China 2002, Part XI: Hangin' in Hangzhou

Wow, it's been almost a year and a half since my last China 2002 post! I guess I've been pretty busy with other things and have been finding too many other interesting things to write about. Fortunately, I didn't really come across anything interesting the last couple of days... thus is the nature of the off-season! What's that you say? Basketball? Magic? Cavaliers? What are those? Drum corps???

After our romp in Shanghai, it was time to move on to less opulent lifestyles once more and head towards what the Chinese refer to as "Heaven on Earth". You see, back in Imperial times, when the Emperors wanted to live the high life, they would leave their capital cities (be it Xi'an, Nanjing, Beijing, etc..., depending on the dynasty) and head towards the cities of Suzhou (苏州) and Hangzhou (杭州). These two cities collectively were known as Su-Hang (苏杭), and it is said that "上有天堂，下有苏杭" (shang4 you3 tian1 tang2, xia4 you3 su1 hang2). This little couplet translates to "Up there there is Heaven, Down here there is Su-Hang", referring to the paradise-like qualities of this region.


We hopped on the train to Hangzhou on the morning of July 8, arriving in the afternoon. We quickly found a hotel courtesy of one of the famous-but-probably-illegal "bread cars" that we had become quite familiar with during our stay in Xi'an. So called Bread Cars are essentially privately run taxi vans that are shaped somewhat like loaves of bread, similar to the Volkswagen vans of the 70s (in fact, I'm not sure that some of them aren't actually Volkswagen vans from the 70s!). These services are typically shunned by the government, which has deemed them to be road hazards, and rightly so, since they don't really follow road rules and stop just about anywhere there is a potential fare!


The first order of business after finding lodging was washing our clothes, since they were pretty soiled from the last few days of mountain-climbing, panda-hugging, and club-hopping. This was China, however, so we washed our clothes by hand and hung them up to dry. This proved to be a bit of a mistake since the climate in Hangzhou is substantially more humid than that of our Xi'an home base... regardless, the next thing on our minds was getting some food, as we had not had any since leaving Shanghai. We were quite excited to find a place claiming to serve our favorite Xinjiang dish, 大盘鸡 (da4 pan2 ji1), or "Big Plate Chicken", a wonderful concoction made with a whole chopped-up chicken, red hot chili peppers, potatoes, and broad rice noodles.


Unfortunately, our hopes and wishes were completely dashed, as Hangzhou's interpretation of 大盘鸡 was a complete failure. To compensate, we went in search of more food, which we found courtesy of a local who showed us a place to have more traditional cuisine of the region (typically sweeter and more vinegary than the bold tastes of Central China). We hit up an internet bar to catch up on our e-mail and then headed in to sleep.

The next day, we headed out to see Hangzhou's most famous landmark, the West Lake, or 西湖 (xi1 hu2). The West Lake is famous for a tower called 雷峰塔 (lei2 feng1 ta3), or Thunder Wind Tower. Unfortunately, the tower was in the middle of a restoration project, so we didn't get to see it. We did, however, get to take a little boat ride on the lake and see the Chinese tourists gawk in awe at my tall, Caucasion companions. One family even asked Eric to pose with their children!


Tune in next time for the conclusion of our trip to China's Heaven on Earth!

I Want Six Pack Abs Results

A little over 16 weeks ago, I embarked on a journey to try to get back to the fitness level I had seven years ago, when I was around 15 pounds lighter and and sported around 7% body fat. As you can see from the photos below, I had a lot of work to do!


The 16-week program is finally over. I have to admit, I am not totally happy with my progress, but since I didn't really follow the program to the "T" (I'm not sure I would have survived - I had to puke on week 16!), I'm not too disappointed either.




As you can see, I've certainly lost a bit of "baby fat" in my face and at my sides. I've also added some definition in my arms. Interestingly, in my last month of the program, I actually seemed to regress a bit! Below is the side profile from the previous month:


I should have laid off on Nathan's Fish n' Chips (But they're soooo good!)! To my credit, I think in the April pic I was sucking in a bit, though I'll never know now.

So, I wanted to just go ahead and say that this program definitely does work, and I highly recommend it for anyone who's serious about working out and getting fit. Hopefully, my mediocre progress has inspired some of you (and not turned you away!!!) to try it out! I didn't quite make it to a six-pack, but fortunately, my own quest to get fit again is not yet over! Arnel, the architect of the I Want Six Pack Abs program that I just completed, has actually set up several more workout programs to help folks like you and me continue to get in better shape. It's been long and hard, but I'm going to keep it up! See the rest of the photos from my progress here: I Want Six Pack Abs Progress (and heckle all you want lol, TONY and ALEX!!! Y'all just haters!)

