China Adventure

Home again and back

2010-08-20T22:57:00.000-07:00

Well, after a good May I was going to head home at the end of the month. The main reason was to get back in time for the boy's graduation. Brian was graduating from the UofA and Kevin was graduating from high school. This was going to be a busy month. We also were still very busy with work trying to finish up all the early tool set and be ready for the start of running test wafers in July. We were doing well but still a little behind on a few tools.

A couple days before I was going to leave for home I had to change my plans as we had too many of our folks that had already went off on a vacation. I was planning on getting home in time for Brian's graduation from the UofA but was unable to. I was sad I was not going to be able to make it but there was no way I would have been able to stay home long enough to be able to go to both the boys graduations. Brian was OK with me not making it to his and Kathy, Kevin, my mom and dad and Kathy's mom all went down to Tucson to go to the graduation. As you can see it was a good ceremony. I am really sorry that I missed it. Kathy and Kevin also met Jenny's parents too. I have yet to meet them.

What a crowd at McKale center at Uof A

Here is my mom and dad with Brian

Kathy with Brian

Kathy, Kevin and Kathy's mom with Brian

While I waited another week before I was able to go home and be there for Kevin's graduation, I hung around China like usual. The weather was getting really nice by now. The days were warm but the evenings were still cool. Right before I was going to leave the folks at our favorite hang out decided to have a cook out to celebrate Cindy's birthday. Cindy is the owner of the bar. She has become a good friend with all of us so she invited us to come to her party. It was our first official outdoor cookout for the year. What a good time.

A little booze, beer and meat and what a good time

The next day I left for home and was ready to get there and have fun. I was looking forward to seeing everyone and enjoy Kevin's graduation. The night of the ceremony it was a nice night. You never know in Arizona at that time of the year. It could be way too hot to be able to be outside or there could be a massive dust storm that could come in and blow everything away. Well, we lucked out. Neither happened and it was a wonderful night. Other than my mistake of which side to sit on it went off without a hitch. Kevin did really well as he graduated number 25 in his class of over 400. He got to sit in the "Front Row"

Here is the ceremony on the football field.

Kevin with my mom and dad

Here is Kathy and her mom with Kevin

The next week after the graduation we were able to get down to Mexico and spend a couple days in our condo on the beach. I have missed going down there and relaxing. The weather was great and there wasn't too many people down there at Rocky Point. Kathy Kevin and I went down there for about 3 days.

Here is the view from our balcony

Beautiful sunset over the water in Rocky Point.

After a couple weeks at home I set off for my other home again. Yes, back to China. The good thing was that Brian decided that he was going to visit me for a few weeks. He flew out the week after I got back. He was with me for a couple weeks before Kathy was planning on coming out. He just kind of took the time to relax and enjoy a culture that he was not used to. He had taken a semester of Mandarin Chinese and he was able to practice it while he was here. He was very good at it. He and Nicholas were having very good conversations. He was able to carry on a solid and understandable conversation. I had been here for about 9 months and I couldn't even speak as well as he was.

While he was here and before Kathy got here, we did a few things. The first weekend he was here we went up to Dang Dong. This is the city which is about 2 hours from here to the north. It is right next to North Korea. It also has a portion of the great wall. I thought Brian would like this. We spent the day up there. Walked the great wall, saw the damaged bridge between China and North Korea and went to the Korean war museum. Nicholas was wonderful and drove us up there and back in the same day. I really appreciate him. It was raining when we left in the morning but ended up being a nice day and we had a great opportunity to walk the wall.
Here you see North Korea in the back ground from the wall

Brian with North Korea in the background

From the wall overlooking North Korea

The little river between China and North Korea

The rest of the time that Brian was here before Kathy came to China we spend watching the world cup soccer games. We did a little shopping and ate out a lot, but we just waited for Kathy to show up so we could head to Beijing and Xi'an. That will be in the next blog.

General Life

2010-07-23T22:33:00.000-07:00

After we finished with the party for Kathy we still had a lot of time in China before Kathy had to leave for the states. The weather was still cold outside but was just starting to get warmer. It was no longer below zero but it was still pretty cool. There were many friends to make and places to eat. Some of our old friends hung out with us. We all had a great time sitting down in a restaurant and talking about how difficult it was to live in China. Let's see, I think a difficult day for Kathy, Barbara, Wendy, Lisa and other new friends was to start out at breakfast, do some shopping, catch a lunch, get the nails done along with a pedicure and finish it off with a few hours at the spa for a foot and body massage. I know this is difficult to have to put up with but luckily I didn't have too. I only had to work all day long.

Once the woman were all worn out after the difficult day, they would get ready to go out to dinner with the guys. There are many wonderful places to eat both in KiaFiaChu and in downtown Dalian. One of the fun places to go to is the Paulenar Bar. In this restaurant there is wonderful German type food and the brats are good. The German beer is delicious. I ordered the Venice brats and Kathy ordered a salmon salad. Well, my food was good but when they brought Kathy's salad it actually had raw salmon on it. There was no way this was going to be eaten. We sent it back and wanted them to cook the salmon. They did but when it was brought back again, it was still raw. She ended up ordering something else. We still sat back and enjoyed the Filipino band that played.

Here we are enjoying Paulenar Bar. Beer and Brats

Another fun bar that we frequent regularly is Friends bar. We are always greeted with open arms by Krystal the bar owner. She is this tiny Chinese woman that remembers everyone that ever comes into her bar. Kathy and I have gone there with our friends every time she comes to visit. Krystal takes pictures of everyone and of course, Kathy and I have our pictures up on the wall. That is how friendly it is there. In this bar Krystal had a wonderful game that helped her sell drinks. It is called the shots around the world. In this game you chose from a list of shots from 21 different countries. You need to choose one type of shot from each country and finish them in 3 month time. After you have completed drinking some type of shot of booze from each country you are allowed to choose a bottle of one of the drinks you tried. Everyone was doing it. Many folks have done a number of them. Once they finish the first 21 shots they start on another round. I had completed only one game. That is enough for me. I chose a bottle of 10 year old Glenmorangie Scotish Whisky. I have no idea what I am going to do with it but it was pretty good when I had the shot.

Proud completers of around the world

Kathy's final night in Dalian this time had us finishing up at Friends. She needed to get up in the morning to catch a flight but that did not stop us from having a few going away drinks. We did not stay out too late but it was fun and relaxing. Cheers Kathy until the next trip.

You can see it was two for one night.

About a month after Kathy left it was really starting to get nice in Dalian as far as the weather goes. It was cherry blossom time. They say the best cherries in China are in the Dalian region. The next trip we decided to make was down to a city called Lucian. This is a small city farther south on the peninsula of Dalian. It is supposed to be the best place to see the Cherry blossoms when they begin to bloom. We took the 2 hour drive to south of Dalian in search of some good picture taking opportunity. Boy, were we disappointed. We were about a week early on for being able to see some good cherry orchards in bloom. It ended up being a stick festival instead of a cherry blossom festival. It was a fun trip none the less. After we visited the stick orchards we went to an old Japanese prisoner camp for political prisoners. This was an eye opener. They tortured many Korean and Japanese folks for their beliefs. This area a China was controlled by the Japanese at one time and the folks who were against the Japanese political philosophy were tortured and killed.

Here is the stick blossom festival

I was lucky to find a couple trees with blossoms on them

Trees with blossoms were few

The front of the Japanese Political Prison

These are actual skeletal remains in a barrel These prisoners were put in barrels and buried alive

Once we left the prison we went to a tiger park. This was not as good as the one in Harbin though. It was dirtier and the animals did not look too healthy. Not a place we would visit again. It was hard to see the animals in the bad conditions. I did actually get to feed the tigers with a live chicken. That was pretty cool to see.

Prior to my upcoming hike on the mountain on the 8th, Barbara, Brian, Jackie, Nicholas and myself decided to take in the zoo for a day. It was a beautiful weekend so why waste a good sunny day in May in Dalian China? Off we went. The Dalian is a very nice zoo and you can get very close to the animals. In fact, with some type of animals you can actually walk among them and pet them. Very spacious very nice zoo.

King of the Beasts

Queen of the beasts. Here is displayed a rare wild animal known for the shopping habits and wine drinking.

It was cool to walk amongst the animals

We could actually pet the animals as well

The following weekend ended up being my birthday. I decided to go for a hike on my 53rd birthday. I have done this hike before. It is a pretty vigorius hike. It is on Black Mountain. We go up one side, reach the summit by the communication towers and then down the other side. This hike takes about 4 hours. After a night of having fun at Obsiden I got up firs thing in the morning and went for the big hike.

the hike is very pretty and it was a nice warm day
Here is a temple up in the middle of the mountain

this is a long and difficult hike in some areas

Great way to spend my birthday. Even at 53 I can still climb the mountains

This was it for the Month of May. I was able to head home the end of May for some time off and going to many parties for graduation. Both Brian and Kevin graduated in May this year. Brian from college and Kevin from high school.

Half Century Celebration in China

2010-07-10T02:38:00.001-07:00

Happy 50th Birthday Kathy

Well, it has been a long time since I have updated the blog and I have so much to talk about I don't know where to start. The best place would be to start where I left off. That would be back in April when Kathy came out to visit me once again. This time the weather was much better. It was no longer -15degrees C. It was still cold but not like in January. This time too we had a big celebration to keep us going. Yes, that's right, we, or should I say Barbara, Wendy and Lisa, put together an unbelievable 50th birthday party. Let me get into the details a little.

First, while Kathy was here visiting in January she met and made a lot of friends amongst the wives of my co workers. They got along very well. They all got to talking and were discussing the different parties we have all had while here in China. Some of them included theme parties like I have written about in the past blogs. Barbara's pajama birthday party, the new years eve parties, the infamous club crawl just to name a few. Well, Kathy decided that she wanted to have a party when she came back in March or April to celebrate her birthday and to have a theme of a hat party. It ended up as both a hat party and a formal dress party for the woman. This is all that Barbara, Wendy and Lisa needed to begin the planning. This planning started back in January and ended in April when Kathy came back to visit. This planning obviously gave the women something to do for a few months. They told me to leave it to them and they would put it together. That should have been a clue to me as to what was to come. With them planning the party it took a lot of pressure off of me but I found out that was a good thing and a bad thing. I didn't have to plan it but I had to pay for it. I was visiting the ATM all the time. Mind you, I am not complaining as they did a fantastic job and there is no price limit on the happiness of a wife, especially Kathy. I opened the check book for them, or should I say the ATM.

I was kept totally in the dark on the party. They did not want me to know where it was, what was going on, what they were buying or anything. All I knew what the day it was going to happen. April 2nd. This was a few weeks after Kathy's actual birthday of March 15th, but when you get to be 50, a few weeks does not make that much of a difference. for weeks leading up to the party I was trying to find out what was going on. Nothing, I heard nothing. They did a really great job at keeping the details a secret. I was assuming it was going to be at one of our local club hangouts. That is what we have been doing since I have been here. I did get Rami to slip up one day when I asked him about the party and he mentioned he thought it was downtown Dalian at the Brooklyn Bar on the upper floor. That made sense to me and I assumed that is where it was going to be. Well, the day of the party here is what transpired.

Barbara told me they would be by the apartment to pick us up and take us to the party. We waiting patiently for their arrival. I took this picture of Kathy while we waited. The flowers were purchased by Nicholas my driver for Kathy in celebration of her birthday. It was very kind of him to do this. Nicholas is a very good driver and friend. He is always so thoughtful. He takes very good care of us.

The Queen of the party. Waiting to be picked up.

Barbara eventually showed up at our door. She told us to come with her and we would get to the party. We grabbed our warm clothes and headed out the door. We got into the elevator and headed toward a night of fun and laughter. Now, once in the elevator on the 18th floor Barbara took charge. The elevator started to move. I was not paying attention and before I realized it the elevator stopped on the 21st floor. I just assumed the elevator went up to pick someone else up and I had forgotten that no one lives on the 21st floor. This is the penthouse. Well we got off at the 21st floor and went to the door to the penthouse. As we opened the door, everyone yelled surprise and shot off little tubes of confetti. So this is where the party was being held and why the secrets were kept. They had rented the penthouse for her birthday. What a great place to hold a party.

Kathy's grand entrance into the party room.

Barbara and Kathy right after the door opened.

I tell you, when these girls plan and throw a party, they really know how to do it right. The decorations were wonderful, the food was tremendous and delicious and there were plenty of drinks to go around. There was about 25 to 30 people there. All people who have meet Kathy and who we have become friends with in the past year. It was absolutely wonderful. Z basically was in charge of the music all night and everyone had a great time dancing and eating and of course drinking. The penthouse was very spacious and it was a wonderful place to hold a party.

Everyone sitting and enjoying the atmosphere

How about that hat?

The cuisine was exquisite. Catered by Flares

Kathy the birthday girl, surprised and happy

Kathy with the boss, but this night, just a good friend

Kathy relaxing before the rest of the evening

Of course, the night would be complete without the event of fireworks. We set off 1000rmb worth of fireworks. One of best displays to date. These were loud and high in the sky. We all went downstairs to the front of the building and Jacky and Nicholas set up the boxes of fireworks to be set off. It was a lot of fun.

Kathy, Jacky and Barbara

Kathy and Nicholas

What a wonderful cake which Barb had made for the party

She looks great for her age huh?

Just a few of the friends Kathy has made

Once the fireworks were done, and the food and cake was eaten, the drinking continued and the dancing began. Everyone had a chance to shake their booty. It went on for hours. People came and went and returned during the night. The wine and beer was flowing and the music was loud. Everyone was laughing.

Old but not dead!

I just feel like dancing the night away

Here is the planning committee

Wendy and Z

Claire and Kathy wrapping the party up

You know the party is over when Kathy ends up on the floor at some time. Just joking, but we did have a great party. I think it ended sometime around 3am. It was a wonderful time of celebration and enjoying the friendships we have all made. Not many people can say they had a celebration like this in China during their life. Kathy and myself are blessed to have wonderful friends and an opportunity to be in China. Happy Birthday Kathy. I hope you had fun.

St. Paddy's Day Party And the Crub Crawl

2010-04-18T07:05:00.000-07:00

After I got back from my home leave and met my new room mate it was only one day away from St. Patricks Day. As you know, this is a big holiday in Ireland but I don't think too many people have a clue what it means here in China. However, I think there are more Irish folks here than in Ireland. Rami's wife Wendy is from Ireland and she love to have a good party, so, she planned a big official Irish dinner party for St. Paddy's day. She invited the normal list of people. She was planning on having a traditional Irish meal. Shepperd's pie, Irish Stew and of course, bread pudding. The evening was planned and the party was on.

For a weeknight this was a good idea to just have a dinner planned. I of course thought that the night would not be complete unless Roxanne joined us. Before I went down to Rami and Wendy's apartment I took Roxanne and made sure she looked good for the party. I put my coat around her and we headed down to Wendy's apartment. We went down to the 6th floor and I walked up to their apartment. I rang the door bell. To my surprise, a person I have never seen before answered the door. Well, here I am, standing there with my room mate on my arm in her under ware and I am looking stunned. The lady just looked at me. All I could say is that she was my girlfriend. I was trying to understand why she was in Rami's apartment. Then I suddenly remembered that they had moved apartments to another floor. I just could not remember which floor. She said she didn't know either. Well, standing there with a blow up date it dawned on me they had moved to the 9th floor. I just thanked her and went on my way up to the 9th floor.

I got up to the real apartment and found the party in full swing. Roxanne and I settled in and enjoyed the food which was prepared by Wendy. It was all delicious. We had a good time for the rest of the evening. Everyone enjoyed the company of Roxanne as well. This was a good party for Roxanne to get used to the crowd we hang out with. There was a party coming up the next weekend to celebrate the true meaning of St. Patricks day. That being drinking, drinking and more drinking.
Roxanne's first official party. This primed her the coming weekend

Now Friday evening came around and it was time for the first annual Dalian Crub Crawl. This Crub Crawl was born from a few of the wives that we busy drinking one afternoon looking for something to do to celebrate St. Patricks day. Well, Wendy, Lisa and Barbara came up with the traditional Irish celebration of a pub crawl around the city. The problem was that Barb had a little too much to drink and when she went to say Pub Crawl it came out as Crub Crawl. Hence, the official name was born.

