Great Drawing

I just thought this was pretty cool:

http://www.emagi.co.uk/2006/08/12/bush-vampire/

English Lessons for Markus

Melanie and I were having dinner with her family in Großaspach, Germany. Her youngest cousin is relatively close to our age group, and he is a blast to hang around, so we were spending most of our time talking to him. At this point, my German language skills are decent - since his English skills are also decent, the conversation kind of drifted between German and English.

At one point, he was asking us to teach him English phrases, so we gave him a few useful ones (that I can't remember). I am not sure what triggered it, but I was suddenly taken with the desire to teach him an interesting phrase by first writing it down on a little notepad and having him read the text. The video below is young Markus doing his best to read it:





Puerile - maybe. Hilarious - absolutely!

In China today

Just wanted to point out how surreal it is here. I was in Beijing yesterday and am visiting our Shanghai office through Saturday. I wish I could more adequately describe the overall impression it leaves on me (this is roughly my tenth visit), but words escape me. I understand nearly everything that's being said around me, and I generally understand the culture, but the overall gestalt of the place is just beyond words.

I'll try to think up some anecdotes to capture this, but I simply felt the need to at least put something down that captures my utter sense of bafflement...it might take a while since I can't even do a Google search to grab a picture that's even remotely related to China...