Cancun Underwater - Fishy Paradise

I woke up yesterday morning and packed up the things I was bringing on the boat. Trish got herself ready for a day at the spa and we were out the door. I got on the bus and got off once again at the wrong stop. I had to walk 10 minutes to get to the dive shop. You think I would have learned from the day before, but no... not that smart.

I got to the dive shop and a few people were there already, getting their gear together. The lady asks me to fill out some forms, so I do and I hand them back. She looks at them and says "Oh, you can't go diving today." WTF?!?! She explains that because I haven't been diving in 10 years and I don't have my certification number and I don't have my log book that there's no way she can let me dive.

Great, now what am I gonna do, Trish is at the spa, so I have a day to kill. And I can't go diving, awesome... just great. So as I stand there with a dazed look on my face thinking this through, and she looks at me again. "You could do the recertification today and then dive tomorrow?" Nope, I leave tomorrow. "Well.... maybe I could talk to the dive master and he could test you in the pool. It would cost extra though. ok?" So... apparently with enough money everyone will bend the rules around here. Ok I say, how much? $10 US. That's cool with me. She also tells me that I'll have to fill out a new form saying that I dove last year. Apparently you have to recert if you haven't gone diving in the past year.

I go to the gear rental place, get geared up, and the dive master takes me to a tiny pool. I get in, he gets me to clear my mask. Then he gets me to take my mask off and put it back on, then clear it. Then he makes me take my regulator and throw it away, then find it and start breathing again. It's not super hard to find your regulator underwater, but it is a little tricky seeing as it's attached to your back. So I do all his tests and he's really happy and tells me I can go diving today, no problems. WOOT!

So I get my stuff together and hop on the boat. The photographer chick presents herself to me and tells me that she's going to be taking video of us today. Her name was Aline, which is mexican-ish, but her english was pretty much perfect. Turns out she spent 8 years in california, pretty cool. So she asks me if I would be interested in the video and I tell her yes. She tells me she'll pay special attention and try to get me in the video a lot.

We got set up while the boat was heading to the reef, the dive master went over the rules. Basically stay together and the few symbols that will keep us alive. It's not like you can explain much underwater, all you have is hand gestures. Since we don't all know sign language, there's just a few signs you need to know. OK, not good, my ears, my regulator, my stomach, look here, low air, go up, go down, and how to tell how much air is in your tank. Then he told us all sorts of symbols for fish. I only remember baracuda, because it's the hand gesture you would make if you pretend your hand is a monster trying to eat something... that's baracuda for you.

So we dive in and sink 50 feet to the bottom. This is my first time diving in really clear water, and really warm water. The lady at the dive shop asked me if I wanted a wet suit. The water is really cold she said, I recommend a wetsuit. I asked how cold. 24 degrees... celcius. I just told her "I'm Canadian". That seemed to settle it, she stopped trying to rent me a wetsuit.

So at first the water was piss warm, but 20 feet down there's a cold undercurrent. Cold in this world is 24 degrees celcius. I found it refreshing, cus honestly diving in bath tub water was making me a little claustrophobic. I dunno, water to me should always be cold. So yeah, never once did I think "Oh this is chilly" at best I was dreading the top 20 cus the water was too warm. When I first got to the bottom I had a little bout of vertigo. The weeds were all rocking back and forth with the current, but the rocks were standing still. The weeds covered so much more area than the rocks that it made it look like the rocks were moving back and forth. My brain did not like that, the ground is not supposed to rock back and forth.

In any case, the vertigo didn't last and everything was cool after that. It was pretty awesome down there, not as many fish as I would have hoped, I saw a few grunts, the stuff we fished up the other day. These grunts were yellow instead of white. Same family, different fish. The coolest part about the first dive was that he took us through a cave in the coral. It was just a tunnel, but it was really cool.

The next dive was way better, we got to the bottom and there was fish everywhere. They weren't really scared of us either. There was cow fish, that look cool and have a triangle shaped body instead of flat. Lots of grunts again, and mixed in I saw some big blue ones that people couldn't name. There was some four eyed angel fish or something like that. Then we saw a manta ray. It was buried in the sand and Francisco, the dive master, started playing with one of it's wings. The ray obviously did not like that so it took off. It's really cool looking.

We saw a couple more rays during the dive, and then Aline pointed out a big fish to me. Turns out it was a puffer fish. The thing was huge, as long as my arm, I wonder how big it gets if it puffs up... ouch. Then we saw a barracuda, it swam into a cave. Francisco made the pacman chomp chomp sign and then put his hand up kinda saying stop. He followed into the cave after the barracuda, I went up and over. On the other side of the cave we saw a crab in an alcove. That was pretty much it down there. We came back up and hopped on the boat.

I was taking my gear off and Francisco came up to me and pulled a big rock out of my suit saying "souvenir" before tossing it back in the water. I had seen him pick up that rock but I had no clue why. I never even noticed when he put it in my buoyancy vest. Turns out he decided I was floating up too much so he put a rock in my pocket.

Anyways, I had a really good time. Trish had a great time at the spa too. We've been basically chilling since then. Our legs are still dead from that Ek-Balam trip. So hurty. They should put an escalator or something on those pyramids.

Now we're chilling by the pool, they kicked us out of the room. And we're spending the day here cus our bus to the airport doesn't leave for another four hours.

Tonight we hang out in mexico city and fly home tomorrow morning. Since you're reading this I'm going to assume you weren't here. This assumption is pretty safe because I'll only be wrong in one case, Trish. So with my assumption that you weren't here I just have to say "Sucks to be you." I hope you had a great week at work... I know I had a great time in Mexico.

Cancun voyage - Hot nights and hotter days

Last night we headed to grab fish tacos before our fishing trip. We went to this tiny shop that Erick our host had suggested much earlier in the week. Getting there was a small ordeal because as we waited for the bus a cabby stopped by and wanted to drive us. After negotiating a price that was almost the same as bus fare, we got in. The problem was that he couldn't understand where we were going. Possibly because only locals would go to the shop we wanted to go. He dropped us off at a sea food restaurant in the tourist mall thinking most likely that the directions we gave him were somewhat wrong. I thought we were near the right spot, so we paid him and got out. Turns out we were about 10 minutes walk from where we needed to be. Doh!

Well the tacos were totally worth the confusion and the walk. The food we got was pretty awesome. After eating the tacos we headed off towards our night fishing tour. Grabbing the bus this time we headed off. The problem with buses are that the stops are pretty far apart. So when Trish saw a dive shop we figured we must be in the right spot or at least close to it and got off the bus. Turns out we were about 10 minutes walk from where we needed to be. Hmm, deja vue?

On the boat we met some crazy people, Steve, Allan and Andrea. We kept ourselves entertained while they played music from the 70s to the 90s including some pretty terrible remixes. Turns out they're from the bay area too! And Allan actually has a fishing boat. Apparently I may have found a bay area fishing buddy. Anyways the night tour was advertized as fishing and food and lots of partying. What a load of crap. The fishing was pretty bad. With 15 people pulling up fish the average was about 2 fish each. Most of the fish was "white grunt" whatever that is. There was one grouper, and a few "jacks". The jacks looked like small tuna to me, but they assured me it wasn't tuna.

We went to the front of the boat to fish because there was no room in the back and Steve, Allan and Andrea joined us. We kept ourselves entertained through quite a few hours of bad fishing. From the description we thought they would cook fish as we caught it, but it wasn't so. They started cooking the fish on the way back to the dock. It took us about 90 mins to get out to their marvelous fishing spots and the same on the way back. Cept on the way back we had food instead of bad music to keep us entertained. The food was fish lasagna and garlic butter fish and veggies. So they made ceviche special for me. It was practically midnight by the time we ate but it was fantastic. Best fish ceviche I ever had. If you don't know that ceviche is, it's raw fish cured in lime juice with onions, tomatoes and a few herbs and spices.

All in all we had a good time. Mostly because of the company rather than the boat tour and fishing. Steve owns a house down here and spends almost half his time in Cancun. Allan and Andrea are newly married and on their honeymoon. They're pretty hillarious people and we had a great time making stupid jokes. When we got back to land Steve offered us a ride with his personal cabby and seeing as Allan and Andrea were staying in the same resort as us, we gladly accepted. Steve didn't even let us pay for the cab ride, I think he might be a little loaded. Anyways, we traded info with Allan and Andrea so that we can keep in touch when we head back to the bay area. Maybe I'll finally get to go fishing in the bay!

Today we visited Ek Balam, the tour was a lot like the Chichen Itza tour except way less touristy. Instead of hundreds of people checking out the buildings, it was just us. And instead of millions of tourist traps and souvenir shops there was one souvenir shop in the parking lot and it was well priced. Trish bought a nice pair of sandals for less than $15 and I think we still overpaid a little. The best part of Ek Balam was that we were allowed to climb up the buildings. We went up the tallest one and took pictures of the others. That was enough excercise for us. Those buildings are tall. I'd say at least 4 stories up if not 5.

On the tour, instead of taking us to a super touristy boutique of knick knacks he took us to a farmers market. Trish and I were pretty much the only ones buying stuff from the locals, everyone else was looking and thinking they might get sick if they touched anything. We bought some veggies to cook with the fish. And then the guide told us which limes to use for ceviche and pointed out a cool looking melon that we should try. The guide even told me that if we come back next year, he can hook me up with iguana and armadillo meat. He told me the locals eat that stuff, but they never sell it in shops or restaurants because nobody would buy it.

Well, now we're back and we're cooking the fish. Well, Trish is cooking, seeing as I'm currently blogging. As a last note, if you had to pick between Chichen Itza and Ek Balam, I would do Ek Balam while you can still climb the buildings and get up close to the stuff. Everything in Chichen Itza is roped off. But they are both very different and both very much worth visiting.

Tomorrow is scuba diving!

Chichen Itza - The water magician by the sinkhole's edge

We woke up early yesterday and headed to the meeting point. Some guys picked us up in a van, we were the first people in the van, but that didn't last long. Stop after stop, people piled in. Then we stopped at a shopping mall where we all got out and followed this tour guide guy. This guide was in a hurry because he wasn't waiting for anyone. We pretty much had to rush to keep up with him as he trekked through the mall and up some stairs. I had completely forgotten that we were supposed to have breakfast, but at least the tour guide didn't. What was supposed to be a continental breakfast turned out to be "Pick anything from the menu except the two really expensive dishes." Trish and I ordered what we thought would be good and waited patiently for our dishes.

When the waiter came by my dish was covered in heavy cream and Trish's had a pile of ham. Awesome! I wasn't even sure that this was what we ordered. Trish thought it was similar to what we had, so instead of bugging the waiter, we traded. I can't say it was the best breakfast ever. I was kinda authentic, there was eggs and salsa, and crispy tortillas, so it was more mexican that most of the food we had so far, but it wasn't anything special. Nothing to write home about, but totally worth blogging. Or something like that.

