Sweet Home Alabama, bizarro Russian style

I have heard many a version of Sweet Home Alabama all over the world. The one below with the Leningrad Cowboys + the Russian Red Army choir takes the cake (h/t to David Churbuck; let me know if you get a vid of "Sweet Home Clamabama").

I am using the screen shot instead of inserting the code because I just love this Russian Red Army dude jamming to Skynyrd. Click here to see the video.

New Scirocco to be launched.

My old HS and college buddy Patrick Nelson sent me news of the new VW Scirocco.



I had a '85 Scirocco that looked just like this red one:



I like mine better. The new one looks a bit boxy to me, more like a GTI.

Went to the Zoo

The real highlight of the Shanghai Zoo is not the animals (actually, this part is pretty depressing, especially the elephant show), but the fact it is a big open space and just a good excuse to be outside on one of the "springiest" days of the year so far.

Leo loves to walk now, especially if you let him hold your hand (actually, your finger).



Maybe his favorite thing was the fish tanks.



Here is running through the grassy area chasing bubbles:

Leo loves Thomas the Tank Engine

Leo has turned into a huge Thomas the Tank Engine fan.


We take his Thomas case when we go out.



He plays with Thomas and Friends while eating.



He has about 20 of the different trains, and can name them all.




Here's a video showing some of his memory skills.

A Sunday at Gymboree and Family Dinner

Today we went to Gymboree.



Then I cooked my favorite of mom's recipes, Chicken Spectacular with wild rice (she sent from the US).



At night, Xiao Ayi hosted a dinner for the family, and Leo had a blast.





Here he is kissing his cousin, Chenchen.

DIY on our Buick Minivan

We got a Buick minivan recently. I view it as a bus...busing people for work and sometimes busing the family. It's a minivan...it's a Buick...it's not particularly exciting as far as cars go, but I'm certainly not complaining. It's very convenient vs. taxis.



I decided to peronslize it a bit with an Alabama Crimson Tide sticker. Of course, we also have the requisite window flag, but that will have to wait until football season ;)


Just for fun, here's a random pic of Leo with static in his hair.

Leo offers a cheers, speaks Spanish and eats the country side chicken

At dinner tonight, Leo was in typical form.

First, he loves to "gambei" or "cheers" everyone. all. the. time.



Next, he showed of his Spanish counting ability. Other than forgetting about "tres," he does pretty good since I only started teaching him last week. He already can count in Mandarin and English. You can also here him say some Chinese like "Duzi e le."

Finally, the chicken from yesterday is now history and is contributing to various dishes, including this chicken soup.

bug fixes: RSS feed and archives fixed

Thanks to Denis, my RSS feed is fixed. Should be easy for your feed reader to discover it by simply typing in samflemming.com.

Also, links to archives work.

Ayi comes back from country side with live chicken

Our ayi (maid) came back from Chinese New Year vacation today with a live chicken. She did this at the request my wife and mother in law. This is China's version of "Free Range Chicken."

Lifestreaming and relaunching samflemming.com

After over a year of dormancy, I am resurrecting samflemming.com as my personal blog. I am insanely busy, but I have felt a need to express myself about more personal things in my life which do not fit well on a company blog.

I used to use samflemming.com as my company blog, but in early 2007, I moved the blog to our company blog platform, seeisee. I will continue to blog about my company there. I am keeping my old CEO blog posts from samflemming.com up because they continue to get hits.

If you are interested, you can track my "life stream" through these channels:

• Personal blog: This inlcudes my fun stuff about China/Shanghai, my son Leo, and thoughts about music.
• CEO Blog: More "professional" thoughts about CIC, IWOM and web 2.0 in China
• Twitter: microblogging, i.e. short snippets and thoughts. This is more personal and could be inanely boring
• Flickr: Pics
• Youtube: Video
• LinkedIn: Resume
• Facebook: I don't use this social network much except to track others in my circle
• CIC: company website

I actually would like to set up a proper lifestream aggregrator (see more on this topic here), but Tumblr is blocked in China and I just hate the name profilactic. Until I find another service, the above list is where you can find me.