The perfect decompression

Tue, 26 Aug 2008 06:42:39 +0800

If you are ever in China for a month working 14-hour days (minimum) then I strongly suggest you take some time in Hawaii on the way back. Yes you are going to add a bit of flying time but it’s worth it. Just give yourself more than 36 hours.

After about 4 hours of sleep we got up and headed for the shuttle bus on Monday morning and off to the airport. Thankfully they continued to take care of those with Olympic credentials and had expedited lines for customs checkpoints. I bought a few more souvenirs as I still had a couple of pink Maos left to spend. Then a flight to Seoul and a layover and off to Hawaii.

Now the weird thing with the International Dateline is we left Seoul at 8 p.m. Monday night and we arrived in Honolulu at 10 a.m. Monday morning. Yep, we lived the same day twice. i don’t if that makes me a day older or younger than I was but who knows for sure.

After a quick check-in we headed out despite being exhausted and started driving around. We went to Oahu’s North Shore where everyone promised nice beaches and they didn’t disappoint. Lots of white sand and crystal water. So blue and green that when the waves would break they would really shine a bright teal-green.

We came across people climbing a big rock and jumping into the water. I waded out for a better angle and got soaked from the waves. I forgot my passport was still in my pocket and got wet but it seems to have dried out okay.

Around each corner seemed to be another great beach. We found one that looked good for the sunset and it was pretty good. It would have been better without the darker clouds on the horizon which obscured the sun as it set behind a large rock in the surf. But we did catch some great light of the orange setting sun on a beach and rocks so that made some nice frames. -- Photos at the above Hawaii link --

Tuesday morning I slept in, finally! Checkout was at 11 so we jumped in the car and headed for Diamond Head volcano. Unfortunately it’s a 2-hour hike round trip to the top so we skipped that part and started driving to the east. More great beaches and one great looking cove that I had to pull off to the side of the road and climbed down the embankment to join swimmers on a small beach. I saw some folks up on the rocks on the point and figured that would be a good angle so I climbed up there as well. I wasn’t sure about the climb at first but then I realized if people in bikinis and bare feet can do it then I can in my light hikers -- which have survived with loose soles and will be replaced as soon as I can shop on Thursday.

After that we still had time to kill so I swung by the USS Arizona memorial. The guard promised it wouldn’t take too long to get in so we went in. Luckily it was only a half hour wait for the movie and then boat ride out to the memorial that sits above the sunken ship. You can look down in the water and see the hulk of the ship that sank on Dec. 7, 1941 and is the resting place of more than 1,000 people. I’m glad we went as I do like to hit educational places when I can and I think my history-teacher Mom is very happy I took in something more than just beaches while here.

Now I’m sitting at the airport waiting for my flight lands in Denver on Wednesday morning and then off to DC to see my family. I can’t wait!

When I first booked this flight I thought it would be a fun diversion and a way to get add one more to the number of states I have visited (41 now) with Hawaii being one I would never get to.

Now that I’ve been here I’m positive I have to bring my beach-loving wife to see these great beaches and clear waters. And I have to explore more than just the one island and I have to do more than just drive and wade in the surf. Climbing volcanoes and snorkeling will have to be on the agenda next time.

If you have read this last entry I appreciate you staying around and I greatly appreciate the readership over the last three weeks. I hope this has added a perspective to the Olympic Games you don’t get from Bob Costas and Matt Lauer.

Coming to a close

Sun, 24 Aug 2008 19:05:37 +0800

So I’m writing this as the Fuwa dance (above) entertaining the crowd about an hour before the closing ceremonies begin. It seems like an eternity since I sat in the same seat and watched the opening ceremony while editing photos.

The closing is a more relaxed affair. I’m sure we will still have spectacular effects and performances but the athletes, those that haven’t already left, are not tense and the march of athletes should be less orderly and quicker -- one can only hope for the quicker after about two hours in the opening.

I will miss the Olympics and miss the very nice people in Beijing, but I’m ready to go, as you could probably tell in my post yesterday.

Besides getting back to my family I look forward to my own bed, my own TV, my cable with more than three channels in English and a work day less than 14 hours.

I look forward to driving my own car and not sitting on a shuttle bus waiting for it to leave or stop at every traffic light on closed streets.

