This makes me laugh…

I promise a new blog post shortly.  Topics will most likely include sailing, applicant advice, living in London, and/or the economy.  For now though, take a look at this clip… and get some asprin ready because it will make you laugh until you have a headache.  Make sure you watch the entire thing!

GO PHILLIES!!!

Copying my other blog

So, I’m doing exactly what I intended not to… I’m falling behind on my blog.  I was absolutely adament that when I started my MBA, I’d keep posting on my blog on a weekly or so basis.  When I was applying to schools, I got so much out of reading current students’ blogs, I decided that I wanted to help others by writing my own.  I also got really frustrated when a blogger I had been reading for a while suddnely stopped posting.  I vowed to keep posting on a regular basis once I started my MBA… and what have I done?  I’ve hardly posted anything at all during the past month!  My official excuse is that I’ve been far busier than I ever thought I’d be… but in reality, I have no excuse.

Guys, I promise I’ll get around to writing some more posts for this blog… but for now, I think you’re going to have to settle for a cut and paste of my blog posts I’ve written for the school’s blog.  Here is my latest one:

My shins are black and blue, my knees have soft mushy spots which hurt to touch, I can feel muscles in my back that I didn’t know existed, my forearms feel like rubber, and I have a red scratch under my eye from getting punched in the face by a French girl.  No, I didn’t have a rough night out in East London… I spent the weekend sailing with the London Business School sailing club in the Sunsail Regatta in Portsmouth.

It has been a long time since I’ve been in a sailboat where I was doing something more than just relaxing, sipping wine, and taking in the sun.  This was racing and I had forgotten how physically taxing (and exhilarating) it can be.  With all of my bumps and bruises though, I got off easy; my classmate MK, who was on the other boat, got in a fight with a sailboat and the sailboat won.  Basically, the main sheet caught his neck as they were jibbing and it smashed his face into the deck.  He’s a trooper though, he was in class the next day, bandages and all.

Well, as fun as I had during sailing, Krish already told me he had written a blog post about the whole experiences, so I’m going to use this as an opportunity to segway to the topic of clubs in general.

The shear number of active clubs at this school is crazy… its almost impossible to keep track of them all.  The trap which many first-years fall into is to join too many.  There are many clubs that I’m interested in, but I realized within the first few weeks that I was going to have to prioritize and only participate in those I really wanted to be involved in.  Trying to fill professional, social, and sports needs, I have joined the following clubs:

• Venture Capital Club – one of my main professional goals is to work in Venture Capital, preferably in Renewable/Green Tech or Nanotechnology.  Though this is a lofty goal (it can be very difficult to land a VC gig right out of school) but the VC club greatly increases your chances of breaking into the industry.  There are numerous speakers, entrepreneur pitches, and competitions.  I’m particularly looking forward to the VCIC competition in the Spring Term where we form fictitious VC funds and evaluate real entrepreneurs’ business plans.

• Energy Club – As I have a strong interest in renewable energy, and I may not be able to land a coveted VC job, I’ve started looking into working for a big energy firm such as BP in their alternative energy group.  I’ve been learning quite a lot about the industry through the clubs events, and I look forward to more.

• Entrepreneurship Club – I’m still holding onto that dream of starting my own company right out of school (yet another pathway into VC), but I’m having trouble coming up with a winning idea.  The entrepreneurship club’s  speakers and competitions help bring ideas to the surface and offer inspiration.

• Squash Club – I used to enjoy playing racquetball in college, and squash is the next closest thing.  Amazingly enough, the London Business School squash club has full access to the Lord’s Squash Courts!  The opportunity to play at such an exclusive club is invaluable, not only for the experience, but also for the people you may find yourself playing squash against!

• Student Ambassador – ok, so its not really a club, but it will be taking up a considerable amount of my time.  A former student ambassador, Dana McNabb, was instrumental in my decision to apply to London Business School.  I decided a while ago that I wanted to help prospective students learn more about the school, just as she helped me.  I’ll be attending information sessions, giving campus tours, and generally making myself available to answer questions about the school.  You can see a listing of all Student Ambassadors here.

