Bin Laden has released a new tape in the wake of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's death praising his struggle in Iraq. It's hard to know what the Arab Street makes of this. Perhaps Bin Laden isn't the shining example of Islamic ascendancy to many he once was. These days it seems Arabs kill more Arabs in the name of Allah than are killed by any other cause. Ayman al-Zawahri had sent a message to Zarqawi at one point counseling him to knock it off with all the killing of Iraqi civilians. In the Arabic Islam world of Zarqawi and others it isn't enough to follow Muhammad, but you must follow the exact right flavor of Islam or else be labeled an apostate and be labled for death. Funny, I can't remember the last time a Methodist faction bombed a Catholic Church -- though maybe this type of thing would be more common if there was a complete breakdown of order in America or Europe.

Bin Laden's audio tape (the fourth this year alone versus none in 2005) follows on the heels of two Zawahri video tapes; these guys are talking just a little bit too much for their own good in my opinion. Things are not going well for them and I suspect these efforts of theirs to rally the troops will instead finally lead the US or allies to both of them in less than six months. Lord help the Democrats if it's before the November elections. Both Bin Laden and Zawahri promise vengeance for the death of Zarqawi. So before they were just trying to kill us in the name of Allah... but now it's personal. Note to Bin Laden and Zawahri: threats of vengeance are much more effective when you haven't already made previous promises to kill us.

In contrast to this, and certainly more surreal, is Japanese Prime Minister Koizumi's visit to Graceland with President Bush. Koizumi seen on camera singing snippets of Evils tunes, imitating Elvis' judo moves, and hugging Lisa Maria Presley -- you know the Scientology nut job that was married to Michael Jackson, oh wait I guess she is Elvis's daughter also. Call me crazy, but I'd prefer my world leaders to travel in more dignified circles, especially at time of war and with certain nations currently playing nuclear-warhead-capable-carrying chicken with missiles. But then hobnobbing with the famous and near famous is what politicians do.

Swinging back to more sober matters, I can't help but be amazed by the struggle between Hamas and Israel. Given the desperate financial mess the Palestinians have found themselves in after voting Hamas to power, Hamas seem to have gone for broke in attempting to irritate Israel. I'm not quite sure Israel's overreaction to the kidnapping of one Israeli soldier on Israeli soil is quite what they wanted or expected, but in light of not being able to do anything else for the Palestinians they've gone the martyrdom route again. As long as the struggle goes on and Hamas continues to poke Israel with a stick, it seems the Palestinians' will continue to back Hamas. Self-determination doesn't seem to be a panacea for the ills of the world. The Palestinians' almost certainly chose unwisely in what would bring near term relief for them in electing Hamas, and the current actions of Hamas can only be considered wise in the long run if Israel is eventually destroyed (a seeming unlikely outcome).

Nations like Somalia would seemingly rather tear themselves apart than brook US and UN interference. Yet (and much to my wife's consternation) the US backs independence for Tibet from China, whose people she feels have generally benefited from China's governing. Almost universally in America it is accepted as an article of faith that the South should not have been allowed to secede from the Union in our own Civil War. So I guess the larger question is when is it to be encouraged for regions to break away and become autonomous, and when not? Chechnya had America's sympathy for seeking independence from Russia until we recognized they where employing mostly the same terrorists methods as al-Qaida (though before 9/11 the US largely ignored whatever methods the Chechens were fighting with). America has supported numerous South American insurgencies in the past. What made them "good" ones? During the Cold War whom to back was an easy call; insurgencies against Communist countries where supported (whether the people generally supported their Communist Government or not); and insurgencies against Capitalist governments (even those corrupt, despotic, or dictatorial) where to be stamped out. Without this guiding (though flawed) principle it is hard to know where America should intercede (or at a minimum support) and where not (my wife would say always "not"). Many would say "oil" is America's new guiding light. I'm not quite to the point where I believe my Government is so self-serving and greedy, but if your Politics run counter to America's AND you have oil under your feet, well it's probably not a good combination for you.

Nian and I are one step closer to being together permanently. Visa application forms came the day before yesterday in wake of her CR1 citizenship application. Not many steps left, but we still have to wait until August, 2007 before we can get final approval, this because there is a mandatory return home for 2 years requirement because of her having been here in America on a J1 (student) visa. There didn't seem to be any easy ways to sidestep this wait, and Nian wants to do everything absolutely by the numbers. And which is a topic I will return to after a few other pieces of news.