They had t-shirts made with the name and all the names of the bars on the back. We all looked good in our t-shirts.
Here is Wendy showing off the front of the official t-shirt Here you can see the back with our starting point, The Real Eddies

We started the night out at Real Eddies. He always some good food and spirits. We ate dinner and before we knew it, we were off to the first Crub.

Our first Crub was the Cafe Vienna. A nice little establishment which we frequent often. The night was started. Our next stop was Obsidian. In between the two bars I decided that Roxanne needed to join the party. I went back to Shama and got Roxanne dressed up. The rest of the night Roxanne was busy entertaining the crowd.

Here Roxanne is meeting new people
What a popular girl

Devin was our leader for the night.

Even the local Chinese folks enjoyed Roxanne.

After a couple pubs Roxanne and the rest of the crowd was getting pretty rowdy. Obviously alcohol had a lot to do with it. Roxanne continued to meet people but also started getting a little wild. She began to do some pole dancing and hung from the rafters. I guess I just can't take her anywhere.
Mo I think is now Roxanne's BFF

What the heck, she actually made some money doing this.

Devin didn't mind that she was becoming a floozy.Of course, no party is a party without Rock

Roxanne caught Cindy & Wendy talking about her.

She just wanted to be one of the girls and hang out

She kept ending up back at the poles in the pubs.

Danny and Brian were ready to go to the next bar.

Roxanne was everywhere that night.

Brian and Rami didn't want to be left out.

Our last stop for the night was at the Focus bar. This is the loudest place and I couldn't keep track of Roxanne. She went off with Rami and the last I saw, her under ware came flying across the dance floor. It was time to get her a little more clothes. She was able to get a shirt and her under ware back on.

Someone was kind and gave her a shirt. Now an official member.
Brian and Danny enjoyed the sights at Focus Bar

After this wild night I still got to go home with Roxanne even though I think a lot of people would have like to be in my spot. Oh well, their loss. The unfortunate thing was that by the next morning, Roxanne was a flat. She has never recovered since that wild evening. I am guessing she is just not Irish.

From all of this, our team had a fantastic time. Some memorable items and some they just can't remember. After this wild night, the next focus was planning Kathy's 50th birthday. That will be in the next update for this blog.

Who is that in my bed????

2010-04-10T02:32:00.000-07:00

So, after a nice relaxing time at home in Arizona I headed back to China relaxed and ready to start working again. I actually left on a Saturday this time which means I would end up in China on Monday morning. The flight was a good flight with no delays until I got to Seoul Korea. Once I arrived there after a 14 hour flight from LA I found that my flight was to be delayed going to Dalian. I am not sure of the reasons but it was delayed a least an hour. Once I finally got on the plane and headed to Dalian it ended up being one of the bumpiest flights I have ever taken. Now, I don't normally get motion sickness at all but this flight I actually felt it. It was so bumpy that I actually started to feel queezy. It is only an hour flight and with an hour time difference I did not get into Dalian until just about noon. I was supposed to be there at 10:45am.

Nicholas was waiting patiently there for me as always. He seemed to be happy to see me. The weather was cold and cloudy. He gathered my luggage up and put it in the car and we headed toward the DDA area. I was still feeling pretty sick from the flight and Nicholas had the heater on in the car and that made it just that much worse. I finally had to open the window and get some fresh cold air or else he might have seen what I had for breakfast. The drive took the normal half an hour or so to get home. Once I pulled up to the Shama I got out, gathered my luggage and sent Nicholas on his way home for the day. I was going to do nothing except rest the remainder of the day.

As I walked into the Shama I noticed that Barbara and Wendy were sitting in the lobby. They both seemed excited to see me and asked me about my flight. They were wondering why I was late getting back. I told them about the delay in Korea and how rough the flight was from there. I wasn't really tired but my stomach was still a little upset. We chit chatted for a few more minutes and I said I was going to head upstairs to take a shower and get unpacked. They were very cordial and said they would see me later. They asked me if I needed any help or anything but I said I was good. I knew that Barbara had been taking care of my plants while I was gone and I thanked her for doing that. I said I would get the key back from her later.

Well, I headed up to my apartment. As I got to the 18th floor and headed around the corner to my apartment I had noticed the "do not disturb" sign was on my door handle. I really did not give it much thought and figured the maids put it on there so they knew not to enter my apartment everyday to clean while I was gone. That just made sense to me. So, I put my luggage down, dug out my key card and opened the door. As I opened the door I saw that someone had been in my room. It looked as though a wild party had gone on. There seemed to be baloons and confetti all over the hallway. This is what I saw when I opened the door.

view from my doorway walking into the apartment

Well, as I walked in further into the apartment I noticed even more baloons. But, it was not confetti on the floor, it was rose pedals. I thought then, this was the last time I was going to give Barbara my apartment key. There were baloons every where. And the rose pedals led to my bedroom.

I was thinking that the gang went to a lot of trouble to decorate my apartment and give me a home coming with baloons. I figured that my bedroom was going to be filled with baloons when I opened the door. As I approached my door I notice is was slightly open. As I pushed it open I noticed there was someone in my bed. That really freaked me out. I thought who has been in my apartment while I was gone. I slowly opened the door and this is what I saw.

What or who the heck is this sleeping in my bed. Should I wake them?

Then I began to look around the room. I was absolutely amazed at the sight I saw. There were a pair of high heels at the end of my bed. Baloons and rose pedals all over the floor and on the bed. A bottle of wine and two wine glasses half gone on the nightstand.

On top of that there were packages of condoms on the night stand and all over the floor. Multi colored ones no less. Then I actually went to pull the covers back and was amazed at what I saw. I was a blonde woman sleeping there. Not just any type of blonde woman, but a true blue, very real like blow up woman blonde.

Meet Roxanne.

When I pulled the covers back even further I found she had a baby with her. Yes, a chinese speaking baby and when I pulled the covers back she spoke chinese to me. I am not sure what she said but she would not shut up.

Now that is one sexy blonde huh?

I now was in complete and utter disbelief. The first thing that came to my mind was Barbara and Wendy. Now I know why they were so happy to see me and why they were waiting downstairs in the lobby for me to get home. I am sure at this point they are laughing their butts off downstairs. I started to walk around the room and looked at what else is out of place. I went into the bathroom and found that "Roxanne" seemed to have moved in. She had her toothbrush, hair comb, makeup and other woman things all over the bathroom. There was even a pair of red lip imprints on the mirror.

Women always take over the bathroom with all their crap.

Ah, but wait, it doesn't stop there. Not only was there now a woman in my apartment with a baby but I looked on my night stand on the opposite side of where the wine was and to my disbelief I found a vibrator, love get and a couple of goldfish in a bowl. Yes, goldfish. I come to find out by way of a special note sitting on the night stand that their names were Randy and Candy.

Here is what the note said:

"Mr. Greenwald,
Thank you for allowing my family and I to stay with you. There is "nothing" I wouldn't do to show my appreciation.

P.S. Please don't forget to feed Candy & Randy.

Love,
Roxanne"

Now how is that for a home coming? An instant family. After all this and getting my mind straight, I called Barb up. I explained to here that I will never lend her my apartment key again. She obviously denied everything and said she did not know what I was talking about. I told her I was going to do an DNA test on the lipstick pair of lips on my mirror. All she did was laugh and told me it was Wendy's lips. I was absolutly amazed at the amount of work they went to for me. I really feel loved and missed. All I could do the rest of the day was sit and think what it must have been like for them to go around and buy all this stuff. An anatomically correct blow up doll with all parts that can be used for a lonely guy, a multi colored package of condoms, sexy underware for Roxanne. A nice pair of Hooker high heels and of course the two goldfish. On top of all this, I was told to be sure and feed Candy and Randy but there was no fish food to feed them. I ended up feeding them crackers for a couple days.

Well, it took me about an hour to clean the place up. I had to make sure it was in good shape for when the maids show up to clean the place. I didn't want them to think I was some kind of a weirdo or something. I wasn't quite sure what to do with Roxanne. I couldn't leave her in my bed or the spare bedroom. So, I decided to gather up all the baloons and put them in the front bathroom. After I did that I thought it would be a good place for Roxanne as well. So, I put her in on the floor amongst the baloons. I figured why not, after all she obviously is a parting type of a girl. I just wish I was around the next day when the maids opened the door to this sight.

Ah well, all in good fun and it was a lot of fun. It doesn't stop there though. My next blog will fill you in when I went on my first date with Roxanne. You will not believe it.

Going Home for a rest

2010-03-20T04:32:00.000-07:00

After a couple months of cold weather and endless hours of hard work I was able to get away from China for a couple of weeks. Yes, it was time for a home leave. I decided to head home the last day of Feb and the first couple weeks of March. I thought this would be a good time to be home as it was going to be the start of spring. The weather would be nice and warm and I would get some fresh air.

Well, the day I left here which was Feb 27th, it was snowing. I thought as much as it was snowing that my flight would be canceled. It started to snow on the way to the airport and by the time my flight was to take off a couple hours later there was a couple inches of snow on the ground. They cancel flights here in China for smaller storms than that one. I lucked out though, the flight took off. I was on my way home for a few days of relaxation.

The nice thing about flying back to the states is you leave here in China on Saturday and you get home on the same day a few hours later. Never mind the fact that you are still on the road for about 24 hours. The flights themselves were not too exciting. Nothing special happened. It was a long flight between Seoul and Los Angeles. The best part of this flight was I got to fly in the upper portion of a 747. That was pretty cool. It was very comfortable and a quiet ride. The time actually went by very quickly. I got home around 4:00pm.

Both Kathy and Kevin came to pick me up at the airport. The first thing I did was get in on the drivers side of the car. I had not been driving for about 4 months at this point. I have really gotten used to not driving. I told Nicholas, my China driver, that I was going to have Kathy drive me around and pick me up when I needed it while I was at home. Of course, I knew that wasn't going to happen. It was easy, you don't really forget how to drive. On the way home from the airport the first place I wanted to stop was Red Robin. I was craving a good big juicy messy hamburger and of course, their bottomless fries. I know, not healthy, but good. After that is was off to home.

I spent the next few days working on our taxes. Boy, when you live in another country like China for part of the year it is a big pain in the neck. It is a good thing that Intel is providing a company to put our taxes together for us. The amount of taxes paid in china is about 45%. I thought we had it bad in the US. With the China goverment taking so much of peoples income here I can see why everything is paid in cash and that there are so many street vendors and farmers. When they only make a few dollars a day they sure do not want to give almost half of it up to the goverment. I am trying to figure out all of this and figure out if I owe both the US goverment and the China goverment. I hope it becomes clear.

After I continued doing things around home for a few days I was able to get with all my racquetball buddies and play some good games. I played just about every day. It sure felt good to get back on the court. I really miss running around in the courts. It was even better seeing my friends again. Many of them that haven't really played since I left showed up again to play. It was great and really fun. Now I can't wait to see them again when I come home in May.

Kathy and I were able to see many of our friends. We met some for dinner and others just in passing. They all ask the same thing, "How's China?" I am always happy to share my experiences from here. I make sure I tell them this is one of the most interesting places in the world with the kindest people you would ever want to meet. I have been so lucky to have the chance to be here and enjoy this new culture.

My parents pulled together a small get together with the rest of our families to help celebrate Kathy's 50th birthday. We had a nice visit and enjoyed the time together. Kathy's birthday was the 15th and our 29th anniversary was the 21st. We were able to celebrate both of these together. How nice was that? I didn't put together a party for Kathy while I was home because the plan was to have a really nice party in China when she came to visit in a few weeks. She was going to be coming to China on the 18th and stay until the 10th of April. The party is being planned by Barbara, Wendy and Lisa. All I am going to do is pay for it. They are doing the rest. I think Kathy will really enjoy it even though we have no idea what it is going to be like. The theme is a hat party so we will see how this proceeds.

One thing I was able to do again while at home was to get down to Mexico to our condo. I was so looking forward to a couple of days on the beach in warmer weather other than snow. Kathy and I headed down there to rest for a couple of days and pay our taxes and renew my visa and FM3. I have to do this every year since I own a place there. After spending some time down there I really now miss not getting down there. The weather was great, virtually no crowd and the sun was shining. I am looking forward to when I come home in May to spend a few extra days down there and soak up some sun.

After all of this it was time for me to head back to China. It was hard to leave again but I also knew that Kathy would be in China to see me in a couple more weeks. Something to look forward to.

The Chinese Year of the Tiger

2010-02-16T02:10:00.000-08:00

Well, this past week I was able to experience my second New Year celebration. You see, in China, they have their own calendar they go by and they have their own New Years celebration aside from the traditional January 1st date. Hence, I had the pleasure of celebrating 2 new years eve's for 2010. I must say it turned out to be an extraordinary Chinese New Year and very exciting. This was not a boring time at all. I will attempt to explain.

Let's start with work and the time leading up to the New Year. We had been planning on the CNY (Chinese new year) for quite some time. We had been told that the local contractors and workers pretty much shut down everything during this time of the year. We were told that about a week prior to the new year the Chinese folks begin to leave work and head home to spend time with their families. Then there is the actual 2 weeks of the CNY which everyone travels and spends with their family. After that, the local folks take a week to get back to work, that is if they even decide to come back to work. Well, if you count all that up you will get a mere 4 weeks that basically is not very productive at all. We knew this would happen so we actually baked that into our installation schedule. That's right, we have put in our project schedule 4 weeks of no work by the sub contractors. This was not so bad but the hard part was that we did not move our end date for the completion of the project out be 4 weeks. So, this means we just loose a month of work productivity toward the completion of the project. We obviously will be pressured to make up that 4 weeks some where in the remaining time of the project. On top of all this, history has shown that 30 to 40% of the workers just never come back to work after the CNY. Now that is what is left to be seen and something we will begin to deal with starting the 1st of March. In the meantime, our workers dwindled down to only about 40 of 50 people showing up to work prior to the 12th of Feb. That was the last day of work prior to the CNY which was actually the eve of the 13th. We will see how things go after next week.

The funny thing about the CNY, this is a time when family is extremely important for everyone of the Chinese people. They take days to travel to their birth places by train, bus, and plane. You see everyone carrying luggage, packages and gifts to take home with them for their family. This is a very important time for them. They have many traditions that happen this time of the year. This is the biggest holiday celebration in China each year. I was lucky enough to be able to experience some of those traditions first hand while here in China. Being here by myself my driver, Nicholas, asked me to be a part of their family. He is a local born person so all of his family is here in town. He was lucky enough to not have to travel at all. Nicholas was excited to have me over to spend time on New Years Eve and meet his family. Here is Nicholas and his entire family. His son and wife to his right and his mother, sister and brother in law to his left.

Part of CNY tradition is shooting off fireworks where ever and when ever you want too. I have never heard so many fireworks and firecrackers in my life. Everyday, every night, every afternoon there was something exploding. Then on new years eve, the normal tradition is that you spend time with family, eat very traditional Chinese food for dinner, sit around and talk and play cards for a few hours and then begin to make dumplings. Once the dumplings are made you all go outside at 11:30pm and shoot off fireworks. After the fireworks you come back inside and sit and eat the dumplings you made earlier. Now that is a lot of eating. After that you just relax as a family and look forward to the next 2 weeks enjoying your family.

