On my recent visit back to Shenzhen, China, we had a little… adventure.  We were staying at this very nice, posh hotel.  It was clean, nice location, large, comfortable rooms – nearly perfect.  Until we went to bed, that it is.  Sleeping that night was miserable. The bed was basically a slab of plywood with some batting on it.  I called down and asked them to do something about it; change rooms, change bed, something. 

They brought up a couple of comforters and put them under the bed sheet.  A minor adjustment at best and it didn’t do much.  Soooo uncomfortable. 

The next day, with the thought of that bed waiting for us at the hotel, we decided to fix the problem.We walked over to WalMart, about a five minute walk and bought some air mattresses (five of them). Oh, also a case of water, ’cause you really can’t drink water from the tap here.

We then wheeled the shopping cart with the boxes of mattresses (and a case of bottled water) through the park, across the street, down the alley. Carried the cart up the stairs and then wheeled it THROUGH THE LOBBY, into the elevator and up to the 16th floor.

Giggling the whole time.

Earlier in the day, we had talked to the hotel management and they didn’t have a solution for us for this trip.  As we rolled the cart through the lobby, the hotel management staff had no clue what to do with us.

We dispersed the materials (including the bottled water) and then two of us took the cart back to WalMart. I didn’t go to return the cart, but the report back was that the WalMart staff cheered when they took the cart back – they didn’t know what to do with the crazy Americans and we think they were trying to decide whether or not to go after the cart when we returned it.

So, as some of you might know, I can be quite a "Grumpy Gus" at times.  However, I am quite aware of this and actively try not to be and, at least in my head, I’m moderately successful. I’ve even had people comment that I’m upbeat and positive when stuff isn’t going well and they think I’m a bit loony, which is fine. I know that if I act as if I’m in a good mood then, in a few minutes, I’ll be in a good mood.

However, today I read a comic strip (and boy do I love my comics) which summed up my goal in my personal philosophy, quoted here:

Ya set yer expectations to "grim" an’ each day is like Christmas!

Exactly.

We had a shopping excursion over the weekend and ended up in Luo Hu, a very big shopping mall.  It is less of a mall in the western sense and more a building filled with street vendors … four floors of it.  Each vendor’s shop is perhaps a 8-10 foot storefront and runs back from 10 to 30 feet.  The vendors usually have someone inside doing sales and someone stationed outside to pull people in – when I say ‘pull’ I mean it.  Lots of grabbing hands and arms to get you into their store.

We were shopping in one store and the vendor looks at me and smiles.  As you all may know, I’ve got a bit of a belly on me; I’m not svelte by any means or angle.   The vendor looks at me again and asks:

"How many baby you have in there?"

Now, I know he is making a joke at my expense and that’s fine; it is a good joke.  I quip back with:

"I ate one for breakfast.  Gave me gas."

Which, of course, cracked up my traveling companions to no end and totally confused the vendor.  For the rest of the day I was ‘Man with baby’; fortunately that nickname seems to have passed now.

The few Adderites will recognize my reference to TB-EBOBAW, also known as "Da Bish".

So, I’m working with our engineering partners in Shenzhen, China for the last 10 days or so.  I’ve gotten tired of going out with the group so tonight I rebelled and walked to Wal-Mart for snacks and then walked to Pizza Hut to pick up a pizza that tastes okay, but Not Quite Right.

C’est La Vie.

In case you were wondering, I am aware of the stuff going on in Tibet.  CNN shows it and when CNN crosses the line and starts to show something that the Chinese authorities think isn’t appropriate, the television station goes black for a bit.  Sometimes it is for just a few seconds; earlier this evening it was for about 15 minutes.  I usually pull up a web browser at that point and join millions of Chinese computer users in circumventing the Great Chinese Firewall with VPNs and open proxies to watch CNN online.

I’m such a naughty boy.

I haven’t taken as many pictures this trip, except for Sunday’s sight seeing excursion. I’m ready to go home but I’ve got a couple more days to go yet before heading home.

Other than that, I’m still alive and all that jazz.

Arrived in Hong Kong earlier after about 16 hours in the air and a total of over 20 hours travel time.

Not too bad considering the distance.

The group is heading out for dinner and a cruise through the entertainment district of Wan Chai. More later, if I survive…

UPDATE: All survived, a couple with hangovers. No fights or missing so I’ll call the babysitting a success. Oh, and they came up with the label, not me.

I’m finally, finally done for the day.  Checking out at… 11:55 PM to drive home and crawl into bed.

My head is full of cobwebs,
My jaw is full of pain.
Time to crash,
perchance to dream,
then do it all again.

So, this tells us that if you keep me up too late too many days in a row and get me up too early the next day too many days in a row then you get really bad poetry.

I’ve decided that I’m going to find (or make) a T-shirt that says "I have a rich inner life".

‘Cause that would be cool.

So, the last time I left the country I had to rush about to have a broken tooth prepped, root canalled, and capped. Not fun, but it was better than being somewhere else if I had problems.

Last month, I went in for my scheduled cleaning and the dentist decided that two of my filling were degrading and pulling away and should be replaced. He joked if I was leaving town anytime soon and, as my travel plans had just been set, I told him I was. We scheduled an appointment to have it done before I left, last Wednesday (Feb 27).

All went well… except. Yeah… one of the teeth with the new filling hurts like a sonofabitch. It feels just like the tooth that I broke last July which means that cold liquids *hurt* and I have a general ache in my right jaw.

Oh, and I can’t sleep very well.

So, I go back in Wednesday morning to see what is wrong (did they crack the tooth putting the new filling in, is it a different tooth, little gremlin in my mouth with a jack hammer?)

I can’t wait. Really, I can’t.