Coming Home for the Holidays!

Hello all! Just wanted to give a quick update about my trip back to the States for the Holiday Season.

So here's the deal:

Dates Home: December 20th to December 29th, 2007

Current Tentative Plans:

Trip to Milwaukee: December 21-22
Early Christmas Celebration: December 23

Other than that, I'm free. I'll be spending my time in the Madison and Milwaukee areas, so if you want me to stop by and say hello, drop me an email. See many of you soon!

New Photos from China!

Hey all. I'm back from my trip to Yangshuo and Shanghai, and I've put up three new photo albums! You can access them here: http://picasaweb.google.com/ngpinger.

Happy looking! (I have a couple of videos too, but I have to figure out how to display them properly -- maybe YouTube!? I'll let you know when they go up.)

Yangshuo

Hello again! I'm taking a brief break from the beautiful scenery here in Yangshuo (located in the south of China) to give a quick update about how things have been going.



Pre-Yangshuo: not too much interesting stuff was going on. Sabine had to take a trip back to France to get her French citizenship (and she's still there), so I've been back to the work, sleep, eat, party lifestyle for a while.



Yangshuo: Dan and Elliott (two good friends of mine) arrived in Beijing on Friday and we left the next day for Yangshuo. It's basically a small (though I'm not sure of the exact population - it may be quite big compared to may small American towns) town in the South of China located near the more-popular city Guilin. It's known for beautiful scenery: rice paddies, rivers, and most notably, large limestone karsks. From what I hear, this type of scenery exists only in two places in the world: here and in Thailand. I won't go through too much description because I will be posting photos (and hopefully videos) as soon as I return to Beijing. I'll be certain to post again to let you know when that happens.

Anyways, since the scenery is so beautiful, the majority of the activities here in Yangshuo are located outdoors. Dan, Elliott and I have been doing quite a bit of walking through the town, both on the main tourist street, XiJie (or West street), but also quite a bit in the less touristed areas. In addition, we've spent two days biking through the rice paddies surrounded by limestone karsks in the country side, and Dan and Elliott took a little kayak trip down the Li River yesterday (as I recovered from a "rough night").

We've also met some very nice people here. The rough night was instigated by an Italian fellow named Mauro who was quite worried about, "De kids with too much moneys." However, even though Elliott and I might have fit into that category (we didn't test the waters), we had a wonderful time laughing and joking with him and his wife, Marta, in a strange (and somewhat slurred, later in the evening) mixture of Italian, English and Spanish.

Today at lunch we also met a very nice French couple (though we didn't catch their names). Turned out, however, that the husband had done quite a bit of business in Milwaukee, Wisconsin early in his career and absolutely loved the people with whom he worked during that time. Hence, he was immediately very warm with the three Wisconsinites that happened to be traveling through China at the same time that he was. I personally found his life pretty fascinating: grew up in France and educated as an engineer; decided to take a job in sales instead of engineering; moved to the USA to work; moved to South Korea to work; worked some other places for different companies; now manages three auto parts plants in south and east Asia. Gotta love traveling . . .

Not much else to say at this point. We take off for Shanghai tomorrow to visit my now ex-boss, Alex. Should be a fast-paced, whirlwind tour of Shanghai for Dan and Elliott. I'll just be along for the ride.

More posts to come as more interesting things happen and pictures become available.

New Photos!

Hey all. So I've finally taken the time to put some new photos up. However, I'm making the transition away from Webshots to Picassa, so the only photos that will be up in the gallery are the new ones (but who wants to look at old photos anyways?).

So here's the new stuff: http://picasaweb.google.com/ngpinger

Enjoy!

A Somewhat Funny, But More Interesting Summary of Cultural Differences

Hey all!

I've been doing a lot of writing in my other blog, about cultural differences, but I thought that this little link (open it in a second window . . . you'll see why later) was better suited for the personal blog. I've been dealing with this stuff a lot, and yes. I understand these. I'll give you a little overview:

Now let's run through the pictures (email/my blog on the left - other blog on the right, if you care about my opinion):

My favorites are:
Contacts
Queues
Parties
Definition of Beauty
Handling Problems
Moods and Weather
The Boss
What's Trendy
The Child
Perceptions of Each Others' Culture (though the Germans forgot the fortune cookie - which, by the way, doesn't exist here)

I disagree with:
Way of Life (Chinese will cheat each other until they're all broke - they view it as, "If your'e stupid enough to let me cheat you, then you deserve to be cheated")
Anger/Displeasure (They whine just as much as westerners)
View of Myself (Partially - the elderly may be as described, but ever hear of the "little emperor syndrome")
Life of the Elderly (Old people in China LOVE dogs! They just have grandkids and dogs.)

