China 2002, Part V: City Walls and Terra Cotta Warriors

My brother Ed is in town this week - it's the summer break between Summer A and Summer B semesters at UF. Ed spent last summer interning at my dad's workplace, and took advantage of the fact that he was in South Florida by training every day with our Sifu. He managed to finish learning our 13 Lunges Spear form, but the most beneficial part of his training was the huge improvement he got in fighting. He spent about an hour and a half three times a week training exclusively with Sifu, as in just him and Sifu, one on one, going at it for the entire length of every sparring/bag class. And the results were pretty amazing - his fighting style changed and I have to admit that he is a level or two above me now.

He also showed me a neat trick - apparently over the year he'd conditioned his forearms very well. We used to do this exercise at kung fu school called "three star", where we bang our forearms against our partner's forearms at three points to condition them, like in the picture (not us). Usually, we would do this for about 3 minutes. Apparently Ed was doing this exercise with three or four different people, one after another, effectively quadrupling the time spent. He demonstrated his conditioning by asking me to hit his forearm with one of my wooden swords. I did, repeatedly, and he didn't even flinch. He even added to the impact by throwing backfist punches against my strikes! Amazing!

We've also been spending a lot of time playing Super Smash Brothers for Nintendo 64. I grabbed this ROM when I first started playing around with N64 emulators early this year, but I never really got to play with it much. It's a lot more fun playing with other people, and Cherry didn't like it (too much stuff going on I think), so I never really got into it. However, I got Ed to try it with me, and I finally know why the series is so popular in college dorms now!

And now, in the spirit of all this combat, I'll tell you about my trip to the Terra Cotta Warriors Site (兵马俑), in this episode of China 2002!

At this point in our trip, we had gotten accustomed to daily life: wake up, try to find lunch, go to school, come back and eat again, play some Chrono Trigger, or maybe visit the English Salon. One night, three of the girls in Kir-Wei's group on the first trip to the English Salon came over for a while. They said I looked like Jackie Chan, only cooler and better looking! On the weekend, we went shopping at the Kai Yue shopping mall downtown, one of the massive classy shopping malls typical of Asia (the main one in Xi'an). We also visited a Brazilian Barbecue. I've heard these exist here in the states too, but they're fairly popular in China - I've been to three there. Basically, the owner and waiters bring slabs of meat, pieces of fruit, bacon, sausages, whatever, on huge skewers and cut them off onto your plate. It's all you can eat, and the meat is really great! One of my favorite restaurant types for sure.

One afternoon, Candy, also one of the girls in Kir-Wei's group, invited us to go to the City Wall with her and her roommates. Xi'an is one of the few cities in China with the vast majority of its city wall intact, and it's beautiful. The photo on the left is just to show who all went - it really doesn't do the wall itself any justice - so I've linked the photo to the right from Wikibooks, which is much better!

We ended up going to visit the Terra Cotta Warriors site on a Wednesday, because Diana and Conrad, the extended stay students who served as our guides when we first got to Xi'an, said that a weekday would be less crowded and therefore less confusing/dangerous. For those not in the know, the Terra Cotta Warriors is a collection of underground chambers with several battalions of terra cotta soldiers and horses. Each statue represents one soldier of Qin Shi Huang, the first official Emperor of China back in 221 B.C., who apparently wanted to take his invincible army with him to the afterlife.

Every statue is sculpted in actual size (they were actually quite tall - around 6 feet - so I'm not sure how accurate the height was, considering that this was a Chinese army after all...), in stunning detail, including facial features, weapons, and even their mail armor! The site was discovered in the mid 70s by some farmers digging in the area, and now there are four chambers that the public can visit. When we returned to school, we realized that we didn't tell our history teacher that we would be going on the trip to the Terra Cotta site, and found out that he waited at school for three hours before going home! But it was in the name of learning about history that we went, so we didn't feel bad for too long!

All Star Grant!

It's a sign!

So, we went down to Boca this past weekend to spend time with the family and celebrate some birthdays. The drive this time was pretty quick, especially when compared with a couple of the past few which have been littered with brush fires and accidents and other such obstacles. The weekend itself was a fairly busy one.

We got home at around 8 PM on Friday and just spent time with the family, watching Bend It Like Beckham in the spirit of the World Cup (despite the unfortunate early exit of the USA), but moreso in the spirit of seeing Keira Knightley kick balls in a sports bra. Ed brought his computer and a 4-USB-port adapter, as well as both his and Shawn's Logitech Dual Action gamepads, and I brought both my Logitech Dual Action and Gamepad Pro gamepads, so after dinner and the movie, Ed, Cherry, Melinda, and I got a little four-player Mario Kart 64 action! I haven't played > 2 player Mario Kart since probably sophomore year in college, and it's still as fun as ever. I probably noticed it before, but it's harder for one player to dominate in Mario Kart 64 than in the original Mario Kart, since the game makes it easy to gun for the leader of the race, making it more fun in that aspect.

