Michelle and I took the boys to Tankfest at the Flying Heritage Collection museum in Everett today. The FHC is a collection of World War II aircraft collected by Paul Allen (who has way more fun with his money than BillG does, IMHO). I love these old warbirds, and the fact that many of them are flyable is even more exciting.

Anyway, to celebrate Memorial Day, they were hosting Tankfest where local collectors brought their armor and other weapons in. They had three tanks - A Russian T-34/85, a German Jagdpanzer 38(t) Hetzer, and a more modern British FV101 Scorpion - plus big artillery (including a few German 88s) and jeeps, half-tracks, and other cool WWII era stuff. They were driving the vehicles around and did a little shooting (blanks, of course) as well.

The Jagdpanzer and T-34

.30 cal machine gun on a half-track

Taking aim on a 20mm anti-aircraft gun

Andrew (13) manhandling a bazooka

WWII era radio set in the back of a Jeep

 

As I mentioned I love old warbirds, so it was exciting to see the planes too.

P-40 Tomahawk in Flying Tigers livery

Warning by the cockpit of a Hawker Hurricane

 

I'm looking forward to going back on their flight days to see some of the planes in the air. They have "Mustang Day" coming on up June 4 and especially exciting is the debut of their FW-190 on June 18. This is the only flying FW-190 with the original engine left in the world. You can find their Free Fly Days schedule here.

This week I’m back in Beijing for the first time since we moved back to the US. It just so happens that I walked past the Apple Store in the posh Sanlitun Village shopping mall last night, the night of the iPad2 availability in China. There was a huge line at least 100+ people deep sitting outside the store. Inside, there were big curtains up so people couldn’t see into the store. Here’s the end of the line. The big white circle of light at the top is actually the Apple logo. The line extends under that sign and around the corner to the left.

It's been a little over two years since the epic 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing. Of course, after the Games, there's the question of what to do with everything that they built for the Olympics. Some things have been repurposed; for instance the Water Cube (where Michael Phelps broke all those swimming records) reopened this year as a water park. They're still figuring out what to do with the stunning Birds Nest Stadium since there aren't any professional sports teams in Beijing that could fill the place.

And, then some things, people have just discarded. This Olympic sign was hanging on an overpass near our apartment complex. The management just tossed it to the side by an old truck now that it's not useful anymore. Kind of sad.

After my trip to India, I met up with Michelle and the boys in Thailand for a vacation during the National Holiday in China. We went with our friends John and Ann out to Amphawa to see the floating market there. This is a quiet town around 90 minutes from Bangkok where city folks come for a good seafood meal. Most of the tourists there seemed to be Thai.

The streets were pretty crowded with vendors; since it had been raining pretty hard, they were hiding under big umbrellas.

The main "drag" was a river with shops along both banks.

In some parts of the river, restaurateurs in boats cooked and served up meals in little boats, with their patrons sitting on the docks eating.

Grilled seafood was a popular dish.

Phad Thai was also very popular, including this beautiful variant with squid ink noodles.

Since our party was pretty big, we ate in a restaurant and feasted on local delights. I'm still full just thinking about it.

Long-tail boats cruise the waterways. These are long, slender boats with huge engines mounted out of the water and the driveshaft and propeller extending directly from the engine into the water. To steer, the skipper pivots the entire engine. Here's the lovely bow of one boat.

Here's the pretty purposeful looking working end of the boat.

In the evening, we took a long-tail boat ride around the river to see the fireflies. There were zillions (I counted) of fireflies in the trees around the river. There were so many fireflies that at some points the trees looked like they had Christmas lights in them. The fireflies even blink in some rhythm, further emphasizing their Christmas-light-osity. It was pretty amazing and lovely.

During my brief visit to Hyderabad, India, in addition to my visit to Golkonda Fort, I spun around town a bit, seeing both the new and old parts of Hyderabad.

The Charminar - a famous mosque in the center of the old part of Hyderabad.

Hyderabad has a large Muslim population including the most women I've seen in full burqas.

The streets were as chaotic as any I've seen anywhere, with motorcycles, scooters, and the ubiquitous yellow "auto rickshaws" darting in and out of traffic. Somewhat surprising to me, there were almost no automobile taxis to be seen. Auto rickshaws dominate the trade. You need to call a taxi to get one apparently.

Of course, Hyderabad is an exciting tech hub with a vibrant new economy as well. Google is hiring aggressively here.

