While I was there this time we were looking for a new apartment. Mary has been in the same place for all 10 years and it was time to move for various reasons. We went and looked a a few but didn’t find any she wanted except for one that had a nice ocean view but it had other issues including an owner that didn’t want to negotiate. Finally just before we left for Beijing we found one she liked and agreed to rent. We moved Wednesday before I came home on Friday. It is about a half mile away and closer to the village on the 7 (top) floor. The view from the front balcony
The tall buildings to the right are the old apartment complexLooking to the left from the front balcony. That brown spot on the hill is a shooting range used in the morning by army or police. We didn’t know that.
Entryway from the balcony into living and dining area.
Typical high end Chinese kitchen.
Master br and bath
2 of the three normal bathrooms come equipped with Beaureguard the bathroom butler devices and this one also has the ball washer device.
The other master bedroom that also has a full bath and Beaureguard.
The dining area looking onto the back balcony
The back balcony
Off the balcony to the left is a separate room and bathroom I guess for maid or something. But it does provide the opportunity for practicing the use of the infamous Asian toilet.
And I mean practice. The few times I have been forced by events to use one of these things I felt like what a German bombardier must have felt like during WWII (the big one) without the use of the top secret Allied bombsight. NO targeting ability at all. His General guy says “Herr Vienersnitzle geten ina z areoplane and go bombenzen the buildingza” and he had no choice but get in the general area and let them fly and hope they hit a target. Using the Asian toilet is a lot like that. Anyway we now have a practice unit if anyone is interested.
Those were pictures I took when we did our walk around and Mary has already changed a lot and the maid has cleaned about everything.
Mary bought a couch and even with the back off it would not fit in the elevator so it had to be brought up the outside of the building 7 stories.
Shortly after this picture the guy in the white shirt climbed over the rail and held on by one arm and fiddled with the couch so the others could lift it over the rail. Nuts they are all nuts.
They got it in without anyone dying, Mary has take over one of the 2 remaining bedrooms as her office and the other is used to store all the extra bedding and stuff we don’t want.
The place is called Sunny Melody, for some reason and it’s mascot is a long neck chicken.
And as an added bonus if you go to the back balcony and lean out looking to the North you can just barely see the ‘view from Mary’s office building’ behind the blue silo and on a more clear day you can see the white factory building.
So there is now plenty of room in China so everyone come visit, just not all at once.
The weekend after the party we went to Beijing for a visit and to discuss with Yuki collage plans. As a 16 year old High School junior (as well as being a junior citizen) she will be doing the application process very soon. We went this week end because the big APEC meeting earlier in the week had shut Bejing down, no factories, school and driving restrictions to cut the Beijing smog. As this picture from the hotel window shows 3 days after the meeting ended it was still relatively smog free.
I mentioned that Ashley’s grandparents were in Zhuhai this week and they went on to Shanghai so they were not in Bejing this week end but Thursday after the party they did come by the plant after we met them for breakfast.
Johnny on the left has recovered from his hangover and the lady on the right is a childhood friend of Mary
Dinner out somewhere on Friday night and then Saturday Yuki, Mary, Ashley’s dad and I spent a few hours at a coffee shop discussing important stuff.
After planning her entire life we went back to the apartment to meet up with the people that had to work.
Returning to the apartment generates a scene that anyone that has been to Beijing for a visit will recognize with one exception. Since Grandma was not there her duties of making sure there was more food on the coffee table than could ever be eaten was spread around to all in attendance.
Sometime during this gathering it was decided that Yuki and I would go to a movie after dinner that night and the adults would go back home and talk Chinese.
For those of you that have not been there the apartment is near the center of Beijing and and is right next to a big shopping area. There is a mall that is 6 or 7 stories tall next to them and all 4 corners of that intersection have big shopping high rise buildings. So that night it was off to dinner at the Korean BBQ on the 9th floor of one of these buildings where we got to cook our own stuff at the table. Not a big ol TBone but little slivers of stuff. When the time came Yuki and I left to go across the street to the Cinema.
The move was the 3 hour long Intersteller that was released worldwide that weekend. Had lots of good effects and had real astrophysics concepts. All in all a good movie. Their popcorn was like Carmel corn though, but acceptable. The movie got over sometime after 10 and Yuki and I walked home. During the walk she told me she was excited because this was the first time she was able go to a movie at night and was able to walk home at night. Night is study time. So for any of you that have a 16 year old or know someone who does I think we can update the old adage that got repeated when a kid didn’t want to eat their stewed tomatoes and soggy bread, “Eat there are people starving in China”. Now when the 16 year old wants to take the family sedan and perform with The Jack Kochman Hell Drivers and then go to a celebration party at Ed’s Emporium of Lewd Behavior and Disco the responsible parent can just reply, “No, 16 year olds in China can’t even go to the movie at night unless accompanied by a certified Senior Citizen” That should put them in their place.
That ended the evening and the visit. The next morning while getting ready to go to the airport I noticed the Sunday morning Chinese window washing crew work on a building across the way.
