I didn’t go on my normal hike up Mission Peak today. Instead I went to visit some local home gardens. This weekend was the Going Native Garden Tour in the South Bay. For this, various people with home gardens consisting of primarily native plants volunteer their homes for visitation. It’s a good way to get some ideas on what sort of plants work well in the area, especially those that both look nice and need very little maintenance in this climate. A common flower to all these gardens is the California poppy, which also happens to be the state flower.

After touring a few gardens, I went to the Nikkei Matsuri. This is a Japanese Cultural Arts Festival in San Jose’s Japantown. It is pretty similar to the Cherry Blossom festival I went to yesterday, but I did see a few different demonstrations. One demonstration that I found interesting was Naginata. This is a martial art practiced with a long staff with a blade at one end. It was pretty interesting.

There are a lot of vendors selling arts and crafts, and of course, food. I had some yakisoba (fried noodles) and short ribs. They were both pretty good. There was also a stage out in the street. When I first got there, a jazz band was playing, which didn’t seem to fit the theme. Later, I saw San Jose Taiko perform. They are really good! Here’s a clip of one of theyr pieces (AVI format, sorry about the shake!):

San Jose Taiko at Nikkei Matsuri (15 MB)

Well, I’m off to China tomorrow, so I guess I should get packing…

It’s Saturday (almost Sunday now), so that means I played basketball today. I’ve been playing with the same group of guys in Palo Alto for about 13 years. They have been playing together even longer (from their college days at Stanford). They call themselves SMH (Saturday Morning Hoops). I forgot to set my alarm for this morning, and ended up being 15 minutes late. When I got there we had 7 in total, but we eventually had 10 for 5-5. Good fun and good exercise.

After basketball I went to the Cupertino Cherry Blossom Festival. They have a lot of cultural exhibits like origami, taiko (drums), sumo, karate, traditional dance, etc. They also have some food booths serving various types of Japanese (fast) food. Today I ate some teriyaki chicken, soba (noodle soup), teriyaki burger, and tried some teriyaki corn on the cob. I saw some bonsai tree displays, which were pretty cool, as were some origami and brush painting and writing demonstrations. I also saw a bit of a sumo demonstration, but the guys were pretty small compared with the professionals in Japan. Afterward I got some funnel cake to work on my sumo physique! I also saw a taiko show which is pretty cool.

From the Cherry Blossom festival, I went to Palo Alto for dinner (more food!). I went to a place called Mediterranean Wraps in the business area of Palo Alto. I had a combo plate which was huge! It came with tabouli, dolmas, babganoush, hummus, falafel, pita, salad, and shawerma! Man, I was stuffed!

After dinner I went to a gospel concert, the All Faiths Gospel Music Festival. It is a charity event put on by an organization called INCH. Their main focus is helping low income mid-peninsula families. They have this gospel festival every year with a variety of performers. This year I saw four performers: Jamie Davis, Foothill Gospel Choir, Avery Stafford, and Maranatha Hope of Glory Mass Choir. Maranatha is usually my favorite, and this year was no different. Even though they had a smaller choir than usual, they are always so powerful and energetic. Here are some (poor quality) video clips I took with my phone:

Jamie Davis singing Amazing Grace
Jamie Davis singing What a Wonderful World
Maranatha Hope of Glory Mass Choir (clip 1)
Maranatha Hope of Glory Mass Choir (clip 2)

They are 3gp format, which is a cell phone standard. You should be able to play them with Quicktime by either right-clicking the link and saving to disk, or just click the link and see if you have an embedded Quicktime player in your browser.

Well, it’s after midnight; I guess I should think about calling it a day…

I’m back home in California now. I got back on Friday, but my internal clock is still out of whack. It seems like I want to stay up all night and sleep all day. Is that jetlag, or is that just normal for me?

The trip went pretty well. I spent about a week in Shenzhen and a few days in Beijing. It was raining off and on in Shenzhen, but I was usually indoors at the time. The first day I had meetings in a building in the Shenzhen High Tech Park. This area has a lot of small electronics companies and a few big ones as well.

I also had some meetings in the Futian district of Shenzhen. This area is dominated by the China Merchant Bank building. It’s an easily recognizable landmark in the Shenzhen skyline. I think this is the area where we will end up opening our office. A lot of our customers are in this area, and there are a lot more restaurants here than in the High Tech Park area.

