Talking about the past... part 3

The final leg of our 4 country, 12 day vacation as a one night stop in Tokyo to see friends Holly and Skip, with their kids Skylar and Blayden. We took an overnight flight from Malaysia and arrived at their place early on Saturday morning.

A quick shower to freshen up and we were off with Holly and the kids to wander the streets of Tokyo and see the little German Christmas market that was set up in one of the neighborhoods. That night we planned to show the two local expats what we knew of Tokyo, taking them first to the local sushi restaurant that Matt had found when were were here a few years ago for the Red Sox games, and then where we stopped in when passing through on our way to Hawaii. So off we went with our business card for the restaurant, and after some slight confusion we found the place, and of course it's closed. Holly talked to some locals and they told us that they are always closed on the weekends....

But that was okay, after accepting the let down and apologizing we found a tiny little restaurant around the corner where Skip had to work hard on his reading and speaking skills in order to get us food, but the food that we did eat was delicious.

After dinner we headed across town to take them to the jazz bar we went to last time we were here so that we could see Stan Gilbert again. So what happened here? Well as you can probably guess Stan doesn't play on the weekends so we missed him too. Overall our night of trying to upstage the locals with out knowledge was a bust, but we did leave them with two cards for these places so that hopefully Skip and Holly will get a chance to return and enjoy the night that we had tried to show them...

The next day we had to leave in the early afternoon for our flight home so we tagged along with our friends to the local Synagogue where they were having a Sunday buffet since we were there in the middle of Hanukkah, so we were able to enjoy a nice meal and once again learn how to play the dradle game.



From there we were off to the airport and then back on the plane heading for the states, it was a quick trip and we packed a lot into it but it was definitely worth it all just to be able to spend such quality time will all of our friends and family over on that side of the world...

Talking about the past... part 2

From Xiamen we went down to Singapore for two quick nights, where we were supposed to meet up with The Mexican but just a few weeks prior he was transferred back to the States. We have been to Singapore before and seen most of the sights, so we used this unexpected break as a great bit of down time between to sections of our trip, oh and we went to the Singapore zoo.

The latter part of the day rained so we relaxed in our hotel room enjoying a bottle of wine and playing Scrabble. The next morning we were up bright and early to the train station for a 10 hour ride up to Ipoh, Malaysia to see our family.

Station in Singapore - closing early next year

Station in Ipoh

In Ipoh we only had a quick two nights, but we needed to get there to see family again, and as usual they pull out all the stops to make sure that we have an excellent time. One thing that we learnt after arriving is that Ipoh has an airport that has direct flights to/from Singapore and that only take about an hour... But the train ride was nice, and we got to see the countryside and a great downpour as we rolled through Kuala Lumpur.

Alex with the champagne we brought for them

FamilyMore FamilyA very pregnant Siew Yih

The second night we were there they went out and treated us to an amazing feast, probably some of the best food that we've ever eaten. It was great to see everyone and have the time to catch up with them even though it was such a short time, the next day we were back at the train station to head down to Kuala Lumpur to catch an overnight flight to Tokyo.

The good news from the trip is that Alex and Dr. Lim are coming over to the States this spring and hopefully we will get a chance to catch up with them then...

Talking about the past... part 1

Yep, we're still here and occasionally thinking about writing posts to share with all of you... It's amazing how easy it is to get away from this, and then how hard it is to get back into posting.

Alright, so let's take some time to go back and talk about the trip that we made over the Thanksgiving holiday in the States. We took advantage of the two days off and bundled it with a week of holiday for a 12 day trip to Asia. And we do mean Asia, as we managed to visit 4 countries during that short trip....

The Tuesday before Thanksgiving we took a night flight from Chicago to Beijing, landing on Wednesday pretty close to midnight, a quick trip to a hotel for 5 hours of sleep and then we are back at the airport and heading down to Xiamen.

Xiamen was almost the same as we remember it from a year ago, some shops had closed and other had opened, but overall it was still that same small town of 4 million that we love. We spent 4 nights there and had a great chance to catch up with a lot of our expat friends that are still living there and the locals that we had gotten to know. We dined twice at our favorite local restaurant, we call it "The Sisters" for the two sister who run the place, and the second time they were kind enough to treat us to the meal. More of a meal then we would have eaten, as we ordered a small amount and they decided that wasn't enough and also brought us a plate of shrimp and a whole fish - the food was excellent, as always, but it was tough to finish it all.

Shelly at the new coffee shop she runs

The Sisters

Lao Joe at CoyoteOn Gulang YuLao Joe, Jasmine, Ulf, and Tina at Me&You2Howard and his brand new fiancee at The Oriental

It was a quick trip, but a lot of fun, and while we were there talking to friends we agreed that we would come back the first weekend in 2012 and run in the Xiamen International Marathon. We think that the 13 months we have should be enough time for training...

Hey everyone....

Wow, it sure has been a while since we've written a post here, I was thinking that I'd apologize for the lack of posts but that wouldn't be fair since I can't promise that it won't happen again. We've been busy, and for some strange reason being back in the States doesn't lend itself as easily to writing a quick post every day, or I suppose even once a week, or month…

We've done a lot, from trips to Canada, New Orleans for Jazzfest, Philadelphia, Boston, Tina's first trip to our cabin in upstate New York, and a trip to San Diego and Tijuana. And that's not including that both of us traveling a bit for work, and in-between thoroughly filling all our time in Chicago with baseball, concerts, and the fun of just hanging out and catching up with old friends. It's been a busy time since we've been back.

So why post now? Well I've been on a trip back to China for almost two weeks for work, and something about the middle kingdom just pulls blog posts out of me. Of course the same blocks to Blogger and all that still exist, so now I'm sitting at the airport, my last hour or so before boarding, and I figured I'd write up one or two stories that I could quickly post when I land back in Chicago before we head out for our Labor day weekend.

