treasasweek

treasasweek

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[	archive	\|	journal archive	]

How do I get a land line phone number using a street name?	[Dec. 12th, 2008\|10:11 am]
My (irresponsible) cousin has moved to a tiny town in Colorado and her cell phone has been disconnected. We haven't heard from her in a month and we're getting worried. The address she gave us (1476 2300 Rd, Delta, CO 81418) isn't right. The zip code belongs to a place 10 miles away from the road and google doesn't think that the address on 2300 Road is real. Does the Internet know what the land line phone numbers are of the ~10 houses on 2300 Road? Please help me Live Journal.
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Curling Pics	[Nov. 27th, 2008\|07:55 am]
My mom visited 2 weeks ago and was nice enough to photograph invisibor and me during our Curling league night. The pics are up at http://www.flickr.com/photos/tlara/. In the league, Invisibor is unbeaten and my team has yet to win. Be that as it may, it's fun in a cold, clean sort of way.
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California the Beautiful

[Nov. 27th, 2008|06:54 am]

[	Current Location	\|	Home is where the heart is	]
[	Current Mood	\|	petulant	]

Every time I visit California, she shakes my brain around and shines the sun on me and makes me regret living in rainy, god-forsaken Seattle. It was sunny in Seattle yesterday and I do so HATE urban sprawl but the zoomy cars (rental!) and the shirt sleeves temperatures and the amazing people are so hard to leave. every time.

I keep telling myself that I'll find some geeks to speak Geek with here in Seattle (but it's been 6 years and all I've found are Microsofties). Maybe I'll grow to love trees more than sunshine (but I left the Rockies of my own volition). I guess my career is going well (but I work in energy waste and buildings... Cali's got plenty).

Seattle is my home. I love the chair in my livingroom that gets happy sunshine from Noon to 3pm (most days). And home is the most beautiful place on earth from August 15th through October 15th (too bad that's only 17% of the year).

The thing is that I am quite happy. I've found the element I was missing when I posted my first lament here a few years ago. I want for nothing and generally have a great time. I just wish California wasn't so alluring. Back in '99, fresh out of college and living "on my own" (with 3 roommates), I got a Discover Card in the mail with a 2004 expiration date. Right then, less than 1 month into my career, I promised myself that I would never get another credit card delivered to a California address. That I would leave California forever before that Discover card expired. Maybe I was being too melodramatic or maybe there is an element of life there that isn't good for me. God knows how much my life has improved since I left LA. sigh. Maybe all these raindrops are good for a part of me that can't speak up for itself. I wish I knew how to listen to it.

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Photos from Asia are Up	[Sep. 1st, 2008\|06:18 pm]
You can see the ~250 that we deemed ready for the Internet without major editing here. I fear that I've made the rookie mistake of uploading files that are too big. http://www.flickr.com/photos/tlara/ Do they need to be re-sized? Please advise.
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We're baaack

[Aug. 28th, 2008|09:03 am]

[

Current Location

Jury Duty, day 2 with FREE WIFI

]

John and I are back from the "far east". Can you believe Reuters used that term instead of saying "China" during the middle of the Olympics? (I think we all know where China is guys). Summing China into a phrase or even a word is difficult. I guess I would say, “International". Culture shock doesn't exist in China since life there is a reflection of cultures from around the world. If you doubt me, look around you right now. It's likely that you are touching something manufactured in China.

China has lots of people; most of them use umbrellas as sunshades and many of them spit in the street. But they wear the same clothes they send over here (complete with stupid slogans in English) and they enjoy a good bargain just like my Mom. Almost all Chinese we met are fitter and healthier than the average American. Very few of them drive and almost all of them have gainful employment. As evidence of this (and in contrast to what Western newspaper publish), I submit that during our 40 days of travel, we saw fewer than 5 homeless people. Instead, we saw a middle class Chinese families in droves.

I could say that our trip was life changing but, in reality, I was changing before I left. I found what I was looking for this summer; I have returned home with a sense of wonder at the luxury of my life and a wonderful, renewed passion for smelling the roses.

P.S. I wrote several emails in July but couldn't get to LJ to post them. A couple of entries appeared yesterday and I hope the balance will be up by the end of today. If you want the whole gory story, read my journal starting with mid-June.

