Yesterday was Akiva’s Birthday. He is now a big seven year old boy.

Its Chinese Newyears, So all his classmates/friends are on vacation and most left the country. So we had a small party among our nation of four. We made Akiva’s ice-cream cake together.

One good thing about Winter here… strawberry season.

Before the cake, we had home-made hand-made Sushi. Haga bought the sashimi in the JiuGuang department store in Times Square. She said it was packed, in part because its actually open during the Chinese New Years holiday, and in part because people like to buy high-end presents. But the sashimi was half price because she bought it at night. So she bought a lot. They could not finish eating it and we could not let this go to waste, so I had to help out a lot.

We didn’t get anything for Akiva for his birthday. We want to get him a new bike, but its too cold now to really ride it. Akiva didn’t see any toys he likes. Also lately he is concerned about money…because his dad is concerned… so he said we didn’t need to get him anything now. We wrote him a birthday certificate which he can redeem when we go to San Diego and see more selection. His brother, however, wanted some toys. So we got a another little Lego set and we spend hours playing with Lego Ninjas.

I borrowed my friends X-Box and we have been playing games and watching movies on it. It’s pretty awesome. The kids like Naruto fighting game. I like Deus Ex. We all played Batman: Arkham City together. We play while laying on the heated carpet, which, I swear, is the best sleep aid ever invented. Nothing can make me want to sleep more than a nice heated carpet or heated bed pad (only problem is that if I fall asleep, I will wake up in 2 hours with my back all hot and sweaty, but my top sort of cold).

This is a one-day garbage haul of spend fire-works from part of our complex. Fireworks often go off at 3AM.

We also went for a walk on Akiva’s birthday. We kicked a soccer ball on the sidewalk. On the way back Akiva accidentally kicked it into a pond. Then we waited around until the wind pushed the ball to the side of the pond. Then Akiva picked it up and passed it to Kenaz, who didn’t block it and it went back in the pond. The kids had great fun doing this.

We had a very lazy weekend. It was cold and damp. We did nothing. I took the kids to Starbucks by the lake yesterday and they colored in books and played games on my cellphone.

When its cold its good to each Korean food.

This is Haga’s “hotpot”… beef bone soup and rice vermicelli, with some corn and lots of mushrooms.

Start of trip

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We took a family vacation to Sanya town, on the Southern tip of Hainan Island between 12/26 and 1/1. This was a budget vacation (we spent about $1100 including round-trip air-fair). The kids had a week off from school during the Christmas holiday because they go to International School. Most Chinese have no holiday during Christmas. So, we found out that its easiest and cheapest for us to travel within China during this time.

Our goal was to get somewhere warmer than Suzhou, where we could warm-up and play. We spend the first 3 nights in a Youth Hostel, then later upgraded to an economy hotel room. We spend our days either on the beach, or watching movies. We had 4 pretty sunny days with temperature around 27C.

Drinking coconut

Sorry, but not a lot of pics of food in this post. Kenaz and Akiva tried Coconut milk. We ate street food every night. This included boiled clams, stir-fried veggies, BBQ Chicken. And rice. I also tried a donkey meat sandwich. On one night we had some really good Guilin Rice Noodles. Every breakfast we went to a good Western cafe and had eggs and coffee. Pretty good breakfast. Unfortunately, that place had the cheapest coffee, and it was 20RMB.

The beach in Hainan Island is rather over-developed in parts, and Ghetto in others. At the beginning we stayed at the hostel. Not so great a beach, but its good to start off at a hostel where people can help us find out what’s going on.

Although the beach by the hostel was not really good, it was about a 15 minute walk to the Hotel Intercontinental beach. And because I’m white, I can pretend that I’m staying there and they provided free bottled water and let us use their beach parasols.

Around the hostel was a “locals” neighborhood. Lots of chickens walking around. Kenaz wanted to find and kill one (to eat). I met several Chinese senior citizens who were quite friendly. Apparently there are a lot of retirement housing in Sanya geared towards Chinese from the cold North, who spend their Winters on the island.

Das Boat

Das Boat

We rented a small inflatable row boat and went into the waters around the hostel. I was the Captain, of course. However, my crew didn’t cooperate with me very much. And our oars were of different sizes and didn’t fit into the oar locks. So we didn’t get far.

