More happiness today -

The trees outside the teahouse (where the ladies go dancing at night) were in bloom! No leaves yet, but there were pink and white flowers all over the branches. The bees were buzzing around, the air was warm, the sun was shining (kind of), and the sky was blue(ish). What an afternoon! While a lot of the plants stay green all year here, it is nice to see these early signs of spring.

Also, tonight is the Lantern Festival, which marks the end to Chinese New Year celebrations. It is traditional to begin and end the year with a bang, so there are lots of fireworks to mark the occasion. We don't have the best view (a lot of the explosions are hidden behind other buildings) but some went off right across the street.

Fun!

-alan

Happy news for CDIS?

One unintended consequence of working for an international school in China is that you find yourself paying more attention to minor stories that come across the economic news wire. As we are dependent on foreign business to keep our school afloat, we are always looking hopefully for signs of potential growth.

From this week's news - Intel will be closing its plant in Shanghai and shifting all its people to Chengdu. There's 2,000 employees at their facility there (including Chinese, I believe)....and surely some of those have some families who can swing our way during the next year. Fingers crossed!

-alan

Improved quality of life

First, a piece of old news from January - Colby is out and about! Here's a video of our new afternoon activity, taking walks together through the neighborhood. Colby is quiet (no barking!) and very friendly, so it is nice to go around and meet people with him. We do, however, need to work on teaching him to "heel."

And now since we've been home from vacation, it is NICE to be outside. The weather is fantastic, considering it is early February. It's in the mid-50s and will be up to 60 this week, so it is fabulous to be able to go outside with a sweatshirt and not be freezing. Today, the sun even tried to come out....
Finally, Chinese New celebrations are just about over. The fireworks are dying down. I wonder how long the lanterns will stay up in our complex...

Which reminds me - there are still Christmas decorations up at school. Seems like the holiday season should be over by now...

-alan

School begins again

We returned from break and have started school again. I'm glad this is only a 2 day week, because I am already tired!

Though we have had a break, some things never change. The first morning back, my 1st period freshmen boys gathered around the mini-basketball hoop affixed to my classroom wall and resumed their morning ritual. I won't call it a game, because there are no teams, no rules, no scoring system. Here's how it works, as far as I can tell - the boys stand in a semi-circle around the hoop. Whoever has the ball shouts the name of an NBA player, moves towards the hoop, and shoot/dunks the ball while the onlookers emit various primitive grunts and noises. My suspicion was that they were mimicking the NBA dunk contest - but soon I realized that there was no connection between the name shouted and the action that followed.

So for a good 5 minutes, this is all I hear:

"Ohhhhh Gasol! Ughhhh. Yeahhhhhh! Ko-beeeeeee! Hrrrrrmphah! Ahhhhh--GARNETT!" And so on...

Oh teenage boys...At least the advantage of this type of communication is that everybody - Koreans, Americans, Chinese - can be included in the fun. Leave it to the NBA to unite the world.

-alan

The Borders disappointment

One of my rekindled loves in the past year has been that of reading. It all started last year - I was no longer teaching full time, which gave me extra free time to play around with. Because I was also taking master's classes at UIC, I had access to the university library and the ability to borrow books at will.

This year, because I have less housework to do (thanks Xuemei!), I still have free time to spend with some books. I brought a few books with me but finished them all by Christmas. [if you want to know more, I update a page on the book network site Goodreads every now and then with what I have been reading]

Unfortunately, there's not much in the way of English bookstores in Chengdu. Thankfully, I got Hot, Flat, and Crowded (which I just started) from my sister Sharon for Christmas, and we picked up a few more books in Hong Kong and Taiwan over the holidays.

But the Borders in Kuala Lumpur has been in my sights for awhile now. Touted as the largest in the world, I drooled at the thought of all those books waiting for me.

That's where the story turns.

First, we don't even step foot in the door for a day and a half, leaving us less time to browse.

Then, they don't have the 1 book that Rachel REALLY wanted. (The Ayatollah Begs to Differ)

The book I REALLY wanted was ordered by Rachel on Amazon, and is on its way back to Chengdu thanks to Jenny, our trans-pacific pack mule. So I didn't need to buy it there. (In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto)

I wanted the February National Geographic, but it wasn't out yet. (on Feb 2?)

