Things that I find difficult to do...

1. Figure out China's internet filtering: Hey, China, make up your mind: either block blogspot.com or don't, but let's stop this back-and-forth hesitation. Either we are all trying to undermine you or we are not. These things do not work halfway. The revolution must be total and complete.

2. Bike in a wrap skirt: You know, the skirt that is just one long piece of fabric that you wrap around and fasten with a tie? Does not work well with bikes, especially not on windy days! I may have scandalized half the Beida campus and random passersby when I zipped past with entirely more leg exposed than is proper. On the other hand, the Beida campus could definitely use a bit more scandalizing.

3. Figure out Rowling's mental state: What's up with the title of Book 7, "Deathly Hallows"? And do you think JKR and whoever is in charge of Bloomsbury's children division were drunk and/or high when they approved the cover art for the British children's edition? Hermione & Ron look particularly awkward: is he falling forwards or backwards, and why such ruddy cheeks and shiny noses?

4. Go to bed: I can't seem to go to bed before 2am, and it's not for want of tiredness, either. Going to bed just seems like hard work and effort. I have to forcefully exert energy to do it. It's just much easier to continue awake. Really.

5. Enjoy my job: I didn't get hired to edit websites, fix Dreamweaver, or make stupid presentations on the Olympics. Not in the job description. This would all be made better if they gave me Photoshop, but there is only one license in the whole company, and it goes to the girl who does not know how to use it.

Nothing says springtime like forsythia

Somehow my lazy, waltz in at 11am part-time job has suddenly turned into a 4 days a week, practically full-time, stuck-to-my-desk-all-day job. The design/web person left mysteriously, and the new German/Belgian interns are overloaded with work, so they asked me for help:

GERMAN GIRL: I COLLAPSED. On the SUBWAY.
GERMAN BOSS: *pointed look* Would you like to work a few extra hours?
ME: Well, yes, if you put it that way.
GERMAN BOSS: Great! I'm off to Laos.

At this point, saying no would have been churlish and mean and awful! It would have been saying to A., "Yes, by all means, do collapse from overwork again!"

(But I'd also really like to tell A., J., and N. that collapsing is what happens when you live off fruit, salads, and Diet Coke. A. eats apples and mangoes, J. eats bananas and cookies, not sure what N. specializes in. According to A., at least, this is the sum of their lunch and dinner. A. is also under the impression that China will make her fat, because according to a fellow German, that's what happens to Europeans upon coming to China. I told her she has nothing to worry about.)

So, part of my new job description includes getting A.&Co. to eat, but I also get to play with Macromedia Flash MX and Dreamweaver. Dreamweaver is more of a bitch than anything, but Flash MX = crazy hard. Took me hours to make this flash animation.

I like it, but I'm afraid that it will get sued for copyright infringement (I'm not sure where the photograph is from; I found it in the Temporary Internet Files folder. I think it comes from The New York Times, if for no other reason than that it's a good photo - does anyone know if they ran an article on Tibet recently?).

Other reasons why I come to work: the coffee. It's not very good coffee, certainly, but it's free and plentiful. I'm probably also the most willing coffee brewer in the office, and when we're out of coffee, I mope from cubicle to cubicle until I find the Chosen One who knows where the lovely extra coffee is stored. My coffee is also somewhat notorious.

COWORKER: *sips* ... You made this, didn't you. *grimaces*
ME: Yes, I did! *beams, is ridiculously happy to share the joys of coffee with the world*
COWORKER: *runs for water cooler*

I'm convinced, really, that it's not my taste that's skewed, but other people's. The best moment of my coffee-making career was when a fellow caffeine-hound complimented me on my coffee.

Happy Equinox....

Dear Beida Students:
If you want to make out enthusiastically at 10pm in the middle of an empty field, more power to you, but please to take off your backpacks first. It makes for a much more aesthetically pleasing sight.

Love,
Shelley, who prefers her PDA tasteful

~

In other news, it's the vernal equinox. And while I put off an email, let me recount recent spectacular earring losses. First one vanished while I was biking (unmatched earrings are almost as sad as unmatched socks....actually perhaps more so). Then I lost 2 (different) backings, thus giving me unmatched backings as well.

Then one of the "marble" black and white discs from Dali fell and broke in half. Ironically, now that it's broken I finally believe the salesman's claim that it was real marble/crystal/rock substance. But the breakage is actually rather nice, so I will just have to artistically break the other one. Symmetry is so overrated.

All this sacrifice has not been in vain: my biking has been improving drastically! (Yes, they are correlated, and this is my personal opinion.) While I'd write a memo to Beijing drivers that bike lanes exist for a reason, there's nothing like dodging cars/other bikes/wayward pedestrians to make you really, really pay attention. I do need a loud jangling bell, though, or a "New biker—please stay AWAY!" sign, or perhaps just wobble so menacingly that everyone is terrified—who let this drunk girl out onto the streets? And etc.

