We just finished up our “Call Me in China” January retreat.  My business partner, Peter, who is also a former MS employee was in town for around two weeks.  After leaving Microsoft, Peter moved to Shanghai for the more stimulating social environment and cosmopolitan feel.  Me, I still like Shenzhen.  Peter’s brother, Chris, accompanied him.  Chris, a computer engineering student at Carnegie Mellon, accompanied him and will be spending a semester in Shanghai learning Chinese.  Chris’s capacity with “Call Me in China” was officially intern and his contributions were greatly appreciated.  To learn a little more about the retreat, read more here.

We ate many meals together.  Peter and Chris leaning more towards the Northeastern style cuisine featuring dumplings and me preferring the spicier offerings of the Sichuan and Hunan regions.  Our final meal together was at a fairly small Sichuan restauarant.  Peter heard a suggestion from the waitress of what he though was “sweet chicken”.  The conversation was too fast for me to catch, unfortunately, for I knew what this “sweet chicken” really was.  Actually, it was “field chicken”.  Both “sweet” and “field” have the exact same sounds:  “tian” tone 2.  But, the characters are completely different and thus the meaning is completely different.

“Sweet Chicken”, aka “Qin1 Wa1″,  is another word for “Frog”!  I’ve grown to like frog actually and this was a tasty dish, but it was a bit to realistic for Chris’s liking.  The bodies of the poor frogs were almost intact.  The heads were missing thankfully, but the cute little hands and feet were still intact.  The underside looked otherwordly too; “Alien” was the term that Peter used.  Chris didn’t eat too much of this dish, but at least it made for some good pictures.

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Good news!  Here’s another funny synopsis on the back of a pirated DVD. The grammar is actually pretty good; this time, the comedy comes from the content.  I love how the author believes that the climbing shots are CGI.  I predict that “some people in the audience will cry” with laughter when reading this.  Here’s the text:

Although the movie starts a little slowly, it really picks up about one third the way in.  The main characters (the two mountain climbers and the one female love interest) are all solid actors, well directed, and well casted.  The director did a great job at capturing the climb.  Everything was so convincingly shot, it makes you wonder if they actually filmed some of it on a real mountain.  I supposed they must have used CGI, but it was used so sparingly and realistically that it must be commended.  The contrast between the plight of the mountain climbers and that of the rich bystanders makes the movie so much more emotionally riveting.  Some people in the audience cried.

I enjoyed the movie very much.  Indeed “the CGI” included some of the best mountain videography I’ve ever seen.  (FYI, the movie was shot on the mountain! I recognized much of it, having hiked underneath the north face two summers ago.  Was it really that long ago?)  Michael, yeah, it looks doable!  :-p

As always, I had a great Christmas vacation in the US.  Some highlights:

Catching up on sleep.  Well, maybe I wasn’t catching up, but I certainly slept a ton, typically 9 hours a night.  Also, for some reason, I can’t adjust to the time in one day when traveling directly to Atlanta.  Traveling to Seattle or back to China is never a problem, but it takes me about five days fully adjust when coming to Georgia.  And just when I was starting to enjoy getting up at 5am and working for two hours before going back to bed for another couple of hours, I started sleeping through the night.  Can’t win ‘em all.

Accompanying my mom to the charity food shelter. Actually, I don’t know what the official name of it is, and I certainly don’t claim to be Mr. Charity, but I did enjoy spending the afternoon bagging up groceries to give to the less fortunate folk in town.  I also enjoyed eaves-dropping on the counselor talking with the visitors, learned a lot.  The quote of the day goes to a rambunctious woman named Wanda who quipped to the counselor, “Now this man we elected president said he was gonna get us jobs!  I don’t see no jobs!!!”

A typical Christmas Eve Dinner with family and friends: Beverly and Ed, Matthew and parents.  Though my favorite dish (Beef Wellington) wasn’t served, it was still the best meal of the year. Topped off with perfect bananas foster toasted in a huge fireball.  The picture on the left shows the main course – dang, what’s the name.  Andouille sausage, shrimp, and fetuchini in a rich sauce (what was in that sauce?).  Now, that’s quality!

Hiking around Pine Mountain, Georiga.  Wow, it was a big hike – 4.5 miles and maybe 500 feet of elevation. Well, I disrespected the mountain by wearing my casual shoes and not bringing any water, so it was fitting that I felt tired afterwards.  Scenery was nice.  Would be fun to explore the whole area one day, maybe camp out too.