So here is how my evening went. At 5:00pm Nicholas picked me up at my apartment. We drove down to his house. I had to take a gift with me to the house so I had purchased 3 baskets of fruit to give to his wife, mother and sister. This seems to be a very traditional gift to give at this time of year. We showed up at this house and I was greeted outside the door by Nicholas' son. He is 14 and a very big boy. He helped carry up the fruit baskets. I got to the door and was greeted by his whole family. I would tell you their names but it is hard to remember how to pronounce them. As I walked in the front door I was helped with taking my shoes off and put slippers on. This too is a very traditional Chinese habit. You always take your shoes off before you go in the house. I was then asked to sit down. Now mind you that no one in the house speaks English. Nicholas only knows what he has learned since I have been here and his son knows a little from school. I sat down and on the coffee table was much fruit, nuts, pumpkin seeds and watermelon seeds. There were different types of drinks and a bowl full of candy. I can see that they went all out for me. We sat and talked some what. His mother, who I have met a number of times, sat next to me. She kept telling me to eat the nuts and seeds. Have a drink of apple juice and candy. She didn't want to be without anything.

Here is Nicholas with his mother. A very sweet lady

Now once we sat there for a while I got to watch Nicholas' brother in law cook some of the food. He is a cook by trade so Nicholas told me we would have good food. He wasn't kidding. The food was good, interesting and different. His brother in law was an excellent cook and in such a small kitchen he was able to produce large quantities of food.

The master cook on a 2 burner stove.

What came next we an experience. They put me at the head of the table with a cushion on the chair. I was the honored guest. They started out with about 5 different dishes of food on the table. This continued to grow while we began eating until we had 15 different dishes on the table all at once. Now, this was not a big table. Just big enough for 4 people and we ended up with 7 sitting around it eating. We had platters of food stacked on top of each other. Good thing we didn't have any plates as there would not have been room. We used a very small bowl and a saucer. Nothing except chopsticks to use. Again, very traditional.

you can see the kitchen in the background. Very small.

Here is a list of what we ended up with on the table to eat. Kung Pao chicken, Kung Pao pork, Octopus, edible fungus, a whole sweet and sour fish complete with head and eyes, snow peas, Sea Cucumber (you know, those soft black creatures that you can hold at Sea World), a shrimp salad type platter and a plate of whole shrimp not cut up, a pork plate, a beef plate, a sweet and sour breaded meat plate, egg plant, a sticky potato plate. The last plate I remember was another traditional Chinese plate which was from the sea, that being crab.

Now, I tried all of it. Obviously some of it was much easier to eat then others. The chicken, pork, beef, and shrimp were all very good. I had a difficult time with the Octopus and Sea Cucumber. The edible fungus (mushrooms) we very slimy and just slid down the throat with no problem. I didn't let them stay in my mouth very long. The Sea Cucumber was the weirdness tasting and had very strange texture. This is a very common food here but very expensive. It is supposed to be very good for the body and makes you healthy. It apparently holds very medicinal powers and is good for the body. Nicholas' mother kept putting more and more of it on my plate, both hot and cold. I couldn't swallow the pieces whole so I had to chew them a couple times before I could swallow them. It was the same with the Octopus. Very different tasting and extremely hard to chew. Very fishy tasty as well.

Well, I managed to finish the meal. Most of it was very delicious. I had more then enough to eat. The plates just kept coming and coming. Finally after we were done we all took some pictures. Here are a few from the night.

Nicholas his wife and son

Myself, Nicholas, his wife and sister

Myself, Nicholas and his son

Nicholas, his son and wife and me

Next, after the dinner I was led back to the sitting area and asked to sit and relax. Little did I know I was about be eat more. By the couch on the coffee table were a couple bowls of fruit. Nicholas' wife took the two bowls to the kitchen and cut all the fruit up. There were apples, Kiwi's, oranges, dragon fruit, pears (a very important fruit in china, it brings you good prosperity), a honeydew type melon common to China and bamboo fruit. I didn't even know that bamboo had fruit. It is this very hard shell that when you crack it open there is this white slimy seed inside that you have to dig out and eat. It is very disgusting looking and is very slippery and slimy but tastes very sweet. Nicholas told me to not look at it, just eat it. That makes it easier to eat. It actually looked like a big aaaaachchcc toooooo . Nicholas' mother kept telling me to eat, eat, eat. I was so full I couldn't eat another bite. But, I did. and every time my plate got empty they put more fruit on it.

I finally went into Nicholas' son's room and we were able to have a very nice conversation by way of computer. He would type in a question and it would translate to English. I could then answer. I had my hand held translator and we talked for about an hour and a half. Of course, they kept bringing me more fruit to eat the whole time. It got to be about 11:00 and it was time to make the traditional dumplings. They wanted me to learn how to wrap the dumplings so I gave it a shot. I was not the best at it but it was fun.

Here is how it's done, it is easy I was told.

Just fill the dumpling and fold it over and squeeze it shut

Easier said than done

I ended up leaving it to the experts, they were much faster than I was

Now came the time of fireworks. I have never seen nor heard so many fireworks in my life. It sounded like a war zone outside. There were hundreds of people around all shooting off their own set of fireworks and firecrackers. It was so loud and there were so many going off that the smoke filled the air and you couldn't see the people across the road. Talk about your pollution. That smoke filled the air the rest of the night. On my way home it was so smokey in the city you could not see to drive.

After the fireworks we went back inside and actually ate all the dumplings we had just made. This was a lot of food and once again Nicholas' mother kept telling me to eat more. I just could not eat any more. I must have had about 15 dumplings. They were filled with beef and spices. Very very good. I finally said that I would only eat one more and they said two. I said one and that was all I could do. I was finally finished for the night. Nicholas then drove me home and I rolled myself into bed. What a wonderful time to experience a real Chinese New Year. This is something I will never forget. I just hope I am not here again next year to relive it.

Well, the holiday was not over. On Monday night there was going to be a very large fireworks display in downtown. Brian, Barb and I decided to go and watch them. It was however so cold outside that it was going to be miserable if we were going to have to stand outside with about a million people to watch this massive display of fireworks in Xing Xhai square. We lucked out, one of our do workers happens to be staying in an apartment in downtown overlooking the square and overlooking the exact location of the fireworks. What a better way to watch the display than in a warm apartment, eating snacks and drinking beer. We were warm and dry and comfortable. Well feed and hydrated. When the fireworks began around 7:30 pm we all chose a window to look out of. This was one massive display of fireworks. It was like a non stop of 30 minutes of a what normally see as a finale. It wasn't just shoot one up and explode, it was 10 to 12 in the air at all times plus the ground display. I have never seen such a display in the past. I took some video but couldn't load it up on here. I will see what I can do in the future.

The whole square was lit up to extremes

Well, once the fireworks display was done we thought is be best to head out. We let the crowd down below disperse and decided we would head off to another party we were expected at. Everyone decided to leave about the same time. Well, when we all headed for the door we found to our dismay that we could not get out of the door. It was locked. No problem right? Just unlock it and head out. Well, that did not work. The security dead bolt would not unlock. For some reason the dead bolt would not disengage and stayed locked. Now this might not have been a problem as we could just take the hinges out from the inside and open the door. That wasn't going to happen either. This was a security door which had 3 dead bolts engage on the one side of the door jam and had 3 pins on the opposite side of the door jam. These pins and deadbolts went into a solid steel door jam built in to the doorway. We were truly locked in. Here we were, on the 23rd floor of an apartment building on a holiday and no other way to get out. We called some friends and told them we were locked in. They showed up on the other side of the door after about an hour. They wanted to try and use the key to open the door from the hallway side. Well we had the key inside and could not figure out how to get it to them. We decided to put the key in a asprin bottle, fill it with tools for weight and throw it off the balcony down 23 stories. They were waiting at the bottom. Good thing I had my laser as I was able to shine it where the bottle landed. They got the key and tried opening it up. It didn't work. We asked the tenant if there was a maintenance person on duty, he didn't know, asked about the people at the front lobby, he didn't know and they didn't speak english. We were in trouble. Luckly Jackie, Brians driver, was outside and he was able to help out. He tried to call the police, they said don't call us. He called some locksmiths, they said don't call us, it is holiday. He tried calling the manufacturer of the door lock, they said they could not help until tomorrow. Looks like at this point we were going to be spending the night. Everyone in the room took a crack at trying to open the door. Non of us succeded. Finally, at 12:15am we decided to call the fire department. Jackie called them and they said call the police, Jackie called the police again and they asked him why he was calling them? Finally Jackie called the fire department again and they came over. We decided to have the door broke down so we could all leave. It took almost an hour before the fire department decided to break it down because they were wondering who was going to pay for the door. After an unsuccessful attempt to find the landlord we convinced the firemen to break it down. There was 8 firemen and 3 policemen outside the door. Suddenly we heard them pounding a crow bar in the door jam. Well, this did not work. The security door was truly a security door. They got it partially open but could not get the lock to break loose. Suddenly we heard the chainsaw start up. Yes, a chainsaw. They were able to take a swoop down the side of the door the deadbolts were on and then kick the door in. Yes, we were finally free. I finally got home around 2:00am and didn't make it to the next party.

Here is the first attempt to get free

We tried to expose the lock to see if we could get it to work, no way

Yes!!!!!!!!!!!!!we are FREE

Well, that is pretty much how I spent my Chinese New Year. The Year of the Tiger. I see for me it has come in like a tiger. It will be an interesting time. I hope the rest of the year is a little more smooth sailing. Tomorrow it is off to work again. Just a two day week this week and then one more week until I will be coming home for a couple of weeks. This is a crazy country and always something exciting going on. Today it actually snowed about 2 inches. It was a complete blizzard and white out for the whole day. What a great place.

Until next time. Take care and have a great Year of the Tiger.

So what is new?

2010-02-04T06:00:00.000-08:00

Well, the bottom line is, not much. The past couple of weeks have been pretty uneventful. the workload continues to go up at work and the hours continue to increase. There have not been any new adventures to speak of and I don't actually have any new pictures to share.

Our project continues to fall farther behind as our general contractor is just not getting the job done. The good thing though is that we do continue to bring tools in and get them in place on the factory floor. We have a good number of them now. It is actually looking like a factory now. Even being as far behind as we are there are some positive aspects.

in the past couple weeks we have had a few parties happen on the weekends. Our team had a party with our contractor to celebrate our first tools being installed and the partnership between them and our team. We had a great time and had a fun evening of inter team entertainment. People on our team danced and sang. I didn't realize there were so many talented people on our install team.

The following week Intel had their annual Chinese New Year party. I have been with Intel almost 30 years now and other then the 25th anniversary parties Intel had back then, this was the largest crowd I have seen at one Intel gathering. There was over 1200 employees there. They were all yelling, screaming, shouting and the loudest group of people I have ever heard at an Intel function. They obviously take their party's seriously. It was a good time, but very crowded. When dinner was served they were going to call table number by table number to go to the buffet line. Well that worked out good, as soon as they announced that dinner was ready everyone did as the Chinese people do......disobey all rules and sense of assembly and everyone in the place got up and rushed the food tables. The unfortunate things was that there were 3 buffet lines set up and all of them were rushed and it was total caos. The lines, if that is what you want to call them, were so long. Actually the only people who were actually standing in line was the expat Americans here on assignment. Everyone else just rushed to the tables and grabbed plates and food. It was like no one had ever eaten before. I didn't want to stand in line so I just walked around for a while. I just watched the people. It was a very interesting observation. People were just grabbing food with their hands and people were actually eating the food will in front of the food platters. It was gross. There was absolutely no order. The people who were in line ended up standing in line for over an hour. I wasn't about to do that so I just blended like the locals. After all, I have been here almost 6 months now. I am practically Chinese. I just pushed my way in the so called line and forced people to make way for me and I grabbed my food too. Once I got in there and got my food, I found there was not really anything good to eat or actually edible. I ended up raiding the fruit trays and the desert table. That was enough for me. Here are a couple of pictures showing the crowd and the F68 staff. They tried to act Chinese but just looked foolish.

There were a bunch of prizes given away that night and true to form, I did not win a thing. 30 years at Intel and I have never won a prize at a major party like this one.

After this party was over the normal "gang" decided to head over to Friends for a final drink. 2 hours later I headed home.

Well, that pretty much brings us up to date. Like I said, there was nothing over exciting that happened the past couple weeks. Now, going into the Chinese New Year, I should be able to gather some new pictures and share them. I know there is going to be many many fireworks. Only I know they will not be outside of our apartment complex. I think that is because of what Brian did at Christmas. We shot the fireworks off out in front of the apartment. The way they were set up when they went off about 18 stories up, they hit the building next door. Well, today, we all received an email stating that we are not allowed fireworks in front of the building.

We are just going to have to find another spot. I am thinking that the best place is just across the street. Who knows. Where ever we end up doing them, I will get pictures.

I have been invited over to my drivers house on New Years eve. He did not want me to be alone on New Years Eve. I will get a chance to meet his wife and 10 year old son. I will also get to meet his sister.

OK, that is it for now. See you when I see you

who said it was cold

2010-01-21T04:53:00.001-08:00

Well, here I am again, so far behind on my blog. I think this time I will be able to catch you up as to where I am today. It may be pretty long but hopefully interesting and good reading. In this blog writing I will show you what we did as a family here in Dalian and Harbin between Christmas and when the family left. I hope you can hang in there long enough to read this.

To start off with we had just finished a Christmas celebration complete with large numbers of fireworks. We bought about $300 USD of good ole fashion Chinese fireworks. As you can see in the picture we had a large amount of trash left over. We shot these off right outside of our apartment complex. There was plenty of room but we did happen to hit the high rise next to our complex. No damage or fire though.

Now between Christmas and New Years I still had work to do but Kathy and the boys did a lot of shopping and driving around. Nicholas took good care of them while I was working and then at night we would head out to dinner. I think the boys enjoyed themselves. Kevin found stuff to buy for friends and Brian found some nice things for Jenny and some of his friends as well. We went to a local tailor which I found a while back and had suits custom made for both Brian and Kevin. When we finally picked them up after being made these guys tried them on and I must say they looked great. We had two suits and two long sleeve shirts made for less than $150.00usd. What a deal. I know these guys enjoyed the Chinese culture somewhat. These guys enjoyed the local food. All three of them enjoyed he Chinese food Nicholas took them out to. Kevin even ate fresh crab. Now that is something I would never of thought I would see happen.

There were other things that these guys had to get used to. The obvious things like, AAAAchchcch ppppptooooo. The general unsanitary conditions of the streets and the air. And of course, the squat pots. When ever we are out in public and have to use the bathroom this is what is available. Of course this picture is a much cleaner one than most. I am sure the boys were glad they are boys. I feel sorry for Kathy. It is amazing how the local people are so used to this stuff. Consider yourself lucky you live in a country with real toilets.

There were a few more days left in the year 2009. I had a couple days off as well. As usual, in China we always find a way to celebrate and have a party. We all got ready to go out for new years eve. We went to a party at one of our new friends. Devin and Lisa's place. We had good food which was catered by the Real Eddies. One of the better restaurants here in the Dalian area. Then when midnight came around we just had to shoot off more fireworks.

After a week in China it was time for Kevin to head back to the US. He had to get back to go back to school. He was about to adventure a world travel by himself. Sorry to see you go Kevin.

Now once Kevin was gone a couple days later we had another really bad snow storm. This was the worse storm this area had in over 10 years. It dumped over 5 inches of snow overnight. Yes it was cold, wet and icy. We were able to go out to dinner to Flairs but it sure was snowing.

Within a few days Kathy, Brian and I headed to the coldest place in China, Harbin. This was going t be the last exciting sightseeing we were going to do before Kathy and Brian we going to leave for home. Harbin has an annual Ice Festival which many people travel to in order to see a remarkable site of a city made of blocks of ice. This place is an unbelievable site to see. I can understand now how these artists can build a city out of ice and not worry about it melting anytime quickly. The city has an average high temperature of -27 degree centigrade. It was flippin cold there.

Here is the temp displayed by an all ice thermometer. I think it is right around 0 degrees F. You can see Kathy and Brian are a little cold.

Here are a few pictures from the trip. This was so much fun. It was an amazing sight to see all these buildings made of blocks of ice from the local river there.