The way these guys worked was to swing back and forth left to right and wash in one pass and squeegee in the next while the guys on the roof slowly lowered them. No fancy platforms and safety harness for them, no siree. But of course they didn’t grow up with Jiminy Cricket.
Which also may explain Chinese driving and walking habits. Anyway we got home ready for the last week in China.
The main purpose of this trip to China was to take part in the 10 year anniversary of the starting of the company. Nov. 2004 Mary started production of a couple small parts in some spare floorspace in the much larger Eti as part of a joint venture between Titan, that we worked for, and Eti.
She has now built it to 2 plants and about 130 people.Most of the people that are in the pictures have been with the company most of that time. Her management staff is very loyal and her turnover rate is very low. She is proud of the fact that most of her management employees have been able to buy cars and many have been able to buy a house. Mary and the people that work for her have worked hard and have built a very viable business that is different from most other Chinese molders and as a result are now in a position to grow significantly. She is planning a third plant late next year. So this party is a recognition of the 10 year mark and a jumping off into the next 10.
The party was held in Zhuhai as that is where the first plant is and most of the people.Chinese company parties follow a general template. Speeches, entertainment provided by employees, prize/gift giving, and dinner with lots of drinking. Plant was shut down on a Tuesday for this and it started about 4 in the afternoon with Mary’s secretary and the company driver acting as masters of ceremony.
Mary started it off by giving her speech.
Her HR manager consulted with her about an issue while dressed in her dance garb.
Her and Mary’s secretary were the main organizers of this event. With the first speech out of the way it was time for the first entertainment which was a dance routine by members of the staff. (accountants, engineers, production supervisors etc.) Here is the last few seconds of that entertainment.
It should be noted that that may be a bit much to our western norm this is the cutting edge for formal entertainment in China. There are hours of stuff like this on the TV for the New Years entertainment.
Then it was a speech from Head Lee the plant manager.
Then it was some singing from one of the employees.
Then James Wong gave a speech. James was a driver that picked up Mary at the airport the first time she went to China and has been with her since. He now works in purchasing and his wife also works at the plant.
Then he sang a song.
There were during the event drawings for gifts. Here are the winners of a backpack, the first level prize.
There was more singing, a duet by these 2 girls.
Then it was time for the head accounting guy to sing a song.
And then he was joined on stage by Mary for a duet.
There were some more prize drawing and then a dance number to some Korean pop dance music song that generally was considered to be the best act of the night.
That pretty much wrapped up the program. There was a fair amount of picture taking.
The customer service shipping department. Ashley the manager just to Mary’s left has be here for 7 or 8 years.
So it was into the elevator to go to the dinner activities.
If you have ever wondered what happens in the elevator when the big shots and the photographer get in it it is pretty much a picture being taken and the big shot asking what are you doing, as if it wasn’t obvious.
The first person I saw was James Wangs youngest daughter all ready to party down.
The venue.
Mary took a couple bottles of her expensive wine from the winery we were at this summer but that was poor planning on her part because they quickly disappeared with all the toasting that takes place at a Chinese celebration dinner.
Like this
And this
And this
And this
By the end of the night some people looked as wasted as they were.
And finally there were just a few people left with Mary discussing things with the 2 plant managers, (Johnny with his back to the camera if anything was more wasted than Head Lee and he is the nephew of Mary’s sister’s father in law (Ashley’s grandparents) and they just happen to be in Zhuhai this week so he also had to meet up with them while nursing a massive hangover) At the table Finance, purchasing Quality Control and HR are still holding in there. Since I had managed to keep my total toasting down to about 3 glasses I could still drive so shortly after this picture the party broke up and we headed home for the night.
It was and epic event and everyone seemed to have a good time.
I got back from China last Friday and have spent the weekend getting Yusmith back up and running. It seems that we had an issue the likes of which only high level guys like Mark Zuckerberg and guys like that have. My server crashed, which is normally not a huge deal, it’s happens about once a year. This time though it happened right in the middle of a WordPress update thus making the great Yusmith site non existent after I had repaired the server. My server has 4 2T hard drives configured in a Raid array to protect for 1 drive to fail. Which it does. When one fails you pull out the dead drive and replace it and the system rebuilds itself.I this case what it rebuilds did not fix the problem because the failure occurred just as WordPress was updating itself and its configuration file was lost and the php database that keeps track of everything could not be accessed.So after the 24 hours to rebuild everything I then had to download the archived backup I keep updated at an Amazon backup service downloaded and installed which took another 24 hours so the world was without Yusmith for over 48 hours. But now it is safe and I can update the 10 anniversary party for Sepstar, the trip to Beijing and the new apartment. So to hold you over until then her is another menu item from the neighborhood restaurant.
Before the picture it turns out This was still not fixed and another 2 days of fiddling with the software to finally get it fixed so here you go the offical return of Yusmith, the black hole of the web.
