The largest problem with making trips to the US is the return.  Flying west causes you to miss a day, so I left JFK Friday morning 8:30 am and arrived in Shanghai 5:30 pm Saturday night.  Add that to the security checks, air plane food, etc and the feeling of being stuck on a plane for 13 hours waiting to get home again and you can tell its not that much fun.

New York was New York, the city has changed quite a bit though since my last visit.  I have been to New York 5 or 6 times prior to this trip, all of those times were before 1998.  I remember New York as a different place and having a much different mood and feel to it, since 9/11 the city's mood and feeling has changed.  Every city has a feel to it.  This is very hard to explain.

This week, thus far, has been catching up on lost work from Friday, plugging into my new role in our NTP program, attending numerous conference calls at all times of the day and night and writing more then my share of reports.  I still have to finish up documenting my US trip with Coco and Sophia, go over the anguish of sending her off to her grandparents the following week, the adventure of getting my new cell phone, backing up all my personal files, rediscovering PC gaming, and getting a new work PC, and then we can go over the NYC trip.  Highlights will include; navigating New York's subway, visiting 'ground zero', shopping madness, and of course the air port nightmares (including special appearance by one very famous basketball player)!  Stay tuned because as I am trying to get all this out of the way we will be having a mini family reunion for 2 weeks while Sophia comes for a brief visit.

This weeks sees me making a 3 day trip to New York, for work. This trip was planned in about 3 days prior to last Friday so it was pretty stressful getting tickets, hotel reservation, new PC from work, etc. This weekend was also hectic as clothes had to go to the cleaners, bags packed, etc. Coco is a little upset as this will be her first week alone in Shanghai since I moved here two Marches ago, the last time I left for business she was in Guangzhou with her parents in the last trimester of her pregnancy. She is being a trooper about the whole thing so I hope it is not too stressful for her. She is much stronger then she gives herself credit for and I know she will do well.

I have to go for two reasons. One is the internal client I represent will have minimal representation due to an internal workforce shift, and I am replacing a previous team mate who was promoted in the client organization. The second is my ever expanding roles and responsibilities in the project. I have become a victim of my own success, as stated in earlier posts, and the stress of the workload is beginning to build a bit. I have not reached critical mass yet, but we are skirting it pretty close now. I will be attending the 3 day conference as well as attending training on my new regional role as APA MPLS order lead. I will be responsible for gathering, verifying, submitting, tracking, ensuring validation and acceptance of our new MPLS circuits in the APA region. I am working in the Planning and Roll Out teams already so most of the information, contact, and roles I know... now I will have the ability to better track what is going on and why it is as it is.

Friday at work was my first English class, yes William you can tell Mrs. Becky I am officially teaching English now. The class seemed to go well, we covered some basics, terms, examples, and had open discussion in the form of debates for practice. I do feel a bit intimidated as I have never taken a teaching class in college and the training I conducted in the Navy was all related to my job so I knew if intimately and teaching it was second nature. We will have these classes twice per month and I hope I can meet expectations as well and improve everyone's level of communication.

I have not been to New York since 1998 when I accompanied some friends there on weekend leave a few time while in the Navy. As we all know New York is a much changed city since then, ground zero, various plots, political landscape shifts, so it will be interesting to see what has changed and what hasn't. I have been to New York many times over my Naval career, once officially for Fleet Week and the rest for personal visits so I know my way around the major sites (not as well as Chicago unfortunately). I do have some side tasks of picking us some things for my wife and friends here in Shanghai so I hope to find the time to do so.

I was hoping to get more work on this blog done here or there but it seems that will have to wait for at least a week. My new work PC has much longer battery life so maybe I can get the time on the plane or on lay overs, I am avoiding Chicago and getting to New York via my birth place... San Francisco (its a shame I won't be there more then 1 hour, just like when we were in DC on the way home last month). Flying always makes me nervous, part of growing up in the 1970's with all the disaster movies at theaters and on TV, and I am trying to hide this from Coco as much as I can. I look forward to getting to New York and attending the conference, getting trained up, and getting some more US supplies but at the same time I can't wait to be back here with Coco... and one week after I get back Sophia is coming for a week and a half long visit (just in time for father's day!!!).

