It's Rough But Somebody Has To Do It

Well it's me, Lightnin again....Thunder is slacking but when you see the pictures I'm posting , you'll understand why I'm not really complaing!

We are in Kuantan, Malayasia for this week. The first day in was my birthday. Thunder waited just until my feelings were starting to get hurt, before wishing me a Happy Birthday. He's sometimes like that. Then he told me he had to go to work but had a surprise for me when he got back. Okay, so now I have the day by myself and a surprise coming. Which by the way I hate surprises! Grab a book and head to the pool. We are only 3 degrees from the equator and let me tell ya it is hot, Hot, HOT! You can get burned in the time it takes to drink one beer even while using SPF 30! Trust me this is fact! I have some very good water proof sunscreen which is also good since I have to dip into the pool about every 5-10 minutes! So I spent the afternoon taking it easy and then back to get ready for my "surprise".

Thunder had made arrangements before coming here for the romatic dinner on the beach as my gift! He couldn't have done anything better! We had our own wait staff that seated us and started off with a bottle of champagne. Then came the carpaccio salad! Delicious. This is one of our favorites and have had it all over the world, but none compared to this.

Then it was a lobster bisque with prawns and parsley cream. We really should have quit right here, but no...it's a four course meal so let's move on! Now Thunder has picked out a bottle of Merlot to go along with the main course. Our main course was Tiger Prawns, a lamb chop and a chicken breast chop. This came with a baked potato and sauteed corn in a red wine sauce. At this point I knew we needed to-go boxes because I was already stuffed.

The dessert was one of David's favorites a Tiramisu served with chocolate wafers, passion fruit, kiwi and blueberries. I'm not a sweets eater but had to try it all. I think I'm hooked on passion fruit now! So now I thought we were done...wrong! The staff comes down to the beach to sing Happy Birthday to me and with them they have a heartshaped fresh mango cheescake that says "Happy Birthday For Mrs. Wise"candles and all, and a bouquet of fresh roses and other exotic flowers. Okay, so I cracked at this point. I felt more like a Princess than ever. This was truly the best birthday ever and there have been quite a few. Back at the room we finish the evening...now stop thinking that! There was an envelope with birthday wishes from SPC Dude that he had called into our hotel! What a great memory to have as long as the dementia stays at bay!

There are other fun things here also...creepy little monkeys everywhere and last night one visited our balcony that wasn't so little. There is also a creature described to us as "cat/wolf" that roams around! I'm pretty sure I heard one early this morning. There was loud bang as if someone knocked over a chair and then a horrible cat sound that would even put our cat to shame! These things are called masang so Thunder and I googled it....We really don't want to see one these guys! Thunder has been working very hard this week. He even did a double shift one day. But ya'll know Thunder he still managed to sing with a guy last night at a typical Malaysian resturant. It was a little too lounge-lizzardy for me but he still sounded great! Well tomorrow it's back to the Jing where hopfully we meet up with SPC Dude. We are all three going to make it to one of the Olympic events...Sand Volleyball! So there will be more post coming later this week. Hope I haven't bored you too much but we feel a lot like traveling food host, so eat your heart out Anthony Bourdain!

Our Gold Star Hero

Lightnin here-

Well last night was a very memorable evening....for those of you "who ain't from around these parts" let me first explain what Gold Star is. We have a whole different version of chili here in the Nati. It's more like a greek sauce than your typical chili. We make cheese coneys with it as well as server it on spaghetti. You either love it or you don't. And there are litterally hundreds of these chili parlors here!

So back to the story....Gold Star throws a party for our soldiers returning home. Last night was SPC Dudes turn. When we got there the sign outside welcomed him home in large letters, plus a very nice professional banner again welcoming him home. Once inside the door it looked like the 4th of July all over again. Flags and red, white and blue banners everywhere. The table was set and waiting for us with personalized place mats and welcome home balloons on each chair! The staff there was great, seeing to our every needs and presenting Dude with two bouquets of red, white and blue flowers. Oh yea, guess I forgot to tell you that the local NBC affiliate sent out a camera man to interview SPC Dude! Yes he made the 11:00 O'clock news. I'm trying to get a copy of it and will post a link to it once that's done. After the food, flowers, interview and fun they brought out a huge cake and I do mean HUGE!!! We had the Harrison fire department stop by and thank him for his service as well as many of the other patrons. We shared the cake with all of the customers, said our good-byes a very big Thank you to Gold Star. What a night for Dude to remember and to know that friends, family and strangers all alike really appreciate his service for his country and to be willing to fight for our freedom. Thanks Dude and thank you Thunder....we've done good! Also a special thanks to STEB, Taco and Ollie for joining us for this special evening.