Saturday morning, my dad and I dropped off our cars at Tire Kingdom to get my tires aligned and get my oil changed. I checked the oil level on the car before I left, and it was like halfway empty! I'd never seen that before! I wonder if that has anything to do with the seemingly low mileage I've been getting these past frew months. Then, the family headed out to Deerfield Beach for a few hours early in the morning. I don't think I've ever been to the beach that early, but it was actually pretty nice. The tide was ultra low, so there wasn't any wave riding at all, but on the plus side, since the water was so still, it was really clear - you could see the fish swimming around in the water around your feet without much effort. I ended up racing Ed in swimming - and lost. Twice. I also lost my contact lenses. That's three losses! After the beach, we headed to Top China Buffet to get my monthly hit of Chinese Buffet - and it was satisfying. My only regret is that my stomach couldn't hold any more than what I ate!

After we came back from the buffet, we picked up the cars and went home, then took a long nap. When we got up, it was time for Ultimate Frisbee. Shirlene and Eva had arranged for some 20+ people for a game at around 4:00, like they do every time everyone is home for a break. It was like 4:30 when we finally dragged our butts outside, and we had to pick up Kir-Wei, who lives 15 minutes in the opposite direction of the park, so by the time we got to the park, it was damn near 6:00 already, and also slightly drizzling. As I might have mentioned before, Frisbee is just not something that caters to my athletic abilities. In other words, I suck at it, and I blame the game. Eventually, I was able to convince part of the group to play football instead, and we had a little five on five going in no time!

At first, I played QB for my team, and tossed one TD to Kir-Wei. Soon, after the other people finally joined up, a tall black kid who we've played frisbee with in the past asked to QB sneak, so I let him. The amazing thing was, he was at least as fast as I was, and he was wearing Vans, compared to me and my cleats! He also was making some pretty consistent completions, so he played QB for the rest of the game. After he became QB, the game became a lot more street-ball, without much structure to the plays, basically relying on just someone to get open instead of timing routes. Towards the end of the game, that kid and I became a solid connection, as I reeled in a 30 yard bomb and a couple of great slants, finally going down the middle for a score. I felt pretty good about my mobility too, as I was able to juke out a few defenders on some of the short route passes and make some good YAC.

We won the game 5-1, but I feel kind of bad because the other team would have scored on one play for sure if it had been a tackle game - they had a little speed demon (who was damn fast) who blazed to the outside, beating both me and Kir-Wei. I touched him with four fingers on one hand and one on the other and marked him down, but I think it would have been more fun for the other team if we gave them that score. Anyhow, it felt great making those catches - it's been a long time since I last played football with more than 3 other people!

China 2002, Part IV: Competits and Sand Dragons

So yesterday, Cherry finished her last exam for the summer A semester. To celebrate, she decided to give the apartment a long overdue cleaning. Which is all good and well, except I had to get in on the fun too after a long day at work! However, in the end, it was the right thing to do - the place felt a lot fresher after scrubbing the floors and dusting and vacuuming and throwing out all of the papers that had accumulated on the majority of our flat surfaces. It's probably something I should look into doing for my cube! After cleaning the house, we went to the park to meet Nick and do the park trail workout again. We pushed it pretty hard this time, but I am now able to do the "Running Man" pullup from the Thug Workout Videos with dignity! Rock On!

And now, for the next episode of China 2002!

In the afternoon of Eric's, Kir-Wei's, and my moving day, we joined the rest of the group for lunch and were told that we were to meet with two girls from the Foreign Language College next door to our school, Shaanxi Normal University. In preparation, we moved some of the furniture around in one of the lobbies downstairs so everyone could sit in one room. While moving one of the heavy sofa chairs, Kir-Wei inexplicably pushed hard towards me, and the wooden arm of the chair smashed into my nose, causing profuse bleeding. Eventually, the bleeding stopped, and we held our meeting. The two girls wanted us to help out in some sort of English Language "Competit", which I took to mean competition. The poor spelling basically eliminated any credibility of the the event in my mind, however, and in the end I think only Tom went to it (and eventually, to many other events as a speaker of sorts, even making some money, living up to his self-dubbed "Daqian", or"Big Money", name!).

The "war zone" pool hall!

We took some time to explore our school, as well as the area around it, some more. Eric and I looked around campus for the PE department, but what we found was rather disappointing - a bunch of classrooms with no workout equipment to be seen. We found some places to pick up bootleg DVDs and VCDs, and picked up Star Wars, Episode 2 (the movie was still in theaters in the US). We also watched Shaolin Soccer and the Korean movie I mentioned before, My Sassy Girl, for the first time at Colin's room, since his roommate had both of these movies (two copies of My Sassy Girl, in fact! A bunch of us would pick up copies of both of these movies for ourselves. We also found an outdoor pool hall of sorts, run by some real pros who could make insanely complex shots but miss painfully easy ones, and rack the balls with just their hands! It was cheap too, and a fun thing to do at night if and when we were locked out of the hotel from staying out too late (along with playing Counterstrike all night at the internet cafe for 10 RMB).