After breakfast the guide ran off once again. Trish was using the facilities at the time, so we got downstairs a little late. They already had people lined up and going into different buses and vans. We had to ask someone which bus was ours, and they pointed us to a van... ugh. The van was cramped and fit 14 people, including the driver and guide. The ride sucked, I hate seats where my knees have to be much higher than my butt. My legs hurt after the ride.

First stop on our itinerary was a cenote, which is an underground cave filled with water. It was pretty cool, with stalactites and some greenish water. The cave was huge, the water was kinda murky and had fish in it. Trish and I were thinking about swimming in there. The pictures they show on the web look way nicer than the actual deal. Maybe it was just this one cenote that was crappy though. In any case, the water didn't look very fun to swim in, so we didn't.

Next stop, tourist trap. Shops with all sorts of crap you would never use. Why would you go to mexico to buy a blanket depicting some japanese woman? I mean really? I was totally thinking that while I was dying in the 110 degree weather that I should buy a blanket, and while I'm in mexico why not buy a japanese blanket. Makes perfect sense to me. Anyways, the silver was by weight and it was way too much by weight. This is how I think they calculated their silver prices... First the price of silver by gram, about 50 cents. They had to pour it into a mold, so double the price. Then they had to have someone darken and polish the pieces as necessary, double the price again. If you're following along, we're at $2 a gram. Then we're gonna offer the tourists a 20% coupon when they get off the bus, so add 50% now. $3 a gram. The tour guides will tell the tourists that they must haggle, add in a 50 cent/gram buffer, $3.5 per gram now. And finally, tourists are stupid and they like to buy this stuff anyways, double the price. $7 a gram. Sounds about right? Needless to say we didn't buy anything.

Off to lunch at a buffet place. What is it with touristy spots and buffets. It seems like most places have a buffet around here. And they totally cater to your generic US resident. This was some of the blandest mexican food I've ever had, in our out of mexico. No spice, no flavour. The only thing that was really tasty was the meat of the day which was ground beef with some veggies and peppers. Their version of pulled pork was a distant second. The food wasn't bad, but it was almost as mexican as a white boy eating wonderbread and cheezewiz. The only mexican thing about the food was the guy who cooked it. For a bit of fun during lunch they had three people come up and do a dance for us... they danced with bottles on their heads and stomped their feet a lot. It was interesting, but not super awesome.

Chichen Itza, it's one of those Mayan temples. It's been promoted to one of the 7 wonders of the world now. The architecture it pretty cool, and there's a few interactive things you can do. The place is built for echos, I guess sound was important to mayans. If you clap near the base of the temple, the echo coming out of the little room at the top sounds like a bird on one side and more of a growl on the other. Then in the football field if you clap in the middle you hear about 7 echos. If you do go visit Chichen Itza I strongly suggest you get a guided tour because without explanations it would be pretty boring. There's nothing to point out strange carvings like in a museum, there aren't even signs to tell you where to go. Without the guide it would have just been a large temple like you see in the books.

The most annoying thing about Chichen Itza is the souvenir stands. They all want to sell you the same crap. Some of it is even hand crafted, which is cool, but they try to scam you which I hate. They tell you it's one dollar. "One dollar, very cheap, almost free, one dollar" If you ask them about the price, it's one mayan dollar which they say is worth whatever, or they say oh it's one dollar off. And there's so many of them all selling the same thing that it gets anoying. But that's life. One funny guy did say "You need to buy your wife a present." and when I said no thanks he replied "Don't forget about your neighbors wife".

During the long ride home I reflected upon my day, and figured that all in all, the tour was worth it. It would have cost us $40 to rent a car for the day, another $40 in tolls (WTF?! two $20 tolls crazy) and $10 each for entrance fees, that's $100. Then we would have had to buy lunch, pay for gas and I'm not sure if the cenote was free, though it looked pretty free. Actually I'm not even sure we would have found the cenote. It would have cost us about $130, and I woulda had to drive. Though the drive would have been a little more comfortable. Oh and I'm not sure if there's a parking fee. Instead we paid $160 and got a tour guide out of the deal. So yeah, go with the tour is my advice.

Back at the hotel we took a swim. The entire day had been crazy crazy hot and humid, the pool felt nice. Then we went to eat at Captain's Cove. We had seafood which was awesome, but the coolest part of the night was the alligator. We were out on the waterside patio eating our food, and miding our own business when a waiter comes by with someone's leftovers. The leftovers were from a deep fried whole fish, it was pretty big but it was just a big head and bones. The waiters says something like "I'm going to feed him" with a big smile on his face. He goes to the rail and leans over. Then he tosses the fish to a six foot alligator who happily catches it in it's big jaw. Pretty cool, restaurant with pet alligator. I need one of those.

Today we're taking a night fishing tour boat thing. Not sure what we're gonna do until then though...

Cancun Adventure - Cancun city

Last time I wrote stuff we were heading to Walmart... Our adventure did in fact take us to Walmart. It's pretty easy to get there, everyone knows walmart and it's pronounced the same in english and spanish, who woulda thought? Right, so we bought food, flip flops for me (they suck but they were $2) and some dish soap and bug spray. When I was buying meat I was somewhat confused. Next time I'll buy more because everything is in kilos and everything is cheap. I got a chorizo link, the size of a bratwurst for 3.8 pesos, and another one somewhat bigger but the lady assured me it was the best for 8 pesos. Chorizo in the US is like $6 a pound... you don't get away with anything as cheap as uh... 30 cents.

We got back home cooked up some stuff. I was a little worried about my chorizo because one of them was called queso de puerco. queso is cheese. I'm allergic to cheese. not good. So I cracked it open and it smelled a little cheesy. I cooked and it didn't look like cheese at all. So I turned to the interwebs. Turns out it's head cheese! I have no idea what goes in head cheese but it's delicious. And so was the chorizo.

This morning we had a date with Erick our host for the week. This was arranged by our personal concierge Valdo. Erick treated us to a buffet breakfast that was about as mexican as me and chatted with us. Obviously he went on about how great this resort was and that we should become members, but mostly we chatted about random things. When the sales pitch came, we told him we weren't interested (the starting price was $10K) and he pretty much finished his schpiel in five minutes. Then he passed us to the guy who wanted to sell us a "come back to cancun in our resort" package, and we told him no. He said ok, thanks, enjoy your stay. We were a little confused. No hard sell, nobody bugging us. Crazy. Free breakfast though, awesome!

Trish and I then came back to our room to book our trips to wherever we're gonna go this week. The maid stopped by and started cleaning, she was pretty nice but didn't speak a word of english. After we were done booking trips to Chichen Itza and Ek Balam we headed to downtown once again. Market 23 was our goal today.

Drivers are a little crazy here, not China crazy, but still crazy. The buses tailgate people, people change lanes all the time, well really there are no lanes painted on the ground. They have weird traffic circles too. The bus got there without any accidents though. We found many little shops kinda like what you see on the discovery channel. One shop had open sacs on grain and spices on the ground kinda like the bulk food department at your favorite grocery store. Except that being outside this bulk section of food came equipped with flies, ants and bees. They probably don't charge you extra for the bugs though.

We found a little restaurant, nothing much to look at, but the menu looked good. Well, what I understood of the menu anyways. We sat down and scanned the tiny menu, they had obscure english translations, mostly direct translations from spanish. I got poc-chuk and Trish got ceviche, and we split some guacamole. The avocados in the guac were yellow and green, and they tasted really good, no clue what kind of avocado it was. I say kind of avocado because we found more than one kind at walmart, and if walmart has 2 kinds of avocados you know there's gotta be at least 3 or 4 kinds more out there in the world. Anyways, the food was awesome, and there was way too much of it. We didn't finish our plates and we barely touched the habanero salsa "muy picante" said our waiter when he plopped it on the table. The food only cost us 200 pesos, like $15 or something including tip. I asked Erick and he said 10% tip is customary here.

We just got back to the resort now, and I'm covered in sweat, it's gotta be 35 or 40 out there, maybe even 45-50 with the humidex factor. That's like 200 degrees for you american types. Learn celcius, it's too hot to translate in my head.

I think I'm gonna go swim, cus there's a pool right outside my door. Have fun at work tomorrow, I'll be in chichen itza. It's a mayan temple.

Cancun Vacation - The way over

So Trish and I decided to head out to Cancun for a vacation. We planned it a while back, and invited some of you, but nobody wanted to come along. Whatever, your loss. Now you can read about everything you missed! I know, it's totally awesome, it's like being there really. Anyways, Cancun through my eyes is probably way more hilarious than if you were there yourself.

SFO is far from our place, so trying to find a way to get there is always a problem. We did a hotel 1 night and park for 2 weeks once, and that worked well. But for Cancun we were leaving Friday night, so we opted for a shuttle instead. These guys pick you up at your house and bring you to the airport. The shuttle ride was pretty quiet, met a guy from New York. He wasn't very interesting. We got to the International terminal, and the dude wanted us to get out, we thought Mexico flights were domestic, but when we saw the Mexicana sign we figured we should get off the shuttle.

The international terminal at SFO is kinda boring... There was a bunch of annoying "kids" (you know, ages 20 to 25) that were also going to Cancun. Great. They were really loud and rowdy but the strangest thing was that they didn't seem to know each other much. They were really loud when we first boarded the plane, making jokes yelling at each other and stuff but when the plane took off the loudest of the bunch was out cold. He slept in the most awkward position with his head lolling forward. I hope he suffers severe neck pain. Not because I'm just plain mean, but because he really annoyed me.

Anyways, we got to Mexico city, most of the airport workers that dealt with people (this excludes maids and security) knew a little english. This helped because it meant I didn't have to break out my broken spanish just yet. Well, at least I thought it helped. The directions we got lead us to a baggage carousel where we patiently waited for our luggage. When our bags didn't show up and we were still waiting someone approached us(I didn't see many bags so I figured they just hadn't offloaded them all). I asked if they spoke english "Hablo Ingles?" they giggled, and told us yes. They directed us to our flight because our bags would be automatically transferred... hmm... when did we pass customs? Ok, whatever. Turns out they giggled because I should have said "Hablas Ingles?" and I more than likely said "I speak english?" the question mark must make it really funny. Hi! I'm not sure but I think I'm speaking english right now, do you know if that's right?

We got to the new terminal and it was the best terminal ever! The ground was dirty, the seats were dusty and the air had the smell of campfire and pooh. That's the kind of place I want to kill two hours in. So we wait because the electronic board says we should be at gate B. Seeing as we're standing at gate 19a,19b,19c and 19d we figure maybe we're in the right spot. A little while later a woman shows up at the information desk and tells us that terminal B is where we need to be, and that's trough the security checkpoint down the hall.

