With more regular internet access, comes more regular postings! Yah! Who doesn't like that? Breakfast was a delicious treat at a local breakfast house. We had meat and vegetable buns, seasame buns stuffed w/ roast beef, soft tofu w/ sauce, and wonton soup. All for 12 Yeun! Much cheaper than the 300 yeun dinner we had last night. And just as filling. Then we went to the Great Wall of China. This ain't no "good" wall, or "average" wall. They weren't kidding, it's Great indeed. YSP.
After that, we took a short car ride to the tomb of emperors of the Ming Dynasty. These guys knew how to die. It's easily comparable to the tombs of the pharoahs, if not more impressive. The tombs were burried 11 meters underground and withstood thousands of years of pressure w/o collapsing. YSP.
Now I'm off to dinner w/ another family friend. The end result will probably be eating too much food. But I'll let you know if there's a twist in this story.

A quick recap of what I do and do not know.
Do's
* I'm in Bejing
* It's around 10 PM right now
* I'm tired
* My back, neck, and knee hurt
* I will be in Bejing for 2 more days and then go to Shanghai
* I've eatem my weight in food over the past 4 days
Don'ts
* What day of the week it is
* How long I've been in China
* How I'm getting to Shanghai
* When I'll get a decent night's rest
* What about 1/4 of the food I've eaten is (you really don't know what it is)

Alright. Here's a run down of what happened since leaving Taiwan:
Got on a plane and flew to Macao. Gorged myself in the VIP lounge. Got on a plane to Shanghai. Was stuffed with food by the son, wife, of my grandfather's 11th sibling's (sister) and son of her 1st daughter. This is going to get confusing, so I'm going to lay out some groundwork. My grandfather was a family of 13. So they'll be refered to as 8th (hunchback sister), 10th (blind sister), 9th (1/2 blind sister), 12th (brother) and 13th (brother).
Got on a train from Shanghai to Feu Ming in AnHui. Had lunch with 12th, 13th, 8th, the three daughters of the 8th, the husband of the 8th, and the grandson of the 10th. Went out and visited the grave of my ancestor (grandfather's grandfather?) in the middle of a mountain off in nowhere. You'll see in the pictures (YSP). Had dinner at the 8th house with same people I had lunch with. Spent the night at a 2 star hotel which didn't have a shower curtain, or a toilet that would work more than once per hour.
Next morning woke up and had breakfast at the hotel restaurant. Met up with a relative of ours, which doesn't look a thing like us. Took us to visit several more tombstones throughout the countryside. Visited 10th who was blind and wouldn't let us leave without taking a live chicken with us. Discovered the first latrine with maggots  in it. YSP. Visited Grandmother's step brother and visited some more tombstones. At a chicken that was alive earlier that day. Lots of drinking an toasting. Eating way too much food.
Third day in AnHui. Left at 7:15 with Brother, Dad, 12th, 13th. Went to Yangtze river and rode a ferry across it. 2nd latrine with maggots in it (do we see a pattern here?). Met 9th and her husband, 3 children, their spouses and one grandson. Had lunch of way too much food, even more toasts, and way too much drinking. Visited the house that my grandfather grew up that was built by hand by my grandfather's parents and uncles? Visited the12th's wife, son, and daughter, and the son's son. Ate food again, and packed us a ton of food for the train trip. Went to the 13th's house and met his wife, two daughters and one of the daughter's son and daughter. Ate dinner with them. Ate too much... again. YSP.
Fourth and final day in AnHui. Had breakfast at the house of the 8th, with husband, 3 daughers, 12th, 13th. Ate the chicken in a soup that the 10th had given to us 2 days earlier. Put fried rice into the soup that looked like the maggots that I'd been peeing on the past couple of days. Went to see the house of a famous historian that worked under the emperor as a 2nd in command. YSP. Had dinner at the 11th's house w/ husband, 3 daughters, and grandson. Went to the train station. Met up with the son of my grandmother's step brother and got on the train together.
16 hours later and 100+ pages of Xenocide later... Arrive at Bejing train station. Check into a hotel with internet and shower curtains! Visit the Forbidden City (it's freaking huge!). YSP. Had dinner at a Peking Duck restaurant that famous people dine at (Bush, PM's of various countries). Ate too much. YSP.
More to come...

Funny link, care of Hilda.

Finished the first country of my tour, Taiwan. Got into Taiwan at 6:30 am. Rode a bus too Taipai. Got on a taxi and drove 1 hr+ to the countryside to visit my grandmother and grandfathers resting place for their urns. I have pictures that I'll put up later. Suffice it to say, it was beautiful. Drove 1 hr+ to get back, and then went for a run to the 101 building in Taipai. It's very humid here, so I sweat like a pig. Dinner was spent at Dozo's w/ my brother, father, and aunt. It was Japanese fusion cuisine. Had some Orion beer which was really good, some weird cocktail, and a variety of Japanese Tapas. Off to Macao, and then Shanghai, and stopping in An Hwei. More then!  

QOTD: When you go to the bathroom in a public restroom, do you first
undo your pants (not pull your pants down), or do you first lay the
protective seal?