This is Don, Kathy and Brian outside of our Hotel

This is what the City looks like from afar.

The Kremlin up on a hill. All ice.

Here is what the Forbidden City looks like all in ice.

This is just a wonderful master piece and work of art.

That building in the background is about 20 stories high. My feet as I go down an ice slide. So does she look cold or what?

Even in China there is a little bit of America.

Now, after all the ice cold fun in the Harbin ice festival we visited the Siberian Tiger Park. A one of a kind of park built to protect a species of tiger's that were close to extinction. It was fun to see all these tigers being cared for in different ways. We were able to ride in a bus that went around the park and experience the tiger's just walking around in the almost wild. The best part was watching them get fed with a live chicken. It was so cool. The driver of a utility vehicle came out and threw a live chicken in the air. Then the tiger's went crazy. Just a couple pictures that shows those wonderful animals up close and personal.

Just to let you know, that is not a real tiger and Brian is fine.

Once we finished up with the cold of Harbin we made it back to Dalian. Nicholas was waiting for us at the airport and we headed back to the apartment for a final night for Brian and Kathy. They had to get up the next morning to begin their journey back to the US. Kathy caught a cold the last day she was here and felt terrible. Then she had to get on a plane for a long flight home. I went to work the next morning and Nicholas sent them off at the airport. They made it home safely and I am guessing they all enjoyed themselves here. I know they will all be back. China is a wonderful country and fun to experience. The next time they come back it will be warm and we will go and experience other parts of China.

That is it for now. I will catch you up in the next blog to get us to today.

Christmas in China

2010-01-02T00:40:00.000-08:00

Well, once again it seems like I run out of time to update this blog. I was in a whirlwind for the weeks preceding Christmas and then again during the Christmas and New Year Holiday.

I returned back to China the second week of December with hopes of moving into my new apartment and getting away from the hour drive from downtown to work every day. I was supposed to move 2 days after I arrived back only to find out that was not going to happen. Was I surprised, not in the least. After all, TIC (this is China). I was told it would be the next week and then I would move. Well, that weekend I went to the Korean Market in downtown and began doing some Christmas shopping to prepare for the family coming on Dec. 24th. I bought myself a tree which was lit up with lights and fiber optics. Originally when I went to buy it and I asked the price the seller wanted to charge me 3800RMB. That is about $500.00 USD. Tai gui le (to expensive). My driver scolded me and told me not to ask price. He would ask for me. Well, now I understand why, we was ultimately able to get me the exact same tree for 250RMB, that is $31.00USD. Big difference huh? I know have Nicholas do all my negotiations for me and all I do is give him the money afterwards. I was able to do all my shopping very inexpensively. Not cheap, just inexpensive. Now all I needed to do if figure out if I should put it up in my apartment as the Shangri La or wait to see if I was going to move on the 14th of Dec. Well, the 14th of December came and went and I still had not moved. Talking with the folks at the Shama Luxe, (the new apartment complex) I was not going to move until the 18th. Well, I decided to not put the tree and decorations up at that point since I thought I would be in my new place before Christmas and the family getting here. At least I thought that would be the case. Well, you guessed it, that date came and went. Come to find out there was an air quality issue at the Shama and Intel would not let anyone move in until the quality of the air got better. They had to do a couple of air samples and we were just waiting for the results at that point. The sample test came back bad again and it looked as though I would be spending the Christmas holidays in the Shangri La. Not that I mind. It is a really nice place to be. I resolved myself to the fact that this is where I would be so I proceeded to set my tree and decorations up in the apartment. It looked great. I got tree ornaments, a wreath for the door, bells to hang above the window and of course, stockings for everyone. I put them all up that weekend. That was Dec 20th. On Dec 22nd at 4:30pm, the relocation folks called me and said another set of air quality test results were back and they came back good and I could move in on the 23rd (the next day) if I wanted too. Well, I thought about it for a few minutes and decided that the reduced drive time would be good, the new apartment would be nice to share with the family and I was just ready to move, so I said OK. What a whirlwind to get into the apartment.
This isn't actually mine but mine was just like it. I forgot to take a picture of mine.

In the meantime, work continued to be extremely busy. Danny was able to go home and at the same time, Rami had to leave for over a week to attend a wedding in Bahrain. That left us extremely short handed with virtually only Brian and I dealing with all the difficulties at work. I also had a coworker from Arizona come to help me out for a couple of weeks. He showed up on the 12th and was going to leave on the 23rd. We did not set him up with a driver and I had to pick him up everyday and home every night. Then of course I couldn't leave him alone in China in the evenings so we had to go out for dinner and drinks almost every night. That ate a lot of time up. He left on the 23rd. I just had Nicholas pick him up and take him to the airport while I stayed home to pack my apartment and ready for the move that day.

I finally moved into the Shama on the 23rd. The movers showed up at my place about 9:00am. I had to take my tree and all the decorations down and put them in boxes to prepare for the move. Brian and Barbara were in the same situation as I was and in a whirlwind as well. I however, was first on the list to pack and move that morning and they were set up for 1:30pm. I let Barb know that was because I was moving into apartment 1810 and they were moving to 1710 in the Shama. Obviously I was in the better apartment. It has a much nicer view than they have the floor below me.
Looking out of my apartment window on the 18th floor.

Well, I took the whole day to set my apartment and most of the night. I wanted it completely done and set up before Kathy and the boys were to show up in less than 24hrs. I wanted the tree up, the decorations up, the wreath on the door and the stockings full and hung with care. I stayed up so late that night that I think it was Santa that actually showed up to help me because remarkably enough, I got it all accomplished. I got all the boxes unpacked, the tree and decorations up and even when grocery shopping. Something I had not done in over 2 months. My cupboards were completely bare. The next day, I left for work at my usual time only a half hour later. Nicholas picked me up at 6:30am instead of 6:00am. What a nice change. I was to work in 20 minutes. I left the apartment with the Christmas lights on both the tree and the window and ready for Kathy, Brian and Kevin.

Here it is, the 24th of December and Christmas eve was upon us. Nicholas picked Kathy, Brian and Kevin up at the airport at 11:00am. He had to take Jackie to help him because I knew they were going to have a lot of luggage. Nicholas and Jackie waited for them at the pick up and they recognized them immediately as they were the only white American men over 6ft 5in to get off the plane. They went right up to them. Brian said they were staring at them so he knew that they were there to pick them up. Then Nicholas recognized Kathy. They then went back to my new apartment. Kathy said it was a nice touch to walk into a new place and have it all set up waiting for them. I even had a bowl of peanut M&M's waiting for them. Some I had brought from my visit home.
Here is my new living room and dining room with a view.

The master bedroom, what a view from there.

Here is the kitchen. She did not come with the apartment but I am glad she is here.

When I came home from work on the 24th, everyone except Kevin was asleep. I let them sleep for some time but then told them that they needed to get up as we had a party to go to. Now I know I threw them into the party scene very quickly but what the heck, TIC. We went out to one of the local Intel hangouts. It is called Obsidian. This is a nice quiet little bar in the area called 5 color city. Just down the street from the Shama. They were having Christmas eve drinks and putting together food, Chinese style. We went and you can see we did have a good time. We spent a couple of hours there and just relaxed some. We had Chinese dumplings, chicken strips, vegetables and other good food. It was all prepared by the girls who help run the place for Cindy who is the manager of the place and the girlfriend of a co worker.

Girls of Obsidian making the dumplings.

Kathy, Brian and Kevin (l to r)

Here's the family after a long flight from America on Christmas eve.

We closed that night out and went back to the apartment to prepare for the next day which happened to be Christmas day. I was going to have to work on Christmas day for a few hours as we still had tools moving in that day. Christmas is not a national holiday here in China. After all, TIC. During the night, Kathy did not sleep very well as the jet lag was causing problems. She got up around 3am and to her surprise she looked out the window and saw something we never get to see in Mesa Arizona on Christmas morning. Yes, SNOW. Just like I ordered. I thought it would be nice to have a white Christmas for a change and it made me look good by ordering it.

A white Christmas. What the heck is that?

We all got up, I went off to work, Kathy and the boys relaxed that morning and by 1:00pm I was home. We all relaxed for the evening and decided to just stay in and warm. We played a few games together and then went to bed early on Christmas. All of my coworkers decided that we were going to celebrate Christmas on Sat this year since we all had off and it was really the 25th in America. We got together in Rami and Wendy's apartment. They happen to live in the same building as I do now. this made it very easy to get together. Just had to walk downstairs. Brian and I went to purchase fireworks for the evening entertainment. The food was wonderful. We had all kinds of good eats. We had a turkey which was cooked by a local restaurant and it was really delish. We spent the evening having a few drinks, listening to Christmas music and eating. At 8:00pm we decided it was time for fireworks. These are not just these small pop, pop kind. These are full fledged hundreds of feet in the sky type fireworks. We had over 2000RMB worth of fireworks. We lit the sky up. Unfortunately I do not have any pictures of the fireworks. I was busy lighting them. I will try and get some pictures when the other folks share their pictures.

Party Animals,Kathy,Danny, Devin, Richard, Cindy, Brian

Here is Kevin, Kathy and Brian

Kathy. She doesn't look too jet lagged, she looks great!

So this took us through our Christmas celebrations. It was a lot of fun and we really enjoyed the family being together. We had a great time with all of our old and new friends alike. It has been a wonderful experience to have an opportunity to celebrate a Christmas in China. Even though it is not a holiday in China it is a lot of fun and as we all know, anything goes in China after all, TIC.

My next update will begin the next couple weeks while Kathy, Brian and Kevin are here. Some exciting adventures.

Home For a Short Time

2009-12-19T02:23:00.000-08:00

Well, just to pick up in the sequence that I left off, it is now time for a summary of my first home leave. I had a wonderful time going home. I looked forward to getting home for a little relaxation but I must say I was going to miss all the smoking, traffic, people and of course the all encompassing AAAWWWWK ptuuuuu (spitting). The sound of that is in the air in all places from walking the street to shopping in the grocery store. You always have to watch where you are walking. The lovely sounds and smells of China. Then of course there is the bathrooms. Not seeing that short toilet so close to the ground is going to break my heart.

I started off leaving China on the 20th of Nov. I wasn't looking forward to the long flight but then I remembered that I actually got to fly business class and knew it was not going to be so bad. I flew from Dalian and then over to Seoul. That flight was short and pleasant. Once in Seoul I had a layover of about 3 hours. I thought what the heck am I going to do for 3 hours and then I remembered that I got to use the Business Lounge and get a bunch of free food and drinks. I went to the lounge and enjoyed a relaxing time. I got on line and was able to finish up some work that I didn't get done that day. I was leaving work at a bad time. We were right in the middle of a lot of tools showing up and so much work I felt bad leaving. I wasn't concerned that the work wouldn't get done as I knew Danny and Brian had it all under control. I just felt bad dumping all my work on them. Well, come to find out over the next 2 weeks I still stayed in touch and stayed in touch by email. You just can't get away from it you know.

After leaving Seoul I settled into a really nice chair in Business class. This was wonderful, it actually laid all the way down so I knew sleeping was not going to be a problem. I didn't have anyone sitting next to me either so it was quiet as well. Soon after take off they came around taking our dinner orders. I ended up eating a steak which was really good for airplane food. I ate it and decided to watch a movie. Once the movie was over I slept for about 4 hours. It was very comfortable. This went on for the duration of the 13 hour flight. Next stop, LA.

There was not much of a layover in LA. I got off the flight and walked over to the other terminal I needed to fly out of. It was about a 8 minute walk. It felt good to walk after such a long flight. I got on the next flight for Phoenix. I would be home in just another hour. I arrived in Phoenix on the same day I left. I left Dalian China on Nov 20th at 1:30 in the afternoon and arrived in Phoenix on Nov 20th at 6:30pm. Sounds like a pretty short flight huh? Trust me, it is not.

Kathy was waiting in the parking lot for me. I called her and she pulled around to pick me up. The first thing I did?? (besides kissing Kathy) was to get behind the wheel. I had not driven for almost 4 months now. I couldn't wait. Well, we headed home. I asked Kathy if she had eaten yet and she said no. I said, we are going to Red Robin on the way home. I wanted a good hamburger with those wonderful bottomless steak fries. After 4 months anything other than rice was going to taste good. During dinner Kathy was explaining to me all the things that had gone wrong at home while I was gone. It sounded as though I was going to be pretty busy for a few days fixing all those little things. So, after being gone for so long and now home, on the way home from Red Robin I past the Home Depot and mentioned that I should stop there and pick some stuff up. Now that was one real smart move on my part right? Don't worry, I didn't stop.

Sunday Kevin wanted to go to the Suns game. They had been playing really well and were tied for the best record in the NBA at the time. I got some good tickets. They were center court, and I mean center, and 19 rows up. They were playing the Detroit Pistons. It was a fun game. It was really good to spend some time with Kevin.

Here we go, tip off

Nash with the ball

Amare taking a free through

And of course, we cannot forget the Suns Dancers. That was worth the price of the ticket alone!!!!

The suns won the game. We went home and the next day was Monday. This was the day of Kevin's swim banquet. He had a great season. He was one of the captains of the team. He was able to make it to state again this year. Unfortunately I was not able to see any of his meets. The night of the banquet was really fun. Kathy was in charge of putting it all together and she did a wonderful job. There was good food in a great hall with some very good prizes that were being raffled off. There was also a silent auction too. We actually won one of those. A number of night out on the town in restaurants.

The cake for the swim team

The senior swim boys

The next few days I spent catching up around the house. Fixed many things. Had lunch with a good friend and did some shopping. Now came Thanksgiving. Since it had been so cold in China I was looking forward to going to our condo in Rocky Point (Puerto Penasco) Mexico. I knew it was going to be nice and warm down there. It was a beautiful 4 days down there.

What a beautiful day from the balcony

We didn't have turkey for thanksgiving but we had a very good steak. Brian met us down there so all four of us were together again. It had been a while since we were all together for any length of time. We just enjoyed each other. Relaxed and played games. We pulled out the Bocci Ball set and went down to the lawn and played a mean game of ball.

This is the life, just relaxing in the sun.

Kathy and Kevin in deep conversation
What a wonderful family.

We spent a total of 4 days in RP. The only bad part was when we left on Sunday we ended up waiting in line at the boarder for 3 hours. That was painful. Never again will I do that. I will come back on Monday morning from now on while down there on a holiday weekend. Brian left for Tucson on Monday and he only waited 15 minutes at the boarder.

I had a week left at home in warm weather before I had to go back to the cold China. I made the most of it. I spent as much time outside as possible. It was a really good 2 weeks at home. When I left for China it was still a very nice day. After my long flight back to Dalian when I was landing in China, there was actually snow on the ground. It was very cold. I can't wait until my next trip home again. Kathy and the boys are heading out here to China for the holidays. They will be leaving on the 22nd of Dec and get here on the 24th. I am looking forward to them being here and they are looking forward to coming. I will write more later.

It has been a while

2009-11-16T06:12:00.001-08:00

In case you have forgotten what I look like. The beard is to keep my face warm

Well, it has been awhile since I have taken the time to sit down and catch up on the stories from here in China. I have been so very busy and it has been difficult to get time when I haven't been too tired to sit and write a new entry. I am not sure where to start. As usual I have the disaster of work and the fun of dinners out with the gang and celebrations for milestones we have reached. I am going to have to break this blog down a little. I know you will get bored reading it if it ends up being too long. I will break this done into 3 parts. I will close out this blog and start another one for the last of the three parts. It will be put together like this. A night out after a very difficult week of work, a night of celebration after reaching our first safety level 1 and 2 milestones for our first tool installation and last but not least, my home leave.

I am currently sitting in the Seoul airport writing this waiting for my next flight to go back to China. If some of the writing or sentence structure doesn't look quite right it is because I just got off a 13 hour flight from LA. I just finished my first home leave and had a good couple of weeks home relaxing. More on that later. For now, I want to start off with the first part of this blog, the night out after a very long and difficult week of work.