• Sailing Club – as I mentioned above, I had a great time sailing and want to do as much of it as possible during my time at London Business School.  My boat, skippered by the incomparable Miranda, came in 3rd place last weekend out of about 20 boats!!  Each year the sailing club takes a spring break trip somewhere to go sailing… last year it was Thailand… its up to us this year to figure out where we want to go.  I’m thinking Vietnam sounds good.  Today I start a seven week Day Skipper course taught at the school, covering maritime basics such as navigation, etc..  Its the first step towards getting my Skipper License which will allow me to rent boats and take them out.

Well, there are a few other clubs I ‘dabble’ in (Poker, Rock n’ Roll, and Wine & Cheese come to mind), but these are the main ones I’m making a strong effort to be active in.  I’m at least making sure I go to all of the meetings and events, but once you start factoring in class trips, friends’ birthday drinks, company networking events, etc. it become hard to keep all of the balls in the air.

By far one of the best aspects of London Business School is the extremely high level of involvement that the student body has in clubs and activities.  There is something for everyone offered at the school, and if there is a club you want to join which doesn’t exist, the school makes it quite easy to start a new club!

Oh, and it should be noted that I didn’t do anything to deserve getting punched in the face by said French girl… it was entirely by accident… I was manning the Genoa sheet, pulling it in after we tacked.  She slipped the ratchet handle onto the winch before I could get the sheet through the locking clamp.  I then leaned in to try and get the sheet over the handle and onto the winch while she was turning the winch handle, and as her fist came around, she caught me square in the eye.   Ouch!

First week over

Well, the first week of my London Business School MBA is over. We are finished with Understanding General Management (someone in the class calculated that that means we are finished with 2% of our total credits) and I will soon be finished with Business Statistics. I really wish I had opted out of statistics (or sadistics as my Grandfather called it from his days at Wharton) because, though things are worded in the form of business problems, once you distill out the data, the stuff we are learning is very basic for anyone who has studied engineering. I suppose the only thing I am getting out of the class are some new tricks on Excel which I didn’t know about; new tricks that I am sure will come in great handy over the next few years.

Heading down to Picadilly on the Tube

When not in class, I’ve been spending time with my classmates. Activities have included drinking at The Windsor, drinking at The Volunteer, drinking at The Hobgoblin, drinking at the school’s own MBAr, or going down to Picadilly Circus to go… you guessed it… drinking. Again, keeping in mind that in the MBA student world, drinking together is an important part of the course and is thus referred to as networking.

My first class, Understanding General Management, was quite interesting. The course was only a week long because it followed the block format which some classes are offered in here. Basically, by taking a class from 9am-5pm, we can finish the whole class in as little as 3 days. This of course wouldn’t work (I don’t think) for something like Finance 2, but for a course like UGM, its just fine.

We started UGM with a case study on Honda. In the b-school world, its probably once of most famous of all cases. We were assigned to read ‘Honda (A)’ which paints a very rosy picture of how Sochiro Honda and his cohort Takeo Fujisawa conquered the American motorcycle market in the mid-1970’s. By the time class discussions began, most of us ignorant students were of the mindset that Honda was a ’superman’ in terms. They had entered the US marketplace with such skill, foresight, and wisdom that clearly, as we are all aspiring future managers, we should emulated their overall strategy.

After the discussion died down a little, the Honda (B) case study was handed out to us and we were given the chance to read it. Boy, did it paint a different picture of Honda. Wisdom was replaced with recklessness, strategy was replaced with shear luck. Most of the class enjoyed this image of Honda much more; it painted the founders of the company as men; men with flaws, and in a sense showed us that regular people can accomplish great things. Another purpose of the dual-case study was to teach us that we should not always believe everything we read in case studies; the bias or intention of the author determines how the final article portrays a company, not reality. In truth, I expect that the read Honda and Fujisawa lay somewhere between Honda (A) and Honda (B), but I guess we’ll never know.

Well, that’s it for now. I have more drinking networking to go and do. Haha, actually no, I’m kidding… its only 10 in the morning. I have to go and finish writing up my study group’s recommendations for a fictional Chinese food restaurant called Red Dragon. For Business Statistics we had to advise the restaurant on a policy to offer a 10 pound (still can’t figure out how to type pounds sterling on my US keyboard) certificate to customers in a 10 mile radius when their orders were late, and what time limit to place on that guarantee. Actually a pretty fun exercise, so I guess I am getting something out of Sadistics Statistics after all.

True Story

So, I was in Victoria station the other day waiting for the Maidstone East train to go down to my grandfather’s house.  I arrived at 5:58 and my train was at 6:22.  I figured I had enough time time to stop at the ‘Cornwall Pasty (spelling?) Stand’ and buy myself a Steak and Stilton pasty.

I bought it.

It was delicious.

I ate the first half leaning against the brick wall of Victoria Station.

Just as I was about to take a bite of the second half… I mean, as it was going into my mouth… PLOP!!!

I pigeon from up above on high SHIT all over my pasty!!!

EWWW!!!!

 

So I bought a baguette from another shop.

Continental Flight to London (backdated)

What is it with me an in-flight entertainment systems. Recently, every time I’ve taken a long flight where access to movies and music is considered a humanitarian service to prevent the passengers from going insane, the in-flight entertainment system has crapped out on one row, or one section of seats on the plane, and it always includes my seat. Usually the flight crew is able to reset the system every time it freezes up, making a two hour long movie take about 3 hours to watch, but on today’s flight one half of the plane has a working entertainment system and the other half does not.

I’ll give you two tries to guess which half of the plane I’m sitting on. If you need both guesses, then you clearly have been smoking some illicit substances.*

*If you have been smoking some illicit substances, go and see the movie Pineapple Express… you’ll enjoy it greatly. Seth Rogan is a comic genius! Even if you haven’t been touching any illicit substances, go and see the movie anyway. A good stoner flick can make everyone laugh.

Newark Airport, Aug 18 (backdated)

Well, here I am sitting in Terminal C, Gate 86 waiting to board my flight to London Gatwick. After waiting in line at the Virgin Atlantic check-in desk (Terminal B), I was told that my flight, while a Virgin flight, is operated by Continental Airlines (nice of them to tell me) and that I had to make my way over to Terminal C. Fortunately I had arrived at the airport 3 hours early (yes, I arrived at the airport really early… you read that correctly) so I had plenty of time to make my way over there.As I sit here waiting for the flight, I’m going over in my head all of the things I need to do this next week. Fortunately I already took care of some of the most difficult tasks; opening a bank account and finding a flat, but I still have a large laundry list:

• Get myself a cell phone (aka. a ‘mobile’ phone in British English). Last month I put myself on a waiting list to get myself an iPhone. Fortunately, it is free with the monthly plan I will be purchasing, though if I want to upgrade to the 16GB, which I probably will, then I need to pay a little money myself.

• Discuss with Frank and Apoorva what items we need to buy for the apartment flat such as a television, phone, plates, cooking utensils, etc. Then go and buy said items.

• Go and actually register myself with the school and get my ID card; this will allow me access to campus buildings including the gym. After 3 weeks of indulgence in the US, I need to hit the gym hard. My knees aren’t hurting yet, but if I don’t get running soon, they will start to. I’m particularly looking forward to jogging around Regent’s Park, adjacent to the school.

• Investigate how to hook-up our apartment (damn) flat to the internet. As you can see, since I am sitting in an airport terminal trying to hook up to the internet, I cannot go for long without internet access. Its a miracle I was able to travel across parts of Indonesia as I did.

• Get my drink on with some of my LBS classmates (don’t worry Mum & Dad, just a few pints, no gin involved)

• Get all of my registered mailing addresses changed from the US to London. This, of course, is mainly to ensure that my ‘Scotch of the Month’ gets consumed by myself rather than my father. (note to self: find a scotch of the month club and join it)

• Find out how to buy an Oyster card. A single Tube ride in London now costs 4 pounds!! Yes, to ride the Tube in London is the equivalent of going to a movie in the US!! With and Oyster card however, the price drops down to 1.5 pounds. Since my flat (woohoo, I’m getting the lingo down!) is only a 12 minute walk from school, I’m hoping I won’t need to use the Tube that often.

• Figure out how to type the symbol for ‘pound sterling’ on my US keyboard

• Learn enough Mandarin Chinese in two weeks so that I can pass the Level 1 Chinese proficiency exam (yeah, three years of living in China and would still fail the exam if I took it today… but only because a large portion of the exam is reading and writing… if it were merely speaking, I could pass Level 1 pretty easily. I need to pass Level 1 to get into the Level 2 classes… I’ll be damned buggered if I have to sit through yet another Mandarin intro class chanting, “b- , p- , s- … j- , zh- , g- … etc.” (those who suffered through the first semester of 汉语说在烟台大学, then you know what I’m talking about).

• And any other of the 50 gabillion things I have to do this week before orientation starts which I’m not going to write about because this blog is supposed to be entertaining to read and not incredibly boring

Well, that’s enough for now I suppose. As I said, I have loads to do… I guess there is no reason to bore you senseless by writing them all here. It does, however, help get things straight in my head by writing posts like these.

They are just about to start boarding, so I’d better go now. See you in London!!

Heading to London!!! Woohoo!!

Bronwen Court, St. John

Well, my wait is finally over.  It has been 20 months since I first sent in my application to London Business School, and later this afternoon I will be heading up to Newark Airport to board my flight to London.  I can’t wait to meet the rest of my class in person… I’ve been seeing all of the fun they’ve been having these past two weeks.  Most of the class arrived quite early and spends the evenings out at pubs getting to know one another.  For me, it was important to spend more time at home since I’ve only been seeing my friends and family about once per year, so I decided to arrive only one week before orientation.

I am very glad I went to London last month to find a flat.

My Living Room

The past few days I’ve spoken to quite a few of my classmates that are having a very difficult time flathunting this close to the beginning of classes.  I was able to get a fantastic place in Saint John’s Wood (a 12 minute walk from the school) for a decent price.

My two roommates seem cool; Apoorva is from India and has been living in China recently, while Frank is French Canadian and has been living in Germany. I’ve meet Apoorva before… I went to visit him at his place in Shanghai three times and we had loads of fun hanging out together.  I’ve never met Frank in person, but when I’ve spoken to him on the phone, he has seemed like a really cool guy.

Kitchen

My first week is going to be a whirlwind of activity (I’m sure the whole first year will be actually).  I arrive on Tues morning and will make my way to 55 Bronwen Court, Saint John’s Wood.  My house it directly across the street from Lord’s Cricket Ground, so I had better become a fan of cricket (its pretty much baseball).

Some members of the class have already organized an ‘Explore London’ day on Tues… I may go in order to meet some classmates, but I’ve already seen all of the sights they will be visiting (I can’t begin to count the number of times I’ve visited London over the past 27 years). 

My bedroom

At some point I’ll head down to Otford to visit my Grandfather and pick up the boxes of stuff I have sitting in his house.  I still don’t know how I’ll get it up to London… perhaps hire the ‘Man with a Van’ that other LBS students have hired.


Well, its time for me to pack up the computer now, so I guess I had better go. I’ll see you all in London!!

Bathroom

Indonesia Rules

So, before I left Blogger, I promised everyone that I’d write in greater detail about my past six months or so.  Well, here it goes.

In March I stopped working and I went down to Malaysia and Thailand with my longtime friend Mattei.  I had been to Ko Phi Phi and Kuala Lumpur a few years previously (some long-time readers might remember my scuba diving story from back then… check the archives for April 2006), but I had not been to Penang before.  We had a great trip, but it ended in disaster when my camera bag with over $1,000 of equipment and all of the trip photos were stolen at the Yantai Airport.

From March to June I was enrolled full-time at 烟台大学 to study Mandarin.  Before I knew it, I was packing up my possessions like a mad man and trying to figure out how to ship three years’ worth of accumulated crap halfway around the world to London.  I ended up spending a fortune on shipping costs and leaving a tremendous amount of stuff behind.  I still feel quite guilty about the state I left my apartment in.  Oh well, the Chinese workers cleaning it out had a ton of free stuff to choose from.

Left to right: Apoorva, me, Graham, and Joel

I left 烟台 and headed down to 上海 for a few days to visit my future London roommate Apoorva.  I was also fortunate to see some old friends from Yantai, Joel and Graham.  We had a good night out and I found myself quite sad that my China days were numbered.  After saying, “再见中国“ I headed down to Bali, Indonesia to start a one month trek across the Nusa Tenggara archipelago.

I cannot rave about Indonesia enough.  It is an amazing country and you should not pass up the chance to go there.  I had been to Bali before two years ago, but I only stayed in Ubud and never once went to the beach.  This time I spent one week in Bali earning my PADI Advanced Diver so that I could go on some deeper dives.