Chinese Churros

On the third day we moved to a hotel near DaDongHai (Great Eastern Sea). There was a street food fair there. We ate “California Churros” with icecream. But it wasn’t that good. In that same area all the shops had signs and menus in Russian. Sanya has become a big tourist destination for Russians (maybe coming from Siberia).

Near the food street was a small amusement park. We did bumper cars. Kids played on an inflatable castle. They had Micky and Minnie walking around posing for pictures. And one of the most spectacular things (according to the kids) were the Coy fish who were addicted to coconut milk. People were fishing them out of the pond using a baby-bottle filled with coconut milk.

Foozball at the Dolphine

In the mornings we ate breakfast and played Foozbal.

We saw two fires while in Sanya. The first fire happened while eating at night on the food street. A Christmas tree caught on fire in the parking lot. Second fire occurred the next day at a construction site near the hotel we were staying at.

I’m wondering if the fires had anything to do with us. Two fires in two days. Coincidence?

Finished sand castle

Of course, lots of sand-castle building.

We spend New Years on the beach. On New Years eve, before the ball dropped, we all said our resolutions. Haga’s resolution was to eat less sweets and also spend more time teaching the kids. Akiva made a resolution to help Mommy and Daddy more and learn more in school. Kenaz made a resolution to always be with Mommy and Daddy. My resolution was to have more faith in myself, other people, and God. And also increase the strength in my legs so that if everything fails we can live cheaply in a mountainous area were I will have to walk up and down hills all day. Then the ball went down and we said happy New Years. When we got back to the hotel, the kids crashed into the beds and went immediately to sleep.

So that’s it. We’re happy to get back to Suzhou, even though its really cold here. All in all, we had a very good, stress-free time. I’m definitely up for going back to Sanya. It was a nice, warm, easy, cheap vacation.

Presents included several Naruto figures, a graphic novel, 2 Angry Birds Slingshots, and a model submarine.

In other news:

1. We are going to Sanya tomorrow for one week, and an ultra-budget vacation. Haga and I are both a little sick, and the kids are not in school. So we figured we should warm-up.

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2. Kids have been having a good time. They went on excursions, had school productions, took pictures of rocks and holes, and played alot.

Once again the Covner family in China celebrated Thanksgiving with Beijing Duck.

Chinese Greens

Wood Ears

And the Duck

For the record, I’m thankful for my hard-working, beautiful and patient wife and my great Children. Haga was thankful for Akiva and Kenaz and her supportive husband. Kenaz was thankful for life and said does not like dieing. Akiva said he was thankful to G_d for providing us with life and food.

1. I successfully helped my children celebrate Halloween.

Kenaz and I made his Wolverine costume. And Akiva and Mom made his Ghost costume (his idea…he wanted to be scary).

This may not seem like a big deal. But I was worried because I didn’t know where anyone was doing trick-or-treating. Two years ago we just had some trick-or-treating among friends in our apartment complex, but they all moved away (and we to another complex). Last year they got dressed up, but we just went to a party at a cafe, so no trick-or-treating. This year I got a little crazy about this, which made Haga a little annoyed. And I’ve been too busy to get things done ahead of time. In the end, on the Sunday before Halloween I found the location – an upper-end housing-house complex filled with Western expat managers – by chance when the girl who sold me my cellphone (Samsung Galaxy S2…rocking my StarTrek LCARS custom made theme) called me and asked me to help her translate for her customer, who happened to be an American who was celebrating Halloween that day. After I received this call, I took the kids to Taiquandao, then we rode out to the housing-complex. And on the way the e-bike ran out of electricity.

Akiva's pumpkin (left) and Kenaz's batman pumkin (right)

When we finally got to the housing-complex, everyone wanted to take pictures of the boys. Maybe because their costumes were very…DYI. Some people put on some pretty good haunted house displays, complete with dry-ice smoke and spooky music. A lot of kids…most older than the boys… where going around. 75% were vampires. A few older women were milk-maids. And of course a few princess. Akiva and Kenaz really got into the spirit of it and knew for the first time how its supposed to be. Akiva in particular wanted to stay out and make sure we hit every single house. He wanted to hunt. And we agreed next year we are going to bring some rotten eggs with us.