The others are true, but didn't strike me as particularly funny.

Don't get some of them? Don't worry, and feel free to email me to ask for clarification :-).

New Blog Going Up

Hey everybody. So I'm planning to keep writing in this blog as sporadically as I was before, but I wanted to inform you that I'm starting up a new blog (which I have a feeling that only about 5 of you will actually enjoy).

However, if you feel like checking it out, I'll give you an idea of its premise. First of all, it will be much less personal (which, ironically, probably means that I'll write in it more, since I don't like talking about myself as much as I like talking about other things). Second, it'll be quite a bit more analytical, but hopefully still very accessible. It will be mostly business oriented, so anybody who loves marketing, technology, general business trends and consumer psychology as much as I do will be pleasantly surprised. Anybody else will probably read one or two posts and then get bored :-).

So, without further adieu, it can be accessed here: http://nathanpinger.blogspot.com (or you can link to it from my blog directly). If you want to get fancy about it, you can subscribe to the RSS feed at http://feeds.feedburner.com/nathanpinger (if you have no idea what an RSS feed is, then perhaps you can bite the bullet and jump into the digital reading world with my new blog as a starting point . . . or not). Enjoy!

Long Time No Post

Hey all. So since I've been doing a TERRIBLE job of keeping people updated on my life, here is an abridged summary of my last 4 months:

First, I have a girlfriend. Her name is Sabine, and she was born in China (so yes, I am nearly as lame as every other white guy in China who is dating a Chinese girl, but not quite as lame because she . . . ), grew up in France, and now she's back in China. We met at a friend's barbecue, but she thought I was strange because I am a vegetarian. However, she gave me a second chance and now we've been dating for about four months. She's awesome, and she shares a birthday with one of my favorite people, Ryan Resch, and with one of my least favorite people, Paris Hilton.

Second, I still work a lot. That's all I'm going to say about that.

Third, Jason (my younger brother) just came to visit. We partied a lot and visited some cool places: the Beijing art district, the Olympic Green, JingShan Park (which overlooks the forbidden city), Houhai (a nice lake area), etc. It was good times all around, but yesterday he continued his trek around the world by skipping off to Hong Kong.

Fourth, I'm considering an MBA or going back to Madison to get a better feel for the family business by working with my dad. The MBA would be cool because then I would supposedly be a "Business Master," but it costs a lot of money so I would also be broke. Working with dad would be cool because I would get to work a nine-to-five and be able to golf a lot.

That's really about all that's happened. I may have some fun stuff upcoming: October Holiday, Trip to Tibet, Home for Christmas, Something Random for Spring Festival, etc. We'll see how it goes and how motivated I am to write!

Concerts and Crowd Control

So as you have probably noticed, and a few have pointed out, my blog posts have been coming less and less frequently. My apologies to those of you who like to keep tabs on my life and a big "You're welcome!" to those of you who don't, but in the spirit of sporadically keeping one fourth of you content, one fourth of you annoyed and affecting half of you in no way whatsoever (estimates only), I've decided to add another small chapter to my mini Beijing chronicle.

The story begins last Friday, June 15th when I was asked to help out as a "client interface" for the Samsung Olympic sponsorship announcement concert which was to take place the next day. While "client interfacing" certainly sounds like an important role, it ends up involving a whole lot of sitting-around-and-doing-nothing when the client (who in this case was actually a PR firm, and not Samsung itself) is so busy with his/her own work that he/she doesn't really care about talking to other people. So I spend the most of the day sitting around due to the busyness of my clients, and was only called in when crisis struck and people needed to recharge their phone or needed to get a package from one side of Beijing to the other side in less than 30 minutes (which, I must note, is an impossible feat considering the density of traffic in Beijing - I made it in 45). So anywhoo, Friday was a pretty uneventful day, until the stars came.