After having started a new blog project Brink I had had essentially NO visits. On the one hand this is a little depressing, on the other it means my BNL hit numbers have some validity and that people are making return visits and must be finding this blog by means other than just the random blog link that Blogger.com allows. I posted a +5 insightful comment on Slashdot.org today on whether SETI is a waste of time and linked in one of the Brink articles as pertinent. Boom about 40 visits in an hour or two. I don't expect to keep this audience, and I'm not sure Brink is worth maintaining, but I have several more essays I intend to write in it before putting it to bed.

Already posted to Brink: Nuclear Fusion Life Extension IQ Enhancement Artificial Intelligence SETI: First Detection Cryonics To be posted soon: Quantum Computing Cheap Access to Space Autonomous Robots Personal Emotion Control Personal Genetic Evaluation Nano-Technology Nano-Assemblers

Possible topics: (advances less likely, less soon, or possibly ever) Digitized Minds Impending Certainty of Doom World War III Anti-Gravity New Fundamental Force of Nature Direct to Inertia Propulsion Memory Transfer to a New Body Life Creation / Life Design Animal IQ levels raised to near human IQ levels Discovery of and ability to use other Dimensions Proof of a Multiverse and ability to travel to other Universes Direct to Mind Learning Mind to Mind Communication (technologically enabled telepathy) Flawless Lie Detection Flawless Criminal Rehabilitation True Global Equality Teleportation Time Travel CTC Computing (Closed Time-Like Curve Computing) Past Time Viewing Faster Than Light Travel Faster Than Light Communication Total Mass Conversion (to energy) Clean Cheap Atomic Transmutation

Hopefully others will suggest a few more possible advances that could have a huge impact on society, either here or in Brink directly.

Back to our scheduled topic tonight and that would be immigration as I await Nian and I to be reunited.

Nian gets a little upset if anyone accuses her of marrying me because I am American and suggests that she wants to be American. If anything, it seems I have married the only Chinese woman in China that doesn't want to be an American and would prefer I find good gainful employment in China. But she has become a focus of attention to her friends on how to snag an American. She seems unhappy in this role, especially since love doesn't seem to be the first priority of those looking to marry an American. As for Nian and I, we were together 3 months here in America, and I traveled to China to marry her -- there is no doubt of our love and commitment to one another.

I am a little conflicted over how to feel about illegal immigration. Nian and I are following the rules and are apart for 2 years as a result of it (one more year to go). Mostly I blame unscrupulous employers for offering the carrot of (low paying) jobs to those they know are illegal. Also to blame are those who exploit migrant farm workers who are paid by the basket of food picked, where even good workers can make less than $2.00 an hour under slave like conditions.

In my opinion we shouldn't turn a blind eye to illegal workers with the rationalization that it is better than what they can get at home. Paying such disgusting low wages for such hard labor depresses the value of all manual labor and ensures Americans never will seek those jobs. Food in America does not have to be picked at $2.00 an hour. We pay the lowest percentage of our income in the world on our food and paying decent wages for this labor would allow foreign farms to compete more fairly with America. This is what free markets are suppose to all be about.

It has been suggested we need a guest worker program. Other countries do this, many Arab, and it leads to a stratified and inequitable society. The Gulf states of Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and Oman have an average of 37% foreign residence, mostly Asian workers who can never hope for permanent residence (one could assume a large racial and religious prejudice component) with United Arab Emirates having a shocking 80% of its citizens without resident status. Honest work is honest work, if there is work that needs to be done it should be done by the citizens of whatever country that that work is in. If there aren't enough citizens to do these jobs then the solution is to allow enough legal immigration to do those jobs.

How to deal with illegals already here, I'm less sure. Amnesty is sure just to fuel more illegal immigration as it has already been proven to do. Sending 10 million plus back is impractical, disruptive, and probably cruel in the majority of cases. Letting them stay slights millions of others from other countries that will be denied entry and who have applied legally. If it should be demonstrated that the recent huge influx is in some sense orchestrated as a stealth takeover of certain regions, then this needs to be addressed also.

America could/can accommodate a lot more that it currently does. One solution would be to open the doors wider on legal immigration -- though this is a hard sell in this climate of fear over terrorism. One thing is sure; America's ability to stay an economic superpower rests with its ability to harness in a fair way an influx of immigrants from around the world. Only if we do these things in an equitable fashion, will America continued to be admired as a beacon of freedom around the world.

I haven't offered many political opinions online about the war in Iraq, which I'm not quite sure qualifies as a war by classic definitions because it isn't currently be fought against any organized government or country (at least any that claims credit). But I have come to believe that going into Iraq was a huge mistake, but once having had been made can't be so easily corrected. There are a few recent rays of light however, staged withdrawal debates are now common and it seems certain that withdrawals to some degree will occur by the November elections.

