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.

V for Vietnam: Various Vagaries

I fall easily in love with foreign countries, but Vietnam, seems to have captured my heart most completely. Possibly it’s because I was there for a long time, or maybe this is because they have the best coffee ever. This is coming from someone drank her caffeinated way through Europe. But nothing, absolutely nothing, compares to the intense richness of Vietnamese coffee, blended with condensed milk and poured over ice. It’s sweet, but not sweet enough to drown out the intenseness of the coffee, which is the problem of American coffee with condensed milk: the sweetness completely overpowers the delicious bitter goodness that makes coffee coffee.

So now I’ve been spoiled by Vietnam, and any other coffee will never, ever completely satisfy me again. I may make an exception for Viennese mélange. Perhaps the secret ingredient of good coffee is a name that begins with a V.

(This now reminds me of V for Vendetta, which lots of words that begin with V, and Guy Fawkes, and Edmund Dantes, who was the ill-starred victim of a 20 Questions game that I bungled, and the answer was never attained.)

Cliff was actually almost not let into Vietnam—or rather, he was almost not let out of China, by the Chinese border officials, because they suspected him of leading an international spy and smuggling ring. He did actually have an extensive and cunning plan for the demolishment of Vietnam’s population of pineapples, shrimp, and general seafood, but they didn’t know that. Meanwhile, I had my eye on their sticky rice.

We did a lot of motorbike riding in Vietnam. Sometimes we rented our own motorbike, and went about according to do our own whim and fancy. This was awesome—as the lazy passenger I had nothing more to do than, you know, sit, and enjoy scenery, etc, so perhaps that's why I enjoyed the entire process more. Cliff had to ride through some drizzle, dust, mud, wind, rickety bamboo bridges. Pictures will soon testify to this.

Most of the other times, though, we were at the mercy and skill of a motorbike taxi driver. This is exactly the same concept as a taxi, except there are about 30 other motorbikes in the same street, coming from all directions, and you suddenly realize how exposed you are. Whether your driver has showered recently also becomes much more obvious and relevant to your enjoyment of the ride.

Then, imagine having 3 people on 1 motorbike. One of them is 6’3”. And it's a one hour ride down steep mountain roads, no railings, lots of hairpin curves and switchbacks. It's windy. A hat gets blown away. And it's getting dark. And you possibly just pissed off your driver by bargaining a bit too hard on the price (admittedly he was trying to rip you off).

Or, maybe it's completely dark and you're going down a road at surely illegal speeds—but probably not, as there are no speed limits ever posted—with a giant backpack whose weight is pulling you backwards.

Anyway, that's a few thoughts on Vietnam, most of which I wrote at work, so that's why it reads so haphazardly. There will be more later, with later being an uncertain span of time, because Internet access is sporadic and uncertain. I'm in a cafe right now in Jianguomen, but I must be getting home. Dinner calls.

unruly wanderings

still in vietnam, having crazy times, motorbikes, villages, rice paddies galore, unexpected pineapples, the best coffee of my life, the best seafood of my life, and swindling children on top of sand dunes!

[Edit: I'd like to make clear that I wasn't swindling children; the children were swindling me. They were pretty damn good at it too.]

why am i always so last minute?

waking up in 3hr. for flight to nanning, guangxi in 6hr. 30min.

then it's a 4hr. bus ride over the border to vietnam!

where hopefully we shall not be devoured by giant mosquitoes.

or devour any mosquitoes ourselves.

because, you know, in vietnam they eat everything.

including beating cobra hearts.

and yes, it's time for the obligatory F. Scott Fitzgerald quote about how it's always 3am in a real dark night of the soul.

Hello, this is my brain on malaria medication speaking. No, it's my brain on mefloquine speaking. Here I am awake at 3 am for three nights in a row, because I can't fall asleep, despite being really tired, because mefloquine is the crazy drug that gives you odd sleep effects. Or maybe there's something else wrong with me and it's not the drug at all.

Regardless this is all because I'm stupidly single-minded at times, and once I get an idea, there's no getting it out of me. I admit it, I wasn't thinking!

Doctor: Would you like the nice anti-malarial that has no side effects?
Me: No, no, I want the mefloquine!
Doctor: ...Are you sure.
Me: Yes, yes, I am.

