Taiwan trip 2011

Hello Everyone,

After Thailand we met back up with Tom in Taiwan. We arrived by plane and followed Tom's directions to take a bus to Tainan. When we got on the bus there was actually only one seat left for the both of us but a local actually gave up his seat for me. The guy ended up having a child on his lap for the 4 hour bus trip. So, it was a pretty friendly first impression!

Lots of neat things happened in Taiwan, so I think I will do this blog in point form also (and in no order).

* Stinky tofu is a traditional dish in Taiwan. It looks and tastes like deep fried tofu. However, it is fermented and as a result it smells like something between shit and rotten meat. Julie & I both tried some. It tasted all right but the smell is such a turn off. Taiwanese people don't think it's weird, but they think that eating stinky western cheese is weird! Different strokes for different folks.

* We also had flavored desert tofu. This was amazing. I would eat this often. It's a very soft tofu flavored with things like strawberry and/or chocolate. Some of it was very similar to pudding and others were more similar to a snow cone.


* Tea & fruit juice seems to be also very popular in Taiwan. We had tea nearly every day. There are entire restaurants dedicated to tea and they have dozens of different tea's to choose from. At one place, I had this amazing fruit tea where they put actual chunks of orange and other fruits in the cup. The flavor from that fruit tea was so powerful & fresh. The hot tea water really pulled all the taste out of the fruit in the cup. They have cool take away cups that they seal for you on the spot with plastic. You could easily hold this cup upside down after they seal it.

* We decided to take a surfing trip to the south in Kenting. Tom has a friend who has an old van loaded with 2 surf boards. One of the boards was a short nimble board and the other was a long board (ideal for beginners). When I first saw the van I really wasn't particularly confident it could travel hundreds of kilometers but Tom was enthusiastically confident in its worth.


The van performed amazingly both there and back.

* The night before surfing we examined the beach in the dark and the waves looked quite good. That night I had visions in bed of me flawlessly executing on a surf board on my very first attempt. The next morning I was very confident I would excel at surfing. We went down to the beach and saw that most surfers were concentrated in a small area. We didn't want to interfere with them so we chose a different section of the ocean. I took this massive board into the water and started to paddle out. For nearly half an hour I could not even get out to where I needed to be. The waves kept beating me and pushing me back to shore. The massive surf board I was holding was far more awkward than I had anticipated. After 30 minutes, I was exausted and came back to shore. I didn't even make it out far enough to catch a wave at that point. I felt extremely defeated. I gave the board to Julie who tried her luck with the ocean. While standing on the beach I had a better vantage point. I saw exactly the problem from the beach. The place I entered originally had many frequent waves but there were other places along the beach that had less frequent waves that would give you more time to paddle out between waves. I noticed that surfers would walk up and down the beach before getting into the water. They were looking for good places to enter. Next time I got the board back, I was able to quickly find a good place to enter and quickly get out far enough into the water. Then I had a whole different set of problems - catching a wave. Anyhow, long story short, I tried many times unsuccessfully to catch a wave and I left the beach slightly disappointed with myself. I think that my high initial expectations may have ruined my first surfing experience.

* Kenting was a very beautiful seaside town. I really love some of the pictures we got there:



* I was very impressed with Tom's Chinese. He seems to understand people and people seem to understand him. We didn't have any problems with language when we were around Tom.

* We went to a few vegetarian restaurants in Taiwan. All of them were amazing. The one pictured below offered a hotpot where the meal comes out with a flame underneath and cooks in front of you. They give you a large tray of uncooked vegetables and you can add the ones you want to your dish.

* Tom has a temple right next door to him!

* We used scooters to get around in most of Tainan. Tom has his own and we borrowed his roommate's scooter as well. It's really enjoyable having the freedom to just scoot around town. Traffic for scooters is quite good and it seems like no where is more than 20 minutes away (often more like 5).

* Tom & I decided one day to go for a hot towel shave. We walked by one place where we saw a man getting one so we figured we'd stop by and get one ourselves. The atmosphere in the barber shop was not what you might expect. The barber was watching the stock channel intensely while listening to the radio at the same time. The shop was basically a converted garage that still looked very much like a garage. The barber did not even seem interested in our business. Tom went first. When Tom was finished he didn't seem too happy but recommended I do it regardless. The shave was good & bad. It was good because he got very close and it only cost me 1 euro. It was bad because the barber was more interested in giving the closest possible shave than how my sensitive skin would feel afterward. He often went over and over the same spot if he wasn't happy with it. This left us both only partially happy with the ordeal. Here is a picture of his shop:



* We went to a hot spring one night near Kenting. Tom says that often each hot spring will be famous for various oils and/or minerals in the water which are believed to have therapeutic properties. This particular spring was a co-ed place with many indoor bath tubs which were at different temperatures depending on your threshold. It also had a bunch of water jets and falls all throughout it for extra entertainment. It was very relaxing and I was ready for bed after it. Here are a few videos of the place.





