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.

After the climb of Slippery Slab Tower, I headed into Cashmere to hang out at Robert’s cabin for a short retreat.  The great thing is that there was no internet connection, phone, and so on.  I was planning to stay there for about four or five nights, but ended up staying less after Daniel confirmed a Wednesday departure for a trip to the North Ridge of Forbidden Peak.

Though I ended up staying for only two full days, I accomplished a lot.  Basically, my schedule:

• Wake up, have breakfast
• Dig a little section of trail on the property until about 8:30 or 9:00
• Work on WordPress development
• Have lunch
• Go into town to check email and do a little bit of internet surfing, two hours max
• Work on more WordPress development
• Dinner, read, go to bed

Actually, it was a great break from the usual routine and it confirmed suspicions that I had about my personal productivity.  One of the problems in China was that the internet was so slow that I’d be working on a certain web page, but it would take a little to long to load.  So, I’d tab over and open another page, another site that I needed to work on, investigate, read, or whatever.  Naturally, that page would take a while to load as well, so, I’d open another tab and repeat the process.  Eventually, I’d have ten or so tabs open and rotate to each one as they finish loading.

Switching focus between tasks is undeniably costly.  After a few weeks of this, it became apparent to me that this rapid switching between tasks was costing me a lot of time.  Spending time at the cabin away from the phone and the internet empirically demonstrated that being away from these distractions causes productivity to jump.  So, in only two days I wrote a WordPress plugin that reads a folder on a website and displays each of the files as downloadable links.  This was the first time that I’d written anything in the PHP language.  Not only that, but I also created two admin settings pages that integrate into the WordPress admin panel:  one for uploading files, and one for deleting files.  If I were working on this project in a normal environment, it would probably take me a week to write this.  So, how do I enforce this undeniable law of productivity in a normal environment?  Well, I hope I can qualify this better in the future, but to start with, setting distinct time limits on tasks, in units of hours only, is a good start.  Also, simply accessing the internet at specific times helps too.  I may have to get back on my email checking schedule…

Anyway, thanks, Robert, for the opportunity to stay at the cabin.  I enjoyed it.

[View with PicLens]

After a relaxing week back in Georgia, I packed up my cumbersome bags again and headed off to the Hotlanta airport.  As I was boarding the plane, delighted that I’d been upgraded to first class, a guy started chatting with me about my guitar.  Turns out he knows Robert and we met the following day and chatted about all kinds of stuff from China to the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra set to perform the Brahms Violin Concerto…featuring a pianist!  Anyway, a great contact to make.

Visiting Matt was typical – lots of reliving high school days, playing computer games, and so on.  Of course, one of the most important things we did was work on new Frozen Taco songs.  Oh yeah, and we officially released the FT website and Facebook page.

As for “normal” stuff, we visited Navy Pier (there’s a new upcoming FT song that mentions it), Millenium Park (I really liked the opposing video obelisks of kids’ faces – see the pics) and kayaked the Chicago River.

Though many people told me that Chicago is a beautiful city, I had my own assumptions that it was just another city.  The rumors are true; I was very impressed with downtown Chicago.  It must be one of the most beautiful cities of the USA.  I enjoyed recording guitar in Matt’s apartment thirty stories up while looking out over the canal.  But, I have to say it was the kayaking trip that showed up the full beauty of the city.  It was the inspiring beauty of the city and the company of friends that kept me going; we kayaked a good six miles easily, most of the time contending with waves and avoiding the other boats, and most of them we much bigger than us.  Enjoy the pictures.

[View with PicLens]

I had not been looking forward to my trip back to the US.  There were still too many things to take care of before I left, and many of them were going to have to remain undone, or at least to be completed at a slower pace due to email back and forth.  But, once on the plane, I was able to forget it all for a time and relax.  I can recommend Air Canada to anyone wanting to travel to Hong Kong from Seattle or Vancouver.  The economy class was quite comfortable and, between two movies and dozing in and out while listening to podcasts, I barely noticed the 12 hours go by.  Even when I arrived in North America, I felt good.  Instant adjustment.

Seattle gave me a shock when I went to pick up my rental car.  The website estimated it at around $200, which wasn’t cheap, but was tolerable.  However, at the counter, the final estimated expense came to $435, and that was with no fancy features, no extra insurance, nothing.  Oh, nothing besides an absurd amount of TAXES.  When I saw that price tag, I pleasantly told them to keep their car and I hopped on the city bus.  My accouterments were curious:  Hauling a very used climbing backpack, a guitar, and a suitcase; wearing a nice tailored shirt and sports jacket, blue jeans, and hiking boots.