By stars, I'm referring to Chinese, Korean, Taiwanese, and Hong Kong pop singers (6 total). Friday was just a warm-up and "test out the microphones" day, but it was pretty cool to sit right up front with about 50 of my co-workers in a park that was made to seat 6,000 plus people while we got a private show from some of the big name pop stars from the east. However, after two of the six had practiced, crowds began to form just outside of the park, so we had to disperse and keep these fans (or just people with nothing better to do) from trying to come in to get a closer look. There weren't really any issues. Nobody got out of control, but when the Korean boy-band (I think the lead singer's name was Konta) hit the stage, there was a bit of excitement amongst the Chinese teenie boppers. Nothing too crazy, but it was kind of funny to see the line of taxis waiting for his band to leave the venue so that they could follow him back to his hotel. Funnier still was listening to my co-worker Brian relay to me the planning of Konta's escape route that he was hearing via walkie talkie. I don't know how it turned out, but Konta did turn up the next day for his performance safe and sound.

Saturday was the actual day of the event. The morning involved a lot of nothing, and the afternoon was filled with me following around the client with whom I was interfacing in order to make sure that everything was perfect and set for the event, which was to open at 5:30 and begin at 6:45.

The beginning of the event went off without a hitch. The crowds were relatively orderly, and we only had to do a little bit of work trying to make people sit where they were supposed to sit (seating was arranged based on how soon people arrived, best seats going first - colored wristbands were given to people in order to designate the sections where they were supposed to be, within sections, general seating was the rule). It was almost comical how many people in the red section (the best seats) magically seemed to "lose" their wristbands. Here is an example of the generic conversation that I must have had 10 times:

Me: "Can I see your wristband"
Person A: "I lost my wrist band"
Me: "Oh, I'm sorry, but you have to have a red wristband to sit in this area"
Person A: "My wristband was red; I lost it"
Person A's Friend: "Yeah, she (95% of them were female) lost it"
Me: "I'm sorry to hear that. If that's the case, you have to go back up front and get a new one"
Person A (excited): "Oh, so I can tell them that I lost my red band and they'll give me a new one?"
Me: "No, they will give you whatever color they are giving out now. If you wanted to sit here, you shouldn't have lost your red wrist band in the first place."
Person A (angry): "But I HAD a red one before! Why can't they give me a new one!?"
Me: "We are all out of red ones. If you don't have a wristband at all, I'll have to ask you to leave. Could you please go get a new one because I don't want you to have to leave . . ."
Person A (throws a small hissy fit and leaves, only to come back to the same seat 5 minutes later as I watch her . . . I walk back, and the conversation begins anew and then I escort her to get a new wristband after seating people wearing red wristbands in her - and her other friends' who also lost their wristbands - seats).

Wow, that was fun. My other favorite excuses for being in the wrong section (and my immediate thoughts after hearing the comments in italics):
"I'm a Journalist" (Then why are you stuck with a wristband while all of the other journalists get VIP seating?)
"I'm a photographer" (Then why do you not have a big sign on your back that says "PHOTOGRAPHER" like the other photographers?)
"My friend is meeting me here . . . Just let me call her. When she comes, I'll go back to my section" (Ummmm . . . DUH! You have a cell phone! Call or text your friend and tell her to meet you in your section next to the big flag that is the same color as your wristband!)

Ok, that's enough ranting about the silly, unoriginal excuses that I heard and the unnecessary amount of effort that was required in order to convince people that they were not, in fact, journalists, photographers, or more important than everybody else. On to the concert . . .

It was very cool! . . . until Konta came on stage. At which point about 1,000 Chinese girls (and a few of the girls' boyfriends . . . WEIRD!?!?!) rushed the stage. Security was completely unprepared, so I had to play blocker as the girls tried to rush past (good thing Chinese girls are very small). A couple of my co-workers had to do the same thing. One got a black eye from a girl punching him in the face; one got socked in the stomach; I just had my "Event Staff" badge ripped off. Luckily my co-worker picked it up before somebody ran off with it. Otherwise I would have been stuck in the red section without identification or a wristband (EEEK!). Eventually security formed a line and the girls couldn't get through. Whew!

