The Race Is On!

Here it is, the home stretch.

31 DAYS TO OKTOBERFEST!

Okay, so I'm a little excited. The beer's been announced. Button unveiled. Schedule's up. Who's in this year? Anyone planning on going to the tapping? I'll be landing in Minneapolis on Wednesday (barring another Northwest "issue"), getting to LaCrosse on Friday. Current attendees include:

1. Myself
2. Kelsey
3. Derek
4. Nicole
5. Mike
6. Chad
7. Liz
8. Cox
9. Jaw
10. (your name here)

So what are you all waiting for? With a guest list like that, you know it's gonna be one helluva party! Parade starts at 10 am Saturday, sitting at the usual location, across from (the former) Loving Fun.

SARs In Action!

No, not SARS, the deadly virus. SARs, or Special Administrative Regions. Those funky city-state ex-country, ex-colonial ambition type thingys that Hong Kong and Macau have become. I know it's been a while since I've delivered the sort of pictures and adventures you require, so I tried to make up for it.

I made the trek down to Hong Kong on Friday, to hang out with Dave and Paul. Pretty low key night Friday, just some dinner in Lan Kwai Fong. Saturday morning, way too early for me, we got up and decided to visit Victoria Peak. Yes, I've done this before, but this time, we walked. And walked. And walked some more. I believe we walked the Peak Trail, which (obviously) goes to the peak. It starts in Pok Fu Lam Country Park, which is on the west side of the island. It's up a steep climb, and my legs still hurt on Monday.

This is where we started, at the reservior. The anvil thing in the middle is the Peak. As you can see, it was a pretty hazy day.
Dave and Paul ready for the climb.
I don't have many pics from the climb up the hill, as we were nearly running (up in half an hour!). But here's a peak pic. You can hardly make out Kowloon.
We came down on the Hong Kong side of the peak, kind of running with the tram. There were some nice little waterfalls and some really nice houses up there.
After getting to the bottom, and landing in Central, we walked over to Causeway Bay (itself quite a hike) and just shopped around. Around 4 pm, Dave and I took a jetfoil over to Macau.
Saturday night we did a tour of the casinos of Macau. Right now, there's really only one Vegas style casino, the rest are old school, Monaco type. But the growth in Macau is nothing short of astounding (like most of Asia), and there are at least 5 casinos opening up in the next year. I lost $300 at the first place, but made it all up at the last. We're talking HK$ here, so around US$36. I'm definitely NOT a high roller.
There's only so much gambling one can take, so Sunday was a day of sightseeing. Despite being slightly larger than a postage stamp, Macau has a rich heritage and lots of stuff to see. The Cantonese/Portuguese mix is facinating. The highest point in Macau (Macau describes an SAR and a city) is Guia Fortress and lighthouse. It was right behind our hotel, so that was first on the itinerary.
It offers some amazing views, like of a mint green church.
In the fort there's a little church that's being restored. Again, a interesting mix of Christianity, Portuguese, and Cantonese. This theme will continue for much of the day.
Walking down into Macau (city) we come across the Ruins of St Paul's Cathedral. Supposedly built in the late 1500s, it was ruined by a typhoon and fire in the mid 1800s. All that's left is the facade and some tombs.
There's also the Church of St Dominic's, which is pretty cool looking, both day and night.
Following the culture portion of this excursion, we found Macau Tower, the 10th largest free standing tower in the world! Yay! No, the tower's not crooked. Just an optical illusion from the camera.
Anyways, the tower is pretty much pointless, I mean, who cares about a 338m tall tower? We did go up it, of course. And the tower does have some cool events. One, you can sky jump from it, which is kind of like a bungee jump (which is coming next year). Also, you can walk outside, tethered to a safety cord. The coolest thing though, is the mast climb. Yes, you can climb to the top of the mast! No, we didn't do that.
The hill in the middle of the picture is the Guia Fortress. The large building under construction is the addition to the Casino Lisboa.
That be China! The bridge at the bottom of the picture connects Macau to Taipa Island, which is still part of Macau SAR.
After the tower we taxied it down to the south side of Coloane Island for lunch at Fernandos. There were some nice beach front bungaloes down there. It's relatively remote, and would be a great place to relax.
To finish of our time in Macau, we did a little go-karting. They don't drive any better on the track than they do on the street. I got t-boned pretty hard. There are brakes for a reason!
After that it was head back to China. The ceremonial border gate.
And this was waiting in line at Macau immigration. If Macau was this bad, just imagine what the Chinese immigration lines were like!!
After all that it was a 2.5 hour bus ride back to Guangzhou.

Tuesday I head to Nanjing for work and then to Shanghai on Wednesday evening until Saturday evening. Unfortunately my cousin Rebecca is back in Canada this week, so we won't be able to hang out this time. Maybe later. Hope you all enjoyed this journey.

Feel Quite the Cheese?

