Language Barrier

The Great Wall in China is about two hours outside downtown Beijing. The best way to get there is to hire a private driver. The cars are nicer than the cabs, very inexpensive (roughly $40 USD gets you a driver all day) and you have a better experience than a tour bus. But private drivers are less likely to speak English than a bus driver. In fact this was true in most of China - very little English spoken. And I do not speak any Mandarin. Which really isn't a problem, you simply have someone like the front desk at your hotel write out - in Chinese - directions to where you want to go on a slip of paper you hand to your cab or driver. But this doesn't really cover you when about one hour into a two hour trip you have to pee. And have no way to communicate this information to your driver. Well, unless your artistic ability is equal to mine, and you are capable of drawing a stick figure going pee. Showing this to your driver is bound to produce both laughter and a stop soon where you can have a brief biological break. Really quite funny.

Pictures from China - The Great Wall

I'm back from China and have a couple posts in my drafts about the AFM race #5 and further posting about Beijing and Shanghai, for now here are a couple quick pictures from the Great Wall...

Enroute To Beijing

-- Posted After Returning From Trip --

In Beijing for the next couple days then going to Shanghai Monday. Currently in taxi headed away from airport - the smog/haze is intense. It's roughly 100 degrees Ferenheit temperature. I'm strictly a tourist through the weekend, Monday is spent traveling, then next week I'm in a class at Fudan University.

My first impression of Beijing is surprise at how modern it is. I guess the GDP per capita stuff you read about is proof that numbers can lie... or at least they don't tell the whole story of this city. Beijing is very wealthy, on par with any US or European city I've visited. Clean, expensive cars, great roads, sprawling urban planning, a GREAT many tall buildings (there are 26B people in Beijing afterall), parks and greenways beside the roads.

I keep getting these travel books before I leave the country, then crack 'em open for the first time on the airplane. Which makes the first couple hours of my flight always very fun as I get excited for my trip. Here's what excites me about China:

- China sends 220 billion text messages a year
- It's probably illegal but I bet panda bear tastes good
- The terrain variety is baffling, from mountain borders shared with Nepal to the Muslim (yeah, when I think of China my mind doesn't jump to Muslim either) regions to the West borders shared with the -stans, desert/ tundra with camels toward Russia, sub-tropical rain forest to the East... it's boggling
- Would probaly like to spend five weeks here in a row at some future point to actually make a dent in the list of things one should see/ do/ eat/ experience in China - it's that big
- Agricultural areas with water buffalo and straw hat wearing rice farmers
- Old men who play mahjong and smoke pipes

Things I'll blog about in the next few days:

- Tienamen square
- Great wall
- Forbidden City
- Getting custom shirts for $15
- Getting a massage for $15
- The ensuing debauchery of 65 MBA students in their final school obligation

Access Denied (which in Chineese sounds like, *silence*)

Just back from a week in China for a class at Fudan University - I have to post some updates soon but I'm behind since blogging is prohibited in China! Pictures to follow later this week...

This is not like the blocking in Dubai where you are presented with a blocked page and a link to the acceptable use policy. This is a much more sinister blocking. There's no error message or
little note acknowleging the Internet's success in connecting you but China's denial of your access. Pages simply do not resolve with no error message. Of course instantly upon figuring
this out I began testing other sites which are blocked, and how to get around this blocking.
Here are a couple other sites apparently China does not want Chinese people visiting:

- YouTube
- State Web for Nation of Taiwan (stat.gov.tw)
- Web for US Courts (uscourts.gov)
- This blog (race.fm) and all blogs actually
- US Marines (usmc.mil)
- UN News (unitednationsnews.com)

Proxying out encrypted does work, but since I'm not interested in testing exactly how much they care and what they do to you if detected, I'll skip sneaking around for this short trip.

AFM Round 4 - Thunderhill

Great weekend at Thunderhill Raceway Park for AFM round number four. I had to miss round three due to a wedding in Seattle - and the new job has kept me too busy to get to the track lately - and it showed in my performance. Did have my best laptimes at Thunderhill with one 2:06 in the clubman race, but I got seriously rocked in all three races. I was overly intimidated by my first time out in the Sunday big-boy races. I also had some mechanical FAIL getting the bike prepped the week prior, which always jostles confidence a little. I'm not sure I realized I was signing up to be a part-time bike mechanic when I started racing! Weather was epic, made some new track friends, had a friend come visit at the track and learned a ton... great weekend. Round five is back at Thunderhill and I hope to find a couple more seconds - should be pretty easy if I find the time to train properly and kick up the running. Here's a laptime analysis of me and the two guys who were holding up the back of the pack with me. Appearenly I'm good at race starts.