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Shanghai, Chengdu, Guilin	[Jul. 25th, 2008\|05:34 am]
We've topped 700 photos, although John will quickly tell you that several of them have a very limited audience (e.g. mundane things like air conditioners and toilets). We do have some unique images though. Would anyone like a World of Warcraft credit card? How about KFC delivered to your front door by bicycle? You can look forward to 10 angles of 2 year old giant pandas, the full moon rising over Shanghai's Pudong district, and rice/corn/pepper fields photographed from the train (hopefully they'll come out). Speaking of trains - they rock. Although trains are a few percentage points worse for the environment than traveling by public bus, climate protection is my tertiary reason for supporting trains. * Train travel is a very healthy way to get from point A to point B. Trains have options for walking, standing, sitting, eating, drinking and - for long distances - laying/sleeping. You don't have to sit in a particular position with one foot on the gas for your entire trip. Also, the scenery beats rivers of cars hands down. Although there are some ugly bits (the station yards tend to have lots of tracks and some busted equipment), mostly you get to look at people, buildings, and countryside. Perhaps this sentiment will seem a little too callous but, now that the American automobile industry is failing, perhaps the train lobbyists could get some of the Interstate subsidy re-assigned to prop up the locomotive industry? I'm going to cross my fingers in case that helps. Happy Summer everyone. Stay cool. * Climate impact is according to the Guardian; I couldn't find a ready American source.
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Does the world really keep spinning when you're not watching it?	[Jul. 14th, 2008\|05:26 am]
For that matter, I have always doubted that water really knows how to boil on its own. I'd tell you I always watch my pots but, unfortunately, Katie Schempp has plenty of evidence to the contrary. But that's another story. Hangzhou is a beautiful city of 6.2M people (http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&geocode=&q=hangzhou,+china&ie=UTF8&ll=30.285753,120.237808&spn=0.336786,0.510864&t=h&z=11&iwloc=addr). We've chosen to stay in the tourist part of town on the eastern edge of West Lake which is similar to the size of Seattle's Lake Washington. I feel that our view of the water rivals Mr. Bill Gates' view of Lake Washington. It might be even better than Bill's. John & I get to gaze at rolling hills of a giant nature preserve on the west bank of the lake while Bill is stuck staring at Ravenna - yuck. :) We've arrived in Hangzhou fresh from a 2-day tour of Mongolia. Mongolia reminds me of eastern Colorado. There are farms (albeit smaller than Colorado's industrial farming), horses, ranches, and wind mills. Lots and lots of wind mills. The tour guide claims that Mongolian wind farms make up the largest wind power plant in China. I took photos; you'll be able to see them in August :) Before we headed left the US, I reassured myself that I have very well honed travel abilities that would help us navigate with no itinerary. It turns out that all those years of getting on planes to go to meetings didn't really prepare me to be in a series of brand new places with zero obligations where I feel kindness towards anyone who understands the question, "Where are we"? Needless to say, I've lost the illusion that I have an innate ability to navigate in new places. Now that my language skills are (mostly) moot, successful traveling has a lot more to do with the amenities offered by the new city (tourist map!) and following the guidebook than our supposed ability to determine which way north is. For example, last night we were looking for a restaurant recommended by Lonely Planet's China guidebook. We were a little lost. All of a sudden, a woman ran out of her establishment and practically pushed us inside. It turned out that we were standing in front of the place we were looking for. I'm pretty sure that the woman recognized the cover of the guidebook that we were studying. Go, Go Gadget Guidebook!! I guess the silver lining is that I am becoming very interested in studying Chinese. And helping travelers navigate Seattle. Maybe if I pay forward all of the little favors the Chinese people have given us, I'll feel better about showing up in their country and expecting them to communicate in my language. P.S. The fireworks in China far surpass anything the US can do / wants to do (Chinese people really like fireworks). I guess China is still benefiting from inventing fireworks all those years ago.
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Xi'an and Beijing	[Jul. 8th, 2008\|05:15 am]
We took our first hosted trip to see the terra cotta warriors outside of Xi'an. The tour was mostly trips to overpriced trinket shops, but the tour guide was nice and we got to see the warriors and the prehistoric village of Banpo. It's clear it takes a megalomaniac to unite a country, after learning about the scale of the tomb. The warriors make up only one little part of an entire city devoted to the first ruler of China. The village was interesting, given that it is perhaps 6000 years old. Separate from the tour, we got to eat the first thing I actually thought was good, as opposed to passable, here in Xi'an. Spicy meat on a stick! When I returned the next day, the saleswoman remembered me, so we must stand out... We bought an overnight train trip to Beijing from Xi'an. A little nervous, we showed up at the train station well before it was time to leave, so we spent a couple hours in the train station along with the rest of the country. We also realized that our beds were in different train cars. We spent the night fitfully and arrived hot and overtired in Beijing at rush hour. We couldn't cram ourselves on the subway, so we took it all the way out of the city and got back on going the way we wanted. Then we wandered the city until we found the motel we were going to stay in...up a dirt alley...in a construction zone...surrounded by "Adult" stores, but cheap and airconditioned. It took a whole day to recover from the train trip and walking tour of South Beijing, so the next day we went to the Palace Museum (formerly the "forbidden city", but it sure isn't forbidden any more!) Lots of history among this huge grounds, but it's hard to get your mind around the age of things here because everything has been reconstructed so many times. Originally built in the 14th century and rebuilt in the 1950's looks to me mostly like built in the 1950's. The largest courtyard reminded me of Disney's animated movie "Mulan"... The next day we saw the more recent history of China, with trips to the Hall of the People (read: congress), Mao's tomb (read: Arlington), and the site of the 2008 olympics (read: Orange county development). The Olympics site is mostly closed off, and still being constructed, with only 30 days until opening ceremonies. We went on the hottest day yet, and there are no functioning subways or noticeable bus service to the site. There are, however, subway locations all over town that are not yet in service. Any day now, we hear. The Summer palace and Temple of heaven are parks with temples in them. Both are very nice large parks well used by people who aren't tourists. Lots of dancing, games, and picnicking. Fun hills to climb and beautiful gardens, being made all the more beautiful by hundreds of workers planting and laying stone. Greater revelations are: Continuing disbelief that so many identical stores can survive so close together. The alley closest to our motel has probably 15 "adult" stores. Sometimes we walk by entire streets with nothing but aqueous pets. Another has nothing but bicycles. It just doesn't seem efficient to put all your stores of the same type in the same place. Perhaps these are "lucky" places for a certain type of store? The construction in Beijing is amazing. Every park is being planted, every road is being rebuilt. When we got to our motel's road, it was a dirt road. 2 nights ago, they paved it. I expect by tomorrow it will be marble tiles. The road next to ours was just like ours, but was designated by the government as an official "tourist site" (perhaps it has a lower density of Adult stores?). The construction is on-going but our peaks through the fences demonstrate that this brand new street now has a two block long tram for the weary and carefully placed street light. The Beijing Magazine for tourists says that it opened last month - as far a we can tell, it'll be at least 2 more weeks.
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China: Hong Kong, Guangzhou, and Xi'an