Between the transfer and the near 20 minute waits for both busses, it took me two hours to get to downtown Redmond.  Rain was threatening and I barely made it to some Taco restaurant for a late lunch/early dinner just as it started to open up.  From there Kevin picked me up and it was smooth sailing.

I picked up a car two days later at one fourth the cost.  What car rental business you ask?  It doesn’t matter; what matters is avoiding the idiotic taxes at the airport.  Even the car that I had was taxed twice at 9.7 percent.  Once for sales tax and once for “car rental tax”.  So, it’s not like I was “sticking it to the man”.

The car was super useful though; getting around by bus or even bike is just not practical here, or anywhere in the US, if you have a haphazard schedule like mine.  As I was motoring around on the Eastside, I became aware once again at the numerous crazy traffic rules, with all sorts of weird special rules and such in different locations.  Going into the Microsoft campus, I noticed bright yellow markers and pylons all over the place to indicate, “Hey! Someone might walk here, so you better be super alert!  Oh yeah, and it’s the state law, so there!”  I’m almost to the point that the Washington should ban all car rentals to outsiders due the complexity and confusion of the laws.

Enough of that.  Sounds like I’m really complaining.  It was good to be back.  The weather was perfect.  The air was weightless, so much so that it felt like walking in a vaccum.  No doubt it’s a great part of the world.  Maybe I’ll retire here some day.

There’s not much else to tell.  This week in Seattle was all about running errands, hunting down info, hunting down items, and other sundry tasks.  I got over half of them done.  Some had to wait because paperwork wasn’t available yet, others because paperwork (or items) had vanished.  But, I did get two afternoons with my fellow condo owners weeding and planting, saving us another small fortune quoted by some local gardeners.

I’m back in the US for about 10 days.   Some fun differences in living style, habits, and culture that smacked me in the face within twelve hours of arriving in the US:

• At Hong Kong airport, walking to the gate for the first plane on the journey to Seattle.   I swear I hear the announcer call for boarding for business class ticket holders.   So, I look at the gate, there are two long lines about 3-5 feet away from the check-in point.   Someone just went through but no one else is moving.   So, doing the only normal thing for someone in China to do, I walk directly up to the check-in point when a cantankerous old American traveler barks at me, “Hey!   Git in line like the rest of us!”   “Didn’t they just call business class?”   “Yeah, but (stumble for more angry words as I walk to the back of the line).”   In China, if there’s a line that far away and there’s nobody moving, then there’s no line.   (Most of the travelers in this line were Americans.)
• Cars stop if I’m just standing on the sidewalk facing the road even with no intention of crossing.   Those who know me well know this is my #1 pet peeve about the Seattle area – pedestrians can stop traffic.   I’m resisting the urge to go off on how ludicrous of an idea this county law is.   I find it funny that in China you can easily find thirty people lined up along the double yellow lines waiting to pass between moving traffic.
• I went to get a breakfast bagel at Noah’s in Kirkland right after opening.   I told the manager that, according to their hours posted, they opened one hour late.   She went off to fix the sign instructing one of the young lady staff members to take care of me before she went to her car to get some personal item.   As the manager walked off, I noticed out of the corner of my eye the girl making an angry face behind the manager’s back and the eyeroll at another coworker.   “Not a big fan of the manager, eh?” “Well, <sigh> sometimes…”   I have not seen anything remotely close to that in China, just the opposite.   And they don’t work for tips there either.   That’s right, tipping is not a custom in China.   But, while I was in Xi’an last weekend, I did see some oblivious tourists tipping bellboys for carrying their bags out to the busses.   Stop!

Lines in the west…and in China:

Courtesy of this website.

Tiffany, a friend that I know through Toastmasters and a practitioner of Chinese Medicine and Acupuncture, had long suggested that I come and give acupuncture a try. I was always curious, but had never quite made the leap of faith for some reasons, probably the needles. However, with my imminent return to China, I decided to give it a try for the sake of a new experience and to perhaps help out with occasional knee pain I had. Before leaving for China, I had three sessions. I’ll talk about the first here; it was the most revealing.

Needles in the back (they’re painless)

The first thing she did was feel my pulses in both wrists for several minutes. I had no idea, but a lot can be determined just by listening to a patient’s pulse. As a result, Tiffany also suggested we treat my digestion, which felt weaker than it should probably due to my experience in Peru eating some bad food, to say it mildly (I ended up in a hospital in Lima for three days).

