Last night my wife and I put together our list of preferred jobs for my next assignment. Although I won’t leave Seoul until early 2007, I am eligible to bid early because I have enough Mandarin Chinese to qualify to bid. I would normally bid next February. For a variety of reasons, I decided to bid early. I feel confident that I will qualify for one of the nine assignments on our list. The finalists are Beijing, Chengdu, Shanghai, Hong Kong, and Guangzhou, in that order. There are multiple jobs in some locations. Most likely I will be heading to Guangzhou if I am chosen early for my next assignment. I would prefer to go to one of the other four locations, but I would be happy with any of these locations. If I am not chosen this time around, China assignments will certainly be at the top of my next bid list. I should find out in about a month whether I will be heading to China. I initially thought I was heading to China for this assignment, but I was given Seoul instead. I’ve always wanted to end up in China because I know Mandarin Chinese and know Chinese culture very well.
I am at home today with my son. He just went down for a nap. This morning we took mommy to work, and then we played on the swing set outside our house. Later after breakfast, I took him to the neighborhood playground. He played with a vengeance! I met a nice family with a young boy about the same age as our son. They played together for awhile and had a great time. When he looked tired and a close to sunburning, we headed home. On the way, we stopped by a neighbor’s house. They were having a tie-dye party, turning white T-shirts and other clothing into 1960’s-style psychedelia. I stayed to talk to a few friends while my son watched everyone tie-dye. The host gave him a Rice Krispy treat and some oversized sidewalk chalk. He had a grand old time drawing on the sidewalk (he loves to color coloring books with crayons).
Blog Notes: Apologies to Astros and White Sox fans everywhere for not having the confidence to think they could advance to the Major League Baseball championships. Congratulations! The Astros 18-inning marathon win over the Atlanta Braves was timeless. I have to root for the Astros to win it all because they are the only team never to have won a World Series…in 43 seasons.
When I told my friend from Taiwan about this blog, he was surprised. After talking awhile, we discovered that he had come upon it by accident. He had no idea I wrote it even after reading some of the entries! Fortunately, he had nothing but nice things to say about it. I guess I succeeded in being inconspicuous enough that even friends don’t know who I am.
This blog still averages about 2,000 hits per week and is now up to about 45,000 hits. Thank you! As always, I appreciate your patronage. Lately I haven’t had time to do long treatises on Korean culture, but I hope to have more soon.
i really enjoy reading your blogs…i came across it by chance when my msn today had a beautiful picture of some koreans wearing "hanboks"…it’s even a bigger surprise to see that you’re an UW alumni…just thought i’d let you know that it’s really interesting and well written…*2 thumbs up!*
I’ve been reading your blog since the start of your A-100 days. It’s the best coverage of the actual A-100 life as I’ve read online.Good luck with the bidding. I think Beijing would be a fabulous next post. If I get the call this spring (fingers crossed) then I wouldn’t mind getting Beijing. Two words: Olympics 2008.It’ll be insane there.