[Jul. 1st, 2008|02:24 pm]

[

Current Location

Jury Duty with Free WIFI

]

3 cities. Home to ~30 million people. 7 days. We leave for Beijing in 8 hours.

Despite promises to the contrary, there are unlikely to be photos with our emails this summer. Flickr and livejournal are censored by the govm't. Besides, we haven't found a computer that would let us download the photos from our camera; damn dis-connectivity! Instead of images, here are a couple of impressions.

1. The Chinese have figured out how to integrate malls and public transit. There are MALLS in the subway system. Large networks of underground passageways connect commuters to trains and to any trinket, snack, beverage, device, or wardrobe imaginable. We didn't see any raw meat in the subway malls but it would be easy to do your (vegetarian) grocery shopping and run your errands on the way to/from work. We hear from other tourists that Tokyo and Korea have also adopted this model; the US needs to get on this bandwagon. [Editor's Note 8/27/08 - Our subsequent experience with the Tokyo subway system showed that China's consumer needs far outstrip the Land-of-Cheap-Fish.]

2. The whole "on season" and "off season" touted by wikipedia travel and Lonely Planet are dead wrong. We are here during the hottest, rainiest part of the year (e.g. the "off season) and it's great! There are no lines, few tourists, and readily available train tickets. We were led to believe that we'd be stuck with a miserable "hard seat" train ticket if we tried to buy one day in advance. Not so! We've got tickets for a sleeper car. The weather's not that bad; it's 80 to 90 degrees but that feels really comfortable when it's raining. The skies are overcast (or maybe it's smog?) but - coming from Seattle - that's business as usual. Here are 2 thumbs up for traveling during the "off" season.

3. Chinese prices rock! $30 hotel, $0.50/hour high speed internet, $150 plane tickets (bought 1 day in advance!), and $40 train tickets (11 hours overnight trip, 600 miles, sleeper car). So far, the food prices are only a little cheaper but that's because we are picky and conservative. The guidebooks say that China "isn't as cheap as it used to be". Well, it's cheap enough for this Penny Pincher. Maybe we'll come back next year :)

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Do you know someone in China?

