Lawrence Foster:
CLASS OF 1972
Beaverton High SchoolClass of 1972
Beaverton, OR
Santa Clara UniversityClass of 1976
Santa clara, CA
Lawrence 's Story
Life
My Spouse
I met her while living in Bakersfield, CA in the fall of 1976. She moved into an apartment that Steve Prosser and I had moved out of.
My Pets
We had some tropical fish while living in Taiwan. They're basically useless. I never could train them to do anything, but they did help the feng shui.
My Job
Engineering consultant for the design of semiconductor factory high purity gas, chemical and water systems. I spent four years in Taiwan working on Fabs for Taiwan Semiconductor. Since Taiwan we've moved back to Arizona and then to Dublin, Singapore, Shanghai, Australia and New York.
Update 6 Dec 2007
-Still married to the American wife.
-Since the 2002 reunion I've lived in upstate New York, Dublin, Israel, Shanghai, Taipei, Singapore, a town you'll never hear about in Victoria, Australia and a brief stint in northern Alberta. Oh, and Phoenix occasionally.
-I suck even worse at mountain biking. My skills and conditioning have both gone downhill and it takes longer to recover when the inevitable happens. So much for wisdom coming with age.
Observations of other cultures;
-A St. Patrick's day parade in Dublin looks like an overgrown BHS Homecoming parade, only with more beer. Way more beer in fact.
-I'm losing the language battle. I still can't speak Chinese worth a d*mn and now American accents sound funny to me. I'm also told, frequently, that my Aussie sucks too.
-Electronics made in China cost more in China than in the States. DVDs, on the other hand, are far cheaper just as long as you don't mind the occasional person getting up to get popcorn. If you're good at it you can get a pirated copy of a popular new movie before the newspaper articles come out saying that new government anti-piracy efforts have successfully prevented it from being pirated.
-Australian wine is cheaper in the states than in Australia, though it's not the better for all the travel.
-Starbucks anywhere elese tastes better than in the states (not hard to do). McDonalds still tastes the same, ...Expand for more
and is extremely popular along with KFC I might add.
-Chinese food is sometimes, but not always, better in China. Just remember to never look in the kitchen. It also helps to tell yourself that it's beef that you're eating if you don't know the characters for common domestic pets.
-In China just because you have green walk light at a pedestrian crossing doesn't mean that you're not going to die when a black Buick doesn't stop. The Shanghai city government ran a big campaign to make pedestrians follow the lights, but didn't change the laws for cars to keep them from turning on a red light without even slowing down. It was really weird using crosswalks in PDX when I got back, people actually obey the laws.
-Contrary to the TV adverts, you can freeze your *ss off in Australia. And nobody barbeques shrimp either. They do barbeque shrimp in Korea, but I don't remember Paul Hogan doing their tourism commercials.
-Radio and TV in any ex-British colony, with the exception of Singapore, is a lot more interesting than in the States. Less paranoia about body parts, language and being PC. Chinese TV, however, is not interesting at all unless you like to guess when the censors will black out CNN or BBC.
-Living in places that get 15 inches of snow in an afternoon or 14 inches of rain in a day reminds me of why I live in Arizona.
Update 13 Jan 2010
-Since the last update spent another year in Dublin and am now in Israel.
-Ireland was nice for many reasons, not the least of which was that nobody has missiles pointed at my house. At least while in Taiwan the Chinese never actually shot one my way, unlike recent events in Israel.
-I always figured that MacDonalds tastes the same anywhere in the world. I no longer believe that to be true, as a Big Mac is different in Israel. Amongst other things there's no cheese.
-I never thought that 7-Up had to be kosher.
Update 9 Jan 2015
-You can get cheese on your Big Mac if you ask for it at some McDonalds in Israel. You can also buy Christmas decorations.
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