GwaiLoDown 鬼佬向下

I’ll never understand moon cakes 我永远也不会明白月饼

Archive for category Family

Let me summarize…

Dec 8

Posted by Gwailo in Dalian, Family, Guangzhou, Life in China | 1 Comment

Wow! My last ‘real’ post was back in January. Where has the time gone?

I was going to do a top 10 list of myths surrounding my disappearance, but after I got to number 4 even I thought my jokes were pretty stupid. The reason I have been silent is a combination of work, life and lazy. Not particularly in that order.

So here is what I have been up to this year in a nice, bulleted and summarized format.

  • In March of this year, I closed the doors on the business I started when I first came to China. The financial crisis made all of my clients run for the hills.
  • I spent the next several months taking a well needed rest while playing with my boys Wyatt & Cyrus.
  • I also continued my involvement with the Guangzhou chapter of the Hash House Harriers. I love that group of people and I miss the free beer. On on!
  • In June, through what can only be called “blind ass luck” I was introduced to a person who was looking for someone to run the China operations of their company. The company is a software/hardware development company and my skills pretty much matched exactly what they had been searching for.
  • After many rounds of interviews I was offered the position. The job was exactly what I wanted to do, but it did have one big down-side. I had to leave Guangzhou and move to Dalian. My wife has a great job in Guangzhou so we determined that the only thing to do was for me to move to Dalian without my family. They would follow in spring of 2010. And in the mean time I would be flying back and forth on a regular basis to see my family and every night my wife and I talk on Skype.
  • At the end of July I made the move from Guangzhou to Dalian. My loving wife visited a month later in order to help me find an apartment to live in and not get charged too much because I was a foreigner.
  • Summertime in Dalian is beautiful.
  • On October 15th we had the official grand opening of our company here. It was attended by all kinds of VIPs including the Vice Mayor of Dalian, the Irish Ambassador to China and the Irish Minister of Finance and Trade. It was also the beginning of winter in Dalian. My first real winter in over 20 years.
  • Wintertime in Dalian is cold. Very cold. Lots of wind. Cold + Wind = Sucks.
  • Fast forward to yesterday. Yesterday my wife was offered her dream job. In Wuhan. Wuhan is not near Dalian. This means my family will not be coming to Dalian. So lots more flying in my future. Time to get a frequent flyer card. It is my wife’s dream job. All I can do is support her and know that the choices we make will ultimately be best for our family.

So that is a summary of what I have been up to. Lots more details and stories to be added as time permits. Hopefully I will get around to updating a tad more often.

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Very busy these days

Nov 26

Posted by Gwailo in Family, Food, General Thoughts, Holidays | 4 Comments

Lots going on. Aside from my normal work I am also deeply mired in the re-design of my company’s website. The current website was supposed to be a temporary measure, but that was almost 2 years ago now. 

Somehow, I think it is a little sad that a web design company like mine has to have such an ugly website. But that is what happens when all of your time is spent making great sites for other people.  But I have finally forced myself to set aside the time and the manpower to create the new site.  And it will be one that I can be very proud of. 

Aside from work I have been trying to spend more time with my boys.  But that hasn’t been as successful as I would hope.  During the week I am lucky if I get to see them for two minutes before I have to rush out the door.  Normally by the time I get home they are already asleep.  Weekends are a mixed bag. I get to spend a little more time with them but a lot of my time is still spent working in my home office.

Speaking of my boys, I picked up their American passports the other day.  They are now officially American citizens.  I don’t know how long it will be before they get the chance to go to the United States, but the thought of transporting 2 eight-month old babies on a 14 hour flight seems like a very difficult thing to me.  I will probably have to wait until they are a little older.

In a couple days is Thanksgiving. Of course it isn’t really celebrated here, but there are a few restaurants where American expats will gather for what passes as a traditional Thanksgiving meal here. But the food doesn’t really matter that much.  It is the chance to be around friends and people who share a common culture with you for a little while.  You would be surprised just how much that can mean sometimes.

Anyway, enough of these boring random thoughts.  It is time for me (and probably you) to get back to work.

Kids today

Nov 19

Posted by Gwailo in Family | No Comments

I came home yesterday to find out that my boys, Wyatt & Cyrus, have set up their own blog.

http://wyatt-cyrus.com

Hallo-what?

Nov 3

Posted by Gwailo in Family, Holidays, Life in China | 1 Comment

Halloween was one of my favorite holidays when I lived in the US.  I always looked forward to either dressing up or handing out candy to visiting kids, or doing both.