After this, traffic in any other city will probably seem sedate and zombie-like. I secretly wonder if perhaps there has been a champion biker hidden in me all these years, and has now finally discovered its perfect habitat in Beijing.

vietnam, the pictorial version

Clearly this is an attempt for me to waste time, look at pictures, and think about how nice it would to be have a bowl of pho ga while sick in sub-zero Beijing weather. A curse upon you, El Nino!

But actually, it was cold the first few days in northern Vietnam. Here we are crossing the border. I was sort of sad to leave China (I might not come back again!) but ironically, at the end I didn't want to return . This place was all very new, by the way, as China tore down everything in its eagerness to attack Vietnam some 30 years ago. Boo, China. Now it's called the Friendship Pass.

Our first meal in Vietnam was the first, and possibly the best, of many bowls of pho. I began with a plan to take pictures of all the pho, but the number grew out of control. Sometimes we had pho for dinner, then breakfast the next day, then lunch; by dinnertime again I’d insist on absolutely no pho.

After this meal, we had some beer with a few guys, who were really interested in our marital status. They turned out, in fact, to be older than we. They also really wanted Cliff's phone number.

Vietnamese people clearly love da bai cai just as much as I do. This is in Cao Bang, an awesome northern city in which we were the only tourists. We spent a lot of time looking for food here (no restaurants) and bargaining for motorbike rides out into the beautiful countryside. To quote the Go: "Cao Bang is magical." And so it was.

The saga of pho continues! This is our third bowl, served up lovingly by a shop near the bus station of Cao Bang. Not the best, I think, but doesn't that plate of fresh lettuce look so tantalizing? And those limes? And the chilis??

Our first self-piloted motorbike ride down the highway of Ninh Binh—by the way, most highways in Vietnam are just two lane roads, with no divider and no lane markings, because lanes are interepreted very loosely, and the two directions of traffic exchange sides pretty fluidly.

Sadly, this one of the few action shots I have, because pretty soon Cliff forbade me to take photographs while on a motorbike, or do anything else involving movement and not holding on.

On one particularly lazy day in Ha Noi (well, there were several), we went to 3 or 4 cafes in one day. But this was the first that we went to in all of Vietnam, the first place where we discovered the wonder of Vietnamese coffee. The NYTimes recommended the French pastries here, and the coffee was probably the best.

Another pho shop! It's a definite truth that market stalls and open-air street shops sell the best bowls of pho, not restaurants, though there are those that try to charge you 30,000 dong for a bowl. Plastic chairs, ingredients hanging out in the open (including these fine chicken asses, see them up close), bent chopsticks, unidentifiable meats—all the sure signs of quality. And in the end, you pay less than US$1 for a delicious, steaming bowl of pho.


We paid 2000 dong to cross this thing. I'm glad someone's maintaining this bridge though! It wouldn't do to let it fall into ruin. We had to push the motorbike across.

I'm also sort of ridiculously proud of the fact that I stayed in my first bungalow. In fact, I found out just what a bungalow is. And learned to take record-speed (for me) cold water showers.


Our ridiculous seafood feast. Ridiculous in how cheap it was, and how delicious it was, and how much devastation we caused.

See what I mean? Utter devastation. In our defense I say that scallop shells are much more substantial than scallop meat, though the shrimp were mad hefty. Where else will you find this for US$10?


We gave away all our candy here to these fishermen's children in Mui Ne fishing village. Even though they fought over the candy (we had a limited supply, and somehow the children multiplied when the chocolate came out), they were pretty sweet and cute, especially compared to the children who came later....


The pirate children of the sands! They look very sweet, cajole you to ride down a slide down a sand dune, and then when you're down immediately ask you for 100,000 dong. Also, if you slide down with one person, you're somehow expected to pay all 8 of them around you. Here they are mobbing someone else. Really, they were vicious. It was awkward, and Cliff thinks I would have really given them 100,000 dong if he hadn't been there. (They were so cute at first.)

I enjoy this picture. Dog investigates.

Floating market. Those were some pretty knobbly, warty carrots in that boat.

Here is a landmark moment, one might even say a Hallmark moment. After years of not eating pineapples out of extreme phobia (due to one bad childhood incident, involving salt), I had my first fresh pineapple again. You can see its hacked off bits on the floor of the boat there. And it wasn't just a small chunk of a pineapple. It was almost half. I have to admit it was not bad, pretty decent, almost tasty. I mean, I did eat nearly half the thing.


And because I'm a fan of full circles, endings that follow their beginnings, here is a photo to echo the first one.