OMG

So I'm guaranteed to miss something. But the longer I wait, the more I'll forget. So here's a brief synopsis of my week at GDC.
Got in on Saturday and was picked up by Jared. Proceed to play Full
Auto at his place and then eat lunch at Cluck-U. Met his g/f Jules,
who's really cool. Worked on his solar system project. You really don't
know how much you've really learned when you look at the stuff you used
to struggle with and understand it so easily. Went to his sister
Katie's birthday party at their mother's house. That was fun. It's
interesting to meet a bunch of Jared's family (he has a ton of
uncles/aunts). Afterwards, we did a bunch of drunken video gaming that
night and then passed out on the couch.
Sunday, woke up and took a shower. God damn! Every time I spend the
night at Jared's, it's like I'm at a day spa! He's got the best product
of any guy I know. Met up with Gagan for lunch over at Pasta Pomodoro.
Man has their menu changed since I went there. But there are still some
things that never change (their wine glasses). We walked around Santana
Row for a while and caught up. It's great to see old friends! Sunday
was spent at the CA volunteer dinner. So-so food, and meeting all the
people I'd be working with for the next week. 270 volunteers, all
masterfully coordinated by Tim and Ian.
Monday through Friday was spent working the convention. Attending
sessions during the day, and then drinking during the evening at the
fairmont hotel and various other locations. It was fun. But I didn't
get more than 4 hours of sleep on any night. I'm surprised how
productive I was during the day on so little rest. Here's a quick
rundown of all the sessions I worked/attended:
Physics for Game Programmers
Game Design Workshop
C++ on Next-Gen Consoles: Effective Code for New Architectures
Playstation 3: Beyond the Box (Sony Keynote)
Cracking the XX Factor: How Devs can turn Women Players into Buyers
All About Ninety-Nine Nights: Next-Gen Character Design
Advanced Prototyping
Disrupting Development (Nintendo Keynote. My favorite session)
Taking Emotional Gameplay t the Next Level
Threading Full Auto Physics
Easy Come Easy Go: True in Poker, Not True in the Costly World of Hiring & Firing
God of War: How the Left and Right Brain Learned to Love One Another
Famous Last Words Live - An Open Mike to Discuss Game Dev Contracts

The evenings were filled with drinking at the Fairmont lobby, Mission
Ale House, the Microsft Party, and capped of with a pizza party for the
CA's where I consumed much beer and a shot of Jaeger.
Stayed up way too late on Friday night (Sat Morning) playing video
games and drinking. After I finally got up on Saturday (after 4 hours
of sleep again!), I went back to my hotel to pack up my stuff while
Elliott and his buddy slept in until 1 PM.
Went over to Victor's place to see that his house had changed with all
this new technology (tv, reciever, speakers, track lighting, ice cream
maker). We went to the World Whiskey Expo and proceeded to eat prime
rib and then start drinking Whiskey. Here's a brief list of all the
whiskies I had:
Ardbeg Uigeadail
Auchentoshan 17 yr
Auchentoshan 1973 ($639.99!!!)
Bowmore 16 yr Cask Strength
Bowmore 17 yr
Glenfarclas 21 yr
Glenlivit 12 yr
Glenlivit 18 yr
Highland Park 18 yr
Laphroaig 15 yr
Laphroaig Quarter Cask
Macallan 17 yr
Macallan 18 yr
Yamazaki 12 yr
Yamazaki 1982
Got on the plane Sunday at lunch and had a great conversation on the
way home with a guy who's an accountant but would rather be
skating/surfing/snowboarding. Recommended some really good music to me.
I convinced him to get a Nintendo DS.

Pictures!
GDC
World Whiskey Expo

BTW, if you haven't seen this yet, it's a very funny parody.

My Myspace Movie

I should have just waited a couple more hours to do my last post. Oh well. We (me, Nick, Chris, Jason, Matt) went to a near-midnight showing for V for Vendetta on Thursday night. What I gathered from the movie is that the Wachowski brothers are the pagiarist of all plagiarizers. This is not meant as an insult, but rather as a compliment. They are the best people for taking a story, and translating it into a screenplay for the big screen. And they know how to bring in actionrs and make them act to their best. Just look at Keanu. I would highly recommend V, as I thought it was both thought provoking (that's because of Alan Moore) and fun to watch (that's the Wachowski touch).

I'm in San Jose right now. Going to be here for the next week for GDC. So, if you want to meet up for dinner, give me a call! I'd love to hear from you.

A lot can be said from my most recent flickr uploads.

But, here's a brief summary: The weekend before last was planning for Chris' birthday. Last week was spent acquiring items for Chris' birthday, and just waiting for it to arrive. Friday and Saturday was spent "warming up" for Chris' birthday. Sunday was Chris' birthday. Monday was the aftershocks of Sunday were we didn't get home from LA until 3 PM and spent the next hour or so cleaning the house that hosted Chris' birthday. Tuesday night was spent metting most the poeple who missed and attended Chris' birthday at Martini Ranch for the birthday party of several employees at Henry's Pub. There's a central theme for the past 10+ days. Can you see it?
Through all those events, I managed to rewrite the camera for our engine while migrating to a new source control manager for our programming department.
I love how I can move between two polar opposites without pause or problem.

Flickr has a lot of cool pictures!

What happened this weekend? It wasn't quite a M.O.A.W., but I still had
fun. Went up to LA on Saturday afternoon for a date and then to hang
out with Will. Hanging out with Will was great because I could really
be at home with myself and feel fine. We could say whatever we wanted
in front of each other. We woke up a bit late on Sunday, and by the
time we got to Mountain High, the parking lots were closed and we'd
have to wait antoher hour before we could even park. We resolved this
by going to Boomers and hitting in the batting cages and playing
minature golf. Those two activities are so stress relieving. You should
try it sometime.
Mardi Gras is tonight, but I'm not sure what's going down... I'm a
little tired from the weekend, so I may just take an easy day.