Airports Galore

Somehow putting the below with the earthquake update didn't seem right. So on to the more mundane things in the Liebat household…

KARL: I spent 3 days in Beijing this week. The Chinese airport is so funny: for everything that is almost liquid they take it out of bags and smell it. Then they randomly decide what you can keep and what must be thrown away. This time they decided that my hair stuff had to go. After 4 trips, this happened to be the time someone decided hair products could not go through. Unfortunately, airport negations have not been covered in my Chinese lessons. However, I practiced my Chinese with Driver Peter, and he understood about 95% of all the words I said. I can now also count to 900,000!
This week I also found out that they don't sell Benedryl in china. I went to the pharmacy and they finally gave me two drugs in the same family. The problem is that they don’t work! They had to get doctors ok for both but said I could have gone to a Chinese clinic and gotten both without doctors approval. How strange. This rash over my body has me missing the overpriced American health system.
We shipped our grill from the US since it was brand new. Too bad the Porsche couldn’t be shipped too. Anyway, the total cost for installation and 2 tanks is about $115US. Each tank refill will be US$13 – not a bad recurring revenue. The company also has air filters. We have one now – that’s about the size of Lila. The “gas tank, air filter” guy said we need another one given the size of our apartment. Although they cost thousands of dollars, it’s a small price to pay for clean air.

LILA: I spent 2 days in Taiwan this week, before heading to the US for my boss’ staff meeting. Unfortunately I ended up with massive stomach pains that killed ½ day of work and my shopping night.. I’m convinced it was the clean air. The weather was gorgeous – even hit 90s in Portland. The greens were beautifully green and there wasn’t a cloud in the sky! After a business dinner the next night I did squeeze in the Costco-Target run to pick up stuff. It was kind of wild driving, knowing my way around, and there’s nothing like terrible TV to make you appreciate American commercials. I did end the week very tired of airports after having gone through 11 airports (only 5 unique) this week. The worst part was the security and check-in lines at SFO were horrendous and my seat mates (had a middle bulkhead) kept invading my personal space. Very excited to be home in China!