We're now in Munich airport in Germany, waiting for the connecting flight to Finland (after 13 hours in a plane from Hong Kong). It's been an eventful trip so far! In Hong Kong it turned out we had a lot of overweight in the luggage and Lufthansa asked for about $2000 USD worth of penalty. We're gonna be on the road for 3 months so yeah, we have stuff... so we ended up sending one luggage as cargo (will arrive in a week), which saved us.

Unlike HK, Munich airport doesn't have free internet and my paid time is up, so c u later!

Wen and I are just finishing packing our stuff and starting to head out towards Hong Kong airport. We'll fly to Finland where we'll be staying a few weeks and then continue to tour around Europe for a month or two. If anyone has ideas on where to go, what to see, please let me know. We're especially interested in beautiful scenes with some historical significance so we can take photos and post them with interesting stories to XIHA Life. Even better if you live in an interesting place and wish to be our "tour guide". We'd love to meet XIHA Life members of course! Would be more than happy to grant a free game for such a great offer, wink wink.

I'll try to post photos and stories quite frequently, but I have no idea of our ability to get to internet so let's just hope for the best...

2007 is an exciting year! We're soon going to fly to Finland with Wen and then cruise around Europe for couple of months. Our plan is to go and see at least Germany, Switzerland, Italy, Greece, Spain, France...

I should probably start a new blog for the travel... and I promise to try to update it more often than I've been doing with Shenzhen blog!

Wishing for success in the new year...

The Spring Festival is here again, and for the next two weeks Chinese will celebrate the start of the year of the fire pig.

Let's see how the year will go for me! This year is going to be "very good" for me if the Chinese horoscope holds true. Here's the chart:

Best year for: Tigers
Very good year for: Goats, Rabbits, Pigs
Good year for: Roosters, Dragons, Dogs
Mixed year for: Horses, Oxen, Rats
Difficult year for: Monkeys, Snakes

So, I'm a rabbit... so good so far! But how does the year break down to? Let's take a look:

JAN *
FEB *
MAR **
APR *
MAY **
JUNE ***
JULY ****
AUG ***
SEPT *
OCT ***
NOV ****
DEC **

**** Excellent (Very auspicious, a wide and smooth path)
*** Good (Better than average)
** Fair (mediocre, status quo)
* Difficult (Be cautious, astral clash to the month)

So it seems the start of the year is still going to be quite challenging but things will get super around the half way. Interesting... quite many difficult months given that the entire year is going to be "very good". I guess it must mean the good months are pretty outstandingly good! Well let's read on, here's a prediction for the year, in writing:

Rabbits re-establish contact with old friends. Financial improvement is a great help to love and your social life is likely to be lively. In 2007, special sentimental fireworks could ignite during a reunion or a long term friendship could change to a mutual feeling of passion. A satisfying and positive year for Rabbit natives, the focus of your attention will be on making your environment more comfortable. Follow your hunches and trust your instincts as you will have your hand on the pulse of humanity. No Love or friendship crosses our path, without leaving some mark on it forever. Make some fond "memories for the rocking chair" this year.


I wish everyone happiness and success for the new year!

It's that time of year again! Newly married, I feel today's especially good reason to celebrate and I wish everyone has someone to share the day with!

These photos are from my first Valentine's Day in China. Can't believe it's already been two years!

I have very exciting news - I got married to an amazing and beautiful Chinese girl Xiao Wen on January 12, 2007 in Beijing. Our wedding was a traditional Chinese style ceremony - my head is still spinning as I'm trying to understand everything that happened during the day!

Remember I told you earlier my life was gonna change big time? Well, this is first of the big changes happening! I'll try to post more details from the wedding soon, it was a really interesting event!



I don't seem to be able to post photos to this blog right now so I'll try posting to the forum and albums...

Hmm ok it seems I can't post photos now, the internet connection not being up to the task. Tomorrow we're heading to my wife's home town to meet relatives who couldn't make it to the wedding so it may take a few days until I get a chance to try again.

