Gas

Our awesome Diplomatic Security guys, Chip (L)and Garrett (R-duh), have given me a lift to BNU over the last few days. It's been great. The ride is much better than the bus, and the company is fantastic. These guys are a lot of fun to hang out with and have shared lots of information on Beijing and China with me. And a few jokes too. Some of Chip's are actually funny.

Know what kind of car they drive? A minivan. A BUICK minivan (Note 8/11 post).

The best part? They have "Dip Tags". DipLOMATIC tags. Which means they can park almost anywhere.

Their boss (Shawn's a great guy!) has the coolest of cool car Olympic credentials. He can go anywhere, park anywhere and they cannot search his car. I bet that causes some confusion at security gates across the region!

What was I writing about? Gas.

The Buick was on fumes. Went to one station - closed. Went to another station and a conversation began. The attendant pumps the gas. Garrett speaks fluent Chinese. Chip speaks a bunch too. It still took forever to get them to pump the gas. There was concern that they were going to put diesel in the blue Buick. No worries in the end, and off we went.

This all with 2 Chinese speakers in the car.

Lesson here is don't rent a car in China. Or, if you do, hope you don't have to get gas.

PS - The station was on the OLD road. I've not seen any gas stations on the new main highway between here and Shunyi.

Oh, and the station that was open didn't sell beef jerky or Icees. We don't appreciate what we've got in the good old USA.

Where's Larry Sprinkle when you need him?

P-O-U-R-I-N-G today.

One forecast I saw said - not making this up - "tons of rain today". Did this guy get his weatherman degree by mail?

Shunyi local forecats is rain, cooler and less rain by 5pm.

I hope the semis are not delayed to tomorrow. I would suppose that would move the finals to Sunday? If not, we'd have them on back-to-back days.

Nothing would surprise me, though.

I'm kinda looking forward to the last BNU/MPC/Shunyi/MPC/BNU round trip.

I promised more on taxis---

BREAKING NEWS: I have now seen three accidents. Only two involved taxis and one was a tow trucking making it's own business by hitting a taxi.

As I've said befire, I'm shocked that there are not smashed taxis pushed to the side of the road everywhere in Beijing. I'm also shocked that the hospitals aren't filled (though they might be, what do I know?) with pedestrians, byclists and taxi passengers with cardiac arrests. All victims of these green and yellow cars.

There are 64,000 taxis here. All but 3 of them are green and yellow. And all those drivers wear yellow, collared, buttoned, short-sleeved shirts.

There is no road rage. Everyone - bikes, cars, pedestrians and cyclists - cut each other off. But they do it calmly and move on to their next encounter. They ring bells, whistle and blow horns, but no yelling, bird flipping, stare-downs etc.

I heard that a cyclist will keep peddaling as long as they see the driver look at them. If not, they brake. Wise.

I've had great, OK and poor cab rides. Most great! But, as in the rest of life, the bad ones stand out.

To have at least a 50/50 chance of getting to your destination, it helps to have your destination written in Chinese characters. It helps more to have someone who speaks Chinese tell the driver your destination. It's a bonus if you have a map to which you can point and grunt.

I had two of these the other day when I was running to the MPC to catch the Shunyi shuttle. None of it helped. He even spoke a bit of English, so less grunting was required. He drove me everywhere BUT the MPC. After awhile, he was so embarassed that he turned off the meter. I was nice, don't worry.

Once reaching the MPC and having learned a hard lesson (and missing my shuttle) I needed ANOTHER cab to take me to the venue in order to be there when needed. So I asked an English-speaking volunteer to help me explain my destination. One driver was hopeless and we sent him on to a less complicated location. We found another who understood. Right.

He took me on a scenic tour of the Village, Birds Nest, Shanghai, the Great Wall, the Not-So-Hot Wall (OK, so I'm making some of this up) and finally got on the highway to Shunyi.

Moral to the story? In order to get where you're going by a Chinese cab, be Chinese.

Confucius says...

Grabbed a quick cab to see the Lama Temple and Confucius Temple before heading to Shunyi.

I'll tell you later about the horrors of that day's taxi rides. Yikes.

Anyway, Confucius was a pretty cool guy. We've all heard the jokes, eating jellybeans, going to bed with an itchy butt, etc.

