Chinese Drivers

After spending more than 20 hours in a car riding in and around Shanghai and the adjoining countryside I can honestly say that Chinese drivers are a breed of their own.

The roads in and around Shanghai and probably most of the rest of the east coast of China are new, wide, smooth and well planned.  All of the highways have at least two lanes in each direction and usually three or four.  The pavement is all asphalt and there are guardrails on both sides all the time- not just along dangerous sections as in the USA.  Signange is plentiful and in both Chinese and English.

So the Chinese people have a great infrastructure on which to drive safely at high speeds.  The issue is that they don't.  I like to call them "wanderers."  For some reason they have a very difficult time staying in their lane.  If the road is open a good amount of the time many drivers will just straddle two lanes or weave back and forth between two or three lanes- continuously.  The do not stay in their own lane.  This applies even when there are other cars adjacent to them on the highway- they will creep over into the other lane forcing the driver in the other lane to avoid them by moving over or slowing down.

If they are driving a truck at 50 kph in a 120 kph zone, they will probably stay in the middle lane of 3 and go slow.  If they are driving a car at 50 kph a 120 kph zone they will stay in the left hand lane no matter how many people are behind them blowing the horn and flashing their hi-beams.

Most don't use turn signals.

In the slower speed areas many people will just pull out without looking what is coming and expect the oncoming traffic to swerve to miss them.

I am truly amazed I have not seem many accidents.  I think these people are worse drivers than Hondurans.

Adventures in China

Have you ever been to a hospital in China?  I developed a sinus infection my second day here so my host took me to a hospital in Lianshui county to see a doctor.  It seems that everyone likes to hang out in a hospital.  There were people everywhere.

The place had a strong smell of urine.  My host paid the doctor bill of 30 yuan (about $5) and i was seen immediately by the "doctor" who looked to be about 22.  He asked many questions and my host let him know that I would not agree to an IV (what looked to be the normal course of action for all patients for any illness) so he wrote me a prescription for  Cefaclor.  I filled the prescription at the hospital pharmacy for about $3.

Then I made the mistake of going to the bathroom.  This bathroom was worse than any nasty truck stop bathroom I have been in.  I almost passed out from the smell.

Then I tried to get some ibuprofen our acetaminophen for my sinus infection induced splitting headache.  No one I spoke to had ever heard of either and they suggested that I not take anything for my headache but were gracious to attempt to find the drugs for me.  I figured that I could tough it out instead of trying to find it.  When in Rome!

Jet Lag

I find myself in China again for a sourcing trip.  I haven't been here since early 2011 and I had forgotten how much the change in time zone screws with you.  I woke up at 3:30 AM yesterday to catch my flight out of Charlotte.  I arrived here in Shanghai 22 hours later at 1:30 PM local time with maybe one hour of sleep on the 14 hour flight from Chicago. 

I waited over an hour for my contact to pick me up at the airport and then an hour drive to the hotel -Sheraton Pudong - Shanghai.  Two hours to settle in the room- I didn't sleep.  Then dinner and walking to the street along the river where there were literally hundreds of thousands of people looking out over the river at the lights.  The streets were so crowded with people it was difficult to walk and cars had trouble passing.

I went to sleep last night at about 10:00 PM or 10:00 AM EDT so that was about 29 hours without sleep.

I woke up this morning at 4:00 AM and couldn't sleep.  I am assuming it is because my body thinks it is 4:00 PM.  So I am running on about 7 hours of sleep in the last 35.

Anyway today is going to be fun as in tiring.

Leaving the kids alone at home for the first time

after all the flooding and mayhem from yesterday there's a shitload of stuff for me to clean up.  the blower is out of gas and I don't have any 2 cycle oil to mix in the gas.  so I need to run out to the auto parts store to get some 2 cycle oil.  the kids are laying around the house watching movies and being themselves pretty much lazy.   their mother was out getting her nails done ahead of our trip to Napa Valley. so I decided it was time for me to leave them there by themselves for the first time.

with a little luck hopefully the house will still be standing when I get back.

Stupid dog

Stanis the dog is not over his chewing yet.  Left unsupervised he will chew everything.  My flipflops have been recently ruined.  We have painters who are painting our cabinets and somehow the dog has managed to make off with all their painter's tape and chew it up.  Every day there is a fresh batch of small chewed up papers, toys plants or other miscellaneous debris. I guess it is not the dog's fault- he is bored, but I am ready for him to be out of this stage.

London went to camp Seafarer today a day late due to the fact that she had been running a low-grade fever.  She was so excited to go.  Atticus had his last All-Stars baseball practice before the first game on Friday.