There is another new taste treat added to the menu of the restaurant across the road from our apartment in Zhuhai.
MMMMM Tasty
As long as we are discussing the neighborhood restaurant Mary has been uncharacteristically repetitive in her food ordering the last 3 times we have been there. Now before I tell you about her food selection, that she has ordered 3 times in a row, don’t get your hopes up that you will go the the Betty Crocker cookbook, seafood section, to throw this together for tonight’s meal because it is not included there for some reason.
Nothing like a big bowl of FISH LIPS to satisfy your hunger pains.
As of this morning President B. (I can’t spell Barack) Obama made an executive proclamation declaring that I, Michael S. Smith am now officially a Senior Citizen, I guess. I mean he gave me a Medicare card and as near as I can tell that means in the eyes of the government you are a Senior Citizen. Of course my Congressman, Congressman Fred “just call me Fred’ Upton immediately announced that he would fight to repeal that order just like all other things Obama does. Congressman Fred said “I am not a scientist but there is no definitive proof that the passage of time results in aging and that aging leads to senior citizenry”. I will proceed with this announcement assuming that his efforts will be unsuccessful.
So what are the requirements to be a senior citizen you ask. Age seems to have a lot to do with it. The booklet and rules document I received indicated some of the following requirements. Your earliest known photo has to be done in sepia thus proving that that is a real thing and not just some crappy filter on your phone or camera.
Although it could be sepia because, if I recall correctly, the couch and wallpaper combination might have short circuited a color camera of the day. Anyway we moved a couple months after this picture to the big mansion on E. Race St. You and everyone else your age was posed naked on a shag rug for a picture.
Of course today there would be the risk of involving the law and prosecutors for doing this. I did consider doing a then and now picture but when I checked with the Olan Mills they were not to interested and they didn’t have a big enough rug.
You need to be born 2 to 5 years before the first generally accepted as the first rock and roll songs. Some cite ‘Rocket 88’ from 1951
Of course one has to remember and identify a Rocket 88 running down the highway to qualify.
Others cite the 1954 ‘Rock Around the Clock’ because of its huge commercial success bringing rock and roll to the masses.
One note of importance all the dancing people in that video are too old to be senior citizens but they are included in the new demographic group being considered by congress, ‘The Olds’.
Most lawn mowers (including toy ones) didn’t have motors but cars did have fender skirts if you are old enough to be a Senior Citizen.
To be a senior citizen you needed to be wearing a flat brim hat 60 years before it was in style, although it didn’t need the big dumb sticker.
Thus proving that for my whole life I have been on the cutting edge of fashion.
Posing next to the brand new 55 Chevy Belair, yep that qualifies.
Painting a pole next to burning trash while wearing a Davy Crockett T shirt is also reason to qualify.
Feeding your youngest sister as a 9 year old during the same year Alaska and Hawaii became states is a qualifier.
Driving a 63 Chevy Impala station wagon to the Jr Prom, yep qualifies.
Also applies for the Sr. Prom, counts double if same suit and different tie and girl.
Graduate high school 2 years before man sets foot on the moon and a month before China gets the bomb is a qualifier.
Although it couldn’t have been a better time for music. Monterrey Pop 67 was in a month and this was 2 years before Woodstock. Here is Otis from Monterrey Pop. Watch the whole damn thing Junior Citizens.
Luckily I had proof for those and actually a few more but I guess this was enough to qualify.
All people that qualify of course are curious as to the benefits of being a Senior Citizen. First off if you are 65 you have already outlived 30% of the original group. That is a pretty big benefit. Hopefully the AARP will finally give up and quit sending requests for you to join their little club. While getting a hair cut the other day I saw that I will be able to save $2 on haircuts and if I get one on Tuesday I can save $4. I think they can do that because of the cost per hair that they have and statistically they found that seniors have less hair so if they can get them in they can actually make more profit per barber hour. Of course I could apply the fabric store logic that if I spend $40 and they tell me I saved $30 I’ll be real happy and buy more. Although when I told Mary to give them the fabric back and for them to give me $70 they seemed to change their story. So I could get a haircut every day and save something like $750 a year.
I’ve heard tell that I can now go to the mailbox in my underwear and nobody will complain. I can go down to the ‘all you can eat’ at 3:30 in the afternoon and fit right in. I can now use words like “whippersnapper” “by-cracky” and “sombitch” without sounding old.
Probably the best benefit is the little used but in my opinion quite useful benefit being able to replace all prefixes, titles, and honorifics with the all purpose call out “Junior Citizen” which I totally intend to exercise. From now on I can just not care who people are like Congressman Fred above, he is now Junior Citizen Fred. President Obama is now Junior Citizen Obama. So all you Junior Citizens just remember that there is a reason why you are only a lowly Junior Citizen and I’m not going to tell you what it is because in a few years I may forget what it is.
So all you Junior Citizens just turn down that music on that transistor radio, pull up them britches, go get a drink from the icebox, and goldarn it just stay the hell off the yard.