* Taipei 101 is the tallest building in Taiwan. We went to the top of it and it only took 30 seconds in the elevator (worlds fastest elevator). My ears popped on the way up and the way down.

The building itself is pretty amazing. I recommend reading the Wikipedia article about it. It has a huge 660 ton damper at the top of it which helps keep it stable during typhoon winds by moving in the opposite direction of the building sway. Here is a picture of me being silly with the damper:


And here is a picture of the the building itself.



* We spent a lot of time with Tom's friends, most of which are English teachers. I enjoyed seeing how Tom lives, works, and plays. He has a good group of friends. We also went to see some of his students at the English school. Most of the kids are typical kids, laughing, playing, causing trouble, and generally not doing 100% of what they are told.

* I was somewhat surprised by how much lawlessness I saw in Taiwan. Many of the English teachers were working entirely under the table and had no working visas. Many of the drivers will come up a red light, look for police, then drive through the light. Many people drove scooters without a drivers license. Somehow though, the city seems to run perfectly.

* In Taipei, we visited this cool "silk market" where the sold lots of traditional Chinese clothing. Julie bought a red dress here.

* Tom insisted that we try Betel nut which is a nut that if you chew it gives you a mild sensation much like that of taking a single shot of alcohol. The nut is perfectly legal in Taiwan and its pretty much only consumed there as well. It has a red coloring inside and if you chew it enough your mouth goes red. It's fairly common to see taxi drivers & truck drivers with very red mouths.

I think I'll leave it at that.
All of the pictures from the trip can be found here.

Cya

Thailand adventures

Hello,

Before I get to Thailand, the big news is that Julie got accepted to Oxford university under prof Stargardt. Prof Stargardt wrote a book that was very infulentual to Julie's earlier thesis called Witnesses of war. So we will be moving to England! There are still 1001 details to work out which will all come in due time. I will post these details as I figure them out.

Thailand has been a crazy adventure and there were so many interesting things all independent of eachother so I think I will do this blog mostly in bullet form.

Bangkok

• Traffic on the streets for cars was ridiculous! For motorbikes it's not so bad because they can weave through traffic. They are starting to put in skytrain lines which are amazing but there just aren't enough lines to cover the city.
• Many things were ridiculously cheap. I got a delicious pad Thai from a street vendor for 70 cents. The 1 hour taxi from the airport was about 4 euros. We both got 30 minute foot massages that totaled to 4 euros!
• Originally we scheduled to spend 2 days at the start of our trip and then 3 more days at the end of our trip in Bangkok. However, the traffic in that city is just too bad to make it enjoyable. We cancelled our last 3 days in bangkok and opted for 3 more beach days in Phuket.
• I got a barber shop, straight razor, shave for the first time in my life for 2 euros! It's an interesting experience to have a foreigner who doesn's speak any English have a 6 inch blade to your throat. The end result was a good shave but not quite the "smooth as a baby's ass" I was going for.

Phuket

• We got a fantastic hotel in Kata beach area for an amazing price. Tom got one just down the road.
• Met up with Tom and Sayana! Tom had a scooter and eventually got a hotel just down the road from us.
• I went parasailing on the beach. It was a bit more expensive than everything else but still only about $25 CAD. It was still very worth it though. You can't see it from this video, but there is a small Thai man up there with me and he is not strapped in at all. He is holding the ropes behind me controlling our flight and landing.
  

• Kata beach was beautiful and not too crowded. It had all the amenities you could possibly want (food, shopping, pharmacies, etc). It even has things you wouldn't expect like botox and teeth whitening services.
• Tom and I went on an adventure without our sandals. We were walking on rocks and gravel. We eventually got very far away from that start and decided to head back but our feet were very sore from walking on all the rocks along the way. We decided to make our own shoes out of broken coconuts and vines. After many failed techniques we discovered the best vines and best wrapping techniques. It was key to have several wrapping points including around the middle of your foot, your ankle, and your big toe. The shoes were actually not bad and they saved our feet from the tough gravel for the rest of the walk home. When we were making the shoes, Tom & I couldn't help but wonder "What would Mark Davis do?". I'm sure Mark could have made even better shoes.
  

• On my first day I applied 30 sunscreen once. I did not reapply and as a result, I got burned on my shoulders and feet. The next day I stayed out of the sun and wore a tshirt. It wasn't too bad though. I didn't burn again for the rest of the trip.
• I specifically chose Kata beach because it was supposedly the best beach for waves. However, there we no waves while we were there. The biggest waves come in the summer time. So we didn't get to try surfing like I wanted to :(
• We all went on an elephant trek which was amazing! They even let you ride bare back on the elephants neck. At the end you can buy sliced pineapples to feed to the elephants. This was a highlight of my trip. I love elephants! We later played with a small elephant on the streets (captured in the video below).
  

