changes

will be posting on a new blog as this one is nearly impossible to get to now .
www.defendbeijing.blog.com will also try to keep this one up and running . sorry for the inconvience but please come and read on the new blog same me same rants same same.

i

i miss you all.

just so you all are aware i am still alive despite the coral, mosquitoes, volcanoes and trekking. indonesia is grand but sweltering and it is really a bit unbearable as the concept of air conditioning is not at all embraced. eating and sweating is no fun at all try it sometime wiping your brow before biting to avoid dripping into your food. other than that it is lovely. the volcanoes smoking and threatening to blow are surreal, standing on the edge hoping the moment isnt now. other than that i will write much more when i am back in beijing. actually looking forward to going back and cooking for myself and sleeping in my bed and doing the things that are familiar. sounds lame right being tired of travel.

bali

Went to bali and was a bit disappointed. the waves were nice and all but really it was a bit crowded and there were too many people surfing for me to try to go out and get my groove on. It says something about a place when the entire stretch of beach was lined with the vendors , not fruit or trinkets but surf boards. now do you really expect me and this temple i have to climb into the water with the riff raff that rents surf boards for a weekend visit? All I could imagine was an errant surfer getting on a wave too big for his rookie ass and crashing into me so i left the beach and headed into the mountains much nicer up here less people less to doi and overall less expensive.Think I will enjoy the few days I have here just a lot of walking and looking and figuring out what it is I want to do next. Hopefully there will be time enough to hit a beach and relax but if not thats ok I am trying to learn to take it easy and harbor less expectations. Life I think is about learning, I am not finished yet just have to remember that.

malaysia

This day has been a wreck. First I took the worlds fastest commuter train from beijing to tianjin yesterday. It topped out at 330 kph which is screaming fast. though not fast enough to get me back in time. You see my tickets to bali in indonesia were for yesterday and I thought that they were today. Silly me for not ever learning to read. Anyway got new tickets for today and now the final leg of my journey from Kuala Lumpur to Bali has been delayed for three hours. Which sucks as now i wont get in until 1030pm and then I have to find a place to stay. I really need a beer and to relax but as I am at the airport it is super hard to find either of those. I did however encounter what I believe is the edge of civilization. This is according to the Dunkin theory of world levels. Yep thats me at the low cost carrier terminal in Kuala lumpur.

clearly a failure

So the little experiment didnt work. I cannot get my videos up to this blog. I think that I am just not cut out for this sort of technological stuff. As a side note I am again in china and the great firewall is blocking my site from me posting so again it is a hassle for me to circumvent. China is much the same as when I left there are really nice people that I deal with and then there are some rules and shit that I must follow even though I cannot understand why. Let me give you an example to illustrate my point. I have a bike. It has been sitting for the last month. It needed air in the tires so I took it to a bike shop around the corner, the same shop I go to get tune-ups. The worker filled the tires and then when I asked how much he said no money was needed. Very nice as he could have charged me a few RMB and bought lunch for himself. Then I rode my bike to the bank to change money, as I pulled up to the bank the security guard told me that I have to park my bike on the street in the median. I asked why and he of course couldnt tell me just the rules. I didnt have the bike against the bank just next to the last car parked in front of the the bank. Such a strange country. Rules must be followed. Except of course there was a bike already there. And I was only parking next to it. I asked why did that bike get to park there and the guard picked it up and moved it to the median. So I of course complied and did the same with mine. I am happy again for the self reliance and lack of responsibility that being home brings. I can go on my own schedule and I neednt worry about how to get from A to B. It is nice to be back on a bike back on my own time and back on vacation. As much as I enjoyed seeing my family it is nice to be home.

trying something

this is to try to put some small video into my post. this one is of me at the beach in N.C. body surfing on a wave. It is from my perspective and is in real time i will slow it down and add effects later just wanted to try to get it up and see if it works. oh thats my little brother in the beginning catching the first wave. some other random thoughts about the travel to china this time. first taking muscle relaxers and alcohol does in fact produce drowsiness which is good on a 13 hour flight. Next what is the point of the quarantine in china? I arrived on a 777 with 500 people from the US to korea all of them got off and now I will be in a smaller plane from korea to china. If there is a sick person from L.A. to korea then I am sick. If the plane from korea to china is cleared then I still am sick just not showing symptoms as I caught the flu on my way from the US. It seems really silly to me to even try to stop this wouldnt it be better to wash hands and encourage basic hygiene?

last day

well this is the final day of my US adventure for 2009. Some of it was a blast some of it was so so and some of it wasnt very fun at all. In all i think that the US hasnt changed that much from last year, I am really happy that i got to see the parts that i did and am really looking forward to traveling in Indonesia next. I am truthfully a bit worried about the fact that I may get quarantined in China when I arrive. If that happens I am most certainly screwed for the next leg of my vacation. We shall see. I leave in 7 hours and get to spend the next 18 hours traveling. Oh what a world.

travel with family

good to see them other things have happened will process and inform...

family

finally arrived to the outer banks to spend some time with the family. posts will be light for the next few days as every day will be more or less the same thing sleep wake beach drink run dinner talk tv sleep repeat. looking forward to the monotony of relaxation.

airports

sitting in an airport waiting with a three hour layover for the next flight and i found a free internet hub so i decided to sit and write a bit. There is a really cool keyboard theat is perhaps the single most industrial thing that i have ever encountered. I kind of want one for the home. I am going to take a photo and perhaps get it posted later on today so you to can witness the brilliance of this thing. Not only does it look sleek but it has a good feel and is nice to type on.