[May. 2nd, 2008|09:16 am]

[

Current Mood

creative

]

I am fast becoming an armchair expert on China. For the first time since the mid-90s, I listen to the news. I have read more non-fiction books about China than any other topic. When someone asks about my life, I tell them about John and my looming trip to China. I am eager to experience the country, its language, people, and culture.

For instance, today I am filling out my Chinese visa application. The form says that I have to provide a hotel reservation. Actually, that's problematic. You see, we don't know where we're going to be. We are flying into and out of Hong Kong with 38 days in between. The plan for spending those days is hazy, at best.

The visa consultant I called recommended that I write "Hong Kong & Shenzhen" on the application. These 2 cities are in China's "special economic zone" to which Chinese citizens need permission to travel. The consultant says that it doesn't matter if we actually go to X'ian, Beijing, Shanghai, and Nanjing (e.g. cities outside of the Special Economic Zone). He says the Chinese government won't check our visas once we arrive in Shenzhen. I'm not sure that I want to take that chance. As I said, I've read a lot about China and one of the biggest impressions I've gotten is that Chinese citizens want MORE lawyers to combat the seeming random way that their government enforces its laws. I don't really want to chance having a Chinese official ask for my visa and then figure out that I'm not where I said I would be.

This morning I noticed that the Chinese visa application will accept the name and address of an "inviter, contact, or relative in China".   I'm positive that I don't have any relatives in China but I think it's pretty likely that I could drum up an "inviter" or "contact". So, Live Journal, what you got? Do you know someone in China?

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Summer Vacation 2008	[Aug. 1st, 2007\|11:50 am]
This is serious people. I have a stack of 16 library books (okay, 14 books and 2 VHS tapes) to get through. Somehow, checking out Lonely Planet & Frommer's makes this trip to Asia more real. For the moment, forget that we don't have visas, plane tickets, or reservations to anywhere. Also, forget that our first (and only) language is een-glish. I am convinced that it'll all come together. Somehow. For example, I understand that if I pay the tourist rack rate at Chinese hotels, the concierge will write down locations and phrases for us in Chinese before we set out each morning. I wonder where we'll end up if we haggle for the actual hotel rates... I guess I should factor both options into our travel budget. So far, my favorite tourist book is Lonely Planet's Experimental Travel. Although we may not go an a "Bureaucratic Odyssey" or play "Travel Pursuit" in a country where it's possible to accidentally disappear, I'm totally up for a round of "A to Z" in Gilroy, California. Is anyone going to the Summer Olympics next year? Right now, we're thinking of avoiding them, but if there's a chance of hanging out with folks...
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so _that's_ what my password is

[Mar. 22nd, 2007|06:37 pm]

[	Current Location	\|	McCarren Airport	]
[	Current Mood	\|	calm	]
[	Current Music	\|	rockland USA	]

One excuse for not posting in 18 months is that I couldn't remember my password. It sounds plausible to me so I'm sticking with it.

Whee! I spend a lot of time in McCarron Airport. That's in Las Vegas for you lucky people who aren't intimately familiar with the innards of commercial aircraft. It's actually not that bad.  Between Bose headphones, free internet, ample outlets for the laptop, and decent fast food, the only sucky bit is consistent airline delays of 2+ hours. People can say what the want about Sin City but the amount of cash flowing through this desert is trickling down to the public; at least the public who can afford airline tickets.

On a different topic, John and I haven't taken our honeymoon yet (although he'll tell you all about the un-airconditioned 1,000 mile drive in July if you bring up the subject). We think we wanna go to Asia. And, when I say "Asia", I include all the islands in the neighborhood like Australia and New Zealand, etc.  One of our goals is to learn about / experience ancient history. We also want to see big, beautiful buildings (well actually that's just me, not John). We also want to meet up with anyone who's living / visiting there. We're thinking 2 months in the summer of 08. So here's the Live Journal participation bit:

--Where would YOU go in Asia? Why? How long would you stay?
--Do you have plans to be in the southeastern hemisphere in the summer of '08?

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_Candy_Freak_ by Steve Almond

[Sep. 26th, 2005|05:13 pm]

[

Current Music

Mine Own Laughter

]

Disclaimer: I'm on page 38 of 261.

This book is violently funny. I had to stop reading on the bus this morning for fear of cackling out loud. I don't remember having laughed with a book so much. As I'm typing this I realize that I may be in the target audience since I am married to a Candy Freak. Or my reaction could be a side effect of the pain meds I'm taking (I had my tonsils out last week: hurray! Modern Medicine Rules!). But, really, I think it's the book.

Stats: Non-fiction. An informed opinion full of self-deprecation regarding a deep knowledge of candy.

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