Mexicans have the best security. Toss your bag on the treadmill, it goes through the x-ray machine and you're done. Tada! Passed the security checkpoint the terminal greatly improved. There was food and shops, and the smell of pooh and campfire was a thing of the past. After deciding what to eat and never selecting any food we ended up in a 7-11 to buy some water. Then we headed to our flight. We were rejoined by the noisy "kids" since they too were headed to Cancun. They were much quieter this time, I guess an overnight flight and a 5am (3am our time) transfer really kicks you out of rowdy and excited mode.

The flight was ok except for a few REALLY annoying things. Apparently the chick sitting next to Trish kept elbowing her, that sucked. She didn't mention it to me until after the flight so I never did anything about it. The guy behind me kept putting their feet up into that little bag on the seat in front of you. So he was kinda kicking the back of my seat once in a while. When Trish put the armrest down between us the guy even put his foot on our armrest! Who the hell does that??!? Even people in movie theaters have more sense than putting their feet on someone else armrest. WTF?! So I elbowed his foot. He didn't move so I elbowed it harder. That got the message across. Then later in the flight he started whistling along with whatever music he was listening to... Some people are just born jerks. They probably don't even know why everyone thinks they're jerks. In their minds I'm sure putting their feet on someone else's armrest or whistling along to some obscure tune in a crowded plane is just normal. In my world, those people should be put in a zoo so that all the kids can point and say "look that guy has no manners" or "that one's funny mommy, he doesn't understand personal space". But that's life, jerks are everywhere.

We finally get to Cancun, we follow the signs to the baggage claim and as we had been warned, everyone asked us if we needed a taxi. As we were waiting for our baggage inside the terminal only the car rental shops and the tourist information people asked us if we needed a taxi. Our paper from the shuttle we booked warned us that there would be plenty of people asking us and to ignore them. We got our bags and finally we found the customs agents. Well, in Mexico city they gave us passport stamps, but this time it was the "search your bags" type of customs. The guy took our form (which said we had food with us) and then asked Trish to press the red button. The button was attached to what looked like a light post with two lights. Trish pressed the button and the green light came on spelling out PASS and so the custom agent waved us through the door. Now that's tight security. Are they using the light as an excuse? "I'm sorry sir, the light says I have to search all your belongings, please step this way. Don't mind the rubber gloves, it's all part of the process... now please take off your pants."

Well, we got a pass so out the door we went. Now I felt like a celebrity being hounded by the paparazzi on red carpet night. We walked out into a cordoned off area, on our side was the tourists, on the other side the taxi people. Instead of taking pictures they were saying "taxi! you need taxi? taxi!" Anyways, our paperwork described the guy we were looking for as a dude wearing a yellow shirt and blue pants with Thomas Moore logos on him. The guy who looked like that also had a Thomas Moore clip board. The paper also warned that the agent would only ask us for our voucher and that no money would be needed. That's what the guy did so we headed off with him. We ended up with six people all looking for Thomas Moore and so the clip board guy led us to the parking lot. In the parking lot one of the taxi guys tried to take a suitcase from a member of our group. The taxi guy pretended he was being helpful but clearly he was not with Thomas Moore. It's kinda creepy that they can be that pushy. Anyways, we made it to the hotel in one piece, so all is well.

One of the people that was also traveling from SFO to Cancun was this guy wearing a Brazil shirt. I was mentioning jerks earlier, and this guy was clearly one of em. Every time I saw him, on the plane, in the airport, at the customs lineup, it didn't matter... he was always chewing gum like a cow. He wasn't just chewing with his mouth open, he was chewing really big, as if he was trying to shove an apple in his mouth with every bite. In the taxi van he was sprawled all over until we had to cram all 6 of us in there. The he kept using my seat belt to pull himself up from slouching. And when he wasn't pulling himself up he was slouching so much and his knees were pressing on the back of my seat. When the first couple exited the cab (they were going to another resort) he started leaning forward and pointing at stuff through the front windshield between me and Trish. He would lean and then stick his arm over our seat and lean forward until his armpit was on the top of the seat. Not only that but he would cow-chew his gum the whole time. Sadly they are somewhere in our resort, hopefully we never see them again though.

So we get to the resort, our room won't be ready till noon, so we grab some food. It was pretty tasty. Then we go check in and the guy tells us that our room is on the ground floor. We ask and he says he can't change the room because it's already assigned. Apparently at this resort, you're subject to the whims of a computer. Our villa(room) is actually pretty big. Two bath, two bed, kitchen, living room. Sleeps probably 8, 10 if you have some really small friends. The master bedroom has a huge bed, then there's two doubles in the other room and two singles that are murphy beds. Murphy beds are the ones that you pull out of the wall.

The resort also has a cool scam. They validate your credit card for about $1000 and then your room key is used as a cash card. This way you never need cash on the resort, you just use your room key. You can use it at the restaurants, the bar, the pool bar, the mini mart, you can even use it at affiliated restaurants and resorts in the nearby area. If your card runs out, you can extend your credit the same way. This way you can't keep track of your spending! Awesome!

We napped and then checked out the area. The beach is rocky, big rocks with lots of sand and sea shells. The water is warm in both the pool and the ocean. The sun is killer. Super hot. I'll either get a massive tan or a massive sunburn or both by the end of the week.

For supper we hit the restaurant and it's all you can eat tacos for 200 pesos, about $15. So we got that. Trish had many shrimp tacos and I had tons of beef, pork and chicken tacos to go with my shrimp tacos. The cooks name was Julian, he cooked tacos to order. I chatted with him, he was using his broken english and I used my broken spanish. He asked me why I was speaking spanish and I told him I was practicing for when people didn't speak english. He was a cool guy, he helped me with my spanish, I helped him a little with english. He seemed to enjoy my strange requests, like mixing beef and pork into the same taco. Or some tacos without tortillas. He tried to give me directions to the market, but in the end I didn't really understand much. Though if you ask someone where to go to buy food or other things, they always answer Walmart first! Crazy. I came to Cancun to go to walmart.

Anyways, we took an evening swim and then slept. This morning we had an orientation session and the only really useful things were the maps we got and the warning about pickpockets. I also asked the guy about the best fish tacos in town, so we got directions to a couple of places. When we got back to our room there was a large iguana on our patio. So we're not complaining too much about being on the ground floor anymore. The iguana that Trish named Jorge (pronounced Hor-he in spanish) was pretty cool except for the massive crap he left on our patio. it's pretty much the size and shape of a sharpie pen. Thanks for the present Jorge.

We had lunch from stuff we bought at the mini-mart and headed to the 1pm welcome party. Apparently open bar in Cancun means all you can drink rum and coke or dos equis. Really what else would anyone want right? Oh well... it was pretty boring, we went to the pool instead and enjoyed our free drinks. One warning though, everything here is stone, and the sun makes the stone really really hot. If you take off your sandals you run the risk of burning your feet.

Well, so far so good. We're probably gonna go downtown and scope out Walmart because apparently it's the awesomest place on earth. You know... WALMART! woo!

Detroit / Chicago - Car Country!

Wow... I haven't blogged in forever. I thought I would have interesting things to talk about every week or so, but I don't. I guess that means my day to day life is kinda boring. I should get a new job, something with excitement, like a stunt man! At least my current job keeps me out of the hospital I guess. So it'll have to do.

One of the "perks" of my job is that sometimes they send me someplace to do something. I'm being pretty vague here because it's not always clear why I go places and what I'm supposed to do there. Seeing as they've sent me out twice since I started working here and neither times was it very clear what I was supposed to accomplish during the trip, I think it's a trend. I happen to like that trend of vague indications because it means I can never really fail. I mean the conversation would be something like this... "You didn't do what we sent you there to do!" "I did exactly what you sent me there to do!" "Really? What did we send you there to do?" and then the communication break down happens and everyone is happy.

Anyways, this time the flew me to Detroit to meet up with Ford. I can't really go into the details as to what we were doing as it's kinda secret. Don't bother asking on the blog because I won't reply... not that I don't read the comments because eventually I will. But I'm never really inclined to reply to them because I'm lazy like that.

The adventure starts way too early in the morning, something like 5am. I get up and go to the airport via taxi. The cab driver is the same guy that drove Rachel (my neighbor) to the airport a few months ago. He thought he drove me... the guy didn't remember me, he just remembered the building.

I get to the airport and I line up to check in. The trend in airports these days is to replace as many people as possible with computers and to charge you for everything they possibly can. So I walk up to the check in computer, it lets me PAY for my check in bag -$20 for a freaken checkin- and then it lets me pick my seat. I have choice of 3 seats, two of them are middle seats and one is the aisle seat. The only aisle seat available is in the last row by the toilets, but hey, it's better than a middle seat.

I go through security without any issues and find Peggy sitting at the gate waiting for the plane. So I tell her that I didn't have many seat choices and she tells me the same. So it turns out that she checked in 30mins earlier than me and got a completely different seat selection. Her only aisle seat was right next to mine... so we're sitting across the aisle from each other now. So the computer limits what seats you get to see or something. That's screwed up because it means that you'll have a crappy selection even if you decide to check in early. Freaken airlines, they suck.

The flight was crowded and whatnot. We finally got to the hotel, the Dearborn inn. The rooms were tiny, the place looked like a mansion. Turns out it was built by Henry Ford II. So it was probably a mansion transformed into a hotel. It was pretty nice though. We ask the desk guy where we can eat. He says we can go to downtown Dearborn and find some food there, but it's really far to walk. The bellhop offers us a ride since it's one of the services the hotel offers. Cool, let's go.

So downtown turns out to be 1.5 miles away from the hotel, and all the restaurants that the desk guy said were way too far to walk are pretty close to the ones he said "You could walk but it's far". Apparently his walking distance limit is 1.5 miles and 1.8 miles is way too far. Nobody walks in Detroit though, it's car country!

In any case, we walked. It was nice and cool out, a little humid, reminded me of home. We ate at Buddy's Pizza, they said they had soy cheese on the menu, but when I ordered it they didn't have any on hand. They did pile on the toppings to compensate. On the way back home a cop was totally scoping us out. He drove by twice and really really slow. He was probably thinking to himself "Oh! Pedestrians! Those two are up to no good for sure." Like I said, nobody walks in Detroit. He didn't stop us or pull us over, though he looked like he was going to at one point. The rest of the night was uneventful.

We wake up early the next morning to get to Ford by 8am. It's only a 10 minute walk. When we told the Ford people that we walked downtown they were pretty shocked. What's up with these people, they have legs but they avoid using them. The Ford building even has escalators, they look like they were built during the first world war, but they're still escalators. Even the ford people were astonished that we walked.

