I got a double entry China
visa and my tickets for Shanghai. I picked up the visa on Thursday with
Pat on an outing to get some Yoshinoya for lunch.

The other highlight is that a lot of my main work for jetli.com’s bilingualization was finished up which you can see at jetli.com.
I spent a good amount of time cleaning up the server too, which had
some really old, unused files on it dating back from version 2.0 of the
website.

Besides that nothing major happened. On Friday I caught a flight
from Hong Kong International Airport (no Shenzhen this time around) for
Shanghai in the evening, but I’ll write about that trip in another
entry …

Sorry, no pictures for this entry as I wasn’t carrying
my camera around with me much during this time. But there will be lots
more photos from my trip to China in the next few entries …