An American Ex-Pat Living And Working In East Asia
I miss my family. I’ve been traveling for the past few days, getting some important things done, but I’ve been gone long enough and I come home tonight.
It certainly is much ‘easier’ to travel alone (I definatly have a lot less luggage to drag around), but I prefer being with Erica and the girls! I can’t wait to see them.
After I get home, it’s the final stretch before the big journey begins back to America via Europe!
Hold on girls, I’m coming home!
According to Erica, my wife, once you hit 30, you are ancient.
Well, today I am officially “ancient + 4″ as I turn 34!
Happy birthday me! Maybe I’ll have one of these;
Go Gators!
Sat Sep 1 Western Kentucky Steve in China
Sat Sep 8 Troy Steve between China & Italy
Sat Sep 15 Tennessee Steve in Italy
Sat Sep 22 at Ole Miss Steve in Italy
Sat Sep 29 Auburn Steve in USA
Sat Oct 6 at LSU Steve in USA
Sat Oct 20 at Kentucky Steve in USA
Sat Oct 27 Georgia Steve in USA
Sat Nov 3 Vanderbilt Steve in USA
Sat Nov 10 at South Carolina Steve in USA
Sat Nov 17 Florida Atlantic Steve in USA
Sat Nov 24 Florida State Steve in USA
Living in China, you just never get to see a live, college football game. It’s one of the things I’ve missed the most since moving to Asia. It’s going to be so nice to catch a game or two this season - especially if the Gators do half as good as they have been doing lately! (So sorry to all of my OSU Buckeyes friends…)
I’m excited, are you?
Did anyone else hear about this guy, Mike Flynt, a 59 year old grandpa who is going to be playing college ball this season?! Way to go gramps!
Back in the day, Flynt was quite a player.
In 1965, he was on the first state championship team at Odessa Permian, the high school featured in “Friday Night Lights.” He was offered a partial scholarship at Arkansas when the Razorbacks were among the top teams in the land, but instead went to Ranger Junior College.
He wound up at Sul Ross in 1969. An NAIA school then, the Lobos were in the Lone Star Conference with East Texas State, which at the time had future NFL stars Harvey Martin and Dwight White, and Texas A&I, which was starting a two-year run as national champs. The highlight of Flynt’s two years at Sul Ross was sticking A&I with its only loss in ‘69.
Flynt was going into his senior year in 1971 when he got into a fight that was far from his first. School officials decided they’d had enough and threw him out of school. He earned his degree from Sul Ross by taking his remaining classes elsewhere.
This would NEVER fly in America… What has happened is the Beijing City Government Leaders decided to do an ‘experiment’ to see the effects of and to test the logistics of a driving ban for over a million vehicles per day. This is part of Beijing’s preparations for the 2008 Olympics.
A police officer stops a car with an even-numbered license plate on a main thoroughfare in Beijing during the first of a four-day air quality experiment for the Olympics, August 17, 2007.
Beijing’s overall air quality improved during the four-day test period ahead of next August’s Olympic Games in which more than a million cars each day were barred from the roads, according to the Beijing Environment Protection Monitoring Center.
This definitely falls into the category of ‘only in China’!
This photo is a view of Hurricane Dean as seen from the International Space Station
I guess this is something in Texas that will make this ‘Florida boy‘ feel at home when I move to Arlington next month!
It appears the attitude toward hurricanes in Texas is similar to many in Florida…
If the fierce storm appears to be bearing down on Texas Monday, they’ll be boarding up windows and fastening down roofs, preparing for the worst. But on Saturday, Lee and Courtwright were more interested in surfing.
I think that where we’ll be living, the threat from hurricanes will be significantly less than the threat in St. Pete where my parents live.
Interestingly, here in China they don’t have “Hurricanes”, they have “Typhoons.” What’s the difference between a hurricane and a typhoon?
Aside from the name, not much. Both are severe tropical systems that have wind speeds greater than 74 mph.
They are called “hurricanes” in the Atlantic Ocean, Caribbean and eastern Pacific Ocean. But once your go west across the International Dateline and into the western Pacific Ocean, they’re called typhoons. And of course, the Australians, who have colorful names for just about everything, have their own term for hurricanes: “willy-willys.”
Typhoons generally tend to be stronger than hurricanes, but only because there’s warmer water in the western Pacific and are better conditions for storm development.
Maybe one day I’ll live in Australia and can experience a “willy-willy” (can that really be true?) Then I can say that I’ve experienced all three…
Erica has been on my case to come up with a name for the little guy on the way. Not sure what the rush is, we have till November…
Anyway, I came across a story about a couple here in China who recently had a baby and they decided to take the path less traveled and to name their kid “@”. Yes, you read that right, they’ve named their precious little baby with the same symbol that is in every Email address all over the world. Man, I’d hate to get that kid’s SPAM!
BEIJING (Reuters) - A Chinese couple tried to name their baby “@,” claiming the character used in e-mail addresses echoed their love for the child, an official trying to whip the national language into line said Thursday.
The unusual name stands out especially in Chinese, which has no alphabet and instead uses tens of thousands of multi-stroke characters to represent words.
“The whole world uses it to write e-mail, and translated into Chinese it means ‘love him’,” the father explained, according to the deputy chief of the State Language Commission Li Yuming.
While “@” is familiar to Chinese e-mail users, they often use the English word “at” to sound it out — which with a drawn out “T” sounds something like “ai ta,” or “love him,” to Mandarin speakers.
Li told a news conference on the state of the language that the name was an extreme example of people’s increasingly adventurous approach to Chinese, as commercialization and the Internet break down conventions.
Considering 90% of the country’s 1.3 billion people share just 129 surnames, it’s no surprise that this is happening. It sorta reminds me of some of the names American actors burden their innocent children with (ie. Apple, Phinnaeus, “Rumer Glenn”, “Scout LaRue”, “Tallulah Belle”, “Sage Moonblood”, “Sistine Rose”, Puma, Jett, Sailor, and “Heavenly Hiraani Tiger Lily” just to name a few.) all in the effort to be different.
Well, different strokes for different folks! I’m pretty sure Erica will NOT sign off on naming our little one “@” - I wonder if she’ll go for “Starbuck”? That’s kinda a cool name for a little guy!?
What do you think?
This just in…
Just a little Friday humor for you! 
No one was on iChat and Elizabeth was hoping to see Grandma, so we just had some fun with iMovie instead.
Some interesting news from our friends on the east side of the Atlantic;
LONDON — Big Ben’s bongs fell silent Saturday as workers rappelled down Parliament’s iconic clock tower, beginning a month of maintenance work on the clock and its world-famous bell.
Time briefly stood still as the clock’s hands were frozen shortly after 8 a.m. They then were wound to 12 o’clock as a team of specialist “industrial rope-access technicians” descended to clean the clock’s four latticework faces, part of maintenance ahead of its 150th anniversary in 2009.
Although the clock soon will be ticking again, the famed bell that sounds the hour at Britain’s Houses of Parliament will be silent for four to six weeks as engineers replace bearings in the clock mechanism.
This is the first time since 1956 that both Big Ben’s sonorous hourly bongs and the chimes that mark each quarter-hour will be silent, robbing London of one of its most distinctive sounds.
You can read more here: http://www.parliament.uk/about/history/big_ben.cfm
Hi! I'm Steve Webel and this is my blog. Thanks for stopping by!For more about me.
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