89 Days - Day off

Its a super foggy day here in Shanghai today. I was going to do some sightseeing with Mclane, but we figured the weather wasnt good enough. I also was fighting my laundry machine. It just didnt dry anymore. I knew Mclane wasnt up yet, so I went down to the front desk and told them about the problem. In 30 minutes a non-english speaking guy showed up with an entirely new laundry machine. I helped him change it out, and everything works now.

I messaged Mclane and we met down in the lobby. We decided to try BK for lunch. It was actually pretty good, and cheap too. We then went to the mall that was in the same building. I had no idea malls could be this big. It was 11 stories high. One level had an ice-skating rink, another had a Madame Tussads, and yet another level had an arcade. I was looking for a spare battery for my camera since the time-lapse video drains the battery. I actually found it there. My plans were to find this really big camera store which was pretty far away. But this mall is 5 minutes walking from our hotel. There is actually another mall right next door that is even bigger.

We then walked down to the Bund, which is another huge tourist attraction, shopping area. There were all kinds of people trying to sell you trinkets and watches. We proceeded down some side streets to look at the various tool/supply shops. My god, these places were filled up with all kinds of tools. It makes home depot look like nothing. They had everything you can imagine. It was quite impressive. Some stores had pushbuttons, LEDs, motors, all kinds of things. There were many stores filled up with ball bearings. Some of them would display their biggest bearings in the front window.

Picture descriptions: Top - Motor Store!, Middle - New World Mall, Bottom - The Bund

90 Days- Batch 1 hangs..

Today Mclane was able to find some stores in Shanghai that sell quality tools. We were desperate. He got some power tools and a few of the specialty items we needed. We also found out that our three knack boxes (very large toolboxes) should be released from customs hopefully on friday.

Batch 1 is 1 piece out of 7. It contains 144 motors and is about 18 feet wide by 10 foot deep. It hangs, which is a feat among itself.

Yagura got us Pizza Hut for lunch. It was pretty good. The crust was strange. It looked like suckers on an octopus, but they were little cups of cheese.

Tomorrow we have off, so I am planning on doing some touristy stuff. We will go to Pudong and visit the superbrand mall. Which is like a 13 story mall. Also is the world financial building, one of the tallest in the world, and lastly the pearl tv tower.

We will see what happens. I will take pics and post them of course.

I will post up here the timelapse of part of todays events.

91 Days - best lunch..

So I was so excited today about lunch. I dont know why, but getting a good meal for 1.10 us is so appealing. I posted a pic of it. Its called spicy black pepper fried rice. The verdict? It was so yummy. I normally dislike red and yellow peppers in anything because I think it taints everything, but in this case, it actually accented the flavor. It was hot and spicy and had little nibblets of pork and chicken. I am thoroughly impressed. And for a buck and ten cents, its a great deal.

Something else I noticed in town. The traffic lights. So what do you think americans would do if there was a countdown timer before the light turns green? Well here, they do. You can hear all the taxis reving their engines, and all them dumping the clutch just as it rolls to 1. Its so funny. We were riding in a cab and they all get ready to gun it, its hilarious.

The dinner with the Japanese was cancelled. They have rescheduled it for next week. We went to a German restaurant over in this really nice section of town, I think its called Xintiandi. There are a lot of nice places to eat there.

We got a fair bit done at work today but we hit a snag again since we still dont have our tools. Its just really frustrating, to have packed up everything we need to do a job, and now have to explain all the tools we had to someone else so they can try to aquire them.

92 days..

Another pretty rough day at the site today. The strange part is that, most of what I do is standing around making sure the workers do their work right. I guess I am just not used to being on my feet all day. It was pretty cold and blustery today, but at least the sun was out. It was so foggy in the morning that I couldnt see the skyscraper that is right next door.

I am excited for tomorrow. We have two meals I am looking forward to. First is lunch. I am getting something that the locals eat. Its called spicy black pepper fried rice. This is the best part. Its 7 yaun. Thats about $1.10US. I am so curious. I am bringing my backup PB+J sandwich. For dinner our client is taking us to korean bbq. This is a celebration of my arrival. Odwara-son and Watanabe-son are taking us out. It should be fun.

We went to pizza hut for dinner tonight, me and Mclane. Pizza hut is a big deal here. I would compare it to cheesecake factory. Its very fancy and the menu is huge.