In the end, they brought in a good haul. Not a huge haul by American standards. But it was good. The kids were very excited and will remember Halloween for now on.

2. In other news, before our Halloween adventure, Akiva became a Blue Belt in Taiquandao

(Akiva is in the collumn second from left, in the back)

And Kenaz, who just turned five, is a Yellow Belt!

We will have another big accomplishment to publish on this next weekend, so stay tuned!

So I went to Beijing, attended a small exhibition, signed up a master agent for China, and gave a presentation. It was a very interesting exhibition because most of the exhibitors were selling card-games with either copied / ripped-off game rules, or they were selling card games with out-right un-licensed IP. Lots of interesting politics. And in the middle of this, my partner and I arrived with a licensed IP game, with an altruistic vision of how we can fit in China, and…style.

Below is the post from my company’s site (www.eos-sama.com):

________

On Sunday, October 24th, Syn Chen and Jesse Covner (me) went to attend a small Beijing trade show (link to Chinese site) to promote EOS’s “Stormrider” (风云） game in China, as well as make relationships with distributors and potential partners.

Models and Cosplayers show Stormrider game

Our real reason for attending this small show was to meet and work with our new Chinese partners, who will help us promote games and “game culture” in China. At the exhibition we made a group presentation. One of our partners, Mr. Keith Yim, gave a passionate speech about the history and benefits of table-top RPG games.

You can see my introductory speech below..

For those of you who don’t speak Chinese (and for Chinese readers who’s English is better than my Chinese), here is the general content of what I said in the video.

Two days ago I had a little bit of a problem.   A giant monster from another dimension wanted to eat my soul then crush my body with its giant tentacles.  I survived this.  Then yesterday was a little better…. I won a Kungfu competition against my arch enemy, a member of the Vengeful Ghost Society.  He had used his Hungry Wolves sword technques on me, which was no match for my Dancing Crane technique.

Of course, this only happened in my mind…in my imagination.  As you can see, I have a very active imagination. Which helps me in my real-life job .  My name is Jesse Covner.  My job is CEO of EOS.

EOS has a simple mission.  We create worlds out of our imagination in order to share with others.  We put these worlds into our table-top RPG games.  We put these wolds into our game systems.

10 years ago, the founder of EOS…Mr. Syn Chen…who is sitting right there… give a wave Syn… started EOS.  We successfully published several RPG games.  In just a bit, I will talk about what a role playing game is.

This year we have published for foreign markets

Nobilis TRPG, an Manga – style RPG in which players play awakened Gods.

Trail of the Brotherhood – a horror -theme board game based on the literary works of the famous American horror writter HP. Lovecraft

We are publishing next month Legends of the Wulin… [chinese name here].  This is a wuxia – themed RPG game in which players take on the roles of wuxia heros and fight for honor and justice.

And in Greater China markets – Taiwan, Hongkong, and China, we are publishing our Fengyun card game.  This game lets players recreate stories from the Fengyun comic book, which is published by Tianxia company of Hong Kong.  In just a bit my partner will introduce this game to you.

EOS is, as of today, an international company; we publish and sell products in Europe, USA, and Greater China.  (BTW, next year we will be taking some of our boardgames and licensed toys to the Japan market).  We have operations in Taiwan, Seattle Washington (USA), and Suzhou.  In the United States and Europe, our games are distributed by the largest game distributors ACD and Alliance Distribution.  And for our new operations in China, we are represented by …. who is owned by Mr. Zhang Hao and Mr. Keith … please stand up to show yourselves… our EOS Champions.

Our goal here in China is rather ambitious, yet maybe different from the other great companies here.  Yes, we want to promote our products and make money. However, we also want to promote table-top gaming culture.  We want to promot table-top gaming culture because we believe that this culture can help people increase their creativity.  We also think that table-top games like RPGs as well as board and card games helps people look at life differently.

Now, we cannot try to introduce change to China’s culture alone.  We need partners and friends.  We need those who believe in gaming.  So at this point, I would like to introduce you to our great partner, —– who is goint to talk a little about our first Chinese game – Fengyun card game, and also talk to you about what is a TRPG.   Its been my honor to speak introduce my company to you…I hope you understood some of what I said.  Now please welcome Mr. Zhanghao, to talk about our Fengyun game.