Pointer Family Blog

Believe it or not the weather has been outstanding here in Seattle.  70's and sunny most days in May and June so far is looking much the same.  I actually had to water my lawn 2 times this week.  Whoa what's the problem.  I have also been mowing the grass a couple times a week.  I assume the grass over at Grandpa's is knee deep and I need to get over there and mow pretty soon.  Meantime Denver has been getting rain how much of a oxymoron is that?  Anyway I will take it while we have it the odds of having a rainy cold forth of July is still pretty high.  :-)  It's Kelly's 35th birthday this weekend so we have been actively helping her celebrate her birthday she said she wanted suprises so we are doing our best to suprise her.  Even though she is the nosiest person you have ever seen in terms of suprises.  She wants to know, when, where etc?  She went ahead and booked her usual sat routine even though she knows I had stuff booked.  Maybe she just doesn't trust me.  Either way we all hope she's suprised but we also know down deep that she may have snooped and found some him of what's to come. 

So each day I was in Shanghai I put togehter a list of things that happened and I experienced.  These are those notes below:

 

 

Day 3:

1.       Still waking up at 5:30 a.m.  J

a.       Ran 4 miles

b.      Breakfast at the hotel is American style so making that last.  Stole an apple and some cheese for lunch

2.       Car of choice here is the Buick it seems more than any other car

3.       Cab of choice is a car called the VW Santana (relative of the fox I think)

4.       The cafeteria blows on whole new levels at the Microsoft office (see stealing food from hotel 1a)

5.       The Microsoft office is way out in the middle of nowhere (basically they got the building for free for going out there)

6.       Dinner last night:

a.       More eel (deep fried this time)

b.      Pork tendons with little shrimp eggs on the outside

c.       Rice crispy treat (minus the marshmallows) with shrimp on it

d.      Pitcher of beer (The Chinese version of Miller light

e.      Spam with a lay of gelatin fat on top of it. 

f.        Sea cucumber (I call this slug of the sea)

g.       Impolite to eat with your hands (even to spit out fish bones)  J  so I am not doing great in the polite category so far.

7.       I think I had a one on one with half the office yesterday today is the second half

8.       They put fresh fruit out in the kitchen all day long

9.     Everybody is in a cube but seems to work well

10.   They have a pond out front of the building that is basically teaming with gigantic mosquitoes (Minnesota style ones) so don’t go for an afternoon walk for a 1:1 it can be dangerous

 

 

Day 4:

 

Dinner last night was composed of the following:

                Cow tongue

                Cow throat

                Sea Urchin

                Cuddle fish that was beat 1000 times into a paste then boiled into balls (fish balls they call them)

                Some stuff I couldn’t recognize but it was some form of Tofu

                Washed down with 40 ounce beer

Saw Sir Richard Bronson at the airport

Microsoft is building a new campus in Shanghai and it looks a lot like red west should move in around August / September

My chop stick hand is tired it’s a lot of work to eat here

Most popular transportation is a bike if you have a lot of cash you can get a scooter

                Typical family on a scooter configuration:  dad driving, daughter in front by steering wheel standing up, pregnant mother on the back facing the rear holding infant child)

                I am really surprised there aren’t more bike accidents

                Pedestrians are lower level then cars and you gotta watch out cars, bikes and scooters are always try to get you and often do

Met lady last night at restaurant I called the bone crusher.  She basically tossed the whole fish in her mouth and then proceeded to spit bones out on her plate for about 20 minutes all while eating the same fish.  It was a really interesting sight to say the least.

20 bucks full body massage for 1.5 hrs. 

 

And on the last night maybe because it was thursday I was asked to buy something new.  Rolex, DVD, Iphone or Lady Sex.  I had mistakenly heard the guy the first time and thought he said "old lady sex".  Either way it was a pretty fun trip and a great experience.

 

So every once in awhile at work I get to go to some pretty cool places.  This week is definitely not the exception.  Some of our team works out of China so I got the opportunity to go visit this week.  Although a short trip well worth the mileage to come put a name to a face.  What can I say this is defintiely a different place overall.  For starters I flew from Seattle to Tokyo (10 hrs roughly left at 2 pm PST and arrived at 3 pm Tokyo time the next day) and then Toyko to Shanghai (3 hrs roughly) got to hotel around 11 pm or roughly Shanghai time.  So needless to say I was slightly beat up by the time we arrived.  I got up the next day feeling like someone kicked my ass at a bar fight, but I didn't go out.  :-) 

 

The guy I came with is my boss and he's born and raised in china so that's actually been really nice because there isn't a ton of English being spoken here.  One other piece of trivia is I am about the tallest dude around.  I usually think six feet in the united states ain't to tall but over here I look like some kind of freak.  So here is a breakdown of the trip thus far.

 

Day 2 update:

 

1.       Phone works but don’t call me (buku bucks) text messaging works great though

2.       Yesterday was different in terms of meals

a.       Eel

b.      Bullfrog

c.       Some stuff I didn’t know what it was but tasted ok (everything deep fried tastes about the same)

d.      Catfish soup

e.      A fish I am pretty sure they just pulled out of the pond and tossed in the deep fryer

3.       One hour foot massage is 10 bucks

4.       Connector to work is about an hour and a half but probably only about 20 miles (traffic is horrible)

a.       90% humidity

b.      80% humidity inside J

c.       It says it’s sunny but I don’t see the sun just a bright section in the overcast clouds

d.      Bus driver got pulled over this morning on the way to work and that added 20 minutes while he got a ticket

5.       Slept until a woping 5:30 am this morning, figure I will be in China time about Thursday at this pace

6.       Fell asleep last night sitting up on a couch (that’s a first)

7.       Starbucks about every five feet although prices are same as US

8.       Here is what I saw being sold yesterday

a.       Iphone (about .25 thicker than my phone run’s linux) – 50 bucks  - can hold two sims

b.      Mini – Iphone (about half the size as my phone the phone run’s linux) – search for it on the web it’s pretty funny.  100 bucks

c.       Rolex every 5 feet

d.      Windows XP SP3 for 2 bucks

e.      All the wii games you could hold for 10 bucks

f.        All the xbox 360 games you could hold for 10 bucks

g.       Major department store had whole section of windows mobile phones I had never seen before

h.      No apple store at all.

 

 

 

So what a crazy week last week was.  I am guessing it's going to get even more crazy as Memorial Day approaches.  Kelly is in full on clean and declutter mode for a lot of reasons I won't go into.  But last week overall was a first for the Pointers.  We got our floors re-finished and we were down at the community park in the rain living in the camper.  Oh it was fun let me tell you.  Last year we had a bunch of work done on the camper and expected everything to work flawlessly.  Basically that didn't happen.  The wiring shorted out so no lights, followed by the hot water heater blowing a leak on wednesday night.  I woke up to a nice flood of water running through the middle of the camper at about 11 a.m.  I don't even think I was awake while I cleaned it up.  Slept for about 3 hrs and went to work.  The only really nice thing was 1.  I was like 10 minutes from work and 2. the floors look amazing.

 

Next week is the Snoqualmie Ridge garage sale so everything will be prepping for that event this week.  Plus a bunch of other things I would guess.