Before you think I have gone all perverted, stop. These are actual mascots of events. From top right clockwise:
* 1996 Atlanta Olympic mascot “Izzy”
* 2008 Spain World Expo * 2010 Shanghai World Expo
* 2009 Hong Kong East Asian Games

Having lived through and participated in the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta I heard all the “blue sperm” jokes you could imagine. After that I thought, “ok mistake over, now back to lions, tigers, and bears, oh my.” Nope. I just saw the Shanghai mascot last week. Not only is it ambiguous but it is also blue! Then this week I arrive in Hong Kong to the “white sperm twins” for the East Asian games. Those three alone would have been enough for this article, but then I find the 2008 Spain expo mascots. Posis? Negas? Are you serious? What is Posis even doing to Negas on the bottom right? Do people really want to see this? Please tell me I am not the only person who feels this is wrong.

I only have a few questions:

1. What’s wrong with an animal? Starbucks can dress up the same bear 6 ways to Sunday, but these events can’t manage a new animal look? What about the lemur? When was he a mascot? Or the moth? For that matter, they might as well put Alabama’s dung beetle up as a mascot given this company.
2. Why Blue or White? If you made them brown then… oh…I get why not brown.. but orange or green? What about black? Why can’t we have a “black” mascot, hmm? HMMMM???
3. Why so close together? We have gone from 2008-2010 and all three look very close. STOP COPYING CHINA! The problem with being ambiguous is you can be anything and when you are anything you are also nothing which is what they tend to end up. I think I need to report these and collect my reward to China’s new porn policy: http://bit.ly/7yQ5cw

Now most of these were designed using children’s imaginations and focus groups. The problem with children is that they don’t even know all the animals yet, so of course they sneeze on a paper (or worse) and someone calls it “Izzy!” Please, please, please, to the next event planner, find something with legs, a pulse, and a defined neck and NOT something that looks more like what people in Asia spit on the sidewalks.

Posted via email from beuk’s posterous

photo.jpg
Originally uploaded by beuk

I was going to title this, “How to dress like a Westerner,” but then I realized I am not up to date on the fashion trends of the Europeans (give me ’til tomorrow :)

When out on the town we constantly get people noticing BabyG. Now, I know she is very cute, and she hears it all the time, but in my observations I think the real reason we draw so much attention is that she is dressed nicely. So, in an attempt to help my Taiwanese brethren I have assembled a How To guide on dressing your children appropriately:

1. Shoes – I am not going to say you need 20 pairs of baby shoes. Just two. Like a man needs one good brown and one black pair, a baby should have one white and one black pair. This way they will go with everything and you will not have to make decisions on whether pink goes with red (read on).
2. Wear Shoes! – we are working our way up and still on shoes. Here is my tip: Wear them! You cannot dress your baby in a snow suit, sweater, turtleneck, t-shirt, onsie, and blankets; THEN claim it is cold outside when it is 80F; and not wear shoes! If I have to see baby Michelin man running around he better have shoes, otherwise your misconstrued idea about below 92F days require 93 layers of clothes doesn’t hold up.
3. Split Pants – I thought we left these behind (pun intended) in China. If you have not just gotten off the new 70 minute flight from Shanghai, DO NOT DRESS YOUR KID IN SPLIT PANTS! There is not even any place for the dogs to poo, so I don’t know where you think you can suspend you lil kiddo and cop-a-squat. Sew up the butt!
4. PJs – Pajamas are for the home. They are meant to sleep in. While the ones with footies are a step up from no shoes, it doesn’t count. The excuse “But they are nice pajamas” also doesn’t count that is for the old folks in their silk drawers. Your child should have indoor and outdoor clothes and don’t mix them.
5. Colors – red and pink do NOT go together. I know you think red split pants with a pink t-shirt is attractive, but it is not. No one will tell you your baby is cute, they will just think he looks like a stale peppermint stick. If you are in doubt, pick one color and white. It almost always works and no one will get eye strain injuries from carrying your baby.

That is it! Hopefully with these tips you too can dress your kiddo like the foreigners and receive the “So Cute” praise on the street.

Gotta get this post up quick to scoop Rebecca. Frankie is home! After 6 months, 21 days, and more paper work than you can shake a stick at (pun intended) Frankie has once again rejoined our family. He and Gioia get along fine. They kind of ignore each other. Gioia is a lil “over it” and Frankie thinks G is a play toy when you swing her around too much. I can already see that the water bowl is going to be a problem.

