Shazhou Hotel Zhangjiagang

... is on final approach.
You
can shake your hands almost perfectly dry before wiping them on your
trousers, or you have your suits made with terrycloth pockets.
A T-Bone steak with rice sounds just fine.
You believe everything you read in the local newspaper.
You regard traffic signals, stop signs, and copy watch peddlers with equal disdain.
You have developed an uncontrollable urge to follow people carrying small flags.
When listening to the pilot prove he cannot ...

... and taiwan was longer than that.

i said i haven't traveled too much this year. the only trip i took was to go to thailand. and y'all never told me i needed the boarding passes to get a reimbursement that is clearly stated in the contract. i asked about other receipts. i've got plenty of medical receipts. she said they're going to have to be traveling ones. i said does it matter if they're not in rmb? i found some rail passes/receipts ...

... jimmy. i've been excited for that. would be nice to see him after almost a year. sure i saw him in feb that seems like a lifetime ago. so much has happened. like both of us agreeing to move back home within the year. he said he'll be back by the summer of '10. i know a lot of people in nola that's going to be happy about that. it's awesome that i'll be getting most of my friends back when i get back. (jason and lil also said that they'll be back in jan.)

but i am worried ...

so jason and lillian came over to wuxi on 9/30. they leave tomorrow. in the 7 days that they've been here, we've:

- gone to the best wedding i've been to in my life. read previous entry for further info: (http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-e ntries/maymay1980/wuxi_2007-08/12548069 49/tpod.html) very entertaining and honestly the only thing missing from the spectacle was for them to be on ice OR for them to fly in from the ceiling- peter pan style. that would have been ...

... rencontré beaucoup de gens. Et surtout un sculpteur qui travaille cet art chinois très ancien (à ma connaissance uniqueau monde dans sa formulation tout au moins) la sculpture de racine. Cela consiste à prendre des racines tortueuses, les débarasser de l'écorce et trouver une forme signifiante en sculptant une infime partie de la racine 1/5 du total au maximum. Cela donne souvent des oeuvres fantastiques ou la nature dépasse l'imagination.

email from my brother today:

House got robbed in New Orleans! Give MOM, DAD a call ASAP & me. Love U!

called mom. i couldn't really understand her from all the crying. she was so distraught, it was mostly sobbing on the phone. i have never heard her like this before. usually, she's the epitome of calm during any type of accident or disaster ...

... for us at the bus station and then taxied us to our hotel room that he booked for us at a 50% discount. Once in our room we realized that Ivan had come earlier to our hotel room to put the air-conditioning on and had one of our family photos professionally framed in one room and ceramic plates with Janice’s parents and James and Monique embedded in each of them in the other room. Ivan had thought of everything to ...

... of eating chicken stomach so I think it maybe was chicken kidney or liver. Who cares?? During dinner did Eric get a phone call, we have had an accident in the workshop, one guy was in hospital. The dinner was held short and we went to the hospital so check what has happened. A grinding disk had broken loose from the angle grinder and jumped up and cut his lower and upper lip. He had to get about 20 stitches and a tooth was damaged. He looked ...

... an alphabet, it is picture-based. So, for example, no matter how you say "dog", since it's pictograph is still dog, the same character would work in the written representation of any dialect. Back to currency: I saw a gold coin from the Silk Road that was a Ghengis Khan coin. Some of the coins I saw were 3-5,000 years old. This, of all the things we've seen, brought home to me how very ancient the Chinese culture is. Some of the newer ...

... Cambodia again, Singapore, Malaysia, back in Thailand then up to China for a job. The job hasn't worked out but many other options have come into play. I apologize for not properly finishing this travelogue but i will try to as soon as possible. -Tomer