Konta did his things while girls screamed, took pictures and cried (it reminded me of those videos of girls at Beatles concerts that I've seen). Then he left the stage and the crazed fans bolted for the exit, presumably hoping to hop in a taxi and wait for him to leave like the day before. Poor girls . . . so naive . . . I didn't have the time (because of their hurry to sprint to the cars) or the heart to tell them that he had an encore performance at the very end of the show.

The rest of the performance was rather uneventful as far as storming the stage goes. "Photographers" and "journalists" came and went, but didn't put up much fuss when I politely asked them to return to their seats. The singers were cool to watch, especially in the encore performance when all six stars returned to sing "One World, One Dream" the 2008 Olympic theme song.

And that was that! After, I had a quick celebratory beer with one of my co-workers who was working F&B (food and beverage), and went out for a night of KTV. Yeehaw!

May Holiday

Hi everybody! It's been quite a while since my last post, so I'll try to fill you in on some stuff that's happened recently.

A couple of weeks ago (prior to the weekend of April 21st), Anna Rose - my pseudo little sister - came to visit. If you read her mass emails then you can skip this section, because it will be repeat info. While she was here, both of our schedules were packed with stuff to do. Mine was full of work, going to the bars, showing Anna around various spots in Beijing, and volunteering for the Special Olympics Sneaker Ball (a charity dinner and dance to raise money for the Special Olympics in Asia), while hers was full of massages, going to the bars, being shown around Beijing and volunteering. In addition to that business, that weekend was my friend Ralph's last weekend in Beijing. So we had to give him a nice set of goodbye celebrations, which basically consisted of watching South Park, going to the bars, and carrying him home :-P. It was a lot of fun though, even though I was very sad to see him go.

The following week marked the beginning of May Holiday. In case you haven't heard about the oddities of Chinese holidays, the rule is that you get the same dates off each year and you can't have more than 7 days in a row off. For example, May holiday lasts from May 1-7 of every year. Since May 1 fell on a Tuesday, we had to work an 8 day work week the preceding week (yes, we had to work Saturday, Sunday and Monday leading up to the break). Then we took our vacation from May 1-7, and I have a 4 day work week this week. It's all very illogical, just like many other things in China.

So how did I fill my break? Well there was a lot of relaxing that went on; I needed some time to recharge from all of the work that I had been doing.

However, on the 2nd of May, Mike and Jamie (two college friends) came up to visit me from Shanghai after Jamie arrived from New York. They arrived around 11 pm on Wednesday and we immediately went out drinking and dancing. We stayed out until about 4, came home, went to sleep, and woke up at 8 am for our trip to the Great Wall at JinShanLing. As you can imagine, we were all very tired, but naps in the car while traveling around helped to take the edge off of that, and we had an absolutely beautiful day to visit the great wall. It was sunny, clear and comfortable (maybe even a little bit hot at some points). After spending a couple of hours on the wall and Jamie and another of Mike's friends, named Coline, almost getting sick from the previous night's activities, we took the trip back to Beijing.

Once we returned to Beijing, we had some dinner and went out again! This time we started with some KTV (karaoke) and then proceeded to the bars. Didn't stay out quite as long as the night before, but we still had a good time.

The next day Mike and Jamie were going to do all of the touristy stuff (Forbidden City, Tiananmen, etc.) so I decided to sleep in and they left. About 2 hours after they left, they showed up back at my apartment and I was a little confused (it's pretty much impossible to see the tourist spots in Beijing that quickly). Turns out that there was some food trouble . . . probably from the previous night's shrimp ball consumption, and the kids wanted to make sure that their systems were ok before they went out for the sight seeing. As a result, I was fully awake by the time they started feeling better and we went out to all of the wonderful, heavily touristed historical sites together. While we were there we did awesome hippie dances to "Love Generation" and took video of it (which I hope to make into a large video if I ever get the raw footage from Mike), and it was awesome.

After making wonderful videos, we took a hike around Beijing and made our way to Houhai (a nice lake area that I've probably mentioned in previous posts), had some dinner there at Hutong Pizza (to settle the kids' stomachs with some western food) and then made our way back to my apartment. At this point, everybody was so tired from the previous two days that we spent Mike and Jamie's last hours in Beijing watching House M.D. and lapsing into and out of REM cycles.