Kuta Beach had some nice sized waves

I really don’t enjoy Kuta Beach much; its far too touristy for my taste, and life there pretty much revolves around the night life.  Don’t get me wrong… I think its a really fun place to be with friends, but traveling alone its not the best option in the world.  I did meet two nice girls on my first day of scuba diving, Laura and Sabine, who I went to dinner later with that night (and met their friend Lyndsay).  It was a nice evening, though expensive as we were eating/drinking at one of the nicest clubs on Bali, the Coup d’etat.  My last night in Bali, I picked up Dennis Valdez at the airport (a future London Business School classmate of mine… Dennis had arranged to fly down from 北京 to go traveling with me for a week or two) and spent the night chatting with him getting to know him better.  We had spoken before on facebook, but this was my first time meeting him.  Since we both had extensive experience in China, we had lots to talk about.

The beautiful sunsets of Gili Trawangan

After I earned my Advanced PADI certification (and finding a new favorite hobby: underwater photography… more on that in a later post), I headed over to the Gili Islands, a lazy set of three tiny islands known for their extreme beauty and sense of relaxation.

Incredibly relaxing

One thing I love about traveling alone is that it allows you the flexibility to do what you want, when you want, but it is also quite easy to meet people and find a group to travel with when you get a bit lonely.  On Gili Trawangan, Dennis and I quickly became part of a group of really cool people; a few Germans, a couple from Namibia, some Canadians, some Americans, and a couple from England.  I ended up traveling for quite a while with some of them and there are a few whom I am sure I will see again in the future.

Mt Rinjani to the left with the crater lake and cone

After almost one week of relaxing on the beach, scuba diving at Shark Point, and partaking in the crazy nightlife, Dennis and I decided it was time to head over to the main island of Lombok to climb Mount Rinjani, and active 12,226 foot tall volcano.  We had heard it was tough, but we were both up for the challenge (turns out Dennis was much more so than I, having been an officer in the US Special Forces for 8 years). It was a three day trek (two up, 1 down) and we were accompanied by Dan and Jenny from London, our guide, and two porters.

I made it!

Dennis Valdez, future LBS classmate

Dennis will probably laugh at me for saying this, but it was the hardest thing physically I have ever done. Three times on the push to the summit, I collapsed from pure exhaustion. I’m still not 100% sure how I made it to the top, but the sense of accomplishment was fantastic. It was also damned cold up there.

From Rinjani, Dennis, Dan, and Jenny had to head back to Bali to leave the country.  I went back to Gili Trawangan for a few days of well deserved rest.  My legs felt like Jello for days… my German friend Laura had warned me, but I didn’t realize quite what she meant until I actually did it myself.

From the Gilis, I headed across to the other side of Lombok to catch a four day, four night boat to Komodo, Rinca, and Flores islands.  Many of the original Gili group were taking this boat and when we all arrived on board it was a reunion of sorts.  The boat was split into and upper and lower deck; upper reserved for our sleeping and the lower for eating.

A colorful boat passing by off of Rinca

Each night the ship’s cook made us a tasty Indonesian meal, usually rice, chicken, veggies, and of course sambal hot sauce (yum!).  In the evenings we would anchor off of one of the 1,000’s of small islands and take a dip in the water.  The coolest thing was that the water was full of the phosphorescent plankton, and any disturbance of the water made it light up like blue Christmas lights everywhere.  People swimming had glowing hands and feet.  When the boat was moving, the bow waves looked like waves of blue sparks flying through the air.  Even having a piss over the side of the boat provided a lightshow where the urine was splashing in the water (this was discovered by a drunk Dutch guy on our boat who then felt the need to run over to us and demonstrate).

Our anchorage where we saw Flying Foxes

Our days were spent making headway towards Komodo and Rinca, occasionally stopping on an uninhabited island to go hiking through the jungle or swimming in a waterfall. As we got closer to Komodo, we had to be careful on the smaller islands where we stopped. We were playing ultimate frisbee on one beautiful beach, but we weren’t supposed to wander off the beach because there could be Komodo Dragons lurking in the tall grass. Komodos are only known to live on Komodo and Rinca islands, but being excellent swimmers it is highly likely that many of the smaller uncharted islands surrounding Komodo are also inhabited by them. The danger of the Komodo Dragon is that they are extremely fast runners and they have such dirty mouths that one bite will usually lead to a long, painful death via bacterial blood infection.

Biiiiiig Komodo Dragon

Though warned to be careful, we did not see any Komodos until we reached the Komodo National Park. On our first day we only saw one from a distance. That night we anchored offshore and at night we were treated to 1,000’s of Flying Fox Bats leaving a grove of Mangrove trees for a night’s hunting. Flying Foxes have a six-foot wingspan! It was an amazing sight, but I could not get a decent shot because it was nearly dark.

