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| He still loves the Scarlet and Cream |
We're only a couple hours from 2011 here in Taiwan...Happy New Year!
GJS
Showing posts with label Photo. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Photo. Show all posts
Friday, December 31, 2010
Those Huskers, Our Huskers...and Happy New Year!
We're only a couple hours from 2011 here in Taiwan...Happy New Year!
GJS
Friday, July 09, 2010
End of an Era: Last Day of School
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| John (at left), flashing the "V" sign (he has picked up on some local things!) |
Today was John's last day at his local pre-Kindergarten class. He'll have next week off, then we'll be travelling in China for about 2 1/2 weeks, and then he'll have about a week of vacation time left before he starts at his "official, have-to-be-4-years-old" pre-K at a new school.
It was sort of bittersweet for John. On the one hand, he would tell us that he didn't like to go to the old school because he had a hard time communicating (it was entirely in Chinese), but at the same time it was clear that he liked having time to play and interact with kids his age. Kids don't necessarily need to be able to speak the same language to be able to play effectively together, although when conflict arises it is often made more difficult when they can't communicate with each other to resolve it using a common spoken language.
They gave him a couple parting gifts, which was nice. Folks there were really nice, and I hope someday he remembers going to this school.
GJS
"Getting rolled"
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| I can't wait for football season! |
This day has been coming for a while now, but now it's arrived - Lance is able to roll over! His first official, on-his-own roll from back to stomach happened this morning. He's been trying to do it again all day long, but so far it's just been the once that he's done it completely on his own. I'm sure in the next day or so he will have it mastered and it won't be a problem for him to do it at will.
GJS
Tuesday, May 11, 2010
Thursday, May 06, 2010
New York Times "Moment in Time" update
This is not the interactive gallery that we had hoped to present by now, showing all the “Moment in Time” contributions that are fit to print. Frankly, the number of submissions has so far exceeded our hopes — nearly 14,000 at last count — that we’ve been struggling to stay ahead of the tide as we review every image and caption coming in.
Instead, we offer another small sampler of the wonderful work we’ve been receiving, in the spirit of our earlier post, “From Many Instants, a Moment.” These are vignettes around the world taken at one given time; Sunday at 15:00, Coordinated Universal Time.
This short slide show should give you an idea why we’re so eager to share the full presentation with you, which we’ll do as soon as we possibly can.
Cool "crowdsourcing" photo project from the New York Times. I sent in a photo - want to see it?
Friday, April 30, 2010
Expo 2010 Shanghai - "China has arrived"
The 2010 World Expo opens tonight (Friday) in Shanghai. What a tremendous event! Saw this article in the Washington Post today - check it out, along with the photos. Unlike the 2008 Olympics I had no chance of seeing in person, I fully intend to make it to Shanghai for the 2010 Expo. (Helps that it lasts 6 months!)
At Expo 2010 Shanghai, China thinks big
By Andrew Higgins
Washington Post Foreign Service
Friday, April 30, 2010; A08
SHANGHAI -- Take the crowd that attended Woodstock in 1969, multiply it by 175 and dump the result in the middle of the world's most populous city. That is, in effect, what China plans to do at Expo 2010 Shanghai, an elephantine world's fair that opens Friday evening on the banks of the Huangpu River.
Everything about the Shanghai jamboree is super-size, most prominently the China Pavilion, a red upside-down pyramid with floor space equivalent to 35 football fields. That makes it about 30 times the size of the Canadian-designed U.S. showcase, which is tucked away in a corner of the main Expo site.
"The obvious conscious message is that China has arrived," said Jose Villarreal, a San Antonio lawyer recruited by the Obama administration in July to salvage floundering U.S. plans for the Shanghai Expo. "We are basically celebrating China's emergence as a world power."
Villarreal, who was named U.S. commissioner general to the event, joined Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton in raising $61 million from U.S. companies to finance the American pavilion, which -- to China's dismay -- was nearly abandoned at one point for lack of funds. "We were going through one of the worst financial crises in history, and it was hard to get the attention of corporate leaders," Villarreal said.
On Thursday, China signaled its delight that the United States had finally gotten its act together: President Hu Jintao visited the U.S. exhibit, met with Mandarin-speaking American students who are serving as guides and "congratulated us on completing our pavilion," Villarreal said.
For China, money has been no object. Unlike the United States, which has begged for private money to fund expos since 1991, when Congress made government funding difficult, China dipped into the deep pockets of the state. It is spending $4.2 billion on the six-month Expo -- and 10 times that if new roads, rail lines and other infrastructure projects are included in the bill. (The last world's fair on U.S. soil, held in New Orleans in 1984, went bankrupt.)
One thing that has been scaled back in Shanghai, though, is Friday's opening ceremony. It still features an elaborate fireworks display, but an even grander spectacle was pared down to make sure China's second city didn't eclipse Beijing's opening of the 2008 Olympics.