The next morning the others woke up bright and early and headed back to Shanghai, and I was left to my normal life of parting with one small exception: I played golf.

Golf in China is like golf in the U.S. except that you are automatically given a caddy. Even the Chinese words for golfing terms are just phonetic rip-offs of English (with the exception of common words like "Ball" and "Hole"). But "tee" is called a "ti" and a "green" is a "ga-ling" so I got those words down pretty quickly. I played with my friend Sophie who I met several months prior at a friend's bar. I had to rent clubs so it took a little while to get used to them. As a result, the front nine sucked and the back nine was pretty good (57 and 49 were my scores for anybody who is a golfer). All in all, though, I had a good time.

After that, Sophie and I went to a BBQ at the friend's bar, ate some good food, played some Chinese drinking games (though I stuck with water), and then I went home and slept.

Life since then has been pretty much as usual. Friends have been coming and going (Saturday was the last night in Beijing for one of my friends named Rene), so we had a nice little set of going-away festivities for her in the previous days. Work continues as usual; I work a lot, rest on weekends (most of the time), etc. And that's about it.

As far as plans go, there's one thing worth mentioning, I guess. Mike and I are planning a trip to Qingdao coming up at the start of June. For those of you who don't know, Qingdao is an old German port city in the east of China and home to wonderful seafood, Haier refrigerators, and most notably the TsingTao Brewery! It promises to be good times!

That's it for now! Hope life is well for everybody!

Work and Fun

Hello all. My apologies for the extreme delay in my posts; I realize it's been nearly a month since my last post, but I've basically been really, really busy with work. Hence I didn't have much time to write and I didn't have much fun stuff to write about. Here's a quick recap of what's been going on:

Work has been busy. I've been shifting my role. Now the major part of my job is developing questionnaires to measure whether or not we have successful events and then using statistics to figure out ways to improve events, etc. based on the responses to the questionnaires. It's alright; requires a lot of thought, though. I just wrote my first full report earlier this week, and the client was quite impressed with the findings we can present based on a 10 question survey.

My other major role is quality control. As we get more and more foreign (mostly American) clients, we want to write reports so that they can be understood. So I get put in charge of making sure that the everything is clear, understandable and complete when we write proposals. So voila, you have my two major jobs.

Social life is good as well. This weekend has been especially fun. Last night I went to a bbq at my co-worker's house. He's French-Chinese and has a very nice mix of friends. We spent the evening eating, drinking, talking, and so forth. His apartment is also quite nice. There are three balconies at his apartment, and on a clear day (like yesterday) you can see the mountains to the West of Beijing from them.

Today I will be heading to an Easter potlatch with a couple of my other friends. Don't know what food I will be bringing yet, but I'll figure it out, and it should be lots of fun.

Don't have any new photos to add yet, unfortunately. I'll try to take some over the next couple of weeks so I can update you all in a more visual way.

That's about it for now. I will try to write again soon! But of course it'll all depend on the schedule :-).

China Marketing . . . For Those of you Native English Speakers Looking for a Laugh

So, in case any of you were wondering what I do for my work, I thought I'd share with you an example. I have recently been given a more concrete job. In addition to my work in ROI (Return On Investment) work, and writing corporate overviews and such, I have been designated as the English language cunsultant for the whole company.

Today at 10:50 am, I was given the following text; a speech to be given at an upcoming event. I have changed the name of the product and the company so that I can't get into any trouble for posting it. My instructions were essentially, though actually given in broken English by a Chinese associate: "Read this and correct the English so it sounds like it is coming from a native speaker by 11:00 am (10 minutes after I received it) . . . can you do that?" I said "maybe," and set to work.

Actual text as I received it (with the above-mentioned edits for confidentiality):

"19:30-19:35 MC Opening

Good evening, Ladies and Gentlemen. Thank you for attending the launch of “[Chinese name of product]”. Here, our colleagues of Brand A China are thanks everyone to be here for this great moment! Meanwhile, thank you for your concern of Brand A always.

Brand A represent the fine and immutability of style, this is the lifestyle of succeed human being. Brand A symbolize the extremely conceited, also it’s indicate the dream comes true!

