Kevsther's Wedding Prep

On April Fools day, Esther and I decided on and announced our wedding date. We called her family so they could begin the arrangements, and we told a very small group of my friends who i asked to represent my side of the family. As much as i wanted to invite 40 of my closest friends to the wedding, the logistics would be a nightmare. We had decided on April 30th because it was a holiday weekend, which carry with it pros and cons. On the plus side, we could have the wedding on a Monday since Tuesday was also a holiday. On the other hand, the holiday meant that trains and hotels would be really difficult to secure. In the end, only 5 friends from Beijing came down: Joe, Jim, Alex, Nina, and Amy. But that's a story for my next post.

In the next three weeks, Esther and i prepared what we could in Beijing, like wedding gifts for our guests, her wedding dress, my Marriageability Affidavit from the embassy (Do you swear you are not already married? Yes, of course. Ok, that'll be $50.), my ring, and logistics for how we wanted to run the actual wedding.

Esther was the calmest bride-to-be i could ever imagine. She was wonderful. One day we were out and saw a store selling wedding dresses. One hour later, we had bought one. At one point we learned we would need an MC for the wedding, someone to stand on-stage with a mic, introduce us and keep people entertained. Jim agreed without hesitation.

Her mom was great too, helping to sort out invitations and book a banquet hall. There was a lot to get figured out, of course, but everything just seemed to fall into place without much trouble.

Esther and i spent the week before the wedding in Xiaoshan taking care of any last-minute preparations. But really, there wasn't much to do. On Monday, we spent about an hour at the banquet hall/hotel, which is within walking distance of their home. On Wednesday, Esther and I went to Hangzhou to register, which meant we were officially married, but it was so anti-climatic we didn't really feel married until the actual wedding. We had to fill out some basic information about each other, education level, occupation, date of birth, etc, and read it aloud to each other. It felt like reading out the ingredients to a recipe. True story: on the marriage form where it asks for your current status, the options are "Divorced, Widowed, or Spinsterhood."

We wanted wedding photos, but we didn't plan far enough in advance. In China, you take your wedding photos weeks or months before the wedding, on a day when the weather is perfect. Not doing it was our one regret leading into those final days, so we decided to call a local place, cuz, y'know, it never hurts to ask. Amazingly, they had only one slot available due to a cancelation but we had to go the next day, Thursday.

... and I am so happy we did. All together, we had 5 different changes of clothing, over 10 hours, in 15 different scenes. They had a huge wardrobe of clothes to select outfits from, and 20 different set designs for backdrops. They gave Esther a different hairstyle for each clothing change. They took us out to a beautiful lake nearby to take some outdoor shots as well.

The whole experience was pretty entertaining too. The workers are used to seeing unenthusiastic and dull guys. I show up, a foreigner speaking pretty decent Chinese (and even a few words in their local dialect), picking out my own clothing and joking around. We turned their somber operation into a lively place for that day. They loved us.

Here, for your viewing pleasure, are our favorite of the 180 they gave us. Enjoy!

Yeah. There won't be a day in my life when i will regret taking these photos.

~Kev

Beijing Cream

Anthony "Toni" Tao recently started a blog called Beijing Cream.  Check it out, it's pretty damn good.

I gave him my first contribution this weekend, in the form of a restaurant review.  Tao likes swearing, so i added a few in my review.

I went to two tournaments in the last three weekends, and Shanghai won both of them.  Both tournaments did nothing to help our rivalry with Shanghai, and if anything, it greatly intensified it.  At Ningbo, we only had 8 players in the finals against them, since three of our player left early to catch a train.  Shanghai would not let us pick up even one player to try to compensate a little for the players we lost, so we played with 6 guys and 2 girls, and one of our girls was injured.  They won easily.

Then this weekend at Nanjing, Shanghai was the team short-handed.  This time however, they picked up two of the best players at the tournament halfway through day one.  When we played them on day 2, they even had more players than us... 12 to our 11.  We lost 8-7 on universe point.

Does this seem fair to anyone?  Shanghai likes to bend the rules to their favor whenever they can, and we were not pleased at all.

In other news, Esther and I are now in Xiao Shan, making the final preparations for our wedding on April 30th.  Wish us luck!

~Kev

Koh Kood

We met up with Aiyesha and Reid at the bus station, and caught a bus to Trat, a gateway city for travelers preparing to cross into Cambodia. We had to spend the night there. There's not much to the city, but it's pleasant enough, fine for one evening. We still hadn't decided between Koh Chang or Koh Kood, two islands (koh, in Thai) nearby. On the one hand, Koh Chang is Thailand's second largest island, a very popular destination for travelers with plenty of things to do and all night raging parties on the beach. On the other hand, Koh Kood is the escape from the party life, where you go to have a beach all to yourself, be lazy and relax in your own quiet paradise. The next morning we took a boat to Koh Kood.

Koh Kood turned out to be the perfect spot for us. Esther and i had just gotten engaged, and the other two had just been on a three-week whirlwind trip of asia with their professors and classmates. We all craved someplace easy. We found some simple and cheap ($22/night) bungalows on the beach, no neighbors, and little huts with hammocks for our private use. It was pretty ideal.

With 5 days of relaxing, the days all run together. I know we rented mopeds, kayaked, went scuba diving, played frisbee and farkle, read books, ate, laughed, drank, relaxed, and slept. I would have no idea when we did what without the pictures on my camera keeping a record, but the chronology of it all isn't so important anyway.

This pictorial menu was pretty great, as is the poster hanging to the right. Both raise some important questions to consider.

--Are those people drowning?  

--Why are some people high-fiving?  

--Why is there a monk standing in the middle?  

--Why is the only guy that's not being saved also the happiest?  

--Is it really that hard to draw a chicken?

The first full day esther and i rented a moped and checked out the southern end of the island. Our first stop was the quaint fishing village of Ban Ao Yai, population 100 or so, all the houses floating on stilts. There wasn't much to see, but we took our time anyway, walking every path we found.

We rented mopeds and explored north. Most notable was another quiet little town, a Buddhist temple where young boys were doing manual labor, and the Klong Chao Waterfall. Technically, there was water falling at the waterfall, but the cliff jumping turned out to be the best part anyway.

That was our serious pose. Happy poses come out blurry.

My favorite evening spot was at the end of a pier jutting out into the bay, far from the reaches of mosquitos. Out there, even at night, the water was still warm because it was only 5 feet deep. The overhead lights penetrated straight to the sea floor and you could clearly see the night creatures swimming around. I saw a few pufferfish, an eel, and some cuttlefish. I could have sat there for hours.

~Kev