We awoke the next morning with the sun already climbing high in the Alabama sky.  The sent of the flower trees, honeysuckle, and pines was a welcomed trip down memory lane.  Sophia had slept through the night after a little fussing and was still sleeping soundly.  We had some of our things unpacked, we stayed in Alabama for five days, and were content to just enjoy the lazy southern morning.  I went outside and found a black berry bush, the farm has hundreds of them all over the place, and sampled a few... they were delicious.  I gathered another handful for Coco and just enjoyed the warmth and fresh air of the morning for a little while.  On the farm the first thing you notice are the sounds.  You can hear traffic, but you know it is a good 4 miles off.  The assorted sounds of birds, insects, dogs barking, and people doing what every during the day filter through the woods giving only a hint as to which direction they originated.

I went back inside to deliver the berries to Coco and began getting things ready for breakfast.  My mom had already started breakfast so I helped Coco with the baby and we went out for a quick survey of the front yard.  Coco was amazed at the black berry bushes and was pretty happy to just pick the berries.  After a few minutes we went back to enjoy a traditional southern breakfast of grits, bacon, eggs, milk and juice.  We had already decided not to go overboard with the biscuits and gravely or two meats.  After breakfast and cleaning up I took Coco around the farm.  She loved the horses, they are a neighbors who leases the land for them.  We went to almost all the pastures, there was one, the south pasture, we did not go into just due to time reasons.  When we got to the pond Coco got to see a crane, some ducks, and of course the squirrels from the northern wood lot.  The pond is still in bad shape, it is full of algae and turtles, and the drought of the season is evident in how low it was.  We had a run in with one of the horses, a rodeo roping horse who decided to corral us for a bit before becoming bored with us. 

The east pasture had grown up quite a bit and as I was trying to find more wild lime trees, there are a few on the farm, we jumped a doe.  She was maybe 125 lbs and she bounded over the fence and into the thick woods as if it were second nature.  Coco was shocked at the deer and seemed really delighted at the tour.   The heat of the day was getting up there by now and we wanted to get back to Sophia.  We left by the old hey barn and walked by one of the old original oaks of the place.  There is only the one old oak that is still intact.  One blew down in a hurricane 2 years ago, another in the hurricane 2 years before that one, and the remaining two were greatly damaged by the fire that destroyed the original plantation era home the year before my parents bought the farm and these two trees have never been right since then, they are mostly gray trunks and only have a few live branches left.  After seeing the old ivy covered oak I noticed the fig tree was still there, but the figs were too green so Coco missed out on fresh figs. 

Sophia was happily looking around and doing what she does best, waving her arms and making small content noises.  My mom's cats decided the baby was too much and were laying on the porch and steps, the way cats tend to do.  We discussed our plans and found some maps and looked at our options.  My mom needed to go to Selma for some things, before the businesses closed for the day, 5 PM, and we had to work around the fact the town I went to high school in, Camden, closes at noon on Thursdays.  We would go to Selma in the afternoon, Camden Thursday morning, Greensboro Friday, Montgomery on Saturday, and end out the week in Birmingham as we had an early morning flight. 

We got everything together, loaded up in the truck and I was able to drive again, it was becoming almost natural to be behind the wheel again.  We did our business in Selma first, of course, and then went to the historic Water Avenue area to look at old building of the city's riverfront.  Selma was sacked during the War Between the States, there were a few places spared but not many and the economic depression of the '80's and '90's did not help the city either.  Today it was a pleasant surprise to see the St James hotel had been fully restored, although not in its original location I believe, it was still a nice example of the history Selma has to offer.  We strolled the river front on the way to the old home district, where many of the houses go back to reconstruction.  The only homes sparred the burning of Selma were those used as Union command centers and barracks.  It seems Selma was a lesson of what to do and not do on the way to Atlanta by General Sherman. 

Coco loved the old homes and was quite curious about them.  Some were for sale but their prices were not displayed so we could not tell how much they were going for.  Some of the homes were fully restored, others in varying degrees of disrepair and needing work.  The major problem though is lack of adequate industry in the area to attract the quantity of people required to buy, restore, live in, and care for these homes long term.  The problem with many small southern towns like Selma is they are too far from any viable infrastructure to sustain an industry that could make the town viable and prosperous again.  Sophia had been really good up to this point, but she was beginning to show the strains of the day.  We had walked quite a bit and the heat of the day was typical Alabama for this time of the year.  The sun was now sinking behind the magnolias and Spanish moss draped oaks and firs as we drove back to the main street.  There is a small Chinese restaurant across from one of the oldest drugstores in Selma, so we stopped there to try the food.  My mom has eaten at this place often so they know her.  The food was good, Americanized which suited me well, and Coco chatted with the owners and seemed to enjoy the food and restaurant.

