I’m heading on vacation. In about 2 hours I will check out of the hotel and today at 16:00 local time I’ll be on my way to the Philippines with 3 of my friends to go Scuba diving for 5 days.

After that I’ll be heading down to Australia. I’ll be in Adelaide for about 5 days where I’ll be visiting friends and doing a little diving also. I’m hoping to find the Leafy Sea Dragon there because last time I was in Adelaide they weren’t to be found. After that I’m heading up to Brisbane to visit some more friends and on the 15th I head up from Brisbane to Cairns. In Cairns I’ll take a bus up to the smaller town of Port Douglas where I’ll board a liveaboard dive boat.

After my trip I will spend a day in Port Douglas and about half a day in Cairns again before flying back to the US on the 23rd of September. This means that I’ll arrive on the 23rd in the US. I’ll be going straight to Chicago first to see family and friends there. After that I’ll be heading to Phoenix for a day on the 27th, and then to Las Vegas for a day on the 28th and on the morning of the 29th I head to Guadalajara Mexico to rejoin the tour.

Hopefully I’ll be able to see some of you while I’m around the US.
ttys

I have arrived back in Shanghai and all is well. Going to sleep soon.

Hopefully my Skype-in Chicago number will be up and running soon. Right now my cell phone is down I think.

ttys
Paul

Well I got to Shanghai on this past Wednesday and it is now Sunday and it is our first day off. I spent the morning having breakfast with a friend who just got back into town and then I went to Walmart again. Here is one of the pictures I took while I was there:

Yeah those are live frogs and the second picture are live frogs in a plastic bag going home with someone and I’ll say this I wasn’t in the Pet section of Walmart.

After that I came back to the hotel before going out to the airport to pick up a new employee. The way I got there was to take a taxi to the MagLev train station and then I rode the MagLev train out to the airport. The reason I’m mentioning it is because the MagLev train only was a 7 minute ride. The train left exactly at 13:00 and picked up speed, A LOT OF SPEED. Check out the pictures and keep in mind that the car ride I took back to the city took about half an hour on a highway.

I hope everyone is doing well. I’m making my list of what I’m going to take to Canada and what I’m going to bring off of tour today so I am getting close to leaving.
ttys
Paul

I have now traveled to Shanghai which is where the show is starting to setup. We are actually in the process of marking the site out and nailing down all of the plates for the show equipment which should start arriving on the 18th of June.

My last couple of days in Beijing were nice and relaxed. On Tuesday I was originally going to go to the Ming Tombs but we ended up just hanging around Beijing and doing some little things like picking up laundry, some shopping and mailing some stuff back to Mom and Dad’s. On Wednesday morning however we did make it up to the Ming Tombs and to a nearby mountain with a resevoir and Pagoda on top of it. I actually drove from the Ming Tombs to the top of this mountain, my first driving in China. I have been told I did alright driving, I only scared the other passengers once when another car tried to illegally (well it would be illegal anywhere else in the world except China) turn in front of me from behind another car that was waiting to turn. Screams were had but we came through unscathed and I was scream obscenities out the window but it didn’t matter since the only people who understood what I was saying were in the car with me. I hope the guy at least understood my tone though.

After going up to this mountain, which we know how to get there because my friend Paul launches his paraglider from there some times, we went down to another resevoir in the valley below this mountain and just sat around for a while. The cool thing about this resevoir was that the Olympic Triathalon will be held at and around that place next year.

I’ve put most of the pictures from my trip up and I am converting the last of the ones right now and will hopefully put those up tonight or tomorrow. The first Gallery, 2007-06-06, are the pictures from my first day in town. I would talk more about this gallery and the others but the internet seems to have slowed to a crawl so you’ll just have to wait a little longer until things get settled down and I can have a better connection.

Right now I am still in the hotel but tomorrow morning I move out of here and over to my apartment which is where I’ll be for the rest of this city. I will be able to buy an internet connection for a much more reasonable price in the hotel and I will purchase it on a monthly basis so I should be online a lot more when I’m at home.

My Chinese is getting a little better thanks to my time in Beijing and my friends Jianyu and Paul who have been helping me. I’m hoping to get some serious studying done this city so I can get better and be able to communicate with more of my friends that I have made over here.

In case I haven’t said it or people aren’t aware I will be coming back into Chicago in the near future. On the 28th of June, premier night here, I will leave Shanghai in the afternoon and arrive mid-afternoon on the same day in Chicago. I am coming to town for our bi-annual fishing trip to Canada. This trip is it going to be me, Dad, Steve, Andrew, Dan and my friend Stirling who I met in Graduate school and reconnected with while I was in Cincinnati with the tour this past year. On Saturday, June 30, really morning early in the morning we will start our trip up and on Sunday we will fly into the camp and spend a week there. I’m hoping for a lot of good weather, clear nights with lots of Northern Lights, and above all else good fishing.

I have purchased some new camera equipment that I have been needing or wanting for a while now. I have purchased a Canon 30D camera body. I bought this camera now mostly because of the trip to Canada but more important than that I want to stop using the two digital Rebel bodies I have that fit my underwater housing. If I break the cameras that I have now I will have an expensive piece of clear plastic that isn’t worth anything. So I plan on getting the bodies I have serviced, while they still can be, and only use them for when I go diving with them. The 30D will become my primary land camera. I realize that Canon will now shortly announce the 40D is coming out or something like that but what can you do? I have also finally bought a tri-pod with a really sexy swivel head, and also an extender for my Telephoto lense. I think there was something else but I can’t remember now. I wish I had the tripod a couple of times during my trip to Beijing and also the Telextender would have been nice a couple of times. Hopefully I’ll be able to get some really nice picture while I’m in Canada.

I hope you all doing well. I’m heading to sleep soon.