I left work very early today.  My wife called me at about 10:30, barely audible through her sobs, and told me that my next door neighbor, friend, and overall decent human being had taken his own life a couple of days ago.  I took a taxi heading home, where there would be noise & distraction to keep me from falling to pieces the way I did to the 2 poor individuals who I only met 10 days ago.  Riding 13 miles in an unfamiliar city in a car with someone I couldn't communicate with was very surreal.  I'm living among 20 million people, and I find myself missing one man who was 6000 miles away on Monday, and is gone, now.  He was a good man who was always willing to help us, and was a very good neighbor.  The world is worse off without him in it.  I will miss him.

I need to find something to do with these emotions, find someway to deal with them.  It's too sudden, and too shocking.  My only other close experience with death was when my older brother passed away so many years ago.  I had an opportunity to say goodbye.  I was crushed when he died - I remember crying to sleep in my wife's arms that night.  But his death was slow, gradual, almost predictable, and when he died, it was what he needed, and I knew it.  Cancer had taken his eye, and was destroying his liver.  It was tragic, he was so young, so brilliant, so unfulfilled - so much lost potential & possibility.  But it wasn't sudden, shocking, and unexpected.

My neighbor was in his 60's, and had talked about his grandson with a glimmer in his eye before we left.  Suicide is so strange a concept to me, having never really dealt with any sort of depression at all, despite a significant family history.  I wouldn't feel so confused if he'd had a heart attack, or fallen of a ladder, or gotten in a car accident.  There would be a clear reason why he died.  But I don't have a reason, and I never will.  That's very hard.  I think what's so very difficult is that there may never have actually been one reason.

And I now come to the same point I came to with my brother.  He will be missed, but life moves on.  Knowing that John had wished us well on our trip here, that he hoped my family would have an adventure, I'll move on and try to make sure that our adventure is no less adventurous.

I'm from the Rocky Mountains:  small-town Idaho.  I've lived in many random towns in Idaho, none of which had more than 50,000 people (at least not when I lived there).  I think only 2 of them even had more than 10,000 people.  If I had to pick one theme that summarizes my small-town lower-, then middle-class western upbringing (as in "west of the 'mid-west'" which is really the almost east to us westerners :-) ), it's self-reliance.  Some acquaintances of ours from North Dakota have the same general attitude, which is why I extend the assertion to anything west of Ohio:  If you can do it yourself, you should do it yourself.  I can lay tile [self-taught], so I've tiled something like 800 sq ft of floor.  I've remodeled a bathroom.  I've painted probably more 20,000 sqft of wall.  I mow my own lawn.  I've scraped probably 1000 sq ft of (non-asbestos) 'popcorn ceilings'.  I've built a bunk bed, a diaper-changing station, installed baseboard trim throughout almost all of my house.  You get the idea.  Living in Bellevue, major recipient of the financial wake of Microsoft, certainly brought a set of odd adjustments that required me to change my perspective a bit, but my core theme has really stuck.

Three years ago, I met an interesting guy from Virginia, who has lived all over the country, and even spent some time in Thailand.  He made an interesting comment, when I asked if he was painting his new house.  He said his skill wasn't painting, it was earning money by coding. So he focuses on that, and pays other people to do other things like paint his house.  This idea was completely foreign to me.  Why would he not just paint his own house?  He's single, hadn't really unpacked yet, and the idea of not painting your own house interior had honestly not occurred to me as a possibility.

Why am I talking about this, and what does this have to do with my current situation?  One word:  Ayi.

I believe a literal translation is something like "Aunty", but what an Ayi really does is a combination nanny/maid/cook.  All we really needed one for is to watch Casen while Amy is home schooling the girls, and maybe watch the kids one night a week so Amy doesn't go completely insane while we're here.  But that's really not a full time gig.  So she does other stuff.  Scratch that.  She does ALL the other stuff.  And it just feels weird.  She's a very nice woman, who apparently has an 18 year old son and husband who both live in Zhengzhou, where she's from.  And she does everything around the apartment.  She tidies constantly.  She cooks, she does laundry, she wipes Casen's nose.  All for less than minimum wage from 1983.  And from what we hear from other people. we're paying her very well.  So Amy & I aren't doing jack-squat around the apartment, now.  Amy's actually able to focus on teaching the girls, and she really doesn't need to do anything else.  And when I get home from work, Anna's cooking dinner, the kids are playing with each other, and Amy's feeling useless.  I spent the whole time until she left at 7PM just playing with kids and talking to Amy.  I washed the dishes, so Anna could shower and head home to where ever she lives, because I felt so lazy & useless.  Because if I can do something, I should. 