Add to this hopeful news from Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki who has offered a proposal aimed at accelerating Iraqi take over of Iraqi security. Key to this proposal is a suggestion of an offer of amnesty for those that have participated in the insurgency, but not committed war crimes against Iraqis.

Democrats had been the most vocal about setting timetable for withdrawal (BTW, I am not a “timetable” proponent, but probably am an accelerated staged withdrawal advocate). So it was with great dismay as I listened to Democratic Sen. Carl Levin of Michigan say "the idea that Iraq should even consider talking about amnesty for people who have harmed those responsible for their freedom 'unconscionable'" on Fox News this last Sunday. He also went on to say, "For heaven's sake, we liberated that country." To which I would have to say of course one man's liberation is another man's occupation. And just to wrap himself in the flag a little tighter he continued on with "We got rid of a horrific dictator. We've paid a tremendous price." I guess our "terrific price" is more important than the terrific the price the Iraqis have paid. How dare they with their mere 40,000 civilian dead be for a plan that diminishes violence when with over 2,500 American service men have died?

More importantly why are those who have already died so much important than those both American and Iraqi that might be saved if the plan actually did have the effect of dampening sectarian violence? This plan achieves America's stated goals of having a self-governing democracy in place and disengages us from the fighting. To my way of thinking we would be dishonoring those who have died by ignoring this chance at success, the success they were supposedly fighting for. We'd be throwing this all away -- all in the name of revenge. To veto Iraq's amnesty proposal outright would damage America's image abroad, show that we are not about saving civilian lives, and show we are not for allowing an actual free autonomous Iraq.

Embrace the amnesty I say. How better to show our values to the insurgents than granting mercy to them -- mercy being a quality we so often (perhaps hollowly) state separates us from them.

Over the years I have had a number of good ideas (though this is a conceit, and perhaps unfounded), but never made good on them. Maybe "follow-through" is not a strong suit of mine (my wife certainly doesn't think so). At least one or two of my ideas I perhaps should have pursued to the patent stage. In the mean time I will offer one up for free, perhaps it is not unique, and I would love to get some feedback on why this would be impractical. It is an idea for providing plentiful fresh water without costly conventional desalination to arid regions, especially those close to ocean coasts.

Many years ago I read of a scheme to tow icebergs to large costal cities to provide abundant potable water. In the 30 years since I've heard this idea (probably in "Popular Science") I’ve not heard of any follow up, or any experimental projects. Most likely the energy needs for towing are similar to, or greater than, conventional desalination. Assuming you could take the time constraint out of towing, perhaps you could use the oceans natural currents and prevailing winds to do the towing largely for free. Plastic visqueen sheeting seems tough and cheep even in large quantities. Find a suitable smallish sized iceberg, wrap it in visqueen, and attach a series of Sail equipped steering mechanisms, which by action of wind and sea current nudge our nugget of ice where we want it. If all or most has melted by the time of arrival -- no concern, you are still delivering a huge baggie of fresh water. For regions closer to the equator, forget the icebergs completely, tow your huge baggie out to sea and launch it at a starting point that will eventually carry it where you want it, but not before collecting huge amounts of water from rain augmented by solar powered desalination through evaporation of sea water as our bag drifts through equatorial regions where rain is abundant followed by intense sunlight and heat to drive a solar distillation process. Being a "baggie" we would lose virtual no water to evaporation.

Granted there are hundreds of details to work out (which I will lazily leave to others) such as optimal size of our bags, how best to attach sailed steering buoys, how compartmentalized to make the collection areas, how best to pump the acquired fresh water in to the chambers isolating them from the sea water, how best to keep ocean spray and large waves from inundating the fresh water collected or ripping our bags to shreds, etc., etc... Still these all seem like surmountable engineering challenges if the core idea has merit. Should someone take this idea and run with it, I hope they would take the time to cite this blog entry and drop me a line. If not, at least I've put the idea out there. Most likely someone else has already studied ideas identical to or similar to these in wake of the research on towing icebergs. If it is impractical it is impractical. If practical, at least I'm not sitting on it when thirsty denizens might benefit from it.

I still have a lot of work to do on my new blog project (the sidebars need actual relevant links) Brink, but I did get the second entry up last night. Given the cursory and lay nature descriptions of each topic I am writing on, I’m not sure there is much point to the whole thing, other than to summarize hopeful signs of near future progress I have gleamed from a rather prolific reading of lay science news articles from various sources.