Perry's New Blog

Thanks to Ed's websurfing prowess, we've come across a new blog from one of our friends from the old days of kung fu club. I will refer to him as Perry, the way he refers to himself on his new blog, In Search of Adventure. Perry was Ed's first roommate in college, and I met him when he first came to UF. He was a budding kung fu student at the time, blessed with excellent athleticism (he was/is BLAZING fast), though not so much upper body strength. Still, he was one of the better kung fu artists in our club at the time.

Perry also has a bit of a case of "yellow fever", or a non-Asian's love for all things Asian (that is typically driven by an attraction to an Asian member of the opposite sex, but that's story for another day). I came across quite a few of those over the years at UF, but Perry has legitimized his yellow fever beyond typical cases. His Mandarin Chinese is quite good - among the best for non-Chinese I know, and I do know quite a few. This is largely in part to the many adventures he has taken in Far East Asia. Back in 2006 or 2007, Perry embarked on a long trek that took him from Vietnam to Korea, stopping in places such as Hong Kong and China along the way (and possibly Japan, too). He kept a blog at the time, but it was not regularly updated and eventually went the way of the dodo. You can read up on some of his very interesting adventures on that trip here: The Grand Adventure.

By now you've doubtlessly recognized a common theme with Perry - his sense for adventure in the Far East. Circling back to the original purpose of this post, Perry has recently embarked on a new adventure. To log his Asia traipsing and keep us entertained, he's started up In Search of Adventure. Thus far, he's been pretty good about updating, and his writing is quite good as well - he's very insightful and makes a strong effort to immerse his readers into his experiences, which range from mundane but interesting to flat out incredible:

Chinese Language Learning Tools

Some more fascinating online tools, courtesy of the usual suspects, Ed and Karn. Today's featured highlights of the Interwebs are a couple of Chinese Language tools, Skritter and NCIKU. With the growing popularity of Chinese as a second language, these tools are very handy both for beginners and for people who already have experience with the Chinese language!


The first, Skritter, seems to be some kind of introductory online course in Chinese, meant to teach you the basics of writing and pronunciation. It's pretty neat, as it drills you in some important concepts such as tonality. In Chinese, the tone of each syllable is very important. By pronouncing a word using tone 3 instead of tone 1, you could well be calling your mother a horse! Unfortunately, Skritter does not appear to be a free service, but you can still try it out here: Skritter

The second tool is probably a bit more useful for the likes of me - someone who has some marginal skills in Chinese but sometimes needs to look up a word or two. It's an online Chinese dictionary, courtesy of NCIKU. I have no idea what NCIKU is, but they make a pretty mean Chinese dictionary. Like Google's translator, NCIKU allows you to look up a word by typing it in its search field. However, if you can't type in Chinese, you can also search via Pinyin, the main Romanization system used today to transliterate Chinese using Western characters. The strength of this dictionary, however, is the fact that it allows you to use your mouse to write the character. Traditional bound Chinese-English (or just Chinese, for that matter) dictionaries force you to search for the word based on a number of strokes in its radical (a part of the word that often determines the words base meaning and/or base sound), then search within the radical group for the final word. NCIKU's engine let's you make your best approximation of the word, then displays a number of choices that the word could possibly be. You select the one that matches the word you came across, and it then gives you a good definition, plus several sample sentences that include sound clips to show you how the sentences are pronounced! Very cool. Bookmark this one, because, as far as I can tell, it's free! Link: NCIKU

Orange and Blue 2009

I apologize for the extreme lateness of this post - I was supposed to post it way back in April after the game actually happened, but got sidetracked. So, without any further delay, here is the Grant's Pad review of the month-old Orange and Blue Spring Football Game!

So, Ed and I went to the annual Orange and Blue game this weekend to preview the 2009 Gator Football Team. And a preview it was, for sure, because we hardly recognized anyone that was playing! Most of the starters did not play at all, and Tebow only played in the first half. That made it really hard to "keep score". An estimated record 65,000 came to see the game - quite impressive, especially since most of the players were "up-and-comers" that we'd never heard of! Johnny Brantley looked okay for most of the game, although he seemed to get sacked quite a bit. We have a huge stable of serviceable running backs, with Emmanuel Moody, Chris Rainey, and Jeff Demps returning, and walk-on Christopher Scott and incoming freshman Mike Gillispie bringing up the rear. Both of those backups looked quite good. The receivers also put on a decent show, although no one really showed anything "Percy-like" in terms of moves. Frankie Hammond had a good game, scoring on two long touchdowns, and had the best evasive moves of the day.


