Road trip!

Got on a bus yesterday with about 60 colleagues, spouses and kids and went to a city called Kaiping, which is about three hours southwest-ish from here.

It’s a UNESCO site and really fascinating. The architecture not what I think of when I think of Chinese, but what do I know?

The buildings were concrete, a lot like Morocco. They also use their flat roofs for socializing, but unlike Morocco, the buildings were pretty tall. They had multiple stories and we went up into one that was six.

It had been owned by a guy who had emigrated to the US and owned restaurants in Chicago. It was really interesting – he had a bust of himself on one floor -- but at the same time dank.

They had kitchens on each floor, and we were told that was because the village was in a low area and when it flooded, the families would move upstairs and having a kitchen on each floor allowed them to still cook.

There were no bathrooms. I guess they used chamber pots. Zippy would never have survived.

The weather was a tad chilly, but not too bad. We had two buses pretty much full. It was a nice little road trip. I look forward to doing more around the area and in China in general.

I’ve asked off for two days and March and three in April to try to go places, but right now the flights to destinations in China are outrageous, like $600 to Beijing.

In March, I decided to go to Bangladesh and meet a friend who started at work the same time I did. I’m looking forward to it. It’s a long shot, but I could wind up in that position in two years, so this is sort of a scouting trip, too.

Honestly, I have no idea where I will wind up in two years and that makes vacation planning awkward, especially when flight prices are so high. I could shell out $850 to fly to Burma, but it’s entirely plausible that I could wind up there four, six or eight years from now. Sigh.

Anyway, right now, the Philippines are in the lead for April, but I don’t know for sure yet. Like when you go to Greece, there’s a lot of pressure to pick an island without having a lot of information on the options and not having enough time to research.

The past two weeks have just been so busy. I had to work in a different office last week after the week before had been brutal. Next week, hopefully, is a reprieve before another busy one. But soon after that is my trip to Dhaka, so my eyes are on that for now.

My Motown presentation was this past week. When I signed up many moons ago, I had no idea it would happen to fall during the week I was in a different office and staying late every night. In the end, I got about 11 hours of OT.

The presentation went really well, although I had the expected bumps since I had to downgrade from PowerPoint 2010 to 2003. Some of my animations didn’t work right. I had, for example, “Let the Good Times Roll” set to play as little blurbs about the blues popped up during the song. Since I didn’t have the video or the lyrics, it gave people more to do to than just listen. But the animations had to run through before I could play the song, which was really weird since I’d timed them sporadically. Essentially, the slide lasted about two minutes longer than it should have, but it worked. Anytime you close with “Billie Jean” it works.

I was really proud of myself that I got the crowd to play along with the “call and response.” I had been told they’d be really reserved and not want to do anything demonstrative. They were reserved, but with some coaxing, I did get them to do the response in one song, and then I discussed how we still use “call and response” here and there, like when a pastor calls out “can I get an amen?”

I got them to do that, too, and made them shout it. It was really impressive, especially since, at random times during the presentation, I did it and again and they played along.

Amen!