My wife and I had a near fight the other night over the phone. She feels I may be exaggerating when I call myself a computer professional, because I evidently didn’t solve all her computer woes on my last visit to China in May. Seems she expected me to work wonders on a machine whose menus are all in Chinese. Worse she thinks I did something that caused it to quit functioning more than a month after I left, though it had been slow and balky before I added a few simple programs to clean out some Trojans, malware, and viruses, edit the startup registry, and keep third party products from changing the startup registry without authorization. It is possible this work exacerbated an existing underlining problem, but I’m more inclined to think the damage had already been done, and was lying in wait. Also perhaps if I’d been more aggressive in pruning back her startup registry to only necessary items, things would have been fine. My computer runs fine with less than a dozen startups in the registry, whereas her lap top had well over a hundred. Also since I have never done a reinstall of a Windows operating system from scratch, I guess I don’t get to call myself a Computer Scientist (which is the title my employers put on my business cards) in her eyes. I feel I could do this -- with certain provisos. I had no intention of trying this for the first time under a time constraint, in a foreign country on a machine without English menus (though there probably is some way to toggle the menu languages in Windows, and I should find it out before my next visit).

One last note about the overzealousness of third party software products thinking they need space in your startup registry. When I received my Dell system a little over 3 years ago, if you put it in sleep mode it would NEVER wake up. This was straight out of the box. I pruned out all the garbage in the startup registry from trial software, and software I don’t use, and even software I did use, but couldn't see any vital reason it needs to be informed the computer was turned on. The boot time became about one third of what it had been, and it could now reliably recover from sleep mode. When they put an entry in your startup it most likely means one of three things; either the app will try to call home on startup to check for updates (or worse); or it is trying to modify the start up behavior of another product on your computer; or it wants to sit in the background at all times monitoring net traffic. MSN Messenger can damn well wait until I launch it to run, not sit in the background sucking up CPU cycles just so it can tell me so and so is logged onto the net. When I’m in a mind to chat with people and let them know I’m at my computer I will launch it myself. Geez I’m tired of every app thinking it should be in control of my desktop.

I had suggested in my last post that perhaps the 21st Century future that has arrived, is a stunted version of the one promised us in the 20th. For decades the year 2000 had always been seen as the boundary of the future. The rapid pace of change in the 60s made it seem almost inevitable that the year 2000 would be scarcely recognizable to those born in the mid 20th Century or before.

But I also realized I was being a bit disingenuous as I wrote words to that effect last time. While our day-to-day lives are largely unchanged, save perhaps web browsing and cell phones, our work lives have changed enormously. Daily life only changes when either forced by necessity of crisis or when costs and convenience converge on some tipping point for adoption by the masses. Work on the other hand chases change to remain competitive.

Eventually new technologies (or global crisis) will change our day to day lives. So it is I decided to list discoveries or technologies, which if made or improved enough, will have a profound effect on mankind.

I initially started with about 4 society changing advances we will likely see in our lifetime, but then the list expanded to 35 as I allowed for more and more long shot discoveries that could be made, or allowed for longer time frames to be taken into consideration. As I crossed the 2000 word mark, and having barely touched on the first 4 advances, I realized I needed to serialize these entries. So it is today I am creating a new blog entitled: Brink, with the intent of exploring the likely hood and impact of various future scientific and technological advancements.

It is not my intention to necessarily explore these subjects in depth, this is merely a collection area for ideas. Once I have been through the initial list I will probably revisit the more important topics in greater depth and with more supplemental supporting material. Today's entry: Nuclear Fusion

I've begun to feel a bit like a lost time-traveler, one who has experienced a lot of history, but in a chaotic order. Some distant events seeming much closer than others, with some periods of my life seeming as though they happened to someone else altogether. Next month I will be 48 years old, and can imagine being 50 quite easily. And while I don't anticipate retiring anytime soon, I could join AARP in those two years hence, or start withdrawing funds from my 401K without penalty in seven.

This seems all the more odd to me, because I feel young, I think I look young (albeit with the aid of hair-dye) and am now married for the first time in my life (one year come November). Aging has become some weird game of roulette for me -- "Is this the year I begin to show my age? Start to slow down?" While I'm obviously aging some, maybe I'm aging more gracefully than most. Maybe I'm just blind to the slow deterioration going on in both my mind and body. My wife thinks my hearing is bad, though I don't know of anyone else that seems to think so. At times she thinks I'm a complete idiot, perhaps a sign of impending senility, but my mental lapses to me seem no greater than at any other time in my life, though I do now have more responsibility and a much greater scrutiny of action, i.e. a wife to make note of my missteps.

