The picture of the stairway and building is the train station that I walk underneath going to work. I posted it cause it is arty. That and it looks like I will be taking that twice a day if every thing works out with the apartment I might get. Some of my co-workers called a couple of people about apartments for me today and it looks like the ones with one bedrooms available are the ones I will take this train for. The other place only had two bedrooms which are still only $600 which I might take if the one bedroom place ends up being more expensive. It is in a cooler neighborhood I guess though. Near a language institute so lots of foreign students there. Mostly Korean and Japanese so still not much English but at least a different sounding language that I don't understand. I won't find out about the apartment though for another week at least cause everyone is already in vacation mode with the upcoming spring festival / new year celebration.


This innocent looking place is the bane of my walk home. Not cause I am terribly worried about being jumped or something but because of bikes. This overpass gets dark as Hades at night and the traffic is coming at me when I am walking through so I cannot see any bikes that might be careening down the sidewalk. This statement probably brings many questions to your mind, why don't the bikes have lights? Why don't the bikes use the street? And the one that goes through my head the most, why don't the bikes try to avoid pedestrians? All valid and I only have an answer for one. The bikes are mad old, like pre-revolution old. Seriously I have not seen a bike that is younger than me since I have been here and apparently they did not have night back in the day so the bikes do not have lights to equip them for this new phenomenon. I will try to take a picture of this place at night but will have to get over my fear of being run over as soon as I focus my eyes on my camera.


This last picture was just something that made me do a double take when I left the hotel this morning.

Made more strides in my getting acquainted with Chinese culture today. I got a SIM card that enables my cell phone, err, mobile to work with a Chinese number and much cheaper rates (like so small that I cannot do the math even with a calculator). Of course the phone now just calls random numbers completely ignoring whatever number I put in and with no apparent pattern but what the hell, if I just keep trying I am sure to reach the person I want. Not that many people have cell phones in china anyways.

In the work space, it looks like I am going to get my stay length changed for my visa so I will be able to save some cash. I still plan on visiting Korea and Japan but now I can do it on my own terms. Also I can spend more time seeing china itself which should be cool. I plan on going to Shanghai, Xi'an, Hong Kong and Taipei. Air China appears to be cheap for domestic flights so hopefully I can do some of these as weekend trips.

also i had lunch with the one of the guys who helped setup the ATC (the place i am working). It was interesting talking to him about his long term strategy for the center and how he plans to execute on it. Hopefully i will be able to have lunch with him on a semi-regular basis, he is a smart guy who has some ambitious plans.

back to the Chinese culture front i also learned some Chinese and English with Chinese patterns speech today. Jay taught me how to get tickets for the subway system and i learned how to say the name of my mobile phone card so i can recharge it and make more random phone calls. i also learned that "maybe you can ..." means "do ..." in a polite way. Example, maybe you can stand there means stand there.

at the hotel this morning i had some TV trouble. The BBC cut out when broadcasting a story about a recent Google decision. Suprising that they had interference then as the rest of the stories seemed to come through fine. And the damnedest thing was the interference kept coming back only when that story aired.

recommendation for the day, The Smiths - The Best... I - Sire. Supposed to be one of their worst greatest hits albums and it still kicks ass. Great pop songwriting (in a beach boys sense) and Morrissey's voice combined with great melodies make for singing and humming along with all the songs for the rest of the day.

also a ps of sorts, i am no longer using the shift key so whatever capitalization mistakes don't get caught by the spell check are no staying in the blog. Ms. Cameron is probably spinning in her grave or her ears are turning red or something.

i almost forget, "go high fuck try" supposedly this means "with you be wealthy" in Cantonese and is a new years greeting. i think people might be taking advantage of me but we'll find out when i way this to everyone on Saturday.