More importantly, we hung out with Kaveh and his girlfriend Trista during the day, as they came out to watch the game. As a result, we spent most of the spring game chatting it up, so we didn't really get a chance to pay much attention. We were also particularly interested in grabbing as much free stuff as we could, and made it out with bunches of posters for family and friends. Ed got a couple of photos too!

Apex Shaolin

So, I'm furiously studying for my first MBA finals in Professional Writing and International Finance, but I simply couldn't let a whole week fly by without posting something. Fortunately, I have just that something for you. It's Apex Shaolin Kung Fu Academy out of Scarborough (Toronto), Canada!

This is a traditional Shaolin school, of the Songshan variety (the kind that the monks at the actual Shaolin Temple practice), that is by far the most well-rounded traditional martial arts school I've come across. The skills seriously rival that of what I saw while I was at Shaolin seven years ago. They have it all, awesome performance wushu forms, traditional Songshan Shaolin forms, competitive Sanshou full contact fighting, and traditional Shaolin skills such as Tongzi Gong, the art of (extreme) flexibility and Jingang Jia, the Iron Vest technique. And it's really no wonder - they practice, a lot. Observe:





The effectiveness of their training regimen and methodology is only further legitimized by the incredible skills of the students Si-Suks, or martial uncles (classmates of their Sifu), which are showcased here:



Even the little kids are hardcore! Check out more of their stuff at their website here: Apex Shaolin Kung Fu Academy

Shuttles, Spymobiles, and Squirrels

I was going to title this post 3-S: Not a Lean Manufacturing Technique, but then I thought that it might get lost on a lot of potential readers. So, to capture my industrial engineering joke, I thought I'd mention it just in case someone does get it!

One of the more awesome things about living here on the Space Coast of Florida is getting the chance to see shuttle launches just about anywhere not inside a building. At 2PM today, Shuttle Atlantis launched on a mission to go repair the Hubble Space Telescope, which is apparently damaged due to some sort of orbiting space debris. Of course, said space debris also poses a threat to the shuttle itself. In fact, this mission is considered so risky that Shuttle Endeavor is standing by on the other shuttle launch pad in case something happens! I caught this photo a bit too late with my phone - if I had caught it before that huge mess of a cloud, you would have still been able to see some of the rocket flames spewing out the back of the boosters!


Leave it to Karn to find all kinds of awesomeness at his hippie office. They get Yoga once a week, have ping pong tables and video game consoles in the break room, and ride around the halls in scooters, diving into huge bean bags. Software companies are so silly... Speaking of silly software companies, Karn was able to catch the Google Spymobile in action outside of his office window! Google uses this car to take photos and upload them to their Google Maps application, which now allows you to go down to "street level" to see what the street looks like as you drive through it. Ever since hearing about this, I've always thought it was a little creepy and wondered what the Spymobile looked like... Well, now I know, it looks like a Pontiac G5 with a huge camera fixture on top!


In other highly amusing news in my life, a squirrel somehow broke into our Environmental Vibration Chamber today. We use this chamber to shake our products at very high frequencies, simulating turbulence or high G-force conditions. The frequencies are so high that, if you were to sit on the shake table while it was doing its thing, your spine would probably disintegrate! The squirrel had not yet been captured and detained when I left work today... but I hope it didn't get stuck inside the shake table! That could get pretty messy...

Happy Mother's Day!

Shout-out to all the mothers out there! w00t!

Key West Trip, Part II

The second day of our Key West 2009 trip was a long, busy one. We actually got up quite a bit earlier than we did the previous day, because we had to rush to the docks by 9:30AM to meet up with our Jet Ski group. I'd never been jet skiing before, so we made it a point to do it in the wonderful Key West weather. I was surprised at first to learn that they recommend wearing glasses while jet skiing, and I found out soon enough why this was the case. Turns out, you end up splashing quite a bit of water to your face when you come crashing down after catching air going about 50mph! Ordinarily, this might be okay, except the water in the Keys is particularly salty. Heck, even with my glasses on, it burned...


We were quite lucky to go jet skiing with this group. Unlike other places where I've seen jet skiing available, this group didn't just rent the machine to you and let you ride around for 15 minutes in an enclosed area. Instead, they sent a guide out with you, who would ride as fast as the machine would go, and take you around the entire island. The whole trip was about 27 miles, taking about an hour and a half, and we stopped at some quite lagoons that had shipwrecks and sea turtles, rode underneath one of the bridges on US1 leading to the island, and did a "ski-drive" by a Carnival cruise ship at the port!


