Sunday Morning in Chaoyang Park

In my resolution to say "Yes" to any invitation to participate in an activity outside of my comfort zone.....I got invited to play laser tag.  So I got up early Sunday morning and headed out to Chaoyang Park.  Here I am with my friend Masha.

Charlie's Angels Style!

So we wore these vests.  I think I we were to shoot at the little red targets.  But then, maybe those were just the lights that went off when one got shot.  In the typical Chinese, the set up was great, but the execution was terrible.    There was no organization or explanation.  They, the proprietors,  just took our money and didn't pay attention to us at all.

In action.  When you were out of lives, you simply couldn't reload your gun.  For some reason, I never or wasn't able to "die" so I just went out Rambo style into the middle of the battleground and wontonly "killed" my enemies.

Chinese Boys love guns too!

"LIKE A BOSS!!!"  Especially with the facial hair!

As I was leaving Chaoyang Park, apparently Sunday is wedding picture day.  Here's a sampling of what couples in China are wearing in their weddings and wedding pictures.

Galaxy Soho

The SOHO China corporation is the largest real-estate developer in China.  The corporation focuses on commercial/office real estate in the central districts of Beijing and Shanghai and are particularly known for their futuristic architecture.

Here's the newest SOHO building, the Galaxy SOHO, which occupies prime real estate on the 2nd Ring Road in Beijing.

In a city that sometimes looks almost militaristic/Soviet in its boxy architecture, the SOHO buildings, and the Galaxy SOHO in particular stand out with their curved lines.

The pedestrian level has a few levels of commercial whereas the top floors are offices.  It seems to follow a pretty standard business model.

It looks grand, but there appear to be some shoddy cosmetic work as een here by the offset in the seam.

I nicknamed this the "canyon."  Along the length of the SOHO Galaxy, you can look down the length of the complex.  This long axis of the building parallels the 2nd Ring Road.

There are four "pods."  Here it is looking up from the inside of one of the "pods."

The place has JUST opening up.  That's my colleague JPC in the empty ground floor commercial area of one of the "pods."

Commercial Real Estate is READY for occupancy.

In a foresighted move, the SOHO Galaxy has direct underground access to Line 2 of the Beijing Metro.  Still, more empty commercial space.  We'll see if it fills up.

The canyon area has some cool art.

One last picture.  SOHO China is building an even larger and grander complex in the Wangjing area of Beijing.  It's scheduled to open in 2014.  Let's see what they come up with!  Without a doubt it will be join the pantheon of iconic buildings that have sprung up in Beijing in the past decade!

Here is a link for more information on the SOHO Galaxy.

Saturday Swim in Hohai

Why are all these men half-naked?

Well, this man is wearing an amazingly smart changing sheet.  Because he's about to go.....

...swimming here at Hohai.  It's a Beijing rite of passage to go skating on Hohai in the winter, but I didn't know there were swimmers as well until my friend Barbara texted me and asked me to join her.

So, no worries about pollution.  You can see the bottom here at the northern end of the lake.

The Hohai swim club!  Myself, Barbara and her husband Guang!

August 2013 = SEATTLE

My trip back home to Seattle this past August was so eye-opening.  Even though I just did a lot of sitting around the house, hanging out, just doing lots of chatting online with people, I did spend a fair amount of time with my family.  And I realized that I do want to spend more time with them and spend more time in Seattle, and most likely move back.  Yes, part of it was that I was at home with Mom and Dad, had my meals cooked for me and simply could walk into the kitchen and grab anything I wanted out of the refrigerator.  I could just go and see, oh, hey, salmon dip.  Crackers.  Bingo, we've got a snack.  It was fun to go and play golf with Dad.  Fun to hang out with Marlene, Eleni, Kendra and BK.  Fun to just be able to pick up the phone and talk to Dean (even though he was too busy to meet up most of the time) and Carlos.  Fun going out and watering Mom's plants. The new MOHAI with Heidi and her boys was a fun afternoon too.  It was fun just to go and drive around the city, go up to Broadway and just kind of explore the city in bits and pieces. Mariners?  Check.  Seahawks? Check.  And of course, the weather was perfect.  Perhaps, because I was on vacation the city seemed more glorious than it would be if I were living the daily grind of going to work and living on my own and not at the hotel of Mom and Dad.  So Seattle?  You were good to me.  Perhaps too good.  I now can't stop thinking about moving back to my hometown.  So what did I do about it?  I took a morning and stopped in at Lakeside, saw the old alma mater and ran into....the headmaster and chatted him up.  He asked for me to submit my resume to him personally if I decide I want to come back to Seattle.  That will be happening for sure!

Seattle, glorious Seattle.

I LOVE this picture.  It sums up our family so well.  Marl coming to the technological rescue of my father.

The Whatsapp China crew.  Sending love to Jeff O.  I'm psyched that our little group still is alive and very well on Whatsapp.

SEAHAWKS.  Although an exhibition game in which they beat Denver, I write this post on the day Seattle destroyed the 49ers 29-3 to take a lead in the NFC West.

Hanging with Grandpa.  Here showing him Dad's video of our trip around China in June!

SELFIE!

Hanging with Carlos at the Mariners and getting majorly photo bombed!!

Four Years in a Row!!!