Well, it took forever to get the car ready and lunch rolled around while we were still in Detroit. So we ate sushi (Kevin totally did not like it, he barely ate) and then we left for Chicago. On the way down Kevin mentioned that we were meeting up with someone else down there. Little did we know that he would also be joining us, thus cramming 5 people in the car. Ugh.

So I won't bore you with details of the trip, because to be honest, it was boring. We worked long hours in the car, all 5 of us crammed in there. The ford people were the only ones allowed to drive the car, so they hogged the front seats the whole trip. They never even offered up the front seat after we started complaining about how crammed the car was. Most nights we got back to the hotel, went to supper and then slept. I roamed around downtown Chicago for a bit and found a few cool shops like the Lego store and a brain teaser store. So instead of details I'll give you highlights!

First I must complain about the traffic. Cyclist and pedestrians are suicidal. They run out in front of you or swerve all over the street without care. IDIOTS! Then the cars, they love their horn. If you don't hear a car honking at least once a minute, you're probably not in Chicago. And then buses. Buses live by the adage go big or go home. They think that they own the road because they can crush anything on the road. One bus was turning left from the right hand lane and cut right in front of us, Kevin had to slam on the breaks to avoid crashing into it. Let me tell you 5 people crammed in a car that is going from 40 to 0 in less than 2 seconds is NOT comfortable.

Anyways, through the crazy traffic we went to the zoo, because it was nice and open and FREE! We were only there to use the restrooms though... oh well. I did get to see lions, jaguars and a panther because the cat exhibit was right next to the bathrooms. Speaking of cats and bathrooms, there was a giant lion loaf on one of the rocks. Holy crap indeed, those lions don't mess around when they're dropping the bomb. It was huge!

There's a thing in Chicago referred to as "the bean". It's a big stainless steel sculpture that's super reflective. The cool part about it is that it's shaped kinda like a bean or a red blood cell. The shape makes all sorts of crazy reflections, and if you go under it there's a reflective funnel going into the middle of the bean and it makes things go a little crazy. I swear you could get motion sick just standing in there.

The city reminded me a bit of Manhattan because of all the tall buildings. It's nowhere near as big as that but still pretty impressive. We drove around a lot in the city but one day we went into the suburbs. I don't know who picked the suburb we went to but it must have been the rich burb. They had garages the size of houses and houses the size of hotels. Even their shops were huge. They had a giant Costco I swear you would need a golf cart to get around it all. They even had a games workshop in one of the malls with a 12 foot space marine figure standing out front! Crazy land I tell you.

Back in downtown Chicago we spotted a castle. Well a fake castle, but whatever. It turned out to be a tourist information center. How cool is that, total tourist trap "Hey a castle!" but it's meant for tourist cus it's the information center! Genius! Anyways, it was closed, but it didn't look much like a castle inside sadly. And to add to the feel that you were near a castle they had old school horse wagon rides, with real horses. And real horse poop. Horse poop smells.

Apart from the fancy restaurants (Andrea always liked to go to fancy places) and the evenings spent roaming the streets the trip was all business. That kinda sucked. The ride back to Detroit was welcomed by all. Back at the hotel in Detroit Peggy and I took a nap and a swim, the outdoor pool was great. Then we went off to find some food, more sushi, this all American diet was killing us.

The next day we started late, wasted time at the ford building and then headed to the airport. The flight back was even more crowded than the flight there. The second leg of my flight was overbooked by 12 people! I had an aisle seat again, so that was ok. I got to San Jose a bit early but I had to wait forever at the baggage claim. That's right, my bag never showed. I talked to the baggage claim girl, she called Phoenix. My bag was in Phoenix, it never made it on the plane, so now it's melting away in 110 degree weather.

Funny story about my bag though. Seeing as "it never made it on the plane". Well, I boarded a plane in Detroit, landed in Phoenix and then they told us: "If you're staying with us until San Jose, feel free to leave your carry-on on board as we'll be using the same plane." So I got off, grabbed some food and got back on the plane. Meanwhile some baggage handler underneath the plane took my bag out of the cargo hold and just tossed it somewhere?? I don't get it. Shouldn't they have just left my bag on the plane? Airlines suck ass.

The moral of this story is: If your project manager says "Hey Jonathan, would you like to go to Chicago? We really need someone to go." He's not offering you a paid vacation, it's probably gonna be boring. It wasn't boring all the time (otherwise I wouldn't blog about it) but it involved a whole lot of sitting around and waiting for something to happen.

San Jose - Alliance of GEEKS!

So... Last weekend was fun. Saturday was "game day". And no, it doesn't have anything to do with sports. As you probably know I'm a well adjusted geek who has a social life and friends and stuff... but once in a while I like to geek out. Saturday was such an occasion.

The day started out around 10am in Belgatos park. There was a bunch of kids playing in the kiddy park, some people going for hikes and bike rides and only a few gamers. Paul and Cat were sitting on the picnic table that was going to be "monster camp" patiently waiting for people to arrive. The wait is part of the game I guess, because I've never seen one of these start at the arranged time. Honestly, geeks are just as late as the rest of the world...

By 10:30 enough people had shown up that we could start what is called "logistics". Basically people get their character sheets and associated tags to play the game. If you've never heard of Alliance, it's pretty simple. It's like Dungeons and Dragons, except it's "live action" so basically people get dressed up, and then beat each other up with foam weapons.

Each player has statistics that represent who they are in the world of Alliance, the longer they've been playing, the more powerful they are. Tags are little pieces of paper that represent your spells, potions, armor, life points, pretty much anything you can do uses a tag. Then there's physreps or physical representations. These are things you wear and use. If you character is wearing leather armor, you better be wearing leather armor yourself. If you have a sword tag, you need a "real" sword to go with it. A real sword would be dangerous, so we use "real" swords. By "real" I mean something made out of PVC pipe or bamboo and then covered in insulation foam, so it's pretty soft.

So now that Paul is wearing chainmail and Cat is wearing some flowery outfit and they have their logistics package, they're ready to play. There's also Snag, an ogre, he paints his face yellow and he should have some fangs but they broke last game, so he needs new ones. There's a couple of stone elves, face painted white, black lipstick and spell bags at the ready. Oh right, if you're casting spells or shooting arrows, you need "packets" they're little bean bags that you throw at people. You say some magic words, throw the bean bag and if you hit them with the bag, you hit them with the spell.

So I'm just helping out, I'm not wearing anything except black jogging pants and a black shirt. No fancy costume for me yet because I'm an NPC, non-player character. That means I unlike the players, do not have a character. So I'm not Snag the ogre or Legatho the ranger. My job is to be everyone they meet. Once logistics is done we start up with devious plans on how to kill the players. Kinda. Well, to be honest it's not really our choice. We're the "hired" help. We're not really hired cus we don't get paid. We just play the roles of monsters as deemed necessary by the powers that be... aka. staff members.

So our first "mod" or module of the day is split into two because there's low level players and high level players. If you don't know why I would be referring to low and high levels, then you should invest in more video games. So I went on the high level module because that's where I was needed. The plan was pretty confusing actually. The staff member had to explain it to us quite a few times. I did learn something new though. Brandon is not very good at explaining things. Yup, that's about all I learned from his explanation.

Here's the plot: First we're caravan guards who fought off some bandits, but during the whole turmoil, the bandit leader mind controlled us all with magical potions. Lucky for us the potions are of short duration. Now the caravan is running late, so someone mentions this to the players who are patiently waiting in the "inn" (another picnic table in the park). The players come upon us and see us hanging around the few wagons that make up the caravan. In reality what the players see is 6 guys dressed up in varying degrees of "in period" clothing with foam weapons and bean bags in hand. No wagons in sight. Using your imagination is a requirement for this game. I had on a medieval shirt over my black t-shirt, a belt, a hand full of bean bags and a foam sword in my belt.

I was a "templar", the easiest way to explain this is... first forget everything you know about templars, it's just a name. Ok... now, imagine a medieval fighter with sword and shield... good... now add magic! Perfect! Half magic guy half fighter... with a can of whoop-ass in tow.

The plan according to Brandon was quite simple. The players would attack us, then the big bad guy that controlled all the caravan guards would run away. But before running away he would turn one of the guards into an undead zombie of doom. Then once the players have killed us and revived us (you can do that in this game), we would tell them that the big bad guy was actually with the bandits and we would tell him were the bandits were.

Even the best laid plans go awry, and this one was far from being well laid in any sense. So it went really wrong. First off, the players didn't attack us, they talked to us. We told them we got stranded and we just wanted to get back on our way. Then when Brandon (who was playing the big bad guy) noticed that nobody was fighting he killed one of the guards himself and then turn him into a zombie of doom. As the players fought the zombie of doom, we ran away. He ordered us to defend him which should lead to us attacking the players but since the players were fighting the zombie, they let us run away.

So, 8 minutes elapse, the players have cured the guy afflicted of being a zombie of doom. He's now back to normal. Our mind control potions have worn off so we went back to the caravan. Now the players are all skeptical because we ran off with the big bad guy. So they pretty much make us captives and walk us back to town. Never asking us anything. So much for the bandits... Once we get to town they turn us over to the town guards and have us interrogated. Yay, back to bandit land. Notice that at this point almost nobody has even swung a blow.

So we went to set up as bandits and we just kept the same stats and skills since we didn't really fight. I was still a templar dude. This time we went up a trail until we found some shade. Belgatos park is pretty hilly so finding a good ambush spot was easy. Again the players started by asking questions when they found us. We did our best to confuse them, telling them that we were merchants and whatnot. Very entertaining.

Then the fight broke out. "With mystic force I bind you" I yell and toss a packet at the nearest fighter. He's hit but he has a spell shield. "Spell shield" he yells back. No problem that was a cheap spell anyways. "I summon a force to shatter your shield" and hit him again. No spell shield this time, so his physical shield is destroyed. He drops his wood and foam shield to the side, as it's now useless to him. He slips behind the ranks and his friends step up. Casters this time. So there's a lot of "Spell shield! I grant you the power of a spell shield" which means that my spell was cancelled by his spell shield and he cast another one in its place. I swear we must look like idiots playing this. Two groups of grown men yelling things like "With eldritch force I build a prison" and then throwing bean bags at each other. On the other side the person tries to dodge the bean bag. Sometimes there's stuff like "What spell just hit me?" -"Flame bolt" -"Oh, uh, Resist!" -"ok". Then once the spells start to dwindle and some people are pinned, bound, confined, slept, dead, whatever. The ranks close up and people start swinging.

