I just saw this article (off Digg) about China’s plans for their new green cities.  It sounds like the ideas of the Chinese Government got ahead of themselves a little in their planning. The article also makes mention of the fact that the plans are put in place without the input of the people who ultimately would be affected.

After just getting back from my trip to China I can saw that though these plans may have been scrapped, or are least put on hold there is still a tremendous amount of development occurring right now all over China.  China’s building spree for the 2008 Beijing Olympics commissioned several well-known international architectural firms to design new buildings.

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Finally, after almost a week of collecting, sorting, pruning and editing I have finally posted our main photo gallery for the vacation. 

I tried to pick out images that captured the country we were visiting, from the tourist destinations to people in their everyday lives.  For most of these images I did very basic edits:  crops, straighten, adjust levels.  I also made use of the Lightroom presets in the Develop module along with some presets I downloaded from Camera Dojo.  I used the free Lightroom Essentials, though they also have additional presets you can purchase.

Now that I have these up, I flagged a bunch of images that I want to revisist and spend some more time with processing them.  I will post some of these to my flickr stream.

Without further ado, please head over to the gallery and check out the pictures.  Please post your comments about the pictures or the trip.

It has been almost a week since we arrived back from China.  In short, I had an awesome time.  I learned so much on the trip, I enjoyed seeing all the sites and people.  It was great. When I get some time in the coming days I will write a two part series about the trip.  Part 1 will consist of the travel to China and our stay in Beijing.  Part 2 will consist of our tours in Suzhou, Hangzhou, Shanghai and our travel back to the states.

I think I am now just getting back to my normal routine.  Wednesday, Thursday and Friday were crazy at work with trying to catch up for a missed week and a half.  I was able to go through most of my emails on my blackberry on the busride back from JFK to Albany so that helped a little.

This past week I was suffering from sleep bulimia.  I don’t know if that is a real term or not, but that’s how I am describing it.  My sleep schedule from the jet lag is all messed up.  The first night back I stayed up until 1:00am.  I woke up at 5:00am ready to go.  The following night I went to bed around normal time, but I slept until 10:00am.  On Friday night I was exhausted from work and working out at the gym.  I was falling asleep on the couch around 10:30.  I slept until 11:15am Saturday morning.  Finally on Saturday night I went to bed at a normal time, and woke up Sunday morning ready to roll at 5:00am.  I will say that was one of my most productive Sunday mornings in a long time.  I had accomplished a lot of stuff before 11:00.  (more…)

I know this is my first mention of this trip on my blog, but way back in November I signed up for a vacation to China.  Yeah I know, pretty big trip for my first “real” international excursion.  The trip is organized through a tour group that leads tours all over China.  The trip was organized through the Albany Colonie Chamber of Commerce.  The first China trip took place in the middle of November.  They then planned a second trip for the middle of March, 2009.

After hearing first hand from the people who went on the November trip, I decided it was too good to pass up.  The price was right, everything was planned out, local English speaking tour guides and more.  All I had to do was put down the deposit and get a visa.

Fast forward three months and now we are one week away from departure.  This week is all about preparing at work for my seven day absence.  I expect to be out of cell phone and email contact for most of the trip so I want to make sure everything is in order before i go.  I can tell though I have a busy week ahead of me as there are several projects I need to complete in addition to packing and getting the last minute arrangements done for the trip.

Here is our rough itinerary, I’ll try to do one more post before I leave with a more detailed breakdown.

Day 1: Albany/JFK/Beijing (bus down to JFK and direct flight from JFK to Beijing)
Day 2: Beijing
Day 3: Beijing
Day 4: Beijing
Day 5: Beijing/Shanghai/Suzhou
Day 6: Suzhou/Hangzhou
Day 7: Hangzhou/Shanghai
Day 8: Shanghai
Day 9: Shanghai/Beijing/JFK/Albany (flight from Shanghai to Beijing, Beijing to JFK, bus back to Albany).