Sierralima

And a lot has happened. Trip to US in Jan, great youth group retreat last weekend, and I’m getting a new job in August – I just don’t know what yet. More details later – kinda slacking off at work now.

This week has been one of a little more rest than I was accustomed to in November. Since first flight, things are a little slower at work, and I have my weeknds and evenings to myself again. At least for now. I’m sure at some point in the future that will all change again.

So this past week was generally unproductive. I accomplished nothing significant. It was dedicated to let my brain relax a bit and allow me to catch up on a few things. I watched a few movies, was able to spend some quite time at home, and – my favorite – be able to spend time with the youth again.

During the month of November, I gave up any commitments outside of work. I was being asked to work nights and weekends and the conflict of trying to keep my personal life as well as my work life was too much. So I only had a work life. There were only a few times during the month (until Thanksgiving) that I was able to do something that wasn’t work related. They were only possible because nothing required me to be at work at that time. There were three days during the entire month that I didn’t work: the first day and the last two. Some required 24 hours continuous, and others simply overnight. I rarely got more than 5 hours of sleep at a time, and learned to sleep and be awake at pretty much any time of day. It was not much fun. I hope I don’t have to do this again, at least for a long time.

Today (Sunday) I started an interesting experiment. We had our Sunday School Christmas program at church and the Sunday School leader asked me to take pictures or video of the kids as they sang and performed. I have been interested in media for a while and have aquired some video and audio equipment, and very quickly came up with a somewhat complex plan. OK, so it’s not nearly as complex as most of what you see on television, but considering I’m only one person, and very much an amateur at that, it was a bit of a stretch for me. I ended up having three people take video for me – one in the center and on either side. I also had three channels of audio recorded from the sound system. I took still photographs myself. The plan is to get everything imported and manually sync them with each other, then I can cut between different angles from the three video cameras. I’m not sure how this will turn out. I’m importing the first video as I write this, so we have a long way to go before I can see much for results. The end result will be a DVD, and hopefully it will not turn out too bad. While this is mostly an experiment for me, I have a little experience with video recording. At the retreat in October, I had the sessions recorded, and things didn’t go too badly, but I had a few difficulties, particularly with audio, and wanted to resolve that in the future. This is why I recorded separate audio from the main mixer this time. It will add an extra layer of “fun” trying to sync everything together, but hopefully the result will be better.

So that’s my challenge for this week: see if I can do some major video editing.

ARJ21 completed its first flight today. Everything went very well.

An article with a picture: http://www.flightglobal.com/articles/2008/11/28/319486/pictures-chinas-arj21-completes-first-flight.html

You can also check out Google News at: http://news.google.com/news?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&ncl=1275359489

I knew it had been a while since I updated this, but I hadn’t realized it has been almost one month. How time flies! It has been a really busy time for me. From the time of my last post until October 5 I was busy with the youth retreat and its preparations. One “nice” thing is that I had three days off of work before the official start, which meant I pretty much spent all that time with preparations, and meant I started my short nights a day early. This year was well thought out and planned, but made for a lot of preparations ahead of time. That is a good thing. I’m not sure how we made it through the previous retreats. Overall, the retreat was good. The kids had a great time. I enjoyed it as well, but had a different experience. I was “in charge” of putting together the video at the end of the retreat, so I spent most of my time working on that. Too much time – I need to not do the same thing next retreat… Now I’m working on putting together a DVD (or several – there is a lot of material) of the retreat lessons, dramas, etc. I need a bigger hard drive. 500GB is not big enough for editing 10 hours of high definition video, plus pictures.

The last time I made a post I was in Xi’an with Josh. It was a lot of fun having him around, and I’m glad it forced me to take a bit of a break from work. I managed to get a little extra sleep ahead of the retreat, but the highlight was hanging out with my cousin. We don’t get to do that much any more, which I guess is mostly my fault for moving to China. I had another trip to Xi’an this past week. Actually not Xi’an proper, but a “small” town (~250,000 people – small for China, big for American midwest) north of Xi’an about an hour called Yanliang. That was a last minute trip, the return being 48 hours after the decision to go. So I have flown into the Xianyang airport 3 times in the past 5 weeks. If things go as expected, it will become a lot more familiar in the next year.

Work is still busy, and probably will be for the foreseeable future. First flight is still looming, and the pressure is on to keep to the schedule (which still appears to be moving to the right). We are being asked to do some things that are unreasonable with the current schedule, so while the end result of the discussions won’t be much different than where we are now, it will be a painful road to get there.

