First I want to remind everyone that I put some of my more interesting pictures on facebook, but normally I put every single picture on my flickr page at flickr.com/mike-nappo.
Okay so...India. I have to say I haven't ever been to a place with such incredible poverty. I thought I saw bad living conditions and poor people in rural China. While the people in China are very poor, it really is nothing compared to the total poverty of a large part of the Indian population. Living in Chennai is really unusual experience. The class and wealth of the population seems to change on every block. While there is a general trend that the richer people (Indians and foreigners included) live on the southern end of the city around us, there are some pockets of poverty nearby. While the people in the city do live in some bad conditions, it really is much worse in the areas of the city reserved for the "fisherman". The fisherman and their families live in what essentially looks like abandoned land. Pretty much they live in huts made of sticks and woven banana leaves with dirt floors. I have noticed that at least some of the huts have electricity, when we are driving to work at night you can see light escaping around the poorly fitted doors and walls. Generally the people are pretty helpful here, but most often they are helpful because they would like to take advantage of you. It is sometimes difficult to get an honest answer from anyone with anything to gain by helping you. The most notorious rip-offs are the autorickshaw drivers. They will never run the meter, even when you ask them they will insist that it is broken and they don't carry change. Even if you manage to negotiate a "fair" rate before getting in, if you don't have exact change on arrival don't expect them to do you any favors.
Generally speaking, as far as India goes there are much better and much worse places to be. I think the most amazing thing to me is, the Indian people are so willing to live in their own trash. There is a small government housing/welfare complex down the street from our house that always smells like trash. During lunch time you can see the people are cooking, then throwing everything out on the ground not 5 or 6 ft from where they were cooking. I'm not sure if it is the heat or what but they just don't seem to care about living in a clean place. Even the river that runs near our house has just tons of trash floating on it, I can't imagine what is on the bottom. All of that being said, there are some really wonderful (and well cared for) things to see here. The Taj Mahal or the temples at Mahabalipuram, where we were yesterday. At Mahabalipuram there are several temples made from granite, the two most impressive being the Shore Temple, made from individual pieces of granite carved and transported to the site and the Draupadi and Arjuna rathas, which is an entire temple complex carved from a single huge, huge piece of granite.
I start back on shift on Saturday with no more long offs until the end of the month so this will probably be the end of my site seeing in India for awhile. I am still hopeful that I will be able to make it to the Taj Mahal before I leave India. If I do I will be sure to post pictures.
Thursday, February 4, 2010
Wednesday, August 19, 2009
Good News/Bad News
It has been quite awhile since I sent out and update email, but there hasn't really been much going on here in Liaoyang. I feel like I have seen most of the local sights and don't really have enough time off to
go all the way to Beijing. The biggest thing I have discovered here is...wait for it...McDonald's! I don't really care for McDonald's in the US (outside of breakfast and the occasional McFlurry) but here it
is like a godsend. Think about not having American food for, I don't know say 12 weeks, no cheeseburgers, no bacon cheeseburgers, no double bacon bbq burger, no baked potatoes...you get the idea. Now say you
find out there is a place to get a double cheeseburger and chicken nuggets but the catch is it is a 90min bus ride to get there, how fast would you jump on that? The answer is fast, I have gone a few times to McDonald's a few times despite the distance of the bus trip (time is the only factor the bus ride costs ~3 USD).
Okay time for good news, bad news. First the good news, we are wrapping up here and China and I should be finished here by the weekend, hopefully. The bad news, I am currently scheduled to be in Ulsan, S. Korea on the 31st of Aug or the 1st of September so I will only have maybe a week at home. I have to say I am pretty upset about that. I was really counting on taking my 2 weeks of unpaid leave (as required by Honeywell cost-cutters). I am supposed to be in Korea 3-4 weeks and from what I hear the Koreans are much better about this type of contractor work than the Chinese, so hopefully 4 weeks won't turn into nearly 4 months like this time around.
go all the way to Beijing. The biggest thing I have discovered here is...wait for it...McDonald's! I don't really care for McDonald's in the US (outside of breakfast and the occasional McFlurry) but here it
is like a godsend. Think about not having American food for, I don't know say 12 weeks, no cheeseburgers, no bacon cheeseburgers, no double bacon bbq burger, no baked potatoes...you get the idea. Now say you
find out there is a place to get a double cheeseburger and chicken nuggets but the catch is it is a 90min bus ride to get there, how fast would you jump on that? The answer is fast, I have gone a few times to McDonald's a few times despite the distance of the bus trip (time is the only factor the bus ride costs ~3 USD).
Okay time for good news, bad news. First the good news, we are wrapping up here and China and I should be finished here by the weekend, hopefully. The bad news, I am currently scheduled to be in Ulsan, S. Korea on the 31st of Aug or the 1st of September so I will only have maybe a week at home. I have to say I am pretty upset about that. I was really counting on taking my 2 weeks of unpaid leave (as required by Honeywell cost-cutters). I am supposed to be in Korea 3-4 weeks and from what I hear the Koreans are much better about this type of contractor work than the Chinese, so hopefully 4 weeks won't turn into nearly 4 months like this time around.
