On July 18th, 2011 I will set out to move to South Korea to meet up with my good friend and amigo Steve Muzik. Being Stephen and Steven, we are Steve Squared. Mainly this blog is to keep my family and friends privy to the adventures and shenanigans I will be getting into in Asia.

"Because we do not know when we will die, we get to think of life as an inexhaustible well. And yet everything happens only a certain number of times, and a very small number really. How many more times will you remember a certain afternoon of your childhood, an afternoon that is so deeply a part of your being that you cannot conceive of your life without it? Perhaps four, or five times more? Perhaps not even that. How many more times will you watch the full moon rise? Perhaps twenty. And yet it all seems limitless..."

See everybody in a few years, peace, love, and rock and roll.


Monday, September 19, 2011

Pictures and Cultural Exchanges.


Squid on a stick in Qingdao, why not?

This is the wacky stuff you can eat, keep in mind most of it was still moving, for real.

We had our own special bottle of beer made at the brewery:)

International Beer Festival!!!

Bag O' Beer, located on any street corner with a keg for the low price of 75 cents.

Say your prayers, literally, it's a prayer tree. Every one of those red squares is a prayer someone wished for.


Steve's face after we ate Sichuan food, probably the spiciest food on Earth. Better bring Pepto.

The Bullet train I ride on a lot.


The ancient city wall around Qufu.


Helping sweep up around some ancient tablets around Confucius Temple.


Confucius Temple in his hometown Qufu. It's about 800 years older than our country.




More of Confucius Temple.


Bill walking through the Bullet train station on a smoggy day.


The CCTV building Beijing, one of the most amazing pieces of Architecture in the world.

The Bird's Nest, Olympic village.


Yours truly in front of the Cube, where Michael Phelps whipped the world's ass.



A lil handstand in front of the Nest, no big deal.


The Ancient Bell Tower in front of Tienanmen Square.


A communist sculpture in front of the building that houses Mao's dead ass body, if you get there before noon you can actually go see him if you're curious what someone who murdered millions of his own people looks like. I skipped it, but I imagine he looked bloated and pale.

The Forbidden City where 24 Emperors lived. I can't show enough pictures to display how big this place is. Just think the size of Ross, and then imagine one guy lived there.










5 star dinner, Roast Peking Duck.





Ghost Street where all the best night food in Beijing is, Sichuan Food! Look at all those Chilis! And of course the Great Wall way up on top of a mountain.



ObaMao, ha, apparently the Chinese people think Obama is the second coming of Mao. These shirts are everywhere, it says, "to serve the people," on the shirt. He's got a good approval rating over here haha.





Myself on the bullet train, the famous Canals of Suzhou "the Venice of China," Bruce Lee fast food chain in Shanghai, your typical Starbucks chickens.





The 2nd tallest building in the world, a full moon, Shanghai's skyline at night.


Shanghai lit up on a different night.

So much has happened in the past few weeks I can't even sum it up. I'll just tell you a little bit about the events of my coming home from the cafe tonight after drawing. First I went past the Guitar Bar, which had a few Chinese guys in country western outfits playing what sounded like a Mexican guitar rift. I thought I gotta see this live, so I bought a beer and no sooner than that happened they broke straight into the theme song to the movie Titanic, as you'd expect Chinese men dressed like John Wayne to do. After that spectacle I kept on my walk and as I was about to pass McDonalds a drunk man on a scooter full speed runs right into the curb 30 feet in front of me and wrecks his scooter to the sound of crunching plastic. With zero hesitation he picks his drunk self up, picks up his scooter, puts down the kick stand, shit you not he beeps the alarm on his scooter, and limps his ass into McDonalds for a Big Mac. The walk continues, and I see a couple my age, dressed fairly nice, also a bit drunk, a good bit drunk for a Monday night, crouching in the very nice landscaping in front of the "Beijing Oriental International Cultural Exchange Center," I wrote it down so I wouldn't forget. As I approached this complex and this couple, they were one foot off the sidewalk, I realized they were digging a hole a foot deep. Then I realized the girl was hiking up her skirt to take a dump, well played. Cultural exchange center indeed. And that was 20 minutes, now imagine 4 weeks of that. Unlimited entertainment. Alright, off to bed, until next time.....

Saturday, September 10, 2011

The China cometh…


*Geisha Steve, Emperor Stephen, and Emperor Bill

Bill flew in from San Fran and in the matter of a few weeks we tore up Seoul, Korea and ate all the sonyupsou (Korean BBQ) and kimchie we could handle. So we got on a ferry and sailed across the Sea of Korea on an overnight ferry/cruise to Qingdao, China. The ferry was amazing, the sea was great, and we made friends with the sushi cook and after trading him some Johnnie Walker he made us the most unbelievable sushi feast I’ve ever had. In Qingdao, a harbor town with a rich beer history, the theme was beer. The Nazis took over Qingdao in the early part of the century and built and awesome brewery there, and after the war the Chinese claimed the brewery and now they make China’s #1 beer TsinTao there. We of course took a brewery tour, and the brewery is on beer street where tons of little places serve pretty good beer. Guess what we did next, yep we went to the Qingdao International Beer Festival in a part of the city called, big surprise, Beertown. The festival was unreal, beers from all over the world, imagine Kings Island, but entirely beer themed. We had heard the locals usually bring you to there tables and you get to drink for free, and we wouldn’t have believed it until almost at the end of the night a bunch of older business men brought us to their table and insisted we drink all their beer with them. Unlucky for them we could all drink a lot more than them and drank them under the table, so they left wabbling one by one and left us all their really expensive beer, which we appreciated. After Qingdao we went to Qufu, the hometown of Confucius and the location of his massive temple and palace. It was a smaller more relaxing town. The temple was extremely beautiful and amazing, I got to see man made structures over 1,000 years old. We had great dumplings while we were there stuffed with mushrooms, pork, leeks, and other awesome things. After Qufu we headed to the most likely best city in China, Beijing. Beijing was unreal. We did too many things to list so I’ll just shoot a couple off real quick. Saw the Forbidden Palace, Tiananmen Square, Maos Shrine, The Great Wall, Olympic Village including The Cube and The Bird’s Nest stadium, and we ate tons of Sichuan food, Peking Duck, and much more. Bejing was exhausting and amazing. Bill left, so me and Steve headed to Sozhou, which is called the Venice of China because it has beautiful canals that run all over the city. Our hostel was on the most beautiful canal. China is nuts, Steve and I are convinced they don’t have a word for no here because they build whatever they want. In Sozhou they have functioning exact replicas of England’s Big Ben and London Bridge, talk about surreal. Unfortunately my camera is broken so no pics of ol Sozhou. Luckily now I am in Shanghai, so apparently there are lots of places to get it fixed here cheap. I guess the over 2,000 pics I took in a month and a half fried it or something, that or the ridiculously dense smog got to it. Regardless, China has been extremely eventful. Everyday something is happening, and the “small” towns here have about 2 million people. In Shanghai they think there is about 25-30 million people. To put that in perspective there are about 250,000 people in Cincinnati. Well, I’m off to adventure more and hopefully chill out and relax for a few days. Until next time….