After our jet ski tour, we took a long walk all the way to the southernmost point of the continental United States. No, really, we did! Of course, here in Key West, that was only about two miles away! There was a little bit of a line there, but we managed to get a few photos in to show that we had, in fact, been as close to 90 miles from Cuba...


Right after we got our pics at the Southern Most Point, we skedaddled all the way back to the port to meet up with our second excursion group, the parasailing group. I had parasailed once before (and I actually think it was here at the Keys, too!), but I thought it would be a really neat thing to do with Cherry. Our parachute was pretty awesome if I might say so myself! Unfortunately, this time around, we didn't really see any fish or anything like that (last time, I saw schools of flying fish doing their thing over the water!), but the views were still great! The beautiful blue skies were easily enough to make the trip worthwhile!


Our last major stop for the day was the famous Hemingway Home. Ernest Hemingway wrote nearly half of his repertoire here on Key West, in his mid 20s to mid 30s or so. Turns out ol' Ernest was quite the playboy, getting married four times (trying five times), and each time, with a fairly interesting story to boot. He was first rejected by Nurse Agnes while fighting in Europe during WWI, then married once in Europe, married his first wife's best friend at the time as his second wife (almost immediately after meeting her for the first time!), then getting married a third time to a reporter that he had been secretly seeing for nearly two years while his second wife lived with him in Key West, and finally to his last wife until his death. The Hemingway home is also famous for the six- and seven- toed cats that reside there - descendents of a six-toed cat that Hemingway himself owned while living there.


Our guide looked like a character straight out of Hemingway's own The Old Man and the Sea!!

After leaving the Hemingway Home, we started on our way back to Boca, but not before first stopping at the Islamorada Fish Company once more to pick up some more stone crab claws to share at home!

Son of a...!

My air conditioner appears to be malfunctioning. Wonderful.

More meaningful updates in the near future, hopefully after my air is conditioned once again.

Key West Trip, Part I

Cherry finished her school semester mid last week. To take advantage of this rare freedom, we decided to take a quick roadtrip. My options were Atlanta, where Ed recently went, and Key West. Eventually, I decided that going to Key West would be the more practical option. Alternatively, I would have had to drive up to Gainesville, then to Atlanta, then back to Gainesville to pick up Cherry's car, then back again to Melbourne, and possibly back to Boca to visit my parents. That would have added up to nearly 17 hours of driving! Going to Key West would also be a lot of driving, but at least my parents' house was on the way.

Not to say that Key West is close by any stretch of the imagination. I once worked out that it would take the same time to drive from Gainesville to Key West as it would to drive from Gainesville to New Orleans, three states away! We started our journey by first driving to Boca on Wednesday night, helping to cut several hours of driving. The next morning, we headed south to the Keys.


We first stopped at the Islamorada Fish Company for some lunch. Due to the very expensive menu, we just had an appetizer sampler that included some of the famous conch fritters from the Keys (which I finally decided I don't like), some crab cakes, and some fried alligator tail. Unfortunately, there was a bit of paper in one of my pieces of alligator tail, but the manager took care of us by giving us a hefty discount and hooking me up with a big piece of Key Lime Pie, a local food that I do like quite a bit! Before leaving, we headed over to the market side of the Islamorada Fish Company to pick up some of the famous Stone Crab Claws from this area to snack on later.


The next stop was Bahia Honda, a famous beautiful beach about 35 miles north of Key West. Bahia Honda apparently means something along the lines of "Deep Bay", but it is anything but. The water here is quite shallow, and very, very calm. It certainly is a beautiful sight to see, like something straight out of a postcard, with a beautiful blue sky and true, sea green water. However, with virtually no waves to speak of, due to the shallow water, it wasn't very fun to swim in at all. We finished up our stone crab claws, trekked to the top of the old bridge to get some good aerial views of the beach, and continued on our way to Key West.


We got to the big island at about 5PM or so, just in time to check in at our hotel, shower off, get changed, and head out to Mallory Square before sunset. Mallory Square is the square that overlooks the Gulf of Mexico in Key West, where several street performers come out every night to perform for tips. I was surprised to see John, an old tumbler (who was allegedly a former contestant on the show "America's Got Talent"), still doing his show out here. I had seen his show about four or five years ago when I came here with family, and here he was, 51 years old, still performing his acrobatics every night in Key West!


We wrapped up the evening doing a bit of shopping at the street vendors on Mallory Square and watching the sun set over the Gulf of Mexico, then had some dinner on Duval Street and went home to get ready for our big next day.

Stay tuned for Part II of my Key West trip, and make sure to check out some of the photos in the updated photo slideshow in the sidebar!