Halloween would always start with a visit to the store or a local farmers field so that I could purchase a few suitable pumpkins for carving.  Every pumpkin was screaming out a design that suited its particular shape or coloring.  However, my talent at carving pumpkins was never good enough for some of the more challenging designs that true pumpkin artists are capable of doing.

The exception to this of course was a few years ago.  I actually found blue prints and tools for making cool pumpkins. It had templates that you could rub onto the pumpkin and a saw that you could use to cut out the intricate designs.  I ended up making a very cool looking pumpkin that had a skeleton breaking out of it and a few others.  

Then, of course, there was always the fun of eating all of the candy that was left over because you ‘accidentally’ bought too much. Again.

But now that I am living in China, Halloween is not really celebrated here.  Only in a few very small expat communities will you find children dressing up. But even then the kids don’t go door to door.  Instead they go to closed parties where they can get their candy fix.

If kids here tried to go door to door shouting trick or treat while wearing masks and holding out pillow cases, they would be greeted by mostly stunned looks, several people who would be calling the police and maybe a BBQed chicken foot if they were lucky.

And pumpkins? They exist here, but they are all very small.  Too small to really make a cool carving from.

So how did I spend my children’s first Halloween? I spent it on a business trip to Hong Kong. Another place where kids to not trick-or-treat.  But man, do they use it as an excuse to party.  Of course, Hong Kong-ers will use just about any excuse to have a party.

I find myself in a kind of strange holiday-state.  Without the constant sensory input of American holidays I very easily can miss them without notice.  Christmas, Thanksgiving, Halloween, Independence Day, etc.. all go by with barely a thought.

On the other side, because I don’t speak or read Chinese, I get very little sensory input about Chinese holidays. So it is very hard for me to work up any kind of enthusiasm over them.  Mostly, Chinese holidays are painful because they are days I have to pay my employees not to work. But being a boss here is a subject for another day.

So it is kind of strange how quickly we lose our attachment to holidays when we don’t have the constant reminders around us. Kind of makes me a little sad. When I have the time to think about it.

Makes me wonder what traditions/holidays my boys will grow up forming attachments too.

Things to do in Guangzhou

Oct 18

Posted by Gwailo in Family, Life in China | 2 Comments

A friend back in the US asked me to describe a typical week so he could better understand how I live my life here. And since I am a lazy blogger I thought I would repeat it here.

First a little precursor. When I lived in the US I was pretty much an anti-social hermit. My life mainly consisted of work and goofing around on my computer. Getting out was something I rarely did.

So here is a day by day listing of my week.

Saturday: Up at 7:00. Get my breakfast and play a little with my baby boys. I normally spend most of the time being amazed at just how much they change from day to day.
11:00 I am on an hour long bus/taxi tide to the city where my wife and I meet our running club. Http://www.gzh3.com Check it out to see the strange stuff that goes on.
19:00 Running is done time for dinner with friends. I normally get back home at 22:00. Just in time to go to sleep.

Sunday: Up at 6:30, have my breakfast and play with the kids. Around 10:00 I am out the door with my wife and doing shopping for various things (normally baby stuff).
We get back home around 15:00 and I play with my kids a little more. The I head up to my home office and do a bit of work, play a computer game or watch a little tv. (TV here is either by a satelite feed from the philipines or by watching shows online.)
19:00 I have dinner and help get the kids to sleep. Then the rest of the night is spent watching the movie of the moment with my wife. Then it is time for sleep.

Monday: I am up at 6:00, grab my breakfast (which normally is a big bun and a diet coke) and start my drive to the office. The babies are normally sleeping so I don’t get to see them.
I work until about 20:00 and then I drive home. The babies are normally sleeping by then so I don’t get to see them. Talk with the wife about my day and then off to sleep.

Tuesday: Basically a repeat of Monday.

Wednesday: Starts out the same but at night I attend a social networking meeting for people in the Internet industry. Business here is all about who you know. I would be out of business if it wasn’t for networking.
I spend my evening talking with 30-40 strangers and exchanging business cards. When I get home it is normally around 24:00. Nothing else to do but grab a few hours sleep.

Thursday: Same as Monday.

Friday: Starts out the same but by 11:00 I am on a 2 hour train ride to Hong Kong. Once I get there I have time for a quick lunch then it is meetings with clients till about 20:00.
Then I have the chance to call up some Hong Kong friends and go out for dinner and drinks. This will normally go on till about 03:00. Then off to my hotel room for a few hours of sleep before I am on an 8:30 train back to guangzhou so I can go running with my wife.

So that is a pretty typical week for me. I don’t go to Hong Kong every week but I do go often enough where I needed to add extra pages to my passport.