I think it started out as a normal week but by the end, Danny, Brian and I had really had a troublesome week. It was not easy. All three of us were all going off in different directions trying to get things going. Our general contractor was still struggling with getting materials and parts onto the site and into China. Yet, we were still being held to our original schedule. We were trying to understand the true impact of the lateness of the parts and materials and the missing of the first milestones by the contractor. This was not easy. Suddenly, everyone wants to be involved in how to fix the problems and misses. No one is short of opinions. We could see that our contractor was not moving very quickly in procuring the stuff for us so we (Intel) offered up our assistance. We began to find we could actually get things moving quicker then they could. What this means is that we had to do the job we are normally accustom to doing but do not own in this project. We as an IQ organization and the experience Rami, Danny, Brian and myself have on installation of tools is so vast that we just know what has to happen and can get it done. What we were seeing is there were many organizations that just didn't have their part done and ready so we had to step in and do their jobs as well. We then had to fend off every one's thoughts and opinions as well as just try to do our jobs. Danny, Brian and I virtually didn't see each other all week long as we were going in all directions. We all worked until late in the evenings, at least till after 7:00pm, sometimes later. This after starting at 6:30 to 7:00am each day. So, by the time Friday came around, we were ready for some relaxation.

We started off on that Friday at one of the local hangouts for drinks. Danny, Brian and I met to get a drink. Brian had called Barb to meet us there but of course they were busy because she, Wendy and Pam had a very difficult day too. After all, they had shopping to do during the day, had to then stop for lunch (with wine of course), get their nails done and squeeze in a massage before they could meet us. That is fine, we started without them. It was buy two and get one free. After Barb, Wendy and Pam joined us, we got Mike there as well as Rami eventually. After we finished up there we went across the street to Flares for a bite to eat. This is when we started having some real fun. We ordered beer and wine. We attempted to order food but it seemed as though everything we ordered they did not have that night. There was Chicken Curry without the curry or rice. There was no spaghetti or lasagna, and no rice by itself. Some of the folks ordered the chicken curry without the curry and replaced the rice with french fries. I ordered the pizza. We all started to get our dinners but it was at different times. Pam and I were the last ones to get our food. Everyone else was done by the time we got ours.

The gang just waiting to eat

In the meantime, there was a bunch of Japanese folks across the room getting very drunk and toasting all the time. Every so often there would be a loud 'Ganbei" This is Chinese for cheers! After a while it became more and more frequent. So, not wanting to be left out of the party, our team began to join in. They would yell "Ganbei" and we would too. Soon, before we knew it, they were over on our side of the room and toasting again and again. When I finally got my pizza, I could not eat all of it so I offered the Japanese folks a piece. One accepted and another came to get a piece and I pointed to my wine glass first. He then went off and purchased a whole bottle of wine for me. I was not expecting this. Well, this went on for a few hours. More and more wine, more and more cheers or Ganbei. At one point we were and they were toasting everything. Also there was a time when Danny reached over and grabbed my head and kiss my round bald head. This seemed to really get the Japanese excited. They pointed over to one of their colleges and he jumped up and ran over. I was not sure what to think of that but the rest of the night Brian was toasting to the tune of not Ganbei bur DonGay. It was time to close shop at that point. The Japanese folks left and our team also left and went across the street to the Obsidian. We drank for a few more hours and then headed home. Jackie and Nicholas hung out all night waiting for us so they made sure we made it home safely.

Celebration and cheers start rising up across the room

What the heck is all the noise and ruckus?
As you can see, Pam wasn't so sure about what was going on either

By the end of the night we were toasting with the Japanese.Ganbei!
Jackie was waiting for Brian and Barb

Nicholas was kind enough to hang out to make sure I was safe

Well, we finished up that week with a bang. We were tired by the end but sure had a fun and relaxing time at the end. It is a real pleasure working with these guys. We are able to support each other and help each other get through the difficult times. It will continue to get busy and I know we are going to have very difficult times ahead. But, just look at the fun in a wonderful country we are having. It is all good.

Now, to go into the next week and what we did as a team. Again, the week started out being very busy and still behind schedule. We had not made much progress once again. This week we had a goal set and the schedule milestone set for a safety level one and two sign off for our first metrology tools. This was going to be a major accomplishment if in fact we could achieve it. At the beginning of the week it did not look possible. The whole team worked very hard and very close with our contractor to pull out all the stops to keep the tool on track and meet the schedule. Well, by late Friday afternoon, Bill was able to achieve the SL1 but not he SL2. That is fine as the SL2 usually happens a couple days later anyway. It just would have been good to hit both of them. Either way, this was a major accomplishment. It was our first safety level sign off and worth a celebration. Of course, we look for any reason to have a celebration.

For this celebration, Rami bought the drinks for the team until the women showed up and people beside our IQ team where there. That is fine, we got a lot of drinking in before everyone else showed up. We started out at Friends bar in Dalian on Saturday night.

A little blurry but it could be us!

We held our own until the better halves got to the party. Once the lady's showed up, all bets were off. They had spent a few hours in a social hour (or two) drinking wine. That started sometime in the afternoon. We had a good time just talking, drinking, having fun for the rest of the evening. Once again, when there is alcohol involved, Danny seems to like the top of my bald head. He kissed me once again and you know what, it started a chain reaction with everyone. They all began to pick on me again. We were toasting to DonGay and it just kept going. We obviously are a very loving group. Seems like everyone was kissing someone. All legit though.

Ahh yes, something about a bald head.

Rami loves Wendy.......

Brian loves Barb.......

Rami loves Danny.......
Everyone loves Don???????????????????????

I guess it is just that it is so cold here right now. We do have a good time. Once we finish up at Friends this night, most people were pretty well wasted. Luckily I was not as first, I don't drink a whole lot and second, someone has to stay sober to record all these events otherwise they would never remember the next day. Well, after this bar the gang decided to go to Alice Club. This is a local dance and Karaoke bar. A local hang out with very expensive drinks. We all went over there for a few hours and then from there people pretty much dispersed. I did find out from most of the attendees the next day, that they did not remember what they said or did the night before. I guess that is good for the most part because if all of them don't remember, then they don't know to be embarrassed or not. Also, the next day, most of them swore off drinking again. Yea right, I have heard that from them before and actually they do. At least until the next weekend.

Here is the female tribe.

Here's to you Danny Boy.

Here I am and.............

here are my Homies!

Well, I am going to close this now. I know it is long but as you can see, I am still having a good time here. Now that it is getting cold here, I will not be going out and about too much. I will be staying home and staying indoors where it is warm. It actually snowed here last week. Now that is cold for an Arizona boy. I will write another blog in the next couple of days to let you know how my home leave went. It was a good time to be home. I will also capture my endeavors of moving into my new apartment this next week. So much to talk about. Bye for now.

I think I am losing it

2009-11-04T08:10:00.000-08:00

Another week and a half in China and things continue to mosey along. Nothing really exciting has been happening. With the start of real hands on work of moving equipment into the factory the hours in the day fly by quickly. It is not that there hasn't been anything to do but with work being so busy I have been so tired that I have not wanted to go out and do anything in the evenings. Even with a Halloween celebration that happened last week, I didn't have any costume to wear so I just stayed home that night.

This past week I was lucky enough to be invited over to Barb and Brian's apartment for dinner a few times. It was very kind of them to invite me. Both of them are good cooks and they take great care of me. They are always looking out for me. One night last week our normal group went out for a good Japanese dinner. We had a great time with a lot of food. As you can see we also had a good cook at our table preparing the food. At one point he flamed the shrimp. It was delicious.

You can see that we are about to enjoy our dinner. Brian, Barb, Danny and Alex are sitting here relaxing.

Here is Brian and I enjoying a glass of beer before the meal

Our Chef

Our shrimp

On Halloween Barb and Brian had Danny and I over for dinner. This was after we had worked all day in a task force mode. Unfortunately this was Saturday. If I had know we were going to have to work Saturdays here I would have never accepted the job! I thought this would just be a fun time and cheap way to see China. I am going to have to talk this over with my boss. Anyway, we had a wonderful chicken dinner that Barb made. Afterward we played a game called Mexican Train. This is a domino type of a game. It was a good game but Barb lost. We didn't rub it in too much because after all, she did cook dinner for us. She wanted a rematch after that so we decided to return on Sunday afternoon for a rematch. The next day, Danny and I met to go buy some more DVD's. I was able to purchase about 15 recent release DVD's for 95RMB. This is about $10 US dollars. Before Danny and I went back to Barb and Brian's we stopped and got a couple of pizza's from Pizza Hut. We brought it back to their place and had a good pizza dinner. After that we played the rematch of Mexican Train. Barb didn't lose this time but she didn't win either. Guess who came in last this time? It is a stupid game.

Now the beginning of this week started where last week left off with work. We are still behind, missing materials to install tools and began docking tools for move in to the factory. Monday morning we had our first process tool show up. This happened to be a tool I am responsible for. Well we started moving it into the factory and I got my first taste of what the winter is going to be like here. It was so cold and very, very windy. The temperature was 0 degree's C. That is 32 degrees F. Now, that with the wind, it was absolutely freezing. I had to walk to the dock and by the time I got from our office building to our dock on the fab, my ears were about to fall off. If anyone would have hit them they would have just crumbled. We did eventually get the tool moved into the factory and in place. A good accomplishment and just one of over 800 we have to move in. It is a start.

The next couple of days it was even colder out. We hit -5 degrees C. I have been told that in the middle of winter it will get close to -20 degrees C. I don't even know what that is in Fahrenheit. I just know it will be cold and the wind is going to kill me.

Now, tonight you may wonder why I am up so late? Right now it is 1:20 am. Well, I actually have not been up all night. I actually went to bed at 10:00 tonight. I fell right to sleep as I was exhausted. I was sound asleep and I thought I heard my alarm go off. I reached over and turned it off. I then finally got up, stumbled into the bathroom and took my shower. I shaved, brushed my teeth, got dressed went in the kitchen and made a smoothie to drink. I sat down and drank my smoothie. I turned the TV on to catch some news and at the top of the hour I was ready to catch my ride to work. I turned my phone on and noticed it said 11:58. I thought something happened to my phone. I turned it off and turned it on again. It still said 11:59. I went and got my other phone and it had the same time on it. I thought......oh no.....I then went to my room and looked at the clock......it was midnight. I was still not believing it. I went to the window and looked out. Other apartments had their lights on. Finally, for final verification, I turned my computer on. It verified that I was a complete idiot. I usually don't admit that because it confirms what my friend Don has always said about me, but none the less I am because here I am, at 1:30 in the morning and sitting fully clothed typing on my blog. If that is not an idiot what is? Well, I am now done and I am going back to bed. I can actually now sleep an extra half hour in the morning because I don't have to shave or shower.

Slow Week outside of Intel

2009-10-29T06:04:00.000-07:00

Well, it was a very quiet week outside of Intel. It seems as though all I did was work. Way too many hours put in. We continue to struggle getting started on the move in and installation of the process tools. Our general contractor now appears to be about 4 weeks behind the original schedule. We continue to work through the issues both with our own team as well as the general contractors team. I seems like we are spinning our wheels. I feel like I worked so many hours, did so many things, did so much planning but didn't accomplish anything. That is very frustrating. I told Rami today and I feel so out of control because I have no control. That may seem hard to understand but with the way we have our contract set up with our GC, we as Intel folks are not allowed to do much execution without putting Intel in a liable position and open to claims latter in the project. I see so many inefficiencies with the way our GC is setting up and executing the project that I want to just get in there and get it done. I have to be careful not to give specific direction or tell the sub contractors what to do. I can see so many ways we can get this moving and pick up steam. We will continue to give our thoughts and suggestions at this point, but it looks as though we are starting to take more control of some things. That is fine since our GC asked us for some help.

I watched some of our sub contractors install a pedestal yesterday in the fab. This was a comic relief. It looks as though nothing happens for so long and then all of a sudden it looks like when you step on an ant hill and all the ants come out of the ground at once and attacks. That is what this looked like. A bunch of ants on a sugar cube. The people were all over it and every where. They did finally get the ped in place but it took them well over an hour. Now they just have to set it, level it, shim it and grout it before the tool can actually be placed on it for final set and the start of safety sign offs.

I have no new pictures to share this week. I did not do anything fun. The most I did was play badminton on Wednesday night. That was as usual, very fun. The rest of the nights I just came home, relaxed and tried to get to bed a little earlier. I guess I will have to figure out something fun to do this coming weekend. Tomorrow is Friday and the weekend will be upon us. I will not think about work and see what is happening around Dalian.

The best part of the week really has been learning more and more Chinese. Nicholas has really improved on his English. It is getting easier to communicate with him each day. We have a goal to learn 2 to 3 new words each day. I have learned so many words and now he is starting to teach me sentences. This is a lot harder but the challenge is good. I think Nicholas gets excited and then he starts to talk really fast in Chinese. Then I cannot understand a thing.

Well, that was my exciting week. I hope to have more to share later.

Busy week, fun downtime

2009-10-24T06:42:00.000-07:00

This has been a week of a lot of frustrating work. We continue to be behind in the work that has to get done. Our general contractor is now about 2 weeks behind in their commitments. They do not have many of the materials on hand or ordered for us to get started on tool installations. Because of this fact, they have asked us to step in and help them. The bottom line here is that we need to make them successful so that we are successful and Intel is successful. This has caused us to have to pull out all the stops and work some pretty grueling hours to help plan and execute the plan to get things going. Well, we started pulling out all the stops and use our Intel brain power to see what we need to do. I think we ended up working 3 out of the 5 days this week late. The team put in at least 13 to 14 hours each of those days. We were working together to figure out how to get materials in the plant, how to re commit the schedule milestone dates, search for long lead items all over the world with any supplier or vendor we could find. We are still behind schedule and it could be as much as 4 to 5 weeks. We have some good plans together right now to get some of he installations started. We will be able to move in pedestals, set datums in both the fab and subfab, move in a few tools and set them. We can get the electrical conduits, cables and power distributions run. At least we can say that we have started the installs. Waiting for the other facility material for piping and mechanical work will just have to start later as we get the stuff delivered. We have slipped the start of prefac but have not changed the delivery dates of tools or safety level sign offs. We will progress forward with perseverance and fortitude. We are Intel. We will meet schedule in the long run. It is not how you start the race but how you finish.

When the weekend finally arrived I was ready for some relaxation. My driver started it out with a new solar dancing bobble head type of dash toy. This is very popular here in China. All of the drivers have them in their cars. I think that we Americans like them for some reason. Here is the one that Nicholas got for me. He has it facing me on my side of the car.

On Friday night, Danny, Brian, Barb and I went out for dinner at Flares. This is a nice little restaurant. We all relaxed a little and then walked down the street to return to the scene of last weeks infamous pajama party. This night the place was empty and we were the only 4 folks in there. What a difference. We had a couple of drinks and suddenly there was about 5 more Intel people that showed up. One of them was my manager, Rami. I had another drink and then left for home. Got home about 10:30 and called Kathy and then fell asleep.

Today was a good day. We decided to go and visit a Chinese village. Jackie, who is Brian's driver, has an uncle who lives out in a village in the country about an hour from here. He is a farmer and has been all of his life. We thought this would be a great opportunity to see how over a billion people of China actually live.

We got out to his house. He has a nice one room place that is surrounded by his small parcel of land which he farms and has an orchard on. Now, understand, when I say farm it is really farming that sustains his needs. He does not grow the fruits and vegetables for anything other then what he needs to live off of. He has a very nice garden, apple trees, pear trees, peach trees and an assortment of radishes, lettuce, cabbage, peppers and pumpkins. He also has 2 dogs, one cat, ducks, chickens, a rooster and 3 very large pigs. His house was completely built by himself.

