this is Friday night, the night of the hotel party. So last Friday i went to Ms China's party, tonight was for the atc which is the group of people i am working with. They rented everyone a hotel room at the nirvana Beijing resort and planned a full night of festivities.

i drove out with jay and tom instead of taking the bus. Jay had written down directions but they proved to not be very accurate. We thought we were lost until i spotted a bus that i believed resembled the atc buses taking people to the hotel. Neither jay nor tom believed me at first but after a little bit we were so lost that we decided we might as well pull up to the bus and see. We pulled up and tom started yelling out the window at the bus. Turns out they had no open windows though so no one knew what the hell he was saying. Finally we pulled up next to the driver and yelled at him. He unfortunately decided not to answer but someone on the bus heard us and called us and told us that we were following the right bus. Immediate disaster avoided.

we arrived at the hotel and my first impression was of a penitentiary. It had lots of gray cement and steel. Turns out on the inside to be extremely nice. This is where a previous governor of Beijing came with his 2nd and 3rd wives.

the line to check in was long and continuously changing. They told us to get in to two lines divided by name but then as i was almost at the front of that they decided to merge them back together.

also i thought i would not have to worry so much about cutting in line but i was wrong. There was this woman who must have been 5' on her toes. She started out pretty far behind me but every time we took a step forward she took a couple of extra inches. i kept watching her do this and kept staring at her expressing my displeasure through my glare. As ineffective as my mom's glare at this point. She just paid me no attention and worked her way up to two spots ahead of me.

i was staying with jay so we dropped our stuff off and went back to dinner.

the first thing you saw entering the dining room was a back log of people standing in front of the welcome Microsoft sign and guess what they were doing. If you said the macarena you were wrong. If you said taking pictures give yourself a gold star.

the dining room was nice. There were lots of fun toys for people to play with. Air mallets that squeaked and became the weapon of choice for the night. You would expect that because they were blown up they would not hurt when they hit you. You would have expected wrong.

there were also pens and clapping devices for the truly lazy. For those that just could not be bothered to actually clap they provided a device where you simply had to lazily wave your hand and it clapped for you.

there were also bunches of balloons in the middle of all the tables attached to stuffed animal dogs. Quickly the contest of the evening became which table could have the highest balloon bunch or alternately which table could float the largest object with their bunch of balloons. Remember these are all engineers. Everyone seemed to be having a great time and it was fun seeing cans of beer floating across the room. The one disconcerting thing was the stuffed animal that one table got to float being attacked by many squeaking mallets. i may not know much about Chinese culture but it has to be bad luck to beat the shit out of a dog in the year of the dog.

i sat at a table with jay, frank, lianfeng and his fiance. There also were a couple of random late comers who sat at our table as well. By the time we got there we had to take a table at the back.

the floormats that i took pictures of are in all the elevators and they change according to the day of the week.

Friday took me a while to get without my shoes in it. i rode the elevator randomly up and down a couple of times. Whoever got into the elevator would stare at me quizzically while i rode it all the way down or up with them and then did not get out.

Saturday was taken in the morning so it looks slightly more clean.

From Sunday and monday, i have decided that i want a job watching the Olympics, i love them. Like marry them love them. All of them, even ice dancing and anything involving cross country skiing. i actually found myself asking other people if they had been following the big women's 15k biathlon scandal. Let me repeat that, i asked other people if they had been following the big women's 15k biathlon scandal. Some Russian woman took performance enhancing drugs that "were legal in Siberia" and got caught. She was stripped of the silver. She missed gold by 2.3 seconds and took a penalty cause she missed shooting a target after skiing 13k up a hill. The penalty is basically a pretty large lap. 2.3 seconds behind someone with no penalty, how do you deny doping at that point?

that is a rugged event though. i started watching it and the first woman to finish went to put her hands down on her knees and just kept going, lying out on the ground drooling on the snow. i think my reaction was something similar to "ohh shit someone just died in the Olympics" while i was screaming in my apartment though three other women finished and performed exactly the same action. at the end of the race it was over a 90% fall down drooling on the ground rate. Talk about grueling.