Damsel in Distress!

Just a shot of a damselfly hanging on the wall next to my balcony, 16 flights above the streets of Beijing.

I guess she thought I was a bit too close because as soon as I snapped the shot she flew off!

So What About the 5th of July?

The New England Patriot Cheerleaders visited the Goose and Duck, that's what!









































There was a huge charity auction of autographed sports memorabilia up for auction and the proceeds went to the needy children of Beijing. The Cheerleaders were here as part of the promotion! I was there for, hmm let me see, the beer yea that's it the beer is great there! Did I mention that they brew their own?

OK, I knew you wouldn't buy that one either. Being the red-blooded American that I am I was definitely there for the cheerleaders!

Here's a few shots of what I witnessed


























































Somehow I convinced a couple of them to pose with me

Hey let's don't forget the G-Dettes, they're no slackers either when it comes to cheering up the crowd!

From there I went to a bar where local underground rock bands play, and met up with Woody (from the band Woody Allen) and his wife Kelly. Woody Allen was voted best band in Beijing in this year's vote in City Weekend magazine! I've had the pleasure of singing with them once before and Woody and I are discussing the possibilities of more performances by yours truly. We're just trying to reach some middle ground on the music style to experiment with.

Our Soldiers on the 4th

Hi all, Lightnin here-

Just thought I'd post a few photos from our holiday in Chicago. STEB's son Thomas graduated fron Navy boot camp on Thursday. He and Spc Dude went to school together here in the Nati. It was perfect timing seeing how Dude was home right at the same time. Wednesday about noon STEB, Dude, Taco and myself headed out. Of course since Dude was a driver while he was in Kuwait we voted and he won! Yep, our own personal driver! He really did a great job. Thursday it was up at five o'clock! YUCK! But we had to be on post early so off we went. Salami was was so anxious to get out of there immediately following his graduation ceremony! I remember this well with a certain, Marine and a soldier! We tried to keep feeding him, letting him get his fill of steak, chicken, pizza and just about whatever else he wanted! Friday we took the train to downtown Chicago to Navy pier. What a great time. Of course it all ended way too soon especially for STEB and Taco. They really didn't enjoy leaving Salamai. But Dude and I understood what they were going through. Saturday we pick him up again for a few hours before dropping him off on final timne before heading back home. We got as far as Indianapolis where we made a stop to see STEB's sister, brother-in-law and niece. They had a really nice BBQ for us and then a fire in the pit while we sipped a few cold ones and watched their neighbors fireworks. Sister Mary had already planned that we should stay the night. They had a beautiful home with rooms for everyone! We finally arrived back home around noon today. We're heading out again in a little bit, Dude is taking his dad's car for a drive and STEB and I are going to get the bike out. Maybe there will be more pictures later this evening.

Happy Forth of July!

This is an interesting day for me, celebrating our independence from the tyranny of England while living in the PROC. I do have a few things to celebrate though:

1. SPC Dude is out of the sand box we call Kuwait and is in the US right now visiting Lightnin, and may be able to come over and visit me later this month!
2. Our good friend STEB's Son, "Salomi", (Don't ask!) just graduated from Naval training and is about to embark on his tour of duty!
3. My presentation went well yesterday and now it's ready to show to the rest of my upper management!
4. I was informed that I get a pay raise that became effective on July 1st

I would like to take a moment to talk about the first 2 items on the list. Dude and Salomi I hope you realize that you are carrying on the tradition of those great patriots that laid their lives on the line to create our country in the first place! We celebrate this day still because of the efforts and sacrifices of you and your brothers-in-arms, and I just wanted to say thank you and Happy Independence Day (Ben - I hope you know that goes for you too)!

Now to points 3 and 4:

So how do you celebrate the 4th of July in China?
Well you dress up in your finest Harley-Davidson gear and go to Tim's Texas Road house for a steak dinner, of course!

It just happens to be Friday and my resources have informed me that we can get a 12oz wood fire grilled Ribeye, salad, baked potato, and Texas Toast (just because everyone needs those extra carbs), all for the amazing price of only 158RMB (for those of you playing the home version of our game that comes to about $22 American). I'll let you know how it tastes!

Happy 4th of July everyone!
(Please be careful with the fireworks and try not to burn down the country before I get back)

Do You Believe in Dragons?

I hope you find this as interesting as it sounds in my head, but WFH here goes anyway!

There has been this one particular building (well group of buildings) that has been under construction the entire time I've been here (OK there's actually been several hundred of them under construction, but I'm going to talk about this one in particular) and I drive past it nearly every day either on my way to work or back home. I have no idea what the name of it is, but it is located right next to "The Bubble" (the Olympic water sports arena) and "The Bird's Nest" (the track and field arena).

