The Portfolios

Not having much to do last Saturday night, Xianyi and I decided, at Candice’s suggestion, to join her in visiting the new Toys R Us, Shanghai. Da Hai was in town and so he came along with us.

The place, first of all is pretty big. It is inside the Super Brand Mall in Pudong, which is HUGE. There were a lot of people in the mall itself, but most stores seemed to be empty, except for Toys R Us. Perhaps this will mark a resurgence for the Super Brand Mall.

Right at the entrance, Geoffry the Giraffe is there to greet you, along with Buzz Lightyear and Optimus Prime. There are plenty of Legos, including Socialist Legos, and even Chinese versions of popular American board games like Monopoly.

Check out all our pics here.

Attention all: Comments on this site are now completely open. No need to register and receive a password by email: Just click comments and go for it. I had set it up as a must-register because I feared spam might plague the site - well, we’ll just have to see. I’d rather have more commenters.

Thanks to all those who went to the minimal trouble of registering and have been posting comments. Hope to see more of you!

Enjoy some photos from our Christmas Brunch! We had a bunch of friends over for champagne brunch two Sundays ago with eggs, breakfast potatoes, toast, pastries, bloody maries, mimosas, oysters, shrimp and santa hats. Lots of fun. Click on the image to see a slideshow of photos.

Good friend Jeff Crosby has written a great post about his recent travels back to Yunnan province, the place where Xianyi and I met him when he was living with Eli in Kunming. Jeff currently lives and works in Beijing, but makes a few trips back to our old home each year.

This writing is about a trip into the mountains to visit an ancient tea tree. Here is a sample:

This plant slowly evolved in this back corner of the world and was discovered and nurtured by an obscure and forgotten people. Somehow this little plant sired millions of offspring who went on to become one of the most economically, socially and politically important plants in the world, shaping cultures and markets, playing decisive roles in massive historic events from the Opium Wars to imperialism, the American Revolution and Indian Independence.

Check it out.

Dear all my friends!

I finally made decision of my offical name from now on. I’m not Yoyo anymore, Yoyo is no longer with me. My offical name is Xianyi, this is my real, original name, I hope you all could respect and accept my decision.

Thank you!

Have a nice weekend!

Xianyi

Here is the picture I was talking about. I got it.

This was taken as Tiger finished his round at the 2006 HSBC Championship in Shanghai. It was on the bridge from the 18th green to the clubhouse. I had been standing there with Yoyo for about half an hour - when we first arrived there was no one there, but by the time Tiger was finished it was well crowded - and I had been practicing the shot on several lesser players who walked by, as well as general staff. See, I was using my grandfather’s old Canon SLR, which is manually focused and which requires the aperture to be set by the photographer. Knowing I would only have one chance to bag the Tiger, I had to be sure I would get it right.

Indeed I did. The focus is perfect, as is the exposure (OK, maybe not perfect, but at least correct). The look on Tiger’s face conveys disappointment - he finished second and may have been thinking about his round here, but probably he was just trying to avoid being photographed. Fair enough. I was, after all, breaking the rules.

Which leads me to this disclaimer: Tiger Woods, if you are out there and happen to read this post, I would like to apologize for knowingly violating the rules of the golf tournament and taking pictures. You know I wasn’t the only one - and I know that doesn’t necessarily make it right. But know this: I did not and would not ever take pictures of you during your setup, stance, or swing. That would be interference. But I must argue that taking a picture of you while walking down the course, or after you have finished playing, cannot really be interfering with your game. You are a public figure after all, and while you have every right to privacy, I think there are times when you have to allow yourself to be photographed. And sometimes the rules conflict with that.

Anyway, Tiger, thanks for coming to Shanghai. You really made my day. If you would like to respond to my ideas about picture-taking, please, by all means, leave a comment on this blog.

Take a look at this slice of chocolate cake!

Man! This is my buddy Tristan, whom the computers at Georgetown randomly paired me to live with freshman year - and man did they hit the jackpot. Tristan and I became great friends and continued to live together throughout our time at school.

I jacked this image from his Flickr page, which I would link to here, but he’s tagged all his photos for friend and family viewing only - not into the whole open source thing. That’s cool, but I just had to display this shot to the world.

The title indicates that this was taken at Ruby Foo’s in NYC. And by the look of sublime love on Tristan’s face, I’m sure he relished every bite. Cheers to that!

Folks, this is it. The one we’ve been waiting for.

After months of stalling and strage emails/phone calls/faxes, we’ve finally got word of Xianyi’s visa interview.

The magic date is January 22, 2007.

Just a couple of weeks ago, I was writing the consulate at the email address they had provided me to see if they could give me an estimate on when the interview would be. The email bounced. Checking their website, I found an online contact form which I used to ask my question. Five days later I got a message saying that my question could only be answered on the phone - even though the original letter I received from them said it could be done over email.

