Carnival Fantasy Cruise

The family took a cruise over Thanksgiving from Charleston, SC on board the Carnival Fantasy.  We were told by a nice lady at the 800 number that we were allowed to bring 1 bottle of wine per adult over the age of 21 so I took this advice and packed a bottle of wine for me and one for my wife.  When the bags arrived at our room we discovered that they took all of our wine and left us a note indicating that we could pick up the wine at the end of the cruise.  So much for good customer service!  We were so rushed to leave at the end of the cruise that I forgot to go to pick up the wine.  I am picturing some of the crew chugging my very nice expensive bottle of Chappellet wine and having no idea what they are drinking.

We stayed in cabin E161 which is on level 7 on the Empress deck.  I have five in my family and we all fit but it was very close quarters.  There was one king sized bed, two twin uppers that pulled out of the wall and one trundle bed on the floor.  The bathroom was very small and smelled of urine- not so appealing.

The thing that was really annoying about the room was some machinery on the other side of the wall that ran during the night.  It kept me awake for the first two nights with the drone- it almost sounded like a washing machine.  I asked the nice Indonesian man who looked after our room what was on the other side of the wall of our interior cabin and he indicated that it was an air conditioning system.  I would recommend not staying in E161 for this reason- especially if you are a light sleeper.

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.