Shanghai - Here We Come?

Looking Increasingly Likely
Jean has been offered a six month assignment in Shanghai so we may be moving there sometime in November.  The details are sketchy and the timing is not nailed down.  It's not completely locked in but it looks likely to happen.  We should know more in the next few weeks.  (Looks like I have to start practicing my Chinese again.)

Hokkaido - Farming

Summertime in Hokkaido
Our last visit to Hokkaido was during the early winter.  In mid-August it's a completely different place.  We landed in Sapporo on the western edge of the island and drove eastwards through the heart of the farmlands.  The wheat was already rolled up and drying.

Hong Kong - Hiking

Climbing the Dragon's Back
Hong Kong is not exactly what you see on TV.  First, it's made up more than 250 islands, the second largest of which is Hong Kong island with its famed curtain of skyscrapers.  Second, due to the islands' steepness more than 75% of the land is uninhabited.  All the buildings and people are wedged into narrow bands between sea and cliff face.  With just a fifteen minute bus ride up and into the mountains you can be trekking in the wilderness, relatively speaking.

Hong Kong - The Layover

Just for a Few Days
We're on our way back to Hokkaido but have stopped over in HK for a few days.  Yes, Hokkaido, the place we just visited this past November.  Thanks to the Big Boss, who loves Hokkaido, we are on another free trip to Japan.  It's a company trip - the usual suspects from the HK office.  However, while in HK, we'll get some dim sum and a walk along the "dragon's back."  More explanation on that soon.

Singapore - Decorating Update

Getting Customized
Who knew that the Dodo could paint freehand?  Near the front door we painted one wall bright yellow and then added some stickers.

Singapore - Roof Gardening Update

Some Good, Some Bad
Most of the plants survived our absence pretty well.  The lantana in the inner planter thrived.

Syracuse - A Less than Complete Recap

It Started With a Surgery
The matriarch and her petite Asian helper sneaked into the hospital, past security and up to the third floor.  I, of course, was stopped and interrogated before finally receiving a name tag, which later gave me great leeway to roam the halls and buy muffins from the cafe un-pestered.  I lorded it over the helper, pointing at it and mocking her for being stuck, muffin-less, in the room.

Syracuse - Carpentry from Bali

Recreating the Bali "Bar Rocker"
While in Bali we visited a coffee shop for breakfast and sat in ingeniously designed rocking chairs.  The "Bar Rocker" is a typical plastic lounge chair fastened onto a set of wooden legs.  As we sat on them rocking, I non-chalanted that "I could make these, they're pretty simple."  Of course, Dodo jumped at the chance, taking three photos of them and smiling.  She won't admit it now, but she didn't think I could.  Nothing like a good challenge.

Menetou Salon - Hunt for Wine

Out of Burgundy and into the Loire Valley
A few years ago in Paris I had dinner at a restaurant in the 11th with colleagues.  The wine was really delicious and inexpensive and I took a picture of it thinking I would pick up a few bottles.  I looked everywhere for it in vain.  When planning the Burgundy trip I noted that the small village of Menetou-Salon was not that far away from our last stop of Vézelay.  We dialed it into the GPS and off we went.

Vézelay - Hilltop Town

The Natural Beauty Continues
On reflection I think I prefer the French countryside to the grit of Paris.  No doubt I am a city person but that feeling is not as strong as it used to be.  Vézelay is a small village with a large church perched along a narrow spine of hill in central Burgundy.  We stayed in a tiny hotel with a tinier veranda and a larger than life view of the surrounding countryside.

Chateauneuf - Unplanned Side Trip

The Expected Unexpected
We usually plan a loose itinerary so we can get sidetracked.  As we zipped along the A6 on our way from Beaune to Vezelay we saw a castle at the top of the hill and had the same thought - "let's go check it out." We never would have made it without GPS, which took us on a large counterclockwise loop through some lavender fields.

Beaune - Wine Capital of Burgundy

Market Behind the Walls
Beaune is a small town thirty minutes drive from Puligny-Montrachet that sits behind medieval walls and a moat.  It's the epicenter of the Burgundy wine trade, just about all businesses here relate to it in one form or another.  We lucked into a thriving food market and bought a block of cheese, mustard, some strawberries and a bottle of wine.