Koh Phi Phi

• After 5 days in Phuket, we got on a ferry to Koh Phi Phi. This is the island made famous by the movie "The beach". When we got close to the island on the ferry, the view looked like this. I was hoping to see these sheer rock faces sometime on my trip, but I had no idea I would see them nearly every day! (click image to see larger).
  

• We stayed 1 night in Koh Phi Phi in a terrible hotel with thousands of ants and probably bed bugs. I accidentally left two food items in the room only to come back to thousands of ants crawling all over them. I suffered many bug bites from this trip but many of them were probably due to sleeping 1 night in this room.
• The 4 of us rented two kayaks to explore the island by water. This idea seemed great at first but after a few kilometers of paddling combined with 30 degree heat, my arm muscles nearly collapsed while in the middle of the ocean. We went to one section of the water that was famous for coral and tropical fish. I brought a tube of crackers to feed this fish. Once I got into the water, the crackers turned into more like a tube of cookie dough. I would squeeze the tube out a bit and the fish would come from all over to eat the soggy crackers. Here is a video of this.
  

• After a bit of snorkelling with the fish, we went to the closest shore (near the corals). This shoreline had no hotels so it was much more natural. It also had small wild monkeys. Unfortunately these monkeys were very used to taking things from humans. Anyone who left things on the beach risked having their things stolen by monkeys. Here is a picture of a monkey trying to drink someone's suntan lotion. The owner of that suntan lotion tried to rush the monkey and take it back, but then many other monkeys agressivly turned the situation around and started chasing the girl. Eventually a man started kicking beach sand at the monkeys and they dropped the suntan lotion and ran away. BAD monkeys!

• Koh Phi Phi is known as the young, party island of Thailand. They are famous for their "Thai buckets" which are basically a small bucket that comes with a full bottle of booze, a coke, and some straws.

• When the sun went down, the bars along the beach started setting up quick assemble dance floors on the sand and turned the music up loud. Many of the bars offered fire shows where performers would spin staffs that were lit on fire. They often threw the lit staffs spinning into the air and then caught them. It was hard to capture on camera, but it looked something like this. The show was pretty amazing. The safety rules were pretty lax because the audience was quite close to the performers and the performers often dropped their fire. Someone else on youtube uploaded this video which might be more descriptive.
  

• The party on the sandy beach after the fire show was good too. If you were on a tight budget, you could easily just bring your own beer to the beach and no one would say a thing.
  

Koh Jum

• After the crazyness and bugs of Koh Phi Phi we took a longtail boat for about 1 hour to a nearly deserted island called "Koh Jum". This was very off the beaten track and there were probably only a few hundred inhabitants on this island. The beaches weren't as nice but the atmosphere was perfect!

• We each stayed in reasonably priced bungalows. The were quite basic (no AC, no hot water), but they were clean and had mosquito nets to keep the bugs out (the net is raised in the picture below).
  

• I was quite worried that we would be lured there by inexpensive rooms but then burned by very expensive food from the hotel restaurant... but that was not the case. The restaurant food was amazing and reasonably priced.
• Julie & I would often sit down by the water with a freshly blended fruit smoothy. It felt like paradise. I think the hotel tried very hard to give you the "paradise island" feel. They put little flowers on the top of your drink every time, they set out hammocks, etc. I appreciated their efforts!
  

• There were small monkeys on this island too but they were much better behaved. The hotel had signs up saying not to feed the monkeys and I think this made all the difference.
• On the first day we took a trip into the "town" on the island. There is really just one road so its impossible to get lost but the road is several kilometers long. We walked for the first few kilometers then my sandals broke. We needed to find a taxi of some kind into town or back because I didn't fancy walking 2 kms on gravel back. We found a small village who helped us get a taxi. While we waited for the taxi, we watched the locals live out their lives. It must be an incredibly simple live (relative to mine) they seemed to live. We got the taxi into town and I found some new sandals. Tom and I joined a soccer practice game with some locals. The pitch they played on was very bumpy and as a result I tweaked my ankle slightly. After that we went further into town, had dinner, and then watched the local Chinese new year festivities which included some basic fireworks and some singing and dancing. At this point, it was dark and we took a taxi home. This taxi was just a motorcycle with a sidecar on it. The sidecar had a bench big enough for 3 and so Tom sat on the motorcycle seat behind the driver. We had 5 people on this tiny motorcycle. The driver insisted we get a flashlight because the last section of road before our hotel was washed out and he couldn't take us that far. We argued that we could manage without one but he insisted. So we bought one. It's a damn good thing we got that light because I'm sure we would not have made it back without it. The last 500 meters of road that we had to walk was about as pitch black as pitch black gets. Not to mention the road had huge ruts that we would have tripped over every step.
• The next few days were just a whole lot of nothing. Laying in hammocks and reading.
  
