China and Taiwan, November 2013, Part III: Final

The second week of our business trip was much like the first, meetings with our U.S. colleagues all morning followed by a usually large and spicy lunch and meetings on other ad hoc technical issues in the afternoon, then capped off typically by a very large dinner. Of course, I had to insist that one of these dinners was at Latina, one of the many Brazilian churrascarias in Shanghai. For the uninitiated, Churrascarias are basically all-you-can-eat Brazilian barbecue/steakhouses. But it isn't a buffet - the servers bring out slab after slab of freshly roasted meat on pikes and stop by your table asking if you want a slice or two or ten! I usually go here for lunch, but since most of our lunches on this trip were at the other side of town, we had dinner here this time around. Dinner is about twice as expensive, which makes it about on par with what it would cost in the U.S. (lunch, however, is a very good deal at around $15 USD, all inclusive!). However, apparently sometimes at dinner there is live music! I always get a kick out of seeing foreign performers sing Chinese songs:

Our last day of work was Thursday, so on Friday, both Dr. Ying and I both began our sidetrips to Taiwan. For some reason, scheduling our airline route through Taiwan seems to make the airfare several hundred dollars cheaper, which works out well for those of us who have relatives and friends to visit in Taiwan. Incidentally, both of us did!

Going to Taiwan is always a rushed affair for me, because I usually don't spend many days there but I have many people to see all over the island. So for my first stop, I decided to go straight to my maternal grandmother's house in Hsinchu:

Grandma making some dinner

I went hiking with Grandma the next morning. She said it had been years since she hiked this far, and I felt it too... I'm out of shape!

Some live music on the trail!

My aunt and cousins stopped by to visit!

The next afternoon, I headed back up to Taoyuan where my paternal grandparents live. They are not doing very well these days... it's was really quite a shock to me because just last year they seemed to be that much more energetic. That said, it didn't stop them from going for their weekly hike either... which made two hikes in two days for me!

Cousin Tingen is now doing his mandatory military service. As a result, he's lost over 20 pounds since starting just a few months earlier! I should look into doing some boot camp :P

A nice view of the reservoir

After the hike, I made a special trip up to Taipei to see an friend that I hadn't seen since about 2002 or so! I first met Liz at a Chinese American Student Association meeting when I was a junior in college and we hung out at a few parties over the years as we shared interests in Chinese culture and fitness. Since then, she's gone on to become a Foreign Service Officer and is currently posted in Taiwan. She starts her next post in the Philippines next year so this trip was a great opportunity for us to get together!

With a bit of phone tag, we met up at the main metro station and headed over to a nearby park where we talked about her experience living overseas and my own upcoming overseas adventure and otherwise caught up. Eventually made our way to the famous Wisteria Tea House where we drank a lot of tea and felt like idiots trying to unwrap the rice paper off of the sticky tea snacks. Finally, we had some potstickers for dinner and I headed back to Taoyuan. It was really great to see Liz doing well after all these years!

Gator Reunion at the Wisteria Tea House!

The next day, Grandma got up bright and early to get me some breakfast before taking me downstairs to have the gate guard call a cab for me.

And with that, I met up with Dr. Ying again and we made our way back to the USA!

Travelers at the Delta Sky Club in Narita, Japan

China and Taiwan, November 2013, Part II: Weekend at the In-Laws

A business trip to Shanghai is never complete without making a visit to nearby Wuxi to visit the in-laws. So, after taking care of some business on Saturday morning, I hopped on a high speed train and arrived in Wuxi in about 40 minutes.

A few notable differences about my trip this time from previous trips:

• This time, I decided to roll the dice and buy tickets right before I traveled. This was always discouraged in the past because you might end up without a seat or otherwise have to wait for several trains. However, since I had some business in the morning, I needed the flexibility. Fortunately, it worked out okay.
• I also bought my return ticket once I got to Wuxi station rather than buying the return ticket in Shanghai like I normally did.
• In previous trips to Wuxi, my in-laws typically picked me up from the Wuxi train station to drive me back to their house, which is about a 45-minute drive. This time, I decided to do what the Wuxi-ans do and took the bus all the way to their house. The house is about 40 stops away, and the trip took over an hour and a half!

Once I (finally) got to the house, we went out to dinner, then went home where I showed off some of Fifi's mad reading skillz and other videos and photos of the family - especially of Baby Lukas, whom they hadn't met yet.

The next morning, I got up bright and early and helped mother-in-law with breakfast (I made pancakes, which she specifically requested that I bring back from the U.S.).

Chinese kitchens are always busy and splatter-y with plenty of steam and fire...

After breakfast, mother-in-law and I headed out to the wet market, which is always a fun experience!

The wet market is really lively, even early in the morning

Our dinner!

You don't get to see this very often in suburban Florida...