"Prepare to die" I say. Not because it's a cool thing to say right before you start fighting, but because that's how fighters activate their powers. Now that I've said prepare to die I can follow up with "50 slay" or "Disarm weapon" or other fancy sounding things. I open with "50 slay" which means I swing for 50 damage, and it's a slay attack. I hit a shield, so it's blocked, "50 slay" again and I hit the guy in the side. "Riposte" he says, now my attack has been turned against me so I say "Parry" and the attack is gone. I follow up with "6 normal" I swing for 6 damage and it's not magical or flame or ice damage, it's just normal damage. You have to say what you swing so that people know how to react and how much damage to take. The fight goes on for a bit and I get hit with a confine spell and all my spell defenses are exhausted so I'm stuck I can't move.

The fight finally ends and the players have won. The player I knocked unconscious is woken up and the victims of my spells are cured. They drag us into town for more information. That's pretty much how the day goes. There was also some gambling, I learned a new dice game called 421. I was a shop keep that went to the inn for a quick gambling game. I lost a few silver coins to the players but another NPC won a few gold from another game.

So more of the same, barbarians defending a cave... dark ones inside the cave. Spirits defending the tomb inside the cave. All of these with some fighting and some killing. We inadvertently ended up killing a PC because the medics couldn't get to him in time to heal him. He died too close to the monsters and we pushed the line back over his body. So basically he lay there in the grass for 5 minutes and then that was it, his character was dead. Well, he had to go to the resurrection circle and have a death marked on his character sheet. You can only resurrect so many times... didn't you know? Heh.

As a side note, the little kids in the kiddy park liked to watch us play. And the people having a picnic also found us entertaining. So really, it was fun all around. I would probably feel foolish wearing chainmail in a park by myself. But if there's 15 other guys there also wearing strange looking things, I wouldn't care much. On the flip side, if I saw one person wearing chainmail in the park I would avoid them like the plague. But if I saw a group I would assume that they're an acting troupe or they're playing a game.

All in all a great day and a good workout. Lots of fun... you should try it... really... you should! If you want to know more, apparently there's a movie called role models that came out with some LARPing in it... that's Live Action Role Play ing. Come join the geeks! You know you want to.

San Francisco - The Hip

The Tragically Hip aren't that popular in the states. Most people haven't heard of them, so when they came to play in San Francisco, the tickets were pretty cheap. Trish, Brian and I decided we would go to the concert. We got talking to people about it and Derek and Julia decided they would join us. Julia's a girl we met at a Trews concert a while back (again, nobody here has heard of the Trews).

Anyways, so the idea was that Derek would come by our place then we'd go pick up Julia, then Brian and then meet Jennifer for supper. Jennifer wasn't going to the concert, but she wanted to join us for supper. And so that's how it all started. Someone once said, and I quote very loosely here, that "Even the best laid plans turn to shit".

Trish and I were running a little late, and Trish asked Derek to grab her some Starbucks on the way over. At the Starbucks, Derek realized that he forgot his ticket at home!!! DOH! Now he was at the Starbucks right by our place, so he delivered Trish's coffee, he had already ordered and paid before he realized the ticket was missing. So he stops by our place and we make plans to meet at Brian's place in an hour.

Trish and I take off and grab Julia at her place. Julia lives on a busy street, so I wasn't able to go in the correct direction when pulling out of her driveway. But she assured me that if I kept going straight I could grab the highway and we'd be going the right way. Well, that turned out to be true eventually. But the ride was rather long. In the end it didn't matter because we got to Brian's before Derek, but still. I mean, it's true that we can do a U-turn 5 miles down the road, but why not do it right now seeing as we're driving in the wrong direction. Oh and if you ever read this Julia, I hope you're not too offended. You have every right to be offended, but really, it won't do much in the long run. I wrote it on the Internet, so that makes it 100% true, even if you're offended.

On the ride down to Brian's place, we learn a bit about Julia. Seeing as this was the second time I talked to this girl, there was a lot of stuff I didn't know. Not that I really know her that much now, but I know her better than I did. Turns out she's a chemist working in pharma who doesn't really enjoy her job and wants to move back to Canada. She wants to go to Ottawa or Toronto and find a job there. This reminded me of another person, Brian. Brian is a chemist working in biofuels, who wishes he was working in pharma who currently doesn't really enjoy is job. He moved to the states from Ottawa to get a job. When there's 5 people in a group, what are the odds that two people do practically the same job? Especially when that job doesn't involve programming computers, because everyone and their dog does this in silicon valley.

We get to Brian's and wait for Derek. Derek arrives not much later, we pile into the car and take off. Construction or not, there should not be any traffic on a Saturday at 6pm. But this is San Francisco, so of course there's traffic, why wouldn't there be? Stuck in traffic and running late for your supper appointment, what do you do?

Step one, text message your contact at the restaurant. In our case this was Jennifer, who was already sitting at a table for six. It started out as a table for eight, but two people had already texted her that they were bailing. She ended up alone at a table for six.
Step two, go online and find the menu. The restaurant we were heading to had an online menu, so we could read the menu on a phone.
Step three, figure out what everyone wants to eat. This sounds easy, but we were heading to a French restaurant that was obnoxiously snooty enough to have the menu be in french with a crappy English translation. This would normally not be a problem since most of you know that I am fluent in french. But I was driving. Reading a menu on a cell phone and driving on a traffic filled highway is not recommended by the Surgeon General in any circumstance. So I didn't. We did eventually figure out what people wanted to eat.
Step four, text your contact at the restaurant your final order so that she can pass it on to the waiter. This was apparently quite amusing to the waiter, who thought we were all crazy.

So we finally got there and found parking. We parked in a construction zone that said no parking until 6pm, it was 6:30 so we parked there. Quick walk to the restaurant, and on to our table. Turns out that ordering online didn't really save us time cus I'm 100% sure that they didn't start cooking until after we arrived. It took a good 15-20 minutes for our food to arrive, and no, cooking filet mignon does not take 30 minutes.

The food was really tasty, but the portions were very much on the small side. For $25 I expect to have a decent amount of food. I wasn't expecting a 6 ounce filet mignon with a thimble full of diced veggies and four fries made of chick peas. After supper Trish and I split a chocolate fondue which was pretty good as well. It was tasty, but I don't recommend this place, not that I could recommend it, because I don't remember what it was called. So avoid the french restaurant near the Fillmore at all costs! Unless of course you already ate before going there.

We get to the Fillmore at around 8:15, and there's no lineup to get in. The place is like a huge gymnasium, and it's mostly empty. We head towards the stage and hang out with the small crowd there. The place started to fill up over the next 45 minutes, and by the time the band hit the stage it was crowded. The Hip played two sets with a short break in between. The music was awesome, loud, but not ear splitting loud. The show was really good, and we had a lot of fun.

The band was big, Gordie was singing and sometimes playing guitar. They had 2 other guys on guitars, one on base, a keyboard and a drummer. I don't really know the band members, mostly because I don't care, but I'm not sure if they were all the permanent fixtures that make up the Hip. Trish would know, so if you really care, you can ask her. I expected just your regular four man crew, so I was a little surprised.

Gordie was hilarious, making all sorts of pantomimes, like pretending to clean a window, or shoot buffalo and stuff like that. But dude does that guy ever sweat! He kept wiping himself with a white handkerchief and then throwing it into the crowd. But honestly, would you want a dripping wet rag that someone just wiped himself with? The answer for most of the people there was yes, my answer was "hell no". Dude looked like he took a shower with his clothes on and forgot to towel off. Sweat dripped from his face, and ran like a faucet at his elbows. It made for a pretty entertaining night, but still, I would not want his sweat rags, ever. Well maybe if I could e-bay them for millions.

The show was good and most of the fans were fun, but there were some exceptions. Why the hell would you get stumbling drunk if beers cost $12 a pop? Who knows but a lot of people did. During the first act, there was one guy headbanging to Hip music. If you don't know what kind of music The Tragically Hip play, you can stop reading now, and go listen to a track or two before continuing. So this headbanger was making an ass of himself and he headbutts a couple of people on accident. The first person moved away and the second person turned out to be a bit beefy. Beefy guy looked like he was ready to beat headbanger into the floor, but headbanger had an equally beefy friend. So they talked and headbanger was moved away by his friend. He continued to make an ass of himself but he stopped headbanging and started hugging people at random and dancing with them. That didn't go over well either. So he ended up just dancing by himself and bumping into people.

During the break headbanger disappeared, but sadly he was replaced by super tall jerk guy. This guy had to be 6'8" and crazy skinny, but he was also crazy drunk and jumping up and down. Trish traded spots with me because he was being a dumbass. I elbowed him in the back a few times when he started jumping too close to me, but he'd just start jumping forward. I guess I wasn't hitting him hard enough for him to get the message. He kinda moved forward in the end so he wasn't my problem anymore.

Then some drunk girls were hugging random people and each other. Dancing all over the place and acting pretty slutty. It was pretty hilarious (to me anyways) when they collided with super drunk lecherous guy. He just grabbed on to them and started dancing with them. And from where I was standing he was pretty much humping their legs. Especially when the girls started jumping along with the music... this guy pretty much leaned back and let the girls jump up and down against his crotch. Like I said hilarious!

All these idiots didn't deter us from having a good time though. The music was good, the band was cool, they even did an encore. Though it's kinda lame when you can see the roadies fixing up the stage for the encore. The band walks off stage and the roadies immediately started tuning guitars and changing out microphones. It was pretty obvious they were coming right back.

The biggest problem of the night was heat. Everything was hot, everyone was sweating, not just Gordie. Derek and Brian found a cool spot by the door after the intermission, so we had to find them at the end of the night. One thing that was pretty funny and a little gross was that My skin on my arms was kinda peeling from the sun. And because I was sweating, the sweat made bubbles of dead skin with sweat inside them on my arms. They looked a little like blisters, but didn't hurt at all when they popped. Like I said, a little gross, but kinda funny.

So anyways, we left and went to a Belgian style pub for a glass. The place was pretty cool, but the bathrooms were covered floor to ceiling with graffiti. The only spots unmarked were the sink and the toilet. Everything else, including the soap and towel dispensers were covered. I had a dark beer and only paid $3 for it... not sure if the guy gave me the wrong change or not because I didn't know how much it was. It was Moonlight Black Lager or something like that, and it was pretty tasty.

A couple hours later and we were heading back home. I crawled into bed at around 3am... Sunday I woke up late, played on the computer for a bit and then went to Safeway for food. By the time breakfast was cooked it was 5pm... strange day.

One last note, I was trying to type "shift-w" to get a W to type "Well that's it for now" or something like that. Instead I hit "ctrl-w" which is close tab in FireFox... interesting, but kinda crappy. Thanks blogger for auto-saving all the time!

