Upload has started for pics from our trips to Hong Kong, Taipei, and Beijing. Should be done in 2 hours or so. Hong Kong is more of a re-org of previous pics plus our Lantau Island day. We went to Taipei to basically do an eating tour and visit our friend Linda. It didn’t disappoint, we ate at a great sushi place and sampled some local specialties. The condensed milk/shaved ice dessert was awesome. Beijing was also good, the great wall was nice as was all of the emperors’ playpens. Another thing that was interesting was the types of expats there. In Hong Kong/Shanghai, foreigners are mostly wealthy ibankers living apart from locals. In Beijing I saw a lot more mixing and foreigners speaking Chinese. In Shenzhen it’s mostly older white guys sourcing parts/materials for US companies. I guess it has to do with the types of opportunities available at each city.

In other news, we have started to finalize our plans for our return home (or back to America, home is kind of a fuzzy concept at this point). We are flying to San Francisco on 8/2, Seattle on 8/7, and then either driving or flying to New York the next weekend. Considering the previous 3 weekends to those we’ll be on vacation, it’s shaping up to be a busy 6 weeks or so. Ever since we actually finalized the return date and booked tickets, I have been getting more anxious to return home. Not sure why, probably just because we have a date set and can start counting down (37 days for those keeping score).

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More pics are up, this time of our trip to Singapore and Siem Reap. Pretty tired today, we did a return trip reminiscent of my Southwest trips of old, 3 countries (Cambodia, Singapore, China) and a special administration region (Hong Kong) meant clearing customs 4 times and a full day of travel. Enjoy!

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well almost. The internet connection here is pretty slow so they are uploading and will be available in a couple hours. I already created China and Thailand links on the right side.

Long time since the last post. Had a couple very different months. From February to early March, we didn’t spend a weekend at home. I went to Singapore to visit Sriram and met Nhi in Hong Kong on her way back from Seattle. Then we went to Thailand and Shanghai. Lots of fun but somewhat tiring also. In March and April, we have finally started settling down and getting into a routine. We both started Chinese classes. Nhi is trying to learn to write better and expand her day-to-day vocab while I am taking the 101 class. I forgot how much I dislike language classes. The first class is kind of exciting, but very soon it gets overwhelming and frustrating. Still the payoff is pretty good, I can understand numbers ok now and words here and there. So in the end I think it will be worth it and be helpful during my time here.

So we are both adapting to our surroundings better, I wonder if we will go into sensory deprivation when we get back to the US. Things are definitely more lively here. The process has been somewhat subconscious. For instance, one very different part of the culture here is how you treat people. People seem to treat friends and colleagues very nicely, but treat strangers like dirt, or worse. There is no such thing as a line, and people have no second thoughts about doing many things that would be considered rude in the US, in some sense it folds into the true capitalism that seems to be the way to do things over here. eat or be eaten and such. One day a lady waiting to enter the metro paused at the turnstile for an instant to pull her metro pass out of her purse. Not really thinking I just stepped in front of her and swiped my card. Something I would never do in the US, but here it’s become second nature. So if I screw you over when I get back, don’t worry. Nothing personal.

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Bunch of random stuff. First kudos to the IT department. Via some google searching and PHP hackery, now comments appear on the main page! comments are always appreciated and now they are more easily accessible.

Now that I’m in China, I’ve been torrenting away. Watched the past Curb Your Enthusiasm and Entourage seasons. Overall pretty good for both. Entourage seemed to be slipping, but this past season wasn’t bad. Also started watching 30 Rock. I didn’t think I’d like it but it’s actually pretty funny. I watched a bit of True Blood and found it really annoying.

Normally if people in the US ask me if I have dietary restrictions in the US, I say something like “No, I eat anything.” In China, I don’t have the same swagger. Here’s some of the weirdest stuff I’ve seen so far:

• live turtles (at wal-mart no less)
• back half of alligator whole (at upscale supermarket)
• slab of dog ribs hanging up
• dried sea horse
• dried bat

In the never ending game of  “can you top this” of public child urination, apparently a kid had to go in the metro. So rather than wait for the next stop, the mom pulls out a grocery bad and holds it for her kid to pee in. I am so glad the Shenzhen metro is nice and new, providing a really smooth ride. It could have gotten very ugly. Now where does that rank? I think the topper still goes to the mom who held her kid over an open trash can in the metro station. Sure it might have been lower degree of difficulty but I think it still comes out on top. Honorable mention to the mom who had her son just whip it out and pee off the top steps in a public street of the Dongmen shopping area.

Finally, in a don’t “tase me bro” homage comes this quip from a Georgetown student at a basketball game Obama was attending:

After a referee made a call that went against Georgetown, an obscene chant was cut short after one student admonished another, “Dude, the president of the United States is right there.” [link]

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sometimes that’s a good thing, like when you’re walking down an eat street during meal time, like I do every day coming and going from work. but a lot of times it’s bad, like when I walk home past a broken sewer line or past other random stuff. But without question your senses definitely get a workout when compared to the US.