After 30 minutes of browsing, I picked up 3 books I liked. One of them was expensive, and I know the library at church has it (Heaven by Randy Alcorn). Another looked good, but Rachel told me the school library has it (Krakatoa: The Day the World Exploded). The third was a popular science book that would be good as a teacher reference, but not something I wanted to buy with my own money.

So in the end - Total number of items purchased in the bookstore: 0. Number of items purchased in the bookstore coffee shop: 1.

And to put an exclamation point on the Borders disappointment, we happened upon another bookstore in another mall, run by a Japanese company. I didn't look at the prices, but the selection was way better...

Oh well. I've got plenty to read. And really, we were out of spending money anyway :)
So maybe it was a good thing!

Now, off to bed. School's back in session tomorrow!

-alan

Finishing off the trip - Kuala Lumpur

We had two days at the end of our trip to enjoy Malaysia's capital and largest city, Kuala Lumpur. We stayed at Berjaya Times Square, a huge hotel and shopping complex downtown. The room was huge - the bathroom alone was easily twice the size of our entire room in Singapore. It was so big that Brian and Katie stopped to stay with us for a day on their way home from Bali, and it was not at all cramped.

We didn't do anything cultural or historical in KL - we saw the Petronas Towers, and we shopped. Our hotel had a movie theater, bowling alley, restaurants galore, and amusement park, the world's largest Borders, etc - so we didn't need to go out much.

The only downside was an unfortunate pickpocketing incident...but we won't let that color our overall vacation experience. It was fun to spend a couple weeks with just the two of us, touring through the cities we visited. I didn't have to think for a second about work, so it was truly relaxing. I don't know how many places like this we will be able to travel to later in life, so I happy to take advantage of the opportunity now - even if, as Brian says, "it means we are broke for the rest of our life."

-alan

The last couple days in Singapore

We're home in Chengdu now (yay for my own bed!) so there's no more excuse to avoid blogging about the second half of the trip.

In Singapore we met up with our old Northwestern friend Chye, and went to the "Night Safari." Since it is a famous Singaporean spot and it came recommended by Sharon, Danielle, and Jenny we had to go.
It was fun to see the variety of nocturnal animals that you don't normally see awake and active when you go to the zoo. In particular, we liked the flying squirrels, fruit bats, leopards, and civets. We rode a tram through the park to see the larger animals, and also walked around the paths a little (including going in the bat and squirrel cages!)

From the shows, here are a couple videos that show a little of what we saw. On the left is a group of fire-breathing "tribesmen" (I don't know much more than that) and on the right is a video of recycling otters struggling to get that trash put away! Aren't they cute?



Later on we ate roti prata (friend flatbread served with curry sauce) and feasted into the wee hours. Thanks Chye!

The next day we toured through Chinatown. We went to a local history museum and learned about the various plights of Chinese immigrants to Singapore through the ages. They had a full-size reproduction of 1950s-era tenement housing that the majority of Chinese lived in (dozens of people crammed in tiny spaces), and so it was amazing to see how far modernization has taken Singaporeans in half a century since then.

Throughout the week, we have seen troupes of lion dancers (I think we saw 6 or 7 performances in all) celebrating the new year. But in Chinatown, while on the search for Slurpees and egg tarts, we came across a unique performance:

I'm not sure how that guy didn't break all his teeth.

Here's some more sights from the Chinatown streets, including Rachel's new dress:

Later that night, we met with another old Singaporean friend, Mun. We had a fun night on the town, from the English pub downtown to a Mexican restaurant in Holland Village, to live music at an American-style nightclub. I never went out to hear live music all that much in America, but it was therapeutic to sit there and soak up the sound all around me.

We thought we flew out at 7am the next morning, but it was actually 9pm (though there was a brief scare due to the misreading of 24-clock that made us think the flight was at 7pm, but that's another story) so we had another day free. Mun was kind enough to take us out for chicken rice (another local favorite). I'll miss the variety of food that we had there!!

So bye bye to Singapore! In all, the city/country was a lot of fun. We saw a lot of the island, ate a lot of good food, and enjoyed the diversity that is there. It was reminiscent of America to see the melting pot of people all around, and how the variety of people adds a positive dimension to the society.

-alan