props go out to the female Korean speed skaters as well. They seem hellbent on sweeping all medals in every race. i just watched the 8 lap speed race and it was 1-2-3 Korea but one person got disqualified. What was interesting is that they were 4-5-6 until the second to last lap than passed everyone.

last Olympic point. Did anyone see the Russian figure skater, he had me clapping for him in my apartment. i think i saw a glimpse of why my grandmother likes ice skating so much. Done right it is something to see.

today has been nice and relaxing. Went grocery shopping and just sat outside in the central area of the apartment for a while because it was gorgeous out. Then did laundry and messed around the house in between events. i have become a regular at the restaurant i go to a lot. They brought out my tsing tao by the time i decided what i wanted to eat.

i was reading the foreign affairs issue dedicated to china and they brought up some negatives with American society and how Chinese society is better in these respects. Most of them i did not agree with but there was one that resonated, the lack of violent crime here is really nice. i have not felt unsafe here since i have been here (ignoring the traffic) even with the lack of street lights and the many alleys and small streets you end up walking around in. In America there is a lot more tension maybe? About safety. Even in the bar district where i expected people to be drunk and rowdy (code for fighting) there was not any of that. Also you don't see any reports of violent crime on the news (wonder why?) so maybe it is just blissful ignorance. It seems in a city of 20 million that there would be some conflict.

another concern brought up by the foreign affairs was rampant piracy and worries of intellectual property here. The most provocative argument i have heard about this matter since being here is as follows. Beijing is the host of the 2008 Olympics. It has defined an Olympic symbol that it uses on all Olympic related products or information. No matter where you go in Beijing you do not see that symbol on anything other than authentically produced goods. The word from Shanghai is the same. There is not piracy of anything involving that symbol. Thinking about that leads to some interesting discussions that are probably better held in person.

music recommendation, Willard grant conspiracy and telefunk - in the fishtank 8 - konkurrent. konkurrent is a Danish label that started this project. They get two diverse groups in the studio to record an ep in a limited amount of time (usually under a week with no rehearsal, except for this album which is the first to use rehearsals). This particular combination works really well. Willard grant conspiracy are a slower Americana group. They are focused on lyrics and melody with almost a country tinge. telefunk are a Dutch electronic unit. Everything comes to together perfectly for this album. It is mostly traditional songs that have been given a stronger bass with telefunk and great banjo parts from wgc. Also the interplay of vocal styles makes this album one worth listening to no matter what style you like.

ADDED: This happened on Thursday. went out to dinner yesterday with Michael. We went to a hot pot place pretty close to my apartment. It is starting fare away aka the fare drop in the cab which gets you about a mile or two. This was a Mongolian hot pot place which is different from more traditional places because they add spices to the soup. Normally it is pretty clear with some vegetables and you add the spice by dipping the freshly cooked item in a separate spice bowl you have. This Mongolian place must be doing something right as they have expanded from two or three restaurants to the sixth largest chain in china in three years with ten Beijing locations.

we passed a neon three dimensional palm tree to get there. That is pretty cool. i am thinking of getting one for my lawn when i buy a house. i will have to move somewhere without a homeowner's association though.

we ordered, in scientific terms, a shit ton of food. Four plates of lamb, a mushroom plate, a vegetable plate and some extra diakon radish. There is a spicy side and a regular side as hopefully you can see in my blurry picture. vegetables only go in the regular side (according to Michael but even he admits most people put them in the spicy side, he just doesn't like spicy).

we had a nice long dinner. It was interesting talking to Michael. We discussed the various regions of china, how he liked it here as opposed to Redmond, the current cultural movements and politics in general. i liked listening to him describe being here as opposed to Redmond. He used the word free quite a bit which at first took me off guard as i tend to view china as slightly more restrictive than the us. It makes sense though for him. He is much freer to do what he wants here and comfortable enough to do it here.