On the day Eric, Kir-Wei, Zhang Gang, and I played soccer, Tom, Jelani, and Colin were approached by a crazy pot-smoking middle-aged white guy with a hatred for his native USA named Steve who took them to a place called the English Salon (英语沙龙 - literally English Language Sand Dragon). It's a social club of sorts, where members pay to practice their English with other English students in an air-conditioned environment and beer and snacks behind the counter. Apparently, the three guys made a committment to come back with more Americans, and as such, they brought us to the English Salon. At first, there were a few guest speakers, including Steve (who was quite popular for his cynical speeches before he was banned from the place some time later), and we introduced ourselves. I made a crucial flaw when I mentioned that I was of Taiwanese descent - the entire room suddenly was silent, and all eyes were on me when I let that juicy bit fly! After our introductions, they broke us up into groups with one or two of the American students at each table, and everyone proceeded to squeeze in as many questions as possible, similar to some of the International Student parties we had attended when we first arrived a few weeks earlier, only these were all Chinese students. Most of the English Salon's patrons were girls, and so we handed out our phone numbers generously. I got myself in some pretty heated discussions about Taiwan and other politics and had to get rescued by Tom and Eric!

Watching Soccer at the Sand Dragon

We would get calls quite often for the first few days to go back to the Salon, which we did. Tom was getting calls from some girls asking for me - but I never figured out who those people were. We got to know a bunch of the regulars - Candy and her roommates (I've mentioned her before), a Xinjiang native named Jack, and some soccer fans (it was around the 2002 World Cup, the first and only World Cup in which China qualified for). We were also popular with the waiters, Eric, Wayne, and Sanzi, who had pretty good English (except for Sanzi), and would hook us up with free beer and soda whenever we stopped by. Most importantly, for me anyway, was that I first met Cherry at the English Salon! I didn't meet her in this first visit, but how we did meet is an interesting story - one that Eric loves to tell!

One Year of being an Engineer!

Breaking news! Today, June 20th, 2006, is my official One Year Anniversary as a real, working Engineer!!

You may now return to your normal lives.

Gator Football 05 Highlights, Barbecues, Curry, and (Some) More!

An awesome hightlight video linked one one of the forums on Gator Country.




I must have not watched as many games as I thought I did - I don't recall many heroic scrambles by Chris Leak or full-gallop touchdown runs, and in-stride touchdown passes seemed few and far between, but the video still gets me pumped every time I watch it!

Speaking of football, USA survived a match against traditional power Italy, tying 1-1 in the other football this past Saturday, and now relies on a win against Ghana and an Italian victory over the Czech Republic in order to advance to the next round. I'm not getting my hopes up :( ...

Back to the American brand of football, I had the opportunity to talk some football this past Friday at a barbecue thrown by Foley and the other interns, who had (and still have) a rather large surplus of hamburgers, hot dogs, and beer. It was a pretty laid back party, and Cherry was pleasantly surprised when she met Lee-Ann, a white woman who spoke Chinese quite well, and also happened to teach Chinese in high school and Japanese at BCC. I asked her when she started learning Chinese, and she said she started learning in high school in Atlanta. I don't recall there having been Eastern Asian language courses of any sort in Boca - I guess maybe the larger metropolitan areas have them more often. Her listening was quite good and her pronunciation was spot-on, for the most part. Better than most of the other foreigners I've met who learned Chinese... you know who you are! Just playin'!

On Saturday, Cherry and I tried out an Indian buffet nearby. At first, I had no idea it was a buffet, but that might have been a good thing since I would not know what to order if it was not a buffet. I also didn't know that it was like eleven bucks per person - there were maybe eight different dishes on the buffet, compared to 40+ in the Super China Buffets down in South Florida that run for about the same price for dinner and include seafood. I don't mean to slight Indian food - the curry was pretty good - but I did think it was a bit overpriced.

While doing birthday shopping, I almost picked up a super sexy new Nintendo DS Lite. Ed informed me earlier in the week that Circuit City was offering an accessory pack of sorts, as well as the game "Brain Age", with DS Lites for the price of just the console this past weekend. Unfortunately, the DS Lite eluded my grasp, as they were completely out of stock at Circuit City and I didn't feel like special ordering it - apparently they were also out of the free accessory pack, which reduces bang for the buck (something that goes a long way for, er, frugal types like myself). However, I found out that Wal-Mart offers the Brain Age/DS Lite package for a similar price...

China 2002, Part III: Adventures in Shaanxi

Today is Cherry's birthday, so we'll probably go out to eat a few times and go shopping over the weekend for something nice to celebrate. In the meantime, Grant's Pad will get another update on the China 2002 trip (which, as you will find out in the coming episodes, is where Cherry and I met in the first place)! However, a few more quick updates on real life first...

