I will have a new home in the blogosphere for a while – please come visit me @ http://manninchina.blogspot.com/

I have forwarded mannthoughts.com & manninchina.com over there too…

this is a pain

OK, I’m now in China beginning the one year journey. I arrived here on 17 August, just now got the internet hooked up at my apartment.

I am having some serious connection issues with my yahoo domains, so can’t blog…troubleshooting tonight.

On top of that, I just tried to hook up my wireless router and the damn thing shorted out 20 seconds after I plugged it in, GREAT!

Other than that, things are going well. I’ve got a lot to do, a lot to learn and a lot to see…just wish there was a lot more time to do it all.

New blogs to be launched later this week … www.mannthoughts.com & www.manninchina.com … the postings on wordpress hosted mannthoughts will come to a hault (due to “network issues” in China).

Stay tuned (all of the 4 people who read this blog)… I promise to get started again very soon.

On to the next chapter of…

Say one great thing, and you can become “popular” in the blogosphere (as an individual, of course…corporate blogs are a whole other ball of wax.)? I wonder if I’ll ever post that one great thing and make the dashboard of wordpress?….I don’t really care either way (but yeah, it would be cool)… I blog to blog…trying to write more, keep track of things I do, put my thoughts out there…maybe some people will share similar thoughts or have some good input. Maybe it will help my communication skills.

I’m not that familar with all of the “popular” blogs out there, but the only one that I’ve seen that has a lot of useful information is lifehacker. OK, it’s really not a ton of useful information, but they have some cool stuff everytime I look at it.

As for the rest of the blogs I read, they are mostly people I know. People I trust, people I like to listen to. People that I want to “see what they’ll say next.” I imagine that’s why most people read blogs.

Maybe it’s just that I don’t fully understand the blogosphere yet. More communication, more open thoughts, more feedback, more connections…yes, I get all that and think it’s great, but…how do you get people obsessed with it? And, is that a good thing?

Clothes. Books. DVDs. Pictures (so I don’t forget home). Wireless router/Vonage. Personal items. Shoes/sneakers. What else do I need?

I thought about bringing some food…”American food,” but I have to imagine that I can find “Western” types of food in China. I have heard that they have western type stores there, stupid me never went to check that stuff out last time I was there. I’ll be living off of rice & noodles.

Well, I guess if I forget anything, I’ll either have it shipped to me or I’ll try to find it in China or elsewhere as I travel around.

What’s on the agenda for tomorrow:

Close deal on Jeep

Bank

Stop into work for a meeting & say goodbye

Mail out some last minute stuff

More packing

Dinner w/ Aunt/Uncle & cousins in Raleigh

Maybe a couple last minute beers with some friends

More packing

Stay up all night so I sleep most of the way to Beijing

Heading to my last hockey game in the States tonight…playoff time & I can’t play (since I only played one game this season). So, I’ll be there giving the guys a hard time, then a few beers in the parking lot.

The nervousness is kicking in, kind of a weird feeling. But, I can’t wait for this adventure to begin, it’s going to be one hell of a ride.

I wouldn’t say I watch a ton of TV, but would like the comfort of “American TV” while I’m in China over the next year. I’ll mostly use it to watch sports…hockey, football, etc…. I’ve just finished installing it and the software on my ThinkPad. Works awesome! It actually wasn’t very difficult to setup.

The performance is fantastic, but of course it would be from the same household as the Slingbox is in. How will it be 7000 miles away? I guess I’ll find out very soon, about 3 days to be exact. I really hope the speed and picture are somewhat good quality from there. I’m also hoping I can easily hook up my ThinkPad to the TV at my apartment via S video and audio cables…should work just fine. To add to the slowness of the sling, I’ll be using a wireless router in my apartment. Please work.

Multimedia message

Originally uploaded by MJM80.

Last night I helped a friend of mine “move.” He hasn’t actually moved to his new house yet, just moved the bulk of his/his wife’s stuff into a POD (PODS = Portable On Demand Storage). This is a great business. Call them up, set a date, they deliver the POD on a cool truck, position it wherever you want and they’re off, leaving the POD for you to fill.

When you’re done, call them up, they’ll pick it up for you and either A) deliver it to your new location or B) store it in their temperature controlled warehouse for as long as you’d like. When you’re ready for your stuff to make it to your new location, they’ll pull the POD and bring it right over.

They signed up for two months of storage…for delivery, pickup, storage and then final delivery, it comes to about $500. That’s for the biggest POD (18×8 I believe).

I wish I could send a POD over to China with my stuff (not that I’m bringing all that much with me). But, to be able to throw your stuff in there, from your driveway and have it delivered to your next drive way, can’t beat it.

The feeling I have now is that excited, hesitant feeling. What I mean is…I know I’m going to enjoy and learn a ton in my year in China, but, I have that feeling of not being ready. Not really sure I fully understand what I’m getting myself into. I think that will make the experience even more special though…I don’t know what’s going to happen. I know what my goals are for work and am ready to go above and beyond to acheive them. But 1 year in China???

I am truly excited though. It’s a great opportunity and I’m going to take advantage of every second of it.

I have decided that I’ll use another blog to track my experience in China. www.manninchina.com is the domain you can find me at. I’ll continue to use mannthoughts for other random things, but I decided it would be best to have a blog dedicated to China.

Exciting times are ahead…now I just have to get all of the packing and other crap that goes along with leaving your home country for one year behind me.

Here’s one taken by my digital camera in St. Louis last month…it’s kind of dark, but you can still see most.

The Beijing International Marathon is one of the top marathons in the world. Since I’m going to be there, I really want to participate in it, even if for only ~ a quarter of the race, I think the experience will be great.

I’ll be posting my running progress as I get going.