Earthquake

As Carole King wrote:

I feel the earth move under my feet
I feel the sky tumbling down

I'm sure most of you have heard by now that China was rocked by a strong earthquake (7.8 on the Richter scale) this afternoon. The center of the quake was near Chengdu in Sichuan province, which is almost a thousand miles west of Shanghai. The reports we're seeing online now are saying there are over 100 fatalities with hundreds more missing or trapped in the rubble.

Here in Shanghai, the tremor measured 5.7 and I haven't heard of any reports of damage. I was in my office on the 17th floor when it hit. I felt the building sway for several seconds and then it was over. We were told to evacuate the building so we went out and stood on the sidewalk. This brought up the question of what is better in this situation: to be in a high rise building or to be standing on the street surrounded by high rise buildings? There was really no consistency as some buildings evacuated, some didn't, and some evacuated some floors but not others. After about an hour and a half, we were allowed to enter the building to get our belongings and told to go on home. We've been here of less than a year and so far I've missed work for a "typhoon day," a "snow day," and now an "earthquake day." Hopefully this is last of the natural disasters.

One Night in Bangkok

"One night in Bangkok and the world's your oyster
The bars are temples but the pearls ain't free"
- Murray Head

Actually, it was more like one hour in Bangkok, where we had a layover on our way to Phuket. Last week was a holiday here in China so we decided to go to Thailand for a few days. Phuket is an island off the west coast of the Thai mainland. It got hit pretty hard by the tsunami back in December 2004. Many of the resorts, hotels, and restaurants were damaged and about 10,000 people died. The resort we stayed at - Ban Thai Resort - had to pull approximately 50 cars out of their three pools and rebuild everything on the ground floor. All is pretty much back to normal now and you can't tell that anything ever happened.

We took it easy Monday and Tuesday, just moving back and forth between the pool and the beach. The waves were big (7-8 feet) and the weather was hot, with afternoon temperatures in the low-90's. On Wednesday we got a little more energetic and went on a sea canoe tour of some of the small islands between Phuket and the mainland. We've all seen on TV these little limestone islands that look like they just popped up out of the water. Well, it turns out that many of these have small lagoons inside them. However, the only way to get to them is paddling a sea canoe thru a cave. The only catch is that the caves are only accessible during short periods between high tide and low tide. At high tide, the cave entrances are under water. And at low tide, the water is too shallow for the canoes. Some of the caves we passed thru were pretty big. One in particular had a high ceiling covered with thousands of bats. We were lucky and got thru without getting crapped on but some in our party weren't as fortunate. Other caves though were pretty tight and we had to lay in the bottom of the canoes to pass under the rocks.

Once thru the caves, the water opened up into these lagoons surrounded by sheer cliffs. We saw all kinds of birds, a couple of monkeys, walking fish, snails - all kinds of critters. The water had some type of luminescent plankton in it. After dark, you could shake your hand in the water and they would light up like lightning bugs. It was an amazing day. Definitely one of the coolest things we've ever done. More pictures can be found here http://picasaweb.google.com/baamick/Phuket

Jinqiao 8K

Every spring, the municipal government of the Jinqiao (pronounced jin-chow) community where we live hosts an 8 kilometer run thru the neighborhood. Kristi and her good friend Kelly Schroering have been training hard to prepare for this year's race. While some people took it quite seriously, Kristi's goal was to just finish, which she did easily.



















Also participating were some chefs...
















...Superman and his cross-dressing sidekick...















...and a couple of guys from "parts unknown."