But WOW, is this guy revered and rightfully so. There is even a picture of the Japanese invaders paying tribute to him at this temple.

Here are a few things he said or did in addition to the above:

1. If the government (king) wasn't doing his job, it was the public's right to overthrow him.



2. Don't do anything to someone you don't want done to you (did he make this up?)



3. All people have a right to education. He started public education in China. Up until his time, only the elite got educated.
   

The funny thing is that even though he said number 1 above, there are no less than 6 huge carved monuments outside his temple commemorating the suppression of various riots in the late 1600's and early to mid 1700's.

I guess he didn't say that the public had the right to be successful.

Who's the Smelliest? Medal Ceremony

What a great idea the last poll was.

GOLD = Wet Bill
SILVER = Wet Dogs
BRONZE = Wet Photographers

Thanks for voting.

Great start at Shuyi and American heroes

Rami Zur planned the work and worked the plan.

He got a great start to his 1000m campaign by getting a great start to his heat yesterday, then making sure he made the semis without wearing himself out.

He and Carrie have their first heats in the 500 today. Rami is doing both the 1000 and 500m.

It's really great to see Nathan, Cliff, Rami and Carrie. I really just started getting to know them a bit in Oklahoma City at the Trials. They're all great folks!

Chip and Garrett are still out there (US Diplomatic Security) and that's a great thing. What pros these guys are.

Chip talks about the athletes being American Heroes, and they are, but so are these guys. Respectful, fun, competent, helpfull and great ambassadors for the US. Both speak Chinese and know everyone at the venue.

We can all be proud that there are guys like these out there representing our country all over the world.

I heard a young American lady say how the world was getting worse all the time. For the record, I do not believe that. And, if that young lady would conduct herself like Chip and Garrett do on a regular basis, have a positive attitude about our country and share that with the folks she comes in contact with, she'd make the country and world a better place.

Sharing what's great about America with the world is what we as individuals need to do. Where else are the people of the world going to get their POSITIVE views of America? The news media? Bad news and controversy sells, right? Hollywood with their crappy TV shows that portray America as totally materialistic, sex obsessed and petty? Please.

It's up to us as ambassadors of the US to spread that word. Be nice. At least try to say hi or thanks in the host language. Something.

It infuriates me to see visitors from the US and elsewhere being impatient (and thus rude) with the Chinese volunteers that are really trying to help. It's like they expected everyone to learn English before we all came over here. Give me a break.

Enough of that.

Sunday at the South Cathedral

My second Sunday in China was a little rainy to begin with, but became a sunny day despite that.

I was able to catch a Mass at the South Cathedral in Beijing which really lifted my spirits and made me feel a comforting sense of normalcy.

I had missed last week's mass, so I was really looking forward to it. Last week, I had visited St. Josephs, and thought that's where the English mass was being held. As usual, I was slightly mistaken. The taxi took me to the South Cathedral for the mass and all was fine, even though I was in a TOTALLY different area of town.

The cathedral was built in 1601 and was visited over 20 times by Chinese Emperors. They have masses in English every Sunday at 10.00 and 4.30.

I was really overcome, quite frankly, by being at this church. I got a bit emotional. Not only because it felt great to be going to mass, but because of all the hardships this parish and diocese has had to go through over the years just to survive. Riots, Japanese occupation and the PRC's policies have been tough, I'm sure. To a certain extent, I applaud the Chinese for "allowing" the church to continue, although I have heard that masses are restricted to foreign nationals. I did not have to show a passport or anything (like anyone would confuse me with a Chinese national) but I didn't see anyone else showing theirs either.

There was a heavy media presence there as some kind of political - Western - big shot was there. Strange to see video and still photographers shooting communion and wandering all around mass.

Father's homily included "questioning authority" which was an interesting topic. Nothing too hard hitting, but a message there nonetheless.

The congregation applauded us visitors and were obviously happy we were there. We outnumbered the parishioners - no surprise - a fact pointed out by the priest to much laughter.

They have a great choir and a beautiful church. I look forward to next week's mass.

PS - Father told me that he has 17 seminarians helping him with services at the athlete village. I told him I thought that was so kind. "God bless you", he said "but that's our job, isn't it?". Touche.