• One night after playing some cards and jenga, we went down to the beach while it was dark with some flashlights. There were thousands of crabs all over this beach... it was pretty incredible. Also, there was some kind of "firefly" like algae that was washing up on the shore. It would wash up, stay bright for about 4 seconds and then fade to black. It was hard to capture on camera but the best picture we got was this. It also appeared in your footsteps in the sand. When you walked along the beach you could look back and see the sand where you stepped lit up by this algae. It was very cool!
  

• The trip back from Koh Jum was an interesting experience. You need to understand that "everything always works out in Thailand". So we buy our tickets to get from A to B and are given very few instructions on what to do. First we get in the hotels own longboat who drives straight out into the ocean for about 1 km and then just stops. Three more longboats come out and stop right beside us. We all just sit there in the middle of the ocean with our luggage wondering what were are doing. Then a small ferry comes and everyone walks across the longboats with their luggage and boards this ferry (in the middle of the ocean). This best picture I have is this:

• From the ferry they take us to the mainland with no instruction. There are Thai people offering taxi services all over the place and you are not sure which one you are supposed to take. Then someone shows up 30 minutes after you land holding up a sign with your last name on it. Then they take you to another area with hundreds of tourists and dozens of vans. Somehow you get in the right van and the organized chaos continues. These transfers continued to happen 2 more times before we reached our destination. The Thai people know exactly what is going on but the tourists have no idea. You just need to accept that it will all work out (even if they drop you off in the middle of a field with goats). It always worked out despite a fair bit of stress on our part.
• At this point, Tom & Sayana went on to the airport to go back to Taiwan... and Julie and I stayed in Patong for 4 more days.
  

Patong

• Julie and I proceded to Patong which is quite close to Kata beach. Patong is more known for a bit more nightlife, drinking, and prostitution.
  
• We got to our hotel after a very long ferry & van ride only to find the hotel we reserved had a problem with our reservation and we had no room. Luckily it was the hotels fault and they felt very bad about it. They put us up in one of their sister hotels that actually turned out to be a much nicer place! This was very good because we desperately wanted a clean room with no bugs! We got it, the new room was clean with AC and we were happy.
• We rented a scooter every day we were there. it was only about 4 euros per day. I got pretty good at driving the scooter near the end. One day the police was pulling everyone over to check for drivers licenses. I only have an expired Canadian license, so I showed him that. The officer looked at it for about 1/2 second and then waved us on. Phew!
  
• Julie & I went bowling and watched a movie. The movie theater had an option to pay more to get a couch. We opted for the couch and it was cool!
• On the last day of our trip, we did a cooking class. We made green curry, tom yum soup, and tom kha soup. Everything turned out amazing.
• I think in the whole trip, we must have got about 7 massages. All but 1 were foot massages and one was a thai oil massage. The full body massages aren't always that relaxing because they are really pressing very hard, so we tended to opt for the more relaxing foot massages.
  

I think that's about all I have for now. We then got on a plane and headed to Taiwan. I will write a new blog about Taiwan soon.

Pictures of the trip can all be found here:

Thailand part 1
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=270324&id=502577840&l=5f33a3bf47

Thailand part 2
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=270351&id=502577840&l=28842c5311

Dec Update

Hello all,

Everything is well here in Dublin. Ireland & the UK are going through an unusual cold spell (with snow) these days but nothing too crazy. Work is going well. There are lots of work Christmas parties going on now - too many for one person to go to actually. We had a really cool one at the top floor of the Guinness factory where we got to pour our own Guinness.

I am sick today. I have a fever and low energy. I haven't been sick in at least a year. I took the day off work and slept in. Hopefully I'll get over it soon.

Since Julie has the potential to get into Oxford, Cambridge, or University College London, there is a good possibility that we will end up in the UK by September next year. Also, since my grandfather was born in Scotland I may have the possibility of getting a UK ancestry work visa (which transfers to my spouse as well). So I have been working hard to try to collect all the documents I need to make this happen which includes my (deceased) grandfathers birth certificate from Scotland and his marriage certificate from Manitoba. I have received Grandpa's birth certificate and I am still waiting on the marriage certificate. I have been getting a lot of help from my Aunts and Uncles to fill out some of these forms. I needed a lot of info like Grandpa's birthday, middle name, wedding date, etc. So thanks Aunt Lisa, Aunt Shirley, Uncle Donald, and Mom! From what I've read, there should be no problem for me to get this visa which would be fantastic. It would allow me to easily live and work in the UK. My current green card for Ireland is actually quite restrictive in that it is tied directly to Microsoft. If I leave Microsoft, my ireland green card is not much good. Also, for the UK visa, if we stay in the UK for 5 years, we have the potential to apply for UK citizenship! Personally, I would want that, not so much for the UK, but because it would allow us to live & work anywhere in the EU without all the paperwork & visas; that would be HUGE! I would love to, at some point in my life, live & work in a non-english country. Berlin, Germany right now would be top of my list but that may change as life goes on.