talking about the regions was fun. i learned what differentiates the north and south and the east and west from the eyes of a southerner. It seems to be opposite of the us. The northerners here are more open and loud whereas the southerners are more restrained and say less. For perspective he compared both groups to Americans who are louder than both by a large amount. i always enjoy hearing about people's opinions on their fellow countrypeople. He compared the southerners frequently to Japanese as a positive term which was different from how i have heard a lot of people here refer to Japanese. There still seems to be a fair amount of animosity between the countries.

his opinions on the direction the culture is moving were enlightening as well. It seems the almighty dollar or quai seems to be replacing most of the more traditional value systems in the youth. i asked him what impact he felt the cultural revolution had on the more traditional value systems and he agreed that it probably had the most significant impact. Especially because some of the market reforms started while the memory of that was still fresh.

while discussing all these things we managed to put a serious dent in the food. The only thing that remained was the vegetable plate at the end of the meal. We got through everything else.

Michael lives a couple buildings down from me so he taught me how to say a place close to the apartment building that cab drivers across the city would know. After dinner i got in the cab and was able to get him to understand where i wanted to go on the second try. Baby steps. Now i can get home if i get stranded.

because of the setup of the city there are many places that are not on a named street so you cannot really use an American style address like 94 Stewart. People end up using a lot of landmark style directions like near the large department store down the street from the Mongolian hot pot place. The apartment complex i live in is not big enough to warrant landmark status but luckily i live next to the old athletes village and people know where that is so i can say that and get within a two minute walk of the building. i just have to be careful because if i get the first word wrong i could end up in the new athletes village or the Olympic athlete village both of which are about 40 minutes away.

here is the door to my building. If you notice they also use the careful not to get your finger caught in the door sign. Apparently razors shoot out of the door once it shuts and cut off your finger. Glad they put up a sign.

music recommendation, lupe fiasco - revenge of the nerds - mixtape. This is the first more mainstream rap i have listened to in a while and really liked. He is from Chicago and rhymes about things beyond money, clothes and hoes. The song that caught me was a song about conflict diamonds and how the rap industry (and desperate boyfriends) is supporting wars in Africa
and pretty horrible practices by companies like deboer's. This is a slippery slope though. i watched a t.i. video today and caught myself thinking it was pretty good. Pretty soon i am going to have platinum teeth.

Happy valentine's day! Remember my posts from earlier about valentines day not being big here? i most have gone to the one restaurant where it was huge. i walked into a restaurant and the hostess was going to seat me on the second floor but at the last second stuck me in the elevator for the third floor (i think it was her idea of a joke). As i stepped out of the elevator i saw that every table was lit by candlelight and occupied by couples (except for one table that had three). i ended up eating while reading my magazine by candelight and drinking my beer out of a wine glass. Awww, goes up the collective cry. So sad.

Today i went out to lunch with hua's team. They wanted to practice their English and i got to learn about Shanghai and xi'an. Both cities i plan on visiting so it worked well. i learned all the good spots to go to. shanghai's you can see in a day and a half and xi'an requires two weeks. i am not sure i will have enough time to hit that many historic sites when i go visit but we will see.

otherwise today was pretty quiet. i finally found the Olympics channel so i have been watching skiing, speed skating and luging. It is great watching here. They actually show all the participants in an event instead of just the Americans or whomever is beating them. It is like watching cbc but i have yet to see curling.

also the button i sewed back on my coat two weeks ago has lasted for two weeks today. It is not the prettiest stitch but it seems to hold pretty well (better than the original prettier stitch over my scarf).

music recommendation, Paul Simon - graceland - Warner brothers. After lots of jaylib and tribe, i needed something a little different. This album is a lot of fun to sing along to. Besides i always picture Chevy chase in the video for you can call me al. This also was the album on which youssou n'dour made his American debut.