Life Hacking

Whether actually true or not I don't know - but in my own head I am clever, belligerent, defiant, and strategic (read: twerpy). And I like to get my way. Oh and also bull-headed... Heck, I get my way loads of the time by simply tiring out those opposing me. So I don't always listen to words like, "no" or "not now" or "we have a policy against [thing I am trying to do] for no announced reason." I think I should start sharing my trials and tribulations of being contemptible.

Look I didn't choose it... but, I have a criminal mind. I walk into a bank and immeidately oogle their cameras and ponder their locks and protection systems. It's impossible for me to read a list of rules or policies or requirements and NOT scheme to figure out where loopholes are. Controls and countermeasures, gates and fence jumping. Maybe I should have become an attorney. Instead I work in business development for computer security companies (believe me, I'm one of the biggest hacks in and industry which hacks).

Plenty of books and conference talks have been authored on life hacking - I hope to see/read some of them someday, maybe I'll have time after business school. In the meantime I fear the schizophrenic nature of this blog may get another "Face of Eve."

AFM Race Two - Infineon

Yesterday was a big day for bike racing. I did successfully complete my first clubman heavyweight race, without crashing, and did not end up in last place. I did all my own safety wiring and race prep which is also empowering. Now clubman is the race bracket for the newest racers... so it's not like this is even the junior varsity here... nothing is televised, no sponsorship money, racers all have other jobs. Spectators do pay an admission fee to enter the race park, makers of tires or parts will give you a discount if you put their sticker on your bike, and top finishers might get a couple hundred dollars which doesn't even come close to offsetting the costs of racing. I did get my first groupie/fan crush gush yesterday though... which is AWESOME. Some guy came up to me after my race and said, "Aw man, I had money on you to win... That's a sick bike I said to my buddy watch that R1 he's going to kill it." My expectations going into the race were actually to finish without crashing and otherwise get pummeled in performance. I had only been at that track on two other occasions so there's plenty of room for simple experience to improve my performance. Actually I did okay though - it's so much fun to be on the track with other guys who are roughly as fast as me. I'm skipping race #3 for a wedding - so by race #4 in June at Thunderhill maybe I can join one of the bigger more varsity level race classes and try to hang at the back of the pack. Official results get posted to afmracing.org - but here are my laptimes:

That Was Interesting

On the heels of my first out of country experience in the Obama administration I am returning home with overwhelming patriotic feelings. This always happens when I travel - and maybe it has something to do with 15 hour flights and sleep deprivation, but wow - how our international image has changed. People I encountered in both Cairo and Dubai wanted to know what I think of Obama, showed genuine optimism in discussing the future of America and our foreign policy, seemed concerned about our domestic economic challenges (albeit this has potentially selfish motivations), and smiled with their eyes and whole face when I reported I'm an American rather than the furrowed and conflicted brows I've historically seen.

This change is drastic and has significant implications. Do you think the overall image of America is reflected in the commercial success abroad of American brands abroad like Ford, Coke, The Gap, McDonalds, etc? Absolutely.

It's also interesting to think about what it means to be an American when you're abroad. I met a couple guys in Dubai who were: raised in Kuwait, educated in the United States, Palestenian by self identification, and living in the UAE, and carrying US passports.

Considering the face value experience in Dubai - this seems like a very progressive society economically and culturally. But you don't have to look very far to find massive economic disparity, cultural tension on a broad scale, sweeping sex inequality, injustice, human rights transgressions, and people everywhere who are conflicted about their experience in the country and considering leaving.

We have such a special thing here in the US. We're certianly not without fault, but today I cherish our freedom and equality and justice and diversity and tolerance.

Dubai

This place is surreal in so many ways: geographically, culturally, economically... I need to post more commentary but much of what I'm thinking about while in Dubai is detailed here: clickity click Some pictures from 50 stories above the city streets of Dubai from earlier tonight. Man I'm missing my Leica.

Catching A Taxi In Cairo

My travel partner is Indian (like from India) and the Egyptians all assume he's Egyptian so they talk to him in Arabic. And he refuses to tell them he's American. SO I try to get in a cab and tell them where I want to go - and they just look at me blankly and start talking Arabic to my travel partner. Who both refuses to tell them were we want to go (for fear of disclosing his lack of Arabic language skills) and simply repeats everything they say back to him. It's totally hilarious. It probably sounds like this:

Taxi: Where do you want to go? (in Arabic - to me)
Me: Heliopolis
Taxi: blink blink

Taxi: What is he saying? (in Arabic)
Travel Partner: What is he saying (in something resembling Arabic)
Taxi: What? (in Arabic)
Travel Partner: What? (in Arabic)
Taxi: Where do you want to go? (in Arabic)
Travel Partner: Where do you want to go (in Arabic)

Me: Look, can we go to Heliopolis?
Taxi: Get in (in Arabic)

Travel Partner: (to me) where does he think we want to go - let's figure that out before we get in
Me: then tell him you don't speak Arabic!
Travel Parter: no way man
Taxi: Where do you want to go? (in Arabic)

.... repeat at least three times