Thursday, June 01, 2006
Good News / Bad News and other Tidbits
China Trip Photo Album
Well I haven't been doing a very good job of keeping BNL updated. So a few quick pieces of news:
In the Good News/Bad New department...
The Good: Nian's I-130 has been approved.
The Bad: We will have to wait until August 2007 for her and Aiai to join me stateside. This because there is a mandatory two-year wait having been here on a J1 paid for by her government. Still there is no doubt she has been accepted as a future citizen.
I have applied for several overseas jobs so we can spend the next year together waiting for her J1 restriction to expire, but it is looking less and less likely that that will happen. In the meantime at least two more overseas trips are planed for this year, and likely two or three next year. Mid July we will likely spend a week together in Singapore, then in November spend our first anniversary together somewhere in China.
While I haven't been posting a lot to BNL I have been posting quite a bit on Slashdot.org as DumbSwede and I'm guessing quite a few have clicked the "Bare Naked Larry" link at the bottom of my posts as BNL visits have been up lately.
The BaBaLiZer and the REBUSizer toys in BNL are currently broken. This because Yahoo.com and WordLingo.com have changed something about the way their websites return data. I pretty sure I will be able to fix REBUSizer, but I think I will just delete BaBaLiZer, as it is something that has been done a lot by other people already.
I finally got paid my Sick Leave for the surgery I had in early December; wow can corporate bureaucracy be slow.
For anyone that has seen the recent NBA finals commercials on TV, I can't help but wonder at their choice of "Gangsta's Paradise" as the background theme music (the instrumental portion). I am a bit conflicted about their choice -- on the one hand it is a GREAT swelling piece of music, classical in sound. On the other hand it ties Gangsterism into a sport dominated by black athletes, and one that has had some several regrettable episodes of player violence the last year or two. Maybe it is just good marketing, sadly, catering to a "Gangsta Chic" ethos.
In the "I am an idiot" department, I went to a job fair in St Louis last week, the first in person job hunting I have done in over eight years (I have applied for several overseas openings online). I neglected to take a Resume with me. I'm not sure what I was thinking, I realized I should have brought one about half way into the 3 hour drive, but continued on, figuring I would just get some business cards of likely oversea prospects and email a resume later. When I got there, there where only 5 booths, not the vast sea of prospects I had expected (I had been given the job fair tip from Monsters.com). Boeing was the only likely looking prospect, and although I was right there within minutes of the opening, the waiting line for interviews was dozens of people long already, with an apparent 10-15 minute wait for each job inquiry. It seemed doubtful they would even get to me by the 3pm close time. I was dressed the part (as was everyone else in suite and tie), but I lacked a valise or brief case stocked with well formatted, printed resumes to hand out. So I shrugged my shoulders and hit the road back to Champaign and tried to salvage a little bit of a workday. I didn't see any indication Boeing had overseas openings anyway -- the job fair tip had been based on my tech and security background -- useful if I was just looking for a job in general, but not so helpful as it turns out for my overseas job seeking.
Nian sent this list of clarifications on our trip photos:
the 1st jpg is with grandma
the 2nd is a rest zone on the way we back Wuhan from Shiyan
7th and 8th are in Wuhan University
the 10th is in library office with old book
13 to 18th and 23th are the cruise on Pearl River in Guangzhou !
24th just a pic I took for myself
25th is on the train
28th is the breakfast street in Wuhan
38th and 39th are took in Zhongshan University in Guangzhou which has several sculptures on the square and a hall designed by Yale University in pictures separately.
I really only got the river cruise wrong, which was the Pearl river in Guanzhou and not the Yangtze in Wuhan. I had planned on mentioning the others in this post and I had forgotten the name of Nian's Grandma's city which is Shiyan.
