cybrpunk.com

Garsh Dangit

Garsh Dangit: Space Ranger.  Hehe.  Sounds funny.

It seems that I never got around to making a post yesterday.  Which is pretty damn lame if you ask me.  Which you didn’t but if you had that would have been what I would have said.  I have a stash of jokes and pictures that can be used in cases of post emergencies just like that but it does no good if I just plain forget.

Yesterday at work was insanely busy.  I had a big implementation of a Cisco ASA 5510 firewall/Intrusion protection/VPN system for an affiliate company and it took much longer than anticipated to complete.  I didn’t even really get to sit in my own office till about 3:00pm when I finally kicked the installers out so I could get some lunch.

Today has been busy catching up on all the things that didn’t get attended to yesterday as well as some things that needed to get done today.  I spent some time talking to the guy who will be replacing me out here in Hong Kong once I leave to go back to St. Louis.  He’ll be another ex-pat from St. Louis just like me and he has tons of questions just like I did when I was planning on coming here.  I think he’ll do OK out here.  He’s got some size 10 shoes to fill.  Seriously, I’m going to leave him a pair of my shoes.  No, not really.  I’m all hopped up on sugar right now so anything I say can and will be held against me tightly and I won’t let go.  What?  Don’t mind me. My teeth hurt.

A Sort of Homecoming

I believe Muse has already let the kitteh out of the bag, so to speak, but we will be coming home to St. Louis this year.  Muse will be leaving Hong Kong before me to get the pets all sorted and safe.  I was the first to arrive between us and I’ll be the last to leave.  I suppose I should take some comfort in that I’ll get to live here in Hong Kong for just a bit longer but I also remember the loneliness of my first month here.  But that was a long time ago now and I’m no longer a stranger in a strange land with no idea of what to do/where to go/what to eat.  I no longer need to subsist on ham sandwiches and cans of soup.  Although I may just because.

Now, when the time comes, I’ll probably spend my free time leisurely walking the street markets and shopping malls without the worry of wasting Muse’s time or needing to feed or walk the dogs.  Maybe I’ll go directly from the office to a local bar with people from work and see what the night life is like before I leave.  Maybe I’ll go for a hike without worrying about time constraints or anything but my own ability.  Or maybe I’ll just sit in front of the computer and play World of Warcraft all night.   It’s hard to say.

Actually when I say we will be coming home this year that makes it sound like something that will be happening at some far point in the future.  But really it’s nothing like that.  Muse may be leaving in a month or less.  I won’t be here any longer than mid-August.  It’s scary close to those dates already.  By the end of August we will be back in the United States of America and trying to figure out life once more.  This time with a baby on the way.

When we moved we did so on short notice and also threw in our wedding because it wasn’t a stressful enough experience.  Now with a baby coming, I see now that we just really like to complicate things.  I can offer no other explanation.  We sold our house and our cars and most of the rest of the stuff we didn’t ship to Hong Kong.  So add in another layer of sphincter-clenching in that we have a baby coming and we need to buy a house and at least one car but really we need two and baby stuff and furniture and Oh My Gawd what are we insane?

Yes.  Yes we are.  Nice to meet you.

Wonderful parents and people

My best friend sent this link to me for an article labled: ‘My Space’ hoax ends with suicide of Dardenne Prairie teen. At first I didn’t think much of it while I read it. I just assumed it was some family blaming “teh interwebs” for their lack of parenting. Boy, was I wrong. The story laid out in this article is the stuff of urban legend and made-for-TV movies.

If you haven’t heard or read about this yet, I’m not going to ruin the surprise ending for you. Just take a few minutes to read it.

Not normal for me

Here’s a scenario that’s never happened to me before. I was being a bit vain and searching for myself on Google. I can hapily report that I do indeed show up in Google so my existance is no longer in question. So feeling all wonky I decided to see what came up if I searched Google images. And I found pretty much nothing that had anything to do with me - till I got to the next page.

That’s when I saw a picture and the tiny blurb said “courtesy of cybrpunk.com”. I did a double-take and realized that the picture was indeed one of mine. Take a look at this webiste and scroll down to the section labeled: St. Louis Strassenfest. Sure enough, there’s my picture with that same caption of “courtesy of cybrpunk.com” sitting underneath.