Here's the very nice Microsoft campus in Hyderabad. It's much bigger and nicer than our facility in Beijing.

Perhaps this is a very telling view of modern India. This is a fancy shopping mall in Hyderabad, easily as nice as most any mall anywhere in the world. It was covered in netting, however, to keep people from throwing rocks at it. I'm not sure if the netting is always there or was put up especially because the ruling to the controversial Muslim-Hindu Ayodha debate occurred during my visit. All of India was on alert for unrest as the ruling approached; A few examples included Microsoft sending their employees home early, officials closed schools, and police blocked off the old (mostly Muslim) part of Hyderabad from the rest of town with barbed wire. Fortunately, there was very little trouble after the split ruling.

India, like China, is a complex place with a diverse and huge population, a long and rich history, and a fast-growing future. The mix of these things will continue to stretch the capacity, imagination, and patience of their leadership and population. Hopefully, they'll manage it well.

After many years of really wanting to visit India, I finally made it last week for a very short business trip to Hyderabad. Fortunately, I had one day to explore the city before heading out. Even more fortunately, Saurabh, one of my colleagues from our team in Hyderabad, graciously agreed to show me around his city.

Apparently, the key site everyone sees in Hyderabad is Golkonda Fort. This was really a fortified city built starting in the 13th century by a Muslim kingdom. The kingdom was apparently wealthy, with diamond mines in the area; the Hope Diamond came from mines in this region.

The site is pretty impressive still with a keep/palace on the top of the hill and a large village below. The outer wall encompasses a large area where some 40,000 people lived. The engineering was impressive as well. Hand claps at the gates can be heard at the keep on the top of the hill almost a kilometer away, facilitating communication. Water was pumped up throughout the complex, and there were several large covered cisterns to provide water during a siege. They also managed the airflow to keep cool breezes moving throughout the fort. Even in its current degraded condition, the fort is pretty amazing and worth checking out.

The keep from the village below.
    

The village as seen from the keep:

The ornate carvings at the front gate:

The barracks area:

Beautiful alcoves in the village:

I went with my friends Imran and Misha today to a Canon expo at the 798 Art District. This was a free event put on by Canon to showcase some of their new products like the EOS 60D and 300mm f2/8L IS II lens.

The event was in an old water or oil tank. The space was actually pretty cool.

Inside, they had a almost their whole line-up of gear to lust over.

One of the nice freebies they offered was sensor and lens cleaning. Through this process, I learned my beloved (but battered) 70-200 2.8L lens has some moisture residue inside and the barrel is loose. Time for a repair.

Around the edges they had set up mini-studios with their gear to shoot plus models in different environments to shoot in. In the middle they were printing peoples' photos on the various Canon printers. They also had a stage for presentations and a little theater to show movies shot with the Canon DSLRs.

Unfortunately, I think the models were a bit bored and let it show.

Still, the event was fun and worth every penny. :) I really appreciate Canon putting these kinds of events on to let the community try stuff out.

Last week, the senior leaders on my team at work and I went offsite for two days to discuss our future plans. After staying for an evening at the lovely Commune by the Great Wall (super cool resort -- worth checking out their site), we went to Longqing Xia for some "hiking" (really a ton of stair-climbing). This lovely gorge is about fifty miles north of Beijing, past the Great Wall at Badaling. The mountains rise up almost straight up from a beautiful (and clean!) lake formed by a big dam.

For some reason I still don't understand, instead of taking the gondolas halfway up the mountain before starting our climb to the top, we elected to hike up from the bottom. You can see how far the gondolas go up here.

We just kept climbing up and up the stairs. I was dying most of the time. Not only was I really out of shape, but I was also carrying a big camera bag full of gear including my big 70-200 2.8L lens. Still the view at the top was worth it.

Here's are me and my colleagues at the top.

As you may be able to tell from the photos, we had a beautiful day for our outing. It was a little warm but not bad for Beijing, and the air quality was good since we were outside of the city. My only regret was not getting a chance to take a boat ride down the lake. I hope to go back soon to do that with my family.

Longqing is also the home to a winter ice festival (like a mini-version of the one in Harbin). We went to this festival last winter (although I was too lazy to blog about it then...)

I thought this shot from our Whidbey trip was a great one photo summary of my ideal afternoon.

We have these lovely blossoms growing in front of my team's building in Beijing (it's called the Sigma Building). Nice that nature found a way to brighten up normally dreary Beijing.