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".

I had hoped to post a lot of photos tonight of my most recent visit to China (and my wife and daughter). As it is I've uploaded one AVI file am struggling with photo-album apps on my computer to get the jpegs posted.

Several Hours Later
I finally got Picasa to convert my photos and AVIs into a photo album. It crashed several times during the process, mostly while trying to index photos in the background I don't even care about. Sometimes programs try to be too friendly or do too much for you. Maybe in this case it is my own fault for preventing Picasa from running in the background constantly from startup, else it wouldn't be playing catch-up when I launch it. Still I hate how many programs try to hijack your machine and make it their own. While I was in China I edited Nian's laptop startup registry to run few programs on startup.

I'm amazed Picasa (a Google supplied application) doesn't provide an easy way to label individual pictures. Hopefully Nian will help me figure out some tittles for them, though to be honest it isn't likely I will go back and edit the 200+ html files that would need editing to make better names.

Another Hour Later
The pictures are still uploading, actually most of the time is spent on uploading AVIs. I have to go to bed, I have a job-fair I'm going to tomorrow in St Louis. When I get back I'll finish making links to the new album (I still have to upload the thumbnails). I really should have just selected a few of the better pictures rather than upload a whole CD of photos and AVIs. Ah, well it all has all been a learning experience.

Goodnight for now. Love to my wife and daughter. Today was a lazy Sunday, but tomorrow will be a long busy one.

Wuhan from the Yangtze

I've been back in the States since late Sunday. A lot happened in China, but I seem to be having a problem forming it into a coherent narrative. Next time I go I hope to have a laptop or very capable PDA along all the time to jot things down as they occur. I had a great time in China, but Nian and I had time enough for a few disagreements as well. I won't recap what they were, but I'd characterize them as me being unknowingly judgmental, and Nian putting too much emphasis that we put the same priorities on things. I wouldn't call them fights, but Nian was upset that they happened at all by the time I got back home. If either of us behaved badly I'd more likely chalk it up to the stress of being apart months at time (five this time) then only having two weeks together.

We spent a great deal of time in Wuhan, the town Nian grew up in, in central China, this time visiting her father who had traveled back after a long stay with Nian's Mom in Guangzhou where she is currently staying to help look after Aiai. We touched bases with many of Nian's friends and family in Wuhan as well as taking in several of Wuhan's cultural sights. Located along a huge lake and the Yangtze River, Wuhan offers spectacular natural scenic views. A lot of effort has been spent in various parks and island retreats to recapture the essence of classic Chinese architecture. China builds sturdy buildings, but they seem to age unnaturally fast. Nian was constantly referring to "very old buildings" as anything 20-30 years old. With the exception of a very few historic sites for Universities and the like, it seems all of Urban China has sprung up in the last 20 years. Both Wuhan's and Guangzhou's skylines are dotted with uncountable cranes (especially Guangzhou). The rate of building seems likely to double the usable building square feet area in another 10 years time. No mean feat as both have over 9 million residents each already. Unlike American cities with large buildings in the center diminishing in size out to the sprawling suburbs, China's large cities expand outward with all large buildings. Business and residential sections largely mixed, and with the apartment complexes giving the large financial buildings a run for the money with what looks like a majority over the 40-story mark, then falling off rapidly to country side and small villages at cities edge -- villages likely to be annexed and swallowed in China's rapid race to urbanize.

While China's population is large so is it's land area and I had time to see a lot of countryside from train as we traveled to and from Wuhan from Guangzhou. There is still a lot of natural beauty to be seen, but a huge portion of the countryside is of course dedicated to agriculture. But unlike American farms with mile after mile of flat boring sameness laid out in regular rectangles, China's agriculture largely follows the contours of the land in a much more pleasingly aesthetic fashion -- even if this was done for efficiency's sake to make optimal use of land cultivated more at the family level than the large industrial level as in America. In many cases the curved and stepped terrace farming takes on an almost Zen-Garden look.

I have a disk load of pictures to upload, but it is getting late. Hopefully tomorrow will see me get into a better blog updating mode. It is hard to know what to say directly about my time with Nian and Aiai this time around. Nian is a little unhappy my blog posts don't center more directly around family matters. No doubt they will figure more largely in my posts once they are both here with me in America. For now I'm still getting back on Central Standard Time, and trying to collect my thoughts about my last trip even as I search for employment abroad so that we can be together sooner.

Nian is off teaching a class in marketing to some advanced students in economics studies today all in English (keep in mind we are in Guangzhou China right now). I'm not sure whether they are undergrads or graduate students. Most of the morning was spent helping her find some good illustrative commercials to add to her Power Point presentation. My ability to Google my way to find something is evidently a little more developed than hers and our searching went reasonable well.