For those of you keeping score at home, the current travel count is:

Frankie(5) – Chicago, Beijing, Shanghai, Nashville, Atlanta
Gioia(5) – China, Japan, Hawaii, Taiwan, Hong Kong, (coming soon: Singapore and Turkey)

So the question you gotta ask yourself is, has my dog and less than 1 year old daughter travelled more than you?
We can help you fix that ;) Come see us.

Ohhh India… How easy is it to blog about you…

My flight to India started out the same way it did when I flew to Shanghai in 2005. YOU WILL BE SPRAYED! Dude. I am sorry, but it is just wrong to walk down the aisles spraying stuff over people’s heads.

Delhi’s airport is under construction. Apparently, it has been under construction for the past 2 years. Should be ready any minute now, NOT. I had to move loose wires from a junction box to get at my bag. Airport authority, here is a tip: Just calling it a world class airport, does not make it so.

Coming out of the airport I saw an interesting ad. “Diet now, Don’t wait!” Really? How big a market is obesity in India?

Speaking of signs, check these out:

Space for shooting? Who are we shooting?

and…

Is chat more or less expensive than a hotdog? (it should be ChaAt. Even I know that.)

Ohhh India…

Shanghai acrobats are nuthin, originally uploaded by beuk.

Can you see the family of 4 on the bike? We see this all the time. And to think i paid money to see acrobats do the same thing. I also dragged a bar seat back from the US! Even the commericials here have kids showing where they like to ride on the bike.
–
Sent using a Sony Ericsson mobile phone

So, the move to Taiwan did not turn out to be all Guns and Roses (bad pun, sorry. Read on). My 300GB USB disk drive decided it was time to die. Why it could not die BEFORE we moved I will never get a chance to ask it (sob). This was at the same time that I was a decided to add a network storage disk of 750GB to complement it. The reason? I had filled my 300GB and 250GB USB drives with music and movies (yes, music. I had deleted all that other stuff, ask my wife. And if you don’t know what I am talking about… good for you).

I could not believe it. 300GB. Over 140,000 songs. Over 40 DAYS of music! You know, I just might need something to do for 40 days and 40 nights, you never know. My first thought was I can repair it myself. Wrong. 12 downloads of lame programs later and I had not recovered one song. The reason is my USB drive did not show up as a disk when plugged in, so Windows (and Linux, yes I tried that too) did not know what to do with it. When I did get it mounted in RAW format. I still could get nothing back.

So, I thought I would take it to the ubiquitous “lil Chinese guy”. I suppose I should say, “lil Taiwanese guy”, same-same. They could not help me either. I got a price quote of 100 yuan($3) per MB of recovery. This would mean each mp3 would cost about $12 to recover. Let’s see… times 140,000 songs comes out to … er.. nevermind.

So, I tried the backup. I have been using an online company called Mozy. They let me backup anything in a “trickle charge” effect across the internet. When you need it back they burn it to DVD and mail it to you (technically, they mail it to my Mom since it has to be a U.S. address). I was using another company as well called iDrive until I received a nasty lil email from them stating that I was in the top 99.8% of users on their site and I needed to cease uploading and reduce my UNLIMITED account. I guess this is what you call a “Cease and Delete” leterr. Apparently, unlimited storage for $19.95 does not mean unlimited. (jerks!) So, I was back to Mozy. Mozy is good, but backing up 140,000 songs can take wayyyyyyy too long and apparently it never finished. When I checked the site I found that only 40GB had been backed up. 40 is better than 0, but it is not ALL of the music (this is where my OCD kicks in).

After toying with pulling a few songs off our our army of ipods, I finally decided to bite the bullet and go ahead and re-rip all my CDs. Since Shanghai, I have been wondering why I am carrying around 4 giant cases of music. You see, we are constantly going through our stuff and trying to reduce the amount of “shi-tuff” we have. I have so many cables in bags I was called a walking Radio Shack. Twice previously in Shanghai and Beijing I thought, “Why am I carrying all these CDs from house to house. I have them on my disks. What could happen? And you never know when we might have to move again. The less shi-tuff the better, right?” Now I’m glad I kept up with it.