We walked up to his place and he met us with a bowl full of pears and apples which he had just picked. We ate one and it was one of the best pears I have ever tasted. We then walked around the village and met some of the residence. They were really interested in seeing us. There about 100 people that live in this small village. They all came out of their houses to look at us. They don't normally see people like us in their village. They were very curious. They also really wanted to have their pictures taken too. They would laugh and talk while we walked around and met them.

I am telling you, in many ways, they live a wonderful life. No worries, no problems and they just enjoy their families and neighbors. We actually could learn a lot from them and how they are completely satisfied with what they have.

All in all, it was refreshing to meet them and spend some time with them. They are wonderful people and as friendly as can be. I have been honored to have met them. I hope to get out their again to visit with them before I leave next year.

Tomorrow, I am just going to relax around the apartment and maybe walk around the city a little bit. Hopefully it will be another nice day. Right now you do not know what type of day it is going to be. It changes so drastically from day to day and even hour to hour. It is getting cold and windy here now.

Wild Weekend

2009-10-18T01:34:00.000-07:00

Ok, picture this, a number of middle aged Americans, Irishmen, Israel, Scottish, English, Chinese and someone I am not sure about, all in a bar in pajamas for a wild night of celebrating a friends birthday. Well, believe it or not that is what we had Friday night. We were having a good time enjoying our international friendships and celebrating Barbara's birthday. The theme was pajamas. We all had to wear them. Well, at least some of us did. Here are a few pictures. You can see Rami, Wendy, Brian and Barb. They had their pajamas hand made here in China.

Brian did a great job in setting this party up. We had good food, drinks, a birthday cake, good music, fireworks and a wonderful crowd. The fireworks were set off a couple of hours into the party. We did this right outside the bar. This is not a problem in China as these type of fireworks are legal. Brian had 4 pick boxes of fireworks. We shot them off. The first set was pretty good. They exploded a little lower and had whistles and sparkles when they went off. When the explosions were done we had notice the building across from where we were having the party had a little flame on the top of the building. Suddenly, we realized that it was on fire. Yes, we started a fire with the fireworks. Luckily Fireman Rami grabbed a fire extinguisher, ran into the burning building, went upstairs, stuck his head out a window and sprayed the fire. What a hero. All he needed was a damsel in distress. I never thought we had to come all the way to China to burn down a building. Anyway, all was safe and we continued with the fireworks. Why not, lighting never strikes twice in the same place right?

We finished the night off with more drinking, more eating, more music, and the eating of cake. Who says you can't have your cake and eat it too? The cake was wonderful. The friendships superb and the atmosphere unforgettable. We even had our own godfather looking over us and keeping us safe. You can see him here.

We also had Barb cut the cake so we could all get a piece. She looked great behind here cake and blew all the candles out. The evening still continued and most people left sometime after midnight. It was a long evening. You can see that it was so long that I actually needed a haircut after it was over.

And the next party is who's??????????

The next day Brian and I went and played a couple hours of badminton. We had a good time and worked up a real sweat. James joined us. After badminton we decided to go to....what else, but an Oktoberfest in China. Yes, beer and brauts. Barb wasn't feeling up to going out again so we made it a guys night out. We found the place and James, Danny and Alex joined us. The food was good, the beer was outstanding and the band was fun. Who would have thought of an Oktoberfest in China. Well, you only live once right? We stayed and ate for a while. That is a way to wrap up the weekend. On Sunday, I was tired so we didn't do anything except to do a little grocery shopping.

I guess it is time to get back to the real world and start work again tomorrow. I finished off the weekend with a fantastic home made steak dinner at Brian and Barbara's apartment. It was the first steak I had since getting here.

Busy week, seems like a month

2009-10-15T06:08:00.000-07:00

Well, the week is about over. It is Thursday night and it turned out to be a busy week. I didn't do much outside of work but it was a good week. I went out to dinner with friends on Monday. We went to a hot pot. This type of dinner is where you have a pot of boiling water with different spices and vegetables in it. You order off of a menu as to what type of food you want. You then cook the food in your boiling water pot and dip it in different sauces you make. You can order just about anything you want. The meat and fish are sliced paper thin and only takes about 30 seconds to cook. The vegetables are fresh and the beer even better. Anyway, there was 8 of us around the table, a ton of food (more then we all could eat) 2 bottles of wine and 4 large beers. The total bill came to 425RMB. This equates to less then $7.00 a piece for that much food and drinks. It was fantastic.

That was the most exciting thing I did all week. On Wednesday night I played badminton. Again, like always, it was a lot of fun. I don't think I am getting any better but none the less I am having fun and getting a good workout. This is not like your backyard picnic game, these people take if very seriously. So much so that my partner hit me a few time returning the shuttle. It actually hurt. One time he hit me in the head. Ok, so part of it was my fault for looking back at him, but come on.....your partner?

The rest of the week was really just filled with work. We are ready to go with the tool install start. Many people are in place and will begin the prefacilities work on different tools. That was scheduled for Monday, but it never happened. Here it is Thursday night and it still hasn't started. I guess we are going to have to kick some butt to get things started. We have awarded what we call a lump sum contract with a general contractor. This means that we will pay one price to the GC and anything beyond that need of installing the tool will now fall on the GC for any financial burden. That is of course dependant on if Intel directly caused problem with the contractor and delayed them in any way. Many hours work this week.

Tonight I was exhausted and we still have one more day to go this week. The thing to look forward to is a party on Friday night. It is Barbara's birthday and Brian is going to have one heck of a party tomorrow night with everything included. This means major fireworks. I am just glad I don't have to celebrate Kathy's birthday here. My co-workers have really set the bar high when it comes to birthday party celebrations. The theme of this party is a pajama party. You will only be admitted if you are wearing your PJ's. What am I to do? I don't have any PJ's. Some folks may be in for a surprise. Barbara and Wendy could not find pajamas here in China that were large enough to fit their husbands. So, what is the next best thing to do? Have some custom made by a little Chinese tailor. They actually call them a maker man here. These guys are going to have some fancy PJ's. I am sure they are going to look like Hugh Hefner. Custom made PJ were actually cheaper then purchasing already made ones. How do they do this kind of stuff here? I can't see how anyone can make a profit over here in China.

Well, I am taking my camera to the party so I will be posting some pictures. I just hope they are not to risky. I am getting tired right now and it is almost midnight so I am heading off to bed. I will post pictures and update blog this weekend. Until next time, bye bye.

Relaxing Final Day

2009-10-09T19:26:00.000-07:00

The last day for Kathy here was Oct. 5th. Because of this my local friend and his wife wanted to spend the day with us and show us around the city. There names are James and Catherine. They have become very good friends. James has lived in the Dalian area for over 10 years. He has been a big help to me while I have been here. He knows where all the good places to eat are, talks to my driver and explains were I want to go when I need him and James is the one who has gotten me into playing badminton.

As far as what we were going to do for the day, we decided to tour around the area of Dalian called the DDA. This stands for Dalian Development Area. This is the area of Dalian that the Intel plant is actually in. James and Catherine gave us a first class tour. First we picked them up and they presented us with a present. Catherine gave Kathy a set of chop sticks from Chengdu. This is where they raise Panda bears. The chop sticks had pandas on them with 2 small Panda bears to place the chop sticks on when we are not using them. They also gave me some Sechzwan beef and some tea from Chengdu. Well, once we got underway we headed toward Golden Pebble Beach. This is a very nice area of the DDA and a very expensive place to live. It actually has two golf courses. One of them is very big and a beautiful course. The annual membership to it is about 175,000RMB a year that is about $25,000 US dollars. A little to steep for me and most of the Chinese folks. The drive was beautiful. If followed the coast and the overlooks were stunning. There is a pretty sandy beach and many natural rock formations that take on the look of a variety of things. These are in a natural Geographical park. We stopped to take some pictures.

Our day was not done. We headed toward a place that looks like a flying saucer. This is called the UFO. It is a lookout to be able to gaze upon a part of Dalian. We were able to climb to the top and get some pictures of Dalian in the background.

We couldn't have have for a better day. It was clear and warm. The weather was perfect and we could see for miles. Once we finished here we decided to get some food. Since Kathy had never had Korean food before we decided to go for some Korean BBQ. It was delicious. We tried many different things. We even had BBQ fried eel. This was actually very tasty. I never thought that either Kathy or I would ever be eating eel in China on a beautiful Fall day in October.

Now we thought our day was just about complete and thought we would head back to downtown Dalian. On the way back we decided to visit the Tea House. This was the same place that I had been once before but I knew that Kathy would enjoy it. We had some wonderful black tea which was prepared in the way only a girl who has gone to 3 years of school could prepare it. Actually we found out that the girl serving the tea was only 16 years old and was given a special arrangement by the Chinese government to attend school so early. This was because of the terrible earthquake that happened last year in Chengdu. It had killed over 60,000 people. The tea girl was from there and needed to finish school quickly in order to get a job and move back to Chengdu to help her family. That is why she was in her second year of tea school and working as an intern at the tea house. That is unusual because the legal working age in China is 18. No one younger then that is allowed to work by law. Well, she did a great job serving us and she was just a doll. As you can see by the picture, she is very cute. We had a great time sitting there and talking with James and Catherine. We ended up staying there for about 3 hours. Then we decided to leave since we had taken up the whole day of James and Catherine's. They were very gracious. We had to get back to the apartment anyway to get Kathy packed for the next day.

This was a fast and furious 10 days with Kathy here. We made many friends, went many places, and enjoyed the food and culture very much. There is of course, more to do and see in China and hopefully we will be able to enjoy more of it in the future. The next trip hopefully Brian and Kevin will be able to visit as well. It looks as though we will be planning that for around Christmas time. It will be freezing but we will figure out what to do. I will close this now with a warm thank you to all of our friends who made the trip very special for Kathy. They made the transition to China easy and pleasant and showed her their warmth and kindness. Thanks to all of you and I know Kathy thanks you as well.

From now on I will be beginning to work a lot as we will be starting our tool installations next week. This is what we have been preparing to do for the past year and a half. Busy days ahead. My blog updates will probably be boring to everyone but I will keep them up non the less. Till next time. Bye

What a Good Holiday

2009-10-08T05:07:00.000-07:00

Well, where did I leave off? I was at the foot of the great wall with Kathy and friends and we were just steps away from North Korea.

After we finished up taking pictures of North Korea we headed to 5 dragon mountain to a China Buddhist Temple. The temple is called the 5 Dragon Temple. I guess that comes from being on the top of a mountain that looks like it has Dragons laying on it. We had to travel up the mountain in the car and once part of the way up we parked and walked. One of the drivers told us it was 108 steps to the temple. I believe he was right but only for the first level of the temple. I am not sure he knew there was 5 levels of temples until you got to the Buddha cave that housed the Jade Buddha. After climbing the Great Wall this was a little more difficult but none the less, we did it. The temples were very interesting and the views spectacular.

What can I say, we got our exercise for the day. After the temple and the modern day exercising we decided to call it a day and head to the hotel. The hotel we stayed in that night was the Crowne Plaza. It was one of the most beautiful hotels I have ever been in and I have had the privilege of staying in many 5 star hotels. Well, we were put up on the 27th floor and we had a wonderful view of the city. This room was really nice. I had to get two rooms for the night, one for Kathy and I and one for my driver. For this wonderful hotel that would normally cost a couple hundred dollars a night was only $65.00 and that included a buffet breakfast the next morning for us and our driver. I will definitely try to stay there again when I go up to Dandong again. The next day we had to continue on our journey. We stopped at an old bridge that connects China to North Korea. The only problem is that the bridge was bombed by the US Air Force in 1950 during the Korean war. This was one of the most precise bombings the military has ever done. The bridge was destroyed exactly from the boarder half way across the river and included the whole Korean side of the bridge. the bombing had to be so precise so as to not destroy any part of the China side of the structure. If that would have happened it would have been seen as an act of war against China by the United States. The bridge was never rebuilt but the China side of the bridge still stands.

From the bridge we left for a water cave that contains stalactites and stalagmites. This was a living cave in which you had to get in a boat and ride back deep into the cave. The formations in the cave was very pretty and massive. This cave went on forever. It was also very cold inside. You could see your breath. It was awesome.

After this tourist trap we decided to head home. It was going to be a long drive home. I think is was about 3 hours. Not a bad drive when you have a driver and you can just sleep in the back seat. Here is a picture of the three drivers that took all of us up to Dandong. My driver is on the right. If you remember, we named him Nicholas. He told me today that he really likes his American name and his wife does too. He said that she calls to him now by the name Nicholas. He asked me to thank Kathy for the name.

In the next blog I will recap the last day Kathy spent here in China. We spent it with some new very good and fun friends, James and Catherine. They showed us their city.

A Couple Weeks Behind

2009-10-05T21:51:00.000-07:00

Well folks, I am not sure where to start. I am a couple weeks behind on my blog. I have been very busy and just have not had time to update my life. This posting will be pretty long but I may have to make to entries. You may get a little bored with my happenings but I guess this is about as exciting as my life gets. Hope you enjoy the good, the bad and the ugly of the past 2 weeks.

I will start with the saga of my passport. I am sure everyone wants to know what I had to do about this. This all started with losing it or at least not knowing what I did with it. I waited about a week before I decided to follow the process to get a new one. I thought maybe by some unbelievable chance it would show up. I turned my apartment upside down a number of times and checked in every stitch of clothing I had looking for the stupid passport. I checked the obvious places like the refrigerator and the washing machine as well as every drawer in the place. I checked on top of and below everything in the place. Guess what, I couldn't find it. I checked every shirt pocket, pants pocket and my underwear drawer. Nothing! I finally came to the realization that it was truly lost. By Thursday of that week I decided to start the process of procuring a new passport. I took Thursday afternoon off and started with having to drive back to my apartment an hour away from work to go to the police station and report the passport lost. The first police station by my apartment told me I could not report it there and had to report it at the police station where I thought I lost it. This happened to be about 20 minutes away. I got to that police station and went inside with my interpreter. The police looked at me like, what a stupid American. I have to admit, I would have to agree with them. How the heck do you lose a passport? Only the most important document you need in this place. We finally convinced the police that I was truly an idiot for losing the passport but still needed a report from them in order to me to go to the Chinese security bureau and report it missing. The formal report they gave me? Well, it was a hand written note from the police officer with an official stamp on it. Kind of like a note from my mother excusing my stupidity. My next trip was to the Security Bureau. Of course I couldn't go to the office which was just down the street in downtown Dalian, I had to go to the office which was where the Intel plant is in the DDA area an hour away. We jumped in the car and drove to he Security office in the DDA an hour drive of course. I was rushing to get this all done so I could go to ShangYeng and the American Embassy on Friday. Remember, ShanYeng is a 4 hour drive and is only open from 1:30 to 4:30 3 days a week. Also China was coming up on a National Holiday where the country shut down for 6 days. I got to the Security office and did the paper work there. They told me they would have a report and letter I can give to the American Embassy in 5 working days. Well, that blew my thought of going on Friday. I then had my driver take me home, an hour away back in downtown Dalian.

The next few days I got ready for Kathy to come and visit me. She was going to be here on Sunday morning. I did a little shopping and bought some flowers for her so my bachelor pad looked inviting to her. Just like before we were married. It worked:-). Anyway, Sunday morning I was going to go to church with my driver. He picked me up at 6:00am. I got dressed and started out the door. When I got to the elevator I went to put my glasses in my pocket of my pants, and to my amazement, my passport was in the pocket. I cannot explain how it got in a pair of pants that I have only worn once since I was here and that was the previous Sunday when I went to church and after I had gone to the Metro shopping center. I had checked those pants at least 3 times. I am not even going to try and explain it but the main thing is that I found it. I now have it under lock and key in a safe in my apartment. Now I don't have to go to the Embassy and reapply for the passport and then back to immigrations to apply for a visa and work permit and residence license. Problem now is that I think the police and security bureau have already logged me as lost. The story of my life. I will have to figure that out this week.

