Hi, Zach-o-philes

Photos from Zachary's Christmas trip to California are now online on my Flickr page. Click here for the Christmas set. More may be added later as I get pictures from other cameras. The set includes photos of Jesse, Abby and Zoe also. Samples below.

Hi, everyone

After a long absence, here are some new photos of Zachary, taken during a day trip to the Mutianyu Great Wall, outside Beijing, along with Olivia's brother, Glenn. You can find the new photos on Flickr here. Other photos from that day out (which don't all include family members) can be seen here.

Zach and Olivia are currently enjoying a trip to the US, which means dad is living the exciting bachelor life in Beijing. This consists mostly of watching TV, it turns out. Which means its not really all that different from my actual bachelor life, back in the day. Zach and Olivia will be in Palo Alto for another week and a half or so.

Zach is adding words like crazy these days, in both English and Mandarin. It's been fun listening to him learn to speak. I expect his trip to the US will yield a bunch of new vocabulary, much of it probably having to do with Nana's dog, Lucy.

While we were all in Singapore I treated myself to a new camera lens. Recently, on a Saturday in the courtyard, I had a chance to try it out on my favorite subjects. The results can be found on Flickr, here. That set is a mix of old and new photos, and the new photos start here, if you want to concentrate on them. A few starters below.

Enjoy!

Yesterday we took Zach to the Singapore Zoo in the morning. The animals were somewhat interesting for Zach, but the main attraction was the wonderful water park. Zach is obsessed with water and loves the shower, the bath and the swimming pool. So there are photos of Zach looking at baboons and a hedghog, but mostly pix of him playing in the water. There are also a couple of nice shots of him at Sentosa, taken by Olivia. The whole set is online, on my Flickr page. Video coming soon.

Here are some photos from Andrew's visit to Beijing. It's been a wonderful weekend, hot and clear, with breezy evenings. Today we went to the Blue Zoo, one of the aquariums in Beijing. When we went to the Steinhart in San Francisco at Christmas, Zach wasn't quite old enough to appreciate the fish. But he sure did today! Highlights included some big sharks and running the wrong way on the travelator (for about four laps). All of this got Zack worked up for a swim in our apartment's pool this afternoon. A selection of photos, including those from the Blue Zoo and elsewhere, is online. Below are a couple of highlights.

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All the photos are here.

A set of new photos of Zach (and in some cases of Olivia) is up now. Mostly stuff taken at mealtimes, and including a good look at Zach's new summertime buzzcut (not shown in the photo below).

I'm now hosting the photos on Flickr instead of Facebook, which means interested parties (mom?) can now download higher resolution versions than Facebook supported.

Before the buzz...

A couple of weeks ago, as a birthday present for Zach's Nana, Olivia and I put together a video montage of some of the best photographs from Zach's first year, presented in chronological order. Now that she's had the exclusive for a while, I wanted to share it with the rest of Zach's community. So here is an online version:

This video, unlike the others I have posted, is hosted on the Chinese video sharing site Youku. Don't worry; they won't suck information out of your computer. I have friends who work there.

It doesn't mean what you think. Get your mind out of the gutter. Zach's friends Casey and Gavin, and their parents, came over today for an afternoon playdate. While the parents gorged on dim sum, the kids raised hell in the apartment. Photos of the day's adventures can be seen here.

The three extremely small stooges.

Today, Zach, mom, dad and Nana made a late-morning excursion to Qianmen, the old neighborhood south of Tian'anmen Square, in search of Mrs. Wang Zhiping's Shanxi noodle restaurant. Olivia and first discovered Mrs. Wang's restaurant four years ago, during Nana's first visit to Beijing. It was a very hot day, and we only stopped in for a cold drink. Mrs. Wang, the consummate saleswoman, soon had us sampling her hand-made knife-cut noodles, a Shanxi provincial specialty popular in Beijing. We've been fans ever since. Superb noodles, a broth based on a secret family recipe (and ladeled out of an unpromising looking vat), and the magic of fragrant Shanxi vinegar come together in the best 3RMB bowl of noodles you will ever eat.

It's been over a year since we last went, and we weren't sure the restaurant would be in the same place. She's had three different locations since we first met her. The neighborhood where her first restaurant was located was demolished for redevelopment. Then there was a bad stretch when she operated a food court at a wholesale market (something of a lost year). Then a spell when she was out of business but once made us noodles in her one-room apartment. For the last year or two she's had a larger shop on the opposite side of Qianmen Boulevard from where she used to be located. 

The restaurant was right where we remembered, and business appeared to be booming. Her son and daughter were no longer in the shop. The son was getting his drivers' license in Shanxi, and the daughter is now apparently teaching English. (Mrs. Wang has conspicuousy mastered the word "beer", which is helpful for serving overheated foreigners.)

To this day, Mrs. Wang refuses to charge us. Today we ate three bowls of noodles, a huge plate of cold starters, deep fried croquettes, and braised pork. We couldn't persuade her to let us pay. But we brought some nice fruit for her as a gift in anticipation of such an outcome.

Previously:

Magical Shanxi vinegar: The wit and wisdom of Mrs. Wang (June, 2005)

Z has discovered that he can actually walk backwards. This adds to already high risk factor inherent in his walking, but is a source of obvious merriment and pride for him. Now if he can just figure out how to slap his kidneys while he's doing it, he'll be ready to join the old, Chinese men who take their morning constitutionals in the courtyard.

A little Sunday-evening fun with the dustpan, a shoe, mom and one patchy cat.

One year old last Monday, March 9th. Celebrated with home-made apple cake and one long, skinny candle for a long, skinny boy. A photo album here.

All images link to the same gallery.

Zacharize

[ZAK-uh-rahyz] Verb (transitive)

To destroy a small object, e.g. a toy, utterly and without remorse. "To zacharize."

Imagine a wonderful table, covered with nice table linens and good tableware and set with an exquisite meal. Now put that table in a wind tunnel and crank it up to supersonic speed and you'll have a pretty good idea of what our dining table looks like at meal times. The good news is that there are always new discoveries and perhaps even the occasional business opportunity waiting to be stumbled upon...

Tomorrow is Zachary's first birthday. Word has it there are treats around...

Zach's new favorite toys are the broom and dustpan. Hopefully he'll be as excited about them in another eight or ten years, when I expect him to help with the chores. Yesterday I invited him to embark on a new career as a Beijing street sweeper: