king kong

yep. we are in hong kong. this city is ridiculous already. people, buildings and vehicles everywhere. the weather is nice. it is plus 20. at least. sounds like saturday we are going to the beach. life is good on this side of the world. any reports from canada?
miss you guys.

yangshuo snaps

i added a few more shanghai pictures, but also some pictures of yangshuo. we leave yangshuo tomorrow for hong kong. so that catches you up with the pictures, and least gives you some idea the crazy stuff we have been seeing. thanks for checking them out.
if you are interested, i will show you the rest when i get back home

shanghai via the D70s

i added a few raw images to flickr from our 10 days in shanghai. you can check them out by clicking on the flickr badge to the right, or go to www.flickr.com/photos/jeremyolson.
ill try to add more in hong kong.

my run in with a motorcycle.

so let me set the stage. jon and i rented pedal bikes today. and rode out into the country. we saw some real neat rural life, and rode through lots of mud puddles. it seemed like all our riding was up hill, and we were tired, and not sure where we were. we still dont really know. when we were pretty much at the top of the mountain and it didnt look like we were headed in the right direction, we decided to turn back and started to make our way down. and down. it was a long way down. we were going pretty quick. we stopped in a flat spot for a drink and some oreos and then kept on going. i pretty much felt like i was a downhill mountain biker. we pretty much were. and then around a sharp curve, a motorcycle came out of nowhere, so i hammered on the brakes. the thing is, the brakes on the bikes in china are reversed. that is, the front brakes are on the right side where the back brakes should be. so when my body reacted, it squeezed the right side good and i went up and over the handle bars, and into a superman slide on the rocky gravel road.
my camera made it though. thanks to my nifty lowepro bag. my body wasnt so lucky. just joking, mom. its fine. but i got some sweet scrapes. and lost a few layers of skin on my right palm.
we made it back to the hotel and annie kindly helped me out (and acted as my translator, and price bargainer). she took me to a side of the road retired doctor that cleaned me up and bandaged me up. all for 20RMB. so like 3 bucks. im a little sore, but have some scrapes and some neat stories to tell.

yangshuo me the money

so we made it. stop 2 on our journey. we are in yangshuo. we flew into guilin yesterday afternoon. by the time we got in the car and on the road to yangshuo it was getting dark. so we didnt get to see much. annie showed us to our room and we got settled and went out for supper.
so this morning i was pretty excited to see the view from our balcony. it is pretty outstanding. me and jon were talking, and it is too hard to describe this place, you just have to come here. maybe ask jason, his mastery of the english language may put it into words better than i could.
so this morning we woke up, ate some breakfast and headed out for a 2 hour cruise on the yulong river on a bamboo raft. got to see lots of country and had a peaceful trip. we got on bikes from there and headed up to moon hill. a hill with a whole in the middle of it. quite a climb up and down. two ladies followed us the whole way trying to sell us water or beer or mango juice. jon finally got suckered in at the bottom.
then we hit the bikes. we rented these from our hotel earlier in the morning. we rode and rode. my butt is telling me that we may have rode for too long. anyway, we got lost, in the country. this was kind of our first real run-in with the language barrier. a man on a motorcycle stopped to help us, but we couldnt understand him and he couldnt understand us.
we figured out that we missed our turn and headed back to where we came from. anyway. i took my 500th picture today, so there will be lots to see when i get back. this is long, i know. but my mom always complained that i wasnt descriptive enough. and i could write more...so, mom, this ones for you. tomorrow we might go rock climbing, or explore a cave, or white water raft, or hot air balloon ride. who knows. this place is full of crazy things to do. thanks jay and shannon and harm for the hot tip. thats all for today.

i would walk 500 miles...

me and jon have been walking machines the last few days. no lies. lots of miles of shanghai have passed under our feet and we have seen everything from dead rats, to roasted ducks to an 88 story building from the top and bottom. we have been to a massage parlor that employs blind people and have been asked to buy "watch, bags, dvd" likely over 1000 times. we haven't been shanghai'd yet. thats probably a good thing. doug explained what it was to me, but i forget. so maybe we have been and i just dont know it. but our days in shanghai are over. off to the country. guilin and yangshuo will be home for the next week. it will be a nice break from metropolitan living before we head back to more of it in hong kong. if you want something from china, send me an email. i can likely find it for pretty cheap, and if it fits in my bag, its yours. so, signing off from shanghai. thanks for all the notes and comments. it is good to hear from home when you are surrounded by millions of people that probably dont even know what a wheat field or big sky horizon look like.

boxing, ballet and chess

thats what its like watching roger on court. powerful, yet graceful, intelligent, and can deliver the knock out punch when he has the opportunity.
the 8 days of tennis are over. and to tell you the truth, it brought a tear to my eye to see it end, and to hear roger and james offer their final words. james blake has been through an amazing amount of tragedy and near tragedy. look him up on google and read about it. its pretty insane what he has gone through.
anyway. its over. and it was magical. definitely the best 300 dollars i have spent in a long time. hands down.
we even got to bust out the canadian flag and cheer for daniel nestor as he was in the doubles final. unfortunately they lost, but he did acknowledge jon and i. so we are pretty much best friends now. serious.
a few more days in shanghai, a city i am growing to love more and more, and then off to yangshuo and guilin. then off to whip harms butt at squash, or badminton, or whatever she feels like losing at. hope all is well at home.

13.4 million...

people live in shanghai. plus me and jon. that makes 13,400,002 or something like that.
this place is great. federer is even more of a genius than i first thought. and james blake is one stand up, classy man.
the tennis is seriously unbelievable. i cant even describe it. seriously.
as for china. im actually really liking it a lot. its fun. friendly. busy, loud, and funny at times.
hard to describe for sure. especially after coming from yellowknife and regina. where with all the tall buildings stacked on top of each other, it still probably won't equal the height of the building across the street from me.

anyway. about 4 more weeks in china. ill try and write again a few more times. until then, keep watching tennis highlights for two pale white guys who havent shaved for a while. it might just be us.

twenty-four...

hours till jon and i hop on the plane and head to shanghai. roger awaits us. it is highly likely that i wont be on here often while in china. but will do my best to keep the few of you who check this out updated. if not, ill do it when i get home. when you watch tsn highlights watch for two white guys with a canadian flag at the tennis masters cup. it will be me and jon. see you all in december!

mother russia

so ive been home for about 24 hours. and ive seen a lot of old friends and had some good breakfast already. kris met me at the airport and brought me out to white city. it was good to see him, melissa and nic. they are surviving with out mom and dad so far. had a sweet visit with jon and then went to the soccer centre to watch some of the guys play. definitely miss that. got to see arlo and brianne, kamara, blair, vince, bryn, lucas, eder, and a whole lot more. all that to say its sweet to be home. breakfast with blair this morning was grade A. i think we have found a new 3.99 breakfast spot. pretty sweet. today i ran around and picked up some bills with emperor mao on them. some travellers cheques and some immodium. lots of immodium. tonite looks like a young adults hang out before it all starts again tomorrow with breakfast with brianne. good to be home. good to be going to china in 3 days. if you in regina and reading this...phone me before friday. lets do lunch.

the final countdown..

today was my last day of work. i am going to miss that place more than i thought i might. not actually the building. but the people. i worked with a really good crew who were more than good to me. so, part one of farewells began today. the next few days will be full of more. im thankful for my time in yellowknife. the experience i got at my job, the friends i made there and the friends who took care of me during my life away from the lab. i am going to miss my yellowknife family. if you guys are ever in saskatoon, look me up. we will do breakfast. or lunch. or dinner. its your call.

i found..

twelve hundred dollars today. no lies.