today was pretty uneventful. It was however beautiful outside. i am guessing it was about 12 Celsius out and sunny. So sunny that i had to squint when i walked out my front door. It was also nice and windy. Now i know a lot of people are thinking that windy usually does not equate with nice. Here it does. The wind blows away the ever present smog and also helps when walking around and encountering unpleasant smells. You only smell them for a second.

the tall buildings are all part of my apartment complex and my apartment building is actually not captured in the pic.

the security guards for the complex double as parking assistants. Because the streets and parking lots are so narrow here whenever a car is pulling out it has to be assisted by a guard. They usually help when pulling in as well. Parking challenged of the world should move here. Not only could you use the parking assisted technology on cars but you have a real life person making sure you don't run into anything.

i just found out how to change the picture order around. It all boils down to html and referenced files so i just switch the references around. Like i said i am kind of slow so you will have to excuse the fact that it almost took me a month to determine how to do that.

the new subway line they are building does not seem quite on track to be completed by the end of the year. i got up on a bridge to peek over the blue wall and expected to see an actual tunnel. Instead you just have this. Maybe there is a tunnel far below this earth and i just cannot see any access to it.

the way i walk to work requires me to jump over this gate every day or to jump over the gate at the other end. It seems that they built the light rail station next to the existing rail. After they finished building it and putting in these stair cases they realized that if people used them they would be coming out right on the rail. They then thought about the liability of all these people pouring out on to the rail and what would happen if a train came. So they decided to put this fence around the outlet.

it really helps nothing. Everyone just hops over it by hanging on the taller part of the fence. On the other side (which is taller and a little more awkward) people have built a de facto staircase out of cement shards. It reminds me of a giant hole that someone punched in a wall i found when going to Williams that first night for dinner.

pretty sky, so nice to have some sun after some days of smog.

another difference i noticed a while ago but kept forgetting to write about. When you get to a restaurant, the waiter hands you the menu and waits for you to decide. There is no helping anyone else or coming back after a couple of minutes. at first i thought it was because they thought i might need help but it happens at every meal i eat out no matter who i am with. The menus are usually huge as well so it takes a while to decide.

music recommendation, you should be listening to jay dee or a related CD.

RIP Jay Dilla.

one of the best to ever come out of Detroit. Missed already. Check out Stones Throw for an obituary.

listen to any album you have of his or that he touched (d'angelo, a tribe called quest, slum village, busta rhymes, de la soul, the pharcyde, the roots, common). I'll be listening to jaylib and cursing the fact that i can't get the album he released six days ago until i get to Japan.

the rest of the weekend was a lot quieter. On Sunday i went to the largest mall in the world (in terms of square footage) with hua who wanted to look for things for his new apartment. The mall blew my mind in terms of size. Imagine the mall of America laid out in a straight line with five floors. What really blows me away is the amount of shopping in Beijing. Yeah, they have a lot of people but this many large shopping centers don't seem to be sustainable.

i had my first foot massage here (place to the left). Foot massages are awesome, you stick your feet in water that boils the flesh while they rub your back and arms. Then they rub your feets and legs. All for under $10. i just need to find a reputable place by my house now and i will be getting these all the time.

the mall was so big they had rides for the kids and scooters that looked a lot like rascals that you could rent. Everyone was riding around on scooters. It was pretty funny looking. Unfortunately my sausage fingers could not take a still picture of this phenomenon. When i go back i will try again.

Saturday i spent going to the grocery store and walmart yet again. The grocery store proved to be trickier than i expected to find. It was up some stairs behind a Kodak store, not the most logical place to find it. After i got groceries and got back home i realized i had nothing to eat them in and no cups to drink from. That was the impetus for walmart.

nobody really followed me this time because i was running from aisle to aisle grabbing silverware and bowls. When i went to check out i heard someone screaming in English so i had to turn off my ipod and look around. Turns out they are trying to hype up valentines day and sent some random guy to do it at the walmart in Beijing. It was so funny to hear this guys voice, it was like David cross were standing there screaming at Chinese consumers to come play musical chairs while channeling Gabriel from shut up you fucking baby. i started laughing so hard in line that i had people staring at me (alright more people staring than usual).

