My epic 11 minute China montage

It's late, I'm tired, but it's done at least. I made this video with some of the 600+ pics and 30 minutes of video I took in China. It took a lot longer than expected but I'm done and it looks good me thinks. Let me know what you think. I'm off to bed.

one red paperclip

one red paperclip

I had read about this guy a while ago in Wired magazine. His goal was to trade a red paper clip on craigslist for something else. He planned to keep trading up to something more desirable until he turned that paper clip into a house.

Well I guess he finally did it!

Arrr Matey, give your scurvy-dog lovin' self a pirate name... yarrr....

I found this amusing website that turns your real name into a pirate name.  I am supposedly "Black Buckthorn" (!!??)

Not sure how they got that from my name exactly.  Anyway, give it a shot and see what you get.  There are seperate male and female versions.  I tried some of my friends names and got some really funny results. 

Lads:  http://www.mess.be/pirate-names-male.php
Lasses:  http://www.mess.be/pirate-names-female.php

linese.com??

I was watching the world cup final at my place with some friends and thought it was interesting to see that one of the ads for Budweiser beer was half in English and half in Chinese. Just gives you a better perspective of how many people were watching the game and the demographic makeup of those people!

Also today I guess China launched a website to teach Chinese for free! I'm going to have to check it out (seems to be a dead link right now) since I've been interested in learning Chinese ever since I got back. Seems like it would be a useful personal and business tool moving forward.

On a side note all my picks for the World cup lost. I picked France today and in earlier games I had picked Argentina and England in their respective knock out games. Ugh.

I vooood lik to bui daburgaa

I watched a few crappy movies on the plane ride over and back from China. On the way there I watched the Pink Panther and Firewall with the latter being far more poopy than the first. Pink Panther wasn't great but it wasn't a complete waste of time like the Harrison Ford craptacular-fest that was Firewall. On the way back I watched that movie about the dogs in Alaska with Paul "2 Fast 2 Furious" Walker. I forget the name but the movie wasn't too bad. Seemed like it would be better suited going straight to video though.

I rarely laugh out loud when watching a movie by myself but one scene in the Pink Panther actually had my eyes tearing up I was lauging so hard. The inspector wants to go undercover in America so he hires a dialect coach to rid him of his extreme French accent and.... well just watch it:



On a side note if you've never seen the original Pink Panther movies they are pretty funny. Peter Sellers crowning achievement, however, has to be "The Party". That movie ranks up there with Airplane as one of the funniest ever.

Home again, home again, jiggity jig jig

Well, my trip here in China draws to an end today. My departure is sort of bittersweet because I don't feel like I had enough time here. Regardless I squeezed as much as humanly possible into 2 weeks. I made a bunch of new friends. they are my co-workers but I regard them as my friends after my experiences with them here. China is an amazing place and I hope to return soon and for longer next time.

To give a one sentence summary of what I did here: Shopped on cultural street, ate scorpions (!), played 4-on-4 basketball in the parking lot of a temple in the mountains, rode a zip line over the ocean in the fog (!!), saw a live filippino cover band at a hole in the wall bar in Tianjin, taught English to a very friendly (and cute) shopkeeper at the silk market, pulled an all-nighter in a train overnight from Qing-Dao to Tianjin talking with a person I had met the day before, rode a public bus to the Summer Palace, climbed the Great Wall, talked with students in Tiannemen square, took a self guided tour of the Forbidden City, cooked my own food at a hot-pot restaurant and Korean BBQ restarant, played hours of Uno on the "hard seat" section of a local train, watched a world cup soccer match at 11PM in a co-workers room at a really crappy hotel room, and laughed along with my co-workers until my stomach hurt.

Thank you China!

ps. I'll post pics when I get back.

I used to like Craig David

I haven't posted in a few days since I've been really busy here at work in China. I get up at 7AM, generally work till 8PM or later, go home and do some homework for school and go to sleep at 11 or so!

So a few quick notes:
- The Chinese people are all generally very friendly. They are eager to talk to you in English and like to practice other languages. They also appreciate the broken Mandarin I speak back to them from my handy dandy lonely planet guide
- Haven't eaten too many exotic things since the hot pot I tried last weekend. We did go to this hole in the wall Chinese place called "Jo Mama" or something like that. The food was great and 6 of us are for under $20 including drinks! Plus there was a ton of leftovers.
- My hotel restaurant, where I generally eat breakfast, only seems to have one CD that they play on a loop. I think it's the best of Craig David. Now I used to like "Fill me in" and all those other songs but after hearing them every morning since Saturday, my patience has expired!
- I haven't mustered up enough courage to try Chinese breakfast yet. They have all these dumplings and noodles at the buffet but they labels are not very insightful so I don't want to bite into some mystery meat!
- This Saturday I'm going to some mountains near Beijing and on Sunday we hit up the great wall! Can't wait.
AJ