Let’s give a warm welcome to the representative of enterprise：XXX

（Staff lead to stage）

Next let’s welcome XXX to give us the welcome speech.

19:35-19:40 The welcome speech of XXX.

（Speech Over，Back to Seat）

19:40-19:42 [Chinese]

Thank you very much for the great speech. There is someone often ask: What is Brand A brand likes? Actually, not matter where, Brand A keeps it’s characterizes. Next let us to appreciate this brand

19: XX-19: XX Brand Video Show

XX: XX-XX: XX [Chinese]

After watching Brand A video, I believe everyone have some knowledge of Brand A. Many people who are well-know Brand A [Model Name] is classics motorcycle (Note: it was actually a car) type. BRAND A [Model Name] is a design originally from [Country] by [Name]. It is like a

work of art. The pursuit of beauty and life, Is also has elegant, sports and features of exclusive.

Today BRAND A company present new [Model Name] CEO Series automatic transmission modes——BRAND A [Model Name] Automatic. The brand new series provides a new 6-speed automatic transmission, a brand new body color and two-color seating, also provides more variety of choice for the owners.
Ladies and Gentlemen, next let give warm welcome to our guest to inaugurate. Representative of EnterpriseXXXX and local retailer general manager to stage

XX: XX-XX: XX New Car Launch

XX: XX-XX: XX MC [Chinese Name]

How arouse feeling moment, so charm. Let us remember this moment. After Brand A [Model Name] Executive Series before in our eyes, May I present you a show, let us appreciate this moment again.

XX: XX-XX: XX New Car Video Show

XX: XX-XX: XX Q&A串场

I guarantee everyone has some question to Brand A [Model Name] Executive Series after appreciation. Now I will present Mr.XXXX and Mr.XXX explained why this car is so charm and how they are so special and different with other cars.

XX: XX-XX: XX Q&A Finish

Thank you giving us a brilliant explanation.

However I think this simple explanation is not enough to you understand. Therefore have to personal experience Brand A Executive Series automatic transmission models, we will arrange test driving for everyone lately. Our staff will arrange test driving for everyone here during the party time.

Well, there is enough explanation. I think everyone must want to see Brand A Executive Series engine right away. Now, Let us welcome Mr.XXXX and Mr. XXX to open engine top, and show us the heart of Brand A Executive Series.

XX: XX-XX: XX Open Show Car Engine Top

XX: XX-XX: XX MC [Chinese Name]

By the way, today all the attendee to test driving will get a present from Brand A. This present is a Brand A hand mud making by yourself. After you make appointment of test driving, we will invite you to make your hand mud, and processing after party finish, also this hand mud is with the autograph of [Name Deleted] Brand A Chinese general manager. When you participate in the test driving, we will give you this hand mud. This special hand mud is not only representing the friendship between you and Brand A, meanwhile only attendees have this present, which is good value of collection.

Well, next I will past to our music band, I wish everyone enjoy this party and Brand A launch

XX: XX-XX: XX MC Ending Speech

Ladies and Gentlemen, Here,“[Chinese name of product]”is going to be finish really soon, Exciting moment always really short, but leave many wonderful memories to us. We appreciate Brand A [Model Name] executive series automatic transmission models, and spend a full of passion, beautiful, unforgettable night, at this moment, we have to say goodbye. On behalf of all my colleagues in the Brand A again thanks to the arrival of the distinguished guests, and I wish everyone success, healthy and a happiness! We expect meet again in the Brand A [Model Name] Executive Series automatic transmission models testing drive..."

Fun Huh? I finished at 11:25 am. I figure that was pretty quick.

Second Half of Thailand

So I’m back in Beijing after the Trip to Thailand. And let me tell you, Thailand really picked up after the last short blog post. I completely fell in love with it.

Why is Thailand so awesome? Well, it starts with the people. If you’ve spent any extended time with the Thai’s themselves, Spaniards, or drunken Wisconsinites when the Packers are winning, then you have some idea of what I’m talking about. With the exception of a couple of Taxi drivers and swindlers hanging out at tourist spots in Bangkok, everybody seemed to be extremely genuine, always smiling, and always willing to have fun.