Apologies for not being online much lately. About one week ago a 7.2 magnitude off of Taiwan in the South China Sea damaged the submarine internet cables connecting China with the US and many other countries. Some connections are still working but we're suffering with the "highway rush hour" effect - too much traffic and not enough bandwidth means that everything slows down to crawl.

I'm currently visiting Hong Kong which gives me a chance to write this little update, but don't expect too much communication from me in the coming weeks. I can check the site now and then, but posting anything or uploading photos isout of the question. The current estimates are that the connectivity will take months to be fully restored, and at least it might take several weeks to get any type of reliable connections back online. The damaged cables are deep down in the ocean bottom which makes reaching and fixing them a real challenge.

This is quite a reminder of how much we rely on internet with our dialy lifes. I've had to learn to cope with practically no access to any western sites and for the most part even no MSN or Skype. Finding an address or phone number, looking up some info, basically doing my work... all is dependant on reliable internet connectivity! To my surprise Google and Gmail have worked fine through all of this. It doesn't help much to be able to search things on Google if I can't open the sites, but sometimes the little two-line excerpts that Google shows have been real life savers. And with no instant messaging, email has become quite an important tool too.

Lastly, thanks for everyone's concern - I'm totally fine over here. We felt the quake in Shenzhen but it was really mild, mostly just an odd feeling of earth moving under you. It's said that this was the strongest earthquake in this region for over 100 years, so I guess this is quite a rare event.

Until next time - Happy New Year Everyone!

I wish everyone is enjoying a peaceful and warm Christmas! This year I don't have much of a Christmas feeling myself but the thought of people around the world celebrating makes me happy. In China, Christmas is still pretty much non-existent. Yes, you do see decorations here and there and department stores play Christmas music on the background. You can even buy Christmas stuff and especially places like IKEA have a good selection. But Christmas is much more than just decoration. It's hard to be in a festive mood when everyone around you is going on their daily duties as usual. I bet most Chinese don't know what Christmas is about. I am pretty sure they just know it's some western holiday and that's all.

Another reason I'm feeling a little down this year is that I managed to catch cold, so I've been spending the Christmas mostly in bed. Oh well, might just as well...

But in any case I wish everyone who observes Christmas is having a wonderful time! Enjoy, and try to remember how lucky you are that you can celebrate Christmas!

This Sunday I was having a dinner with guests who had a one year old baby girl with them. Everyone except me was Chinese and nobody in baby's family spoke any English. It's quite amazing how a baby can be an ice breaker. We really couldn't talk, and there would normally be nothing in common. For some reason though, the baby liked me a lot. It was love at the first sight! She was a little shy at first but in any case couldn' stop staring at me. And pretty soon she refused to stay anywhere but my lap. I had to hold her all the time, even in the dinner table. I like babies so I didn't mind at all, but most importantly it created quite an interesting non-verbal bonding between me and the Chinese family.

During the meal the baby was mostly sitting on my lap. Everyone else around the table tried to lure the baby away, one by one, so that I could also eat. I guess the baby turned it into a game and refused the attempts out of a principle rather than anything else really. The funniest moment was when at one point a waitress asked the girl's grand mom if the baby can speak Chinese... Turns out everyone around us thought that the baby was mine! Oops.


The family was quite fascinated by the baby's behavior. They feel she is a lost case - when she grows up she'll obviously marry a western guy. Someone even suggested that in 20 years I won't be too old, so perhaps we'll have a chance to end up together... now, she's a cute baby, but still... I find that a little hard to imagine!

More baby photos in my album... take a look (click on my face to get to my page)!

My passport is in a pretty bad shape after intense traveling so I had to take a trip to Guangzhou to apply a new one at the Finnish consulate. I had emailed the consulate earlier and was told that a new passport would take two weeks to get so I timed my visit so that I will be within the limits of my existing Chinese visa.