Adrienne still likes to look through my hair for dead skin.

Sugarsync vs. Google Drive

I just dropped Sugarsync cloud storage in favor of Google Drive.  I used Sugarsync for over a year and I originally selected it above others at the time because I could configure it to use my current folder structure without having to move everything to one folder and because it was reasonably priced.

I was happy with it for about a year until their price increased and then with the release of Sugarsync 2.0 I started having crashes constantly and customer service was of no help.  I sent them a .dat file as requested repeatedly but they never could seem to fix the crashing problem.

Then suddenly it went away- it must have been an update that solved that problem.

Then other thing I disliked about Sugarsync was their subjugation of a drive letter.  It installs a S: drive titled Sugarsync drive the just confused me.  Despite Sugarsync's insistence of the Sugarsync drive being a benefit, I could not see the need for that drive.

Then last but not least was the price.  For personal users Sugarsync is $9.99 / month for 100 GB and Google drive is $4.99 for the same storage capacity- a difference of $60 per year.

So now I am moving all my files over to my Google drive which means now I have to access all my personal stuff under a folder called Google Drive but hopefully that will not be problem living with.

Tooth and M3

Atticus pulled out his second tooth on Friday morning.  It was just hanging by a thread and he twisted it and pulled it right out standing in the master bathroom.  Side note-  the kids are at the age where they have no use for their own bathroom- they want to bathe, urinate, defecate, brush their teeth and do other personal activities in mom and dad's bathroom despite the fact that we provide them with their very own bathroom.

I took Friday off work and Tamara drove us all down to Duluth Georgia to pick up my brand new 2013 BMW M3 Convertible.

I had been looking at M3s to replace my aging 2004 Volvo V70R.  I was looking at used M3's and last monday when Tamara and I were in Atlanta for the Fleetwood Mac concert I had found a 2011 white M3 convertible with manual transmission in Duluth which was on our way back on I-85.  So we stopped to see the white one and it was being repaired.  I proceeded to drive several other used ones- a 335i convertible with manual transmission, an M3 coupe with manual transmission and an M3 with the dual clutch transmission.

The white one was really what I had wanted but once I drove the dual clutch transmission I was a convert.  I had always been a traditional manual transmission sort of guy but then I drove that dual clutch- ain't nothing like it I have ever driven! Smooth, lightning fast shifts, and no hesitation - you don't even lift your foot off the accelerator.  Holy shit that car is fast!  It has the tightest feel of any car I have ever driven.

So we tried to come to an agreement on one they had on the floor but I walked out because they wouldn't meet my price.  They called me about an hour down the road and cut me another deal but then they kept saying the car I wanted was just sold.  They eventually found what I was looking for in Florida but it was black. So I settled for the Jerez Black Metallic.

I didn't have time to go pick it up until yesterday so we went.  I pulled out in front of a lady driving a 7 series in the parking lot of the dealer.  So I almost crashed the car before I got it off the dealer's lot.   Tamara has video of this and I will post it here later.

I  still cannot believe that I paid $82,000 for a car.  It almost makes me sick to my stomach.  In the back of my mind I have issues with with other people will think about me owning a car like that.  I worry about what my employees will think because the business owns the car.  Tamara tells me I deserve it because I work hard and am successful.  I agree with this, but I still have trouble letting go of the fact that I consider it unfrugal to buy a car like this.

The kids rode with me out of the lot and all the way to Commerce Georgia where we spent a lot of time at Chick-fil-a while Tamara shopped (mostly for me- clothes).  At commerce Atticus rode the rest of the way with me with the top up.  He had question, after question after question.  He is so curious about the world around him.  I keep having to remind myself that he is just a kid and curious.  Sometimes I just like the peace and quiet.  But I am thrilled that he is absorbing and learning so I continued to answer his questions joyfully and prompted him back when his questions were nonsensical to me.

We got home about 10:30 - really tired from the day.

Saturday London had two softball games with a team from Granite Falls who plays under different rules.  London's team is machine pitch- 3 strikes and you are out.  The team they played was coach pitch and they had 5 pitches to hit the ball whether or not they had 3 or more strikes.  London's team won both games.

We went to the pool at Catawba Country Club afterward and Greg and the cousins came and joined us as did Derrick Sweet and his wife Kelly and daughter Parker. The kids swam and played for several hours.

We then went to Mom and Dad's house to eat- we had pork chops and all sorts of vegetables mom prepared.  I finally ripped the kids away and got them home about 9:30 pm.