What I’ve been up to!

Well this is certainly an update long in the works.

Short Version: I’m back in Shanghai, China, after graduating with a Masters in International Business from the Frankfurt School of Finance and Management in Germany. I did my thesis on some innovative ways companies are using social media in China as a marketing tool. Since finishing up I’ve been working freelance as a quality manager for TransPerfect Translations, editing mostly  documents that were translated into English from German and Spanish.

Apart from that, my new business partner and I have started a tourism company here in Shanghai. We share a love for Shanghai, but with slightly different focuses, so we merged our ideas into one great business plan. We are focusing on my love of running, and her love of eating, and launching UnTour Shanghai, an urban adventure tourism company specializing in sightseeing runs, culinary experiences, and cultural excursions.

I’ll let the site speak for itself, so please check it out! If you know anyone visiting Shanghai, and might be interested in seeing Shanghai in an active, unique way, send them our way please!

And as always, I love when friends visit, so let me know if you want to plan a trip out!

~Kyle
Chief Running Officer
UnTour Shanghai

BSK English

Going through some old China photos this morning, I came across this gem. It is a flashcard as part of a set that I got from my employer when I was teaching English in 2007 & 2008. I post this just so that anyone considering working for BSK Shanghai Academy can get a feel for the professionalism and dedication to accuracy and learning they possess. It’s an accurate reflection of their overall style.

your llama & alpaca news headquarters

now located @

llamasutra.blogspot.com

stay informed & current on all important issues regarding our furry camelid friends.  Do it, now.

Come Visit me in Germany!

Here’s a sample of something I do part time in the marketing department. Hopefully it entices some perspective students to come to Frankfurt!

A Jaunt to Ukraine

When older brother Ryan came and visited me last month, I knew that I should  expect 3 things:

1) We’d probably eat a lot 2) Ditto for drinking, and 3) We’d be constantly on the move.

Needless to say, I was three for three. For the few days we actually managed to stick around Frankfurt, Ryan managed to teach my Hungarian and Polish roommates the American tradition of Beer Pong, celebrate his birthday on a few different nights (sorry I couldn’t stay up past midnight on your actual birthday, since I was participating in a case study competition the next day). He also managed to find a wine festival on his own accord while I was at class. Nicely done.

Weekend one entailed a perfect 4 day trip to Italy to visit some old friends of mine, to be detailed at a later date. Weekend 2 entailed a 1300 km drive, each way, to Ukraine and back to visit some old exchange friends from his time in Uzhgorod, our sister city,  10 years ago. I thought the whole idea was perhaps not the best plan, since a)the rental car company doesn’t allow you to bring their cars to Ukraine b) Even if you promise to park the car in Hungary while you take the train across the border, they only let you rent a Ford c) I had class on Thursday and Monday d) European gas tax! e) etc. etc.

These reasons clearly weren’t strong enough to break Ryan’s sense of adventure, so I complied and we set off from Frankfurt at 9pm in our Ford Focus. I slept most of the 9 hours to our first major stop in Budapest, only to wake up from time to time to a) translate the sign that we did in fact need an Austrian Autobahn pass, just in time to miss every exit to buy one, b)ask for a Hungarian breakfast, only to end up stopping at the next Mcdonalds, or c) yell at Ryan to get gas.

In Budapest we picked up some of Ryan’s “Hungarian with Ukrainian passport” friends who would guide us to the friendly man’s house at the border who would let us park our Ford in his lawn, and hope for the best while we took the mildly decrepit train 20 minutes across the border, and spend the next two days in the forbidden lands.

Our friends told us that we should expect issues at the border with our passports, because the Ukranian border guards didn’t accept any funny business…just bribes. Seeing as how Ryan had put his passport through the wash recently, so several pages were stuck together, and how I have about 10 pages of Chinese visas, coupled with an old picture that looks nothing like me, we expected the worst. Luckily we caused just a minor diversion, and the passport lady called her boss over to try to determine if it was really me in the picture.

The rest of the trip pretty much involved going from place to place of people that knew Ryan while he was in Ukraine before, or relatives of those who did, eating meals, taking shots of vodka, and looking at old, extremely entertaining exchange-era pubescent pictures.

Ryan’s old host brother Christian has a young, adorable daughter now, whom we dubbed “Hurricane Valeria,” as she never really stopped moving/screaming/terrorizing (see video below, ukranian translations welcome).

A few more pictures, and a video below!

Corvallis' sister city, Uzhgorod

I want one in every color.

Eurovision

The most important annual, pan-european, musical singing contest is kicking into high gear. I present to you Germany’s entry to the contest, rumored to be supported in the finale show by a Dita Von Teese strip show of some sort. The hastily put together, nomenclature-challenged duo, Alex Swings Oscar Sings, performs the song, Miss Kiss Kiss Bang.

Taking the concept of Eurotrash to a new level seems to be a key requirement for the competition. Have you ever seen the jacket with no shirt underneath look pulled off so flawlessly anywhere else??  They are clearly a shoe-in. Props for integrating it into the 50′s Americana swing-vibe though.

Listen to it twice and good luck getting it out of your head.

Update: Ok, leave it to the Americans to get involved in a Eurovision controversy, but apparently Ms. Teese got kind of innapropriate, a la Janet Jackson. “Her nipples were however covered partly by some glittery stars. Whether this kind of nudity will be allowed by the Eurovision Song Contest bosses, remains to be seen.  If so it will be a clear a new precedent on what is and what is not consider suitable for the Eurovision Song Contest stage,” according to esctoday.com . And yes that url stands for eurovision song contest today.com

And I’m done caring.