Today was quite an adventure for us here in China. After staying at our friends’ (very nice) apartment in XinJin yesterday and basically working most of the day, we set out in the evening for Ya’an, an old-fashioned town about an hour from here that is home to China’s single largest population of Pandas — a world-renowned location.

We arrived last night and had a late dinner. Since we’re in Sichuan province, the local culinary specialty is called “hot pot.” Basically this involves a large table with a gas burner in the center, upon which a large stoneware pot is placed, then filled with broth and all manner of ingredients. The contents are brought to a boil and everyone partakes in what’s being cooked inside. Last night, the particular variety of hot pot that we enjoyed was like a big chicken soup: Chicken-based broth filled with tons of wild mushrooms local to the region. Lest you think it was simply chicken broth, allow me to add that an entire chicken was cooked in the pot as well. It was quite simply delicious.

Afterwards we spent the night at what is probably Ya’ans nicest hotel, an extremely posh and modern place — one of the nicest hotels I’ve stayed in, even. They had very fast high-speed Internet, a huge spa bathtub (the first bathtub I’ve seen since I’ve been in Asia, actually), fantastic furnishings, and a tremendous array of buttons, switches and electronic convenience doodads. To gain entry to the room you just waved a keycard at the door, and there was a console outside with a bunch of telltale indicators on it that were linked to switches inside the room. You could indicate that you didn’t want to be disturbed, or that you needed something, or a bunch of other situations that I didn’t have time to investigate.

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Our globetrotting continues, this time taking us to Chengdu, China, where we are presently staying the night at the apartment belonging to — if I’ve got this right — my boss’ wife’s parents. (Between my boss, his wife and their family, they have several residences in the country.) The first thing we noticed about Chengdu is that it’s freaking cold here. Of course, “cold” is only about 50 degrees — not exactly blistering, but the wind chill makes it seem colder. And, coming from the 95 degrees of Thailand, anything else would seem like a refrigerator.

I got to see our company’s China office, as well as a five-story computer and electronics center called “Buy NOW” (not kidding) where you can buy just about any geek equipment imaginable. Lastly, we had dinner at a really fancy restaurant called “The Essence of Europe” (if memory serves) which was quite wonderful.

My boss has to get up at 3 a.m. and go into the office to take care of some kind of database transfer procedure for one of our big clients, which sucks for him. I’m not quite sure what we’ll do tomorrow, but I think we’re going to get our “work day” out of the way so we can spend the next few days relaxing and chilling out. Either way, we’ll be in China here for the next few days — we return to Thailand on the 11th.

Also, for the curious, the time here is one hour ahead of Thailand time. So if it’s 8:00 in the evening here, it’s 7:00 in the morning U.S. Eastern Time.

Greetings, gentle beings. Chief Oddball here, with another update from GMT +0700. (Thailand time, by any other name.) It’s been a few days since I’ve posted, not because I’ve been overwhelmingly busy or distracted, but because I wanted to get my latest photos off my digital camera first. Because I was a doof and forgot the camera’s USB cable, I need access to my brother-in-law’s computer in order to do that. Couldn’t find a chance to get at it until tonight; he’s not at home at the moment.

So the Chinese New Year has wound down, the firecrackers have stopped going off, and it’s back to business as usual here in the Land of Smiles. While Apple’s father’s print shop hums with activity during the daylight hours, I’m usually to be found in the (very thoroughly) air conditioned loft, working away on my laptop. Prior to that, though, we spent one more day celebrating the new year by going out to a Chinese festival where they have a variety of traditional stage shows, and a big street fair where you can buy all manner of food, trinkets and other stuff.

A stage was set up in the courtyard of a rather large high school, and there were numerous acts on display. A troupe from China, who visits Hat Yai every Chinese New Year to put on this show, was the last event of the evening. Their performances ranged from traditional dance and acrobatics to puppetry and a magic show, but the most interesting was the last show — wherein a pair of Chinese dancers performed almost magical “face changes.” They’d spin around, or bob their heads, and their masks would completely change in an instant. Pretty cool to watch. I shot a video of it, and although my camera doesn’t take very high-res movies, it came out pretty well.

(You may have noticed in the background of the photo above that the year is “2550.” That’s 2007, according to the Buddhist calendar.)

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Today begins the Chinese New Year, the Year of the Pig (or Boar, if you will). Here in Thailand, where much of the population is of Chinese ancestry, it’s a cultural event on the order of our own Gregorian New Year back home. Many people (including myself) wear bright red shirts on this day for good luck. Yesterday, on New Year’s Eve, we spent much of the day celebrating the new year in traditional style.