And now, okay. If I were to go back and ask for the nice anti-malarial that doesn't come with weird effects on your sleep habits, I would feel foolish. Ah yes, I was an idiot, should have listened to you! Shouldn't have been fixated on mefloquine! Why was I stuck on it anyway? I have no idea. None at all.

Oh hell i want to go to sleep. Really I do. At least the Internet is somewhat faster right now.

To add to my list of supposed health problems, I drank water containing floating colonies of mold in it today. Why did I do that? Because, once again, I am an idiot.

Oh hell. What am I going to do? Go back to the doctor and ask for nice drug? Continue this as a damned exciting experience that undoubtedly will be unlike any other I've ever had? Enjoy the ride? Buy sleeping pills?

I forget to mention that another deterrent to returning to the doctors is the medical cost. For some reason only fancy foreigner-run hospitals have this stuff readily available, so it's US$55 + cost of drug for another visit.

And, dude, in America? $10 for a consultation, yo.

Hello, sleep or poverty?

At least I paid my credit card bills, thanks, super-slow Internet that only works at 3am.

Of Haircuts as a cultural experience & the Symbolish therein

"Why are most hairdressers men?" I asked him, looking around the busy shop, a whirl of scissors, blow-dryers, and conversation.

"Because men and women have different ideas of beauty." He said this as if it was the most obvious truth in the world, which it may in fact be.

"But then," I pursued, "Shouldn't more women be hairdressers, if they care more about their hair?"

"Ah," and he said this as if sharing a great secret, "But women style their hair for men."


Leaving the truth of that statement up to debate, I might also have liked to tell him that there are vastly different ideas of beauty between cultures, and ours, sadly, did not coincide.

But I didn't, mainly because he was so vastly pleased with his handiwork. And handiwork is probably the right word—he treated this as something he designed, and not only that, went over every strand of hair at least 5 times. I didn't count the number of times he exclaimed that this haircut is simply perfect! I just writhed internally, and glanced at the clock out of the corner of my eye.

"You'll stop all the passersby in their tracks," he said. (Word-for-word translation: "You'll have a 100% head-turning-rate", which he had to explain to me.)

I was pretty dubious of this. Either it was enthusiastic flattery, or he genuinely believed that this was the best haircut ever. Or perhaps it had something to do with the fact that his glasses had no lenses. Was this literary symbolism for the fact that all men were in fact blind as bats and didn't give a damn for what your hair looked like? If my life were a novel, then yes, I think it was.

One Mao, Two Mao

Yesterday I bought a newspaper and a juice box for 0.50RMB, or the equivalent of $0.07. The newspaper turned out to be mostly detritus, and the juice I haven't tried yet—this same juice was the suspected culprit in a friend's food poisoning in Pingyao. Little yellow berries, shall I risk you?

Things you can get for twice that (or $0.14): A Suntory Oolong tea and a copy of The New Beijing Newspaper; a ride on a bus without A/C; a bag of popcorn; half a roasted yam.

Some prices in comparison:

> Imported box of Kellogg's cereal 50 RMB ~ $7
> Sony battery charger and 4 rechargeable batteries 170 RMB ~ $21
> Meal in the cafeteria 3.50 RMB ~ $0.44
> An extravagant feast for nine-ten people 600 RMB ~ $75
> My weekly commute 40 RMB ~ $5
> A flimsy new bike 180 RMB ~ $23
> Santa costume 36 RMB ~ $4.5

* Not all of these are my purchases. Some of them are just observations, like the cereal. I'll leave you to wonder whether or not I bought a Santa costume :>

smokin' monks

...China has 300 million smokers; maybe in hell they're smoking paper tobacco? But given that Buddhism has 84,136 hells, I'm not sure if folks down there are smoking or being smoked.

Nánpǔtuó's studious monks aren't so sure either. I asked one, "Who goes to Buddhism's 84,136 hells?"

He said, "Anyone who does anything wrong." He pondered this a bit, and added with a wry smile, "Everyone, I guess."

"Is there a Buddhist heaven?" I asked.

"Of course," he said.

"Who goes there?" I asked.

The monk thought a little, and said, "Just a minute." He pushed his Gandhi spectacles back up on his nose, flipped back and forth through the pages of a massive, musty volume, and after a few minutes said, "No one has ever asked me that. I'll have to get back to you."

From: http://www.amoymagic.com/nanputuo1.htm

A rather depressing article about the state of panda conservation in china

Seed Magazine: "Black and White and Desired All Over"

Sometimes—when I read something like this, when I am in a bus going through the city—I can feel, so sharply, all these problems and conflicts that China is facing. It's so like China, isn't it? To want more UNESCO sites, more panda bears, more medals at the Asia Games, more honors and awards that we can plaster to our face and call ourselves splendid, great, modern. But then inside it's a rotting, stinking mess, and the quest for international prestige is not going to sideline the race to make more money, develop more land, build more tacky resorts, whatever the cost.

So many things, panda bears not being the least, are being sacrificed for these $1 milion RMB housing developments, because we want to have an apartment in the "Versailles Gardens" or "Victoria Palm Beach," and drive our shiny shiny Audi to the disgustingly pretentious mall or home-improvement center, where we will load up on assembly-line statuettes of eyeless Greek gods to fill our home and make believe that there is some meaning to this.

And then, at the same time, this country is also so wonderful, and beautiful, and there have been so many great things done and read and drawn and written here. It makes my heart hurt.

Burdicks makes NYTimes' top 10 chocolates list

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/03/style/tmagazine/03tfair.html

Christmas is coming up...and I'm in fancy-chocolate-less
China...*accidentally drops hints liberally*

And it's apparently December already

*blows dust off toast*

China's proxies mysteriously cut off Blogger for a month or so. Now it's back again, just as inexplicably. Some quick updates on a long stretch of time:

* We had a Thanksgiving dinner, complete with real, half-cooked turkey. Real, half-cooked turkey cost us Y600 and was the most delightful shade of pink half-way down on the inside. It was still, nonetheless, one of the best turkeys I've ever ate.

* Then immediately after it snowed. Woo.

* I have a job. Am now English editor for a German travel company down in Jianguomen. Work is easy, and I treat myself to long lunch breaks with the IT kids, and unsuccessfully battle through crowds on the subway. I now know what it feels like to be a grain of coffee in a vaccum-packed bag—airless.

* But expanses of space also exist: I found myself in large, entirely empty underground passage at night, a little spooky—but I decided to sing "La Pastie de la Bourgeoisie" ("In the autumn cool, say cheerio to school")—because there was no one there to hear.

No more chickens.

Some terribly random discoveries of the last few days:

Wudaokou Clothing Market (五道口服装市场): Clearly the place to go if you want to look like a Korean pop star. Hello, fire hazard? Stalls upon stalls and a forest of people jammed into the narrow paths(a fight broke out while we were here). You could probably find something good here if you push patiently enough, dig long enough and bargain hard eough—but chances are some Korean girl on campus already has the exact same sweater/belt/sparkly accessory.
By the time we left this place, we ended up smelling like five different kinds of fried foods all rolled into one. Clothes shopping comes hand-in-hand with food in China, and right next to each set of doors were vendors busy grilling and frying all kinds of meats. It left a stale scent of old oil throughout the entire building.
Conclusion: only for the strictest of bargain hunters or BoA-wannabes.


"Be For Time" (避风塘): Neither the Chinese name (another reference to fried food?!) nor the English name makes much sense, but oh, this place is worth it. For Y18, you get all the coffee, bubble/pearl tea, shaved ice, yoghurt smoothies, milkshakes, juice, tea, and ice cream you can drink. COFFEE. Granted, the shaved ice was a little sparse and the fruit flavors more artificial than fresh-squeezed, but the coffee was decent, and really, Y18? Did I mention it's open 24hr.? And that there's coffee?
Conclusion: HEAVEN.

Random European-style street near my grandparents' house: WTF? Last time I checked, we had some nice little alleys, the odd chicken, some old ladies outside washing their vegetables, some old men smoking the day away. A car would sometimes come by and try to squeeze into the too-small alley. Random kids and a lone white cat. There was a mosque somewhere.
And now? I thought I made a wrong turn into some new-ish corner of Lisboa, where they were trying to "match" the old 19th-century style architecture but clearly coming across as a confused, half-hearted 20th-century imitation. Aside from balustrades and wrought-iron balconies, we also had: tea parlors, a bar, an Avon, a cafe, a pizzeria, and some costume shops (?!). No more chickens. In fact, all the people seem to have vanished as well. Utter desertion. It was actually a bit like walking into a deserted movie set (hence the costume shops?).
Conclusion: Beijing Olympics - more harm than good? (note that this is more a question).

Random book shopping: If there's anything I love, then it's hunting through a vast clutter of used books. And what a relief to not have to bargain: there's really no arguing against a book for Y5.

