Back in the U.S.A.

In a departure from the normal topic of China, this time I’ll share a few pictures from my recent trip back to the US. I took the direct flight from Beijing to Seattle on Hainan Airlines, which saves a lot of time compared to even the Air Canada route via Vancouver.

The first few days I was home, the weather was reasonable. Here’s a clear day view from our front deck.
I promise if you look really closely you can see a bit of water between the trees. That’s something you can’t get in Beijing (and I’ll leave it to the reader to decide whether I mean the water or the blue sky).

This is a cat named Baby.
She is not a skinny cat.
No, the cat in the picture above her is not her, but another cat with a strong resemblance.

When she gets a chance, she likes to hang out in the yard.
Speaking of the yard, there were a few dahlia stragglers still in bloom.
And speaking of cats, here’s the other one, generally called Pele.
Here’s one of the parts of the house in Seattle that I miss:

Another highlight of the trip was seeing Sam Phillips at the Triple Door. This is a really nice club in Seattle where they unfortunately keep the lighting really low.
She is one of my favorite singer/songwriters, with a wonderful expressive voice.
She’s a pretty good guitarist too, and plays both acoustic and electric. And in case you’re wondering, that other instrument is a Stroh violin.

Her drummer also used uncommon instruments.
Here he’s holding a drum in one hand and hitting it against his leg while he plays a cymbal with his other hand. He also had a tambourine strapped to his ankle and a table full of various objects to hit and shake.

One of the fun things she did was for the song “Animals on Wheels.”
She was accompanied by a piano recorded on a microcassette which she held up to the microphone.

And all too soon, the stay in Seattle was over (though I’ll admit to being tired of the rain), and it was time to return to Beijing.

Here’s a rugged part of Siberia we flew over.
Here in Beijing, winter has definitely started its inquiries, and will soon be moving in. After a couple of cold nights, I got my heat turned on, so all is fine now at home.

While I was away, those of my coworkers who are still with the company moved into a temporary office space at The Place, which I’ve written about before:
At the moment, we’re all on folding tables crammed into one room.
That picture was taken with my BlueBerry, so excuse the quality.

Sometime next month our permanent office should be ready. It’s also at The Place, in one of the other towers.