Blogging is hard to find the time for but I do it when I can. This post is being written on my phone while I sit on the train.

Here are a couple of pictures from my window:

9 Days Off

Sep 26

Posted by Gwailo in Family, Holidays, Life in China | 4 Comments

Monday is the start of the National holiday here in China.  That means that there is a mandatory 7 day vacation for most everyone in the country at the same time.  1,600,000,000 people all on vacation at the same time.  What can go wrong?

The way they get their 7 day vacation here is kind of odd.  Basically, it is a 3 day vacation, but they “borrow” a weekend” to fill in the other 2 work days, hence giving them a total of 7 days off (3 day vacation + 2 days from borrowed weekend + 2 days of real weekend).  Simple, huh?

Now, in order to borrow this weekend they need to balance the books by making everyone work a weekend.  So before the 7 day vacation comes a 7 day work week.  Working the weekend is a way of getting the “borrowed” weekend that extends their 3 day vacation into 7.

Everyone clear on that?  Good.

In my office, I just say “screw it”, throw up my hands and admit that I hate working weekends.  So, my staff lucks out and doesn’t have to work a 7 day week.  So they actually get 9 days off rather than 7.

That will give them a bit of a jump on their travel plans.  Since it is customary for people to go back to their hometowns on the holiday they will all be jumping on busses that will take up to 30 hours to drive them home.  Just so they can turn around a few days later and spend another 30 hours on a bus coming back.

Now, I am faced with 9 days off.  What adventure do you think I have planned?

That’s right!  You guessed it.  I will be doing nothing but staying at home, playing with my kids and computer games.  Then later in the year when the rest of the country isn’t invading every other part of the country I will take some much needed time off someplace that is not in China.

So if you are planning on coming to China between now and October 5th, I have one piece of advice.  Don’t.

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Nothing but chip

Sep 16

Posted by Gwailo in Family, Food | 6 Comments

 

This weekend my wife and I went shopping for western*1* food at a store called Metro*2*.   Armed with a shopping list that could choke a horse we went shopping for our supplies.  

 

While my wife was rapidly filling up our cart with everything baby related, my goal was slightly more self-centered.  The best question of the day from my wife: “Do you think it is worth buying 600(!) diapers so we can get 10 free rolls of toilet paper?”

 

Odd questions aside, the one of the things I really wanted to pick up was BBQ flavored Pringles.  In the US I would rarely buy these but here they serve as a comfort food on the rare occasion that I can find them.

 

We went down the aisle after aisle and I found a vast array of Pringles and Lays potato chips.  My taste buds went into overdrive at the mere sight of the familiar packaging.  Seconds later my junk food junkie dreams were crushed as I started to read the labels.

 

Here are some photos*3* that I took of what they had to offer:

Black Pepper Rib Eye Steak Flavor

Braised Pork Ribs Flavor

Crispy Prawn Flavor

Crispy Roasted Chicken Flavor

Hot & Spicy Aromatic Grilled Corn Stick Flavor

Italian Red Meat Sauce Flavor

Mexican Tomato Chicken Flavor

Spicy Seafood Flavor

Tomato Flavor

 

No BBQ flavor Pringles to be found.  I left the store chipless and disappointed in their selection of western flavors.  But I did score a bunch of chocolate candy and a 2 kilo (4.4 pound) bag of shredded mozzarella cheese.

 

Some day, when I am feeling brave, I will show you some of the unique ice cream flavors I have to choose from here.

 

*1* ”Western” food is the very loose term they use here for anything that isn’t Chinese, or that they want you to think isn’t Chinese but actually is.

 

*2* Metro is like the US store chain Costco.  Metro is huge, membership only and has everything from clothes to electronics to foreign food.  They even have sides of beef hanging on hooks.  Want a specific cut?  Just point and the butcher will cut it off the frozen cow right in front of you.

 

*3* Sorry for the quality of the photos.  They were taken by my iPhone which really is a poor excuse for a camera.  Next time I will take a real camera.

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Happy Mid-Autumn Festival

Sep 14

Posted by Gwailo in Family, Holidays, blogging | No Comments

Happy Mid-Autumn Festival to one and all.  I hope you are all with someone you love, or someone in your family.  Or perhaps both if you are really lucky, or well adjusted.

I am spending tonight with my lovely wife, who gets prettier every year, my mother-in-law, who gets sweeter every year, ayi #1, who always seems happy, ayi #2, who isn’t very good but she really tries hard, and my two 6 month old boys, Wyatt & Cyrus, who give my face a reason to smile and my ears a reason to bleed.

Gwailo

P.S. Added this new theme today.  I think it really sets the mood here well.  What do you think?

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