Wednesday, May 24, 2006
On the Roll in China
Larry on Roller-Skates in Wuhan
(4 Meg)
Well if you blinked, you missed it. I had ALL the photos and movies up for about 1/2 a day, but then took them down when Nian complained that it showed "too much" of our lives together, and to be honest I really should have excluded a lot of the photos of Aiai and Nian's mother since I really didn't have what amounts to conesent from either of them. It seems unlikely, but there are unusual people out there on the net and I certainly wouldn't want any of them developing an unhealthy fixation on our family with too many intimate details and photographs.
I have a video conversation going on with Nian right now, but she has slipped away to feed Aiai, so I'm jotting this down while I wait.
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OK, a day has passed. I've remade the new abridged photo album. The old one was much too large for the server anyway. I selected only the 5 shortest AVIs and 34 photos, versus over 200 meg of AVIs and over 250 photos. For a casual visitor it makes for a much more manageable collection to peruse. I am a little disappointed that Picasa (the program I used to make the photo-album) chose to override the ordering by picture number and use it own ordering based on which order I dragged the photos into the album (then renumbered them). I could go back and remake the whole thing again, but I think I will leave good enough alone (at least for now).
A few quick notes about the Photo Album:
1.jpg is myself, Nian's Grandmother, and Nian.
2.jpg me at a university in Wuhan
3-6.jpg and 19.avi a popular live performance club in Wuhan
13-17.jpg & 23.avi a cruise-boat ride along Wuhan on the Yangtze [correction - the Pearl River in Guangzhou]
9 & 27.jpg a small (oar) boat right on the Wuhan East Lake
29.jpg a Soviet built bridge over the Yangtze
32-34.jpg Myself and Nian in period garb at a Wuhan historical site.
35-37.jpg a Buddist Temple in Wuhan
(after I talk to Nian, I may edit and rename the pictures in the album's html file)
I'll have a lot more to say about these photos, especially after I check some facts and names with Nian. The 26.jpg photo is an editorial comment of sorts. From our 3-Star Motel room on the 19th floor in Nian's Grandmother's city, this is the view out the backside of the motel. Transitions are sudden in China, often going from opulent to slum. Please do not infer slums are common in large Chinese cities, just that you can come across them unexpectedly, much as reaching city edge and encountering small villages and farmland versus spreading out gradually into sprawling suburbs.
I spent a large portion of the day waiting on the phone to talk to someone at the USCIS (formerly the INS), it seems we overlooked apply for a CR-2 visa for Aiai. We had expected her to be covered under Nian's K3, but unexpectedly the CR-1 came through first. I also got some answers about a possible 2-year delay in approval because of having had a J1 visa first -- the answer was a firm definite "maybe".