Regular readers of the blog will know that I did a German exchange program 27 (for those of you who can't do the math, in 1986) years ago.  I've kept in touch with my German brother, Uli and over the years have become great friends with his wife, Alex, and kids, Josefine and Jonah.  Each summer in during my years in Italy, I made a trip up to Nuremburg, Germany to visit them.  This summer, my last stop before heading back to the United States for the month of August was to visit Uli and his family.  Leaving Serbia, I flew to Nuremburg via, of all places, Istanbul.  It was the cheapest ticket AND I got miles.  So Turkish Airlines it was.

I arrived on the evening of July 31st and on the 1st of August, the family and I drove out to Uli's hometown of Spiegelau (where I did the homestay).  Germany has these fantastically fun roller luge runs.  Jonah and I did it three times.

Most of my pictures were on my camera, which I left at the Frankfurt airport. These were taken from my phone.  The morning of the 2nd, we went into the Bavarian National Forest and climbed Mt. Lusen.

Alex and Myself on the top of Mt. Lusen.

On the way down, Alex and Jonah went directly to the car, while Uli and I trekked to Tummelplatz to see the cabin in which we stayed 27 years previously.  It was a glorious day and the place looked as beautiful as ever.  We all stayed at Uli's mother's place and had a fantastic BBQ with great homemade cake.  Uli himself is dealing with the fact that his mother is now 81, living on her own and it's getting tough for her.  He's lucky that the couple next door helps her out with things like shoveling snow and major lifting, but he too is going to have to make a decision soon about her future living conditions.  Will he move her out of the house and town that she's lived in for 50 years and relocate her to Nuremburg?  Uli and Alex are both dealing with a 12 year old daughter who's a complete pre-teen brat.  If you ever read this Josefine, your behavior is unacceptable and I wish I had done Uli and Alex the favor of telling you that from an unbiased third person perspective.  I love Uli and his family and it's always such fun to spend a few days with them every summer. 

Return to Belgrade

I'm at the point in my life where I need to live with no regrets.  I am trying to say yes to everything, simply to see what life has in store for me.  To say that I've managed to live this way in my professional life, that point is clear.  I left the United States in 2009 to move to Italy, with the security of knowing that I had a job back in Oakland if I decided to go back after a year. I gave up that job to follow this path of what felt right....living abroad, which lead to two more years in Italy and now at least two years here in China.  I'm living without a certain way to get a job back in the United States, without knowledge or in possession of a true path.  When I was working in Oakland, that job could have been the rest of my life.  I gave that up for adventure and I'm grateful that I took this chance.

So, now I am trying to apply this to my personal life.  Lately, ok in the past few years, I have really been feeling as if its time to settle down, find someone to make a life with.  But to do that, I have to actually go out and date people.  Meet people.  See what kind of guys I'm compatible with.  Ok, yes, I've dated some in the past and learned that I can't date a guy who's parents were alcoholics (and hasn't yet gone to therapy about that issue) nor can I date a guy who is overly emotional and doesn't always think logically.  Those things I've learned.  But I've got to take more chances.  Sample the goods as they say.

So, I did that on this trip!  When I was with Brian in Belgrade, Serbia on our trip through the former Yugoslavia.  I turned on Grindr (and I had quite the time with the guys there, sorry Mom!) and for some reason checked messages on the Chinese version of Grindr.  Lo and behold I started chatting with a Serbian guy who turns out to live in Beijing, but was back in Belgrade to finish his masters in Chinese.  Milan T. speaks Chinese better than me, certainly writes and reads Chinese better than me, and is a Serbian.  I didn't have a chance to meet up with him before Brian and I left Belgrade, but for the next three weeks, he and I kept up a torrid texting conversation.  There were possible sparks there.  And because I had a few free days after Viterbo before heading to Germany to see Uli and his family......I flew back to Serbia to meet Milan.  Talk about taking a chance! 

We met up and he's a great guy, but no sparks.  But in meeting with him in person, I learned so much about how where we grow up affects our outlook on life.  As an American with my blue passport, I can see the world pretty much at will. I have advantages that I've never even thought about.  Milan, being a Serbian, has some pretty tough visa restrictions to travel to most countries. To do what he wants to do outside of Serbia takes so much more effort and documentation than I could EVER imagine. And to that effect, he sees the world as the small bubble of Serbia and the ex-Yugoslavia. It colors his attitude and there is an edge of defeatism in his view of the world.

Even though, the trip to Belgrade the second time didn't advance my relationship with Milan beyond friendship, I want to say that I'm glad I took the chance of heading back to Belgrade to see him, and meet him in person. You don't want to say to yourself, "what might have been...."  Well, I know. And that's satisfying.

However, let me tell you......I'm a HOT commodity in Belgrade, Serbia.  No need to put details here.  Let's just say, BOTH times I was in Belgrade I was not without male companionship!

Costa Concordia -- Giglio

As the crow flies, the Island of Giglio, off the western coast of Italy is about 45 miles from Viterbo.  The Costa Concordia shipwreck has put Giglio in the news.  I had never heard of it until the tragedy.  Being the gawker that I am, I HAD to take a day and go see the half underwater ship!

The accident occurred in January 2012.  When I visited in July 2013, the ship was still underwater, but salvage workers were working hard to get it prepared to be floated upright!!

I originally was unsatisfied with the view from the beach, so I climbed up and found an amazing viewpoint from which to view the wreckage.

This is how close it is to the beach and the town/port of Giglio.

The water is amazingly clear!!!

So, they have attached flotation piers to the exposed side.  I believe the plan is to the float the ship upright and then attach the same flotation piers to the currently underwater side.

The Costa Concordia will then be towed (I heard Genoa or Sicily) and then dismantled and sold for scrap!