(Yes, I'm talking about dragons, I just needed to give you that background first)

Anyway I think it is supposed to be in the shape of either a dragon or a sea serpent. Given that Beijing sits pretty danged close to a dessert, I'm gonna go with dragon! I'm pretty sure that the tallest building in the group is supposed to be the head and neck, and the trail of smaller buildings are supposed to be the humps of the dragons back. You be the judge:

OK so why the big deal, well I'll tell you, It looks like they finally completed the exterior construction while I was away and I've been trying to get a photo of it since I got back. The problem is that since I got back it's rained or been foggy for all but two days and luckily I didn't have to work those to days. So today it was finally sunny and the taxi driver took me right past it so I could get a fairly decent shot. What does this have to do with believing in dragons you ask? (OK come on, I know someone asked that)

Well here's what I got from a fairly reliable source: You see Dragons are believed to control the weather. It is also believed that the dragons live in a place called "Three Gorges" which is a natural wonder to the south of here. So something has happened at "Three Gorges" to disturb the dragons and they aren't happy about it in the least, so they changed the weather in a not so pleasant fashion.

Now as I said before we practically live in a dessert and at this time of year it is supposed to be hot, dry, and well generally like a dessert, however for the past month it has seemed more like a rain forest until today. I'm thinking that this is as good of an explanation as any, after all there isn't a single weatherman in the US that could give me any better one! ;-)

So do you believe in Dragons?

Spaghetti Dinner

I thought I'd show a photo of the spaghetti dinner.

It was a simple meat sauce, over angel hair pasta, and served with some sliced cucumbers and sugar snap peas!

Not much else happening here. Prepping for a visit from another of the top dogs, a summer intern starts next week, and a major milestone in my project is upon me, oh yea it's also contribution writing time. So I'll post when I can, but it might not happen until this weekend!

Turning 50 in "The Jing"

Well, here it is 50 trips around the sun! My body is telling me that I can't do the things I used to do, but my mind says "Aw come one, give it a try!" which certainly explains my knee injury! ;-)

There was a big celebration last weekend between three of us friends who all had June birthdays. We celebrated on the rooftop of a place named "Obiwan" (yep after the character in "Star Wars"), it's located in a place called HouHai about 30min from my apartment. We had the place to ourselves, well and about 25 of our friends, for about 4 hours and it was a good time.

Here's a photo of the three of us.

That's Scott to my right and Aaron to my left.

This is a shot of me, my friend Phil, and my Deutsche friends Kathrin and Peter.

I quietly celebrated my real b-day last night, over dinner, with Kathin and peter at a nice German restaurant named "Schindler's Anlegestelle" (Their Sauerbraten and red cabbage is awesome!)

Not missing an opportunity to make connections, this is yours truly and Josie (one of the managers of the place)

It truly was a grand night with good people, conversation, music, and drink. I can't think of a better way to celebrate a 1/2 a century here on earth, other than the fact the Lightnin wasn't there! (To qoute "3rd Eye Blind": "I've never been so alone, and I've never been so alive!")

My actual birthday is today. I celebrated in a rather lay-back fashion by cooking myself some spaghetti with a basic meat sauce. (sorry no photos yet 'cause it's still cooking).

It's a bit of a bummer because it's cloudy, foggy, humid, and cool yet again today! This is a bit unusual for this part of the world, it should normally be hot, dry, and sunny right now. I mean come on, I was hoping to catch a few rays out on my balcony today. Oh well you can't have everything, and besides I've got some good music on and the place has the smell of oregano, basil, thyme, rosemary, tomatoes, onions, and garlic (hungry yet?).

A Day at the Beach

We were fortunate enough to have a company off-site meeting at a place called Nai Dai He. The first nightt was a bit of entertainment followed the next day with meetings, but hey it was still at the beach!

We had a nice 4 hour bus ride to get there, and it took several hours later for me to get the feeling back in my feet. The day and 1/2 that we were there the weather was uncharacteristically cold, windy, and foggy, as you can tell by the following photos.

The view from the hotel room

A few shots of the fishing boats, probably catching our dinner

The view a bit closer to the waves

At the end of the day yesterday we boarded the buses for the log trip back to "The Jing". It was raining when we got back, and we were all pretty tired. I lugged my overstuffed backpack up to the apartment, unpacked, ate a light snack and hit the bed pretty much worn out from the trip.

All in all it was a pretty good experience.

Breast Fest (Not What You Think )

Hi

All- Lightnin Here Again-

I know I have your attention after the last post, right?

