done

Home at last. Jesse and I are getting our heads on straight in Westover, Alabama, enjoying some lake water, blue sky, fresh air, and tall green pine trees. We are still trying to get over the time change, waking up very early since we've arrived. Our favorite meal so far, southern BBQ; pulled pork sandwich, baked beans, & mac and cheese.

What we experienced, learned, enjoyed:

Two years worth of professional & personal growth in six months.

Spectacular geography, the most dynamic landscape I've ever experienced.

Great friends for life. Ryan, Cat, Joey, Steven, Luke, Benny, Terry, Evan, Liza, Leon, Eric, Nick, Bee, Nicole, Poppy, Ish, Mark and Dan.

Thanks for following.

Where to next?

bored in seoul

look at what we painted!!!!

seoul

we are in our 11th hour at ICN, Seoul, South Korea

get me home!

homegirl

Every morning she'd push a cart full of things to sell to this spot. She was basically bent in half, but I liked her a lot, we never exchanged any thing, I was able to see her exuberant willpower to be there everyday trying to make dime.

fish fish fish

bloody bloody fish. half of these halved fish where still moving

this never gets old

this is what traveling to china can look like

@work HK last day

I invited my mom and jon out to a dim sum dinner with the whole NK crew, Benny, Terry, Joey, Evan, Luke, and Steven. We had plenty of dim sum, cow stomach, chickens feet, and rice cakes.

My building in the morning, last day!

m&j at Stanley

ahhh, these are called lady bars

this is why shenzhen is called sincity.

i need a computer mouse: the journey

elements mall

m.jordan still makes it on bottles here

i miss the days when basketball was cool, jordan was def. apart of that.

b&w china

excuse the fog, actually i want to talk about it. they love to blast the AC here, for good measure of course, cause its a constant 93 muggy degrees here all the time. so foggy shots like this, going from chilly hotel, to the inferno, are all to common

ive been lazy

here comes a catch up blog dump of the last few weeks. Jesse and I are done with our contracts, my parents are here, we are ready for some usa.

cooking dinner

shenzhen walmart

im not at work on a monday

wow does it feel good, lets let freaking out, about not having a job, start to kick in two months from now. I'll be enjoing and taking advantage of freedom.

mom and jon are here!

Touchdown in the Kong, two more Southerners have arrived!

I am off to my last day in Shekou, and then Friday will be my last day in the HK office. Can't wait to be done!

lucia

Lucia worked for us for a short while. She was fresh out of school working as an office assistant. Her English was just ok, and was getting better by the day. So, really didn't get to know her beyond her reimbursing me for hotel stays, the systematic "good mornings" or "ne hows", and a question she asked the boss one night out in Shekou.

"Do you believe in Jesus Christ?", Lucia asked proudly.

The importance here isn't to analyze the question, but to look at who is asking this question. At a macro scale, her question challenged my perceptions of a Christless China. Simply fact, a Christian PRC Chinese is considered to be weird, further, the PRC forbids the open practice of Christianity within the country.

Shortly after this night she quit the company. I don't know if the answer to her question was the a motive for quitting, I doubt it, but maybe, (I'm interested at the idea though, working for someone based on their religious beliefs, or analyzing working for a Christian boss versus working for an atheist boss) I think she was simply pushed to hard, maybe a little unqualified, but the best part is since she left others are starting to follow.

eric at work

Notice the John Lennon sunglasses while working. He was singing some French song very loud while I took the photo. Normally he listens to techo, he's a big fan of Kraftwerk.

He's pretty hilarious all around.

eric on s+arck

Eric, my design manager took me out to some BBQ last week in Shekou. Apparently Barrack Obama's brother owns the place, but I couldn't get any firm evidence on that. I asked Eric about his time in Paris designing under Phillipe Starck, a famous industrial designer. Here are some quick snippets of what I could remember.

On process: Everyone in the studio would do 100 sketches, afterwhat Starck would review each one. He would rarely pick one sketch in its entirety. He might highlight bits and pieces for refinement. Sometimes after a review he would say it all was no good and come back after lunch and show a concept that would literally make you bow down to him. haha, that part was funny. He said he did this quite often. Eric said he was able to consolidate all the greatness from the 100s of sketches into the final design in a very short amount of time.

The environment: He let creatives be creative, explore yourself, he let your creative mind able to flow.

