So what else.....

Oh yeah... people... we are currently living in Shanghai and have been to Beijing and another nice place called: Qingdao [which is pronounced: CHING DOW]. Let's talk about people for just a moment or two... Qingdao is considered a "small / smaller" city in China. The registered population of this place is about 7 million people... which puts it on the scale of probably, Chicago in the U.S.

AND after being in Shanghai, which has a population of about 17-20+ million people, yes Qingdao is small...

TANGENT: Qingdao is a really cool place to be... people from the U.S. call it the San Diego of China, but after being here for a while, I would probably call it the San Francisco - without the large gay population. It sits on water, has hilly roads and is back-dropped by mountains. The air here is cleaner, as well as the water, people are nicer and things seem to be very 'western' accommodating.

Shanghai on the other hand is busy busy busy - louder, slightly dirtier: although, clean for a city of it's size... which is on an order of magnitude of about 3X the size of NYC. The city literally goes on and on and on and on... you can drive from one "side" or municipality to another for what seems like hours and still you are buried in all directions with monstrous sky-scrapers and people people people. The point of where this pre-emptive description is going is this: there are people for everything.... literally. Example: when we go to our building, there are usually no less than 8 - 10 employees in the lobby that are bell hops and "greeters". Then there is always one or two people that stand at the entrance of the elevators to summon the 'lift' for you.... i.e. push the button and put their hand and arm in between the doors until you've boarded the elevator. At breakfast there are 20+ people, from the hostesses, to the person that puts your napkin in your lap, there is a different person that puts your silverware out and yet even a different person that is the "dish president".... funny, as soon as you dirty anything, cup, dish, plate, fork, etc. This person's purpose is to IMMEDIATELY present you with a new one and take the dirty one to the kitchen for cleaning.... I've gone thru 14 plates at one sitting before. So, like I said people people people... people for everything and THEN SOME.

Traffic -

I guess the next logical discussion should center around traffic since we are talking about the shear masses of people here.... Traffic here would drive some people in the U.S. to either road rage in the first three minutes of driving or serious bodily injury - crash. The first few times in cabs here, you get the helpless feeling that you are at the mercy of some elementary school educated drop-out hopped up on meth - but...... NO ONE here pays any real attention to several things, one of those things is law... Susan would have a coronary if she saw what happens here on a minute by minute basis. No obedience to law whatsoever.... none. That being said, you would think that there would be an alarming rate of accidents and injuries - but there's not. In fact, people here are engaged in some type of "understood harmony" of utter chaos. Example: if a guy cuts you off, that is fine, you just let him in front of you no problem.. reason: because where he's coming from might get you to where you want to go a little faster by creating a hole from where he's transitioning from. It's kinda like an evolving organism that people cut you off and blatantly disregard street signs and signals, but when you want to get from one lane to another or thru the masses to somewhere else, the people that you are cutting off to do so are gain advantage to go the other direction or where they want to..... it is literally UNREAL, you need to experience it for an extended time - then the chaos doesn't seem so erratic and it actually starts to resemble some sort of a Ballard / harmony. If people from here drove in the U.S. this way, they'd be dead in under a week... but here it works. I thought people here were crazy for the way they drove until I started paying closer attention, then I realized I was EXACTLY like them - and had a suitcase full of parking, speeding and other moving violations from the U.S. to prove it. Maybe one day I will get my chance to 'integrate' into this dance of the vehicles.... for which I can honestly say I really miss driving. Don't get me wrong, being chauffeured is really nice, but I miss the freedom - of course. I'll discuss the 'layers' of whom yields to whom and the unspoken rules of the road...

OH YEAH....

Tipping -

As in the amount of money you give your server, waiter or waitress when he or she busts their butt to serve you hand and foot at a restaurant. In the U.S. if you didn't tip, the next time you ate at that restaurant you might find some unpleasant and unwanted surprises in your food the next go around. Here: patrons DON'T TIP... the employees view it as somewhat of an insult??? Not sure why. But, when you try to give them money they always say: Just come back and eat there again. Which I'm not exactly sure how that financially benefits them at all... since they are being paid a "standard hourly wage"... which I've been told amounts to anywhere between 4RMB and 8RMB an hour.... the RMB is the Chinese dollar, NOT the Yen, that is Japanese and the Chinese take great offense to confusing the two. Just for reference 1 USD = 8 RMB. But, with all inflated / deflated currency exchanges things "cost" more... i.e. a coke in a restaurant is usually 8RMB which is 1 US Dollar.... many many things are much cheaper here. But, anything imported or authentic [i.e. not knock-off] is relatively expensive. I'll give examples later...

One other thing about the waiters / greeters is that every time you enter a building, either a restaurant or hotel or something like that, people say: Huan Ying Guang Ling (pronounced: HWAN ING GWANG LING) means: Welcome!!! (extravagantly) Nevertheless, when the people say this really fast and slurred, it almost sounds like they are saying: See You In The Morning!!! So, now I have a new thing that when we go places and people say that to us, I reply with: see you in the morning!!! I have no idea what they are really saying and by the expressions on peoples' faces they really have no idea what I'm saying either.... but, what is really cool is the immediate laughter and smiling that always follows. Four or five people, in unison, saying this and then after my reply they all look at each other and bust out laughing. It's great.

Lot's more to blog... just thinking of the best way to organize it.