After the market, we headed back home to rest a while before going back to town to pick up my wife's nephew, Wenping, from his weekend class, and we headed out with his mother to a cool place I'd never been to called (loosely translated) "Mandarin/Clementine (as in the orange) Estate". This cute little park's primary attraction was (obviously) its mandarin orange groves, from which (at least as it appeared to me) any visitor could pick oranges!

Oh Clementine, my Clementine...

Nice artsy bokeh shot overlooking Lake Tai

Some mistletoe

Nephew Wenping needs to eat more - he's a teenager already! 

Although China is experiencing record pollution problems in the past few days, the air quality for most of my visit was quite nice...

This is a lot harder than it looks...

This is also a lot harder than it looks... I've never done a pure vertical wall before...

With that, we headed home for dinner:

In the winter, my in-laws sometimes eat in the kitchen where it's a little warmer

My in-laws drove me back to the train station to spare me of the 90+ minute bus ride that night. The train ride back to Shanghai was uneventful, but I did get a seat this time (not like last time, when my chivalry got the better of me). However, my experience at Shanghai station was just like last time; for some reason, at the train station at night, cabbies refuse to run the meter, instead trying to BS you into taking a gouged "flat rate". Once again, I wandered about a mile away from the station to hail a normal, rule-abiding cab!

China and Taiwan, November 2013, Part I: Settling In

A few weeks back, my coworker Dr. Ying and I were notified that we were to fly to Shanghai in a week to support some meetings with our customer. So, on Monday, November 11, we made our way to the airport and headed to the Far East.

Checking out the cockpit of the 747

Previously, my favorite ride in the sky was provided by the advanced Boeing 777 - the first commercial airliner to feature fully reclining seats in business class. Prior to the trip, I lamented to our program manager Yifei that my long connections were all on the older 747 aircraft, which only featured partially reclining seating. She assured me that I would not be disappointed, as Delta had upgraded the business class seating on their 747 fleet. As it turns out, she was right - not only are the new 747 seats fully reclining, they are actually bigger and feature nicer entertainment systems than those on their 777 fleet!

New 747 Business Class seating

After about a 30 hour day of traveling, I settled into my hotel room. It was a very nice corner room that, as such, featured panoramic windows on two of the four walls:

While this setup certainly afforded some very nice vistas, it also contributed to an ancillary problem - the climate control of the room was terrible, and I often found myself shivering at night as temperatures dropped! I later learned that the hotel actually had portable heating units available to borrow to mitigate issues such as this - a shame I learned this only after my last night in the hotel!

Each morning, before breakfast, we would take walks in the park near the hotel. One of the coolest things about Shanghai and other large cities in China are the parks - lots of people gather there in the mornings for recreational activities and exercise such as tai chi, jogging, and badminton:

The park is at the bottom left of this photo taken from my hotel room

Panoramic view of one of the park's ponds

A nice bokeh shot of some of the horticulture in the park

Another bokeh shot of some Tai Chi in the park

Some Er hu (sort of a Chinese violin) playing in the park

Badminton - one of the most popular activities in China

The next few days were characterized by all day meetings with the customer at one of two locations - our company's nearby Shanghai office or our customer's impressive, but not-so-nearby facility about an hour's drive away in the Pudong area. Meetings in China also tend to feature large luncheons, and business trips in general tend to feature large dinners, so once again, I found myself eating far too much for most of the trip.

One of the huge buildings at our customer's new facility in Pudong

Mandarin orange trees in the back part of the facility! Yum!

Scale model of the facility

Another side effect that I learned about was my motion sickness. In my previous trips to Shanghai, I was able to take the metro to work on most days. However, since the customer moved their operations to Pudong, there are no longer any nearby metro stations. Thus, on days where we were to meet at the customer's facility, we ended up taking a cab. Due to the crazy driving techniques and the stop-and-go traffic of Shanghai, I found myself feeling absolutely miserable at the end of these days - the effects of meeting all day, eating too much for lunch, being jet-lagged in the afternoon, and getting motion sickness on the way back to the hotel...

After a few hours of rest, it was Google Hangouts time with the family!

And so each day went for the first week of work in Shanghai...

Fifi's Very Belated Third Birthday Post

About three weeks ago, my favorite little girl turned three! I can't believe how fast time has gone!

My Three Year Old Princess

To celebrate, we held a party in the park with a few neighbors, friends, and family:

Cake Time

Baby Lukas plants a kiss on neighbor Rylee

Omnomnomnom

Baby Lukas clocks out...

Dinosaur pose!

In the past year, she's learned to read, sing Disney songs, dance, bike, and swim. In the last few weeks, she's also learned to draw! Behold her first masterpiece, My Baby Brother:

A spot-on rendition, in my opinion!

She loves playing with her baby brother, and he loves playing with her as well:

Some shots from this past Halloween and Fall fest:

Baby Lukas has made some progress on her own right - he's learned to clap:

And he's learned to use the dino walker as well:

It won't be long before both of them are chasing each other around!