One of the things families do is burn faux paper money and gold as an offering to their ancestors, that they might enjoy these riches in the afterlife. Another part of the ceremonies is the preparation of a huge meal which we offer to those past. At night, the Chinese temple across the street blocks off the road and sets up a big movie screen in the middle of it, after which they play Kung Fu films and set off firecrackers all night long.

We ate home-cooked meals of traditional Chinese dishes yesterday, but in the evening we went out to a western-themed coffee shop called The Coffee Maker. This is a yuppie coffee bar type of place, in the style of the various “boutique coffee joints” in the U.S. You can drink a cappucino and eat chocolate cake along to the sounds of Norah Jones and Britney Spears. They also have a full menu of food ranging from Thai favorites to western-style spaghetti and sandwiches. Each with its own Asian flair, of course.

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I meant to post here before we left for Thailand on Wednesday, but the days leading up to our departure were a whirlwind of activity — packing, finishing tasks, preparing our house for a lengthy vacancy, et cetera. Last week I had thought I was already prepared and ready to take off, but of course, as crunch time approaches, you tend to find out otherwise. As it stands, I made all the preparations that I’d wanted to, and then some.

Work was a bit of another story. We’re creating a new website to market one of our big products, as the existing website is overly complicated and too verbose. After my epiphany a few weeks back, wherein I told management exactly how long it was going to take to launch the site (months, thanks to all the continuous meetings and screwing around), my comments were apparently taken to heart and the development process was completely altered. Now, the one guy who always held up the content development by insisting on doing it his way, then changing his mind eighty million times, has been asked to just write the damn content himself and get it over with.

That immediately made a huge difference, and as a result, the first phase of the site is almost ready for launch. Management set a new launch date of February 15th, but unfortunately, the site content was not delivered to me until midday on February 12th. Given that I only had the 12th and 13th to work on it (because of our trip), the launch did not take place. However, nobody above me is up in arms about it — in fact, they’ve been perfectly understanding, given that they each had their own hand in causing the delay. I worked on it until four in the morning on Tuesday night, while I digitized a last few DVDs and copied files to my notebook computer. Beyond that, I’m not even going to worry about it again until I get set up in Thailand.

Another factor contributing to the launch delay was another employee, who is currently judge, jury and executioner on both the support and development of the very product our new site hopes to sell. He’s been eliciting my help (by phone) off-and-on for weeks as he’s been implementing the new GUI that I designed. Realizing that I was about to situate myself in a time zone 180 degrees opposite from his — thereby making it difficult for him to confer with me about the product — he spent much of Monday and nearly the entirety of Tuesday bringing me into one impromptu conference call or meeting after another, so that I could help him polish off some UI implementation problems. We pretty much went through his whole back catalog of issues and solved all of them, so hopefully he can live without me for a couple of days.

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Yesterday was quite a day for both Apple and I. Because it was Super Bowl Sunday, Apple’s restaurant was closed, so she had a rare day off. To celebrate, we decided to go up to the new Coconut Point mall — supposedly one of the region’s biggest — and see what it was all about.

The weather was overcast, but there was a cool wind blowing and the temperatures were very mild. In a way, it reminded me a bit of spring in Michigan. Upon arriving at Coconut Point, we were amazed by how big and sprawling the place was. It’s not an indoor mall, per se — rather, it’s like an interconnected series of villages, with freestanding groups of stores lining the avenues, and big-box joints like Best Buy and TJ Maxx at the far end. It’s like a super-upscale plaza mall, really.

We spent the afternoon browsing around, actually with some very good consequences. I picked up some goodies at Gamestop, Apple found some new clothes, and we both treated ourselves to some new bedsheets and other housewares. I even landed the last copy of the Dead or Alive Xtreme 2 calendar, which includes a pin-up poster of top-heavy Tina. I also found another rather sizeable book to read on the flight to Thailand next week, so I’m all set for reading material (and since our seats also have individual AC power ports, there won’t be any lack of things to do).

After shopping, we met two of my co-workers and their wives for dinner at Ruth’s Chris Steakhouse. It had been seven years since the last time I went to Ruth’s Chris — which was also my first time, incidentally — so I barely had any recollection of the place, but last night’s meal was certainly excellent. The filet mignon is, of course, the pride of the house. The calamari was good but a little oversweet, and Apple enjoyed a rendition of the traditional Louisiana seafood gumbo. Afterwards we split the check three ways (each of which was expensive enough to feed all of us at any other restaurant, naturally) and went on our separate ways.

By now you’re probably wondering why I called this day a “rollercoaster.” While it was all fun and games up till this point, that was all about to change shortly thereafter.

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