The Clan's China Adventure, Episode 23: Family Fitness

So, on my last trip to the U.S., I brought back some nice toys for Cherry and myself (for once, lol. Most of the time, I bring back toys - lots of them - for the kids).

Thanks to a fantastic promotion, I picked up brand new 64GB customized Moto X Pure Editions and Moto 360 Sport smartwatches.

Our previous (and first) smartphone experience was with the original 2013 model of the Moto X, which was an excellent phone that featured near stock Android plus many very smart voice and gesture controls that Motorola added in. But the phones were aging a bit and no longer getting updates, plus the battery life was getting to be an issue, so we decided we would go ahead and get the upgrade, which gave us a much bigger screen, huge storage, and battery (it's nice to not have to charge in the middle of the day!) as well as metal construction and more voice and gesture goodness!

It wasn't all gummy bears and rainbows, however... when we initially brought the phones to China, we had all kinds of reception problems. But those seemed to go away after about a months... weird!

The real killer part of the deal, however, was the Moto 360 Sport smartwatch - I got one in "flame" and Cherry got a white one.

Motorola was the first company to put out round smartwatches that could pass for regular watches, but the Sport edition packs a unique look that I've gotten lots of good feedback on. I never really "got" the point of smartwatches, but trying one for a just a few weeks really has me tagged as a believer. Being able to access your notifications by just flicking or gesturing with your wrist, respond to text messages by speaking at your watch - these are all features that I never thought I would like so much!

But, as its name implies, the Moto 360 Sport is really intended as an exercise companion - the default watch face (which can be changed/customized to use your photos, or whatever) provides a plethora of useful information, including your steps, heart rate information, and calorie burn. Of course, it also provides and indicator of how far from your daily goal you are - and you would not believe how addicting it is for a gamer like me to try to meet my daily goals every day. It comes with a companion app that tracks and compiles your stats for you, adjusting your goals as you progress, really speaking to the "level up" mentality in me!

So as you can imagine, smart watches in tow, we really got off on a fitness mission this summer. Nearly every morning this month, we've gone out running with the kids. At first, it was a challenge - the kids complained and could only run about 1km. A few short weeks later, however, and they're doing over two miles hardly stopping at all in between!

Warming up!

Ready, steady, go!

All this running has given us a side benefit - the kids endurance and ability to walk looooooong distances (like 5-10 miles a day) has allowed us to really do some serious sight-seeing! I recently finally took a few days off. At first, we were planning on visiting a nearby town, but instead, we decided to visit a few more local attractions in Shanghai that we'd never visited before!

Our first new local attraction was the fascinating Sihang Warehouse Battle Memorial. Back in August of 1937, during the early days of the second Sino-Japanese War (which is often largely associated with the beginning of the Pacific Theater of World War II), the Republic of China stationed about 420 soldiers and officers in a furniture warehouse across the Suzhou creek from the foreign banking buildings with orders to hold the position at all costs. These 420 soldiers became known as the "800 warriors" due to a ploy by the Chinese commander, Colonel Xie Jinyuan to mislead the Japanese invaders of his unit's actual strength.

Bullet holes still adorn the warehouse today, which is still in use as a furniture warehouse as well as a memorial

 By and large, hold the position the "800 Warriors" did, repelling the Imperial Japanese Army for over three days, until the Western powers, anxious of getting hit by the crossfire, persuaded Generallisimo Chiang Kai-Shek to withdraw, which he did, feeling that he had conveyed the message loudly and clearly enough - the Chinese are prepared to defend their land!

Some statues depicting the inside of the warehouse during its defense

Some art depicting a printing press printing reports of the battle

An oil painting of the battle site

Our second day trip was more serene in nature - we visited the Confucian Temple and Longhua Temples. Both of these temples were built over 600 years ago (Longhua nearly 800 years ago, as it is the oldest temple in Shanghai today), and, despite their central location in the city, provide a pristinely quiet environment for prayer and contemplation, just as their sponsors would have wanted them to generations ago!

The Confucian Temple:

The main courtyard of the Confucian Temple. Note the more muted and simplistic color scheme, in contrast to the Buddhist temple shown later

The hallmark of a Confucian temple is its classrooms

Serene garden nestled in the city

Writing your wishes is a common practice at Confucian temples. Most of the wishes have to do with being successful in your studies.

And the Longhua Temple:

Hmmm... which fish shall I pick?

Our third day trip was to a more modern shrine - one to one of my personal heroes, the one and only Jackie Chan!

Drunken Fifi against Dragon Lukas!

The Jackie Chan Movie Gallery is a bit pricey, but it attempts to make up for it by having a ton of things to do inside, some of which seem to be not a little bit non-sequitur, like a series of ocean-related motion games:

But the actual gallery itself is thoughtfully laid out and interesting, showing exhibits from Jackie's early life through to his successes as a superstar. Many of the exhibits are also highly interactive!

Horse Stance!

Preparing for Chinese Opera

Performing Shadow Kung Fu

Jackie Chan's childhood contract as a part of the Seven Little Fortunes troupe

3, 2, 1... Action!

This was a lot more fun than I ever thought it would be

Jackie Chan Stunt Team Gear!

Perspective

Some of the stars that endorse Jackie... that one at the bottom is really a ticket seller!

Just some of Jackie's accolades...

Fan loot

Wall of Fandom

Jackie's logo consists of a lot of symbology, starting with the name "Jackie" embedded in the Chinese character for "Dragon". Each portion of the character also represents something - like the dove on the upper left corner for "Peace"

After visiting the Jackie Chan gallery, we swung by a place we hadn't visited as a family in a while - the Lujiazui Financial District! It's actually changed a bit since we moved from there more than a year ago, starting with the huge Disney store!