Our family has decided to spend next Christmas somewhere tropical. I can't wait for this. Hopefully we will get one large house or condo and put most of us in there. Then just get individual hotel rooms for any extras that cant fit in. Unfortunately this idea seems to be quite popular and prices for beach houses skyrocket over the Dec 25th week. It seems would could save at least 20-30% by going a week earlier or later. Regardless, I am super pumped to spend a full week with the whole family in an amazing tropical beach setting!

Tom & I are making progress on our Thailand/Taiwan adventure. So far it looks like Phuket Thailand, then Bangkok, then Taipei. I have been spending most of my time researching the Phuket part of the trip. I bouht a sweet waterproof housing for my digital camera. It was only 15 euros too! I am expecting some fantastic pics to come out of this trip. You can take it up to 3 meters under water.

We don't have any big plans for this Christmas. I think we will be doing a webcam Christmas with the family in Ottawa. Tom will also be joining from Taiwan. Hopefully that should be fun. I am not taking any extra days off from work this year because I am saving up all my vacation days for our Asia trip.

I am enjoying all of the stories these days about "wikileaks". It's interesting to watch governments around the world react to this.

I'm still working away trying to learn silverlight & trying to make an app for the windows phone. I've put learning German on hold for the time being to focus on this. I've got an idea for an app all lined up (you can ask me in private for it if you are interested). I mostly want to make this phone application to try something new and to round out my resume.

Beijing

Hello,

i just got back from Beijing yesterday. I had an amazing trip for lots of different reasons!

I'll start with the work part of the trip. We met with our vendor on Monday morning and started the training. They seem like very qualified people and I am excited to work with them. Mostly I am excited because they will take a huge load off my shoulders here in Dublin. The training went very well and they asked some very good questions. On Tuesday & Wednesday we did more hands on training and they continued to impress me. On Wednesday night we met with the COO of the company. It's a 3000 person company, so that's pretty impressive. He was a very sharp guy. I always enjoy talking to great leaders and seeing what makes them tick.

Of course, my favorite part of the trip was not the work but rather the city. On the first day, we got into the airport around noon. We were pretty tired but needed to adjust to the new time zone. We decided it best to just take a small nap then go out. When we went out, we grabbed a taxi and went to a night food market. The taxis are crazy cheap. Most of our journeys were around 2-3 Euros. The night market was a very interesting sight. It looked like this:

These stalls went on for quite a long way. It was about 95% meat which was somewhat disapointing to me. However, there were a few stands that were vegetarian and I got this amazing soup and veggie plate. The soup was a spicy noddle soup and it was amazing. That soup really gave me a great first impression for Beijing :). This dish below cost me about 3.50 euros and I'm pretty sure I got ripped off.


I got pretty handy with the old chopsticks! By the end of the trip I was being complimented on my chopstick skills.

After that nice meal, my impression of Beijing was quite good. We kept walking and these 2 girls came up to Stephen & I and started talking to us in pretty good English. They were visiting from another part of China and trying to navigate around Beijing themselves. They asked us if we would like to walk with them for a bit and try to find a bar to go to. Stephen & I were a bit skeptical, but they seemed nice, so we walked with them for a bit. When we walked by a tea house with Karaoke, they pointed to it and recommend we go in. My immediate thought was positive and thought that sounded good but Stephen quickly figured out what was going on here. This was a textbook scam. The scam is, they get you in for a drink but start to do Karaoke. The drinks are moderately priced but the Karaoke price is not listed and its obscenely priced. After we left those girls, Stephen showed me the Lonely Planet travel book and showed me this exact scam. The description in the book was EXACTLY what happened. This incident took my previously great impression of Beijing and shattered it. I really had a hard time sleeping that night. I was quite badly affected by these scam artists and how close I came to being sucked into this textbook scam.

Breakfasts in the hotel were a mix of Asian & Western. I ate western breakfasts every single day. The Asian breakfast is pretty much just lunch - noodles, rice, veggies, etc.