Finland is in many ways the opposite of China. While in China nothing is ever exactly the way is says in writing, Finns tend to follow the book by the letter. Here's an example; I had a photo with me. A passport photo which I had just used for a Chinese visa. At the consulate the first thing they did was measure the exact size of my head on the photo - two millimeters too small! So I had to go to a nearby photo studio to take a new photo according to their standards. That took an extra hour so fortunately I didn't show up at the last minute.

After all the hassle I got the application in and then came another shocker: "You should call us early January to see if the passport is ready for pick up". Now hold on! How does two weeks processing time translate to January if I'm applying on November 30? Easy! They only send mail from Guangzhou to Finland twice per month and I missed their previous mailing by a day! So, it'll be two weeks before the application actually gets mailed out, then about two weeks for it to get back. However, since Finland is mostly closed during the Christmas and New Year, this will add an extra 1-2 weeks to the processing time. This means: 2 weeks is actually 4-6 weeks, depending on how (un)lucky I am!

Nothing that could be done so I will just need to cope with it. I had another thing too - I'm selling one of my cars back in Vegas so I needed a title transfer notarized. Here comes another shocker: "The computer has the passport program open now, so we will have to wait until it's finished. You need to wait 1-2 hours or come back another time". Again, hold on. The consulate of Finland has one computer, which is incapable of multitasking? Which country was that again? Home of Nokia, the master of telecommunication? Ah, whatever. I opted to sit down and wait. I don't even live in Finland anymore so who am I to judge their methods of conducting the work...

Today was my birthday, which marks the end of an era and the beginning of a new life. Today I decided it is time for me to move on, look for new horizons. When and where, not exactly sure. I will update my blog when I know more! Sorry to be vague but there's not much I can say right now.

No cake! Since I live a little outside of the city, and since birthdays or cakes in general are not a big thing in China, there was no way to actually buy a cake nearby. And since I forgot to buy whipped cream when I was in the city yesterday I couldn't even make one myself. In any case I started the day by baking a plain sugar cake and eating it with strawberries... pretty yummy, actually!

I spent the day cruising around Shenzhen with a friend of mine. Funnily enough the first taxi cab happened to have a whole load of roses on the back window. Quite absurd really, but nice smell and made a good photo.

The first stop - HSBC's new branch in the city center. Can't take the whole day off without at least a little bit of business...

Sipping caramel machiatto at Haagen-Dazs... Having used to Starbucks' version of the drink my first though was "Couldn't they find a smaller cup?" ... anyhow, a tasty little espresso.

No cake for the day but this was a pretty good replacement.

Shenzhen city view... I also took some more photos while browsing around some shops that were selling pirated goods but I almost got my camera confiscated... ended up having to just delete the photos though. Ah well...

It's just past midnight here in China so I guess I can say it's officially my birthday now. I can't believe another year has passed! It feels like just yesterday I was feeling miserable as the world seemed to end on my 30th birthday. The world didn't end, I got over it eventually and now 31 doesn't seem like such a bad number. I wonder what 40 will feel like?

The past year didn't go quite as planned. Mostly my plans failed and a lot of stuff is different than I expected. One of the positive things that happened is this website - XIHA Life. I wasn't gonna be a website designer / programmer. I was supposed to be running a succesful game studio. But in the end I feel happy things didn't go quite as planned, as creating this website has been a lot of fun.

I kind of enjoy the new life of not working on games but on the other hand I also feel the urge to go back and make another game. I have a lot of ideas, and mostly it's all about two things - time and money. If I had enough of the both, the world would see some cool new games in no time! But as it is... well, let's keep up the hopes. XIHA Life is going to keep me busy for the time being but you never know what will happen!

