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My China trip with Lauren Part 3

So now Lauren and I have our boarding pass. My mom brought Lauren to the bathroom, trying to get her to go poop before boarding. The care-taker we hired for Lauren first introduced the practice to us. Basically, the process goes like this. I hold her legs with my hands and let part of her left butt-cheek rest on my my left leg over the toilet bowl. Then I basically make funny noises like grunting to get her to poop. I understand it’s been practiced in China for quite awhile because they didn’t have paper diapers so regular pooping is a necessity.

Anyway, Lauren is used to being held to have her bowel movement, and she’s quite regular on the timing. You probably wonder why I brought this up, and you’ll see later.

The next hurdle is the actual security check-point. It was difficult even for me to go through the security check-point, much less with Lauren. I brought Lauren to the security-checkpoint, and everyone said teary good-byes.

I dutifully put all Lauren’s food inside a quart-size plastic bag as instructed. The first problem when I approached the check-point was that they officer told me to put the stroller through the X-ray machine as well. The stroller I have can not be folded with only one hand. After looking around, I had no choice but put Lauren next to me on the floor, she’s actually sitting quite well, so that’s not a worry. She just sat there and looked around while I folded the stroller. I carried Lauren through the metal detector with no problems. Well, I then needed to put Lauren back into her stroller, and I really didn’t want to leave her on the floor again. Just when I was trying to figure out my options, a lady behind me kindly offered to hold Lauren while I unfold the stroller. With a sigh of relief, I did exactly that. I came to realize that I needed to depend on the kindness of strangers on this journey, which was a completely new experience for me.

I pushed the stroller and my carry-on luggage with me to the gate, which is one level down, so I had to find the elevator. I then waited in line at the gate counter trying to find out how the gate-checking of stroller works. It turned to another 30 minutes wait in line because there was only one lady behind the counter and about 40 people in line.

The CSR lady turned out to be real nice. She explained to me the gate-check process, and actually got the gentleman who can actually does the gate-check to give me the forms to fill out.

To be continued.

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My China trip with Lauren Part 2

Since I’m traveling to China with Lauren alone, I needed to repack my suitcases because now I can only bring two big ones instead of four. It proved to be a big challenge. As a result, quite a few of Lauren’s toys didn’t make it to China. The suitcases were filled with diapers, wet wipes, canned baby food, baby medicine and toys. It was a struggle to keep each suitcase below the 50 pounds limit.

On the day of the trip, which was really just the next day, a friend with a van came over to drive me to the airport. I was actually unsure about the whole thing, and the thought of cancelling the trip came through my mind couple of times.

After praying about it, I decided to take on the challenge of bringing Lauren to China myself.

The flight was at 2:45pm, and we left my house at 10:45am. I strapped Lauren securely into her car-seat. She seemed to be happy, actually, she’s happy whenever she’s out of the house. I then loaded the two big suitcases, a small carry on, her diaper bag, and her stroller onto the van.

BTW, I just want to mention the stroller. I bought it specifically for this trip, and intend to leave it with her in China. The model I bought was the
The drive to the airport was uneventful. Cosmo Ex Merlot Stroller, which turned out to be a great stroller to use in the airport and for general day to day usage. It’s basically an upscale umbrella stroller but with some very nice features. For more detail, read my Amazon review on it by following the link above.

But I digress.

The trip to the airport was uneventful, traffic was light, and the mood was good in general. Lauren shouted quite a few times, she’s very vocal nowadays, trying to prepare for her language development I assume. Our friend, who drove the van, got startled when he first heard her shouting, it was kind of funny.

Check-in was pretty easy, although there were quite a few folks in line already, JY and my mom brought Lauren to a seating area to feed her and change her while I waited in-line. It took me around 30 minutes to check-in.

I asked about the bassinet that I ordered for Lauren at the check-in counter, and was told that I should have ordered the hanging one because it’s much bigger. My problem was that when I first ordered the bassinet, I was put into non-bulkhead seat, so the bassinet I ordered was the floor model. On the 747-400 I was traveling on, only two bulkhead rolls can have hanging bassinet, and although I changed myself to a bulkhead row couple of weeks ago, I didn’t change to the bulkhead rows that have that feature. The problem was, I was never told about this before I arrived at the airport. I actually called United a few times to change things, and every time I was told I’ll get a bassinet for Lauren, but the difference between the bassinet was not explained to me.

This has just made my trip much more difficult, because the floor bassinet can only hold a baby up to 6-months. Well, I was at the airport, and there was no turning back.

To be continued.

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Week in Vegas

I just came back from a week-long trip from Las Vegas. It was a conference that I attneded for work.

The hotel I stayed in, JW Marriot was a bit far from the Vegas strip, about 15 miles one way. It’s a rather nice hotel, with a big jacuzzi style tub, a large bathroom, two twin size beds and a nicely landscaped courtyard.

But as most of you know, when you are in Vegas, the strip is where the action is.

I spent the last couple of nights on the town with my colleagues from the conference.

We went to a show called Splash at the Riviera. It was a variety show, with juggling, motorcross, ice skating and skits. It was very very entertaining. We were told that the whole show is performed topless by the female performers on week nights at 9:30pm and weekends. I don’t think I’ll enjoy the show that much more though. I highly recommend it for anyone who wants to be entertained. You can find a review of the show here

One thing about the shows is that you should not pay full price. You can find discount tickets at multiple places. I liked Ticket 4 Less at the first floor of the Fashion Show Mall. There is another company at the food court in the same mall., althought their selection is more limited and price higher.