A dozen boxes of silk
When London hosted the first world's fair in 1851, showcasing Britain as the dominant industrial and imperial power, China's sole contribution was 12 boxes of silk sent by a Shanghai merchant. Karl Marx, who was in London at the time working on theories that would inspire Mao Zedong and which nominally still guide China's ruling Communist Party, deplored the whole affair, known as the Great Exhibition, as an exercise in capitalist excess.
About the only nod in Marx's direction in Shanghai is a second opening ceremony Saturday -- International Workers' Day -- to open the Expo's vast riverside sites to the general public.
U.S. reliance on corporate sponsors has presented "unique difficulties," Villarreal said, noting that all other major countries have full-time government-funded teams that turn up at each world's fair. "We invent the wheel every time," he said.
While throngs of Chinese with advance tickets waited for hours earlier this week to get a sneak preview of China's already operating national exhibit, American contractors were still connecting wires and unpacking boxes inside a hall dominated by the corporate logos of sponsors.
'Rising to the Challenge'The U.S. pavilion -- motto: "Rising to the Challenge" -- features a movie house, a big room filled with stands promoting the companies that are footing the bill and a fast-food joint run by Kentucky Fried Chicken and Pizza Hut. The United States has also signed some big-name acts, including musician Herbie Hancock, who will perform next month.
Early reviews of U.S. efforts from ordinary Chinese have been mostly lukewarm. "There are too many corporate logos," said Sam Feng, a 30-year-old Shanghai resident. "I thought the USA would have some brilliant and exciting stuff. . . . Except for buying some souvenirs, I can't think of anything special about it."
China's pavilion has also stirred some grumbling. There have been complaints that its design was cribbed from a Japanese exhibit in Spain in 1992. The Chinese designer denies this.
Zhou Hanmin, deputy director of the Expo's organizing committee, said China is not trying to show off by building a gigantic national pavilion. It needs the space to house exhibits from 31 provinces and cities, which each have bigger populations than many countries. Moreover, big as it is, the China Pavilion will only be able to accommodate about 8 percent of the expected 70 million visitors, he said.
Thursday, April 29, 2010
Can't believe I missed World Tapir Day!
via google.com
April 27 is World Tapir Day - who knew? (via Flickr Blog, http://blog.flickr.net/en/2010/04/27/its-world-tapir-day/)
Monday, April 26, 2010
Comparison
I've been wanting to get some photos of John and Lance side-by-side at about the same age for comparison's sake. Picasa just made it really easy for me - it displayed these two pics right next to each other:
That's John on the left and Lance on the right. I think both pics are taken when they are about one month old. I know for sure the one on the right (Lance) is at one month, I just took it a few days ago. As for John's pic (on the left), that's his Grandpa Sampson holding him while visiting us in Hawaii not long after his birth, probably about a month or so afterwards, but my memory of exactly when my folks came to visit us then is a little fuzzy.
Anyhow, it's fair to say there's some family resemblance here! Discuss amongst yourselves...
GJS
That's John on the left and Lance on the right. I think both pics are taken when they are about one month old. I know for sure the one on the right (Lance) is at one month, I just took it a few days ago. As for John's pic (on the left), that's his Grandpa Sampson holding him while visiting us in Hawaii not long after his birth, probably about a month or so afterwards, but my memory of exactly when my folks came to visit us then is a little fuzzy.
Anyhow, it's fair to say there's some family resemblance here! Discuss amongst yourselves...
GJS
Thursday, April 22, 2010
Lance: One Month
He's already been with us for a month! We've also had "help" with us, in the form of gracious family members, but that ended this morning with the return of Aunt Kristine and cousin Nicholas to the U.S. It's just the four of us now!
I meant to get some new pics and video up here last week in celebration of his 3rd week, but that day came and passed with no success in getting the material uploaded, so I figured everyone would be OK with waiting until the one-month mark (today). Unfortunately, I am only going to be able to "tease" you a bit with a single item today - getting late and I need to hit the rack. More will follow soon.
GJS
I meant to get some new pics and video up here last week in celebration of his 3rd week, but that day came and passed with no success in getting the material uploaded, so I figured everyone would be OK with waiting until the one-month mark (today). Unfortunately, I am only going to be able to "tease" you a bit with a single item today - getting late and I need to hit the rack. More will follow soon.
I'm a month old! (taken today)
GJS
Sunday, February 28, 2010
Thursday, February 18, 2010
Taipei-like weather in Kaohsiung
It’s not a very nice day today in Kaohsiung.
And it looks like the weather will get worse before it gets better:
And it looks like the weather will get worse before it gets better:
Coldest weather is yet to come: Taiwan Central Weather Bureau | ||||||||||
| Temperatures unlikely to recover until Sunday | ||||||||||
Taiwan News, Staff Writer 2010-02-17 02:22 PM |
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