I want to sit at my own desk and not at a makeshift one that had me sitting for three weeks with my knees split around table legs. And I want fast Internet access. Our office connection here was not exactly robust. And I want to be able to go to any website I want, not the ones the government feels are okay and obstruct those that are “bad” like most blog sites.

I look forward to eating somewhere besides a cafeteria and I don’t want to eat in McDonalds for months and months and months.

I want to be able to look at the weather map and recognize one of the landmarks on it. And speaking of maps, I don’t want to be in the same time zone as people I’m calling so I don’t have to figure out what hour it is on the other end of the line.

While I will miss the competition, the great photos to be had and many other things I will not miss:

-- going through security everytime I walk out my front door in the morning

-- at least 5 people greeting me as soon as I walk out my front door in the morning

-- figuring out money conversion rates for every purchase

-- haggling for every purchase

-- cab rides that rival the excitement of many amusement park rides

After the ceremony ends tonight I go back to the office to finish packing and send out a few photos from other events that may have come in and then back to the room, hopefully before 4 a.m. Then one more shuttle bus to the airport around 9 a.m. to get checked in for a 2 p.m. flight. Then off to Seoul to get a connecting flight (chalk up one more country visited there) and then a flight to my decompress location for 36 hours in Hawaii.

Maybe if I get away from the beach and pina coladas long enough I’ll post one more time to wrap up this amazing but very long trip. To put the time in perspective, I had a haircut two days before I left and now I’m in dire need of another. I wasn’t to get one here after the experience of a friend who went in for a trim. After one side started off uneven and then the other didn’t look much better he finally just had to tell the stylist to take it all off. Luckily he still had a month before going back to his wife so it’s grown back some.

Olympics at night

Sat, 23 Aug 2008 21:47:41 +0800

Wow, a 2-post day.

Take a click on the Night link above for some photos of the Olympic area at night.

A video lifeline

Sat, 23 Aug 2008 18:55:21 +0800

Everywhere I go in Beijing I see kids out having fun with their parents -- like the little guy above in the food market at Wang Fu Jing today.

And every time the homesickness sets in a little deeper.

Being gone from home for such a long time is difficult in any situation. Heck, even for a single person to be gone from what you know can’t be easy. By the end of the Athens Olympics it was unbearable being away from my wife and now with a son the difficulty is infinitely multiplied. I probably haven’t helped things by surrounding myself with constant reminders such as the five photographs pasted to my work area and constantly staring at my screensaver slideshow of his pictures.

Sure I’ve been on long trips before during my son’s life -- three Super Bowls, two Final Fours among them. And then there are the numerous days where I see him off in the morning and then I’m covering a game when he gets home and goes to sleep. But being gone for nearly a month is impossible to describe. So whenever I’m out and see a dad carrying his son on his shoulders or a family sitting down to have grilled stuff on a stick it’s just a punch in the gut.

It is very tough when your child is too young to comprehend why you’re away. All he knows is that I’m not there. He knows I’m at work on a trip but he has no idea what the length of time is or why I won’t be there when he gets home from school.

Thankfully technology steps in to help shorten the distance if not the time. We do video chats nearly every day and I use voice over Internet to make calls to my wife while she’s at work or to other family members to stay in touch. Now when Daddy is on the road my boy knows that I’m “in the computer” and we get to say hello each day when he wakes up. A few days ago I was telling him I would be home soon, in just five more night-nights and held up the fingers on one hand. He popped the computer screen on his end saying he was giving me a high five. That one made me laugh very hard at how sweet and fun he is.

He got so used to it during one trip that on the day I returned my wife told him “we’re going to see Daddy today” and he ran to the stairs heading for the laptop asking “in the ‘puter?”

Seeing my family’s faces brightens my day and each evening around seven I start getting ready for my wife’s name to show up in my online contacts list -- I get my headphones on and start listening for the bell that signals she has signed on. As eight and eight thirty approach I start getting anxious if we haven’t talked.

Thankfully the Games end tomorrow and I start my trip back. I have a layover on the way back to decompress a bit and until I got here that sounded like a great idea: sit on a beach for a day and rest and let the Olympic stress go away. Now I just want to get home and see my boy at the airport, give him and my wife hugs and kisses, give him his gifts and hear the new song he learned at school. The one he said he won’t sing for me until I get back.