San Francisco - Sunny Crawfish

Well, it's been a while since I last blogged something so I figured I'd blog about last weekend. Sadly, last weekend was double booked. I wanted to go to Alliance, a game where people pretend to be medieval adventures and hit each other with swords made out of plumbing supplies. Unfortunately, I had already booked the weekend for the Crawfish boil in San Fran.

I say unfortunately, but really the Crawfish boil was lots of fun, the only problem was that there was nobody to hit with insulation foam. We got up with the intent of getting to the city by 10:30am, the boil started at 11, but we wanted to be there a little early to organize things. By the time we really got going though, there was no way we'd be there before 11.

The weather underground page said that it would be cool and cloudy, so I wore shorts and a t-shirt. I mean, cool and cloudy for San Fran is 15 degrees Celsius and a bit of fog. I'd rather be cold than hot, so light clothes it is. Trish brought a hoodie and a scarf, just in case. We got there in the fog but by the time we found parking, the fog lifted and the sun came out to play.

We go in the crawfish boil and it was about 4 times bigger than last year. 8 tables instead of 2 and tons of the tasty little crawdads boiling away in giant pots. We set up our chairs and start eating. Brian, Antonio, Jaxs and Darren join us. There was also a new guy, but again, I don't remember his name. Sucks to be the new guy, but my memory is like Swiss cheese, and he landed in a hole. We'll call the new guy Jim, because I'm 100% sure that his name is NOT Jim.

We had good food, crappy beer, and lots of sun. Even though the saying goes "Free beer is good beer" that's not 100% accurate. When the only free beer is Miller Highlife and Pabst Blue Ribbon, it's just free beer, not to be confused with good beer. They also had some free red bull, but I prefer crappy beer over red bull any day.

So, 7 people present, eating crawfish and drinking beer. Guess how many people forgot to bring sun screen... that's right! 7! DOH! So, as it goes, hanging out in the sun from 11am to 5pm without sun screen will get you a pretty solid sun burn on all exposed flesh. My arms are toasty red, except for a strip on my left wrist where I wore the arm band that said I was allowed to eat. My face is pretty red, my nose is peeling, but as a bonus my hair protected my neck and ears! My legs are a little red too, but my arms got the brunt of the burn.

Was it worth it you ask? Of course it was! I hung out there eating crawfish for 6 hours! Yummy crawfish, with some corn and potatoes. There was also some people watching to be had. One guy had some sort of "I can't shut up" syndrome and he kept on babbling about stuff. "This girl looks like a young Jenna Jameson, you know that porn star and did you know that Alcatraz was a fort before it was a prison, that's how the defended the bay." Dude, lay off the crack and collect your thoughts before you speak. Porn stars and forts are not related and should not be part of the same sentence.

One of the girls in the same group as babbling guy had plumbers butt. Why is it that when guys have their pants so low that you can see the crack people are always going "eww, plumbers butt", but when girls have the same problem, people don't seem to mind one bit? Seems a little sexist to me. Then there was also a couple that had two dogs. A big mastiff or something, I'm not a dog person so if I got the breed wrong, that's just too bad. The only real questions I have about dogs now are related to eating them, but I digress. Their other dog was a little black thing with puffy hair. It was hillarious, the size of a football, probably closer to a softball if you soaked it in water. Super poofy hair dog was a little hyper and it was really funny when it ran around.

Anyways, we left around 5pm, mostly full of crawfish. I say mostly full because of the effort it takes to eat the stuff. I don't think you can get full of crawfish unless it's shelled for you. We had a great day, lots of fun and too much sun. So now I'm looking a little like tomato face guy and my chest is SUPER white compared to my arms but I'll survive. I'll have to even out my tan someday, maybe when I go to the pool next time I'll put SPF 75 on my arms and face and SPF 10 on the rest of me.

Well, next year you should all come to the crawfish boil cus it's awesome, and I won't forget sunscreen. Stayed tuned, because on the 20th I get to go to an Alliance day event, so I'll be beating people with foam padded pipe and I'll write a blog about it.

Palm Springs - Capital Retirement

So this story starts on Thursday last week. I was bored and Trish was only back on Friday so I had a Thursday evening to kill. Fortunately, Rachel wasn't busy. So we eat supper and decide to go watch Terminator Salvation. We guilt trip Adam into joining us. I mean, dude, you're not working so bedtime doesn't mean much!

So Adam joins us, we meet at Century 22. Now the name would have me believe that they have 22 screens there to show movies. That assumption would be wrong though. They have 1 screen. They have 3 theaters though, Century 21, 22 and 23. I think 23 has 2 screens. Anyways, I wasn't there to watch the theater, I was there to watch the movie.

During the movie they mention Bakersfield and show a bombed out desolate little place. Rachel leans over laughing and she says "It looks just like the real Bakersfield". Funny thing is, Trish and I are headed to bakers field on Saturday. So we watch the rest of the movie. After the movie I'm a little hungry, so we figure we'll hit Jack in the Box. I've never eaten at Jack in the Box, and I figure I should try all the US fast food chains while I have the chance.

We get to Jack in the Box, but it's closed. Well the drive-thru window is open, but we want to sit down. Why do they call it Drive-thru anyways? Thru is not a word. Would people get confused if they wrote it Drive-through, would they not know what a "throw-ugah" is or something. Are people that dumb that "through" has to be shortened to "thru". If we're gonna put stupid signs like that up, we shouldn't complain that kids can't spell worth shit. That reminds me of the movie "Idiocracy" hehe "Would you like a big ass fries with that?"

So anyways, Rachel says that she knows a place... the Mini Gourmet. So we head there. This place reeks of class. The bathrooms are outside and they're coin operated, but not any coin, they give you coins inside that fit in the hole for the toilet. Interesting. We go in and get a seat. Normally diners and greasy spoons are cheap, but hey, when you own the only place that's open past midnight you can jack up the prices. I wonder if they have a late night menu and a day menu. The same menu with different prices... who knows.

We're feeling cheap, so we split a sampler platter. Ten bucks of deep fried goodness. Well, the zucchini sticks were ok, the mozza sticks I'm told were edible. The onion rings were tasty but there wasn't very many and the jalapeno poppers were so awesome that Adam almost spat it out on the table. So really, we woulda been better off taking a bit longer and going to taco bravo or something.

Let's skip to Friday, I work, eat, wait around and go pick up Trish at the airport. Trish is jet lagged and tired so she's not the happiest camper. Also her bags are laced with lead or something, cus they're crazy heavy.

Saturday, Trish wakes up early (still jet lagged), I don't cus I'm like that. We packs and take off for Bakersfield! Woo vacation. So we drive for four hours to get to a piss ant town that pretty much looks like Bakersfield in the movie. With less explosive goodness. Which made it kinda dull. We got some sleep and ate breakfast at Carrows and then hit the road. A few hours later we make it to Palm Springs.

American drivers are in some ways worse than Chinese drivers. Chinese drivers worm their way in a very illegal and dangerous fashion towards their goal. But they are aware of their surroundings. American drivers are oblivious. They love to drive in the left lane, doesn't matter that people are passing them on the right, or zooming past them as they joy ride in the fast lane. It doesn't matter to them if people behind them are going crazy or whatever, who cares, they're driving along in their lane. Then the guys passing them are no better, they swerve around like idiots, cutting off big rigs, or squeezing into tiny spots. If they cause an accident and they aren't part of it, who cares. Americans are self centered drivers (maybe I coulda left the word drivers out, but whatever). Oh and for all you Americans reading this, I know I'm generalizing, but some of you are guilty of this very thing, so whatever.

We get to Palm Springs and the first thing I notice is that downtown is less than impressive. We find the resort (Telenav missed a turn... who the hell works on the merging... oh right, me). We check in... how many towel cards would you like? WTF? Towel cards? So you get these cards that you trade in at the pool for towels, then when you're done at the pool, you trade the wet towels back for cards. If you don't have the same amount of cards when you check out, they charge you $10 per card. Who the hell came up with this plan? So stupid. She tells me that for a one bedroom place I can have 4 towel cards, so I say I'll take 4. I then have to sign a paper saying I got the 4 cards, but the paper clearly states that you can only have 1 card per person. So apparently my two invisible friends can have towels too, cool. Then she asks how many room key cards we'd like. I say 2, so she says "Ok so I'll give you 3". They have one of the power saver key card things, you have to put a card in the wall for the power to work in the room. So she gives me an extra card to put in the wall, so I never have to take it out. Sound plan, right, leaving the card in the wall clearly saves power. Also the card does not control the kitchen or the AC, so the dishwasher and fridge still work without the card, as does the AC. Interesting.

So we get to our room, it's pretty nice, they say it's like a 5 star hotel, it's not. But it's still good, probably between a 3 and 4 star. No everyday maid service though, but you get a full kitchen and a mountain of towels. So everything is cool. At this point we decide that neither of us want to cook anything, not that we really have anything to cook anyways, so we're better off going to eat someplace and then grabbing some food to cook.

Trish finds an all you can eat sushi place that looks pretty good, and with our room card we get a 20% discount. So we head there... I don't remember the name of the place, mostly because that's what I do; forget the name of places or people. So we get there, and we grab a seat at the sushi bar because we'd have to wait for a table otherwise. Turns out that the sushi bar was a cool idea because the sushi chef asks us right away what we'd like to eat. So I order just a couple of pieces of salmon and a couple of pieces of tuna. The fish was really good. Now here's a question... where do you get fish from when you're in Palm Springs. I mean, there's no water anywhere. The town is pretty much an artificial oasis in the middle of the desert.

Anyways, we eat some good sushi... the fish must have been frozen on the ship and flown in to Palm Springs pretty fast cus it tasted pretty fresh. We head to Ralphs grocery or something like that. It's a Safeway, you even need a "Ralphs card" or something like that. I understand that people want to get some data mining information out of my purchases, but how relevant is tourist purchases to these guys? I mean I bought eggs, bread, orange juice and premade salad. I assume that my purchases will fit right in with the demographic of what normal people buy at 9pm on a Sunday. Yup, everyone buys that on Sunday night.

So we head back to the ranch, and put our food away. We were gonna go for a late night swim, the pool closes at 10, but we were tired so we just went to bed. Trish still had some of that awesome fun jetlag stuff! Woot. Due to said jetlag, Trish woke up really early and decided to make breakfast. She made eggs and dirty rice (that's rice with beans in it, get your mind out of the gutter). Monday was gonna be our day of slacking.

