I'm a U.S. citizen, retired, and living in Chengdu, China with a Chinese wife. I've always said that Chengdu is the world's biggest city that nobody ever heard of. Chengdu is located East of the Himalayas and has been called Paradise. The weather, while hot in Summer, is not too hot. Not as hot, for example, as Beijing while is much further North. Spring comes early in Chengdu. In Winter, it never snows. Ok, maybe sometimes it does snow but it never accululates. The Winters are really too cold for me even though the temperature only rarely falls below 32 degrees F (0 degrees C). The reason is probably because of moisture in the air.

I love tennis although sometimes I'm frustrated in Chengdu because it's not on television. For example, there was much coverage of the French Open but no coverage of Wimbledon. I watched CCTV5 every morning at 7 AM for tennis highlights of Wimbledon. I usually (not always) already knew the results from browsing the web. www.wimbledon,com is especially good at relaying point by point results.

In the past, I served as a marshal at the Cincinnati Masters 1000 Tennis Tournament. I served two years as a marshal. The highlight of these two years was undoubtedly having a short conversation with Ivan Lendl while escorting him from the Practice Courts to the Player's Lounge. I asked a very stupid question: "Do you think you'll win this tournament?" His answer was surprising. He said, "What's the difference?" This led to a very short conversation on his philosophical outlook about life.

After two years as a marshal, I switched to being an Usher because you could watch more tennis that way. I always had the same assignment which I believe was the North Grandstand at Center Court.