How to cope? Still figuring it out. For the sewer line, it’s a known problem so I can hold my breath or try to judge the wind direction and pick an advantageous path. Another technique I am considering is walking behind women in very heavy perfume. There is no personal space here so people won’t find it odd if you walk right behind them in an open street or plaza. And I figure the perfume combined with the air displacement will form a protective bubble. Thoughts? Any other ideas?

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kireetreddy.com has gone international! We all knew it would happen, but so soon! First some China stuff (more posts to come later this week) and then some football stuff. China has been pretty interesting so far. I get the question “How do you like China so far?” and “Is China what you expected?” and I honestly don’t have a good answer for either yet.

I suppose I like and dislike China at the same time. It is a different country and therefore pretty interesting to see what’s the same and and what’s different from the US and there’s lots to explore which has been fun. It’s also great there are so many other countries (as well as the rest of China) to explore over the next few month. But as expected it’s not home, so anything that is “worse” here than in the US is obviously sore missed. For example, coffee is pretty expensive here. We ambitiously brought our cappucino maker and burr grinder but beans are so expensive it’s probably going to be cheaper just to go to Starbucks or a local store. Also Nhi has definitely had an effect on me: the lack of clean bathrooms and community chopsticks is getting to me. I even got a bottle of the local purell hand sanitizer. The end is definitely near for me. It’s also frustrating not to know the language at all but this was expected and I hope to at least be able to pick out a couple words of a sentence by the time I leave.

As far as what I expected, it’s hard to say because I didn’t really have any expectations. I don’t think anything here has been a complete shock. Most of the very different things I’ve seen I was warned about, namely the copious spitting and kids peeing in public. To digress a little bit I don’t really understand the spitting thing. What’s the appeal? And for the kids peeing, I get it to some extent, no diapers. But what’s the age cutoff there? I’ve seen kids beyond potty training age peeing which seems to be abusing the privilege. Anyways cut out those two things and at least the upscale neighborhoods would be indistinguishable from the US in many ways. Shenzhen is a new city so there are lots of new buildings (and more noisily being built every day). I think the main problem is maintenance and worksmenship. I think there is a bit of a bubble here or at least very rapid development which leads to resources being spent creating quickly rather than well and maintaining. That’s great for investors; not so much for residents. That said, things are still pretty nice.

The one thing I didn’t expect was the difference in what things cost here. If you asked me before the trip, I would have just said that maybe stuff cost 20% of what it does in the US and if I was on the game that day I would have mentioned that imported goods would probably be the same amount as in the US. But the truth is that stuff is just valued differently here, there is no constant multiplier. We hired a maid to clean the apartment before we moved in, she quoted approximately $2/hour which in itself is quite a good wage when compared to rural China. But then upscale malls are filled with young professionals buying clothes and electronics at or above US prices. However, food is still cheap across the board. You can get a nice sit down meal at the aforementioned malls for ~$10-$30 a price two to three times cheaper than the US.

Anyways in all the transition I missed seeing Alabama win the national championship live, though I downloaded the game on itunes and watched it later. It was a very strange game due to the McCoy injury and the big lead Bama built in the first half. I’m not too upset I missed it, it’s not the kind of game I generally like to watch and I would have definitely been a bit nervous there for awhile when it looked like Texas had a shot. I have already seen a few people anoint Bama as preseason #1 next year, but I don’t expect a repeat. Almost the entire defense is leaving, 3/4 defensive backs, 2/4 linebackers, and all three defensive linemen. There is talent there but to expect them to perform at the same level would be too much to ask. So then the offense would have to improve in proportion to the defense’s decline. That could happen as much of the offense returns, but I don’t think it’s likely. This team has had a spectacular 2 year run though and I’ve really enjoyed it. I think next year’s team will be a different team and look forward to see how it turns out.

Also in pro football, the seahawks are giving Pete Carroll another shot. Normally I don’t like retread coaches, but I think carroll has a shot. He didn’t do so bad in his previous NFL stints and he’s a great defensive coach. The NFL is mostly about talent evaluation and salary cap management anyways. If he can find management talent for those positions and stay on the same page as his GM things will work out. We’ll see how things go this draft. The seahawks desperately need big play ability on offense. For as long as I’ve been watching (since the superbowl season) this has been missing. for awhile, holmgren’s ball control offense covered this shortcoming up quite well. In fact, the super bowl team’s offense might be my favorite of all time to watch. The skill and precision was just fun to watch. But since that season, things have caught up to the team and something needs to happen. Anyways, at least Carroll will provide some hope for the next couple seasons.

