You know urine China....

Last weekend we flew to Hong Kong and back on another of our monthly visa runs. It had all the makings of a smooth, non-eventful trip. After Brian's traumatized retelling of this story, I actually regret sleeping through it! Leave it to China to make an ordinary moment absolutely unforgettable at the drop of a hat, er, cup. Take it away Bri....

On the flight back to Shanghai we were seated behind roughly 4-year old twins, their mom, and grandparents. The disinterested father was across the aisle from me. Mid-diaper change, one of the girls announced she had to go to the bathroom. So rather than slapping the old diaper back between her legs and hustling to the loo, grandma stands her up on her lap, and has her pee in to the cup from dinner service. Talk about having blind faith in the aim of a 4-year old! Can you imagine being the flight attendant on the receiving end of that cup on your next garbage run down the aisle? No? Not to worry, you don’t have to, because as Grandma stands up and goes to walk it back to the flight attendant, she bumps into her seat and spills it....on the father sitting across from me! Poor dad, who was just minding his own business, valiantly ignoring his kids, trying to enjoy a book during a fleeting moment of silence when they aren’t flying through the air jumping seat to seat, and he’s interrupted by a cup of pee dumped in his lap! (Leslie bets the disgruntled mom probably pushed the grandma in his direction!)  Amazingly, he just casually brushed a few not yet absorbed droplets off his pants and went back to reading as if he didn't even realize what had just been poured all over him. Be assured, had the cup landed in MY lap, there would have been a significantly different reaction!

P.S. To Gerard Depardieu: you're most welcome. We bequeath this oui oui tall tale to you and look forward to your attempts to use it as a plausible cover story the next time you fly.

P.P.S. Two weeks ago, I would have laughed at this. Now it just makes me cringe.

One Year Ago:

Thanks Dad! 

The three B's

With apologies to Bach, Beethoven, and Brahms, today I'm handing the blog over to Brian, blocks and ballast tanks.....

Every few days I accompany one of the inspectors on their block inspections (ships are built in pieces or “blocks” which, once completed are assembled on a slipway).  This day was one such day. A little after noon, just as the thermometer was cresting 95, we got geared up and headed out to inspect a part of the ship I had yet to visit--the ballast tanks.  All you need know about ballast tanks is that there’s some very confined spaces deep in the bowels of any ship, to which I was now being introduced.

To access these blocks you have to be part monkey, part Olympic gymnast. They are up on steel support trusses, about 6 feet off the ground, typically with no ladders to be found. So you find what you can and make a little pile of junk on the ground under the block to get you high enough to reach the first rung of the scaffolding, (which is hanging precariously off the block and you pray that when you grab it the entire structure doesn't collapse because from what you see it shouldn't be standing at all).  Amazed when it doesn’t collapse, you swing your foot backwards to catch the block above and behind your head, push off of that while releasing your grip on the first rung and fling your arms out for the 3^rd rung which is JUST high enough to allow you to get your feet onto the first rung and start climbing up the scaffolding as if it were a ladder.

Alternatively, on the occasions you're miraculously able to find a ladder, you then have to deal with ship yard workers playing the part of the movable staircases from Harry Potter, pulling ladders around randomly wherever and whenever they want, with no regard for who may be trapped by this action.  I don’t know how many times I’ve found myself trapped at the top of a block I’ve JUST climbed because some helpful soul decided to move the ladders I had used to gain the summit to some other block.  Did Sir Edmund Hillary have to deal with such tactics in his day?

So somehow we make it to the top of the block. Now using a mixture of scaffolding and reinforcing beams, we’re faced with a 4 story climb down to what will become the bottom of the ship. Once at the bottom, you get down on your hands and knees, and somehow find a way to fit through a tiny circular opening about halfway up a wall to get into the ballast tank.  The opening appears to be about half as wide as I am and leads to a pitch black compartment about 10 feet wide by 10 feet long, and about 4 feet high with reinforcing beams on the floor and ceiling running the length of the compartment and spaced every 3 feet or so.

To make it even more fun, this block was sitting out in the sun so the metal which we were standing and crawling on was piping hot, and workers were welding and grinding above our heads. So from a crawling position, I reached my arms then torso through this tiny opening, place my hands down on the other side shimy, shimy, shimy, and finally squeeze through onto the other side.

Once through, I moved aside for one of the Chinese quality control inspectors, who had his own method of getting through.  Put one foot through, duck your head through, then simply step over to the other side!  They are SO small!  He laughed at my surprise and told me tai da le (too big).  Once inside this room the fun had only just begun: this was only the first of about 30 sections of the ballast tanks, all connected in a strange sort of labyrinth of rooms and each needed to be inspected.

"A Visit to the Dentist" by Brian DeRoche

I was walking back from lunch, watching all the locals bed down on the lawn and under the trees for their noontime nap, envious that I was faced with another 5 hours of work without hope of sleep, when I saw something that caught my eye.  There at the entrance to the electrical shop were two workers welding some small object.  Welding is an everyday occurrence here in the yard so that didn’t seem at all out of place, but what caught my eye was it appeared as though the small object they were working on was a pair of pliers.  So I walked over for a closer look, thinking to myself, “This has got to be my first glimpse of Chinese humor…  They’re welding shut their buddy's pliers as a practical joke!”  If only that were the case. Instead what I found may very well have scarred me for life.  They were heating the pliers up (an attempt, I believe, to sanitize them) before one used them to pull a molar out of the mouth of the other!  OUCH!!!  At least it simultaneously cauterized the new hole in his head.

An op ed by Brian on Chinese driving

The driving here is INSANE!  Pedestrians, bikes, scooters, buses, motorized bicycles and cars attempt to share the road but there are absolutely no rules. Red light? Just ride your scooter diagonally through the intersection. U-turn across 4 lanes of traffic? Why not? If you come to a traffic jam and the oncoming lane is free what do you do?  Go into the oncoming lane to pass it!  Does it matter if there’s a mile worth of traffic?  Nah, just keep going, dodging oncoming cars as you go!  What if there’s traffic in that lane too?  Well just go down the bike lane, they’ll move and if they don’t, well, you’re not responsible, you were avoiding traffic!  Pedestrians crossing the road slowing you down?  Not a problem, just honk your horn to give them fair warning that you’re coming through and then dodge them as come…  and best of all (they need to bring this to Boston), no on street parking?  No PROBLEM!  Just drive up onto the sidewalk, back right up to the door of the store where you want to go, and park.

After watching this from the back of cabs and shuttle busses on countless white knuckle rides, I was paranoid to cross ANY street or even walk more than like 2 feet from any wall (since I hoped cars didn’t drive through them too). Wandering through the park near the hotel, I came to a HUGE 4 way intersection with at least 8 lanes to cross in any direction and what do I see on the other side?  A mother walks with her 6 or 7 year-old son (she’s walking, he’s ahead skipping) to the corner of this giant intersection and then sort of waves him off and just walks off as he skips through the intersection, not a care for the cars weaving their way by him! 

He made it safely across.

I went back to the hotel to get a clean pair of pants!