Until then, Daddy will be “in the puter”

Firsts and lasts

Fri, 22 Aug 2008 18:08:10 +0800

Even after two weeks today marked a few firsts and what will probably be one last.

Today was the first time that I ventured out on the town by myself and that is probably the last time I’ll be exploring the town as the closing ceremonies are just two days away so it is time for finishing up working, getting packed and getting out of dodge.

I had wanted to find a crafts-type market and two people had recommended Panjiayuan as the place to go. So I had my written directions and one of our local fixers had written it out phonetically for me, plus it’s a place all the cab drivers know so getting there was no problem.

It was a fun market with lots of antiques and jade and pottery and the like. Being a weekday it wasn’t too crowded but I hear the weekends can get crazy. I also liked it because the vendors were not as rabid as at most souvenir places and you could actually browse the merchant stalls and stop and look without a high-pressured sales pitch.

When it came time for negotiating the price with one vendor he didn’t have the calculator like most do and pulled out his cell phone to punch in a price. I topped him by whipping out my iPhone and calling up the calculator function to punch in the price. I think he got a big kick out of the fact I was packing my own calculator. I’m not sure if he knew that the iPhone is more than a calculator -- it is a phone, music player, video player and slices dices and whips up a delicious smoothie in no time -- but he laughed and commented to another vendor.

One of the firsts for me was this cab ride down was with a female taxi driver and I have to say it was the least scary of any of the rides I’ve had so far. Must be the testosterone that gets the male drivers cutting each other off and trying to squeeze between two cars a few inches from each others bumper.

It was also the first time I had made it into what is probably the central business district. I had been to a few neighborhoods and the Wang Fu Jing shopping area a couple times, but this was the first seeing sort of the central “business hub.” It is a big downtown and has lots of skyscrapers that could be any city such as Dallas or Houston -- except bigger. For Houston to equal this downtown you would probably have to combine Downtown, Medical Center and the Galleria buildings all into one spot -- but you would also have to add some really cool buildings such as the great architectural example that I just can’t describe. It’s like a Lego project or something from M.C. Escher. See the picture on the Market link above to appreciate it and I’m sorry for the bad picture through a cab window. I know, I’m supposed to be a professional.

Where we were driving today was also the first time I noticed a lack of cars and could actually see the efforts the Chinese government made to get half the cars off the road. Most places we have been driving have still been pretty packed with cars and I just kept thinking “this is only half the cars?” But today traffic flowed easily and the cabs had no trouble getting around. I guess the fact I wasn’t traveling in rush hour helped a ton as well.

Another first was today I got laughed at by a 3- or 4-year-old girl. Okay, not the first time, but the first time by a Chinese 3- or 4-year-old girl. At the market a little girl came by and said “hello, hello” in English and I responded with my deep vocabulary of three words to say “hello” in Mandarin. At that point she giggled and said hello back in Mandarin. The toddler’s pronunciation was much, much better than mine. At least I tried.

I also employed a strategy for the first time that I devised for cab drivers and it only took me three weeks to realize this simple detail. When it was time to get a cab back I hopped in and handed the driver the official sheet given to us by the Olympic Transportation Desk telling drivers to “take me to the Main Press Center” with an address. He looked at it and made a grunt that I took to mean “where the heck is this place?” As I’ve said before, most of the buildings and roads in this area are new or have been completely renovated and the drivers just aren’t too sure which building is which. That and the MPC is normally a convention center so they don’t know it as the MPC.

But this time I was ready for him and pulled out my camera and called up a picture of the Bird’s Nest stadium. He seemed to respond in the affirmative and zoomed off taking me right to the road by the stadium where I used hand signals to direct him to my media village. There I switched to a shuttle that left two minutes later So simple and it took me this long to figure it out.

But today does mark one last. This is probably the last time I’ll venture out and really explore the city. Another of the photographers wants to get a new bag to carry his stuff to the hotel where he will spend some time after the games so I may make another trip to Wang Fu Jing just because it’s easy to get to on a shuttle bus and I know the store we can go to for him to get a duffle. So though I may get out of the Olympic bubble again, it won’t be on any new, exciting adventure.

I must say today was fun and it was great to just be walking around on my own without any coworkers tagging along. I could go at my pace and enjoyed seeing all the people in the market and more of the city.