I managed to forget my badge again yesterday. Twice in one month (albeit at opposite ends of the 30-odd days). I can't even fathom how it's possible to forget my badge - I put it on the same hook as I put my keys, right next to the front door. I shouldn't even be able to lock up the apartment or drive to work without first seeing my badge! Maybe I should start putting my badge in the car...

On another side note, before I get into the next episode of flashbacks - I mentioned previously that Billy is interning at ITRI (International Technical Research Institute) this summer in Hsinchu, Taiwan. I knew I had a lot of family there, and I also knew that I had a few friends that worked there. What I didn't know is that my friend Darong, one of the students in the Silicon-Radio-on-Chip lab at National Cheng Kung University while I was doing a study abroad there two years ago, works for ITRI! He's the second guy from the right in the photo. The two guys flanking him were also my labmates from that trip, but I think they work for ASUS in Taipei. Maybe Billy can look them up while he's there!

With that, let's get on with the flashback action!

On the very first weekend we had in Xi'an, Eric came knocking on our door damn early. Apparently, Ms. Ping had scheduled some sort of field trip for us, to a temple called Zhou Gong somewhere in the countryside. It was too early, however, for about half of our group - Colin, Jelani, and Kir-Wei all elected to stay in bed. The rest of us, Eric, Tom, Pimchand, and I, got the rest of our sleep on the bus, since our destination was quite a ways away from Xi'an itself.

The temple itself was fairly typical - pretty well kept up and had some nice buildings and statues. To this day I still can't determine if a temple is Taoist or Buddhist (especially since Chinese culture has melting-potted the heck out of both of those schools), but I think it was a Taoist temple. One of the notable features was this room which was like one of those "freak show" exhibits in low-budget carnivals... The trip, however, featured the first of countless times we would be attacked by hawkers trying to sell us useless wares - Tom didn't get back on the bus quickly enough to avoid them and ended up buying a small trinket!

Later, we were taken to a noodle restaurant somewhere between Zhou Gong and Xi'an. I recall some cold, vinegar-y appetizers waiting for us when we got there - and if there's a Chinese food that I really don't like, it's cold vinegar-y appetizers, especially if they served as the whole meal, which is what I thought at first. That and eggplant. But anyway, back to the restaurant. Fortunately, this was not our whole meal. The actual meal consisted of soup noodles of all kinds - normal white noodles in a mild soup, green vegetable made noodles in a spicy soup, red noodles in spicy soup, thick noodles, thin noodles, you name it, they had it. In fact, you name it, we tried at least one bowl of it. The Chinese guys sitting with us at the restaurant each downed no fewer than 15 bowls. I think I did ten. The trick is to just eat the noodles - the soup is for flavor... they actually throw the soup you don't drink from your bowl back into the massive pot and boil it over and over. It sounds disgusting, and I'm pretty sure it's not very hygienic, but it did taste really good, and it's probably because it was cooked so many times. Or maybe it was the beer? Anyhow, the photo above seems to be from that trip as well - I don't quite recall when it happened but I do remember doing it! No field trip to the Chinese countryside is complete without a little plowing!

A few days later, back in Xi'an, I was able to contact Zhang Gang, one of Shuli's friends in Xi'an. Shuli went to the prestigious Jiao Tong University in Xi'an before coming to UF to do her Ph. D in electrical engineering and gave me a bunch of phone numbers of her friends in China. Zhang Gang is the only one that I would actually hook up with (besides her in-laws), primarily because Shuli asked me to deliver him a pair of Nikes when I got to Xi'an. Anyway, he arranged for me, Kir-Wei, Eric, Pimchand, and Pimchand's Korean roommate Mei-Yu to go out to a restaurant to eat with him, and then he suggested that we go play a pickup game of soccer. We went downtown to get a pair of cleats for me to play in for like 30 RMB (about four dollars), and hit the field. Eric and Zhang Gang hit it off pretty well - I believe they actually hung out a few times on their own after this first encounter! We had some good times with Zhang Gang and I still keep in touch with him from time to time on MSN and e-mail.

A few more days later, I got a call from the reception desk, again damn early in the morning. And again, it was Eric's doing. The reception lady told me that Eric had to move downstairs to the 3rd floor, and apparently Eric wasn't sure if he heard correctly. So, I dragged my butt down to Eric's floor (6th) and helped him gather his stuff together. Several hours later, we went downstairs to tell them that he was ready to go. To my surprise, they told me that Kir-Wei and I had to move too! Apparently, the rooms on the upper floors were better than the rooms downstairs, and they wanted to use those rooms for hotel guests. So, we spent the better half of the day moving all the way down to the second floor, where we would spend most of the rest (but not all) of our days in Xi'an!

Tune in next time! And be sure to check out the photo albums, accessible from the Links section of Grant's Pad!

China 2002, Part II: We Arrive in Xi'an

An interesting thing about Chinese airports is the so-called "construction tax". Depending on your destination, this is a 50 to 90 RMB (renminbi, yuan, or kuai - all interchangeable terms for the Chinese currency, which is worth about 1/8 USD) fee that you must pay in order to depart to, well, anywhere. Fortunately, my uncle Cheng Hsiu advised us about this fee beforehand, and so, Kir-Wei and I were able to make our way to Xi'an without getting stuck at the airport.