Now I know that I never gave anyone my permission to use that picture.  However since it’s for St. Louis and German heritage stuff and they were nice enough to at least give me credit - I don’t mind so much.  Actually I’m a little flattered that someone thought one of my pics was good enough to put on their front page.

Pretty weird, huh?

Another blow to St. Louis

I just read that Wachovia is buying long-time St. Louis powerhouse A.G. Edwards. Even though this deal will leave the retail brokerage business based in St. Louis, it means that St. Louis has lost yet another world headquarters of a major corporation. They’re trying to put a positive spin on this but, considering all the other financial and commerce problems that St. Louis has fell upon in the past few decades, this is just one more nail in the coffin for St. Louis. I’m not saying it’s going to roll up the sidewalks and become a ghost town any time soon, but with automobile factories closing, global corporation either leaving St. Louis City (who can blame them with the continual punitive tax laws for businesses) or the St. Louis area altogether.

There are still some very lucrative reasons for companies to stay in the St. Louis area though. One of those which helps the most for them is what hurts the most for the residents. St. Louis salary surveys have consistently shown that salaries are among the lowest in the country for comparable jobs elsewhere. Luckily this is coupled with one of the lower costs of living, especially housing, but it still makes for some hard times in Missouri. This should be a draw for new companies though but it never seems to work that way.

I’ve also wondered if the low cost of living and matching local salaries also contribute to the fact that most people born in the St. Louis area never leave the St. Louis area. I know personally that our housing costs make looking at a relocation anywhere else in the world seem intimidating. Especially if you are looking at getting paid basically the same St. Louis based salary which is common in people getting transferred for their jobs. If I hadn’t gotten a significant portion of my housing paid for in my own relocation contract to move to Hong Kong, I couldn’t have done it. Granted, housing here is comparable to the prices in Manhattan but that scope is frightening to someone from the Midwest.

Before moving out of St. Louis and into Hong Kong I’d been looking for an escape for a long time. I wanted to move many times, but it’s that cost of living that kept me planted. Maybe someday some new big businesses will see the same thing and help to continue the cycle. It may not be a great cycle but it’s better than none at all.

Back in STL

Well we made it back home to St. Louis. Damn that is a long flight. Well three flights… Hong Kong to Toko, Tokyo to Minneapolis and finally Minneapolis to St. Louis. All flights were on Northwest Airlines and I can honestly say I’m not really looking forward to the flights back. NWA as the call it (it has nothing to do with old skool rap) is sad. I now see why the Asian airlines like Cathay Pacific now win the awards that they do.

I’m tired and I’ll post more later.

zzzzzzzzzzzzz…….

St. Louis missings

Here’s a list of few things I miss from St. Louis (or in some cases, Missouri or USA in general):

• Dairy Queen
  The closest one I have found here is in Shanghai, China and it is SO not the same
• Used CD, DVD and video game stores
  I have found one tiny store in Central (the district my office is in) but no others. This could be due to most people buy VCDs at a fraction of the price of DVDs.
• Baked goods
  Although there are plenty of bakeries here in Hong Kong, none of them make anything like back home. Most things are dry. Except the new Krispy Kreme. That tastes almost identical.
• Ted Drewe’s
  I think that this concept would be beyond their comprehension here.
• Papa John’s Pizza
  They have this in Shanghai too and it does taste basically the same. I have a picture of the Papa John’s sign in Chinese on my camera. Have to dig that up.
• Best Buy
  A four story tall giganto Best Buy opened right across the street from the office the week I was in Shanghai. I of course visited and was overwhelmed by the sheer volume of televisions. And the absolute lack of video games, CDs and DVDs. It seems that there may be some truth to ths rampant pirating in China myth you hear about. Shanghai also seems to have more Western goodness thanHong Kong for some reason….
• XL
  XL or extra large size shirts are not the same as they are at home. The scrawny south Chinese just don’t have much use for American sizing I suppose. So I will be getting undershirts when we come home.
• Driving
  Yes I miss driving. We went from having three cars between the two of us and now we have none. Not a car in the world. No we take buses, ferries, trains, etc everywhere. There’s a certain freedom in driving that just can’t be replaced easily. I didn’t realize that till I didn’t have it. We will be getting a rental when we come home. That ought to be fun.