family hike

So yesterday we decided to be eco-tourists here in Phuket. We wanted to go hiking in the jungle and try and find a trail to one of the peaks on the island (about 400 meters high). Everyone we talked to said you couldn't walk through the jungle because there were no trails and the woman at our hotel looked at us like we were from mars when we said we wanted to walk up the mountain. She strongly discouraged it.

In the end, it worked out amazingly well. We walked along the road looking for an entrance into the woods behind the hotels. (We even asked a few people for directions and they all gave us the same 'no, you're crazy for even asking' look). Finally, Jonathan noticed a little road heading toward the jungle and said we should take it. We didn't have any better ideas so we went with it. The road turned narrow and then turned into a path and then a 2 track and then a single track. Along the way, we ran into a Thai gentlemen on his little scooter bike who asked where we were going (we were clearly lost if we were on this path). He got off his bike and drew a trail map in the dirt of where the different trails could take us.
In the end, we made our way all the way to the peak (where there is a 50m tall buddha statue). It was about a 10 mile hike and all the kids (and mom and dad) were pretty knackered by the time we got back to our hotel.

Near the top we noticed the sign in the picture. It seemed like a simple little advertisement for food and drink. Then you read it again and you think 'did that say bombs, fuses, and batteries?' So the Chinese create crazy signs by choosing strange words and then misspelling them. The Thai just write crazy things with pretty good spelling that you just don't understand.

Final disconnected story. At dinner yesterday we were talking about something irrelevent and Nathan seemed lost in his thoughts. After a bit, he enters the conversation by asking 'what is the holiday where we give up wearing underwear for awhile?' There was a bit of a prolonged pause as Dee and I tried to figure out if we misheard our son or whether we've just done a bad job parenting him. My first thought was that maybe this was something his teacher at school had mentioned. This may seem like a strange accusation of a parent toward a teacher, but it made sense to me. Nathan's teacher is not a christian and thinks the christmas celebration is just another example of american cultural imperialism. To fight back against the American Christmas tyranny, she has instituted the concept of festivus: a holiday for the rest of us.' Complete with the 'airing of the grievances' ceremony with all the 5th graders. (if none of this sounds familiar, you need to watch more seinfeld) So if it makes sense to get 10 year olds to 'air their grievances' (it took us awhile to explain to nathan what a grievance is and why you might want to air them) then maybe there was some type of celebration where underwear was sworn off.

So after snapping back into the moment, we asked Nathan what he was talking about. He said, 'you know the time in the church when you give stuff up'. 'So you mean Lent'. 'Yeah, Lent'. And all I can think is what have we done. But then I was consoled by the thought that if giving up wearing underwear is an act of piety, than Jonathan is the holiest 7 year old I know.

Thailand

So we've had spotty internet coverage in Thailand, so we haven't kept up with friends real well. Sorry about that.

So a quick 'thought of the day'. We went for a 60 minute elephant ride this afternoon. Pretty cool time. nathan and emily both got to 'drive' the elephants for most of the trip as the guide walked behind us. They got to sit on the elephant's head and hold on to its ears as we hiked up and down some pretty steep terrain. Pretty cool stuff.

On the way back to our hotel, we rode on a courtesy van. In the window, there was the customary instruction stickers. Do not smoke. A cigarette with a circle and a slash. No music in the van. A radio with a circle and a slash. You get the point. There were like 10 stickers and being the old guy who has seen it all, you just glance at them and say 'oh, they don't want me to use a firearm in the van. Got it'. My youngest is not so jaded. He wants to go through every one. 'Hey dad, I think this sticker is telling us not to use bombs in the van. This sticker is saying. . . '

Then you get to the 'Dad, what does this sticker mean? Is this telling us not to wrestle in the van?' This has to pique your interest. I look over and take a closer look at the stickers. There was a sticker with 2 people having sex with a circle and a slash through it. Not sure why you need a sticker to tell you to not have sex in a courtesy van, but there it was, and now Jonathan was determeined to figure out what that sticker was telling him what not to do.

A better father may have used this opportunity to introduce the topic of sexuality with his 7 year old son. I stalled. This technique led Jonathan to come up with a new theory regarding the picture - that it actually meant not to change a baby's daiper in the van. I'm not sure how a silouette of 2 people having sex turned into a diaper change, but after he said it I convinced myself that he might be right.

stuff

The stories have been piling up, so here goes. . .

When I came to China in June, I was assigned a car and driver by the company. We had him for 5 months without too much trouble, and then the wheels started to come off the wagon.

It started about a month ago. We have our driver pick up our tutors and bring them to our house 2 nights a week for our Chinese lessons (yes we need 4 tutors for 2 hours every week to teach us how to say ‘hello’ and ‘excuse me’. Chinese is hard). After the lessons, the driver takes them home and he goes home for the night. Well, one night the tutoring company owner wanted to take our family out for dinner after our lessons (I think she felt guilty about becoming a wealthy Chinese woman solely based on the revenue generated by our family). So she took our family to the restaurant while the driver took the tutors home and they told the driver to pick us up at the restaurant.

Well, he made it to the restaurant about 20 minutes after us. He came into the restaurant, walked into our little private room, spit on the floor and walked out. Now I’m no cultural anthropologist, but I’m pretty sure in most cultures this is not considered a sign of affection. Then the driver called my translator and told her that he wasn’t feeling well so he needed to go home and that our family would have to take a taxi home.

The next week, I had a little heart to heart with the driver and told him that where I come from, spitting on the floor is considered slightly rude. He listened politely and explained that he doesn’t make a lot of money and we should pay him more if we would want him to work longer hours.