But I've realized something:  My strongest skill is earning money by working at Microsoft.  It has been for a long time, now.  And while I can cook, tidy, watch children, etc..., there are a whole lot of people on this side of the planet that can do all that, but can't earn much money doing anything else.  And there's another thing I can do.  I can help change that.  So I'm paying a very nice woman to wipe our 2 year old's nose.  Because if I can do something, I should.

I'm really having so much fun that I don't want to work.  I wonder if Microsoft would pay me to just play in China for 3 months?  Actually, when I stop goofing around in Shanghai and start thinking about work, I am pretty excited.  Besides Bruce, who I've known almost my whole career at Microsoft, and Terry Leeper, who I've know his whole career at Microsoft, I've also met 2 other members of the team I'll be working with, and I'm really looking forward to putting faces on the e-mail names of the rest of the group.  I'm going to try to catch the 7AM bus, because it looks like they killed the 6AM bus :-(.

For dinner tonight, we decided to try a "local" restaurant.  It's called "Little Sheep" and they serve what I believe are called "Hot Pots".  When we walked in the place, we had no idea what to expect, and I don't think there was a single person in the restaurant that spoke a word of English.  So we pointed, and my amazing wife communicated a few things in Mandarin, and we were good to go.  We got a 'Nourishing Soup' base which they put on a burner to start boiling, then we ordered strips of beef, lamb, a vegetable medley tray, a "medley of balls" and some noodles.  The kids did quite well with the chopsticks, though Casen only liked to skewer meat balls and hold them up to watch the steam as they cooled.  They all ate something, and Amy, Megan, and I all walked out feeling that thoroughly pleasant "too full" feeling of eating so much yummy food that you can't pack in any more.

We walked home at which point I trudged back to the Grand Gateway to try our ATM card again, as it failed at the Fabric Market.  Turns out that all the American Banks take an ATM hiatus at about 2 am Sunday morning, and turn back on around 6AM.  So no cash for us on Sunday afternoon (I visited 4 ATM's before Amy called me to confirm that Visa said that was true).  Stupid global roaming blackout!  Anyway, it turned back on around 6PM local time, and we've now learned our lesson...  I wet back and grabbed some more cash, along with some "Rocky Chocolate" ice cream for Amy.  Hot Pots for dinner, and Ice Cream for dessert.  Life is good...

I also thought I might start chronicling (sp?) the funny translations I see while I'm out.  Today's is "For You Shanghai, Youth Outstanding Person".  You might think that's not really funny, just gibberish, and if it were printed on some pamphlet, I would agree with you.  But that lettering is 8 feet high on a batch of signs that are probably 3 stories high.  If you're making signs that big, perhaps consulting with either a native speaker or a student of the language would make sense :-)

Off to bed before I pass out.  Jet lag still sucks, just not quite as badly as it did 5 days ago...

Amy already talked about our very cool 'tour' of the city of Shanghai on February 28th.  It was pretty limited, but very fun.  Theresa Wang was incredibly helpful, and really good with the kids, letting Chloe just talk her ear off almost the whole day.  Ken [forgot his last name] was also on the tour with us.  His qualifications were, uh, he's been in Shanghai for a year, and he's not from China :-).  He was really helpful in offering a few interesting perspectives.  While Amy was using a restroom at the Yu Yuan Gardens, the kids were eating some ice cream sitting on a ledge.  We had around 75 people watching us, with one woman with 4 teeth (Casen said "Where'd her teeth go?  She needs to go to the store and buy new teeth!") taking Casen's hand to walk off with him!  After that whole thing, Ken pointed out that for many Chinese, the trip to Shanghai is something they save their whole lives for.  They've never seen a foreigner before, and they're not likely to see one again.  It certainly gave me more patience with the 4-toothed child-stealer :-).