I'm trying to book some travel in China. I'm here, might was well go see stuff, right? I figure, not many people come to China, but even less go to the far western edge of China, so I would really like to see it. In the Xinjiang Autonomous Region, there are pretty much two major cities, Urumqi and Kashgar. This area is less Chinese, and more Mongol and Kazakh. It's different, and that's why I would like to go. Kashgar (or Kashi in Pinyin) is further west, closer to the *stan countries.
The best site I've found for inter-China travel is Ctrip.com. It's got reviews, and flight searching, and is pretty helpful. But their English translation leaves a little to be desired. When searching for a Kashgar flight, this is the page I received.
It's a bit difficult to read, and the flight times are completely wrong (negative flying hours?). But whatever. This is a website anyone coming to visit should check out.

Given that a trip like that is quite a bit of adventure, as well as over USD $1k in flights, I think I'll spend the upcoming weekend in Macau. That is, if I don't have to travel somewhere for work. Macau is kind of like Hong Kong, in that it's a Special Administrative Region. It has it's own democracy, money, and customs. It's a bit of a gambling haven, the Las Vegas of China, if you will.

Oh, and for those of you who don't read Chad's blog, he got herpes. Or shingles, whatever that is. He's back in the states too. I think Derek will beat me back to the country by a couple of weeks too.

My Space, Shmy Space

So, what kind of person would I be without a MySpace page? Well, I do have one, and it's all riced up. I typically identify myself with the digerati, hopping aboard the latest technology and websites before they become mainstream. Well, I was certainly behind the times on this MySpace thing. For those of you under 30, you already know what MySpace is. Those of you over 30, just watch the news about how MySpace endagers the youth of today.

I guess I just see MySpace as a blog with little to no content. That doesn't mean I won't take part in it, of course. The most intersting feature of MySpace is obviously the friends part. You can create of list of others that you link to. Think of a really big Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon game. The people that have found me lately blow my mind. I mean, no offense, but they're perfect candidates for the Seven Year Game*. And that's what makes it great! It's kind of like keeping in touch with people you haven't seen in over a decade.

*for those who don't know the Seven Year Game, it's where you and a friend or two try to think of the people you haven't thought of in at least seven years. Try to remember what you can't remember. Not so easy sometimes. Mike and I once did this nearly the entire way from Minneapolis to Madison.

Required Update

So the flight back to GZ was bearable. But just barely. I had a regular coach seat, no exit row, from Minneapolis to Tokyo. That was rough. I'm a tall dude, and those little seats just don't work. I think my leg is still sore.

Of course, no transpacific flight is complete without some drama, right? This time, I think someone died on the plane. Okay, maybe not died, but something was going on. Somewhere over Alberta, Canada, they page the entire plane asking if there's a doctor on board and if so, they should head to row 61. Then they ask for anyone with medical training at all. Lots of flight attendents back there too. Not sure what happened, but it all died down after an hour.

I've moved into a new office in the office, too. It seems they added 4 or 5 people the week I was home, so my cube was given away. Fortunately (maybe), Dave ran out of days in China, so he went to HK for the rest of the year. That means I got to take over his sweet office, with a view.

Speaking of home, while I was there, we got the new security system installed. So don't any of you hoodlums reading this think you can break in! Yeah, it was a bunch of money. No, I'm not completely sold on the effectiveness. But Kelsey obviously likes it and I think it makes her feel safer. After all, we know the dog won't attack a stranger, except by licking them. And if it scares off the riff raff, well, that's all I want. It's not like I have lots of valuable items in my house.

I'm sorry I haven't gone anywhere cool, or had pictures for you guys lately. It's just the way it works sometimes. Maybe something will come up here soon. India? Taiwan again? I just don't know.

Where Have I Been?

Sorry for not posting anything lately. I did eventually make it back to Minnesota last Friday, although it may have been the worst plane ride of my life. First, the NWA flight from Hong Kong to Tokyo was delayed, and it didn't look like they'd get me to MN until Monday! So I bought a United flight which flew straight from HK to Chicago. Now, a 12 hour flight from MSP to Narita sucks. But a 15 hour flight from HK to Chicago is much, much worse. About 2 hours into the flight, the entire cabin went black! All power off, everyone got quiet. They had a small electrical problem in one of the galleys. It scared the daylights out of all of us.

Anyways, nothing new to report in Minneapolis. I looked at automobiles on Saturday. Test drove a SWEET '95 Porsche 911 Carrera. Steel Grey. A beautiful car, and one I wish I had the cash to buy. Just a little out of my price range. Cleaned out the garage this week too. It looks much better, except I discovered that some of the wall is rotted thru, which is where the water leaks in when it rains. Not sure what I'm gonna do about that. Well, nothing for now. Monday I head back to Asia for another 6 weeks, until Oktoberfest!

I'll leave you with a literary criticism of a future classic.

Travel sucks!

Well, this isn't good. It seems there's a typhoon bearing down on Hong Kong. The whole reason I chose to fly from HK was to get around problems in Guangzhou, and now Mother Nature has a different view. My 8:30 am flight has already been delayed by an hour, and it's 11:00 pm the night before! As it stands, the connection in Tokyo will be pretty tight now. Here's to hoping I don't get stuck in Japan for a night. That would truly blow.