Upon arriving in Xi'an, I was a bit amused that Ms. Ping, the administrator from Shaanxi Normal University that was in charge of the program, was able to identify us as American students as soon as we stepped off the plane! So much for trying to blend in... We were driven to the hotel which would serve as our home for the next two months and change. This was somewhat of a disappointment, as I had hoped that I would share a room with some Chinese students and get a better experience of the lifestyle - but Kir-Wei was a good roommate too, I guess. We explored the nearby area a bit and met and talked with a few Chinese students who tried to speak English with us, unawares that we spoke Chinese quite fluently (again, so much for blending in).

Soon enough, the other participants of the program trickled in. Colin, the delicate featured one, Pimchand, the Thai girl who was on her first of several study abroads in her UF career, and Tom, who would later name himself Da Qian (大钱, or Big Money) and would earn the most money of all of us to prove it, had already arrived around the same time we did, and Jelani, the free spirited 6'3" black guy that drew looks from no fewer than 300 million Chinese eyes over the summer, just arrived by train from Beijing, by himself, no less!

We were introduced to Diana, a German UF student who had been living in China for the last two years, and her boyfriend and UF student Conrad, who had been in Xi'an for the last eight months. They took us through our orientation, getting our books and sending us off to our first classes. The group was divided into two groups - upper and lower, with Colin (who had taken 2 years of Chinese at UF), Tom (who had taken one year), Kir-Wei (also one year - for whatever reason), and myself in the upper, and the Pimchand and Jelani (who had both taken Chinese for one year at UF) in the lower. We had four teachers (who were all graduate students studying at the Shaanxi Normal, or Teachers, University: Mr. Wang for History, Mrs. Li for Conversation, Mr. Ma Mao Peng for Listening, and Mr. Li Fei for Intensive Reading. After class, the last student of our group, Eric, the typical, blunt, blond-haired blue-eyed American, finally showed up.

Eric's story was quite an interesting one. He had arrived in Xi'an early enough that day to have made it to class on time, but he did not have the luxury of Mrs. Ping escorting him to the university. Instead, he took a cab, and instructed the driver to go to Xi'an Da Xue, or Xi'an University. Unfortunately, of all of the colleges in Xi'an (there are at least three major universities and a number of smaller colleges), none are called Xi'an University. So, it took them all morning to figure out that he actually was supposed to join us at Shaanxi Normal University. He also had a difficult time being paired with a roommate. At first, he was parked with Tom, who's room had enough stuff for two people. This is because Jelani was Tom's roommate. So, he was set up with his own room on the 6th floor instead.

With the group finally fully assembled, we made our first trip to Downtown Xi'an about 20 minutes bus ride from school. Xi'an is a beautiful city, with many of its ancient buildings still in place. Among them are the Drum Tower, the Bell Tower, the Muslim Mosque, and the City Wall. Xi'an was also cheap - much cheaper than Shanghai. Near the school, at any of the little diners lining the street adjacent to our school and the Foreign Languages school next to us, our entire party of six could eat quite comfortably for under six dollars USD!

Facilities were convenient in Xi'an. There were places to get glasses, haircuts, CDs, another huge supermarket in the form of "Home Club", where you could in fact get razors and toothbrushes and anything else a student, or anyone, really needed, and in case we did get sick of Chinese food or felt particularly decadent one day, there was a KFC nearby and a huge McDonald's downtown (American fast food is pretty much the same price in China as it is in the states - making it high-class eats). It also had all-important High Speed Internet cafes, where we would satisfy all of our Counterstrike and e-mail needs!

So that concludes the introduction of the Xi'an group! Check back for our adventures! And don't forget to check out the My China 2002 Album I and My China 2002 Album II! Also definitely check out Tom's China 2002 Photo Album for great, detailed photos of life in Xi'an!

Friday Fest, Steak 'n Shake, and Badminton

This weekend saw the beginning of the World Cup in Germany - but seeing as the USA hasn't played yet, I haven't had much interest in it, and subsequently, I haven't watched any of it. Soccer isn't one of those sports that I watch just because it's on - I do that for that other football!

What I did do this Friday was check out the monthly Friday Fest. Every month here in Melbourne, there is a block part on the second Friday of the month. Basically there are street vendors, some bands, some activities for kids, and otherwise people walking around, talking to other people and drinking beer on the street. This month, there was a sort of "Renaissance Fair" theme, so there were a bunch of people dressed up in Renaissance-ish dresses and getup. The band also played what was probably folk Irish music or something like that - there is a pretty heavy Irish flavor on New Haven Drive in that part of town, from the Meg O'Malley's restaurant to a number of the small shops on the sides of the street. The shops were pretty interesting, mostly free-spirit types of shops selling fairies, Native American jewelry, wicker furniture, Persian rugs, incense, stuff that is neat to look at but I would practically never buy. The party itself was a little smaller than I expected, but it was okay - worth checking out anyway as it is one of things unique to Melbourne.

