Steve's China Blog

Thursday, September 18, 2008

Almost ready

Trying to get everything ready for my trip. Tomorrow afternoon I'll fly to Beijing and visit my friend Jackie, and then on Saturday I'll catch a flight from Beijing to Washington D.C. That flight is around 13 hours long. Thank goodness for nicotine gum!

This coming Saturday we will be having our annual sports day at IBM, and since I will be traveling I will miss it. I am not sure what sports we will have, but the new addition this year will be cheerleaders!


Some of the Olympic cheerleaders from the Sports Illustrated website
Cheerleaders are sort of new to China and is one of the things about the Olympics that a lot of Chinese seemed to have liked (or did they?). Cheerleaders from the New England Patriots American football team were brought over to train 448 cheerleaders for the Olympics. I am not sure how the IBM cheerleaders are learning their cheers.

This afternoon there were loud air-raid sirens going off in ChengDu. I wasn't sure what was going on with that, but got an email that said it is to remember the September 18 incident... what they call the initial invasion of China by Japanese troops back in 1931. Actually, I've never heard sirens on any of the past September 18's. What's up with that?

2 Comments:

  • Dude, it's 2008! Haven't you quit smoking yet?!

    Hell, I've quit drinking at least 10 times since I saw you last. It's easy.

    By Anonymous Anonymous, at 8:33 PM  

  • The sirens went off last year as well. I'd been forewarned, and the class I was teaching stood up (think they also sang the national anthem), but this year they were indifferent to all the caterwauling, which seemed rather protracted.

    By Anonymous Anonymous, at 9:38 PM  

Post a Comment

<< Home