That Sunday morning it rained hard for the first time since I have been here. It just down poured. The streets flooded in a matter of minutes and many of the roads were impassable. That was not good since I had to get to the airport to pick Kathy up. Finally made it to the airport. Kathy was tired but ready to go on a wild adventure for the next 10 days. Our time together was non stop from the moment she showed up. We went back to my apartment and had some lunch. Kathy then took a nap for about 3 hours. Once she woke up, the 10 days began. On the go constantly. The first stop was to the Brooklyn Bar to meet our friends Barbara and Brian. The Brooklyn bar is run by a Chinese national who grew up in Chicago. He decided to move back to China and open a New York style bar complete with real western style food and thin crust pizza New York style. This is a local Intel Ex patriot hang out. Like I don't see these people enough at work already right? Anyway, we had some good pizza and enjoyed the atmosphere. We got home about midnight. This was the beginning of a pattern for us the next 10 days.

While I worked for the first 3 days while Kathy was here, she was able to do some shopping and begin to understand the size of shopping opportunity. She and Barb had a couple of very good days of walking and shopping and the obvious, spending money on items made in China. By the time Thursday came around we were ready for a good 6 days off together and with friends. Thursday we went to the Russian street and did some more shopping. While walking around with my driver, Kathy decided that he needed an American name. We narrowed it down to 2 names. Teng Jun likes both Bruce Lee and Nicholas Cage. We knew we had to choose one of those names. I thought we could call him Kado. Bruce Lee played him in the Green Hornet. We actually decided on Nicholas. It seems to suit him better. Kathy bought some things on the street for friends and I bought myself a new hat. Here is a picture:

Friday we left for a city called Dandong. This is a city that is right against the North Korean boarder. The first stop was the start of the Great wall of China. The wall was a good hike. We climbed up to the top of it with friends. From the top of the Great Wall we could see North Korea. You can see North Korea in the back ground behind Kathy in this picture:

We could also see from the top of the wall a small North Korean Village. Once we came down off the wall we walked over to a spot that was about 50 feet from the North Korean boarder. In the picture Kathy and I are standing next to a marker in China that says, Korea, only a jump away. We were not allowed to take any pictures past that rock, but I did. You can see the guard tower in the background.

Well, I still have days to talk about but will close this for now. I will pick up the rest in the next day or so.

Here is something you don't want to do

2009-09-22T05:01:00.000-07:00

Here it is, Tuesday night and I am now 4 days without a Passport. Yes, that is right, I lost my passport over the weekend. I believe I was jinxed by the local authorities. We had a meeting on Thursday last week with the local government immigration folks and they informed us one of the worse things that you can do is miss place or lose your passport. The last thing he said in the meeting was that you do not want to have to get a new passport while in china. Well, sure enough, I have had a passport for probably 30 years now and never lost my passport, until now that is. Now I have to figure out what I need to do to get a new one. I am not even sure where to start. I guess pleading for forgiveness with the local police would work. At least I hope so. You see, in China, once you land here you have 48 hours to register with the local police. They want to know where you are at all times. Well, come to find out, they also want to get an updated copy of your passport, visa, work permit and residence permit every month. And yes, you guessed it, they asked for that today. What are the odds. The first thing my apartment manager asked me was did I inform the local police that I had lost the passport. I said no but I was trying to figure out what my next steps were. She then said..."oh, good luck" I am not sure how to take that.

You see, there is only two places I could have lost it. I had to take it to a mega store and show them the passport in order to get a club membership. I handed it to the person at the front desk, she took my information and gave it back to me, I think. I could not be sure once I started thinking about it. I then got the card, went in the store and did some shopping. After that, I came out, put the goods in the car and the driver (not mine but the people I was with) took us back to the apartments. I sat in the front seat. Once we got home, I took my stuff up to my apartment and put it away. I called Kathy, ate a quick bite, changed my shorts to my workout clothes and left to play badminton. I never put the shorts I was wearing back on since. Well, I decided Monday morning to grab my passport and take it with me so I could register at the Intel health clinic. Needless to say I couldn't find it. I tore the apartment apart before I went to work. I am thinking the maid probably thought I had the apartment ransacked. I left for work. I have since been trying to locate the passport. The driver went back to the store for me on Monday and ask them if they had the passport. Neither he nor I could remember if they had actually given it back to me. He called me later to say they didn't have it.

I decided to stop by the store after work and see for myself. You know, there is a bit of a communications gap here for me. They informed myself and my driver that they did not have it. I said OK and I went back to my apartment to look again and hoped maybe the housekeeper found it while she cleaned the place up. Nope, it didn't happen.

I have a good driver that is looking out for me. He decided today to go back to the store and request to view the video recording of the front desk. He was told no and that only police are allowed to. He was persistent. He went to a higher level. Well, they eventually let him view the videos from Saturday. He told me when he picked me up tonight from work that I did in fact put the passport back in my pocket. The front right to be exact. He also informed me what I was wearing on Saturday. I have since found out that they have over 80,000 cameras around the city. They know where you are!!! Well, for the third time I tore my apartment apart. I have looked everywhere including the refrigerator, washing machine and clothes I didn't even wear yet since I have been here. No luck. There is one more place I am going to check again and that is in Brian's and Barb's drivers car. It could have fallen out of my front pocket and fell on the side of the seat or under the front seat. I will look in the morning again.

If I don't find it I believe it will be good reading for another entry on this blog. What else do I have to do? I mean, it is not like I am working all the time or worse yet, going out every night and having fun right? Anyway, I will keep you posted as to how long and what I have to do to get another one. I hope I can quick enough to be able to come home for a couple weeks in the end of November.

Wish me luck

3 down, 49 to go

2009-09-19T19:02:00.000-07:00

So here is what went on this week. work, work and oh yea, did I mention work? We have put in some time to finalize our contract with a company who will be our general contractor. Looks like it is done. We finished the schedule on Thursday and signed it. That meant that I need to get with my customers, process engineering, and inform them of how it turned out and how bad the schedule looks compared to what we wanted. The problems with the Chinese customs, the getting tools on time from our Intel sites in the states and the 4 week shutdown in February for the Chinese new year, there is some major misses to our original plans. But you know us, we are Intel and we will do everything we have to in order to hit our schedule and bring this factory up on time.

We had 3 more of our technicians land this week but I didn't see much of them. They have a week to try and get settled in to this culture and set up their personal lives here. I will be seeing them tomorrow and boy will I put them to work quickly. We have got major safety issues and training that has to happen. We continue to fight a culture that has no value on safety. We find the local Chinese folks act at work just like they do on the streets. No regard to their personal safety. My buddy and I can to the conclusion too that they walk like they drive here. No rules, no regard to the person next to you and no personal space. Wonderful people but dangerous at the same time. Again, we are Intel and we will change that behavior, even if we have to force them right? Actually, the people are very willing to change their thoughts. We are at the infant stages of getting people to realize we want them safe at all times. It is a challenge but it will be an accomplishment.

For a few nights this week it was pretty uneventful. The weather has been wonderful and staying warm late into the night. Monday and Tuesday I didn't do anything after work. Just came back to the apartment and relaxed for the evenings. On Wednesday we decided to play some badminton. This was again a fun time. I am actually getting a good work out from the games. We played for over an hours and I was spent after that. I must say though that I am getting better. I could actually hit the birdie this time without looking spastic. Thursday I just came back to the apartment and worked out and did some work in the evening. It is nice that I can actually get work done at "home" The only thing exciting to happen on Thursday was my "friend", you notice the quotes around the work friend, called me at 2:30am china time. He lives in Arizona. Now, I will not name this person, (see how nice I am Don?) but he happens to be recovering at home from some recent medical issues and he obviously does not have a whole lot to do. I guess it would not have been so bad but I had just gone to bed at 1:00 and had to get up at 5. Well, I didn't answer the skype call but it did wake me up and I was totally dazed. I wondered who the heck would be so inconsiderate as to call me so late. Well, I guess someone who doesn't have anything better to do. Anyway, when I talked to him yesterday and mentioned this episode, he informed me that he thought I was 12 + 3 hours behind him. Yea right, the sun rises in the east and sets in the west. Oh well, what can I say, he has been sick.

Friday night was the night of having fun. It was Wendy's (Rami's wife) birthday. The big 40. Rami put together a party together that had some good food and a large supply of actual fireworks. They are legal here in China and I am not talking about firecrackers. These were full blown in the sky fireworks. We shot them off in the street in front of the bar. I have never been that close to that amount of fireworks. The party finally broke up about 1am Saturday morning. I am not sure how I made it that long. I am not that young anymore you know. Well, I made it home and recovered the next day. Not that I had too much to drink Friday night but because my body just can't stay up that late anymore.

The rest of the day Saturday consisted of playing badminton and dinner later. We again played for 2 hours. Had a lot of fun. For dinner I actually made myself a hamburger at home. At least I think it was hamburger meat. In either case, it was pretty good. At least it didn't bark when I stuck it with a fork.

Sunday was a full day starting with going to a Chinese Christian church. It was very interesting. I couldn't understand a word of what they were saying but I recognized the hymns. The people were very very friendly and one lady even gave me a Chinese bible to follow along in. I had no idea what I was looking at but the gesture was nice. The service lasted an hour and you honestly could feel the passion for God in the place. They were very loud and responded in unison. The place was absolutely packed and it was not a small place. The only down side was that the benches to sit on were wood and very hard.

Brian, Barb, Danny and I then decided to go to the Zoo for the day. Well, that thought was quickly dashed when the sky's decided to open up and pour out some water. We were almost there when we decided to not go so we went to what is their Sea World. It was really an aquarium with a couple of animal shows. It was still raining but at least it was indoors. It was fun but not worth the 190RMB ($27.00) to get in. After that we went to eat something and then I went home and slept for 2 hours.

Tonight we found something none of knew was going to happen. There was a night parade in honor of the start of World Fashion Festival. It started at 9:00pm. Kind of a strange time but I am finding that this city doesn't start going until after 9. Well, here are a couple of pictures of a couple of floats just to wet your appetite. It is a good thing it stopped raining this evening or the light parade could have been a disaster or at least pretty shocking.

More later.

Still Surviving in China

2009-09-14T08:10:00.000-07:00

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.

China Life

2009-09-07T04:55:00.001-07:00

Well, going into another week in Dalian China. What a wonderful experience so far. This past week has been interesting as I start to settle into some routines. I am actually really starting to enjoy my driver. He is really helping me to learn Chinese. It takes an hour to drive to work each day and an hour back at night depending on the traffic. What we do during the drive is teach each other our respective languages. On the morning drive, he teaches me Chinese and at night on the way home we work on his English. He is a very quick learner and already I am able to communicate pretty well with him. We started with me counting to 4 the first day. Ling, yu, du, san, chi. Then he said, "tomorrow 5" The next day we went from 5, wu, lui, qi, ba. Again, "tomorrow, 9. So, this morning I learned jio, shi. I also learned a number of words like today, policeman, traffic jam, good morning, work, wife, phone call and good. By the time I leave here I should have a pretty good vocabulary. Problem is that there will be no one to talk to with it at home.

Over the weekend I spent time with Brian and his wife, Barbabra. We went around the city and explored some of the shopping sites. We used their driver because he is very good at English and he helped explain many things about the city, tradition, how to shop and bartered for us. We started the weekend on Friday night where a bunch of us went to a place called the Brooklyn Bar. Yes, it was just like New York. The food was totally American and they have the best burgers, pizza and other American food in town. It appears the word is out to all the Americans here because it was full of many folks from Intel. The next day I decided to do some walking by myself. I walked for many miles. I ended up down by this Russian part of town. There were street vendors selling the normal tourist type stuff, but also different fruit for the locals. Here is a picture of what it looked like.

After this little stroll I decided to walk over and buy myself a local cell phone. This cost me 400RMB or about $50.00. I can now call my driver and all the folks I work with. Now it was time for dinner and I wasn't sure what I was going to do. It was actually raining and I wasn't sure about where to go. I found a place that looked clean and friendly. I was able to go in and order something that wasn't fishy smelling. It was a rice dish with chicken and an orange sauce. The dinner was very good. I ordered a diet coke with no ice and enjoyed a good meal. This meal cost me 20RMB or basically $2.60. If you stay away from the big hotels you can find meals very cheap.

Sunday, Brian and Barb came to my place and gave me an alarm clock. Our apartments do not have any clocks and I told them I was going to pick one up. They did it for me. I used it today, boy, is it annoying. It is one of those old type with the 2 bells on the top and a clanger between them. That woke me up this morning. We then decided to go and do some shopping. Their driver, Jacky, took us where the chinese go to shop for clothes. It is cheaper then most of the places around town and most of the stuff is knock offs, but you can't tell, it looks like the real thing. There is a lot of that around here. Anyway, the store he took us was about 2 blocks square and was 4 floors high. It was packed with individual stores inside. Everybody selling everything you could think of. There was one floor just for shoes, one floor for just clothes, 2 floors for trinkets and "valuable goods" Stuff you just can't live without.

After all this shopping we were getting pretty hungry. So, we asked Jacky where he likes to eat. Guess where we went?

It was very popular and it tasted just like home except they had a seafood pizza and served escargot if you wanted it. Where else but China can you get snails at Pizza Hut.

After this we did a little more shopping for a couple of hours and then we decided to meet some other friends at a very traditional tea house in China. In this tea house I found out that the girls serving the tea go to college for 3 years to learn the history of tea and how to serve it. Once they graduate they are able to go all over the world and serve tea to various people in special settings. The girl who served us was in her third year. They can also get a job at this tea house or one in Shanghai. This was a wonderful, relaxing way to just sit, drink tea and eat fruit, sunflower seeds and watermelon seeds. We had green tea this time but there were hundreds of types to choose from and they all are for something different for you body.

That was it for the weekend. Today was then the start of my second week in Dalian China.

First few days

2009-09-03T07:11:00.000-07:00

In the past couple of days I have found the transition very different. It has been difficult at times because of the language. My driver here does not speak any English at all. Talk about difficult trying to express to him where I need to go. He is a really nice guy though. I will get a picture and post it tomorrow. I feel like royalty here in China. Working for Intel everyone bends over backwards to accommodate me. Everything is done for me. I don't even open doors on my own anymore. When I walk out the door in the morning the Bellman stands and greets me and opens the door. I have my driver waiting right at the front door. He runs around the car and takes my computer bag from me, puts it in the back seat for me and opens the door for me to get into the car. He has a bottle of cold water waiting for me each morning. He then takes me where ever I want to go. The second day I was here I had him take me to a shopping mall so I could pick some stuff up and some food. When we got to the store he ran and got me a cart. He followed me into the store pushing the cart. Stayed behind me the whole time as I walked the isles and all I had to do was select things off the selves and place them in the cart. He then unloaded the cart for me at the register and bagged all the items for me. He pushed the cart out to the car, opened the door for me to get in and he then unloaded the cart into the trunk. He drove me home, jumped out to open the door for me and then went to the Bellman to get a cart. He unloaded the items from the trunk into the cart, pushed the cart to the front door and from there the Bellman took the items up to my apartment. By the time I got up to the apartment the Bellman had unloaded most of the stuff into my apartment. All of this for no tip. What a wonderful culture. Actually I must say that Americans could learn from this culture on how to treat people. It is all about relationships and face. The people I have encountered have all been humble and kind and treat people with respect.

I usually visit the hotel bar each day for a quick beer, or as they call it pi juang. The first day I met the manager of the bar and he treated me like an old friend. He has even given me my own mug in the bar with my name on it so I can use that mug anytime I come in there. He greats me by name each time I walk in there and shakes my hand and spends time talking with me. Again, it is all about relationships.

I finished my immigrations paperwork today. I am now a working resident in Dalian China. I have my working visa and permit to work. I guess now I am officially Chinese. This was actually a very painless process.