After arriving on Flores island, our boat group split up and said goodbye.  I went scuba diving back in the Komodo National Park at Batu Balong, one of the best (and as I found out later, most dangerous) dive sites in the world.  A few weeks before I went to Indonesia a group of divers went missing from this exact same dive sight and they were found washed up on Rinca island a few days later and they had been fighting off the Komodo Dragons with sticks, trying to survive!

Near Batu Balong dive site

The reason the dive site is so dangerous is it has very strong, very unpredictable currents.  They can switch direction with little to no warning, so it is important to keep a visual reference on the wall so that you can tell if you suddenly start being sucked downwards into the ocean depths.  This was also my first experience swimming with sharks (Shark Point in the Gilis didn’t count… there was only one small reef shark there).  There was a point where the divemaster told us to hang back while he went ahead to check the current… as I waited, I turned and swimming about 5 meters away from me were eight or nine Oceanic White Tip sharks, one of the more aggressive, dangerous of the bunch.  I kept my calm, as we had been told that if you are on the same level or below a shark you’re generally safe… they apparently tend to attack upwards only.

It was quite an eventfilled dive.  After the sharks, we swam through a narrow gap between a pinnicle and the mountain.  At the other side we performed an air check.  Somehow, my buddy had gone through ALL of his air only halfway through the dive.  We ended up having to buddy breathe him up to the surface, cutting the dive short since we were all sharing air.  He was quite freaked out… we had been down at 27 meters, so we had to perform a safety stop even though were were low on air.  When you’re low on air and start to panic, your natural instinct is to swim up to the surface.  Fortuatnely, he didn’t freak out and we did the full safety stop to avoid decompression sickness.  We made it back to the port and as we did so, I developed a tremendous pain in my left ear.  The pain got so bad that I could hardly think… I ended up getting some WONDERFULLY strong pain killers at a local pharmacy when I got back to town.  By the next day I felt fine, so I thought nothing more of it.

Ngada children in Luba village

Kid was terrified of me

New House Festival in Bozumi

From Lubuanbajo on the West side of Flores I took a 10 hour bus ride to Bajawa.  Tourists go to Bajawa to visit the Ngada tribes people surrounding the town.  The Ngada all live in very distinctive bamboo, wood, and mud houses with the houses arranged around a huge, terraced courtyard.  Each day I would visit a few different villages, meeting with the village leader, signing their guest book, and giving a donation to the village to help support their traditional ways.  I was lucky enough to be invited to a rather rare festival, the Ngada New House festival which happens once every few years.  I was the only Westerner in the whole village, and I spent the day eating, drinking, and dancing with the villagers.  Surrounding villages came to pay respect to the family and present a gift of a pig or two.  On the day I was there we slaughtered one pig for dinner… it was such a loud, messy affair that after they told me they would be slaughtering over 100 pigs the next day and some buffalo, I decided that one day of the Ngada New House festival was enough and I skipped the 2nd day.

Well, its pretty late now (2:15am), and this post has gotten ridiculously long, so I’m going to end for now and write about Mount Kilamatu and it painted volcanic lakes later.

Goodbye, Blogger. Hello, WordPress.

For a while now I’ve been a little bored with the overall look and feel of the original PWG which was hosted over at Blogger. For these past three years though, I haven’t really had much of a choice but to use them; China blocked all of the other blogging sites in order to ‘protect’ its citizenry from all of that dangerous information that freedom of speech provides. After shopping around a little, I finally decided upon WordPress, due in part to the Divine Miss N’s recommendation.

I appreciate any feedback people have on the new layout and feel of the blog.

Blog Updates

Well, since I’m moving to London in one week to start the London Business School MBA, I thought I should update by blog. I don’t live in Yantai and longer, so the blog description had to be changed. I’m no longer a factory manager, but now a poor MBA student. I’m also toying with the idea of changing from blogger to typepad or some other service. If anyone has any thoughts or opinions, let me know. Since I no longer have to deal with the pain-in-the-butt that is Chinese web censorship, I have a greater range of blog hosting sites I can choose from.

More to come later! For now I’m busy running around visiting friends and family, and doing some last minute shopping before I head back to England. After all, everything is half the price here in the US as it is in the UK!