6/9/2013: Slow Recovery

I left for China on Wednesday, May 29th, at 4:30am (That is the time we left the house - my flight was at 6:30am to San Francisco, through Houston.) and got home on Wednesday, June 5th, at about 7:00pm.  It was a long and hard fought trip.  My typical work day started at around 5:30am and I wouldn't get back to my room until 10:30pm or later.  The early morning hours were spent doing my daily tasks for Castle Creations and responding to emails from our facility in Olathe.  The rest of the day was spent in pretty intense negotiations with our Chinese partners who co-own our Chinese factory.  The work day was never done at the end of the work day, because meetings would go from the conference room to the dinner table to the night club.  It was an absolutely exhausting week.  It didn't help that the last night I was there we ended up going out to a karaoke club called KTV.  Karaoke in  China is not like karaoke in the US.  In China, you rent a private room with your own sound system and karaoke machine.  You order beers by the dozen and they are brought to you in iced down buckets.  The furniture is a U-shaped couch around a coffee table, facing the big screen TV.  Everyone sings, everyone drinks, and everyone gets a little silly.  We also played a Chinese bar game called Liars' Dice.  It's a ton of fun when you have a big group of people.  I need to teach it to my friends here in the States.  Our GM officially resigned on Tuesday, so Tuesday evening at KTV was his going away party.  The night got later and later, as we talked and talked, and before I knew it, it was 3:00am and I had to leave my hotel at 6:15am.  I think I got about 2 hours of sleep Wednesday morning before getting up to take a cab to the ferry, which took me to the Hong Kong Airport.  I flew from Hong Kong to San Francisco (13 hour flight), and from there to Kansas City.   I slept in a little on Thursday morning, but I was at work by 10:30am and worked until 8:00pm, then I put in another 10 hour day Friday.  Needless to say, I spent the weekend recovering.  I even took a nap yesterday.  I never take naps.

I only exercised once during the whole week I was there.  One day we went sight seeing which involved walking about a lot of stairs to get to a Buddhist temple, but it wasn't really exercising.  I just did not have the time.  It felt strange to get home and feel completely out of it.  I ran Friday morning, yesterday Jack and I went for a nice walk, and today we went to the gym and lifted weights.  Today was the start of a new week and I plan on getting all of my exercise in this week.  On one hand I feel bad that I missed so much exercise last week.  On the other hand I feel like a had a nice respite and I am ready to hit it hard again.  I think this break might actually help me prevent burn-out.  I have been exercising very hard and very regularly for about 15 months, now.  It felt good to get back to the gym today.  I'm sure everything will be fine.

I need to count calories for a few weeks.  I gained a couple of pounds while I was in China.  There were meals where I had to choose between beef noodles and fish heads and I have to admit those beef noodles looked pretty darn good.  Normally I don't eat beef or wheat, but I could only eat so many fish heads before I got tired of picking bones out of my teeth.  So beef noodles it was.

One night we did have a great meal.  We went to a wholesale fish market where you pick your live seafood from the tanks.  You then carry your "catch" to the restaurant next door where they prepare it for you.  Here are some photos:

A small portion of the market.  Picture this times about 10

Sand worms, and yes I ate some.

Big fish

Typical shop

This just looked so Chinese...I had to take a picture

Big Shrimp, before

Cooked!

Fish, after.  There is a before video, below.

Shrimp, ready to eat

Shell fish, not sure what kind, but this was my favorite.

The gang.  The man with the child on his lap is Bill, our Chinese partner.  The man in the purple shirt is his friend, Richard.  The man in the red shirt is my boss, Patrick, of course, you know me.  Everyone else is Bill's family.

Just for fun, here is a video of part of our dinner before it was cooked:

And here is Bill, one of our Chinese partners, picking out some shell fish:

And here is the fish that you see cooked, above, going into the bag:

And just to round out this blog post, a few pictures of our sight seeing day to the temple:

Here are some of the steps we climbed

Colorful...

There were a lot of generals at the temple

Buddha

More generals

Me and my boss, Patrick

A park near the temple, this structure had an open air area and a restaurant in it.

The entrance to the park

All in all it was a successful trip.  We made a lot of progress with our partners and we made the decision to keep a Castle Creations manager in China until we get our new GM trained.  It looks like we have a new GM hired and that he will start on June 17th.  We are pleased with the results of this trip, but poor Patrick is still there and will be for a couple more weeks.  We will all be taking turns going to China until our new GM is settled in and fully functional.  We all believe it is the best thing for Castle Holdings and Castle Creations, but it's not going to be an easy few months.  It will be worth it in the long run, though!!