We headed out to see what was left of the old Selma mall, until I was 16 and had a car it was the largest mall I had ever seen.  We looked at some clothing, picked up some nice outfits for Sophia, she even has to get oversized clothing in the US wearing a six to nine month size at just three months old.  Coco looked at some dresses for her mom, mother's day was just around the corner.  My mom met a nice lady who had some experience with American and Chinese couples before and they had a nice chat while Coco and I explored the rest of the mall, it was much smaller then I had remembered and nearly empty.  I could not find the restrooms but luckily my mom told me they were in the JC Penny's were just shopped in.  We left as the mall was closing and made it back to the farm without seeing any deer, which was unusual.  Everyone was feeling tired so we headed of to bed. 

As time has not been kind, for some reasons I have lauded here, and others I have not, I now have a few hours to catch everyone up on our jouneys.

Our journey started with packing everything into 3 large suitcases.  It turned out babies require much more then I would have thought.  Our flight was not until early afternoon so we booked out taxi (having to hire a van due to the amount of luggage) and went through the apartment to make sure the gas, water, and all electronic devices were off and all windows closed and locked.  We were not too rushed getting to the airport, a little unusual for me.  Sophia was pretty good not getting too upset at the exit point, security point, or shopping in the duty free shops before we borded the plane.  The United flight we took was an older plane, evident by the lack of video screens and no basenett mounting points on the bulkhead.  We were able to change our seats by requesting a basenett which was nice as it offered my much greater leg room.  Sophia did have a few hour meltdown on the beginning of the flight but after two hours of crying she setteled in and the other 11 hours were event free, from her anyway.  I did not pull out the laptop, but relayed on my Creative Zen and sleep to pass the time, taking a peak at the movies they offered from time to time.

Landing at O'hare offered Coco her first impressions of America.  We took differnt immigration lines, I still don't know if we had to as there were 2 Americans in our party, and I went to gather the luggage and wait for her and the baby to show up.  Luckly we had a baby carrier for going throgh the airports as the stroller was always added to the checked luggage at the gate.  I got a cart, foung all the bags, and then gathered my wife, but we could not find the stroller.  They did not have it available at the gate as promised, so I had to ask the good old American airport workers at the luggage handling area and they were as useless as always, finally the stroller showed up and we rushed on our way to the connecting flight.  As we checkin in for the next flight (something we did not have to do) I was reminded about a Chinese bottle of wine I had forgotten on the plane.  The check in people found the bottle, and we added it to one of our cary-ons and had it checked.  Then we rushed off to terminal C via the tram.  Getting in the terminal Coco looked at the duty free shops, and was dissapointed by the lack of choices they had to offer, Chicago's O'Hare duty free shops are tiny compared to what you find in the Far East airports.  We were hungry, it was the same time we had left Shanghai, on the same day, but after 14 hours on an airplane any food looks good.  Coco got a nice salad and yogart at some store I had not heard of.  I wanted to stop off at Quiznones but because of the stroller finding and missing wine I had to resort to McDonald's.  I had forgotten how different Chinese and American McDonald's are. 

We barely had time to get to the gate (thanks to American fast food not being so fast) when the plane was bording.  Coco was amazed by the size of the plane, we had just gotten off of a 747 and now we're on a 707, a huge difference (she had never seen a jet so small before).  We got headed south and Sophia again decided it was time if fuss, only this time she could only last about 45 minutes of the 4 hour flight.  Traveling this long really takes a lot out of a person as I slept most of the flight.  When we landed in Birmingham it was just getting dark.  We walked off the plane and onto the tarmac, not unusual for Chinese air flights, and the first thing I noticed was the sent of honeysickle on the warm southern night air.  The smell was soon overpowered by the smell of jet fuel exhust once a small breeze lazily blew.  For the fist time in well over a year I could look up and see the stars in the same place as they were when I was growing up.  We gathered the baby stroller and made sure the baby was ok and went into the small concorse to find my mom almost imeadeatly.  We had a wonderful 'welcome' hug from my mom as I introduced her to her grandchild and my wife.  Luckly we found a porter and due to the number of bags, and the condition of two of them, we needed his help to get them to my mom's truck.  I was unusally chatty as I made small talk with the porter and he was quite interested in China. 