My dad and I visited the new National Infantry Museum. The building is beautiful and the exhibits are even better.  It’s very well-organized in sections, though winding your way within the sections can be confusing.  We easily spent 2.5 or 3 hours here, even though it felt a little rushed.  Why not make a day trip of it and split the exhibits with lunch?  Yeah, that sounds good.

I always try to take in lots of free movies while in town. I’m sad to say that this was a relatively slow year in terms of movies.  Avatar was mostly a disappointment. Here are my reviews (out of 5 stars):

• Invictus – 3.0 stars.  I had high hopes for this one, but it’s no “Gran Torino”.  My main problem with this movie was that there was no real story arc.  You could watch the first 20 minutes and pretty much have a sense of the entire movie.  The rugby scenes were good and Morgan Freeman was excellent.
• Law Abiding Citizen – 2.5 stars.  Certainly not a great movie, but I thoroughly enjoyed the action and fun. It certainly leaned on the sadistic side which made it hard to cheer for the protagonist, though I appreciated his intentions.
• 2012 – 3.0 – A surprisingly high ranking given the director’s sad history.  But, I was stunned at visual effects.  The movie would have been a solid thumbs up had it not been for a horrendous close quarters, underwater scene at the end.  Just horribly filmed, edited, and all together stupid.
• Avatar – 2.5 stars. Welcome to the most overrated movie of the year!  Yes, I enjoyed it very much, but the story is “Dances with Wolves”.  The effects were great, but not as great as people are making out to be.  I still think Lord of the Rings looks better.  Star Wars Episode III too, but it’s easier to animate machinery than people.  It’s the Emperor’s New Clothes all over again!  But, realize, I’m rating on a scale here!  Expectations play a big role.
• Sherlock Holmes – 3.0 stars.  I fell asleep a couple of time in the first half, but woke up to proclaim, “It’s better than Avatar”!  It’s obviously more in-yo’-face than typical Sherlock Holmes, but they held on to enough good stuff to make it a fun movie. Got to see Jason, my pro wrestling friend, too.
• Up in the Air – 3.5 stars.  I enjoyed this movie a lot, very good story-telling and acting.  Ending was refreshing, though not happy.

Airplane Movies (out of 5 stars):

• Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince – 2 stars.  Yeah, I’m sure the book was really good but this movie was a real yawner.  Bo-ring!
• Inglorious Basterds – 4 stars.  The surprise hit of the holiday for me.  I normally don’t like Tarantino movies, but I loved the story-telling in this one.  Brad Pitt’s character was great too, very funny.

Cranking on work.  I know I’m doing what I want now because I woke up each day excited to crank out more work on my two big projects. I parked myself at the kitchen table each morning very early.  It became a ritual.

Jamming with Chris.  Met up with an old friend from high school and jammed together on guitar, the first time since “Sittin’ There”, an old hit of ours.  We did a version of Frozen Taco’s “Sacrificed” which I hope he will add a solo to soon (I’ll post it when it’s available).  He also produced a cartoon that I drew in either the 8th or 9th grade. It was the earliest “work” of mine (outside of really early school stuff that hangs around my folks’ house) that I’d ever seen.  Really funny getting a look into that early period.

Working on brand new FT with Matthew.  This was interesting and fun as always.  And despite only using an electric guitar with no amplifier (and a neck that needs attention), we worked on another tune, old school style, where Matt only brings lyrics and an idea about how to sing the song and I try to find music to fit it. It’s always a give-and-take progress and the final product was different from what we started with.  When will the final version be available?  I have no idea.  The songs that we did this summer should have been finished by now; I’ve just been too busy to finish off the guitar work. Sounds like a project for me over Chinese new Year.

Of course, spending time with fambly and friends is always the best, but I have to call out special attention to baby Caroline.  I was amazed at how fast she progressed “babily” in the short weeks I was there.  She went from “inchworming” for locomotion to a full on crawl in just one week.  Not too shabby.

My first flight ultimately bound for Hotlanta was scheduled to depart Hong Kong at 8am sharp.  This was the best ticket I could find when searching for a flight to return to the US for Christmas, both by route, layover, and price.  I assumed it would be pretty easy to get to Hong Kong by 8am.  Turns out it’s not.  Well, I should correct that; it is easy, but it took me a long time to figure it out.  I asked lots of people and none of them could confirm anything.  I’d pretty much decided that I’d just go into Hong Kong late the night before, nap some, and then check in around 6am.  Going without good sleep for more than 24 hours is not my strong suit.

