2008 Beijing Olympics - Opening Ceremony

Internationally acclaimed filmmaker Zhang Yimou was the director for the 2008 Beijing Olympics ceremonial opening. Below, in 10 parts, is the entire artistic portion of the ceremonial opening followed by the lighting of the torch in part 11. Enjoy the show... I sure did!!

Part One - The Countdown

Part Two - Drummers


Part Three - Olympic Rings


Part Four - Paper and the Scroll


Part Five - Type Set


Part Six - Silk


Part Seven - Compass & Chinese Opera


Part Eight - Lang Lang


Part Nine - Tai Chi


Part Ten - One World


Part Eleven - Lighting the Olympic Torch

My Daughter's Poetry Scares Me...

If she continues to turn in assignments like this I fear social services may come a knockin'. Maybe we should let her out of the room... ;-)... or at least give her a light.

The Dark Room

The dark, dark room, with me in it,
I don't know what to do?
Screeches and noises are filling my ears
in that dark, dark room.

The tree is tapping the window,
and making a lot of noise!
I can't sleep, I want to weep
I don't know what to do?

In that dark, dark room.

Chalky Gecko

My daughter and I had fun with chalk on our driveway. The gecko-like creature is about 12' long. The neighborhood kids thought we were vandalizing. They don't know about colored chalk... and rain. Sad really, these quasi-third-world kids. It's not poverty killing their sense of fun and imagination, it's education. They spend all their time studying to make good grades. My kid plays and makes so/so grades. That's the way it should be.

beeing samart is overrated in mine opinun.

That King of Fruit... The Durian

Friday was a day set aside for visiting the plant nurseries down south in Johor near a town called Muar. Thousands of acres of plants are available for industrial use. This isn't the place for weekend gardeners to browse around trying to decide which Bougainvillea would look nice next to the Murraya. These are the nurseries where one can purchase hundreds of trees of varying species and thousands upon thousands of shrubs and groundcovers in every imaginable shape, size, texture, and color. My job sometimes requires that I visit these places with the Client and Contractor to settle the final selection of plants...

But this is not about the nurseries. This is about the real purpose of going to Muar and the real purpose the Client wants to tag along. This is about eating that King of Fruit, the mighty Durian which Muar has in abundance.

Now I could go on about the durian's creamy textured meat somewhat similar to a pudding but firmer, or it's arresting smell that has been described in terms of skunk spray to liquid petroleum gas. Or I could talk about the rich flavor when you first pop one of the mushy yet firm meaty seeds into your mouth, I could do all of that but Wikipedia does a pretty fine job of it. For example on the smell here's what wiki had to say:

British novelist Anthony Burgess writes that eating durian is "like eating sweet raspberry blancmange in the lavatory. Chef Andrew Zimmern compares the taste to "completely rotten, mushy onions. Anthony Bourdain, while a lover of durian, relates his encounter with the fruit as thus: "Its taste can only be described as...indescribable, something you will either love or despise. ...Your breath will smell as if you'd been French-kissing your dead grandmother. Travel and food writer Richard Sterling says “ ... its odor is best described as pig-sh*t, turpentine and onions, garnished with a gym sock.

The joys of eating durian extend beyond the love it or hate it taste (I happen to love it) It extends beyond the status of King granted to this fruit (along with a price for such royal recognition). It is a food enjoyed in part to the fellowship of a group of people that share the common love of sitting around a fly invested area eating pig poop smelling custard meat out of a prickly shell so sharp it will draw blood out of your pasty covered fingers unless you know what you're doing or wearing a gloves... and those kind of people are pretty cool!


Durians grow on trees. When they get tired of hanging on they let go and fall to the ground with a loud thud. That's when they're best eaten.


This is a durian stall. It reeks of durian and people eating durian.


Durians come with all kinds of exotic names like 'Wildcat', 'Red Prawn', 'D24', 'D101', etc... they all taste slightly different.


This is the fleshy insides of a durian... before the flies smell it.

Things That Go Eeeep in the Night.

Eeep…. eeeep… that’s what she heard while having dinner last night. My daughter claimed earlier while I was helping myself to some more chicken curry that she kept hearing a noise. “There, did you hear it?” she asked while looking concerned and worried toward the couch. Her spoon was slow to shovel as she kept an ear pointed toward the living area. Eeep… eeeep. I heard it that time but thought it came from the curtain. “It’s just a lizard or small gecko now eat your vegetables”. But my explanation did not whet her appetite. Eeep…. eeeep. Her head quickly whipped around to the living area again, her eyebrows squinched. “It’s probably just the light” said my wife.

After dinner I went upstairs while my daughter stayed at the table to do her homework. “Mom, I saw it. It’s a big bug!”. Then later affirming the daughter’s observation, “oh yeah, I saw it too”. Well now I was curious.

Walking down the stairs I asked if they saw where the sound was coming from. “I think it’s a dragonfly right under the edge of the small couch” my wife said pointinig. I was about to stick my hand under there and grab it when a sudden thought occurred to me, dragonflies don’t go eeeep, eeeep. I got down on my knees and raised the flap of the couch and stared into the small beady eyes of a bat, black and leathery. Eeeep… eeeep it told me.

I whispered to my wife that it was a bat. My daughter thought I said rat and jumped up on the chair squealing. Then I told my wife that I would drag the couch outside so it could fly away. “What? What did you say? Rats don’t fly”, shouted my daughter.

After getting the couch out the front door and flipping it slowly on its back, the baby bat stretched its winged stick legs and started crawling along the edge of the couch shouting eeeep… eeeeep. I put the bat in a small plastic container and poured it out on top of our mailbox. I stood and watched as it eeeeped and crawled around then drug itself to the edge of the box and jumped… gliding down gracefully on to my pants. As I danced the jig and sang the tune of ‘uh, uh, uh’ a black shadow shot out of the evening sky and whizzed by my head. I jumped back and saw the little bat crawling on our driveway. The zipping shadow was an older bat diving and circling the baby. I can’t say for sure whether it was the baby’s mother because I know nothing about the family life of bats, but the older bat guided the young one into the neighbor’s yard.

Back inside, I sat on the couch and began reading my book. My wife was at the table skimming the headlines, my daughter was taking her shower and the bats were outside doing bat things where they belong. Scritch… scriiiitch… “did you hear that?”, asked my wife. “Yeah, it was probably the light”.