Still Surviving in China

Wow, into the 3rd week and all is well. I have not been good at staying on top of this blog. Time has just been flying by. I have been busy with both work and with fun stuff. I will try and catch everyone up on what has happened in the past week.

First, work is moving along and we continue to be very busy. Early mornings and an hour or so after the day is supposed to be finished. I have my driver pick me up at 6am. We have an hour drive to the factory. I get there at 7am and usually have a meeting with folks in Az at that time. We have been busy trying to get the project ready to go. We should actually be starting our tool install around the 12th of October. This is a week late but that is because of the Chinese holiday coming up. The holiday is China's Independence day. It runs from Oct 1st to Oct 6th. The plant will be completely shut down at that time. I then usually leave work about 6pm. My driver is always right there at the front door waiting for me. We then take our hour drive back to my apartment. Usually because of traffic it takes over an hour. I really don't mind the drive because it goes really fast. We spend the whole time practicing English and Chinese. That is going really well and I have learned so much Chinese.

I have been trying to get back into a exercise routine again. It is difficult to get disciplined again but I have been doing it. I really miss the LA Fitness racquetball gang and playing RB. I decided that I needed to do something to take the place of RB. Well, just as I was talking about that, one of my Chinese co-workers mentioned that he plays badminton. He asked me if I wanted to play. I said absolutely. I have never played before but I thought what the heck, it can't be that hard. Well, I was wrong. We played Saturday for about 2 hours. I sweat just as much at that game as I do playing racquetball. It is not just this little racket sport you play on the beach or in your backyard during a family reunion. These guys (and girls) mean business. I never knew that little birdie could go so fast or hurt so much. It was an absolute blast. My buddy and I went out and bought rackets after the games. We will now be playing every Wednesday after work and every Saturday. I am hooked. As you can see by the picture, I have a lot to learn.

I guess I should step back one night though. We had a team builder for work on Friday. This started out having on BAM (big a## meeting). This was to align all our team members on our vision, mission and goals for the next year. It was actually pretty simple, install and qualify the production tools. But, after the morning meeting we all did a great race 68. This consistent of different teams and we were all given clues which took us all over Dalian. We had to have our pictures taken at the different locations. This went on for about 3 hours. It was a lot of fun. After the 3 hours we then met at a Japanese restaurant. It was a great place to eat, but there was nothing for me to eat. It ended up being all seafood. Both raw and cooked. Not my favorite. I have adopted the "you have to try everything at least once" philosophy. So I proceeded to do that with this stuff. It was just hard when the food was staring back at you. As you can see from the pictures it was not my most favorite place to be eating. I did eat the shrimp and tasted the snails. I think all the beer helped with all of this.

This past Sunday I decided to go hiking on a mountain close by. It is about 680 meters high. That would be close to 3000 ft. There was 5 of us who attempted to hike the mountain. We started off on one side, hike to the summit (radio towers) and then down the other side. This was a great hike and took about 4 or 5 hours. Once at the top you could see where the two seas meet around the tip of the peninsula. It was a fantastic hike and very difficult in some places. There was actually about 4 Buddest Temples at different locations in the mountain as well. They were pretty cool and it makes you wonder how the heck they ever built them up there so high in the mountains. Here are a few pictures.

Now today, back to work. I am enjoying myself. The people are wonderful. The food is really not that bad after all. You just have to eat a lot of rice. I get a really big lunch at work for about $1 to $2 dollars. That is my biggest meal of the day and Intel pays for that! I am really getting good at handling chop sticks. That is all they have at the plant for utensils. I will soon be plucking flies out of the air with my chop sticks. I am learning so much Chinese and my driver is learning English quickly. The only thing that is difficult about being here at this time is not having Kathy and the boys. I miss them. Kathy will be coming over for a visit in a couple weeks during the holiday. I have some fun stuff planned during that holiday. We are going to drive north from here. I hear it is beautiful country up north. The only bad thing is that North Korea is up that way too. I hope Bill Clinton is available again, just in case.

Well, that is it. I am going to be heading off to sleep now. I will post again in a few days. Thanks for reading and I hope this is as much fun for you to read as it is for me to share.