Some particularly interesting finds: Trekking Through China, Diplomat of a Chinese Diplomat (by Zheng Deyi, one of China's early envoys to the West in the 19th century), I, Claudius, and Wilkie Collins's The Moonstone, which for me is enough to redeem all Victorian literature.

Coal, buddhas, and corn fields [our national week trip]

Never let it be said that there's no such thing as "not crowded" in China. I was half-expecting to get trampled by tourists running amok during National Week, but lo, sometimes I almost thought we had Shanxi all to ourselves. That may be, of course, due to the fact that Shanxi (and Datong in particular) is known more for its coal mines and accompanying dust, smog, and accidents, rather than for its scenery and history. So on our way to the Yungang Grottoes, Hengshan, and Pingyao, we also caught a fair face full of coal dust and exhaust.

Still, that's not to say we were entirely without crowds. We had to make our way through this to get tickets to our next destination.


Imagine that crowd stretching in all directions. Teeming. It didn't really help that after finally buying tickets I promptly commenced to lose mine (Y90!) somewhere between the (dirty, crowded) bathroom, the (equally crowded, perhaps also dirty) waiting room, and a parking lot filled with buses. Through sheer luck I did find my ticket, though only because Clifford made me go look for it. (I was ready to fatalistically despair, somewhat uncharacteristically of me.)

On Lonely Planet's suggestion, we went on a 15min. walk to the "wild Great Wall" (as in, unrestored, untended, left to crumble and erode and be scavenged). This walk led us through corn fields and a village that probably had not seen another visitor since the delusional LP researcher. A group of unruly children convinced us to keep going in charmingly unintelligible Chinese. An old man yelled "OKAY!" happily and energetically as we passed. I mysteriously developed an obsessive photographic relationship with power lines.

And no Great Wall. No Great Wall! Lonely Planet, how could you have been so mistaken and led us so astray? Oh wait, maybe because you are a useless, pompous, shallow piece of shit. I am completely unbiased.

Here's us stumped as to the actual location of the Great Wall. But honestly, I quite enjoyed this random detour. Corn fields and power lines and not a single souvenir vendors!


About another hour later, we finally got to the Great Wall—30 km away by car, not 15min. away on foot. If we were keeping score, Let's Go would win hands down. Anyway. The "Great Wall" was a series of dusty mounds rising behind a little town, where the chief interest was a gigantic fruit market and the arrival of several foreigners by taxi. We were accompanied by some little boys on the way down, very rambunctious and adorable. We may have told them we were Spaniards.


There was also a near-supernatural moment when a storm threatened over Hengshan, one of China's five holy Daoist mountains and the site of martial art heroes, if you believe your wuxia novels at least. What with the sky darkening and the leaves whipping all around us, I was convinced that mountain spirits and stave-wielding Daoists would appear at any moment.

But no large-scale martial arts battles of any kind erupted, though we did find ourselves in indignant dispute with several Chinese tourists at Yungang. Indeed, traveling in China is probably not for those looking for relaxation. At every other step you're either bargaining down ridiculously inflated prices, trying to avoid being scammed, getting rattled on a rickety, fly-speckled bus, or watching out for your wallet. But I exaggerate, as you should know from me by now. And there were moments of peace.

I heart Deval Patrick. And oatmeal.

Because he was put into the oven as a baby. And because he will be the best governor ever. [The Globe, however, does need more editing. As does 02138. Sigh.]

In other news, I am pioneering a new style of biking called "drunken cycling." Its practitioners, of whom I seem to be chief, can be identified by their excessive swerving, weaving back and forth, running into trees and rocks, and barely missing guitarists, cars, and pedestrians.

I have not known how to bike for the first 22 years of my life; I've decided the best place in the world to remedy this fact is Beijing, where the traffic is tumultuous and the people reckless.

Other random skills I've decided [to attempt] to acquire: calligraphy, chinese painting, oatmeal-cooking.

No more toast

Now, perhaps I should change the name of this to "unruly 馒头", or perhaps "unruly 烧饼", seeing as I'm in the land of steamed buns and such. A total translation would be something like: "无序馒头". I quite like this. It sounds as if it could be a martial arts movie. The protagonist would be a disorderly eater of steamed buns, which would transform into deadly weapons at will.