Okay, back to Breast Fest! On Saturday, STEB took me and Thunders new bike on a charity run. This years run was to benefit a mother of five who recently found out she has cancer. We started at The Best Damn Bar in Miamaitown, Ohio. There were about 75 bikes and it was a beautiful day! We left around 1:00 PM and headed out to Indian Creek, in Reilly. When we arrived there they had burgers, brats and hot dogs ready and waiting on the grill for us! Our next stop was a place called the Kiatta Club in Okeana. Again the grill was fired up and smelling great. The third stop is our stomping grounds; a great little place called Dew Drop Inn, Cleves, OH. This is where Thunder and I go to hang out and meet friends. The last stop of the day was at McDog's in Colrain. We were greeted again with the grill, cheese coney's and pizza. There were door prizes, split the pot and numerous drawings going on. We won a gift pack for Taco's hope chest! It was now about 6:00 PM and the clouds were moving in quickly! A few of us decided it was time to "go west". Unfotunately we didn't make this decision quite soon enough. One of us wanted to leave earlier but others didn't (right STEB?) So needless to say it was a rather soggy ride back, but I behaved myself, as I've been told "there is no whining on the back of a bike" and there wasn't! But we all had a great time and thank you STEB for taking me and thank you Thunder for letting us use your bike!

So, now I'm going to try my hand at posting pics so we'll see how it goes!

Back in Beijing

All, I'm sorry I've been a bit slack on the posts for awhile, but believe it or not I actually have a job to do over here and since they're paying the bills I sort of felt obligated to get things done. In the world of global commerce you have to cover all the time zones, and for us that usually means working from 7AM (to get our work done) until 9-10PM to connect with Europe and the US to satisfy their needs. That plus the brief trip back to the States sort of caused a bit of interruption to my blogging time.

So anyway I'm back and ready to post again!

I screwed up my knee (one of the dangers of "Growing older, but not up") and so I've been working from home these past 2 days. This has given me the opportunity to catch a photo of a definite oddity in Beijing weather.

This is not smog it is real fog! We actually have enough humidity in the air in daytime to cause a fog!

I'm also going on a company off-site to the sea side at Nan Dai He, so I'll try to capture some photos of that and post about it.

Well that's all the time I have for now, lunch break is over, so I'll try to get back into a routine and keep you updated with what's happening in the "Jing"!

Tasty Treat at Thunder and Lightnin's

Hi all,

Its Lightnin! I tried a new recipe and STEB and Taco were the guinea pigs. It was chipotle salmon burgers with mango, pineapple, cilantro mayonaise and broccoli and cauliflower salad, and avacado halves. Served with a nice merlot. Not too much else to say except that it was delicious! FC and Jackie, you would be impressed and might want this recipe. STEB and I are trying to improve our eating habits (ya know, turning 40 and all) ;-)

Father's Day 2008

It's Father's Day and I thought I'd take some time out of my busy routine to pay tribute to a few father's out there!





This is one of our own knuckle heads who has turned out to be one of the best father's. He keeps our grandson occupied, which is not an easy task.


Happy Father's Day Mike!


















I think you all know this knuckle head, but he also happens to be a great father, and friend!





Happy Father's Day FC!















Here's a couple of Father's Helping us celebrate our anniversary this past year.

Scott is in the orange shirt on the right, and STEB is on the left with a ball cap on (his son is in the stripes next to me).

Happy Father's Day guy's!









Of course I had to get into the picture too. even though this is a grandfather pose here! He and I are always the first one's up in the morning.

I got my Father's day gift a couple of days early when SPC Dude called to let us know he was out of Kuwait and back in Germany!

(Go ahead and make fun of those pants, but keep in mind that they are official KC Chiefs sleepwear!)







The before and after pictures from when my Mother and Father traveled to our new land in Florida to help get the weeds under control. I'm sure they are completely out of control again since I've been out of the country.













My father was 79 in these photos and he was helping me cut weeds, haul brush, and treat the fence! He'll be 80 this August and I'll have to wish him a really long distance happy birthday this year.

Happy Father's Day Dad!












Uncle E - I didn't have any photos of you or I would have posted one! Happy Father's Day!





I hate to do this, but I'm going to end on a sad note today.





Lightnin's father passed away this last year and this is the first Father's day she has spent without him. She's trying to cope with her loss which isn't easy because they were so close!



She's constantly catching herself thinking of calling him to tell him what's been going on, like her visiting me in China, my coming home from China for a visit, SPC Dude getting back to Germany, etc.




I don't think anyone can ever get over the loss of their father, but they just learn how to cope with it!





To all of you other fathers out there: Happy Father's Day!