But, thankfully, the day before my flight, I happened to ask my Philippino friend who pointed me to “Sky Limo”, claiming that they left at 5am, maybe even earlier, for the Hong Kong airport.  Turned out that I also had a business card of theirs too (I can’t remember when I last used them).  I called the Hong Kong number and asked in Mandarin if they had any English speakers (I don’t understand any Cantonese).  I got someone who was OK and between Mandarin and English, got it all worked out.  However, there was still some doubt when she first told me that the earliest departure was 6am.  When, I said I needed 5am, she just responded, “5am, no problem!”  Well, I trusted my friend.

I’m not writing this little airport journey story because it eventually turns funny or horrible.  Everything worked out fine.  I just enjoyed the ride from the taxi to the Huang Gang border in central Shenzhen, the only 24-hour border, and thought I’d write about that (and now I’ve got it documented should I need to take an early flight again).

I left my apartment complex around 4:20AM and interrupted a taxi driver’s sleep.  He sprung to life when he saw me leaning over him and we were off.  On the way in, I was amazed at the number of “Ming2 Gong1″ folks I saw on the streets.  These are the people in the aqua and yellow outfits, with those traditional Chinese hats, who are cleaning up the messes that everyone else makes during the day.  I got the distinct impression that, much like how money, goofy gifts and card, and wrapping paper is the lifeblood of the Christmas economy, trash is the economy of the night for these folks.  Maybe it’s halfway a good thing that a lot of Chinese people will think nothing in tossing trash carelessly on to the street; the ming gongs will spring to life after hours and get the city sparkling, despite the stains, again for the morning.

In my basic Chinese, I sort of joked that “ming gong” (tone 2, tone 1) probably translated as “tomorrow industry”, meaning that the sweat from the common laborer was the one who’d provide the muscle to bring the country into a better world, day by day.  Well, no, it doesn’t have anything to do with this.  In fact, this is not the “ming” which means “tomorrow” or the “gong” which means “industry”.  I’m not really sure what it means, dang.  I’ll have to research this some more and add comments later!  Man, speaking of with, there are so many “gong” words which are tone 1.  It’s really hard to keep up:  “industry”, “public”, “company”, and “palace” are the ones that I’m aware of.

Well, might as well finish the story.  I arrived at the Huang Gang border.  Some guy, of course, saw me and said, “Airport?” and tried to take my suitcase.  Obviously, this wasn’t right; I had to cross over the footbridge just in front of me.  A quick, “Bu yong” and I was off.  The stairs leading up the bridge were lined with old beggars; I hadn’t seen such a pitiful scene in a while.  Arriving on the other side, I asked where the Sky Limo window was.  It was just a few booths down though, being 4:45am, they hadn’t arrived at the office yet.  The “limo” ride, actually a mini-van,  was quite comfortable, though we were held up at the Hong Kong border for about 45 minutes because one of the women in the van was pregnant.  I wasn’t sure exactly what she needed to do to pass through, but fortunately the journey from Huang Gang is only 25 minutes.  So I still arrived with enough time.  Thankfully, the security lines were short.

Right around 7:30 am, as I was working on some shredding exercises, I looked up at the video map and noticed that we were flying right over the North Cascades.  I opened my window hoping that I’d see a little sunrise.  There was enough sunrise at just the right time.  I spotted Mount Baker just as there was enough light.  After that, all the other peaks fell into place:  Glacier Peak, Johannesburg, Forbidden Peak, Columbia Peak and so on.  It was great looking down on my old stomping grounds and I had a sensation of the smallness of the world.

I like to shift offices from place-to-place.  It keeps me interested and focused.  I know it would be a dream for many people to work from home, but for me, staying in one location is hard.  So, this is an easy problem to solve since my office if portable – my laptop!  I often go to a Hong Kong chain restaurant in a large shopping area near my apartment for breakfast.  The name, in Chinese, is “Da4 Jia1 Le4″ which translates to “Everybody’s Happy”.  That’s a typical Chinese name.  Though it has an English name too (since it’s from Hong Kong), “Cafe de Coral”, my expat friends and I prefer to humorously call it “Everybody’s Happy”.  “Hey, I’m going to ‘Everybody’s Happy’ for breakfast tomorrow morning.  Come along and bring your laptop!” or “Are you at ‘Everybody’s Happy’ now?”

