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.

I found Theron engrossed in his laptop in the Hong Kong airport after my plane finally arrived Friday night (12/5).  (There had been an hour-long delay while JAL exchanged jets.)  My abnormally short haircut which apparently made me unfamiliar at first glance, but the surprise I intended was my newly learned ability to speak a little Mandarin.  (Ni hao! Wo shi Meiguoren. Wo hen hao.  Xiexei.  Now back to English.)  Following a brief train trip into Kowloon, Theron reciprocated an old surprise tactic I used when he first arrived in London in 1991, having me keep my eyes to the ground until we were in optimal viewing position of Victoria Bay.  Of course, it was breathtaking…I mean after I looked up.  Accommodations in the Kowloon Shangri-La were mighty posh.  We slept in, caught an American-style breakfast at a corner cafe, then strolled Kowloon’s bay walk.  Three different groups of Chinese students stopped us to interview us for a class project, practicing their English.  We ignored less wholesome solicitations, though I think Theron really did want to demonstrate to me how you can enhance your luck by giving a boardwalk stranger money.  It seemed to me that, because it required one to part with some wealth to become lucky, we were better off with the “bird in hand” and so kept walking. We had hoped to get a visa for me in short time, but there was no visa service over the weekend.  (Curses! More time in Hong Kong! I began to wonder about the wisdom of “a bird in the hand.”)  We wandered central Hong Kong pretty thoroughly through the day, photographing immoderately as we went.  The chain of escalators served as our main corridor to higher ground.  Charming side streets and the lovely sage-green mosque near the escalators’ end captivated us along the way.  Fans of “college drankin’” will be disappointed to note that we nobly resisted Cochran’s (“Buddeh?!”) beckoning.  Our wanderings took us among concrete mazes of walkways along, over, and under serpentine roads before the wild cries of monkeys drew us to the zoo.  Watching the monkeys frolic in feats of agility, we took a load off the dogs.  (It was good to sit down…’til the ants began to eat us. Well, really, there were no ants.  I just tend to sing the blues.)  On the downward portion of our journey, an enchanting display of roses frozen in ice, hanging from the limbs of a tree and brightly dripping in the sun caused us to pause and peruse in Causeway Plaza with a number of other camera-wielding types.  The subway then carried us back to Kowloon where we gathered our things (mostly my big and disintegrating duffle bag) and set off in a taxi for the ferry port from whence we departed for Macau just before sundown.

Macau is the Asian Vegas.  Garishly lit buildings glare in the harbor, and the gold-glass, light-spangled Grand Lisboa towers over all like a giant torch.  I think “grand” is not quite the descriptor for it, but “big” or “gargantuan” and “gauche” are certainly accurate.  We stayed at the Guia Hotel next to the lighthouse.  (Now, it has been an odd thing for me to find American-style Christmas decorations–right down to the paper snowflakes–and music everywhere I go on this trip, but it was equally odd to see Portuguese alongside Chinese in this town.  But at least I had a chance of figuring the meaning of the Romance language.)  From our hotel balcony, we had a pretty good view of the lights below.  Also, not a bad room: Sai Long continues to deliver.

Descending into the neon maelstrom, we found not a single respectable local restaurant for dinner.  McDonald’s and Pizza Hut stood like sentinels for America’s good ol’ fast-food industry on one of the main drags, but we were trying to blend in with the locals…until we realized there were almost no Macau locals, as everyone was there from places elsewhere “for the casino” and/or “for the girl,” as a friend of Theron’s says.  So we gave ourselves over to the tractor beam clutching our wallets emanating from the Grand Lisboa.  Security was tight at the GL, so much so that, though we did not go through the metal detectors in the main lobby nor those on the second floor, we had to actually sit down and eat at the second floor restaurant overlooking the open casino floor before we could casually take the escalator down to it, unharassed by the guards in gangster suits.  This may be a TSA operation.  As we ate, we were amused to note the ebbing and flowing tides of men at the bar along one side of the room.  The bar was positioned such that customers sitting at it faced a stage which all too frequently featured dancing girls (Yes, scantily clad; need you ask?).  When the show started, the tide of men trickled in around the tables, getting six-people deep along the bar. The show featured something like choreography to such hits as Strauss’ “Wine, Women and Song” waltz (there’s a theme here working on very deep subliminal levels, deeper than language and cultural barriers, even) and with introductions by the other Strauss’s “Also sprach Zarathustra” (making connections at levels deeper than even Nietzche could fathom).  Somewhere in there, the 19th-century can-can skirts gave way to things that would be generously described as bikinis. Then the movement stopped (an end to the dance, we presume), the curtain closed, and the testosterone tide retreated to the mere sideshow of gambling.  We toured the floor and paused to watch the high tide.  These faces transcended blankness, and the absence of applause following the onstage to-do was deafening.