Ok here's a little photo blog for today... nightly scenes from around my home in Dameisha. This is a small village east of the huge Shenzhen City. In here it's hard to believe I'm living in a city of more than 10 million people. It's a quiet oceanfront village except on beautiful summer weekends and holidays, when the area is flooded with tourists. Climate is nice... it's still pretty much t-shirt weather and it's past mid-November already, so this area will probably get more and more crowded in the future but in the meanwhile I will enjoy the relatively quiet nights walking on the beach...


Elephant in front Pattaya hotel (currently seems to be the best hotel in here, until Sheraton Dameisha Resort opens in the spring of 2007.)


Chinese are big on neon lights. A dejavu strkes me... Vegas baby!


Dameisha has McDonald and KFC. Oh the joy of American gourmet!


McDonald's looks just like in any other country. The biggest difference is that they're heavier on Chicken and quite limited on beef... and they're taking a beating from KFC.


This type of stones are pretty common in China... it's for lovers to go and take photos. Cute!

An interesting phenomena I've seen in Shenzhen (and supposedly this is even more common on the countryside China) are "public TV's". Basically there is usually a TV outside of a supermarket for those to watch who don't have a TV at home. Night time there's usually a dozen or so people watching. Tonight it seems something really interesting was on, and the crowd was large! It almost looks like a movie threater... Click on the photos for large versions.

At long last, today was the first cold and rainy autumn day. Up until now it's been hot and sunny day after day and I've started to wonder how long the summer will last. Well, no need to wonder about that anymore!

Today I also realized something has to be done to the water heater. I have a solar powered water heater which works really well most of the time in Shenzhen's tropical climate. At most summer days the water has been 90-95 degrees Celsius and only couple hours of sunlight a day keeps it well above 85. However since today was no sunlight at all and overall it was cold / windy / rainy, the water is now a mere 37 degrees (warmer than the air but still just about the body temperature). When it gets colder than that it will start to get uncomfortable! There is an electric heater too, but since it's been out of use for a long time... just take a guess whether it works or not. Furtunately I still do have a sauna so even if the water is cold I have some way of warming up.

Today our household got a brand new member - a handsome little puppy. He is about six months old and got too big for his current family to handle, so we agreed to take him. He didn't have an English name (his Chinese name is Xiao Xing, which means Little Star) so we decided to call him Ricky.

He is kind of big in size but still clearly a puppy. Ricky is amazingly full of energy so we'll see how it goes! During the first night he didn't really stop walking and running for a second unless someone was touching him! This will be a little bit of a challenge with my busy work schedule but I guess it will be good to have an excuse to take a break sometimes.

The photos are not very clear as it was already dark when Ricky arrived. I'll post more soon!

Once again it's the time of year when horror is cool. Halloween is catching on even here in China, though obviously in a way smaller scale than back in the US. It's amazing how people everywhere in the world are so keen to copy the American culture. Or perhaps it's the marketing machinery of the big multinational corporations who are searching for new markets for their holiday themed products? Since all the Halloween merchandise is likely manufactured in China anyway, why not try and sell some of that stuff in the home market?

I didn't buy a pumpkin yet, but I'm hoping to buy at least a small one and carve something cool out of it. See this photo from couple Halloweens back. I was in Los Angeles at the time and this was actually my first ever pumpking sculpture. It was a lot of fun!

A masked FBI agent on a street of a Chinese city, carrying a big gun? I wasn't the only person who took a second look when this guy walked past...

Admittedly, he clearly looks like a man on a mission, nothing's gonna stop him...

Except of course a cute little Chinese girl... Turns out there was a perfectly logical explanation (well, logical... sort of!) This FBI guy had a job of posing in front of a shopping mall so people can take photos with him. Still not quite sure why, though...

Today's a special day - a very special lady was born, not so many years ago. The world would be such a boring place without her. There's so many things we have thanks to her, including this website. I'm so lucky to have her as my good friend... sometimes I wonder how a person can be so pretty, smart and kind at the same time... Happy Birthday Wen!

See Wen's space at http://wen.xihalife.com