Monday, May 18, 2009
Qianshan Mountains and Shenyang Imperial Palace
Hey everyone,
I put up nearly 400 pictures yesterday from the last two weekends. Last weekend we went to a Qianshan "mountains" near Anshan, about 35min south of Liaoyang. In my opinion they are very big hills at best but they are very sudden. The land here is pretty flat and then all of a sudden bam, mountains. Also in Anshan we went to see the temple where they have the world's largest Buddha carved from a single piece of Jade, they even have the plaque from Guiness to prove it. This weekend we went to the city of Shenyang, about an hour and a half north of Liaoyang. In Shenyang there is an old Imperial palace, also called the Mukden Palace, built in the 1625. It served as the home of the the first three Qing emperors lived there from 1625 to 1644. After 1644 the home of the emporer moved back to the forbidden city in Beijing. After the palace we went to a highly recommended "international flower expo" which is code for botanical gardens. What a tremendous dissapointment that was. They had different styles of "international gardens" which mostly consisted of the same 4 or 5 types of plants with very cheap rip-offs of the architecture from the target country. I haven't labeled all of the pictures with titles and descriptions yet, but feel free to look through all of them anyway. Some pretty interesting stuff in there.
Work is going much better now, we are still a little behind but the contractors seem to have gotten things all figured out now. As long as things go smoothly from here on out it seems like we might be able to leave sometime in mid-July.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/
I put up nearly 400 pictures yesterday from the last two weekends. Last weekend we went to a Qianshan "mountains" near Anshan, about 35min south of Liaoyang. In my opinion they are very big hills at best but they are very sudden. The land here is pretty flat and then all of a sudden bam, mountains. Also in Anshan we went to see the temple where they have the world's largest Buddha carved from a single piece of Jade, they even have the plaque from Guiness to prove it. This weekend we went to the city of Shenyang, about an hour and a half north of Liaoyang. In Shenyang there is an old Imperial palace, also called the Mukden Palace, built in the 1625. It served as the home of the the first three Qing emperors lived there from 1625 to 1644. After 1644 the home of the emporer moved back to the forbidden city in Beijing. After the palace we went to a highly recommended "international flower expo" which is code for botanical gardens. What a tremendous dissapointment that was. They had different styles of "international gardens" which mostly consisted of the same 4 or 5 types of plants with very cheap rip-offs of the architecture from the target country. I haven't labeled all of the pictures with titles and descriptions yet, but feel free to look through all of them anyway. Some pretty interesting stuff in there.
Work is going much better now, we are still a little behind but the contractors seem to have gotten things all figured out now. As long as things go smoothly from here on out it seems like we might be able to leave sometime in mid-July.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/
Benxi Water Caves
We, Pavol and I, were asking our interpreter last week, where can we go in one a day trip that isn't too expensive but is unique? She took us down to a local travel agency and helped us sign up for a trip to Benxi. Luckily the tour agency also had an agent that spoken fairly good English, and they offered to send her with us for 100 RMB, split between Pavol and me. Total cost of the trip around 300RMB, which is a little less than $50, including lunch and the show. Thank God we had her too otherwise we would have been totally lost. Benxi is a city about 2hrs away by car (can't exactly remember the distance and google maps is unhelpful in China) that is famous for its underground river aka water cave and its maple trees. Despite the extremely large "steel plant" near Benxi the park surrounding the water caves was very pretty and even fairly clean. We were lucky to get a nice bright blue sky (a rarity in china) and cooler temperatures to explore the park in. First thing we did was tour the water cave, then we went to the museum, and then we had lunch with all of the people who came with us. Despite not knowing a lick of English they were very nice and extremely hospitable. This eventually led to me eating a salted fish, whole, all of it, no spitting out bones or anything, because they send the plate your way and then watch to make sure you take and eat some of everything. It wasn't so bad...anyway after lunch we headed down for the show. The pictures on flickr/facebook tell most of the story, except for the ladyboy part.
Okay, so the tour guide talked us into going to the show and wouldn't really take no for an answer so we went. Before the show the best our interpreter could do was, "Do you know ladyboy, is a very beautiful boy singing" or something close to that. Thankfully Pavol had seen a show before and explained to me, basically they are cross-dressing and/or possibly transvestite and/or gay boys performing in public. I consulted Wikipedia and he was pretty much right. It was very weird, despite knowing they are in fact male it is pretty hard to tell with all of the make-up on, but the Adam's Apple generally gives it away. Also both of them were pretty terrible singers. Anyway I wasn't really sure what the etiquette was for taking pictures during the show so I only took one, and it isn't very good. The crocodile part of the show was way more awesome and the pictures do tell that whole story. Those guys are insane, I can't figure out why those animals didn't remove any limbs, they certainly were close enough. The whole experience was pretty cool, wish I could have gotten better pictures of inside the cave but I will survive. The whole day was a pretty awesome experience it really let you see some of China's natural beauty, as opposed to all of the industry we see during the week.
Okay, so the tour guide talked us into going to the show and wouldn't really take no for an answer so we went. Before the show the best our interpreter could do was, "Do you know ladyboy, is a very beautiful boy singing" or something close to that. Thankfully Pavol had seen a show before and explained to me, basically they are cross-dressing and/or possibly transvestite and/or gay boys performing in public. I consulted Wikipedia and he was pretty much right. It was very weird, despite knowing they are in fact male it is pretty hard to tell with all of the make-up on, but the Adam's Apple generally gives it away. Also both of them were pretty terrible singers. Anyway I wasn't really sure what the etiquette was for taking pictures during the show so I only took one, and it isn't very good. The crocodile part of the show was way more awesome and the pictures do tell that whole story. Those guys are insane, I can't figure out why those animals didn't remove any limbs, they certainly were close enough. The whole experience was pretty cool, wish I could have gotten better pictures of inside the cave but I will survive. The whole day was a pretty awesome experience it really let you see some of China's natural beauty, as opposed to all of the industry we see during the week.
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