Next morning, we were up early to try to get photographic evidence proving that Theron’s friend Da Li actually runs marathons.  We had no idea where to find the runners, and we were further daunted by the fact that our uncertain destination was always moving.  Not too far beyond the shadow of the Grand Lisboa, we spotted a couple of sweaty, haggard-looking folks moving at a pace too slow to be casino customers fleeing creditors or pimps, so we knew we probably had the right crowd, though the fact that police were merely calmly supervising did raise doubts.  Nevertheless, standing alongside a road which rose up out of a tunnel that may well have led to the underworld (which would explain the people running out of it, the plethora of police, and the proximity of the Grand Lisboa), we caught sight of a man in a red shirt and a white hat thereby fitting the description Da Li told Theron to expect, and sure enough, it was Santa Claus (for all you kids out there) or Da Li (for nonbelievers).  Theron ran alongside him for a while, snapping photos dutifully.  I confess to having enjoyed an opportunity not to run or even walk at a brisk pace, merely standing there waiting to see how far Theron intended to go and trying to decided whether I would eat breakfast at McDonald’s or Pizza Hut if he chose to keep going to the finish line.  Theron returned, and we commenced exploring the non-Vegas districts of Macau which proved quite intriguing as a remnant of the colonial days.

The old town square was grossly glutted with a reindeer-sleigh-and-”old man Christmas” display (Is there no escape?!), but the wavy mosaic pavement was inviting.  We found a hole-in-the-wall wherein we could have a little breakfast for a very reasonable price, then continued our explorations.  The antique stores’ wares and prices were attractive, but I vowed to restrict shopping on this trip to tailored clothing.  The ruins of St. Paul’s were packed with tourists.  We were confounded in trying to photograph the small nearby temple by other photographers in the way.  Didn’t they understand that I wanted a photo of it without them in it and that it’s all about me?  I mean, really!  The Guia fort on the hill presented an amusing tableau of an old-world defense against the encroaching new-world capitalism, since the old cannons all seemed to be aimed toward the Grand Lisboa and her sister establishments.  I fear the battle is lost. In a quieter corner of the fort overlooking St. Paul’s and a sweeping view of the city, Theron and I sat down for a rest, and Theron began to worry me with talk of plans of becoming itinerant in China, wandering and living with no home to see how cheaply he could get by.  I had begun trying to think of how to tell him gently that I thought this was an absolutely terrible idea when he relieved my worry by saying that it was only speculation and that he had no intention of actually going through with it.  (To any of you living in China reading this: please keep an eye on him, lest he should begin to make serious plans of this nature.  Alert us in the US immediately if he starts talking about getting rid of his apartment and earthly goods.)

In the afternoon, we met Da Li (doing well, in spite of the fact that he had run for 26.2 miles that morning) under the Macau Sky Tower where people were paying around $200US for the privelege of being pushed off a plank for a free fall of 233m, the highest bungy jump in the world.  Appropriately, the first person we witnessed enjoying this rare opportunity screamed like a victim in a slasher movie.  We are delighted to have this on video for your viewing pleasure.  Walking on the glass floors of the observation deck was not a little unnerving but certainly thrilling.  We considered doing the bungy jump, but it just didn’t seem worth $200 for about 5 minutes of thrill, the vast majority of which was hanging upside-down over the landing mattress in front of gawking spectators who might record your less-than-dignified reaction for their blog.  A meandering walk took us over a nearby hill to a brief tour of St. Lawrence and on to A Ma Temple, where the air was thick with incense and the rock walls were carved in characters painted blood red.  Pangs of hunger drove us into another hole-in-the-wall, this one a two-seater where we enjoyed rather spicy noodles in hot broth.  Finding a cab back to the hotel was not easy, and time grew short.  Fortune favored us at last, and we gathered luggage from the hotel and reached the ferry port with plenty of time before depature.  Theron bought a ticket for Shenzhen and I one for Hong Kong where I still needed to get my visa.  We rehearsed our rendez-vous plans for my arrival in Shenzhen and then parted.  Minutes later, we were amused to meet back up on the otherside of customs: all customs lines led to the same lobby before departure.  We then made our farewells again and went our separate ways to be reunited two days later in Shenzhen for some real adventures.

5 – 7 December, 2008.