My wife and son left today. They spent a little over 2 weeks here with me. I already feel a little bit empty without them. I loved coming home from work to hug them and hear how about their daily explorations of Beijing. I loved having them here and I already miss them. I know Rachel was nervous about doing the long flight with Sam. Hopefully it worked out fine.
I won’t see them for 2.5 weeks. I leave China in a week and once in the states I have more traveling. Rachel is going directly to Utah because she has some interior design engagements for a few weeks. So I’m gonna miss them dearly. I love them so much.
Below are a few pics from the Great Wall on Saturday. I tweeted a few of these. All from the iPhone. These two are the joy of my life.
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Rachel looking hot. The clouds would quickly come and go.
When we first got there, it was really cold. So we kept Sam warm. He looks like ET.
It warmed up quickly so we took the layers off Sam. Here he is just chilling. Someday he’ll brag about how cool this was.
Rachel sitting in a corner in one of the towers…nursing the little guy. Both are such troopers.
Beach
San Diego was great. So relaxing and refreshing. I love the ocean and I love riding waves. I normally just do boogie boarding but this time we rented some surf boards and gave it a try. It’s exhausting and it’s tough. I wanna get better because someday i’d love to travel all over the world to find the best waves (like in Endless Summer). I would be fine with being a beach bum and letting my kids grow long, nappy, greasy beach hair. I haven’t shared these plans with Rachel yet. I’ll think of a good way to tell her.
Sam-Bam
The thing I liked most about San Diego is I feel like I got to spend a lot of time with my son. I feel like he’s starting to know me more. He’s interacting with me more. He’s smiling and laughing with me. It’s so wonderful to see and it just makes my heart melt every time he giggles and laughs with me. He looks up to me and loves me. I’m starting to feel it more and more each day. I was able to really feel it start to grow while in San Diego. I loved, loved, loved spending the time with him and this was by far the best part of the trip.
I’m still messing with the hipstamatic app. Pics below.
I downloaded an iPhone app called Hipstamatic and was messing with it. The only thing that I don’t like about it is that it doesn’t save the original image (unadulterated). Instead it automatically saves the image with the hipstamatic effects. Kind of a bummer. But still fun to mess with.
Rachel and Sam below in both pics. We’re currently in San Diego.
After a marathon day working in the office, Al and I headed over to the Bird’s Nest to watch some football. It was a “friendly” match between FC Barcelona and Beijing Guan (China club champs). We were entertained by the worlds best footballer, Lionel Messi aka La Pulga.
As soon as I heard Barcelona was in town earlier this week I jumped at the opportunity to attend. I absolutely love to watch high quality football. Last summer in Europe I had the opportunity to watch two Real Madrid matches. So much fun.
Barcelona won 3-0 tonight. Two of the goals came in the first 15 minutes. We thought for sure we’d be in for a high-scoring game. But for whatever reason, Barcelona cooled off until the ’89 with a pretty Ibrahimovic goal.
I was just a little bummed that Barca didn’t bring their “A” team. So many of their superstars were absent: Dani Alves, Pique, Bojan, Puyol, Xavi, David Villa, Iniesta. This Barca team is such a star-studded squad — many from the Spanish national team (World Cup Champions). It would have been a real treat to see them all play. I’m guessing they’re still on holiday.
But still…overall I had a wonderful experience tonight. I got to watch Messi (Yes, THE Messi), Ibrahimovic, Abidal and Milito. What a great way to end such a wonderful week. I’m sure i’ll be back soon enough to visit our team here in Beijing. We catch a flight back to SF tomorrow. It’s late and I wanna go to bed. Peace.
The Bird’s Nest
The pitch.
Barcelona jerseys in the subway. Yes, that’s a vuvuzuela. They have somehow caught on in China. It was annoying (yet fun) to hear them live. Most of the Chinese didn’t know how to properly use them though so the buzzing was off and on (unlike Johannesburg). :)
I was on my feet pretty much the entire day today. This is what happened…
Lisa (a zincher) took us around today. She is so, so awesome. We did a lot of walking and she was a trooper. I really appreciate her taking the day to help us not get lost in Beijing.
We kicked things off with the Forbidden City. What seems to be calm and quiet in this picture is…a lie. It was mad chaos inside. Sooooo many people.
After the Forbidden City we went to a shopping district (forgot the name). I needed to get something for my wife and son. I can’t say I was super successful…but I made a few purchases as fall-back for if that was the last chance i’d get. We also had lunch in the area and I had no idea what 80% of the food was. That’s always frightening.
We also saw a dude do the Rubiks cube blindfolded. Nuts. Basically he memorizes the layout of the cube first, then gets blindfolded…then does it. I got video of it but was too lazy to upload it.
After shopping/lunch, we hopped in the subway and headed to a College Fair. A group of American Universities were there showcasing themselves. We had a booth there so I went over to help. It was great talking to the Chinese high school students. So many of them were already on Zinch and they love it. I get the sense that it means much, much more to a Chinese student. So much more is at stake. It’s cool to hear the difference it’s making for them.
By far the best part was watching our crew in action. Loved it. I’ve mainly been getting to know product/tech. But today I saw marketing in action. Wow.
The materials, language, buttons, shirts, country and people are all different. But the hustle is the same. They preached it pure. The more I get to know the team, the more impressed I am. They did a flawless job today. Props to Tiffany/Chris/Team. The people are what make Zinch so great.
Not everyone from Zinch who attended is in the pic/vid below. Here are a few.
After the college fair, our small entourage headed out for dinner. It somehow grew to include groupies from the fair. It was funny.
Dim Sum was delicious.
Then we went to some sort of show at a local university where study abroad students (from Harvard/Yale) were performing skits and talents. They were here during the summer learning Chinese so all the performances were in Chinese. It was fun but I couldn’t understand a word of it.
That was the day. Today was a little bit of a breather from work…but still exhausting. Tomorrow we’ll be back in the office with the team.
I saw these little advertisements throughout the Forbidden City. For such an historical landmark of a Communist nation to have this…well, it’s fascinating. I wonder what the CPM is. With the amount of people going through there each day, i’m guessing Amex is getting a pretty good rate. :)
After another super productive day working with the team, we played some pingitty pongitty. I hung in there pretty well against most. The spin they put on the ball is nuts. And of course they hold the paddle in their weird asian way. But it was a lot of fun. Pics and vid at end of this post.
I only lost 2 (out of maybe 10 or so matches). I lost my first game against Eric Y. He was good. Pure finesse. My last loss came at the hands of a veteran (some old dude who probably plays everyday). He wasn’t part of our group but we were eyeing each other throughout the evening (at our different tables) hoping for a showdown. It came. He approached me and asked me to ball. I said bring it (as only as American can).
He’s at the end of the video (short, older, bald guy). He toyed with me and treated me like a little school girl. After the beating (11-3), we took pics with each other and did the smile, hand shake and thank you.
All in all…it was an enjoyable evening with the team. I’m learning more and more chinese everyday. I’m determined to go home and do a little studying for next time i’m out here.
Here’s the video. I tried to film from my iPhone as I was actually playing. Not a very easy task — so I told them to hit softly as I recorded. All pics are from iPhone these days.
Another productive day with the team here. I didn’t get many pictures at work so i’ll just share the pictures I did take.
Al and I enjoyed dumplings for dinner with Eric and Alan. The plates of dumplings kept coming and coming and coming — an endless barrage of dumplings. Delicious. The picture below only represents about 10% of the total dumplings we consumed. I’m fine not eating dumplings for awhile.
It wasn’t so much the food but the company we were in that made the evening enjoyable. The team and the folks here continue to impress.