I was really impressed by how well the 3 kids did, after being driven all over the place, and forced to walk everyone all day long.  By 5 PM, however, Casen was done.  So we didn't get quite as much junk as we needed from Ikea.  So today (March 1 - I'm now 34 years old...) I took him with me as I explored the Metro and went down to Ikea.  The Xujiahui station is like a mini-city beneath an already impressive above ground area.  Casen loved all the escalators, and watching the trains come & go.  He wasn't as excited as I thought he would be by the actual ride on the subway, but he wasn't upset at all.

Once we got off the metro, we headed above ground.  Most Chinese people I've met here are almost offensively "pro-boy".  I have 2 beautiful, brilliant, amazing daughters, and yet no one comments about them except to say I have 2 daughters & one SON!  Then they faun all over Casen.  Mind you, when he's in a good mood, and he says "Ni Hao!" to everyone in earshot, he is pretty adorable, but when I'm out with Megan or Chloe, I don't get even a tenth of the smiles from people on the streets.  I should probably get off this subject.  People that know me well know that I'm pretty outspoken about equality & how much that kind of stuff irritates me.  The thing that drives me the craziest around here is that everyone that sees us with 3 kids, 2 girls and then a boy, believes that the reason we had 3 children was so we could have our boy.  In reality, when we discovered we were having a boy, both Amy & I were fairly shocked:  we just assumed we were going to have a 3rd girl, and were quite excited about it.  Not that having a boy was a disappointment, just a very big surprise:  we weren't happy or sad to have a boy, just not expecting it.  I'll try not to talk about that subject any more.  I imagine Chinese society might start understanding the value of women if they're male/female ratio winds up in a bad state.

Anyway, as Casen demanded a 'shoulder-ride' and I tossed him up in the air over my head and sat him on my shoulders about 40 people must have been staring as him, and smiling.  We went into Ikea, which, as most people told me, is exactly like every other Ikea (almost), and found the extra things we needed.  We got through the check out at 11:30 and Casen was hungry so we got in line for a hot dog.  And this is where the Shanghai Ikea is different from the one in Seattle:  A hot dog was 3 RMB.  That's roughly 42 cents.  An ice cream cone was 1 RMB!  15 cent ice creams, just like my mother (okay, perhaps my grandfather - my mom's still a spring chicken) told me about!  So Casen downed his hot dog like the walking vacuum cleaner he is, and then we got a couple of ice creams, and headed back to the metro station.  We walked back to the house, stopping a couple times to convince Casen that he should A) hold my hand, and B) walk because my shoulders had all of his 40 lbs. frame they could handle for one day.  Amy took the girls out to go pick up a birthday cake from a yummy french bakery for me, and we played on the toys for a while.

Once we went inside, I got pretty sleepy, so I laid down while Casen was napping.  Amy decided to take the girls down to the big playground and let them play for a while, and I didn't set an alarm, so she woke me up when they got back up more than 2 hours later.  Needless to say, that didn't help my still-screwed-up internal clock...  She actually met Bruce at the playground and chatted with him for a while.  I've known him since I started at Microsoft almost 11 years ago, so Amy's met him a few times.  I think the conversation with someone not named Kevin was good for her.  She was in a great mood when she came upstairs, and recommended we order dinner from Blue Frog, which, according to Bruce, makes the best burgers he's ever had.  After ordering them, I'll agree:  If you want a hamburger, come to Shanghai.  Best burger I've ever eaten.  Salt Lake City has a chain of restaurants called "Training Table" that has relatively good hamburgers, but nothing I've ever had comes close to the Montana BBQ burger I had.

During dinner Amy made a bit of a stunned face, and then let out a disappointed "awww...".  She realized that while she bought candles  for my cake, she had no way to light them.  Then she actually opened the cake up.  The bakery included not only matches, but candles, forks, places, and a serving knife!  When the Shanghai-ese sell you a birthday cake, they sell you the whole package!

All in all, a fairly good birthday.  Particularly for a 34th.  On the bright side: only 1 more year until I can be president :-)