Wish everything was this direct

Quote of the Day

White person in Beijing:
"I'm a huge geek TRAPPED in a jock's body."

False, you may be bigger than most people here, but you look nothing like a jock.

Globalisation

I just met a Spanish guy, who works for a French company, in a Starbucks in Beijing.

Only in China

Do you need a massage to recover from yesterday's massage! Whenever I go back to the states, I always miss being able to get a massage at any time of the day or night, which is not only 3 times as long and twice as good, but also half the price of a massage in the US.

Beijing

Arrived in Beijing Tuesday afternoon.  People are always curious how long the flight is from the U.S. to China and on my flight I discovered a good way to describe it: one can watch the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy in addition to another movie.  Yes, the flight had all three movies on demand, which is a pretty brilliant idea.  It also had other movies and their sequels, e.g. the Mission Impossible movies and the Men in Black movies.  Such a good idea!

Started work yesterday, and will get a lot of opportunities to work on my Mandarin, which is great.  While people do speak English, since they discovered that I can speak Chinese they have been slipping into speaking Mandarin with me instead of relying on English to communicate.  Makes me feel so good about my hard work!  Still feel like I have a long way to go, but definitely encouraging that I am better than I think.