Batmaniac

Good job!

The two of us just got iPhone 4s. Haven't had an antenna issue with them. It drops just as many calls as the 3Gs did. I was planning to send over my old 3Gs to Ying's brother in China but until recently I think whatever version of the baseband I was running couldn't be unlocked. Ended up giving that to my mom and unlocked my father's old 3G (he also bought an iPhone 4) for Ying's brother. Unfortunately he had updated to 4.0 and it runs slow as hell now. In retrospect, probably should have worked on downgrading to 3.1.3 before mailing it off. We also unlocked the original Edge iPhone for use when visiting China. Probably a moot point now since the new iPhone 4s sound pretty easy to unlock. http://gizmodo.com/5604031/unlock-tool-ultrasn0w-now-available-for-iphone-4 The new iPhone based unlock hit just a few days after I unlocked the two older phones. http://gizmodo.com/5601874/jailbreakme-20-jailbreaks-all-apple-ios-40-401-and-321-devices Here's an article from today on some nifty jailbreak apps. http://gizmodo.com/5605827/16-reasons-to-jailbreak-your-iphone-or-ipod-touch-now/gallery/

If you went to Little Sheep in China, there is one in San Diego. Franchised I guess. Not quite the same taste, but familiar enough. I couldn't get over how quiet it was!

Congratulations Stepbrow! Looking forward to reading your adventures. Ying's brother lives 2 hours from Shanghai so maybe we will be that way someday. Best of luck with the Shanghai ladies.

You will. Out of all the couples we have met, one guy was just vaguely familiar with CFL. The girls, however, all use www.fromchinatousa.net AKA 003 and meet each other. We have made some good friends already.

We sure do have a lot of wives with name of Ying on CFL! I agree with this totally. My Ying kept asking if people will have a hard time pronouncing her name. I said no of course not. And that's been generally the case. I do guess we Americans put a harder Y sound in front than the Chinese. I hear "ing" a lot. Now, Ying did have a collection of English names from her trading company. Alice, Chloe, Donna . . . We had been together in person 2 weeks when her brother took us out for a hot pot lunch. He speaks limited English, but got very serious, looked me in the eye raised his voice and said "Michael! DO YOU LOVE ALICE!" Scared the crap out of me. I'm calling after Ying who went to the bathroom. "Who the hell is this Alice person, baby?" I still find Ying introducing herself as Chloe. Sometimes it's just the person she meets. If she doesn't feel like she will be good friends (like college classmates, study partners), she'll use Chloe.

From my wife - It's in Thailand. Found by people in the country. Doesn't look like human or animal. They think it looks like an alien and they are worshipping it. They put it in a temple and treat it like a holy spirit. Weird. Looks like concrete to me. Or maybe mummified? Probably a deformed child or little person.

I saw this video yesterday too. Liked the little bit of video of Hua Zhuang Bei in Shenzhen. Browsing that area was 2 subway stops away and always a fun time killer when I was bored. You could go look at the latest SONY, APPLE or NIKON products or browse the fakes. Also some of the oddest looking phones I've ever seen. One style I saw was a retro looking mobile that looked like an early 90s brick style phone with an antenna. But it also had a camera in it with interchangeable lenses! I sort of wanted to bring one back.

Our experiences have been 99% ok. Probably the worst was this foolish police woman on a bike who yelled at me for being in my wife's hometown (after we had lunch with the police chief ) Later it turned out Ying needed to get some visa paperwork, and of course she needed to see that woman. She tried to talk Ying out of marriage to me by listing off a number of reasons that Chinese women should stay in China. But on a more violent turn . . . We actually are actually friends with a couple (not on CFL) who were attacked by two well-connected city officials while at KTV last year. These two thugs were drunk, broke a bottle and cut the girl's face. The whole time they were screaming at her she must be a prostitute for being with the American. The husband landed a few good punches before security came over and threw out the drunks. The police did little since they were well-connected. Joke was on them. The young lady had some high up military connections from her time in the PLA. She got back home and the ball started rolling. A week later she was back in the city where it all happened and there was a significant payout from the thugs' families.

Can we get a video of you, Tsap, doing the funky chicken in the Guz coffee shop when your lil' rabbit gets the visa?

And here's a Youtube video. This must be the tourist entrance that has closed down. Looks cleaner. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LF6Fh0P9y58

http://nmvsite.com/underground-city So who wants to go wade through some of this slop next time you are in Beijing? ewwwww

Congrats on the new house. We just did the same thing. Received a NOA for the I-865 but not the AR-11. I guess that's normal. Same story the first time we moved last summer.

Come on, medium = a grande at Starbucks. Get it right! Just kidding, good write up. And we are very happy for you guys. Hope to see you back in Texas soon!!

This was linked on Gizmodo. Before I even clicked the article I said to myself "yeah, it's going to be China" http://www.core77.com/blog/object_culture/...urant_16355.asp http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Hua I don't know, my past experiences on the sky trams weren't great. I do OK with my eyes shut.