Initially it's interesting to see the little things that you forget from being away, between the things that one finds annoying to the items that you wonder why we haven't embraced that technology. But all I really want to talk about is my trip to the new Hongqaio airport terminal in Shanghai last week for my flight down to Xiamen.

First off, one of those genius items that I can't figure out why everybody doesn't do it. When you are going into the airport they hold people in groups before they enter in little corral areas. Each person gets swiped with that explosion checking pad that we see occasionally used on random people in the US. Then if the group passes they are all let in, if not then they are pulled aside for individual checking. They have two bays, so while one is waiting then the next bay is being filled up, by the time the second is filled you have been cleared and are on your way into the airport… We only see these checks after you have already passed all the way through security, which seems just a bit backwards – "You don't have a bomb with you now, but it appears that you were in recent contact with one…"

Then quickly through ticketing and security and you're into the wonders of the new terminal 2. It's huge, and apparently is used for all of the internal China flights with all of the International flights, that aren't out of Pudong, being relegated to the older terminal 1.

At this time it's almost 16:00, and I had about a hour to kill before hopping on the quick 90 minute flight down to Xiamen, so I stopped at one of the small coffee shops, had a drink and enjoyed the free wireless that the airport provides. Later I was complaining that this new airport had its gates set up in such a way that less of a line then normal formed at boarding, which made for a fun push of elbows just to get on the plane and to your seat.

As soon as I get seated on the plane they make an announcement that the flight is going to be delayed due to "Not enough petrol." This was a new one to me, but at least it was more description then "For flow control", although I did wonder why they wouldn't fuel up the plane before we boarded it. Looking out the window you could watch a pretty fierce lightening storm making its way to the airport, I figured we had about 40 minutes to take off if we wanted to miss it. Five minutes later they announce that they are going to feed us on the plane now before it takes off – that's their nice way of letting people know that their flight is being delayed. I looked outside again and figured that we would be lucky to get out before the storm – unfortunately I was correct.

The meal was good, and followed by a couple rounds of drink service as we watched the rains come and lightening hit close enough that it felt like the thunder shook the plane, and as women walked their screaming babies up and down the aisle I figured that they pretty much knew there was a break in the storm coming and that we would be out as soon as possible…

No such luck, after 4 hours sitting in said tin can it was determined that the storm was still going strong and they might as well let us off the plane to stretch a little and get some fresh air. The air in those planes gets real stagnant when they aren't running the engines and getting a great recirculation. So here we are, almost 3 hours past when we were supposed to land, heading back into the terminal in Shanghai.

At about that time they started handing out food boxes and drinks to the flight that was supposed to leave after us at the gate, and this caused a bit of a issue with some of the guys that had just gotten of the plane with me. They felt that we deserved food and a drink since we were more delayed, and the airlines felt they we should all just sit down since they fed us on the plane 4 hours ago. Forty minutes later us passengers won that argument and we were given a second meal of two muffins and a bottle of water.

Another 3 hours of watching the storm and the increasing yelling match between two travelers and the airline employees and we are back to boarding the plane. This time the line is much more organized and I'm only 2 people behind a child whose stomach decides it doesn’t want to hold all the chocolate and drink his parents have been feeding him. I only get a little splash back on my shoes, unlike the poor woman in front of me.

We board the plane to see that one of the complainers has decided that since we had to wait he can sit up in first class. This has the attendants telling him to move and then the gate agents coming down to talk to him again. At this point its past midnight and everyone just wants to get this plane in the air, but this man is insistent on arguing that he deserves to be up front. After 20 minutes of arguing, why a guard or someone wasn't called to just take him off the plane I don't understand, he finally moves to his correct seat and the plane closes up and pushes back from the terminal.

Made for a fun night, I finally made it to the hotel just after 02:30 and was quickly asleep since I had to be up and off to work first thing in the morning.

The fun of it all, at least the trip had that so that I would have something to post for you all…

One small thing about our return.

Moving back from China the majority of our belongings were packed up several weeks before we left and shipped on a slow boat. We still had far too much luggage at the airport as we mentioned, but overall we thought that we did a fairly good job of packing. All of our summer clothes are packed in a container, and since we were doing our last minute purchasing of almost an entire wardrobe of tailor made clothing most of my regular work clothes were also packed up and shipped. We were just informed that our shipment has cleared US customs and is now in transit to Chicago, but since we are still just in temporary housing until we can move back into our condo in April all of our stuff is going to go into short term storage.

One thing that we hadn't really thought about turns out to be one of the things that we complained about while living in China - doing laundry. Tina was glad to have a washer and dryer in the apartment, mostly to have the dryer so that we wouldn't have to hang up all of our clothes up and wait for them to dry. The downside to this is that our nice new tailor made clothes had never been in a dryer before...

So my six pairs of new pants all came back from the cleaners just a little bit smaller, having shrunk after being introduced to the dryer. It looked like I had suddenly grown 3" since moving back, and that forced me into having to head out and buy all new pants. Between the tailor and now I've purchased more pants in the last three months then I probably have in the last four years.

Tina with the tailors that made a lot of the clothes we brought back.

Tina's also seen some shrinkage in the pants, but most of hers were made long so she could wear heels and thus it's not as noticeable, and the majority of her tailor made clothes still packed in our main shipment. She sees it more in her shirts, now being a little smaller, but luckily the shirts that I had made didn't seem to shrink too much and they are still perfectly wearable.

We should have seen this coming, we had mentioned it before and even talked about taking material to a hotel so that it could be washed and dried before taking it to the tailor, but in those last few hectic weeks preshrinking material somehow slipped our mind. Something to think about if you are trying to save money by having clothes made while in a country that's mainly without dryers.