Saturday was mostly an errand day for me - get some shopping done (we hadn't gone grocery shopping for like a week and a half!), do my laundry, etc. We got up pretty late, and I remembered that I forgot to go to the bank to deposit some money the day before and we rushed out to do the transaction before the bank closed at 1. Then, we decided to have lunch at Steak 'n Shake. It's been a while since I've actually had food at Steak 'n Shake - we often go there just to pick up a Strawberry milkshake. This time, however, we decided to go ahead and eat since it was lunchtime, and since I had coupons that would save us like 5 bucks! I wasn't sure if Cherry would like it - like most Chinese people, she thinks burgers are just burgers, and there's no difference between McDonald's, Wendy's, Burger King, or those six dollar burgers at sit-in restaurants. This view has changed slightly since the last time we went to South Florida. On that trip, we went to Burger King and she agreed that Burger King's Flame Broiled Burgers were indeed pretty tasty. This trip to Steak 'n Shake also broadened her horizons a little bit - she really liked the Frisco Melt!

When we got back, I did the laundry and practiced a little kung fu, then Cherry and I went to play a little Badminton. We picked up the two-player set a little while ago, but hadn't gotten a chance to play yet. I hadn't played badminton in forever... in fact, I'm not even sure I ever played badminton, but obviously Saturday wasn't a great day to play. It was really windy and the shuttlecock kept on flying out of bounds (and no, it wasn't because I suck - it really was the wind!). Finally, the wind settled down a bit and we were able to actually play a game - but I still got my butt kicked. No excuses there...

Before I finish up, a question for you badminton experts out there - for our game, we used ping-pong rules (each player serves five balls - first to 15) for scoring, which I'm sure aren't the actual rules for this game. Does anyone know how to really play this game?

China 2002, Part I

Sorry for the massive delay of this post. I've been pretty busy lately, and Blogger has been troublesome as well, but here it is finally, the first episode of my study abroad trip to Xi'an!

During the Spring 2002 semester, I expressed interest to do a study abroad in either Taiwan or China. My original hope was to be able to continue my course track for Electrical Engineering at one of Taiwan's engineering schools, but after some thought, I decided that the language barrier would be too great for me. Thus, I looked instead for a suitable language program.

Looking around at UF's International Center, I eventually got information from Professor Fresh, a white lady who was raised in Taiwan and served as one of the lead professors at UF's Chinese language program, about a UF sponsored program at Shaanxi Normal University in Xi'an, China, one of the ancient capitals of China. Other choices were the National Taiwan Normal University in Taipei, and some programs in Beijing and Hong Kong. Eventually, I decided on Xi'an, since I figured, if I was going to make the trip out to Communist China (which I had been brought up to question/dislike, being of Taiwanese descent) I might as well spend some time in a historical heart of it. Somehow, my kung fu brother Kir-Wei spontaneously decided that it would be cool for him to go as well, and with that, we had our summer plans.

We got our tickets through Amy, a travel agent in Gainesville who specialized in handling tickets to and from China. Her husband was the owner of Mr. Han's restaurant, a well-known pricey Chinese restaurant near the highway in Gainesville. As such, Kir-Wei and I had to go to Mr. Han's restaurant to pick up our airline tickets in little envelopes. The restaurant's exterior is shady at best - it was located behind Red Lobster, and had neon signs pointing to the restaurant, which was upstairs, and dancing, which was downstairs. The interior was indeed classy, but the most unusual thing about our trip to pick up our tickets was the fact that there were no diners that evening - it was 7 PM, and there was only one table of Chinese men in suits... It seemed straight out of a Triad film!

Anyway, shortly after classes ended in May, we took off from Florida to San Francisco and then to Pudong International Airport in Shanghai, where we were picked up by my mother's cousin, Cheng Hsiu (his name is Romanized in the Wades-Giles system, as is the standard for most Taiwanese passports), who had come to Shanghai some years earlier to open various businesses, such as casinos and restaurants - a very popular enterprise by many members of my non-immediate family. For our stay in Shanghai, we would be primarily based out of his restaurant, called the "Free Time Restaurant". It was a really classy looking joint, but business was never really jumping while we were there - we got that funny Triad feeling again from this place.

Anyhow, Cheng Hsiu took us around town, hooking up with another Taiwanese friend of his named David, and we checked out the famous Huangpujiang river and park, where Bruce Lee kicked down the sign which said "No Chinese and Dogs" in the classic movie "The Chinese Connection". Later in the night we hit up a classy pub that had a cute Japanese singer doing covers of Japanese songs as well as some Cindi Lauper! Weird. At the end of the night, they took us to another shady friend's place to help us change our currency. Needless to say, a whole lot of shadyness in just a few days.