Now that she has gone to class I have the additional homework of finding a few more good ads for future use. Actually I'm surprised how hard it is to find commercials to download; you would think advertisers would make it easy to get to ads directly. Perhaps they fear looking dated and foolish as the material ages. We found a McDonalds commercial from 1962 with Willard Scott as Ronald McDonald before he joined the Today show that is outrageously dated and amateurish looking. Note this MPEG comes courtesy
of The Adventures of the Accordion Guy in the 21st Century

Anyway, now that we are back in Guangzhou after about a week in Wuhan it is easier to get to a computer as Nian has a nice Toshiba laptop and a fast ADSL connection. Still the both of us could easily surf online all day long and with her needing the use the computer to compare class outlines; it is still a little hard for me to get my daily net surfing fix. Since I can download MPEGs only so fast to support her marketing class, and since she is away right now, I have the time to compose this post. Her computer beeps and makes door knocking sounds at me constantly from various messenger apps like MSN Messenger, but the Chinese versions. Cryptic Chinese dialogs pop up every few minutes with what I assume are plaintive cries for attention. I recognize a few of the names and while the messages are in Chinese the name handles tend to be English names Nian's friends have chosen as for their online avatars. Nian's American handle is Helena, and the name she assumed I would use for her, but I insisted that we stick with her Chinese given name Nian. Now she is unsure we should keep Aiai's (Eye-Eye's) first name, and instead choose something more American. I hope she changes her mind back again as we had sort of agreed on Aiai Ann Calmer, which would be her given name, my Mother's middle name, and my last name, and which to my ear has certain melodic sound. Nian seems to have an endless fascination with my Mother the poet who died so tragically young, actually at the age Nian is now, so this seemed a great way to honor her. Aiai could then choose for herself whether to go by Aiai or Ann.

Actually I'm amazed Nian is able to get any work done at all. When I am surfing or writing she can hardly keep herself from answering to the various online chats that are going on, reaching over my shoulder to peck in a quick reply, the comments of which I have no idea. Nian has complained that her computer is much slower these days and hopes that I can do something to speed it up. Perhaps it has some viruses that her current virus software is not catching. I suspect she has too many simultaneous applications running constantly in the background and we should edit the startup registry to keep them from launching at logon. This way she could just start the application when she wants and not have the distraction of constant interruptions when trying to work. This may not be an acceptable solution to Nian however, as her online social network seems to be an all but consuming passion. I wouldn't be surprised of 20% or more of her waking hours weren't spent on the phone or on the computer with friends other than me -- her husband. Add me to the mix and it might climb to over 30% or a third of her time.

I would love to share some pictures and even a video of me roller-skating in what passes for a roller rink in Wuhan, but we haven't uploaded Nian's camera pictures yet so that my have to wait until I get back to the States on Monday.


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Running out of time now, it is Saturday and I leave tomorrow morning very early. No time to find an appropriate picture, just get this posted and take care of a million things before leaving and a million more when I get home late Sunday.

Nian I Love You
Sorry I can't take you with me this time or stay myself.
Life is often unfair, but our great happiness is just a little ways ahead in the future.

Internet access has been a lot more problematic this trip to China. Hotmail has been unavailable the entire trip, and Blogger unavailable most of the trip. I only have three days left here, so it is almost silly to do an update now (I use Blogger.com to post my blog entries). Nian is a little upset about not being able to get to hotmail, especially since we are awaiting word on some job applications I put in for overseas positions so we can be together permanently sooner. The Hotmail censorship seems to be quite recent and her local ISP assures her it will be lifted soon. I had mentioned China's penchant for filtering web access and censoring many websites the last time I was in China, but she seemed skeptical. China is even blocking BBC news that relates to its internet policies (I was really surprised they would censor the BBC) along with dozens of other news related items.

When using Google.com you can't retrieve "cached" items, probably because there is no way for the Chinese government to know whether the "cached" items come from a blocked website. Nian finally got motivated enough to search some Chinese forums about hotmail and lack of access and seemed shocked to confirm what I said was true. Until then she had assumed it was some technical problem or some configuration change I had made to her browser. Maybe it was my fresh install of an English version of Firefox and still unable to get to Hotmail and other websites that convinced her to investigate for herself.

There is a lot to say about our trip to visit Nian's Grandmother and after that a long stay in her hometown Wuhan with her father, but I will post this now while the posting is good. China's restrictive policies with regard to some freedoms of speech aren't apparent on the street or the bustling business centers, but it is there apparently seething and just below the surface. It isn't an Orwellian type of Big Brother ship, but an inconsistent type that concerns itself mostly with possible political criticism. There is much less day to day regulation in the daily lives of the Chinese, and a libertarian free market is everywhere and would lull you into thinking China is freer than even America, perhaps in many ways it is. I think the internet is a confusing beast to the Chinese government, one it knows it must live with to do business with the rest of the world, but would slay if it had the option. Hotmail will probably be online again in a week or so, in this case perhaps censorship is more a matter of harassment and business advantage for the Chinese Government, given their business dealings with Google (Gmail seems to work just fine), thus maybe they have motivation to harass Microsoft from time to time. It is hard to say. Still it is hard to believe that International business persons will tolerate lack of access to Hotmail for long.