I called the number (which required using the final 2 minutes of my prepaid phone card, a special card JUST for calling the visa section of the consulate, which you can only purchase at a specific bank, and asked my question, adding, “Please hurry, before my time runs out.”

“They are running a background check on your wife.”

“And how long does that take?”

“I don’t know, I can’t tell you.”

“Can you guess?”

“No.”

“Is there any former experience you have that could estimate for me how long a typical background check takes?”

“No.”

And that was that. So I figured we were in it for the long haul. Then last weekend, while Yoyo was back in Chengdu on business, hanging out with her parents and eating her Mom’s food again, I was laying on the couch in Shanghai watching a movie when the doorbell rang.

What the…?

“Ni you kuai jian,” the doorman told me, and I wondered, Who has mail delivered at 8pm on Saturday night?

Only the US Government, I suppose. Victory is within our grasp, dear readers. Wish us luck.

I just received my first issue of True Romance magazine.

Some readers might be wondering why I would pick up such a magazine. But it goes further than that, folks. I am a full-on subscriber. Certainly I am not a member of this periodical’s target market. But I’m still a fan.

And I’m not the only one. All across the world, people are starting to catch on to the phenomenon. True Romance is THE new MUST-READ mag. And all credit is due to Assistant Associate Editor Gia Portfolio.

True Romance is a story magazine. Most of the stories are written by readers, and from what I’ve read, they share a few common themes. In “The Love Lottery”, Clare, a woman who has been through a bitter divorce and now works as a tired clerk in an electronics company, wins the lottery and builds the house of her dreams. But things look bad when her ex-husband comes around looking for a share of the money. Clare escapes to her parents’ house for a week, where she runs into an old flame who gets the impression that Clare is in financial trouble because she says she is “not working right now” and at one point has her credit card rejected in front of him. They quickly fall back in love and he proposes, promising to take care of her through this difficult time. The story fades to black as Clare thinks, “Tomorrow I’ll tell him I’m a millionaire, but tonight I’ll just him love me.”

Millie Bauer, a lonely seamstress whose loving husband died years ago, begins falling for a mysterious customer in “The Princess Dress”. But her feelings are reserved as she knows that the tall dark ex-football player she is smitten with is planning on lying to his little daughter about the dress Millie is making for her. Warren is going to tell the little girl that her mother made the dress - she had promised to do so but never did, as she is a lying drug addict. Millie eventually refuses Warren because she needs honesty in her relationship, and so Warren tells his daughter the truth, and the three of them live happily ever after.

Nina, whose battle with breast cancer was made even worse by her jerk husband leaving her after her masectomy, finds courage and romance by taking a city-slicker tourist package to a Colorado ranch, in the story with by far my favorite title, “Save a Horse, Ride a Cowboy.” Nina has serious issues with her appearance, having only one breast and all, and for a long time could not even look at herself in the mirror. But all those fears and self doubts wash away as she basks in the rugged good looks and soothing compassion: “It’s not the breasts I love, Nina, but the whole woman.” Awww.

In all seriousness, though, I’m really proud of Gia for getting her first post-college job. The best part of the magazine is the column she writes each month: “The Couple Connection: Gia’s Guide to Good Lovin’”. In it she discusses ways for couples to keep the flame burning in their relationships, and she comes up with some good reading. For the October issue (yeah my mag arrived a little late - not sure how many subscriptions they have in China), in addition to her usual tips for having fun on a small budget, she has written a list of he & she Halloween costumes.

Still, I’m not sure about some of the advertisers. There is a full page opposite the contents (prime location) pitching the “First-ever John Wayne® Stained Glass Panorama“, which is self-illuminating, hand-numbered and comes with a certificate of authenticity. Get yours today for only $135 (available in 4 installments of $33.75) and saddle up with a true legend!

UPDATE: I am not the only one writing about True Romance, apparently. Peter Carlson of the Washington Post filed this piece about the “True” series phenomenon. It is worth reading for its insight into how such magazines are so successful - and they are successful. The “True” series was started in 1919. As Carlson writes:

Today, Dorchester Media — publisher of True Story, True Confessions, True Romance, True Experience and Black Confessions — sells about a million copies a month, about half of them by subscription, says John C. Prebich, Dorchester’s CEO. The main audience, he says, is older women living in rural America.

“A typical reader that I hear from will say she’s from Oklahoma and she’s maybe 51 and the mother of four kids,” Prebich says. “She’ll say: ‘I started reading them when I was 12. I’d steal my mother’s copy because it was a little risque.’ And she’ll say, ‘For me, it’s therapy. I know I’m not alone. I’m not unusual. Most people have these problems.’”

Absolutely amazing.