The next day, Cheng Hsiu took us out to check out some more sights of Shanghai. I didn't know it at the time, but he took us to the Cheng Huang Miao (城隍庙) area, which is an area downtown modeled after the "Old City". Parts of it really are old, but most of it is newly remodeled. It's definitely a tourist stop, for both Chinese and international visitors alike. Probably the favorite highlight of most visitors here, besides being able to get happily ripped off for gifts and stuff, is the Tang Bao (汤包) place. Every day, people would line up outside of this restaurant/shop to get little boxes of Tang Bao - little bun shaped steamed dumplings with piping hot juicy meat filling. And by juicy, I mean really juicy - the name comes from the fact that there is actually a substantial amount of broth that is collected inside the dumpling during the steaming! Very tasty.

We also hit up some fancy shopping districts (probably around Huahai Road) and tried the famous Xin Jiang Kao Rou Chuan (新疆烤肉串) - lamb kabobs from the Xin Jiang region, also very tasty and one of my favorite Chinese snacks - before heading back to the restaurant and eventually meeting Cheng Hsiu's girlfriend, who would join us when we went out to the Bourbon Street Pub, a very cool place featuring cover bands of all nationalities singing Chinese songs and dancing girls on poles in glass cases! Wicked cool.

On Day Three, we woke up nice and f*@#!ing early to go on a one day trip to the countryside. We got on a bus and drove out to Wuzhen (乌镇) a popular canal village near Shanghai, famous for it's blue cloth and rice wine. There was a small boat there which supposedly featured kung fu demos from time to time, but it must have not been our day or something, cuz we didn't see any kung fu. What we did see is old style beds and furniture, awesome looking narrow alleys (perfect for those Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon nighttime ninja chases), and some damn good candy! At the end of the day, Cheng Hsiu took Kir-Wei and me to Carrefour, a French owned Mega Super Market, to equip us with things that he didn't think we would find out in the rural Western part of China, like razors and toothpaste (seriously - he was worried that we wouldn't be able to find these things). It was absolutely huge, and had everything from groceries to furniture to electronics.

With that, we were finally ready to make our way to Xi'an!

06/06/06, Google Earth, and Staple American Home Foods

I usually don't post two days in a row, but how could I not post on 06/06/06? I saw on the 10 o'clock news that women were scheduling C-sections just to avoid having their kids have this day as their birthdate! That said, it's going to be a pretty short post today - I gotta get some work in to, you know.

First on today's list is the new toy I've checked out these past two days. It's Google Earth. I heard about it a long time ago, but I refrained from downloading it because (a) it takes up hard drive space, which I do not have a lot of on my old laptop, and (b) there's a note on Google Earth's download page that says something like "Notebooks older than two years may not be able to run Google Earth. Mine is, as of April, four years old.

Basically, Google Earth lets you put search addresses and landmarks and so forth, and then it will move you all the way zooming out from whereever you were looking at before (say, Ben Hill Griffin Stadium), then zooming in to what you searched for (e.g., your home address, or the Oriental Pearl Tower in Shanghai). I like searching things on one side of the planet and then searching something on the other side of the planet, just so I can do the flyover thing again! The detail is also remarkable. You can see people walking around in New York City (although the satellite image is a still, so they're actually frozen in mid-walk, I guess), but you can easily recognize the streets, the local Wal-Mart, your car, whatever. Make sure you click the photo of the Forbidden City there so you can get a feel for how clear it is, and that's not even on the highest zoom setting! It also has a free-form forum structure where users apparently can do little writeups on certain locations. For example, if you zoom in on the Grand Canyon, you can find commentaries and travel guides written by users. Very cool. Check it out if your computer can handle it!

Next up, a topic that I thought of recently. I'm not sure why I thought of it, but I actually wrote it down on a little post-it note to remind me to blog about this very important issue. So, here's the thing. As a Chinese person, I have eaten white rice and stir fried dishes for very likely more than 90 percent of all my meals in my entire life. Even throughout most of college, and my friends Kir-Wei, Jeevan, and Jordan can attest to this - I cooked and ate steamed white rice, roasted chicken, and stir fried vegetables for the vast majority of my (and their) dinners.

My question is, what does the typical American eat on a regular basis at home? I go to restaurants from time to time, and I see (a lot of) meat and potatoes, some steamed vegetables, sandwiches, and pasta. It's all good stuff, but in my experience, what I find at Chinese restaurants isn't really staple food in my diet - and I got to wondering if it was the same way with American food. I have my doubts that other Americans eat steak every day, and I can really only tolerate sandwiches two or three times a week at most. So what is the American equivalent for the steamed rice and stir fried dishes meal? I'm really not trying to instigate anything at all, I would be very interested in trying American homestyle food - I always like trying new foods. I'm really just wondering what other people eat all the time - I've never really thought about it, and now that I have thought about it and failed to come up with an answer on my own, I'd really appreciate if you all could give me an idea of what you ate at home regularly growing up, or what you eat regularly now, too! Come on, let's get those menus rolling in!

