Chris Drumgoole

It’s Friday and this photo sums up this past week quite nicely…

This is a public toilet in Ritan park, Beijing. It is comforting to note they are rating toilets like hotels. I wonder what a 5 star toilet looks like…

IMG_0428Originally uploaded by chrisdrum.

Over the weekend, Melanie and I hosted some friends for a 3-way. No, not *that* “3-way” you dirty person… A “3 reasons to have a party” party!

1. It was my Birthday!
2. Melanie and I finally want to have a housewarming party!
3. I have promised many of my friends for a few years now to host Thanksgiving dinner.

So, here are the pics! (um… click on the dang picture to the right to go to the Flickr photo set!)

Melanie and I are finally in Baltimore. We arrived a day late, but safely.

The original route was Beijing to Tokyo to Detroit to Baltimore. We were supposed to arrive in Baltimore on Dec. 22nd early evening, but we had issues on the first leg when we couldn’t land in Narita, Tokyo due to strong gusts of wind. Long story short, we were 3 hours late landing, missed our Detroit connecting flight and had to spend the night in Narita (small city in sub-burbs of Tokyo, where the airport is).

What the heck?! [CNN](http://www.cnn.com) is running a story about a [mother giving birth to her 16th child](http://edition.cnn.com/2005/HEALTH/parenting/10/12/sixteen.kids.ap/index.html). 16 Children. And she wants more!! This is just plain WRONG and the woman and huspand should be shot.

I am having trouble even seeing me with 1!! The family could start their own sweat shop. I hear labor in Arkansas is cheap.

Morning Traffic

Originally uploaded by chrisdrum.

This is what I go through every morning on my way to work. Intersections like this, there there is no left-turn lane. We get green, the guys waiting to turn left bolt, sometimes getting through before the oncoming traffic gets there; sometimes not. Sometimes it is quite comical. Other times (when you are involved), it gets on your nerves!

Note: These guys aren’t moving in the picture… They don’t know what to do!!

Sorry I have been neglecting the website lately… been really busy at work - which I guess is good in some sences.

**Brief news**
- I have an electrical short somewhere in my apartment, which renders about half of my outlets useless until i can find the time to sit and watch the repair man locate it. They claim it will take 2 hours. We’ll see.
- My new toys are running well (that is, when I have power in the house, so, yes, the [Apple](http://www.apple.com) [Airport Express](http://www.apple.com/airportexpress/) isn’t functioning at the moment). But the [iPod Photo](http://www.apple.com/ipodphoto) is nice. Don’t really use the photos portion of it, although I have all my photos on it. The neat feature, though, is the ability to have album art for the songs. I am not yet regretting not getting the 60gig model. Maybe some day.
- Started reading a book called [Mr. Nice](http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/1841953199/qid=1106013483/sr=1-2/ref=sr_1_2/002-1408560-7691256?v=glance&s=books). Kind of a cool story of international drug smuggling.

Ok, thats it for now.