A birthday party of 40.

Steve, Elle and I celebrated our birthday (Oct 6) with 40 of our friends at IKEA. It was a crazy idea, but surprisingly, none of the IKEA staff minded.

Chuandixia: October 19, 2008

Went back to this 700 year old Ming dynasty village, with a lost city on the top of the mountain, a large cave, and a breath-taking gorge.

Jiankou: September 27, 2008.

Organized a trip out to Jiankou with the Chengdu team from SHA. It was a perfect trip: the weather was excellent, the hiking was amazing, and everybody had a great time.

(Photos by Lan Wu and Sarah Nichols)

Scale map.

View from the roof.

Jamming (our tired driver in the back).

Roberto on his iPhone, probably texting the client.

Contemplating the panorama with Lan's nephew.

Joe Kan predicts Obama will win by 15 points.

With two weeks to go, I have concluded that Obama will not only win the election, but he will win it in a landslide. Several factors over the past few weeks that make me believe this. First- the conversation has changed from one of negativity to one of "reality check". Obama clearly benefited from the debates, especially after revelations that "Joe the plumber" is not actually a plumber, and that his taxes won't actually go up under Obama's plan. There's also full recognition now that Obama is.. indeed.. black.. and that will have no negative influence on election day. There's also full recognition that McCain is indeed old.. and his policies, too, are old. With just two weeks to go, I predict Obama will win by 15.

In other news.. the Chinese Yuan is now at 5.6 to the Canadian dollar, which means that on paper, the value of my Chinese bank account is 30% higher than it was a year ago. Amazing!