i started thinking about the reverse of this, what if you went to walmart or costco or whatever in the us and there was someone hooked up to a mic that you could hear through the whole store because it was so loud and he was screaming at you in Chinese while running around some chairs. He would be taken away.

it made me pay a little more attention to my surroundings and i realized that for impulse buys they had condoms and gum. What happened to the walmart that refuses to fill prescriptions for birth control and will not sell condoms in the us? Also the condoms wayyy outnumbered the gums. They also had names that had nothing to do with sex like Billy boy and duck. How do you tell which ones are lubricated or spermicide covered?

later Saturday night i just ended up studying Chinese. i am going to get a tutor because this book shit just is not cutting it.

here is the lunch i had on Sunday at a miao restaurant. The miao are an ethnic minority in the yunnan region. They all had traditional grab on and they also dance during dinner. We decided to have a traditional miao specialty which turned out to be dog. It was basically hot pot style (boil a bunch of stuff in broth, throw in the meat till semi-cooked and eat with sauce). The first bite was a little hard as i imagined trixie but after that it was fine. It tastes a lot like venison (gamy) but one you throw it in the sauce you only tasted hot. It is not something i would eat every day but maybe when i plan on going drinking (according to woo-jin, it absorbs more alcohol than any other food thus allowing you to drink more). i would like to try it in a different style though.

this is a sad car.

music recommendation, Chris rock and Richard pryor. i have listened to all of their albums so many times that i know all the words but i still laugh. Something comforting about their comedy. They manage to make you not only laugh but to empathize with their pain. i view them more as storytellers who tell really funny stories than comedians. To define comedian i think some great examples are Lewis black, Dave chapelle, and Eddie Murphy before Beverly hills cop II.

Sunday was the last day of spring festival (almost, last weekend day to be exacto). Below are some women dancing outside of walmart.

it was also the last night for fireworks. i took some video with my camera so you can hear it as well as see it. It turned out to work a lot better than pictures. When i see you next i am sure i will bore you with the five minutes of video i took of things blowing up in pretty ways.

to the left is a picture of the various heads of Ms china singing on stage with the laker girls.

the pics are out of order for the rest of the night so the telling of events might jump around a little. For anyone who has uploaded pics to blogger and controlled their order, please tell me what i am doing wrong. It seems pretty straightforward but i have been called slow before (usually for good reason).

this was the end of the night so you get an idea of how things end up. Since we were already on the east side of town we decided to go out to the bar districts. First we went to houhai. i would like to come back to this area during the day sometime. The name literally means back lakes. The area is lakes behind the forbidden city (north). There are many bars and restaurants around the lakes. It is supposedly the new hip place to hang out. It is also the location of the highest commercial rent in Beijing (although i would think guomao would be higher but...)

here is the entrance to the second bar of the night. chivas, reminded me of yonsuk from u of m. He used to swear by that stuff while everyone else was drinking crown.

back to houhai, it was pretty empty because it was cold out but the whole area is focused on the lakes. In the summer it should be a lot of fun. We walked from one entrance all the way around to the farthest bar on the other side. i was up for going anywhere inside (aka warm) but people kept finding something wrong with all the other places.

the last place was a shisha bar. They had a nice assortment of hookahs that you could choose from. We ended up just having a drink there and then splitting up to go different ways.

here is us at the bar. William, ju min, Eric (see the peace sign?), Michael and hua.

i liked the bar quite a but actually. It was really low key and pretty quiet. Seems like a good place to go to grab a drink and talk. Too bad it is thirty minutes away and not down the street. One of the drawbacks of this place according to the group was the cats (seen below) that had shed everywhere. They were pretty cute i thought even if they were a bit mangy and undernourished.