So we head to the pool for a swim after breakfast. I'm crazy pale and my arms don't match the rest of me, so I tried to even out my tan. We did kinda notice that there weren't very many attractive people there. You had a good selection of jailbait or old people, almost nobody in our age range. Tons of kids though. You gotta wonder why everyone wants kids. They look cute when they're babies, but they cry. Then you wait for them to become interactive, but once they hit "interactive" mode, they cause trouble. Then they get older and move on to the "know-it-all" phase and well, that's even worse. And by the time they're reasonable, they're moving out. I was a kid once, I realize how much trouble I caused my parents... well I guess if everyone thought like me, we'd be extinct by now.

So after a little bit of sun and fun at the pool, we head out to meet Trish's Lola (grandma) for lunch. Now this lady is around 80 years old. She's crazy short, maybe 4'10" on a good day. She made Trish look tall. But she seems to be in really good shape and really active. When I'm 80 I wanna be that active (or more active). She lives in Palm Springs (along with most of the retired population of the US) because it's warm and dry. Humidity and cold make her bones hurt or some such. She'd love Ottawa in the winter, that's for sure!

We head downtown, because she doesn't really know the restaurants around, she's more of a cook at home or go to Denny's type of girl. Downtown is small and not very exciting. Most of the outdoor patios have mist things that make a cloud of mist overhead. I guess it keeps people cool, but it pretty much evaporates right away so it never hits your table. We went to the Fisherman's Market or something named kinda like that. We look for someone to seat us, don't see anybody, ok... no problem. We grab a table and sit down. After a couple of minutes of wait, a waitress stops by. "Is this your first time here?" that obvious huh? "You have to go in the other building, order your food there and pay for it, then tell them your table number and then we'll bring the food out to you." Ok simple enough, but the menu's are in the other building too. Thanks lady, you were no help at all.

So I go grab some menus, most of the conversation is in Tagalog anyways, so I have no clue what's being said anyways. I come back with the menu and we start looking through it. Half the stuff has no price, cus it's seasonal or some shit like that. Everyone makes their selection and since I'm the honorary waiter, I head to the other building again. I walk in the "Exit only" door because I can't see the entrance door. The first time nobody noticed, but this time I totally freak out some poor kid. He's all "can I help you sir?" with a confused look on his face. Like it's the first time some tourist totally ignores their rules and walks in the out door. I look at him and calmly say "I'm here to order some food." The guy looks at me and then the light bulb goes on, "Oh, you have to line up here!" No duh kid, maybe you shoulda stayed in high school and improved your social skills. Or at least learn to fake like you know what's going on.

So I line up to order some food, I thought it was a long line, but it turned out to be one group of 8 people who were not organized enough to pick what they wanted to eat before heading to the cash register. It did take a while seeing as they had to ask each other what they were eating and then tell the cashier type chick. As if she didn't overhear your long drawn out conversation. Once those guys were out of my way, I order some food and head back to the table. Trish and Lola (I'll keep calling her Lola which means Grandma in Tagalog because I've forgotten her name). Anyways, Trish and Lola were chatting away in Taglish and assumed that I would understand. Thanks, really... throw in one or two English words every now and again and clearly I will understand everything.

Lunch was pretty fun though, Lola is pretty nice. I don't know that I would hang around with her in my spare time, but I'd visit her again. After lunch we dropped Lola off at home, she invited us to come up to her tiny apartment. We looked at some pictures for a bit and then took off. We headed back to the hotel and decided to hit the pool again. Like I said, Monday was to be a lazy day. This time there was a few good looking girls, and possibly guys if I'm to believe Trish, but not too many. Still mostly kids.

We got some sun, then Trish cooked some pasta. Supper was good. I wanted to head out for a walk, but Trish was tired. She went to bed, and seeing as I had nothing better to do, I went out. The adventure started with my keycard not working for the pool area. It kinda sucked because I wanted to see the pool at night, well up close anyways. Instead I got to see it from 20 feet away. I walked around, and there wasn't much of anything that was interesting. A few couples making out in the pool (I hope they clean it in the morning). A few workers cleaning out the trash and that was about it. I saw a couple rabbits, no hat-trick of rabbits though.

The next morning Trish and I went to the pool again. Huge difference, I guess the kiddies were just there for the long weekend. This time it was mostly adults (mostly old adults but whatever). We got a bit of sun, took a little swim and then headed in. We packed and left. We stopped by some outlet malls, huge place, lots of stores, I bought two pairs of shoes to replace the pair I had that was full of holes. Then it took us about 8 hours to get back home, traffic was light, drive was smooth, etc etc.

Now that I've been to Palm Springs I don't feel the need to ever return. I mean, it's nice and hot and dry. And well, there's nothing to do there really. Some people might argue that you could take the tram up the mountain. Woop. I'm sure it's nice and beautiful. But if I'm gonna go on a vacation someplace, I don't want to have to look somewhere for entertainment, I want it to be thrust upon me. So maybe Mexico will be better. Swine flu aside, I hear it's pretty cool.

Shanghai Return - the flight home

Well, this will be the last entry on my trip to Shanghai, seeing as I'm back home now. The day started when I woke up. I guess the day really started with me sleeping, but for me, it started when I woke up.

I grabbed breakfast at the hotel today, same old same old. I had some meat dumplings and some fruit. I smiled at the cute waitress that's always there. I think I saw her in the "lady club" a few days back, but I can't be sure. Most of these Chinese women look similar to me. I could probably just bucket them into a few categories based on body type and face shape. In any case I didn't get a good look at the girl in the lady club cus I tend to avoid looking down the hall for too long. They seem so excited to see a guy walking towards their door, it's kinda creepy. Who knows what kind of massage they give there.

Anyways, I'm not sure the cute waitress understood that when I said goodbye, I really meant goodbye. I never said goodbye to her before, I just said thanks or xie xie. So maybe she clued in. If not she'll clue in after a couple of days of me not showing up. But really, who cares, I don't even know her name.

I head downstairs with all my stuff and check out. The bill was a staggering 5670 rmb. Roughly $850. Once that's done I ask the bellhop type dude to order me a cab to the airport. He says, in a horrible English, that it'll be 10 minutes. Ok, no problem, I have lots of time. I have lots of time you see because my stupid plane is delayed until 4pm. I called the airport just before checking out from the hotel. The airport says that I should still check in at the correct time, but I could call back at 10am and see what the latest time to check in is.

That's very sweet of them, giving me until 10am, but here's the problem. The plane leaves at 12:25 normally, that means that I have to check in by about 10:30. It takes an hour to get to the airport. So if, miraculously the plane is fixed and I call at 10, and they say oh yeah the latest you can check in is 10:30 or even 11, I'm screwed. So I got a cab.

The cabby was late, like 20 minutes late. Dude told me 10 minutes, so I sat in the lounge area. Some dude was chain smoking in there, but the ceiling is really high and the air flow was such that the smoke never reached me much. It smelled a little like cloves. Chinese cigarettes smell bad at the best of times and downright horrible most of the time. This was the first time I smelled some that smelled like cloves, which is still horrible mind you. This guy was sucking them down as if they were better than air. He also had a rattling cough that sounded like some cancerous tumors had gotten loose in his lungs and were jingling around. All in all, really gross.

Now I coulda handled 10 minutes of this guy, but 30 minutes was pushing it. There I was sitting in a leather chair that was huge, so huge that it made me look small. I swear you coulda fit at least 3 Chinese guys comfortably on this chair that looked like it was built for just one really really big guy. Smokey the bear was a couple of couches away in another section, so that was ok, but his cough rattled the whole building. So I look at him put out yet another cigarette and I see that he's stubbing them out in one area of the ashtray and then lining up the butts in another area (it was a big ashtray). What kind of OCD person lines up cigarette butts in an ashtray? Crazy chain smoker guy, that's who. He musta had 8 or 9 lined up already. So I go ask the bellhop dude and he struggles with his English some more. "The cab called and he said he was stuck in traffic, should be maybe some more minutes."

How long is "some more minutes"? Long enough. The cabby shows up and he's trying to apologize, but it's really hard to understand what he's saying cus he doesn't really speak English. He was making the funniest gestures though, arms flailing all over. After we get my stuff in the cab, I hop in and he drives off. The bellhop had already asked me which airport so I knew we were heading to the right place (I hoped). The cabby gives me a menu, and says something like "to help you". I look at the menu and it's a selection of airlines. At first I didn't see United Airlines on there. Turns out that the symbol for United was printed in grey instead of colour, even though other airlines had colour. Odd. So after reading each entry on the menu individually (they weren't sorted alphabetically), I point to the United symbol and show it to the cabby. He nods and stores the menu.

Off we go... well really we had already been driving for 5 minutes at this point, but whatever. The cabby is a mad man, he's swerving in traffic, cutting people off, fitting his car where it should never fit and honking like mad all the way. We get onto the freeway, he starts speeding, where the hell is my seat belt. Righto, no seat belt. The cabs have seat covers, big white form fitted sheets that go over the seats. This makes the cabs look nice and cleanish. The downside is that they cover the seat belts. Well, that would be the case if the cab had seat belts. Apparently this VW didn't come equipped with rear seat belts at all... who needs those anyways? Right?

So, we're going breakneck speeds down the freeway, cutting off at least 2 people per minute. He's gotta keep his racing license by cutting people off or something. In North America people complain that the jerk in front of them cut them off when the car in front of them comes into their lane with less than about 5 meters between the two cars. This would be a regular or careful lane change in China. Cutting someone off in China would be regarded as driving someone off the road in North America. Cutting someone off consists of starting to change lanes once your driver's side door has cleared the front bumper of the car next to you. Yes, this means that if the other driver stays his course, you will hit him. Mostly people slow down and let you cut in front of them. Otherwise they honk. And if you speed up fast enough you can cut them off even if they honk. I've even see people force other people to change lanes. Basically this is done by changing lanes into the other car when you're right next to the other car, just honk a few times and change lanes. If the person next to you can change lanes, they will. Otherwise they honk back.

Now if you follow my driving directions in China and you get in a car accident, injured or killed. Don't blame me. It's your own damn fault for driving in China. Are you stupid? You can't drive in China, take a cab. On with the story. We get stuck in traffic, dude is swerving around, weaving in and out of lanes, almost getting crushed by a huge truck in the process. The trucks there don't have trailers. They're more like the U-Haul rentals with the box top cut off. Everything is bungee corded to the truck. I saw some Inflatable Sporting Goods boxes strapped down to a truck. Nondescript brown boxes, with "Inflatable Sporting Goods, Made in China" printed on the boxes. So, according to this, if you see a beat up brown box containing the item that you're about to purchase, the dust covering it may have been accumulated on a Chinese highway. Interesting.