In Ao Nang, I met several excellent Thai people. Our (all plurals refer to Mike and me, unless otherwise inferred or stated) crazy stoned boat guide named Him (photos of him to be posted when Mike sends me his photos), our mellow stoned driver that took mike and me to the elephant trek, the wonderfully pleasant ladies who worked at the internet café and tourist office, and a group of people who worked at what became my favorite bar.

I have to admit that I was a little biased at the bar since one of the waitresses there, named Um (pronounced ahm), was phenomenally beautiful and we took a liking to each other (enough that I plan to take a trip back to travel with her for a while – yes, I know I’m crazy, but if you have a problem with it, just hop a flight to China and try to stop me . . . haha). But back to the point, she was wonderful, her friends (even, and perhaps especially, her ladyboy friends) were fun, our guides were excellent, and the Thai people in general just made life simple and great!

Anywhoo, the first thing that Mike and I did after the last post was slept, but then we woke up for an Elephant Trek! It was unlike what I expected. A pretty smooth ride, just rocking back and forth. Not exhilarating whatsoever. The elephants were really gentle; one was driven by a 7ish year old kid. Our elephant was mentally challenged. We wouldn’t have known from riding him, but when people tried to feed him bananas, he couldn’t seem to find his mouth, whereas the elephant next to him seemed like his trunk was a rubber band that snapped directly back into his mouth. Our elephant would curl up the trunk and miss his mouth to the left or right and try unsuccessfully a couple more times before finally hitting the mark. After the elephant rides (during which Mike was almost killed by a huge spider – not really, but we almost ran into it, and it was about the size of my hand), we went to a cave for a little bit. Alright, but not amazing.

That afternoon we laid on the beach and Mike got sunburned and lazy. After some dinner and a failed attempt at playing darts due to a power outage, we decided to sleep . . . at 8 pm. Well, the power came back on and I decided that sleeping that early was lame, so I went out to try and meet people while Mike slept and whined about his sunburn (sorry Mike, you deserve to be chastised a little). So I went to this bar where these two girls tried to get us to come the night before by luring us in with free pool. I got a beer and took to flirting with one of the girls and eventually ended up asking her out to dinner on her night off (can you guess who this girl is?). She agreed, so I considered my night a success and went to bed because I had an early boat ride in the morning.

The next day was a boat trip to islands around Ao Nang. Swimming, snorkeling, eating “yummy yummy” as our stoned boat guide called it, and so forth. It was beautiful, and there are lots of pictures from this portion on my webshots site (http://community.webshots.com/user/ngpinger). After that, Mike and I went back to my favorite bar, played some pool, and then went home to bed.

The remainder of our days in Ao Nang was composed of lots of dancing very late into the night, sleeping late in the day, and an occasional meal. The club that we found (where the young people hang out) was a total meat market, and I was thankful that I had decided to focus my attention on dancing with Um. Mike, on the other hand wasn’t (or was?) so lucky, and was swarmed by a mix of western girls, Thai girls, and ladyboys. It was very funny to watch since he is generally so shy unless he’s around people that he knows, but he eventually got used to it. He was also lucky that Um had some very nice ladyboy friends who would protect him when the more aggressive ladyboys attacked.

But like all good things, that expensive and physically taxing lifestyle had to come to an end, and we had to leave. Hence, we caught a ridiculously uncomfortable night bus back to Bangkok. Bangkok the second time was very relaxed. Mike and I shopped a little. Mike went home. I studied Chinese a little since I had free time. And then I went home. And that was that.

Now I’m back in Beijing and have been immersed back into the fast-paced, work-driven, quite rude Chinese lifestyle (my cab driver on the way home from the Airport kept yelling at me about how he had been driving for 10 hours . . . I should have pretended that I didn’t speak Chinese . . . it wasn’t cool), and I miss Thailand already. However, as I mentioned before, I do plan to go back! If I like it as much as I did the first time I was there, maybe I’ll take the country up as my next residence and anybody who wants to can come to visit me in a tropical paradise!

I’ll leave the post off there, and I’ve decided that I’m not going to write anymore about NYC, LA, Las Vegas and Wisco; my life is moving too quickly, and most of it was work anyways. However, I do have some photos posted from those places. Be sure to check them out here! I’ll send out an email when I’ve posted the ones that I receive from Mike.