After re-arranging some things in the bed of my mom's truck we headed south out of Birmingham, I got to drive for the first time in over a year!  Leaving on the interstate I immeadeatly remembered the way and we got out of Birmingham headed towards Montgomery.  We got off the interstate around Montevello and again journeyed south, avoiding deer and slow drivers.  Around Maplesville Sophia decided to have a fit and we luckly found an open McDonald's.  After a changing and stretching out legs we got the baby calmed down and headed to Selma for some supplies.  Coco was shocked I was leaving the truck in the parking lot with out putting the luggage in the cab of the truck.  I did put the small bags, holding the cameras and laptop, in the cab but explained to her we were parked under a light, at the main entrance to the store and there was a police car very close by and the security guard was there eating chips and chatting on his cell phone. 

Coco's first impression of an American grocery store was the Super Wal-Mart in Selma.  It is about the size of the Carefore's in Shanghai (a European superstore with food on one level and retail items on the second) so she was not so taken back by its size, just its selections.  We have canned foods here in China, just not that many of them as well as boxed cerials, pastas, and chips are mere fractions to what you find in America.  We got food for the week and even an outfit for Sophia as well as a University of Alalbama hat for me (remember I am a huge football fan and grew up in Alalbama).  They were renovating the store so 1/4 of it was closed off or under construction so she only got to see the garden department through the chain link fense.  We paid for our things, packed them in the truck, topped of the tank at one of the 24 hour gas stations and went down the highway toward the farm.

We were lucky in that few deer were out this night, they are a large problem on dark southern roads at night all times of the year.  We got onto the dirt rodes and finally pulled up to the front yard of the house just after 1 AM.  We unpacked the truck and settled the little one in and called it a day.

I find a saying about vacations a little odd, 'I need a vacation from my vacation'.  In our modern, instant everything world we seem to try to cram as much experiences into as little time as possible.  From on-demand video to pod casting we all want to fast forward through commercials and skip the previews and credits.  We all try to fit as much enjoyment, excitement, and stimulation into as short a time as possible.  Recently I returned from a two week long vacation to the US and I can totally identify with this saying now.

I am not a person who historically has had the opportunity to enjoy vacations.  As a young child I did enjoy my vacations with my grandparents to their cabin on Lake Huron in Harrisville Michigan.  I can't remember how long we would be there, kids have a much different perspective of time then adults do.  When we moved to Alabama the year I started 3rd grade vacations became a part of the past.  Running a farm and later a small business my family could not afford the time or expenses of taking a week or two off outside of days that most business were closed, and farm chores were never done.  I worked my way through college until I dropped out and then worked full time, even working during the week long factory shutdown to help pay off my car and save up for college.  After joining the Navy taking leave was not an easy thing to do.  When I finally got out of the Navy I had over 90 days (three years) of leave saved up.  I took my 30 days of terminal leave, sold back the rest and found a job in 2 weeks.  I finished college in 3 years Magna Cum Laude so we all know I took classes even during spring and winter breaks.  Back in the job force the only vacation time I took in three years was my first and second trips to China.  Of these years without taking a vacation I have come to believe they were more trouble then they were worth.

Recently I have secured a job with excellent benefits, one of those being generous vacation time, and in a country that allows for 3 weeks of government paid vacation a year (all taken in 3 week long installments).  Vacations are encouraged by the Chinese government and this is a good thing, as nearly the entire country is on vacation at the same time.  In America we aren't as lucky as our longest government sanctioned vacation period are the two 3 day weekends marking the beginning and ending of summer each year (for many people the Friday after Thanksgiving is a work day as it is the largest retail day of the year).  In the US taking a week off means you have to leave work and your job behind.  While you are off your work is just accumulating, waiting, building into a heap of long work days and working weekends for the next month.

Upon returning from my vacation I talked with one of my Chinese friends who took his wife to Paris for May holiday.  We talked about each other's vacations and both of us had the same thoughts.  Not only did we both need vacations from our vacations, we both needed a month to catch up on our work (him not so long as he now has 2 assistants to help him out).  The most troubling part of this is that it is not isolated to just America anymore.  Our dependency on work and employment to define our worthiness and inclusion into modern society is very troubling.  As my long time readers know I have often discussed that we need to define ourselves outside of our chosen professions and incomes.  Work is encroaching into more and more of our lives.  There are two phenomenon here to discuss; 1) the need to take a vacation from your vacation and 2) trying to cope from all the work that builds up when you take a vacation.

When you look at he typical year, 52 weeks, taking two weeks off does not seem like a huge impact on the overall scheme of life.  In the US a work year is based off of 50 weeks, or 2000 hours (this is how you determine your hourly wage or annual income if you are an hourly wage earner), taking an additional two weeks knocks this down to 48 weeks of work, still a very small fraction of time in the overall calculation.  So why is it our grandparents knew how to take a vacation and we don't?  How have I come to this conclusion I can hear you ask... well let's look at how my grandparents vacationed compared to how my family did this past month. 