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almost gone. this weekend was that so special kind of hell called moving day. the move only took 3 hours on sunday, but packing took all day saturday plus some preliminary stuff throughout the week. packing is really a misnomer, it was more sorting. we cut deep this time, and ended up with 2 carloads of giveaway stuff, including some 15 year old CD’s of mine (I had 5 REM CD’s!) and many of Nhi’s “Slow Jams” mix CD’s from her younger days. Maybe we should have kept those, but what’s done is done. Luckily it was a beautiful day outside so no issues there. On the drive home it really hit home that we are leaving and this is really happening. Exciting, but a little sad at the same time. Living someplace, you take a lot of things for granted so in my last few days here I’ve tried to take notice of more stuff and really soak it in; it could be 6 months before a return trip to the bay area.  Anyways, today is the slightly more enjoyable cleaning day and move out is Wednesday. As Borat likes to say, “Happy times!”

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It’s been a sad year for kireetreddy.com. Due to the worsening economy, crippling layoffs occurred in several departments. Quite clearly, creative/publishing was hit hard and was only able to produce 2 pretty sad postings all year. However things are looking up! After consulting with several economic advisors, we have come to the conclusion that the worst is behind us and it’s time to come out of hibernation with a new look and increased posting activity!

First a recap. While it was a ‘lost year’ for the blog, lots of stuff happened to me personally! Chronologically speaking, I got married, Alabama is in the national championship game, and I am moving to Shenzhen, China for a few months. Covering those in order, Nhi and I got married in June. As most of our loyal readers were present, I won’t go into much details besides saying it was great to have everyone there and we were very happy with how things turned out. So how’s married life? Not much different for us. I think the answer to this depends largely on the couple involved. Since we’ve been together for so long, nothing much has changed, which is a good thing.

Moving on to Alabama’s season, it’s been a great year. It has definitely exceeded my expectations considering the high turnover on offense and season ending injury to Donta Hightower. Obviously the high point thus far was the SEC championship where the suffocating Alabama defense made possibly the best college football player ever weep uncontrollably. It was probably the best game I have ever seen an Alabama team play in all three phases against a very good, very talented Florida team. If that Alabama team shows up in Pasadena, number 13 will be coming to Tuscaloosa shortly.

Finally looking forward, Nhi and I are going to move to Shenzhen for 3-6 months. My company offshores some work and I’ll be on-site with them to facilitate knowledge transfer and initial development. It’s pretty exciting, I’ve always wanted to live overseas (though I usually pictured Europe, not Asia) and it’s going to be very interesting from personal as well as work standpoint. So contrary to the manifesto, this blog may turn into more of a diary/travelogue than was first pictured. Look forward to many fish out of water type postings. I’ll be very busy closing out stuff in California so if I don’t post again let me issue a preemptive Happy Holidays!

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quick note: I added a wedding site in the right hand panel. You can also access it at http://kireetreddy.com/wedding. Please check out the hotel page, booking can be a little confusing.

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well not completely. but bama’s football season is over, ending in a disappointing 2 game losing streak. I have been asked a lot about the Utah game and I usually give pretty short answers b/c there are a lot of factors at play. First of all the obvious: utah definitely played the sugar bowl at a higher level of intensity. they had a lot on the line: undefeated season and beating a big name opponent while alabama had relatively little to play for. But I think leaving it at that really shortchanges utah as well as oversimplifies the game. Alabama was pretty lucky this year in a few ways. First, they only faced one really potent passing attack (Georgia). This masked a year (really years) long problem rushing the passer. Even blitz pacakges have been largely ineffective. Second, by jumping out to large leads, bama has been able to hide a limited passing attack due to mediocre QB play and only one receiver that can consistently create separation. finally, bama had incredible injury luck. Besides Cody for a couple games, the most significant injury was Roy Upchurch, the third down back and sometimes fullback. Upchurch definitely provided the offense with a different element and was missed but that’s a great season from an injury standpoint.

In the Sugar Bowl, all those trends reversed themselves. Utah’s offense is a pass happy spread attack, possibly the scheme bama’s defense was most ill equipped to face. After jumping out to a quick lead, utah’s defense, a stack the box pressure defense, was even more effective. . Then Andre Smith was injured and his backup soon after that. Utah played well and took advantage of its opportunity and deserves credit for winning.

I can’t be too upset b/c bama played way over their head this year, delivering two upset victories away from home against highly ranked opponents as well as beating Auburn and Tennessee in the same year in a very, very long time (possibly the stallings era). What is disappointing is the lack of preparedness in the sugar bowl loss. i always like any team i root for to play well and in playoff time play to their strengths. if those strengths aren’t enough to overcome their weaknesses i am ok with that. But losses are upsetting when they are caused by uncharacteristic mistakes. a couple examples are the poor tackling and losing both lines of scrimmage in the sugar bowl. contrast that to the SECCG against florida when bama played well but ultimately lost b/c they faced a great competitor in tebow and didn’t quite have enough juice on offense.

another sad point is that holidays are over. i had a really nice week off. visited both sisters house’s in mobile and atlanta and saw the parents there as well. to start with, i visited shali in mobile. didn’t do much there (besides guitar hero!), but i needed a break and it’s pretty interesting to see how people you grew up with have settled into their daily routines. after that i visited my older sister who is *very* pregnant with twins! again, interesting to see changes in people’s lives. now, it’s back to work and reality. going to be hard to get used to those 5 day work weeks again…

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