Peking University, too, is a masterpiece of unrulyness and disorder. Two different classes are scheduled for the same time in the same classroom. Neither professor shows up. Then next time, with the scheduling "car crash" resolved, still no professor shows up for the sole class in this room. The clear solution, then, would be to sign up for this class with no professor!

Have a question? You'll go to one office, which will send you to another office, which will send you to yet another office, which will send you back to the second office. At this point you will stand your ground and refuse to leave—4 flights of stairs is enough. Grudgingly, then, they dole out your precious answer—but you will be told to come back tomorrow for something minute and unresolved.

China's loving thickets of bureaucracy also means that all of us have given up our passports for twenty days. I am dying to go somewhere (specifically, here), but am unfortunately confined where they are undoubtedly keeping several eyes on us. Just as in America, I'm awash in wishful thinking of all the places I could go, and nowhere near going toward them.

More exciting stories to come, surely - tales of harrowing bike rides (I anticipate), endless quests for the perfect cup of coffee (as of yet unfulfilled), treks and great adventures (to a thousand and one places), and maybe even the odd class or two (we'll see).

Fish babies & the largesses of our ever-friendly apartment

Indeed, things in our apartment keep on multiplying. We continually find that we have gotten much more than we paid for. The gods are generous.

At the outset I agreed to feed their 2 black-and-white mottled goldfish. Then they had 4 fish babies. Then one day I noticed another tiny fish, the "runt." Would he survive? Has he been suffering under my wayward feeding schedule? He did, so that made 7 fish.

Then one day I notiched the fish tank looking cloudier and swirlier than usual. What's this?, I wondered, and proceeded to investigate. They turned out to be the tiniest, most infantile fish babies ever. Not very far from their fish roe state. As it is, they're rather impossible to count, but there's at least 17 or 18 of them.

The fish gods weren't done with us yet. As we were cleaning the tank one algae-filled day, we found yet another hitherto-unknown fish burrowed in the gravel. He looked to be some sort of scaly, anti-social bottom-dwelling fish, keeps the tank clean and all that. He's very well ensconced.

That makes 25 or 26 fish in total. Which, you know, is making me curious about all the rampant fish sex that must be going on.

I'm also trying to name the fish, which is hard when most of them are the size of flyspecks. Being extremely decisive, I went through 5 or 6 names extremely quickly. The only one that seems to have stuck [in my memory] is Darth Vader. My fish can defeat your fish in a lightsaber duel.

(Actually, for the sake of continuity and unabashed dorkiness, I could name them all after characters singled out by FATE to be the Chosen One. The runt will have to be Harry Potter, the proud, angsty one Rand Al'Thor, and the dazed one with half a fin Frodo Baggins, and the pale, pasty fish Neo, although I don't much like Keanu Reeves at all..... But it will be a tank full of fish with Destines, and together they will rule the world!)

The Anti-Cambridge

Everyone knows I dislike TX. I work to conceal my origins, to the point that some of my friends have no idea what state I'm from. I do enjoy being mysterious. Sometimes people think I'm from New York. This always makes me happy, and I like to pretend I am, because it was my first home here. It gave me my first impressions of America, from pizza to Halloween to the beach on Fire Island (Fire Island = awesome).

Some of you try to tell me that Texas is great and wonderful.  Most of you were talking about Houston and Austin. I'd respectfully like to point out, my town is nowhere near Houston and not very awesome. In fact, Plano, with its churches and giant strip malls, is as sterile and bland as you can imagine. This is all subjective, you say, so here are some external facts:

From the National Journal:

The biggest city here now is Plano, with 241,000 people, a former farming community that became a corporate headquarters and edge city with DART light-rail service, site of mega-mansion subdivisions, the state's ninth-largest city and the new face of successful Texas. Plano is 10% Asian, many of Chinese ancestry, and they slightly outnumber Latinos: a new face of Texas.
...

Politically, Collin County is very Republican, indeed more Republican than Dallas County ever was: it cast more votes in 2004 than all but five other Texas counties, and gave 71% of them to George W. Bush.

So there it is, staunch Republican stronghold full of big corporations and ugly shopping malls and cookie-cutter franchises upon franchises. In 2004, there wasn't even a Democratic challenger to the House representative, because everyone is too smugly satisfied with their paycheck and their mutual funds and their big screen TV to want change.  If Cambridge is one of the most liberal cities in America, then Plano is the anti-Cambridge.

I know, I'm a hater. But I'll admit that the roads are good.