Maybe I should feel abandoned on the shoals of time, or like a fossil that is out of place in the modern world, but instead the future can't seem to get here quick enough for me. All around me are signs of a past that refuses to go away. Everyone seems to be listening to 70's and 80's music. I spend a lot of time at the local university Gym (I have an alumni membership) and it seems strange to me that all these 18-20ish something kids should be listening in large part to music recorded before they were born, or at least while they were in grade school. Yet they do it with stylish iPods and laptop-computers and other internet download devices. Technology seems to have taken a more introverted step into the future. Instead of a future with spaceships to Mars, flying cars, super intelligent computers, and totally autonomous robots eliminating human toil and suffering; we have hand-held this's and hand-held that's which allow us to silently escape to digital realms. The made-up worlds of online-gaming are filling up with the exodus of millions from the more mundane real world which seems to have quit evolving.

When I was eleven (1969), Man landed on the moon, the fastest plane ever (that we know of) the SR-71 Blackbird had been flying for 3 years, and the 747 was undergoing flight test certification. Cars were fast, air-conditioning common, most people had color TV. Now that we are on the verge of finally delivering a substantially better picture than analog TV with HDTV, it isn't viewed as some great leap forward, like radio, TV, and Color TV before it, but as some unneeded gimmick by most. By and large we've just grown use to the way things are, and would rather not go through the inconvenience of change.

The ways we work and play have all changed with the digital age, but seemingly little else. Then again maybe we are just on the brink, waiting for changes as profound to occur in our everyday lives as well. Maybe America has forgotten how to change. My visits to China have shown me a world that is use to change, hungry for change, and advancing at a pace that if sustained will leave America in the dust. Maybe America is just catching it breath after two centuries of headlong plunging into the future. Maybe America will enter a period of decline. Who knows?

My journey into the future continues.

Well nobody came forward with vacation suggestions, but we did find reasonably low priced airfare tickets, so it's off to Singapore this time around to celebrate my birthday and the anniversary of my proposing to Nian. The adventure begins July 16th, and ends July 23rd.

In the: I'm-not-sure-this-is-worth-saving-$100 department, it took 3 days to confirm my ticket reservations with Vanguard Travel. I have an E-Ticket number and confirmation number, but when I go to United.com (the main carrier) I can't find any place to confirm these are real seats (evidently you have to book through United for them to confirm your tickets). At least with Orbitz.com I could double-check my itinerary constantly and was advised of any departure delays or changes. Now I have to just cross my fingers and pray there is a real seat waiting for me when I get to the airport.

I've been meaning to write some essays; it seems like I get the seed of reasonable idea while I'm out away from the computer, but then when I've got the keyboard in front of me, I've either forgotten the main thrust of the idea, or I'm unable to shape into something new, coherent, or interesting. One main theme I'd like to revisit though is the commoditification of ideas and the related impulse of governments to try and control information.

Given that I'd been having trouble coming up with something profound to write about, I decided to try my hand at a new Top Ten List. Today's topic: Top Ten Signs Your Relationship Is Headed For A Break-Up

I found I hadn't posted to Larry's Top Tens blog for about 9 months. Entering the Letterman Top Ten Contest had been something I did almost religiously for 3 or 4 years. Still no Late Show T-shirt to show for my troubles. Not all my Ten Lists have come from entering the Letterman Top Ten Contest, I think I may try to come up with a few new (non Letterman suggested) topics just to get the comedic juices flowing again. There are actually two Top Ten List blogs of mine: an old one I did the old fashion way with FTP and hand typed HTML, and the newer one I use Blogger.com to maintain. I really should consolidate them someday.

Nian is off on her way to her office so I have time for a quick post tonight. We've spent the last few nights trying to plan our next get together. Ideally it would be one week including July 20th to include the one-year anniversary of the day I proposed (my birthday). Since our marriage was November 14th (or 19th depending on whether you celebrate the certificate or the ceremony) pushing the visit back to August would make for the halfway point between my last visit and the more important marriage anniversary. Trouble is Nian would like us to economize (and this year has been expensive). I could just go to Guangzhou, but that makes for three visits to Guangzhou, and with Nian's parents getting on her nerves it would be nice to visit somewhere outside of China. Nian has suggested Singapore, and this may be where we end up going. But I'm still looking for more good (affordable) ideas. I have Googled a lot, and sadly, while Orbitz.com and others are good at finding specific deals, they are not so good at offering up bargains given some initial broad suggestions (maybe I just don't know how to navigate the sites well).

Bottom line: anyone with vacation suggestions for a married couple trying meet somewhere halfway between Chicago, Illinois and Guangzhou, China, they are more than welcome to speak their minds.

    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.