Finally we're out of the traffic. We must be going 100 miles an hour (that's 160kph) and I don't have a seat belt. The airport is still 10km away. No big deal I have lots of time and this guy is driving at mach two. Finally he points to his wrist, on which he has prayer beads, not a watch. I guess he never met the watchbag guys. Anyways, he clearly wants to know if I'm late. I give him a thumbs up, and a no worries hand wave (or at least, my best interpretation of a no worries hand wave). Dude gets the message and slows down a little. Ok, so, he was risking both our lives (he wasn't bothering with a seat belt either) because he thought that I was late for my flight. Hmm... if only I spoke enough Chinese to say "Don't drive like an idiot, I have plenty of time."

At the airport, he runs off to get me a luggage cart, I check the meter, 235 rmb. No big deal, I've got enough cash. That's a $40 cab ride for over an hour and something like 50km of travel. I pay the man, thank him and head off to the check in counter. Pretty easy to spot, it's the one with the giant line. Turns out that because of the delay, the check in agents are having to reschedule people's connecting flights. And so the wait begins. Took about an hour to get checked in. There was one couple who had something like 13 bags and 6 carry-on bags. When they got to the front they were each pushing two luggage carts, the check-in lady made the funniest face. It took then a while to check that guy in, but I was keeping myself amused watching propaganda so it was ok.

So China might look like a capitalist country most of the time. Everyone is trying to make a buck, everyone works whatever job they can find, just like the old US. But TV is where the government shines through. On TV, apart from the talk show which I didn't understand, there were these public advisory messages. I didn't understand the messages either, but I could follow along with the cartoon. They had a cartoon little girl going to a newspaper stand and at the stand there's a Mexican looking guy (nobody said they had to be PC in China). The Mexican has a red forehead signifying that he has a fever, and he coughs all over the newspaper and then gives it to the little girl. At this point a giant red X in a circle pops up. Don't accept newspapers from feverish Mexicans right after they coughed on them! Then we follow the Mexican and he coughs into a tissue (ding) and then he throws the tissue out in the trash can (ding) and then he washes his hands with soap (ding). Then the Mexican and the little girl are wearing face masks (ding), and some Asian lady shows you how to put on a face mask. Then everyone is happy and nobody has pig sickness! Yeah ok, so swine flu never really caught on in China. They have a hard time translating it. The funniest translation I heard was pig sickness. Take that Obama and your quest to keep the pig farmers happy by calling it H1N1. It's pig sickness! Hahahahahaha.

Ok so enough propaganda for one day, I'm checked in and they give me a voucher for an 80 rmb meal, but it's only usable in one restaurant in the whole airport. I get to the security place and make sure that the restaurant is passed the security post. I wouldn't want to cross security only to find out that my restaurant voucher is only valid on the side I was already on. So security in China is a little less paranoid than in the US. They don't make you take off your shoes. They had me step up on a little podium after the metal detector and they fondled me with some weird wand device. Unlike the large bars that look like oversized knives that North America uses as a hand held metal detector. The Chinese use a thin wand that ends with a big hoop about 6 inches in diameter. And instead of waving it over you, they kinda prod you with the hoop and rub it all over your clothes. Great. I hope whoever was prodded before me didn't have cooties.

I get to the departure gate and it turns out that the restaurant with the voucher is right next to it. Hope Star it's called. I roam around, the place is huge, vast open, and has a wavy roof. Pretty cool architecture. In the true Chinese fashion, there's windows open at the top, probably cheaper than AC or something. Anyways, it was pretty comfortable in the airport, not too hot, definitely not too cold. It probably just felt not too hot because everywhere else I ever went in China was way too hot.

So after roaming and looking in the shops I go and get a seat at Hope Star. The place is crowded, it's the only crowded restaurant in the airport. People probably think it's crowded cus it serves good food, but that's not true. It's never true in airports. Normally you can judge a restaurant more or less accurately by how busy it is, but not in an airport. How many locals eat at the airport passed the security check? That's right... NONE. The reason this restaurant was crowded is cus people had free vouchers! Eat at the other restaurants, I'm sure their food is equally as crappy.

I ordered the unagi meal and a sprite, came out to 109rmb or something. 20 rmb for a can of sprite that is less than 2 rmb in the corner store. Anyways, I settle in for a long wait, but hey, the seats are comfy and I have a book. The guy next to me keeps asking the waitress where his food is, and she keeps saying 5 minutes. She probably told him 5 minutes for half an hour until finally the 5 minutes was accurate and the food came out 5 minutes later. The two ladies on my right waited about 40 minutes then told the waitress that they were late and had no more time, they had to go catch their flight. The waitress apologized, refunded their money, cancelled their meal and they left while muttering probably something bad. It's your own fault ladies, why did you sit in the busiest restaurant in the airport? There another restaurant about 20 feet away that is begging for people to eat there.

It took about 50 minutes for me to get my food, I got a few chapters read. The food was so not worth 100rmb, it wasn't even worth 20rmb for China standards. But hey, you're in an airport, gouge the tourists! So I eat my crappy meal, I had to ask for my soup, and I never got my desert, which didn't matter, it was dairy anyways. So I finish my food and keep reading. I probably sat there another hour and nobody bugged me. Finally I took off and headed for the bathroom. Fancy bathroom, with hand dryers! woot.

So I read some more, and checked out the shops. I got Trish a present cus it was so cute. It's a little stuffed panda, it's round like a ball, really cute. Hopefully Trish doesn't read this before she gets home, but whatever. Then it was about 3pm, and the lunch had been not filling at all so I was still hungry and I had 30rmb burning a hole in my pocket. I asked the lady what time the flight would board and she said about 3:30, so I had time. I went upstairs to Burger King. The price was the same as anywhere else (almost) it was probably just a couple of rmb more than normal.

I grab a whopper junior combo, pretty much the only meal I can afford. It tasted almost exactly like a whopper junior combo in the states. That was a little creepy. How come Burger King and McDonalds can clone their flavours in China when nobody else can? Cue Twilight Zone music. Anyways, that was tasty, and filling. Better than the 100rmb meal at the other place. Stupid ladies shoulda come here, they woulda gotten their food immediately and it woulda been better.

So the flight is boarding, I line up, and I head to my seat in the plane. There's an old lady sitting in my seat. I tell her that's my seat, she looks a little insulted but gets up and moves over. Then by the time I have my bags in the overhead bin, she's already convinced the guy at the other end of the row (I had an aisle seat in the middle section). Anyways, she'd already convinced the guy to let her have the isle seat. So the guy sits down next to me... for such a small Chinese guy, he took up a lot of room.

The flight was long. I watched Marley & Me or whatever that movie is called. I missed the end of it because my headphones conked out. It turned out that it wasn't the headphones, it was the armchair plug, so I didn't watch any other movies. I missed Yes Man or whatever that Jim Carrey movie is, which I kinda want to watch but whatever. I read my book instead.

When the food cart comes by, I get the beef and mashed potatoes. Not great, but not bad as far as airplane food goes. The next time they come by, they hand out ham and cheese sandwiches. The cheese was something like Velveeta except white. The cheese peeled of easily, but half a sandwich isn't really food in my mind, so I grab a second piece when the lady walks by again to dump the cart. Peeled more crappy cheese and ate more ham. The last meal on the flight was some sort of chicken noodles, kinda bad.

This whole flight the guy next to me was trying to sleep and I kept having to push him off me. He would put his feet in front of my chair and then act all insulted when I shoved him away. What kind of idiot thinks that it's ok to put your feet in someone else's space when you're sleeping? Just cus your sleeping doesn't make you king. Also, the guy kept turning off my little air hole. I get hot on planes, so I turn on the air. And this guy was cold, but instead of getting a blanket, he would get up (the air things were pretty far) and close all the air things that he could reach. No matter where they were pointed. I tried to talk to him, but he didn't speak English, and I didn't know rude enough words in Chinese. So I'd just get up and open my air thing again. He would wait half an hour and close it again. So we played this game for a while. Every time I got up and left my seat I had to check the air thing when I came back, unless twit boy was sleeping.

So the flight lands on schedule and I head for the customs agents. There was a pair of em. One guy was training another guy. So I hand them my passport and they ask if I have filled out an I-94. I tell em the I-94 is already in my passport. They tell me I'm supposed to fill one out when flying in. Ok, whatever, they give me a new I-94 to fill out. They ask if I have some other form, I tell em, no, my Visa is just the I-94 plus the stamp. He says something to the effect of "Yeah Canadian Visa's are weird". He tells the new guy what to write, they staple a second I-94 in my passport, we chuckle about how the Canadian paperwork is screwed up and they let me go. As I'm walking away I think to myself "they never asked ANY questions, except about my visa", odd. Whatever, not my problem.

So I'm waiting for my bag, watching the couple starting to collect their heap of 15 odd bags. Some of their stuff is in DELL or Intel boxes, but it's funny to watch them pile em up. I ask one of the customs agents that's walking around if I can put my passport away or if I'll need it to leave. He asks me if he can see my passport. He asks me about my job, and what I was doing in China. I tell him about the cheap food and he and his friend pretty much want to go visit China after I'm done talking to them. Maybe I shoulda been a salesman?

Finally the guard tells me that I won't need my passport and he marks off my declaration sheet with a black sharpie. I put my passport away, grab my luggage and leave. I'm almost at the exit when another roaming customs agent walks up to me. "Can I see your passport and declaration form?" ok whatever... great, you suck guy. I take my passport out, so much for putting it away. He starts asking me questions about what I bought in China and stuff. He asks if I'm carrying large sums of money, I tell him "I wish I was carrying large sums of money, but I'm almost broke". He asks me why I'm almost broke and I tell him I spent tons of money on my trip. Wow guy, no sense of humour.

He marks my sheet with a black sharpie as well, and off I go. The last guy collects my sheet and points me down the "Nobody else will bug you" hallway. I get out of the customs area and head for the information booth. I don't have any cash on me so I ask the guy if taxis take credit cards, the guy says they do. So I head out and hop a cab.

The guy was Russian or something, thick accent, and pretty old. He drives a prius, he's been a cabby for 18 years in San Francisco, and he likes it. Apparently there's good money to be made because the cab ride to George's place (my car was there) cost $105. What the hell? 20 minute ride in the US is $105, 80 minute ride in China $40. Seems fair. George's wife was supposed to give me a ride, but since George is still in China, she didn't. She did give me my car keys when I got there so that was ok. I drove home a little groggy.

When I got home the house was a little stuffy, it was 1pm and that meant that for me it was 4am. So I went to bed.

Jet lag sucks.

I hope you enjoyed reading about my travels in China. It's probably not as fun reading about my travels than actually doing my travels, but seeing as you're not me, I guess this is the best you can get. You could try travelling to China yourself, but you'll probably have an entirely different experience. Some of it will be similar but most of it will be different. Anyways, I'll probably end up writting some general comments about China someday soon. Stuff like not all women shave their armpits and other oddities. But for now, this is it. Have fun.