For the past week I have been ripping CDs one after another. It has actually allowed me to discover some new music and artists that I did not know I had. For example: There is this guy/group called Adama Yalomba. They have a song called Miri Yoro. This isn’t it on Amazon, but it sounds kinda like it. It is Indian, African, Modern, and Techno all in one. Very cool. I also found some crap music. By crap I mean when did I buy an Enya CD? I think this is one of Rebecca’s CDs. I must say, ripping it made me kind of cringe. I had to fight the urge to chuck it frisbee style in the la ji tong (trash). The music is way too ethereal. Play a guitar for Heaven’s sake! Ironically, there is rarely a Day Without Rain in Taipei, so maybe that has something to do with not liking it.

Now, in doing all this ripping my worst fear was realized and that is that I could not recover some song that Rebecca wanted to hear. Of course, the first thing out of here mouth was: “Do we have any Christmas music?” Ahhhh… I had anticipated this request and already put all of the Christmas music I could find to the top of the rip pile. Then she said the words that Stung Me: “… like Harry Connick, Jr’s Christmas Album?” What? No! I did not have that, but wait… we were listening to it before… that means… that means…. NOOOOoooooo…. It is lost. Lost forever, lost until the dying reaches of time, lost until… until.. yeah, I know. Until I just download it again, but come on! I have spent a week and recovered 100,000 songs with 30 days of music. what are the chances that the one.. i say.. ONE ALBUM my sweet dear innocent lil wife wants to hear is the ONE that we don’t have.
I have:

• Harry Connick – She
• Harry Connick – Songs I Heard (for Gioia, excellent baby music)
• Harry Connick – Star Turtle (dude, what was I thinking when I bought this. it is weird)

but no Christmas Album. In fact our Christmas music list is pitifully short. So, I guess I will just have to find it on Amazon’s MP3 downloads and get it. Consider it an early Christmas present or a stocking stuffer or just my OCD being unable to rest until ALL THE MUSIC HAS BEEN RECOVERED, but we shall have a complete music collection once again, I promise! (cue thunder and lightening).

The only question left is how do I back all this stuff up again?

—
So, see if you can follow this one. Forgetting all about my whirlwind trip through Chicago yesterday I had a whirlwind day! I went from Shanghai to Hong Kong to Taipei to see my house for the first time with our things in it. B has done a great job getting it set and everything is in its place EXCEPT HER! She had to work in Tainan.

Quick Chinese Lesson:
Tai in Chinese means much. It could also mean things like great and grand or in this case capital, such as Taibei (the Chinese way to say Taipei). Because it means too much you can easily see why a WIFE is called Tai Tai, meaning way too much, but that is another story. The “bei” part simply means north. Similarly, “nan” means south so therefore Taibei is on the northern part of the island and Tainan is on the southern tip of the island. Think of it as North and South Dakota and you got it. Now, ignore a few language rules and you can see why the northern and southern capitals of China are… Beijing and Nanjing! Cool, eh!

As easy as the naming convention is, it is easier to get there. An hour after being in Taibei, I headed to the train station. The key to getting to the other side of the island fast is to take the high speed train (gao tie). Silly me, I asked the ticket lady how do you say high speed train in Chinese and she said, “High Speed Rail.” Hence, it is called the HSR, duh. Who said Chinese is hard.

Today I walked around a bit of Tainan called AnPing. It is a actually a 1600′s Dutch colony that was taken over by the Chinese, the British, the Japanese and finally the Taiwanese. While there I got to see Fort Zeelandia the Eternal Golden Castle and much more! For those of you who are aware of my slight OCD, a quick note: This week I also am researching my family tree. I have just been connected with the great grand daughter of my great grand uncle or some such. We are currently working to get the family tree updated, but more on that in a different post. The KEY part is that we have traced the heritage BACK TO 1600. Now, why this week of all weeks am I confronted with TWO 1600 Dutch references?

Lunch was in a cute lil coffee shop I found on the way. In just two days I am extremely surprised how nice people are. Today the waitress there was very kind and obliging to me when I explained that I could not read the menu, but if she could read it to me I could pick something out. We got to talking about life and how I came to be in Tainan and such. Apparently, they do not get too many foreigners on the south side and even less that can speak some Chinese. She was so excited she wanted to take my picture for her blog and I returned the favor.

All in all the trip was quite nice and I am eager to take the HSR back to our new apartment and get settled in!