Over the weekend I explored a bit of Shenzhen, including the zoo. The zoo is pretty good. They have a wide variety of animals, and a lot of the enclosures are pretty big. One strange thing though, there were a lot of places where a handler would be out with an animal like a sun bear or a tiger, and they would offer to let you take a picture with it (for a fee of course). I only saw one panda at the zoo, but there were a number of cute red pandas. You can see more pictures of the zoo in my gallery. Thanks to my good friend, Linlin, for taking the time to show me around!

I stopped in Beijing on the way home for another business meeting. It went pretty well. The hotel where I stayed is very near the new Olympic Park in Beijing. Here’s a shot of the Olympic Stadium, which is currently under construction. They call it the “bird’s nest.” I am looking forward to seeing the new swim stadium. The design looks very interesting.

The hotels are kind enough to remind the guests what day of the week it is by changing the carpets in the elevators every day. This is very useful when you’re running all over the country without a clue as what day it is. In this case it was a good reminder that I would be heading home the following day.

On my last night in Beijing I went to a “disco” with some friends and colleagues. It is called Banana. In the States I would call this a club, but don’t call it a night club there, that usually means KTV (Karaoke). The club was pretty crowded, so I guess it’s a happening place.

The flight home was much more comfortable than the flight over. The plane was fairly empty, so I had a row of 3 seats to myself. I even managed to sleep for a few hours. I also watched two of the movies: “Sideways” and I already forgot the other. I knew I was almost home when I could see Point Reyes out the window…

Well, I’m back in China now. I’m in Shenzhen at the moment, but I’ll be heading to Beijing in a couple days. The flight over here was a long as ever. I managed to take a short nap on the flight, but not nearly long enough. The movies weren’t much help either. Of the 5 movies they showed, I had already seen 3 of them on previous flights. At least I managed to sit in Economy Plus which has decent leg room.

Around half way through the flight, I happened to look out the window to see the ice covered Bering Straight. From the GPS map they show on the plane, I could see when we passed the International Date Line, so I took this picture. Too bad I hadn’t been paying attention a little earlier. It looks like we had passed fairly close to Mt. McKinley. That would have been neat to see from the plane.

A little further on I could see the coast of Russia. Here’s a shot of what I imagine is Siberia. It certainly looks cold enough. It’s funny how far north we travel to get from San Francisco to Beijing. I guess between the funny curve of the earth and the jet stream, it makes sense, but it just seems a little odd.

During the flight you end up getting 2 full means and a mid-flight snack. The meals usually have a choice of a western style or Asian style meal. After taking off around 2 PM, we usually get a dinner service. Then, around mid-way through the flight there’s a bowl of instant noodles. Then, before we land, there’s a breakfast meal which usually means a choice between an omelet or some noodles.

After about 12 wonderful hours of sitting in a big tube with 300 of my closest friends, I finally arrived in Beijing. It was nice to be on the ground and walking around again! However, I only had 2 hours before I had to catch a flight to Shenzhen. So that’s gonna be another 3 hours of sheer joy. Oh, and as a bonus, another round of airline food! How lucky can a guy get?

Well, today is Sunday, which means I go hiking… normally. However, today was an especially lazy Sunday. That is to say, I was especially lazy this Sunday, and the whole weekend for that matter. I guess it really started on Saturday after basketball. After a sizable lunch, I some how managed to take a 4 hour nap! After the nap, I still couldn’t quite convince myself to go to the gym (which I was supposed to make up for skipping a day on Thursday). I ended up having dinner, chatting and web surfing and then going to bed again.

Today I didn’t manage to get moving until about 2 PM. I blame it on daylight savings time! Anyway, I had a huge lunch at the Country Inn (great breakfast food) then back home for another rest (at least I stayed awake this time). Next I went to visit my friends Sabrina and Brian, who just had the cutest little baby boy, Gavin, this past Monday. We brought him a little Eeyore to keep him company. Gavin seems to be doing great, and mom and dad are happy and excited, though perhaps a bit tired.

Now I’m back in my normal position of sitting on my bed with my laptop. I can’t say I’m doing much of anything productive, but it is still the weekend after all. I was planning to go to a conference in San Jose tomorrow (Embedded System Conference), but I think I’ll get some other errands done instead. I’m heading back to China on Tuesday and will be gone until the end of the following week.