I also got a chance to sample the finest food Vegas has to offer, well almost, the finest buffets that Vegas has to offer.

The first one was located at Wynn Las Vegas. It’s a magnificant hotel, the attention to detail was amazing. The selection of food was huge, very high class and exotic food. Instead of chicken, they have free-range cornish game hen, along with more than 10 different types of fish. I’m a seafood person, and I was delighted by the selection. My colleagued sampled their ice-cream, and told me it tasted like it was hand-spun, and he got a second helping. They are a bit more expensive then most other buffets, although I think it’s a steal at $35.

The second buffet we went to was at Paris. They offer food from five French regions. The food selection is a bit more limited, however, the quality is quite good as well. They make ordinary ingredients taste good. I especially enjoyed their salmon, mussels and beef stew. They also have a big selection of desserts, although I’m not a dessert person, I still enjoyed their banana in syrup. It was very good at $27.

Of course, since I stayed at JW Marriot, I went to their Rampart Buffet as well.  The food is nothing to write home about, but it’s plenty and tasted ok for the price.

The weather in Vegas is surprisingly temperate. In fact, it’s very similar to the bay area. We even got a rain shower on Thursday, which was surprising.

Overall, the conference was great, the entertainment was ok, and home is definitely where I want to be.

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We are back to the US

Just to let you all know, JY and I am safely back to the US.  We arrived yesterday morning.  I went to work today, and JY is still trying to recover from the trip at home.

The plane ride back went very smoothly, we actually arrived an hour earlier than scheduled.

We had a bit trouble when going through immigration, the officer I went through told me JY should be with me even though she doesn’t have a green-card yet.  Then JY got sent to yet another line for people with Advanced Parole.

All in all though, things went great.

Look for more Shanghai trip related articles soon.

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We are coming back tomorrow

JY and I am flying back tomorrow morning.

There many things waiting to be done when we get back, got to get ready for the baby. We are taking a bunch of classes and we also need to purchase all the necessary baby-related stuff.

Well, it’s been fun in Shanghai, now we are ready to go back to our old life and start working again. I suspect that I’ll adjust faster than JY. 😀

Look for Shanghai related articles soon.

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I’m in Shanghai

For those of you who are wondering, I’m doing great in Shanghai.

The vacation is going great, although I’m quite busy due to all the people to meet and all the food to have 🙂

JY’s parents are doing well, they are accompanying us to most of the places.

Look for more detail about this trip under the articles section, I’ll put all my trip related articles there once I get back to the US.

In the meantime, please pray for our trip and safe return.

Thanks.

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Wedding DVD part 2

I’m done with the wedding DVD.

It took a long time to author, but thankfully I didn’t have to redo anything.  There were some imprefections here and there, but nothing we can not live with.  Things that I regreted not doing for this release of our wedding DVD:

  • Should normalize the audio level, it would’ve taken more than 5 hours
  • Should adjust white balance of all frames,, this would’ve taken more than 10 hours
  • Should use more transition during the film, I wasn’t sure whether this helps or distracts.  It would’ve taken an hour at most
  • Should synchronize dance music with the actual dancing, they are slightly out-of-synch now.  This would’ve taken couple of hours.

Other than those things mentioned above, I’m quite fond of the resulting DVD.  I may make the montage section available on my site later.

Now I’m back to packing, my next blog entry will be from China.

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Wedding DVD

I’ve been really busy for the past few days.

It’s been 10 months since our wedding.  I had not gotten around to put together our wedding DVD since then because there were so many other things for us to do.

Now that we are going to Shanghai, I thought it’d be nice for JY’s parents to see our wedding DVD.  However, that left me only about a week to put it together.

I’m almost done.  My work flow for editing look like this (well, ideally anyway):

   1. Come up with a story board
   2. Capture video from DV camcorder to harddrive
   3. Once all raw footage are captured, import them into editing program
   4. Go through all clips and isolate scenes relevant to the story board
   5. Sequence the scenes, put in background music and dance tracks for the dances
   6. Put in transitions and chapter headings
   7. Create montage using shorter highlight clips
   8. Create disk menu
   9. Author test DVD
  10. Burn test DVD
  11. Correct errors
  12. Author final DVD
  13. Burn final DVDs
  14. Bring final DVDs with us to Shanghai

I’m at step 10 as of now.  The authoring took more than 4 hours to complete, maybe it’s time to upgrade to a faster machine.

I’ll know by this evening if there is any correction needed.

I’ll post a clip on this block once I’m done.

Wish me luck.

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Shanghai trip planning part 3

We are going to Shanghai!

Well, that’s not exactly news, but we weren’t sure about the trip because of JY’s pregnancty. JY just got the go-ahead from her OB. She was told the baby is progressing nicely, gaining the right amount of weight .

Now that we know we are going to Shanghai for sure, there are quite a few things to prepare. We spent a bit of time packing today, putting all the stuff her mom asked for in our luggage. There are 12 bottles of various vitamins in one =)

There are quite a few other things to plan for, such as the places we want to visit, food we like to have, friends JY wants to see, things we want to purchase both for ourselves and for the baby. It’s going to be a tight two weeks!

By the way, I’ve just re-read the travelogue by one of of friends – Benny Chang. It’s written competely in Chinese and makes a fascinating reading. Don’t expect the same quality of writing from me, Benny used to be a TV news anchor, and words just seem to flow from his pen.

I’ll do the best I can to record the sights and sounds of Shanghai along with my experience, mainly for my own record. Hopefully you’ll find it interesting as well.

Got to go do some more packing now.