My grandparent's cabin had no telephone, was on a dirt road at the end of another dirt road, and the closet town was the size of the town I went to high school in (about 2,000 population).  The cabin was isolated, peaceful, in the middle of scenery I will remember my whole life, and was a place you could unwind and relax.  Our two weeks in the US was jammed packed with an itinerary that was impossible to maintain.  By the end I was exhausted and wished I had more time to relax and recharge for the coming work I knew was waiting for me.  My parents generation tried to be different from their parents generations by going on 'fun' vacations.  They were bored at going to cabins on the lake, sea side resorts, camping in the great parks and they did not want to subject their children to that.  This spawned the rise of the amusement parks, theme vacations, and over stimulating affairs where people were non-stop entertained.  My generation, not one for sitting by and being defined by our parent's lack of imagination, have taken the vacation to the next level, the extreme vacation.  Rapid shooting, mountain summit storming, mountain biking, racing schools, Vegas gambling fests, all designed to wear out the mind and body in ways our parents could not match in the late '70's and early '80's.  We have lost the ability to visit a cabin devoid of telephone, cell phone coverage, satellite TV, laser light show discos, and adrenaline pumping adventures.  We now work twice as hard on our vacations then we do at work, all in the name of relaxing and recharging.  The whole point of having vacation time is to take time off so you don't burn out, or over stress yourself on work related activities.  By taking stress filled vacations we defeat the purpose of taking time off. 

In our interconnected and instant fulfillment global society our work lives keep encroaching into our free time.  While our employers emphasis quality of life, they demand our personal ownership and involvement to a degree we feel guilty for things we really should not.  Anyone who works in an office can fully relate to this, others are made to feel guilty for taking a vacation and leaving the employer shorthanded for the time they are off, (I saw this at Quad Graphics, a printer in Wisconsin, and other laborer jobs I have worked).  While I was in Virginia Beach, working on my friend's PC, I could not resist the urge to check my work email.  Upon seeing I had over 120 emails I felt I had to begin reviewing the major ones, all for the major global project I am working on now and IS my life at the moment.  I was compelled to catch up to speed on what I had missed out on over the week and a half I at this point.  When I got back to work I knew what awaited me, partially.  For two days before getting back to work all I could think of was work, not enjoying my last two remaining days with my family.  While this is internal pressure I place on myself and know that, the nature of our modern work place environment helps to foster this.  I have filled in on a major work stream while one of my Australian colleagues took his two weeks off, starting the day I returned!  I have had to call him and have noticed he has send email while on his time off.  We can no longer resist the urge to stay in touch with our work lives as they have come to define our being and validate our worthiness and place in society. 

I did enjoy my trip home and showing my wife where I grew up and was stationed two of my three duty stations in the Navy.  My friend enjoyed his Paris trip with his wife.  We both felt regret for not having enough time to see more and fully relax.  Neither of us were non-stop, 100 mile-an-hour style vacations, yet we both felt a little cheated with our lack of time to enjoy these trips we spent so much time planning and money on.  This feeling prevented us from enjoying our trips to the degree we should have.  When you go to Paris you should have the time and freedom to see and explore what interests you and make memories that are 100% yours, not those of the tour group's itinerary.  While I knew I could not show Coco everything I wanted to, I still tried, too hard at times, and this led to a vacation that was not enjoyable to us both.  I think we, as a generation, has fallen into the trap of filling out time with quantity of quality.  I see this in more then just vacations, evident by people in the blog world comparing their Xbox 360 premium to their new Xbox 360 extreme and their new PS3.  We feel we have to try and see more and more to gain satisfaction.  We all grew up in a new prosperous age, we witnessed the fall of the Soviet Union, the Berlin Wall, the rise of the PC, cell phone, internet, email, globalism and a new economy allowing us to gain equal wealth to our parents in mere months and not decades.  We have become accustomed to outdoing each and every past memory and experience we have lost sight of what really matters.  Life is for enjoyment not collecting experiences and memories to compare to the old person next to us in the nursing home.  I truly hope this one legacy I can break and not pass on to my daughter, that she can enjoy time off as my grandparents did.  In the days before PC's, cell phones, email, satellite DVR programming, and 60GB MP3 players, there is a world that still exists, one where you can sit back, let the world pass you by and enjoy the freedom of not being part of the rat race.