Clock tower at the Disney store at Lujiazui

The one and only Oriental Pearl Towe

Nothing like Din Tai Feng for dinner!

I do miss this view...

Another view that never really gets old!

It was a great stay-cation, and the kids were able to power through all of it because of our family fitness plan, partially inspired by our new wearables!

New Phone!

I (and a lot of my friends) used to think of myself as a tech-savvy guy. You know, one of those people that knows all about computers and the latest gadgets. Well, I'm actually really not - I don't really know much about the differences between processor technologies or hard drive types, I have the most technologically outdated video game systems in this generation (the Wii and the DS), I only got my flat screen TV this past year, and it's a fairly low-end model at that, and, as evidenced by my post about smart phones, I don't really see the merits of having a device like that!


Or at least, I didn't. But then, a few months back, I had an opportunity to get my first smart phone for free (*plus an $18 activation charge, so it wasn't completely free, but pretty cheap). This phone was the Nokia Nuron, or Nokia 5230.


The Nuron features a resistive touch screen that is fairly responsive - it is responsive enough to scroll smoothly and type on the virtual QWERTY keyboard for texting and e-mail purposes. It also has the ability to sync your photos, music, contacts, messages, and calendar with your PC. It is this last feature that I have found particularly useful about smartphones - I've actually long desired the ability to carry my calendar in my pocket, and now, with the Nuron, I can sync my Google calendar to my phone, and the events show up right on the main screen!

The Nokia Nuron is a fairly low-end smart phone, but it, like other Nokia smartphones, has one key feature that differentiates it from the typical powerhouses like your HTCs, Blackberries, and iPhones. And that is free GPS for life, using Nokia's in-house Ovi Maps service.


Now, the other phones have an instance of GPS (usually in the form of Google Maps), but Ovi Maps is actually regarded as having more features and also being "true" GPS, offering turn-by-turn voice directions in several different languages (including Mandarin Chinese). Additionally, maps are downloaded to your device, so you do not need to have a data plan in order to use it, putting Nokia's claim of "free GPS for life" to the test. In fact, you don't even need to have a cellphone plan to use it, so if you got rid of your plan, you could still use the Nuron as a standalone GPS (and, still download updated maps for free!)

And that is the real draw of the Nuron. Even without a data plan, it is still a formidable device. That's not to say that a data plan is totally a waste if you have one of these. I recently got to try the data plan for free for 30 days. The 3G service (through T-Mobile) is appreciably quick, allowing me to view YouTube videos fairly pain free. Being able to surf the web on the fly - now that's a dream I've had since the dial-up days! Going back to Ovi Maps, there's even a free game called Ovi Maps Racing that allows you to build tracks from maps based on your actual GPS location if you have online capability. Too cool!


At this juncture, however, unlimited data is still not really a big deal for me, so I will probably end my data service after my free trial is up. However, I can add a 200MB data plan for just $10 a month on an as needed basis with no contract (or, if that's not enough, unlimited data for $30 a month), and all that I need to do to get that is just call customer service!

So, with the ability to sync your calendar, take photos/videos, listen to music, surf the web, and, most distinctly, have free GPS in your pocket for life, you can say that the Nokia Nuron has given me a new appreciation for smart phones!

Shark Steam Mop

Been a little while since I've done a review of any kind, much less a product review! Product reviews actually don't come by Grant's Pad all that often, because, frankly, I don't usually buy that much stuff LOL.

That said, I did get a couple of products that I really like these past several months, so I thought I'd do a lil' free advertising to promote them because they were/are so good for me to use!

The first product I'll be raving about is the Shark Steam Mop. You might have seen this on TV -basically it looks sort of like a purple vacuum cleaner, but you put water into it and plug it in and then you push it around on your floor, cleaning it with hot steam along the way.


To be honest, I was a bit skeptical at first. The first reason was the price - we got it at a bit of a discount but the model we got usually retails at over 100 bucks! Compare that against your usual bucket mop, which might cost around $8, and you have to wonder if it is worth the investment. Well, I'm here to tell you that it is. Ours came with the main unit, a regular sized head, a jumbo head, a triangular shaped head to wedge into those tight spots, a "carpet glider" (more on that later), and five different covers (the cloth part that actually does the cleaning) to go along with each head.

So what makes it so good? Well, first of all, the water consumption is really low. I used to have to go through three to four buckets of water to mop my house (which, incidentally, is tiled throughout, save for the bedroom carpet). So figure about 1000 square feet of tile. Well, with the Shark Steam Mop, I can do the whole house in little over four cups of water. As in 32 ounces. That is a two-fold benefit for me - (1) I get to save a lot of water, and (2), it doesn't slosh water around everywhere so we can walk on the cleaned surface within minutes after mopping!

So, it uses less water and dries quickly. What else? Well, in my experience, the thing cleans fantastically. Case in point: My sofa recliner chair left a ton of these black streaks on the tile that I could not for the life of my scrub off using a wash cloth and soap. Well, I steamed over the stains three or four times with the Shark Steam Mop, and voila, just like new! It's really quite impressive, but the Shark Steam mop is really good about taking out stains.

I had mentioned the "carpet glider" earlier. What this is is a plastic thingy that lets you glide the steam mop over carpet, basically lightly steam cleaning the carpet. It's no replacement for an actual carpet cleaning machine, but it does do a great job of freshening it up a bit, and it actually smells kind of nice afterwards!

After you're done cleaning, you just take the cover off, clean it up a bit, and throw it in the washing machine! The only downside is that it's pretty hard to get all of the dirty crap you picked up off, and the covers could stand to be a bit more durable - the main one I use (the jumbo one) is already tearing a little bit.

So, at the time of writing, I steam mop about once every one or two months, but as any visitor to the house will attest to, you would think that we mop at least once a week! Definitely a great product in this blogger's opinion!