I then laid supine on the table. Tiffany introduced me to a needle within it’s tracking case. The cases are thin glass tubes used to keep the thin needles straight when they’re inserted. Before I had the chance to say, “Oh, those are the little cases. So how do the needles go in?”, she made a quick tap on the end of the case and the test needle was inserted. OK, painless! It’s true that there were occasional tiny stings, but it’s pretty insignificant. Within a few minutes I had eight or so needles in strategic places – some in my side, feet, and the two most significant ones in the fleshy part of my hand between thumb and index finger. Apparently, the points in the hand are called “Hegu” in Chinese,   “the Great Eliminator”.   As I lay there wondering what to expect, Tiffany told me about the mysterious “Qi” (pronounced “chee” in tone 4, the quick downward tone in Mandarin Chinese), the life energy running through living things.

(This is the character for “Qi” in simplified Chinese)

I won’t go through a description of “Qi” here, that’s beyond my skill, but there are plenty of websites available. The purpose of the needles in specific locations, however, is to influence the movement of Qi, remove “blockage”, and so on. Tiffany asked me to be aware of a strange energetic sensation, that being the movement of Qi. I found myself honestly thinking to myself, “How strange could it be? Could I have felt it before? Maybe I’ll think I felt something and convince myself that’s Qi.” After a few minutes of no sensations, Tiffany tried to induce a movement of Qi using the point in my right hand. I believe this corresponds to the liver, but I don’t recall exactly. She manipulated the needle by one gentle movement.

I then felt a powerful and unmistakable wave of energy starting in my right hand and running through my body! It started in my hand and seemed to move down to my feet in just an instant. It wasn’t a shock; it felt like a wave and it was undeniably energy. It was intense enough that my eyes instantly teared up. Tiffany remarked, “Wow, that was intense. OK, no more of that for you today.” I also had sensations of a sky blue color. This wasn’t a hallucination or anything like that, I just kept imagining that color. Tiffany later wrote me and told me, “The sky blue color often relates to the kidneys which are related to fear, will power, resources. But it could also relate to lungs…inspiration, aspiration, grief and letting go. These are just keys words mind you.. not the whole enchilada.”

As for the results of the acupunture, it’s hard to say but they were subtle. However, the various Qi sensations that I had afterwards (though none were as intense as the first one), basically proved to me that there’s something palpable to this form of medicine that’s been becoming popular in the West. Ever heard of Acupuncture for pets? It’s real.

I thought I’d write this up ’cause I just thought it was cool. I got to high-five Bill Gates at the end of the MS 2007 Company Meeting. I haven’t been to a company meeting in a while, but our group had front row seats this year, so why not? I sat through all of it, enjoying the various good presentations. The big dogs at the end were the best. Normally, Steve Ballmer ends the event, and he did this year, but it was a little different because he announced that it would be Bill Gate’s last company meeting as a “full time employee”. When Ballmer announced that, he and Gates came down into the crowd right by us and I was right there. Just having that quick contact with such a legend is totally inspirational.

Here’s the movie (but I did turn off the camera as the two of them left the stage). Right-click and download:

For the last day that the China folks were in town, I was planning on taking them on an easy hike in the Index area but rain threatened so I opted for a backup, the ever popular crowd pleaser: Snoqualmie Falls. I knew it was a big hit when the group, as we approached the lookout, collectively exclaimed, “Wow!” and “Aya!”

We then hiked down to the base of the falls and entusiastically jumped the boardwalk to go rock-hopping along the base of the falls. Marshall and Judy, feeling a little more cautious, hung back and took pictures of us from a distance.

After the falls, we hit the outlet mall in North Bend, which has traditionally been a big hit with visitors from China. Victor asked, “Do you bargain here??” to which I replied, “No, this is not like Luohu.” I ended up buying some socks, in anticipation of my return to China where the largest pair of socks I could find barely fit me. The Nike and Adidas stores were popular this time around with the group and it took a lot of comparing and trying-on before anyone settled on a pair of sneakers.

Afterward, we went out to eat Thai food (Chinese family style) at Thai Kitchen in Bellevue. I ate a ton! But, this gave me lots of energy for a trip into the Enchantments with Robert. I left for Leavenworth to meet up with Robert at 5am, just as the China team was heading to the airport for the trip home.

The Enchantments:

Kevin, an excellent fisherman and cook, baked up a couple of varieties of salmon for the visiting folks from China who were heading home in a couple of days. It was entertaining watching them in anticipation of an “American” dinner, not being sure about what to expect, tenuously taking small portions of the strange looking food. Kevin prepared a salmon with a mustard-dill sauce, one with a mango chutney sauce, served with rice and steamed spinach. Well, it was a big hit.   You can see the group in this photo below…Marshall is digging in for more in the back.

When the MACH folks come to Redmond, some enjoy going to the shooting range, so Kevin was happy to oblige to Michael who was interested. I showed up later on and took a few shots at the target with the Uzi and the 9mm. I stayed maybe an hour, but Kevin and Michael were there for a long time. Anyway, here are some pics of us fitting in with the gun nuts.

And here’s a l’il movie.