Friends in Chinese Places

My Chinese speaking white friend Eric is back in China for the second time in two years, taking advantage of his last summer to study abroad in before starting grad school at Texas. He's going to be taking classes at the prestigious Fudan University in Shanghai starting in July, but, as you might have noticed, it's only the beginning of June now. That basically means he's planning to spend the whole month of June on a massive trek through the country with one of his other friends who will is in his same program!

On a similar note, Eric's roommate of several years, also a good friend of mine who used to frequent Grant's Pad quite a bit, Billy, also graduated with his BS this past May and will be pursuing his graduate degree(s) at Georgia Tech! He's also taking advantage of this last pre-grad school summer by spending it in Taiwan doing an internship with ITRI in Hsinchu, the city where most of my maternal relatives hails from (and still lives in, for the most part). A bunch of my labmates from my summer study in Tainan also work in Hsinchu, which is one of the major hubs for semiconductor research and production in Taiwan (which, for the unawares, is the world leader in IC design and production). Although he hasn't posted to it aside from his initial post, you can read about his trip in his Taiwan blog, Taipei: Not Just A Windows Game Anymore.

I haven't been back to China or Taiwan since the summer of 2004, and I have to say that I am a bit jealous! So, I figured that the only thing I could do to keep up with these trips to Chinese places is to put up photo albums from that first trip to China that I allude to so often and plan to blog about extensively as though I were on the trip now instead of at work! For now, you can check out the photo albums: My China 2002 Album, Part I and My China 2002 Album, Part II. Come back often in the next few weeks or so as we go back in time to 2002 and go through some of the more memorable photos and experiences!

Disciple Mark and Cardio, or My Lack Thereof

Several years ago, I got my butt kicked in Kung Fu school by a visitor to the school. It went something like this:

Grantis and his classmates are training their staff forms arduously, when suddenly, a dark figure shoves open the double doors of the Kwoon.

"I want to see your sifu!" the newcomer demands.

"Who do you think you are?!" replied Grantis Mantis.

"I am Disciple Mark! I issue a challenge to your school. I will beat you all!" answered the stranger.

"Well, you'll have to get through me first!" Grantis Mantis shot back, then followed his comment with a Choy Lay Fut Whirling Panther Fist.

"With pleasure!" the challenger scoffed, answering the attack with a Shadow Hand Kick which parried Grantis Mantis's attack, then planted a foot in his chest, sending him flying back.

With that, Grantis Mantis was unable to stop the intruder from marching forward to challenge his sifu. Fortunately, Sifu's skills were much greater than Grantis Mantis's, and he was able to easily fend himself, defeating Disciple Mark.

Okay, so it didn't REALLY happen that way. But you have to admit, it would have been damn cool if it did! What really happened, was Disciple Mark, a student of my si bak (older kung fu uncle) John Wai, came to our school to refine his Sanshou skills with my sifu, who was well-known as a sanshou specialist in the Lee Koon Hung circles. Sifu really did pit both me and Kir-Wei against Mark a couple of times, and I was soundly defeated. It turns out that Mark would go on to become a very good Sanshou fighter, winning three international Sanshou tournaments before being invited to China to train with Sanshou gurus from Shaolin, accumulating a record of 11-2 in Sanshou as well as starting a campaign in Muay Thai with a current 1-1 record. He's competed in several well known circuits, such as Arnold the governator's Martial Arts Challenge held annually in Ohio, and has met and/or trained with a number of martial arts celebrities, ranging from Sanshou's own Cung Le to MMA icons such as Royce Gracie and Tito Ortiz to direct disciples of the current Grandmaster of the Shaolin Temple. According to his website, FLSanshou.com (visit it! And make sure you visit the Gallery for the great photos!), he hopes to represent the USA or Puerto Rico in the 2008 Olympics in Beijing!

Mark posted a few reviews of some of his fights on his website. In one of them, he loses the fight, and met Cung Le, who commented that Mark was a great fighter but he had no cardio in that fight. I actually remember a few times when Mark came to our school to train, he would actually burn out faster than we would! I'm sure his cardio is much better now but I guess it's always something that you need to work on.

Speaking of cardio, to add some variety to my usual workout routine, Nick introduced me to a little park circuit he came up with after seeing the "Thug Workout" videos I posted a little while ago. The park has a jogging trail around a pond, and along the trail there are several apparatuses to mix up the exercise session. We did the ramp climb, some pullups and chinups, some dips, some pushups, crunches, and leg lifts, and some monkey bars. I was really surprised at what a great workout the whole thing was - but all together, the jogging was the worst thing for me. I haven't run regularly since I was training hard with the club running stadiums for what must have been a couple of miles, so I was really disappointed with how I burned out, but really excited on the other hand for being introduced to this combination exercise of cardio and calisthenics! I'm definitely going to add this to my ever-diversifying exercise routine of weightlifting and kung fu!

Not to drag on, but speaking of kung fu, my friend Foley from CASA recently came to my company as an intern, and he has expressed interest in training with me in kung fu as well. Now I'm really excited about my exercise program!