The next day was Sunday and one guy from our vendor (Chao) wanted to show us around Beijing. He took us to the Forbidden city, Tiananmen square, the Hutongs, and the Houhai park. At lunch, we went to a restaurant in the Hutong village. This restaurant did not cater to foreigners as the menu had no English nor pictures. However, Chao helped us order. I told him I was vegetarian and he picked some nice things out for us. The ordering process seemed to be pretty long considering there was only 3 of us. Stephen & I wondered what he was doing. for some reason the waiter then moved us to a different table. It turns out we were moved to a different table because Chao ordered so much food that it wouldnt all fit on the table we were sitting at. Here is a picture of what he ordered (this all cost 12 euros). The food was amazing by the way.

One strange thing when ordering food is the procedures are different. In western cultures, the waiter gives you the menu then you peruse it for a bit and the waiter comes back. In China, the waiter gives you the menu and just stands there until you order. You should not feel intimidated by this... its supposed to just represent very good service. It felt awkward to me though.

An interesting thing about the Hutong villages (that you can read about on wikipedia as well) is that they are traditional Beijing style homes. However, only a few have been preserved for tourism sake. Almost all of them have been bulldozed in favor of high rises and freeways. The communist party has a lot more leeway to do things like this than Western governments have. In fairness, the urban planning of Beijing is pretty rock solid. Much of that good urban planning can be attributed to knocking old things over and starting again with a clean slate.

The Western influence in Beijing is massive. Hundreds of millions of people all aspiring to a western style of life. In a lot of ways I was surprised at how much was NOT different when I first got there. People seem to dress the same, buy the same consumer products, even watch the same TV shows. Chao's favorite TV shows are: Friends, Prison break, & Lost. Most of his favorite movies were western films as well. He owns and iPhone 4. Although he lives in Beijing, his dream home would be a nice detached house with a 2 car garage, a bit of grass out front, and a german shepherd dog. Sound familiar? Sounds like the American dream to me... I just didn't expect the China dream to be exactly the same.

That being said, there are still quite a lot of cultural differences and it would still be easy enough to experience culture shock going over there.

The internet in the hotels was interesting. The Chinese government controls what you can and cannot see online. I could not access facebook or youtube. Both sites just gave me a 404 - page not found error. I managed to get around this by VPN'ing into Microsoft servers in Ireland and then using that internet. Also, I found the internet to be very slow.

On Thursday we went to the Dinghao market. It's the largest electronics market in Beijing. It was massive. It was about 4 floors of wall to wall computer electronics. Everything from GPSs, security cameras, computers, motherboards, ram, etc. Stephen bought a 16 gb USB key for 17 euros (it would be about 30 euros in Ireland). Of course, nothing has a price tag and everything needs to be bargained for. The bargaining system is interesting. Every single vendor seems to have the same calculator. It's a very basic calculator with big buttons and a big screen. You point to what you want, they show it to you and then they type a number in the calculator. You then say "no no" and you press clear and type in a new, lower, number. They get visibly offended and make a new offer. This goes on and on. Here is one reporters story about this market.

Later, we went to a very similar market that sells clothes and other consumer goods. It was the exact same story, nothing had a price tag and you had to bargain for everything. We wanted to buy a coworker a small chinese baby outfit for her new baby. We saw one we liked and she started us off at 65 euros! that was crazy. In the end, she was very mad but sold it to us for 8 euros! From 65 to 8 is a long way to come down. Even at 8 euros, Chao was saying that we paid too much. The outfit was something similar to this:

On Sunday, Chao and 2 of the top performers on his team joined us for a trip to the great wall. The trip was as much about just a hike through the forest as it was about the great wall. Although they all lived in Beijing, none of them had been to the wall yet. (I suppose this is not surprising since I still haven't been to Niagara falls). We started the day off with a hike around the wall, then had lunch, then went on top of the wall. It was very nice. I think the hike around the wall was more rewarding than going onto of the wall - the other team members I think would agree to that.

For some reason, the girls & women in China were all very interested in Stephen & I. It's probably just because we are white and they are not used to seeing many europeans in China. Chao seems to think it's just because I am so handsome - I hope this is the reason. Anyhow, on several separate occasions, people were taking photos of me or with me. 2 separate groups of girls on the great wall asked to have their photo with me. Chao took the photo below of one such occurrence (I am looking at another persons camera in this photo). On another occasion, we were all having drinks at a bar and an older woman was setting up a tripod outside taking pictures of us through the window. She then invited her friend to do the same thing.

There was a lot of interesting things about Beijing and I could probably say more about it. I think for now, I will leave it at that. All of the pictures can be found on facebook here. Enjoy.

Oct update

Hi everyone,

So good news on my stress level. We finally shipped Mac Office 2011 for all languages. After releasing, the very next day at work was night and day different. My stress level went from 100% to 0% overnight. I actually had time to put some new desktop wallpapers on my computer at work. Anyhow, things are already starting to get busy again at work but still nothing compared to the past months.