The breakfasts are really good and inexpensive.  I’ve been told that the coffee is terrible, but that doesn’t matter to me; I always have hot milk tea.  My favorite breakfast consists of:   Breaded fish, little ham slice, scrambled eggs, toast, some corn, with hot milk tea.  It runs around $2.60.

Where “Everybody’s Happy” stands apart though is its wireless internet.  It is fast and reliable, which is pretty rare here.  So, it’s a great place to come work!  The only downside is that every restaurant (I also visited one in GuangZhou) uses the same 10 annoying 1950’s American songs on endless repeat.  OK, the songs aren’t bad but they repeat over and over and it drives me insane.  Reminds me of Christmas carols.  So, my medication:  I ready my iPod and crank something like Therion, Racer X, Yngwie Malmsteen, Wintersun, or Ozzy Osbourne.  Something with a nice wall of sound.

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As part of trying to adopt a better work schedule and feel healthier, I’ve set aside time on Mondays and Thursdays for going to the gym.  I’ve been going for about two weeks now.  I started off by doing the usual routine:  running on the treadmill for 10-20 minutes and then weighlifting.  I noticed though that there were various classes that the gym had.  Yoga classes in particular interested me so I asked one of the staff (there’s virtually no English) if I could join.  Sure, she said, I could join and there was no additional fee.  Great.

I went yesterday for the first time.  The teacher was a guy in his late twenties, I’m guessing.  There were maybe ten people in the class.  Another man, in his late 40’s probably, and me were the only guys.  OK, nothing too unusual here.  That was the breakdown in the US when I went regularly two to three times per week for about seven or eight months.  I enjoyed it then and noticed that I better, plus could concentrate better in key situations.  (One such incident I can still clearly remember using the tantric breathing or whatever was on the Brothers Traverse)

Even though I haven’t done real yoga in about five years, not including the easy yoga classes that I attended this summer with my dad, I remembered a lot.  But, this class was tough and some of the stuff I couldn’t do, nor did I try.  I was content to stick with the most basic levels.  We held the positions for a long time, which I like.  It was hot and I was sweating like crazy.  The instructor also came by and corrected us (mostly me) numerous times, easing me into the proper form of the pose.

The class was, of course, in Chinese and I only grasped about 10-15%.  The instructor had decent English though, much better than anyone else at the club I’ve talked to.

Looking forward to going back.

I’ve been pretty lucky in Shenzhen to have avoided being returned counterfeit bills.  Not that people haven’t tried.  One such incident was when Robert and I were in Dong Men and a DVD street salesman (to be avoided) wanted me to pay with a crisp 100 instead of a ratty 10 so that he could give me fake 10’s in exchange.  No such luck.  I also had a colleague have a few of his 100s stealthily replaced with fake ones while he was in Dong Men.  Bad move there – don’t ever whip out a few 100s in front of those folks.

But, the other day, I did get handed a fake 50 from a taxi driver.  I was in a hurry so didn’t bother to check.  My mistake.  And, I have had a tough time unloading it.  No one has fallen for it.  I’ve had to get rid of a 20 before, and that was pretty easy.  But, maybe I’ll just stick with this 50 for a constant reminder to be on the lookout.

The 50 RMB note, worth roughly $7,  is the most popular fake bill in China because it’s the second highest bill available.  Any time you purchase something on the street markets or get change from a taxi, you should check.  The funny thing with the taxis is that they are virtually never fooled when you hand a fake one to them.  First, they do this all day.  Second, they have a little infrared light above the overhead light that you can hold a note to which will verify for certain if the bill is fake.

But, what are you to do if you have no such high tech equipment or skill?  Here are the ways that I’ve been told:

• The coarseness of the paper just to the right of Mao’s chin is present on real notes.  This one is tough for me.
• The magnetic strip; this is easy to fake, it seems.  But not to a machine that can read it.
• The detailed symbol in the upper left.  Hard to tell if the note has been crumpled.
• The Mao watermark.  I think you need a lot of experience with this one.
• The note numeral on the lower left on the lower left will sort of sparkle on real notes.
• The half-circle on the front and the half-circle on the back that, when viewed with a back light, form as a perfect circle.  This is the one that works for me.