After the immigrations process I decided to go ahead and head into work since I was in the neighborhood. I know my boss Rami has been asking about me all week so I figured I should make an appearance. I wasn't planning on staying all day but as soon as I showed up I was pulled into 4 different meetings and did not get out of work until about 6pm. I can see that this is going to be a very busy project. I am going in tomorrow morning early as well. Oh well, the easy life is over, now it is time to buckle down, dig in and get things started. I will start writing about both work and free time. We will see how this all mixes. I will let you tell me when I am too much one way or the other.

One last thing for today. I know I am going to regret putting this in writing but here goes. I have a good FRIEND, he has been going through treatment and a recent surgery for cancer. He sent me word today that the results have come back on the biopsy and they did not find the cancer in the lymph nodes. This is wonderful news and I am so happy for him. I know he is on to a wonderful recovery and will make it through all of this. He has a lot to look forward to in his long and enjoyable life. Praise the lord for the results. I will continue to keep him in my thoughts and prayers like so many people are.

Getting settled

2009-09-02T01:04:00.000-07:00

Well, now that a few days have gone by I guess I can say I am starting to get settled. After getting my 3 bags on the airplane, 2 for free but that extra third one cost $200.00. I tell you, the airlines are sure making their money on this baggage stuff. One of my bags was over the 50lb limit as well and at least they let me move things around between the bags in order to get them all under the 50lb limit. I never realized that my underwear weighed so much. Anyway, I got it all taken care of and set off for the long flight.

First I had a small puddle jumper from Phoenix to LA. This was a really bad flight. The Cabin Attendant was really cranky and had a really bad attitude. She was the only one on the flight and made it known to everyone. Once the flight was over and we landed in LA we had to sit on the runway for about 15 minutes to wait for our gate to clear. At that time, a passenger got up to use the restroom and the flight attendant got on the intercom immediately and literal yelled at the person to sit back down and not get up again as the plane cannot taxi with someone out of their seat and especially in the bathroom. Boy, did that guy sit down quickly.

I then finally got off the plane and had to go to the international terminal. Is that LA airport ever a mess. It is dirty and run down. I got to the international terminal and to the gate. Standing at the gate, it was at the last possible gate and there were actually 2 different planes leaving at the same time at the same gate. An A and B gate. One going to Mexico City and the other going to Seoul. The gate sitting area had only 2 rows of seating for two jumbo jets. I would say about a total of ~600 people with only 20 seats. That was fun standing for one and half hours. They had good entertainment though. An employee who I think was an ex Disneyland employee took 35 minutes setting up the waiting line ropes. Disney would have been proud. After all that and no intercom, it was a made rush for loading. I made it though.

On the flight, it was uneventful. Other then the bad fish smell when they began to serve the dinner. The flight was full of people who loved fish and rice. I just had a hard time with it and decided not to eat the dinner. The guy next to me did though. Now, just to let you know, the dinner was a Korean dish and it had some fish soup broth. He didn't get much in his mouth because he dropped it and spilled it all over me. That made for a pleasant 13 hour flight. I only had 11 more hours to go. The rest of the flight was quiet and nothing more happened. I slept well on the flight. We then finally landed after 13 hours. I then had a 4 hour layover in Seoul. I grabbed a Duncan Doughnut and relaxed for a while. Made the next flight and was off to my final destination of Dalian China.

Once I arrived in China I had my driver waiting to pick me up. I walked out and there he was standing there with my name on a sign. He rushed up to get all my bags. He does not speak a lick of English. I just followed him to the car. Got in and somehow got him to understand that I needed to get to the Shangri-la resident apartments. He took me to the hotel instead. Not too bad since the apartments were just around the corner. Made it to my apartment.

It is a nice apartment. A 2 bedroom with nice kitchen, dining area and living room. I am on the 10th floor. It overlooks a nice beer garden.

Finally Arrived.

2009-08-30T22:52:00.000-07:00

Well, here I am. In Dalian. It is August 31st and just finished a long flight. I will get into my experiences getting here in a moment. First I want to mention a couple things that went on the past week prior to my leaving.

The week was filled with needing to get a lot of stuff done and prepared or fixed. It was busy but a lot was accomplished. The movers came to get my stuff I had packed to ship. This would include items like winter clothes, some kitchen utensils, some books and shoes. Of course, a George Foreman too so I can actually try and cook something. Well the trick with all that was that it had to weigh a total of at least 220lbs in order for the movers to ship it for me. I was trying everything to get the weight up there. I thought I had gotten pretty close. All of it to me seemed to be pretty heavy. Well, after they came and got it and packed it all up for me, I was sent a letter later in the week telling me that my shipment was 197lbs. Missed it by that much! Luckily, they let it go and they will be shipping it. I was worried they wouldn't.

Next came the last two games of racquetball with my LA fitness RB buddies. They were good games that week but they didn't let up on me. I actually only won one game out of the eight we played on Thursday. I thought they were going to let me win just to be nice. Well, they didn't do that but what they did do after the games was take me out to breakfast. I thought I was only going to have breakfast with John but 4 other guys showed up to send me off. These guys are wonderful. I want to thank John, Dave, Mike, Frank and Jim. These guys have really become fantastic friends and worthy opponents over the past few years. I am going to miss these guys, not only for the games, but the friendships. I am truly blessed with friends like them. They also gave me a new ping pong paddle with its own case and a paddle ball set for beach play. I guess I have to take up Ping Pong or Badminton while here in China.

There were many lunches, dinners and breakfasts I attended this past week. Don't really know why wanted to spend time with me? I guess I am lucky to have a wife who has so many friends. I get to tag along and be her date. That seemed to take up a lot of time in between the running around I had to do.

Now, 3 days before I was to leave, our desktop computer decided to stop working and not boot up. The hard drive crashed on it. Well, what was I to do? I tried everything I could to revive it but it was really DOA. I decided to buy a new tower. I then had to spend the next few days setting it up with programs and stuff so Kevin could use it for school. Many hours in front of that things. I then got a call from the renters of my Mother in laws house on Thursday and he informed me there was a reverse osmosis leak which cased damage to the counter top in the kitchen. I drove over there and sure enough, it was bad enough that it was going to have to get replaced. Well, I decided to go ahead and do the work myself so I actually spent the whole day on Friday (the day before I was to leave) replacing the kitchen counter top. Luckily I had my Dad to help me out. He is always there to help and come to the rescue. I have learned many things from him in my lifetime and I am always grateful to have him by helping when I need it.

We then went to dinner and some friends house Friday night and enjoyed a relaxing time. I then had to get up in the morning and Kathy and I met my parents for breakfast. I figured I needed to eat as much this past week as possible because eating in china is not the most fulfilling or filling thing around.

Then came the moment of truth. Leaving for the airport. This actually went smoothly. Got all of the luggage together and loaded it into the truck. Brian called me and wanted to know if he should drive up from Tucson to say goodbye. Nice and appreciated thought but I said he didn't have to. Kevin said goodbye and Kathy and I were off.

My next entry to the blog will be what I went through to get the luggage on the flight and the flight over. Stay tuned.

Just about 1 week to departure date

2009-08-20T16:15:00.000-07:00

I am winding down. I leave a week from Saturday. That leaves a lot to do over this next week. We are going to have a little get together for some neighbors and friends this Friday night. Just a small crowd. We are just having some small sandwiches, fruit and veggies. No set party type atmophere but relaxing.

This past week has been busy since last weekend. Kathy and I had to do some heavy duty work at her mothers house. We have been renting that out for the past year and 2 weeks ago we were informed that the renters were moving out. Well you know what that means. Cleaning, painting, repairing and elbow grease. We spent 3 straight days doing all of this. Lucky for us, Brian, his girlfriend Jenny and Kevin helped us paint and clean. Then the concern was trying to find another renter. Timing is everything. We really did not need this at this time with me leaving the country. So, in the Lords good timing we found someone to rent the house and they will be moving in on Sept 1st. The place is clean and ready to go and we basically will not lose any rent payments due to lack of renters. The lord is always good all the time. There is a few more things to do over the next weekend but it is ready to go.

Work has been hectic as well. My schedule continues to be filled with meetings every night until around 9pm. That is not so bad, but this week we started the next round of tool install design package reviews. These all seem to be scheduled for the mornings. That still makes for a very long day. I was able to stay home in the mornings a couple times this week which was good.

I am trying to get all my stuff ready for shipping. I have to come up with at least 220 lbs in order to be allowed to ship stuff. I am struggling to come up with enough weight. I don't want to have to put it in suitcases and carry it with me. If I have to, I will put free weights in the shipment. That way I can work out while I am sitting in my apartment at night doing nothing. The movers are coming on Monday to take my stuff so I will be busy gathering and packing stuff all weekend to see how much I have.

Next week will be busy. Will try to get things wrapped up and head out on Saturday. I will see if reality sinks in by mid week that I am leaving the country to live in a different culture on the opposite side of the world for close to a year without my family.

19 days to go

2009-08-10T12:48:00.000-07:00

The clock is ticking. What has happened to all the time I had before I was going to leave? Will I get everything done here that I need to get done before the clock runs out? Oh what the heck, just take it a day at a time. Things will fall into place I guess.

I had a wonderful weekend this week. Enjoyed a good movie with my wife. If you get a chance to see Julie and Julia do so. It is a great movie and really shows the importance of a good blog. I think I am non the right path. Maybe a book deal or movie in the future huh? Anyway, Kathy and I have been trying to do as much together as we can. Being apart is going to be difficult. Kevin, Kathy and I then went out to dinner to Olive Garden on Friday night. That is always a great place to get good Italian food. We enjoyed a good dinner and good conversation. Saturday was then filled with normal work around the house. Little things you know. Fixing sprinkler heads, repairing some outdoor lights, repairing the in ground cleaning system in the pool. All of these little things that need fixing before I leave. After that, it was time for a nap. Got a good one in and was able to sleep for a good hour on the couch in the cool house when the temperature was over 105 degrees outside. We then decided to go to church in the evening and that way we could sleep in on Sunday morning and not be rushed the next day for the nice party my parents gave me. More about that in a bit. After we got home from church we just took it easy for the rest of the evening. Kathy made a nice dinner, Kevin went out with friends. Kathy and I sat outback enjoying the nice night. A beer in hand and a little Baileys for Kathy, we just sat and relaxed. A slight summer night breeze, stars in the sky, a very bright moon and birds chirping as they rest for the night. What more could you ask for and get. And no charge!

Sunday was a good day. Relaxed in the morning and helped Kevin a little with some yard work. Needed to get that done before it was too hot. Kevin does a great job with the yard and also the neighbors yard. This is good because he is going to get paid to keep our yard and pool in shape while I am in China. When we finished up the work we both sat around watched TV and cooled down. Then, at noon it was time to go to my Mom and Dads house for a little family get together. This is always a fun thing to do and it will most likely be the last time I will see my family for a few months. Well, arriving at my parents house I walked in the door and everyone was bowing to me. They tried to speak Mandarin but they didn't have a clue. But, nice attempt. My Mom was great, she decorated the whole house with a Chinese motif. She and my Dad actually went down to the Chinese Cultural Center here in Phoenix and looked for things that would give us a sense of China.

She had Chinese good luck lanterns,
She had Chinese Napkins,

And of course Chinese Fortune cookies.

Then to top off the meal, we had Pizza for dinner. Where else can you have a multi cultural dinner other than in America. Thanks to my Mom and Dad (Bob and Carol) for making this day special, fun and enjoyable. I appreciate the love they show and the concern about me heading off to China.

Well, after that fun lunch, Kathy and I headed off to some other friends for dinner. These are friends we have known since our kids played T-ball together. Dave and Camille had us over for a wonderful pork roast dinner they cooked on the spit of the grill. Camille is a fantastic cook and we ate until we were full. We then sat and talked for some time and then went for a boat ride. You see, they live on a lake and we were able to just walk out the back door to the dock and onto their boat. We took a nice quiet ride around the lake and enjoyed another absolutely beautiful Arizona summer night.

Well, that is it for the weekend. A busy one but what better way to spend my last few weeks. Time with friends and family. Just wonderful.

3 weeks to go

2009-08-02T17:15:00.000-07:00

Well, here I am sitting and trying to collect my senses knowing that I am only 3 weeks away from leaving for China. Again I am excited and apprehensive. I am trying to get all my stuff ready to ship and identify different things I am going to need. This is a hard task since I have no idea what it is going to be like there in China. I have received so many different emails and warnings about what is and what is not allowed in China. I do know that I am not allowed to ship any food, drugs, certain types and amounts of books and I can definitely not ship anything that has political overtones, propaganda about China or Tibet. I will have to get used to the restrictive control the Chinese goverment has on everything over there.

I have done some shopping to get ready. I am pulling together the essentials. I have purchased things like underclothes, new shoes, different clothes that will get me ready for the sub zero weather there starting in November. I was told that it is very difficult to find clothes my size there. Obviously being 6'3" and 195#, I am much taller and larger than the average chinese citizen. The challenge right now is trying to find winter clothes in the stores here in Arizona when it is 113 degrees and in the middle of the summer. Just try and find long underwear. Impossible. I guess i will just have to wait for a month and maybe Kathy can bring me some when she comes to visit me later this year. If not, I am going to be one frozen Arizona cactus boy.

My last week at work was a busy one. I continue to have very long days. Usually around 12 to 13 hours. That is because many of my planning meetings are now being held starting at 5:00pm Az time which is 8:00am the next day in China. I usually end up working to about 10:00pm. The good thing is I can do that from home. I guess the good thing is that will all be over in about 3 weeks, but I am sure that will be replaced with actual hands on work in the field inside the factory once I get there. I honestly don't mind that though. I like to do the actual work instead of planning for it.

Well, this week we will be beginning our redundant tool design for Fab68. This means it will be the second round of tools will be put into design packages for review of installation needs. We look at where the tools will be installed in the factory and all the mechanical, electrical and structural needs to install the tool. This will keep me busy at work. At the same time I will be working with the other project managers trying to figure out how we will keep the design reviews going on here while our team begins to transition to China over the next couple of months. Besides myself, there will be 15 other engineers, technicians and project managers transitioning to China between now and October. Challenges ahead, no doubt.

On the way to China

2009-07-21T18:40:00.000-07:00

Well, here it is, just 5 weeks to go until I leave for China on an assignment that could last for close to a year. Is it exciting? yes but at the same time I know it is going to be difficult for not only me but my entire family. You see, they will not be going with me on this long trip. Oh yes, they will visit and I will make it home every 3 months, but it is still not the same.

My thought process here is to keep a daily log going for those of you who want to follow my time in China. I will put together a synopsis covering what I have been doing, where I have been and how the project is going. You see, for those of you who do not know me, I work for Intel Corporation and the company is building a semiconductor manufacturing facility in Dalian China. I have been asked to go and help start the factory up. My responsibilities will be to install and qual the manufacturing equipment to prepare for the first material to be run through the facility.
I am part of a team who is called IQ or Install and Qual. We work on readying the building all the way from the building being built to the point were the first qualification material is run through the first line of manufacturing. This for the most part will take 9 to 10 months. During that time, myself and the team I am part of will be working extremely hard keeping the project on schedule.

This is all going to make my life both busy, exciting and tiring. I am not sure how I will hold up nor what I am going to say. It will be like my journal which I hope people will enjoy. Please feel free to add any comments. I will look forward to the responses. After all, I am going to be in a country that is much different than our great United States. I will be trying to learn some of the language and trying to fit into the culture. It will be fun.

Over the next 5 weeks, I will be preparing myself to get over to China. I have already received all of my required shots, health checks, and visa paperwork. I have also received a one way ticket to China. That is a shocker huh? I am in the process of getting my Z visa which allows me to work in China. I will keep this site updated over the next 5 weeks.

Right now, this week, I am enjoying a week off with my wonderful wife. She and I are in Pinetop Arizona enjoying the cool weather. We both needed this time away from the heat and by ourselves. I will be wrapping up the next four weeks starting with next Monday at work and then off to China.