More good news, I am definitely going to Beijing, China! My flights & hotels are booked. I leave Oct. 29th and I will be staying for 7 days. I am very excited about it and I hope to make the most of the time that I am not working. I have been told that my hosts in Beijing are extremely hospitable and will go out of their way to show me a good time. So, I couldn't ask for more.

I'm making a bit more progress on our 3 week South east Asia trip. I think we will spend 1 week with Tom in Taiwan and then head over to Thailand for 2 weeks. Originally I was thinking of visiting more countries, but it just seems too complicated and Thailand seems amazing enough as is. The North and South of Thailand are almost like 2 different countries. I have been working on planning this trip for several days now and I still have so much work to do. It's crazy how complicated these trips can be. I was contemplating just buying a prepackaged trip but I think it will be more exciting to do it by myself.

Julie is working hard these days on her PhD applications. She has decided to change her topic of her PhD slightly. Originally she was going to write about the same thing she wrote about in her masters (adolescence under the Third Reich before the war). However, for several reasons she has decided to change her topic to marginalized German adolescence after the war. It may sound like only a slight change, but its fairly significant. She has at least a dozen books to read over the next few weeks before she can even start her PhD application for this new topic; She will be very busy.

I want to write an application for the new Windows 7 mobile phone. I mostly want to do this to round out my CV in case Julie gets into a school and I need to travel with her and get a new job. There are currently very few apps for the phone, so nearly anything I write will be original. Still though, I have no idea what to make. Any ideas?

That's all for now.

Germany Trip

Hello,

Wow, skimming through my last blog post made work look like it was fun. Work has been hell since that last post. I think at some point my patience ran out and I just cracked. It's been more than just putting in a lot of hours and weekend work though. Every day for the past few weeks I have been dreading going into work.

The problem is that the project is so mature at this point that people expect there should be no bugs and everything should be perfect. Of course it is not perfect and there have been a lot of last minute changes that have created a whole whack of last minute problems. At this point, when bugs are found in the product people start saying things like "why didn't you find this bug earlier?" or "how was this issue missed?". Even though I am probably doing a great job, I feel like an idiot on a regular basis at work these days. The stress compounds this effect because I do my worst work when stressed. Most of my stress has been coming from one person. I have talked to my boss about this and he said that I need to confront this person soon.

Anyhow, I just got back from Germany and a quick check of my work emails shows that this final stage is nearly over - maybe another 2 weeks of tough times. Hopefully my batteries will be recharged now and I will be full of energy when I go back on tomorrow.

The good news is that the day before I left for my vacation was my annual review. My review was pretty good. I nearly got into the top 20% again this year. I need to work more on self promotion to my colleagues and superiors. I essentially am doing good work but only those in my very inner circle actually know about it. When I do good work I need to shout it out from the rooftop so that everyone is aware and gives me proper recognition. This is advice I've heard before but I'm not very good at implementing - I still need some practice on this. From the good review I was also giving a nice cash & stock bonus which we really needed as we were getting low on funds.

So, once all the above is said... Julie & I actually had a nice (well deserved) vacation to Germany. As planned, we went to Munich, Nurnberg, and Berlin.

Munich was a very beautiful place. It's an old, clean, and wealthy city. The Bavarian culture is very different from the rest of Germany. Oktoberfest, lederhosen, and dirndl dresses are things found mostly in Bavaria and not the rest of Germany.

Julie tried on a few of those dresses and looked very good in them. She didn't end up buying one this time. We met up with a friend in a munich beer hall. The serve beer in massive 1 liter glasses.

The beer halls themselves are an interesting experience. Its just a big barn with row after row of tables. The one we went to the "hofbrauhaus" which is the biggest in Munich.

Also in the "English gardens" park in Munich there is a fast moving stream that runs through it. At some point, someone put something under the water that creates a continuos wave in the water that surfers use for fun. Technically, you're not allowed to be in the water but the police look the other way for surfers. It was really fun to watch these guys and we stayed there for about 20 minutes just watching.

Then we went to a small town outside Nurnberg for Julie's freinds wedding. The wedding was nice and I met a lot of very cool people. At the tea break before dinner I got talking to a German man who knew everything there was to know about renewable energy (a topic I am very interested in). It was very one of the most interesting conversations I've had all year. I learned quite a bit about energy storage, smart grids, super grids, and concentrated solar. At the wedding dinner we met some more Germans at our table. Luckily they all spoke flawless English. The party after the dinner was lots of fun as well and the drinks were free. Julie was teaching people how to line dance. Once they picked it up, she threw in a bit of a turn which is demonstrated nicely in this video:

Then we went onto Nurnberg for a day. We were pretty exausted from all the drinking in Munich that we didn't really get to see as much here as we wanted. Unfortunately it was also jam packed with tourists. I think there was a bike race on that weekend and I'm assuming thats why there were so many tourists. I thought Nurnberg was a nice city to see for a day but it was pretty boring so I'm glad we only spent a day there.