Sorry no pics on this post. Please put up comments. You can just put your name/url.. For the url just put none.com

93 Days Left...

Today was a tiring and rewarding day. We had heard that our 36 crates of equipment were supposed to be delivered onsite at 2pm. It was raining hard, and cold. We got to the site at around 1030am. The trucks arrived at 245pm. This is a good sign. As always with tasks like this, someone promises to take care of something and then denies they ever said anything. There are so many companies involved on this one project. We have multiple clients as well as subcontractors. Its very tricky. So when it came to removing the crates from the truck and getting them in the building, no one thought of a plan. There was mud surrounding the entrances and they had huge crates to load in. How does a palette jack roll on mud? Well it doesnt. The other question is: Can a forklift operate on paving stones laid on wed mud? No. They will move around, as shown in the picture.

I also relearned a word: Primitive. So how do you sweep up a cement floor? You get an old plastic shopping bag, and attach it to a piece of conduit using bailing wire. Then you try and "sweep" the floor with it. I actually saw this happen today.

Top video is the building across the way (communications building, lower video front of our building).

94 Days Left

So I woke up today at about 3am local time. I couldnt fall back to sleep. I zonked out the when I went to bed, but woke up very early. I dont really know why. I met my coworker down in the lobby of the hotel this morning at 830am. We walked over to the Starbucks then over to the subway station. The station has long windy hallways filled up with little shops. Some of the bigger stations have entire supermarkets. We got to the jobsite. Its pretty impressive. I will have pics of the really cool buildings on tomorrows post. The site is in pretty good shape. We hear that the equipment will be onsite tomorrow. Only 3 weeks behind schedule.

The worse part is that our tools may not be onsite for another 2-3 weeks. This is gonna be a problem. They are actually saying that I might need to go back home to the US for a bit. Im not sure how I feel about that.

We left for the day not getting too much done. James, one of the guys we hired to help showed me where the western supermarket is. I was quite impressed. I lot of stuff there, including things I didnt think I would find, like brownie and cake mix. I bought some things for lunch, bread, pb and jelly, and some other things like ramen, oranges POCARI SWEAT (my fav), and pop tarts. We walked back to the hotel. Bad idea. Its pretty cold here especially when its windy. Plus I had my backpack with laptop from jobsite. Now I know to take the subway back and forth, or grab a cab (12 yaun = 2 bucks).

Terrie, yes there is a Cold Stone here. Funny, they are closing in vegas and doing just fine here in frigid Shanghai.

The Rooms are Nice!

So this room is pretty loaded with stuff. The kitchen has everything I need. Including cheese graters and pizza cutters. I dont see any baking pans, but Im sure I can find something. The laundry machine I know Terrie will be intrigued with. Here are some photos.

The trip was grueling. Some people are so messy on the plane. Its pretty disgusting. I started and finished Lost Symbol in about 8 hours on the plane.

Just before I heard some fireworks and looked out the window, and there they were, mortar looking fireworks being launched between buildings on a street, mostly hitting the windows.

On the plane

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Gate

So I'm waiting at the gate now. It seems ridiculous to write this much all the time.


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Leaving Las Vegas - 96 days and counting.

It is so hard to leave my wife today. I dont feel nearly as excited as when I went to Macau. Terrie dropped me off at the airport and we got there a little bit late. My first flight to San Francisco departed at 7:20. The terminal for dropping my bags was simple, but a line started to form between the terminals and congested the whole area. I think we waited about 15 minutes before they took my bags. At that point it was about 6:40am. The attendant handed my passport to an older lady who saw my info, and said that I was late. I was surprised since the boarding time was 6:50am. Anyways I got through security pretty quick and got to the gate just as they were boarding my group. The first leg flight wasnt very long at an hour. I started reading my book and got sucked in. Before I knew it we were preparing to land. I am now at the international section of San Francisco airport and it already feels like I am there. Everyone around here is Asian. They are already bothering me with the diagonal walking. For those of you that dont know, I walk in a straight line, parallel to the hallway. Well, the people I have issues with walk diagonally, or "serpentine" like from a particular movie. Not only do they walk erratically, they seem to always either walk in front of you, collide with you or purposely stop in front of you. My new tactic is to pretend like I dont see them and walk into them. I know it wont teach them anything, but it makes me feel better. I will post a picture of this area soon.

Jason

The Pack..

So finally packing up all my stuff. Its 10pm and I have just started. Its tricky, the weather is going to change while I am there from freezing cold snow then humid hot sticky. So we will see what happens.

The Apple is gone... :(

So I packed up the apple mac pro, and cleaned off my desk. I took this picture to remember what it looks like and to make sure when I return there wont be equipment piled up on it.

Last day at Fisher

So its my last day at the fisher office and I am packing up everything that I can. Here is what my desk looked like before I packed up. The mac pro and one of the 24" monitors is going with me. I hope I remember everything.