Puligny-Montrachet - Wine Epicenter

How Do You Know You're in Wine Country?
Well, for one, you're surrounded by vines.  Everywhere you look - along the road, in backyards, on the hills.  We arrived at the village of Puligny-Montrachet in mid-afternoon and took a walk along a small winding road to peek at the vines.  Strange tractors puttered by us - four small wheels and then five feet of suspension up to the enclosed drivers cab.  We later saw one crawling through a vineyard - it looked like a spider on wheels.

Auxerre - First Stop in Bourgogne

Medieval Lunch
Auxerre dates back to Roman times when it was a provincial capital of the Empire.  Since then it has seen its share of history: the 100 years war, the Wars or Religion, its capture by the Huguenots, Nazis and the most bizarre of all - the drunken wolves.  During WWII a pack of starving wolves ate grapes off the vines and became drunk.  They lay down in the city center where the townsfolk took advantage with swords and knives.

France - Next Up, Road Trip

Burgundy & the Loire Valley
When I booked the rental car I did it on a French website so I wasn't completely sure what I was doing.  It got even worse when we arrived to pick up the car - nobody there spoke good English.  So, as the clerk chattered away at me in French and I signed each piece of paper I knew something was going to go wrong.  When we got in our car, I noticed it was a standard, not an automatic.  It took a few days to adjust.  Good thing it came with GPS or we never would've made it.  We were headed to Bourgougne otherwise known as Burgundy with a short jaunt into the Loire Valley.

Paris - Stopover No 1

Same Old, Same Old?
It's hard to reconcile my idea of laissez-faire France with the brewing controversy over gay marriage.  After spending years living in the Marais, the gay epicenter, I didn't think the Frenchies would give a hoot.  The city was covered with anti gay marriage messages like this one that reads "We need work, not gay marriage."

Singapore - Haven't Killed Anything...

Yet...
Three of the five trees are flowering, attracting hundreds of bees at a time.  The trio of sunbirds still visit throughout the day.

Singapore - First Test Passed

Storm Survivor
The wind banged against the windows so hard that it woke me from my sleep.  I didn't think much of it - it was a typical full blast Singaporean thunderstorm with winds to match.  Then I thought about the trees and plants on the roof!  I was expecting the worst but to my surprise there was no damage at all - just a few old leaves knocked off.  Even more surprising was the effect it had - some of the trees had begun to bloom.

Singapore - First Birds Arrive

Checking Out the New Trees
It didn't take more than two to three days for the birds to find our new trees.  Every day a batch of yellow belly sunbirds stop for a while and sing a few songs in the tree tops.

Singapore - Inspiration

Bedroom Color
Planting greenery on the roof has got the juices flowing, snapped me out of my decorating slump.  I got Jean this painting last year for her birthday and found inspiration in the girl's striped hair.

Singapore - Roof Update

Plantings Have Begun
The gardening guys carried the soil one bag at a time up the stairs.  I estimate they took 250 trips.  By the time they were done, they were covered in it.  The soil here is bright orange, full of clay and very moist and heavy.  It was impressive.  Four of them worked from 9am to 10:30pm to get the job done.  We put heather in the inner planter.

Macau - Old Town

Senado Square
When I reached Senate Square I remembered Madrid, where I spent a summer.  It dawned on me that Macau and Madrid look alike in some ways.

Macau - the Old Fort

Starting at the Top
After my poker let down (or shall we say relief?) I switched into explorer mode and did what any good explorer does - sought the high ground.  I headed for the hills and found Macau's version to be steep.  I felt like a billy goat on this street, it was like someone leaned a ladder against a cliff and I was somewhere on the middle rungs.  How anyone considered sticking buildings into the ground at this angle is beyond me.  As I stood in the middle of the road taking this shot I was unusually aware of my achilles, which which were stretched to the point of snapping.  Half way to the greenery in the distance, I was completely out of breath but pretended not to be.