Then finally onto Berlin! We took a high speed train from Nurnberg which still took 4.5 hours to get there. When we got there we were pretty shocked to see how very different it is from the rest of Germany. It's really like a whole different country (which, given its history, is probably not that strange). You could quickly get a sense that this city is much more "artsy" and much less "straight edge" than the rest of Germany. There was graffiti all over the place in Berlin - something that we had not seen in the other cities. Also, the way the people dressed was much less conformist and much more individualistic. The people in Berlin are also much younger.

We did a whirlwind tour of about 10 museums while there. This city has so much history to tell. I especially like the history of West Berlin and East Berlin.

German food is terrible for vegetarians. They specialize in bread, sausages, and pretzels. I got pretty tired of bread after awhile. Luckily Berlin was a breath of fresh air. There was so much good vegetarian food all over.

We got to practice our german a bit more while there but its tricky. Once people here your english accent, they just start speaking english to you. This is mostly for the best because when they do speak german back to me I often don't understand. I'm much better at speaking than I am at listening.

The pictures of the whole trip can be found on facebook here.

I think that's all I'll say for now. I could probably write for hours about Berlin but I'm getting tired. Also, I'm typing this at starbucks right now in Dublin and my battery is about to run out.

Cya

Update

Hello everyone,

Everything is going well here. I am crazy busy at work these days but it should calm down in about 2 weeks. We are just in the final days of testing before releasing. Unfortunately, we are finding a lot of last minute bugs in the software and may need to delay the release a few days until we can get the important bugs fixed. I worked on Saturday yesterday and so did most of the mac team. We have been working a few late nights as well. Microsoft has been pretty good about buying us free dinners and ordering taxis to take us home.

All of this chaos at work will end for me on September 6th when Julie & I go to Germany! I really need a vacation and I'm super excited for this trip. I've been slowly but surely learning German with Rosetta stone but I still have a long way to go.

Microsoft is giving every single full time employee the new Windows 7 mobile phone. I played around with it a few days ago at work and it's amazing. I think it's better than both the iPhone & the Android phones. It releases in October here in Europe, so I imagine we will all get the phones then. I think Microsoft is giving us these so that we can evangelize them to our friends & family. The iPhone is very popular and I think Microsoft is embarrassed at how many of its own employees are using the iPhone rather than something made by Microsoft. Anyhow, I can say for certain the the windows 7 phone is the real deal! I will probably end up giving my current awesome android phone to Julie.

I sometimes think it's funny how technologically rich I am. I remember 15 years ago I only had access to about 25 mhz of processing power and 8 megabytes of RAM. Now, my phone alone has 20 times more power and 36 times more RAM. However, if you add up all of my computers, I'm nearly 2,000 times richer (in processing power) than I was 15 years ago! Imagine if my bank account was 3,000 times richer!

Julie is still in celebration mode from finishing her dissertation. Right now she is spending 5 days in Amsterdam and seems to be having a great time. I haven't been there yet, but she is already insisting that we both go back.

It looks like there is a good chance that Microsoft will be sending me to Beijing, China in October. This will be for me to train some contractors to write automation scripts for Mac Office like I have been doing for the past 2 years. I really hope this goes through mostly because I just want to go to China! I think it would be fun. I was hoping Tom could whip over from Taiwan, but then I looked at a map and Beijing is pretty far away from Taiwan. Also, Tom said the flights would be really expensive. Anyhow, maybe it will work out that I can meet up with Tom, otherwise I will see him when we go on our big vacation to Asia in February.

I've been really enjoying listening to podcasts on my train ride to work every morning. There are so many interesting lectures that you can download and listen to. Here's something interesting I just learned: "we live in such a specialized society, that even something as simple as a pencil can't be made by any 1 single person".

If you think about it, to make the above pencil, you need

• A lumberjack to cut down the trees
• A mill worker to mill the tree down into small enough pieces of wood
• Someone to make the long charcoal center
• Someone to get the rubber from nature
• Someone to refine and mold the rubber into a small cylinder
• A printer to print the letters on the outside
• Someone to mine materials for steel
• Someone to make the small steel band to keep the eraser attached to the pencil.
• etc, etc, etc

Crazy eh? no one knows how to do every single one of those professions. It does make me feel better about how specialized my knowledge is. If you ever feel like you know nothing relative to everyone else, just remember that no one knows how to even make a pencil.

I think that's all for now.

Cya