Let me demonstrate:  Have a look at the two bills below.

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One is a real; one is fake.  See the difference in the circles?  The perfect circle is very hard to duplicate.  The only trick is actually paying attention to when you get one in return and making sure that it’s legit.  I think I was laughing it up with the driver when he passed this to me and offered me a friendly, “Bye bye!”.  Well played, sir!

Since moving to the “Coastal City” neighborhood, I’ve become much more adept at riding the bus. I was a little skeptical about moving to Coastal City, having been so dependent on the subways before.  But, I’ve adapted well.  The busses, despite having a few with English announcements, are generally a tougher form of transportation than the subways.  The main reason is that all of the routes “maps” are not really maps; they’re just ordered names of locations.  And, those location names are only in Chinese characters.  So, if you only know how your destination sounds, you’re out of luck.

However, since I committed to sending text messages in Chinese to Chinese people, my character recognition has gotten good enough to where I can go to a bus stop, read a route map and generally know if a bus can take me roughly where I want to go.  I haven’t made a mistake yet and taken a bus to some bizarre location (that happened to Daryl on his most recent trip out here.  Took a couple of hours in hard rain to get back.  Daryl’s one of the few people I know who doesn’t speak Chinese brave enough to try the busses).  It’ll probably happen to me eventually.

Since returning, three new subway stations have opened along the main line, extending westward into the High Tech Park where the MS office is located.  There are many other stations still under construction and are set to open in a year or so (dang!).  The new stations are very nice.  Shenzhen is still rapidly transforming and it’s going to be a great city once all those subways are opened.  Fix the air and this will be a world class place.

Many people have been telling how good of a show that HBO’s Deadwood is.  Since I had no new DVD material that I was regularly watching, I decided to pick it up.  Not to mention, it would be a good diversion from working into the evening.  I scouted around the DVD places and learned that the name of the show is a direct translation:  “Dead” and “Wood”.  In Chinese, it’s “Si”, tone 3 (we don’t have this “i” sound in English; it’s not the same as the Spanish word for “yes”!), and “Mu”, tone 4 (Basically like a cow:  “Moo!” with a strong downward inflection (that’s what “tone 4″ means)).  So, this is pretty easy to pronounce correctly.

I didn’t buy anything right away.  But, I came back a week later to the place that had all three seasons with good quality and a good price.  I couldn’t find it, so I asked for “Si3 Mu4″.  Confused looks.  I explained a little more, “It’s an American TV show.  It’s called ‘DeadWood’.”  Instead, I was directed to someone else.  More confused looks.  I know I was pronouncing it correctly.  Eventually, someone handed me a piece of paper and a pen asked me to write it down in English.  Then we translated it.  “A!!!  Si Mu!”  Yeah, that’s what I was saying!

Anyway, I bought it, but as a continued experiment, I asked a few English-speaking Chinese if they could understand what I was saying.  Most of them weren’t sure.  One good response was “Dead Deer?”

See, it’s not that I was mispronouncing anything.  It’s just that Chinese is such a damn weird language that without the context, you can’t tell what I’m trying to say!  The sound “si”3 and “mu”3 are represented by multiple characters, so with so few words, how do you know for sure what I’m saying.  If I were better at Chinese, I would have said something like, “‘Si’ as when you die and ‘mu’ as what trees are made of.”

Some seventy or eighty years ago, as I understand it, there was a movement to do away with the Chinese characters and adopt some sort of alphabet, like the Western alphabet.  To demonstrate how necessary the characters were, a professor in Beijing wrote a nonsensical story that told about someone named Mr. Shi who lived in a stone hut and was addicted to eating lions.  Sounds weird, but the point was that although he used numerous characters to tell the story, there was only one phonetic sound (excluding the tones):  “Shi”.

See how messed up that is?  People who read the story can understand it fine, but if they hear it, they have no idea what’s being said.  Pretty crazy, huh?  Outside of maybe a short sentence, this isn’t conceivable in English.

The Chinese language is optimized for subterfuge, double meanings, and confusion.  No wonder Westerners here often get frustrated or just plain perplexed.  Maybe this is why Chinese have such a great reputation in negotiation and business; they are accustomed to wearing down opponents just by using frustrating language.