Macau - Ferry

Poker Fantasy
On a Saturday afternoon in Hong Kong, Dodo was at a colleague's wedding in the New Territories (aka "boonies") while I was channel-flipping back at the hotel.  It wasn't until early afternoon that I shook off my procrastination and took the subway to the ferry terminal.  The first ten minutes of the hour ride to Macau were rough but it smoothed out once we picked up speed.  I had a knot of Hong Kong dollars in my pocket, exactly $4,000, which I'd recently won in a Chinese New Year poker game.  I was going to turn the four into ten or twenty, I told myself, then sip champagne on the helicopter ride back.

Indonesia - the Grub

No Complaints
The good food started on the plane in this simple snack: kacang telur.  Otherwise called "egg coated peanuts."  I'd never had them before but now I cannot get enough.  It's a whole peanut coated in a sweet crackly glaze.  No trace of egg to my tongue, just sweet and salty.

Indonesia - Temples

We Need a Recount
Bali is known as the land of a thousand temples but I don't think they've counted recently.  There were dozens in the small village of Ubud alone.  Everywhere you looked there were narrow doors leading to vast courtyards of intricate stone sculptures.

Indonesia - Massage

Humiliation for Only Twelve Bucks
You can get an hour's worth of Balinese massage for a reasonable price.  They throw in the flower for free and even prop it behind your ear for you.  I looked through the menu carefully with an eye towards keeping a fair amount of my clothes on.  I settled on the "stress buster" which focuses on shoulders and neck.  I was instructed to remove everything but my underwear.  I kept my shorts on and only relented when the girl came in the room and insisted I remove them.  "What difference does it make" I thought to myself.  I lay face down on the table and she immediately pulled my boxers down, exposing my ass to the fan breeze   Despite my expectations to the contrary, there my naked ass stayed, becoming an integral part of my "stress buster" hour.

Indonesia - Things to Do

Less is More
What is there to do in Bali?  Nothing.  That's the point, right?  We had even more nothing to do than most since we lived out in the rice fields.  After a good night's sleep in the type of darkness I'm no longer familiar with, we took a stroll into town.

Indonesia - Balinese Breakfast

Learning Bahasa
One of the confusing aspects about Singapore is Singlish.  It's a mix of Mandarin, English, Hokkien,  Malay and Indonesian.  When I ask about a specific word's origin I almost never get a straight answer.  So I was excited to see some familiar Singlish words on the breakfast menu: mee, goreng and nasi.  I was about to figure them out once and for all.  I ordered the nasi goreng and this is what showed up:

Indonesia - Bali

The Getaway
Bali is one of the many islands that comprise Indonesia.  It's a religious outlier in the most populous Muslim country in the world.  About 93% of Balinese adhere to a local version of Hinduism.  It clearly shows in the architecture.  In every corner of the jungle stand ornate temples and stone statues of Ganesha, the elephant god known as the "remover of all obstacles."

Taiwan - Jiufen

Nine Things
The town named Jiufen on the northeastern coast translates to "nine things."  Story goes nine households made up the town a few hundred years back.  Only way in was by boat so whenever one docked for trade everything was bought in multiples of nine.

Taiwan - On the Way Outta Town

Lanyang Museum
The jarring design of Lanyang Museum mimics the nearby seafloor, which has been pushed up at an angle by shifts in the tectonic plates.  We visited on our way out of Yilan.

Taiwan - Jennifer

CFO Slash Tour Guide
We're in Taiwan because of Jennifer, the CFO of the Taiwan office, who invites Dodo to their holiday party every year.  The party is a pretext for her to work her second job: Taiwan tour guide.  She's a passionate advocate for her homeland, she is the one who took us on a tour of Hualian, a year ago.  Her passion for Taiwan can boil over at times.  She says things like "Korea is boring, nothing to do like here in Taiwan" and "the best pizza in the world outside of Italy is found in Taiwan."  Since she was paying for my hotel room I agreed with everything she said.

Taiwan - Practical Application

Slinging a Mandarin Shotgun
"Don't speak for me and don't order for me when we go into restaurants.  I want to practice."  I wasn't sure it registered.  She looked up from her Blackberry, fingers still clicking, then looked back down.  After all the classes, the studying, the tests, the speeches and controlled conversations, it was time for the real thing. In Taiwan I was going to get five days of immersion.  While Dodo was at her meetings, I'd be off chatting up the locals in Chinese.  Picture a three year old babbling to a confused grown-up.