Forbidden City

Wow!!! Some countries build an Imperial Castle. China builds an entire Imperial City!!! Today my Crytek associates and I had a chance to visit the Forbidden City here in Beijing. This place is absolutely GINORMOUS!!! We walked around inside it for three hours, and I'm sure we didn't even see one-third of it. At some points while walking through it, you're up sort of high, and you look over buildings, only to see more buildings beyond it, still within the Forbidden City. You've got to take different paths to get everywhere, and it's just crazy big.

Around the mid-1800s, the Chinese government started imported mechanical clocks (as opposed to the sun dials and other ancient time-telling instruments that they had been using) from Europe, and they even had a "Hall of Clocks" in one of the many temples on the grounds. I immediately thought of Nancy, my dear sweet mother-in-law, whom loves collecting clocks (I even brought a clock home from New Zealand for her on one business trip). Check out some of the photos of the, quite frankly, HIDEOUS clocks!!! One of the photos is of a room; can you tell how many clocks are in that room?

All the walking made my knee really hurt, and I've taken a really heavy pain killer. I've been sitting here with my leg propped up and my knee on ice while going through photos and creating this posting, so if some of this isn't clear, I'm blaming it on the drugs!

Check out the photos I've posted online, including this one here of my associates and I, from left to right Mark Atkinson, Christopher Raine, Sascha Gundlach, Areil Cai, and Barbara Bernad. I've posted more than 70 photos, available here on Flickr, or on Facebook (in two galleries, here and here).

A Proud Father

Today here in Tokyo I took that train to the airport to greet my three associates coming in from Germany, and the down time finally allowed me to finish editing our pictures from our family trip to San Francisco last month. So... I'm finally continuing my San Francisco posting from last month.

The previous posting covered the first day that we went in to "the city," for which I was able to join the family. The second day we went in to the city, my trade show had sort of started (it technically started the following day, but I had setup and meetings to attend to), so I couldn't join them during the day. So I handed my camera over to my son and he took over picture duties for the day. I must say, CHRISTOPHER MADE ME SO PROUD!!! Like a complete photography geek, I like to "frame" things when I shoot, and just LOOK at this awesome picture here, and how Christopher "framed" the cityscape with a tree in the foreground!!! :-) This picture was taken from Alcatraz Island.

So... I've trained Christopher pretty well in being all geeky and framing pictures that he shoots, but apparently I forgot to train him to put PEOPLE in the pictures. I've uploaded 87 pictures that he took that day, and even though there isn't much of our family to be seen in them, they're still fun memories for us whom were there that day. :-)

After driving in to the city from Susan & Eric's house, the family dropped me off to work, and they went off to play. The biggest part of the day was touring Alcatraz - I've never been out there, so I'm sorry I missed it. But then later that afternoon I was able to join up with them for dinner at the Hard Rock Cafe at Pier 39, and then we all went to see Wicked. It was... well... WICKED!!! Seriously, it was so good!!! What an amazing show!!!

Enjoy the pics on Flickr and on Facebook (in two albums there; three and four).

Back on the Pitch!!!

That's right... the greatest sport ever has started back up in Boise, and Spring soccer is in full bloom (pun intended). And indeed, soccer can be a full contact sport; check out that picture on the left! Both players are getting pretty aggressive on the ball here, and number 6 with his back to you is Andrew. The girls on the coed teams don't slow Andrew down at all when he's going for the ball! Nice tackle, Andrew! By the way, no penalty was called here; it was just two players being aggressive after the ball, and despite crashes and burns by both players, everybody was alright and play went on.

I also like this photo on the right. It looks like Andrew is "juggling" the ball with his knees or something, but he's not. It's just a ball coming down, and Andrew going for it.

The season is going well so far. We've had two matches, winning the first one 4-1, and the second one 5-3. Andrew has played almost exclusively at left midfielder, getting lots of exercise! Enjoy these and 58 more photos from their April 4th game, that I've posted here on Facebook, or here on Flickr.

Call Me "Kabe-san"

Greetings from the Land of the Rising Sun. Enjoy the picture of Mt. Fuji to the right, here, even though it's totally unrelated to this posting (other than the fact that I'm talking about Japan). One of the reasons I like coming to Asia is that it seems I always get to experience something new here. This morning was no different.

As I was walking from my hotel to the train station en route to my first meeting this morning, there was this guy RUNNING from the station to his office (I assume). Running late to work, I guess. As I rounded a corner, we met. I noticed him just before he slammed in to me, so I squared my stance to the impact. This poor guy didn't stand a chance. He must have not been much over five feet tall, and the guy just bounced off me. Literally hit me, bounced back several feet, and ended up right on his keester. It didn't even phase me, and I felt bad for the guy. He was really apologetic and I of course made sure he was OK (he was), but as he stood back up, he told me it was like he had run in to a wall. And he laughed... I laughed.

The last name "Abe" (awe-bay) is pretty common here. So... sounding close to that, you can now call me "Kabe-san." Kabe is "wall" in Japanese, and I'm now a wall. :-)

Easter Eggs

Tonight for Family Home Evening we colored Easter eggs. I'm just thrilled because I'm going to be home this Easter!!! I originally thought I'd be in Asia, but I'll be leaving shortly after Easter, instead.

As you can tell, we have a lot of fun when we color Easter eggs. In the photo on the right, you can see GREEN outside in the background. Spring is here, and it's nice that things are starting to turn green again, and flowers are starting to bloom.

We're not sure who has more fun with the eggs, though... us or the cat. Our cat is quite intrigued with them, and she loves playing with them like they're balls. When the Easter Bunny hides all the eggs around our house, the cat really goes crazy. I just hope we find them all, or you can imagine what our house will end up smelling like!!!

Below, too, is a picture from above. :-) And you can see these and 17 more pics that I've uploaded to Facebook and to Flickr.