Getting the job: After Eric passed the interview process, starck asked him if he could start after lunch. Eric said he was like "ahhhh wow, YES I can." After lunch stark presented him with his first task and possibly his last. He had to make a flying lamp from a helium balloon, mylar, light bulb and battery. If he could make it fly, light on out in the courtyard he would get the job.

Eric said he was very confident with his prototyping skills, so he was not worried at all. While making his flying lamp he asked for some help. He needed to secure two large pieces of mylar together with double stick tape. After asking the studio designers no one said anything. It was an awkward moment, him standing in the middle of the starck studio and no one acknowledging his existence. Luckily he had a friend there and he came back to help. He asked his friend why no one would respond to him. His friend said don't worry about it right now. He helped him and went back to his seat.

Eric passed, his flying mylar lamp worked great, he was now working at the most prestigious studio in Paris. He later asked why no on would help him, his friend says, when Starck hires he fires, so Eric was replacing someone, and no one was happy that he was there. Turns out he didn't fire anyone, but this was his first introduction into the lifestyle, Eric put a lot of emphasis on the culture of the process, a very cultural process.

Poor timing: Eric came into the studio at a bad time, starcks wife had cancer, was dying, very sad and emotional.

Starcks Strength and Weakness: Stark did actually design, he was great at that, but what he really excelled at and what's most genius about him is his communication. The way he sells himself, markets himself, he was very successful in that way. Eric said Starck never really had the engineering prowess to do something really great, he always wanted this element. To be great, in the history books next to Tesla, Eisenstein, Morse, etc. Eric said he really needed the relationship of a big company with lots of R&D time/money to do that. The great ideas where there, it was just about the proper funds and timing. It just never worked out that way.

9-0080-86-755-2680-3335-8300

I had to dial this to make a call HK to ShenZhen today. wow

copy BR watches

I am very impressed with the quality of these Bell & Ross copy watches. After some seriously emotional bargaining, thanks to help from Steven, they cost me about $40 USD a piece, a steal knowing these watches can cost well over $10,000 USD. You'll notice the "MILIARY" spelling on the back, but other than that they are pretty good copies. They are very heavy, the black one is almost a full pound!

My design manager originally got me excited about this watch when he wore the BR01-92 to work. I assumed it was the real deal, but I found out later it was a total fake! He said he knows the founders of B&R and specifically picked it up to show it to them the next time he is in Paris.

check out http://www.bellross.com/ for the real deal.

on the way home from PRC

a pic of steven and i on the bus from shenzhen wan (PRC) to kowloon tong (HK). The water in the background is what separates the mainland from Hong Kong. You can see all the platforms out in the water, which are fish, clam, and oyster farms.

drums!

Some pretty decent drumming out in Lan Kwai Fong, California Bar. Try not to listen to the whining on the mic...This guy seems like a natural and I know he could push it much faster and harder if given the right material. He was definitely the best musician of the group and with such a "this is easy" demeanor. Whatcha think?

design at its worst

Leading blind people into a wall at Shenzhen Wan, now that's cruel.

crazy koreans

shekou mornings: pineapple bun

The best buns around.

mickey the addict

Chinease people drink tea, thats it! Coffee is surely a western thing as we recently got an espresso machine in the office. Mickey, a northern Chinese born engineer, has been non stop hanging out at the machine waiting for frothy milky goodness. He said to Luke, "man, what is this stuff?, I feel wierd" He's so hooked...

fresh squeezed OJ!

Right out side the office in HK there is a small fruit stand that offers fresh squeezed drinks, apple, carrot and orange. So good.

scarface modeling

I've been practicing my surface modeling skills in Solidworks when I spend the night in Shekou.  I'm not a smoker by any means but I can respect a good cigar.  I was compelled to both buy a cigar and surface model in my hotel.  I purchased a Romeo y Julieta No. 3 for ¥58 or $8.49. The cigar was quite nice, and it was the experience I was looking for; simply one of a relaxing night.  

I felt a bit like Scarface, (or any cliche mobster) for some reason, yet instead of cocaine, guns and power on my mind I had a nerdy drive to create some anamorphically sexy curves in the computer.

Sorry for the vauge screen capture of my model, I'm working on a special project which I plan to share more once it's complete.

bmx

Fanny & Tiger

We won!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=73s7j6GjyVI&feature=channel_page

Dragon Boat Racing!

Today we finally raced in the annual dragon boat race. . . and won!!!  Well we won the second round. We didn't make it to finals, but we did pretty good for a group of newbies. Now Alex and I have truly experienced CHINA.

Alex got just a liiiitttle sun today. . . he was not amused by me taking this picture. haha