In Thailand with Mike

Hey all! Sorry for the huge delay in posts. I've been crazy busy traveling to the states, doing work once I got back and so forth.

This is just going to be a quick post since I have to pay for internet here, but I thought I'd update.

After my trips to NYC, LA and Las Vegas, I did a little trip back to Madison, Wisconsin to see the family and some friends. Everything was a blast, and I'll probably write a little more about it in a later post, but for now there is too much to say.

For the past 5 days or so, I've been traveling through Thailand with Mike Neuenfeldt. I landed in Bangkok late on Monday Night. Tuesday Mike and I toured the city, saw a pretty cool palace, etc. That night we saw a Thai Boxing match (Muay Thai), and made a little trip to the Redlight district. Needless to say, both were pretty crazy!

The next day, we caught a night bus down to the south of Thailand. We've spent the last few days in a town called Ao Nang. It's a real relaxed place, but it's hot and we're both fighting sunburn because of some bogus sunscreen. Since we've been here, we've mostly been laying on the beach, but we did take a day where we rented some scooters and drove all over the place.

Over the next few days we plan to do an elephant trek, a boat trip to multiple islands around Ao Nang, more laying on the beach and a trip or two to surrounding communities. The scenery so far has been pretty gorgeous. Basically everywhere you go along the beach looks like a picture from a postcard. Cool little rocky islands covered in forest are all over the place in the bays, and on the mainland limestone cliffs lead nearly all the way to the ocean with just a little strip of sand separating them from the water (at low tide).

I'll try to write more about the trip when I return to Beijing, but I already know that I'm going to be insanely busy with work for the first week or so because I took off an extra week to come down here. Also, there will be photos coming soon including shots from New York, LA, and Thailand.

That's it for now! Hope life is going well for everybody!

Happy New Year!

Hey all! I hope that you all had a wonderful holiday season and so forth; I certainly did.

The day before New Year’s Eve, I had my little date with Jeri, the girl that I met while dancing. It went quite well; dinner then met up with some of my friends at the bars to chat for a while. Altogether it was quite wholesome, and I expect to see her again sometime soon (perhaps this afternoon even).

New Year’s celebration was quite fun. I spend the first half of the night with some co-workers. We ate dinner at a gorgeous restaurant, then hopped from bar to bar for a while before I split off to meet up with my friends to prepare for the countdown. We went to a bar called Black Sun where we had a very American-style new years celebration which involved more drinking, a nice loud countdown, and playing darts. It was quite fun, and I ended up staying out until 5:00 am.

Yesterday, therefore, was a recovery day. I woke up at about 2:00 pm, and met up with some friends for a TV series marathon. I brought House M.D., my buddy Ralph brought Prison Break, Kit brought Chappelle Show, and his girlfriend Fleur brought a New Zealand movie called Once Were Warriors. So from 3:00 or so until 1:00 am we vegged out on the couch, taking a brief break for dinner.

I know that I’ve been feeling like my Chinese has been coming along pretty slowly, but last night made me realize how much I’ve actually learned. The thing is that I’m usually hanging out with a bunch of people who have studied Chinese for 4 years +, so my Chinese is pretty mediocre compared to them, but yesterday I was the “Expert” at the dinner table and had to do all of the ordering. To make things more fun, the restaurant didn’t have an English language menu. No bother, we got all the food that we needed (I just wish that Chinese were a little more logical, for example: broccoli is literally translated as “Western blue flower,” as opposed to the more logical “Western green flower.” What’s up with that!? It led to a little confusion.).

Anywhoo, today I planned to be in the office working on a game for the upcoming trip to the US, but as it turns out, my conference call that was scheduled for today at 8pm got pushed back to Thursday night, so I have a free afternoon, which I will either spend with Jeri or watching Prison Break. Oh, I’ll also have to find a little time to collect some information for Mike and Barone’s upcoming visit this Friday!

Alrighty, I think I’ll leave off here. To all of you people on vacation, enjoy it because vacations are awesome! Also, don’t look too carefully for a blog post in the next several weeks. I’ll be busy entertaining from Friday to Wednesday when I leave for the US. In the US, I’ll be very busy, but on the bright side, many of you will be able to see me!

Happy New Year!