latest acquisitions:

 

Cars: Mater-national (Wii)

World in Conflict (PC)

Age of Empires 3: Asian Dynasties (PC)

Flash Focus (DS)

Smart Girl's playroom (DS)

Smart Boy's playroom (DS)

 

Playground (Wii) is being returned tomorrow for getting a 6.5 score on Gamespot.

Research shows that if you keep a log, you tend to put in more steps.

 

My informal "in my head" logging has me at about 3700 steps in a typical day, up to 5500 when I visit a store such as Costco or Target.

 

Now of course, I don't want to offset weightloss with more spending, so I will try to keep a log of my steps here on the blog. I'll post semi-regularly, say weekly.

 

Wish me luck!

 

 

(warning: long)

Whew, just got back yesterday from a week in Shanghai, China.

 

We (the kids, my mom, m-i-l, s-i-l) were catching up with mommymei, who was in Shanghai to work with the vendors she manages for her job. Since my first time in China ended up skipping Shanghai due to late entry, this was a "make-up" trip for me and an exposure to the world for the kids.

 

I find as I grow older, that my parents' philosophies resonate more strongly. In this case, it's exposing the kids to the world outside of North America. Seeing how the rest of the world lives, the challenges they face like undrinkable tap water, barely sanitary toilets, etc, has made me appreciate what I have been given much more. We are very fortunate indeed to live in the good ol' US of A.

 

Back to the Shanghai trip. The trip over was pretty good. We flew on Korean Air and the service was very good. It was a little weird transferring in Incheon Airport, as we had to go through security again even though we had just stepped off the plane, to get to the connecting flight to Shanghai. Eleven hours in the air was tiring, and for the kids it must have felt like forever. The flight attendants kept us busy with meal service, drink service, duty free offers and all sorts of interruptions. Traveling to Asia from Sea-Tac also means crossing the International Date Line, so we "lost" an entire day traveling.

 

Upon arriving at Shanghai, first thing we noted was that the "7 person van" that mommymei hired for us literally could only hold 7 people. Virtually no room for luggage in this configuration. Once the 3rd row was folded down and luggage was loaded into it, we piled in and had three adults across the 2nd row, with the two kids on their laps. This is *not* going to work when the kids are bigger! Getting to the hotel was about a 50-minute ride too. At least, after a week of not seeing mommy, the kids were happy to arrive at the hotel. The rest of us were just dog-tired.

 

Taxis (and wheeled traffic in general) in Shanghai follows the East Asia model of traffic, which is "the lights and the lines don't matter". Many times, we weaved in and out of traffic, one time making a u-turn in the middle of the block with oncoming traffic. Also, like taxi drivers everywhere, they try to take you places via the longest route possible. Because Shanghai is home to many outsourced businesses, there are caucasian visitors and non-native chinese-speakers like me around. Quite often, we'd see taxis sitting around, waiting for english-speakers because they'd ask them for 2-3x the official rate to go somewhere, and do it off the meter too. This made travel within the city harder, because we refused to pay the ripoff rates on principle.

 

We did a couple of days of sightseeing/shopping initially because Mei still had more work to do. We visited the Yuyuan Garden area and explored the local department store.

One day was spent on a paid tour to Suzhou, historic hub of the silk trade. The tour was not that good, since there were ten of us, and the guide did not really add much to the tour. She also rushed us through the few sights we did see, including Tiger Hill and Yunyan pagoda, Humble Administrator's garden and the #1 Suzhou Silk Factory.

Mommymei, s-i-l and m-i-l toured Hangzhou on Saturday. Mom and I stayed behind with the kids and further explored the area local to the hotel. There is even a Best Buy store there! It's not the same as the stores in the Seattle area, since it was broken up into 4 floors, and there was no software (DVDs, CDs, VCDs, PC software) to be found. Maybe I missed the floor with the software? Tons of cutting edge and not-so-cutting-edge hardware though, with HD televisions and camcorders front and center. It was comforting to experience the familiar blue polo shirts and extra loud cacophony.

 

The flight back home was shorter than the flight over, but still had its trials. We were about 40 minutes late leaving Shanghai, which meant that we arrived at Incheon at the exact time that our connecting flight to Seattle began boarding! We had to pull rank to get through the intermediate security checkpoint, and run to reach our gate, which was naturally, the farthest possible from where we landed. On top of that, Elizabeth, who had given herself a mild bloody nose a day earlier in the hotel, began bleeding again while running through the terminal. We made the Seattle flight with almost no time to spare. The flight itself was pretty good, as it was maybe half full, so there were plenty of seats to stretch out in.

 

All-in-all a pretty good sampler of Shanghai. I'd like to visit again, but just the 4 of us, and with less of a hurry. One week is not enough to do much sightseeing there. I'll post pictures soon.

The reasoning for this is simple.

I finally got sucked into buying the Xbox 360 HD-DVD player. Everywhere you look there are deals and free movies being passed out for buying one of these players.

The deal that Best Buy was offering a few weeks ago put me over the edge - they had the player (comes with free King Kong in the box), free Heroes Season 1 ($79 value), two free HD-DVDs (up to $35 ea) in-store, and five free HD-DVDs through mail-in offer (choose from a fixed list of 15 titles). This is such a compelling buy, since you can sell the free HD-DVDs you get on Amazon or Ebay making the player effectively free.

 

Lo, my initial plan went sour, as everybody and his brother went to Best Buy and bought up the players. So no Bricks & Mortar for me. I tried the Best Buy website, but couldn't get Heroes to stick to the cart as a free item.

 

Next best thing, shop competitors on the Internet. Buy.com had the player in stock, offered the free Heroes Season 1, doesn't charge me sales tax and had free shipping. That's not two free HD-DVDs but it's worth ~$20. So I ordered it. So far so good.

Three days later, Buy.com drops the price on the player with the same free Heroes Season 1 offer, by $15. I found they have a pricematch policy so I sent them a mail asking for the $15 credit.

 

The next day I get a reply saying that price matches have to be requested within 3 days of ordering, and that day 1 is the day of the order! On top of that, they said that "Our Low Price Guarantee cannot be used with coupons, rebates, promotional offers, or product-bundle pricing on the order." WTF! I'm simply asking them to give me the benefit of their own lower price! I'm not asking them to match anyone but themselves! And only three days, two days effectively since it includes the day of order, to request a match? Gimme a break!

 

I'm sorry, but this kind of weaseling and not backing up their own policy isn't worth spending any future dollars with Buy.com. I will gladly order by telephone with Best Buy or through any other nameless, faceless Internet site that has reasonable ratings from others. But not Buy.com anymore. They lost a good customer with strong purchasing recommendation power over their stubborn refusal to credit me a mere $15.