So we struck a deal (nice little psychology experiment). I would pay him an extra $15 every week, and he would do whatever we needed him to do. He would be nice to people, not complain about anything, and drive whomever we wanted wherever we wanted. So basically he needed to become someone he wasn’t for money.

As you might expect, this little experiment went according to the textbooks. He gets his money for a couple weeks and acts like a perfect gentleman. Then after 3-4 weeks the true colors start coming out. A tutor called him to arrange a pick up and he told her that he wouldn’t pick her up. When we confront him on his breaking of our little covenant, he calls the tutor back to a) apologize b) share some quality recipes c) yell at her and tell her that she is the reason he’s going to get fired. You’ll have to send me an e-mail to get the correct answer.

So we were done with 2nd chances at that point. We called HR to get a new driver. Turns out my boss is relocating back to Germany so his driver was going to be free. We worked out a little swap. I wasn’t sure exactly how the switch would go, but since our driver was an angry little man, I assumed it wouldn’t go smoothly. I’m not always right, but sometimes I am.

The switch was supposed to be on for Saturday morning. Friday afternoon, our driver gets wind of the switch. He asks for a meeting with HR and me and I manage to defer. He had to take my wife and 2 other wives to meet at a dinner where we were finishing our recruiting of a German engineer to backfill my role. So our driver took the 3 women to a hotel, but then decided he was done and took off. The 3 women had to find a taxi to come to the dinner. This was a good orientation for the German couple to realize that in China, not everything goes as planned.

So Saturday morning, I get a call from the translator saying that they didn’t know who would pick up our family that day. The old driver had not returned the minivan and the new driver had been using a sedan. So we got picked up by the new driver in a loaner minivan. We met up with another couple for a visit to an orphanage, and our van was there at the meeting place. We get out of the loaner van and shake hands with the owner of the car company that rents the cars to JCI. He said he had 'taken care of the situation' and that our old minivan was ready for us to use.

Now I’m not sure what it means ‘to take of a situation’ in China, but I don’t think I will be asking any questions about what happens to a guy who strands 3 foreign women in the middle of the city and then steals the car of his employer. I know he’s unemployed now, but I’m curious if he still has all his digits and limbs. I’m guessing I will never know.

My wife wants to add an editorial correction: The last paragraph was written in jest and mostly to add humorous content to this blog post. We don't believe anyone was harmed in the making of the this blog post.

forgot one thing

So in the US, I always thought we were a bit punitive on the whole smoking crowd by making them go outside to smoke. I think we even make them stand 50 yards away from any entrance to make sure us non-smokers never have to actually come within striking distance of those pesky little smokers.

Then I saw how the germans handle it. Don't make em go outside. Just create a small little public cubicle with no ventilation. You can smoke if you want, just step into this thick cloud of smoke in here and smoke away.

The best part is they make the walls all transparent so us non-smokers can walk by and sneer at the caged animals killing themselves in their smoky filth. I felt very superior as a human being.

trip to germany

So I had to go Wolfsburg Germany for a little over a week. Kind of funny how your body reacts when you go to a western country after being in China for a few months. The first thing you do is look for the sun, which of course I never saw in my 9 days. Rainy and 35 every day. Come on Germany, you can do better.
Then there's the breakfast. Oh sweet love. Fresh bread. Real cheese made from cow's milk. Coffee. cereal. Meats. Coffee. I was late for work every day as I thought it would be in my best interest to have just one more roll with nutella before I left.
Then there was the dinners. Meat and potatoes. And beer. And sour cream, which also came from a real cow. Had to attach the baked potato on my first night. It was like a shrine to the sour cream gods. I was eating the sour cream plain for the first 5 or 6 bites and thought I might need to slow down. I couldn't finish all the sour cream and it made me a little sad knowing what my wife would have done for just a spoonful of the yummy creamy stuff.

As a side note, I went out for dinner with my chinese customer one night. I asked them how they liked Germany. They said they hated it. I asked them why, besides the obvious answer that Germans live there. They had two complaints. 1) Everything is closed on Sunday. They work all day every day and then take off Sunday. The one day they don't work is the one day they can't do anything in town so they have to just sit in their rooms or walk around their little town. OK. I'll give em that one. 2) The food. 'really?' I say. 'for sure' they say. 'So when you go back home, what is the first food you have to have when you get off the plane?' I ask. Chinese guy #1: 'Noodles'. Huh. Chinese guy #2: 'Tofu'. OK, I'm not a cultural imperialist, but tofu? It seems to me that maybe the west has something more to offer than tofu.

I also thought while I was walking around downtown wolfsburg that I've been poking at the chinese for a couple months now. But there I was in the heart of cultured Europe in the alt stadt where they were getting ready for the Weinachtsmarkt and there it was. The 'al bundy shuh outlet'. Including the picture of the bundy family in case you didn't get the allusion to the really bad TV program from the 90's. I got to hand it to them for knowing their obscure TV trivia as Al bundy was a shoe salesman on the show, but do you really build a business franchise on that tidbit. Maybe all of our cultures are just a bit crazier than we like to admit and we just choose to overlook the nutty things that happen right under our noses every day. So here's to the Al Bundy Shuh outlet in Germany for opening my eyes and teaching me a lesson.

There was also the strange little russian theme park just north of town. It had these big russian architecture buildings right on the side of the road. Then there were windmills. Everywhere. It was a strange little town, but we were only a few miles from the old DDR border. I just assumed there was some cultural exchanges that took place after the wall came down. I know that doesn't make any sense, but I couldn't come with any kind of explanation and I can't read german well enough to know any better.

So here's to praying for a peaceful resolution on the korean peninsula. This has become a bit more important to us as a family as our present location is just slightly further than a nine iron from the border. Our school also has a lot of kids from korea so its quite the point of conversation with them. Strange world.