So today I think I am mostly caught up on the sleep I missed during the retreat. Meetings and other work on the weekends prevent me from sleeping in, which is where I get caught up. For some reason, six hours of sleep waking up at 9am is much more restful than 6 hours waking up at 6:30. I did some cleaning today of the office, which desperately needed it. I threw out a bunch of papers, but otherwise just allocated the mess to other places around the office. It looks better at least. Still more work to do. (Overall, I’m doing a better job of keeping the place clean than I did 5 years ago. Wait, I have a maid now…)

Mom and dad – I promise to call you soon.

There are a lot of non-government taxes around. The stupid tax (lottery) and ignorant tax (where a pretty girl calls you handsome and wants to practice English with you, and conveniently knows a good tea house to sit and talk at, then conviently orders expensive tea and doesn’t have the money to pay) are a couple. Another tax which is well known in these parts is the foreigner tax, where locals get a nice low price, but people who don’t understand the language get a higher one. This is not particularly suprising. I arrived in Xi’an today with Josh, and this hit square on with me. I was looking at the information counter at the airport and saw maps of Xi’an, of which we currently had none. The agent said the map, in Chinese and English, was 10 RMB. When I pointed to another one of the maps, she said that one was only in Chinese. 5 RMB. I laughed. I briefly considered buying the Chinese map, but spent the 10 RMB, feeling somewhat sad that I was supporting a business model not in my favor, and wishing I knew how to read more Chinese.

So the week has been interesting. Josh arrived on Tuesday night. I didn’t spend too much time with him while he was in Shanghai – too many things on my plate – but he seems to do quite well on his own. I took him to youth group and church so he could meet my friends, and we all had a good time. Now that I’ve taken a few days off work and left the city, I’ll have more time to spend with him. I’m not particularly excited about being a tourist again, but I’m beginning to think the time off couldn’t not have been better placed. I’ll know more on that later this week. I must say the weather is quite nice right now. After the hot humidity of Shanghai, the cool weather tonight feels wonderful.

I’ll probably go to bed early tonight. Hopefully shortly after I submit this. Maybe I’ll be able to catch up on some of my sleep. I’ll sure need it for the retreat next week.

I worked yesterday, making that three out of the past four Sundays I have been working. I also worked today, which is supposed to be a holiday. Out of the 14 hours worked over the long weekend, only about 5 were actual work. The rest of the time was waiting for things to be ready, a rather fancy dinner in the hangar (where I was forced to win a prize), and a rain storm which pushed them to shut off electricity to the aircraft and sealed us in the plane. All for disconnecting two wires. I am thankful that I have been able to keep my Saturdays relatively normal thus far and have not had to cancel my speaking engagements with the youth at the last minute.

My cousin Josh is coming tomorrow. I’m excited to see him but don’t really have a good idea of what he’s going to do while he’s here. I solicited some ideas from friends so I have some leads. Hopefully he’ll have a good time. I’m hoping to use some of the time spent working over the past weekends as flex time and take him around the city. I’m hopeful that things will cooperate. We’ll see how well I do getting out of my normal paths around the city.

So already being busy with work and youth group, now adding the retreat, time is very precious to me.

I normally update this on Sundays, but as I have been working the last two Sundays, that hasn’t happened. Things have been busy here. When I get stressed, my memory starts to falter on things I don’t have to remember (and a few things that do matter), so I can’t remember much of the last couple weeks. Hopefully this next Sunday I’ll be able to relax and fill you in a bit more.

Friday was a momentus occation for China. For the first time, this country hosts the Olympics. Friday night showed the streets empty around Shanghai as millions gathered around television sets to watch the opening ceremonies. I was one of them. I must say I was impressed. Don’t get me wrong, I never doubted the ceremonies would be spectacular, but I knew not what to expect. The use of wires and flying people, the video screens embedded in the floor and around the “nest” at the top of the stadium, and most of all, the number of people expertly performing their roles showed the world what China is capable of. The scale and precision of the performers was excellent. They had very difficult jobs to do and they did them perfectly. Not that my opinion means much, but job well done!

It seems likely at this time that I wil not see any of the games in person. Traveling to Beijing at this time is not convenient or cheap. Some of the events are being held in Shanghai, but my attendance doesn’t seem likely at this time. Will I regret this decision later? Possibly. My excuses, however lame, include being rather busy both inside and outside of work, with not much time to spare. I realize that my attendance, or not, will not greatly affect either the course of my life or the events of world history, and I figure that maybe someday, at a different place and time, an Olympic opportunity will again present itself to me. (Vancouver 2010, London 2012…)