after a drink William and ju min left and Michael went home. hua, Eric and i decided to check out the other bar (chivas elevator) which was in saniltun. The other big bar district and the place that used to hold the title of hippest. Also the only district called out in my Microsoft travel advisory (something they give every international traveler that has lots of useful info) as violent. Have to look out for people wanting to knife foreigners there. Luckily i have been here so long people always mistake me at first blush for a local so i was not worried.

we ended up getting a table which meant we ended up getting a bottle and yes, of course it was chivas. Along with the bottle we got sweetened green tea which might be one of the best mixers for drinks i have ever tasted. i need to try sweet tea when i get home. Along with three sets of dice.

the dice game started to make more sense as we played quite a bit of it. The strategy is basically lying about what you have. There were a couple of key rules i learned that made a big difference from before. That was the exciting night at the bar. Drinking a lot while playing dice. To mix it up i took pictures like the one above with hua mourning the fact that he lost yet again. Also these pictures are possibly illegal. You are not allowed to take pics inside bars here and i managed to take a couple. The manager got pissed at me though after the second one and stood right next to our table to make sure i did not forget anymore. It was a good time going out and hanging out instead of kicking it in the crib.

the cab ride home was long because of many frequent stops for hua to get some air. When we arrived at the hotel he went to his room and i realized i had no rmb to pay the cab driver with. i tried to pay him with American but he was not having it. Finally i switched some money at the hotel which they did not want to do as i was not a guest. After paying the cab driver and starting to walk back to the apartment, the driver swung back around for one more round of screaming at me in Chinese through his window. Pissed off the manager at the bar, the hotel staff, the cab driver, Beijing is starting to be like home.

music recommendation, yeah yeah yeahs - machine & yeah yeah yeahs - shifty. If you combine their first two eps you get one of the best art rock albums ever. Karen o's vocals sound like something i cannot write about with family reading and nick zinner makes sounds with his guitar that i did know were possible. Besides with songs like art star with the lyric " I got a dealer in Tokyo I got a rep in Paris I got a agent in Colone Shit i got a gallery in New York!" how can you help but like them.

the night of the big party. i decided to take the subway to the party because i thought it would be quicker than the bus from work and that i could leave my apartment later. i left my apartment later but don't think it was any quicker than the bus.

it was also crowded as hell, now that spring festival is winding down and people are starting to come back to Beijing, i keep realizing everywhere i go that there are a lot of people here. It has forced me to become more patient and less polite, an interesting turn of events. Because there are so many people it just takes longer to do everything, and because there are more people you get used to being run into and running into.

here is a picture of myself. i still have my aversion to pictures including me and will probably refrain from posting many of the ones that i do end up taking to the blog. Something about writing a journal about myself while posting pictures of myself seems just a little too egocentric. This might be the only time i wear a tie in Beijing though so i wanted to document it. Also i was able to tie it myself without any help or instructions from the internet. It only took ten tries to get the knot right and the length almost right.

when i finally got to the party i was surprised to find that it more resembled a rock concert than a holiday party. The party was for Ms china so it included atc (where i am, they help the product groups), Ms research china, sales, and marketing. The difference between engineers and sales / marketing is always noticeable. Sweaters and jeans (both sexes) versus suits and tea-length dresses (the only dress term i know because the one i wore to homecoming had to be tea length). There were a lot of wigs for some reason, spiky Mohawk ones and just spiky ones. All in bright colors. The food was not really food just hor d'oeurves but still good. They did not have tables though or even places to set your drink while you ate. i possess the unique ability to spill on my back with only a glass never mind the plate so i ended up just using one of the food tables as my impromptu dinner table. The eating all took place in a hallway outside the ballroom where there was a stage and four gigantic video monitors on the walls.

the ballroom was what made the experience pretty surreal. While i was eating there was a 20 year old pop star on stage who had the women screaming like a beatles concert. Thank god it wasn't like a tom jone's concert. After this there was a rock band that all the people i know here listened to in college. After this they started the raffle which turned out to take three hours.

a digression, i was in the hallway while the stars were performing talking with random people. In front of me the vp of Ms china (all the groups) walked past and was mobbed by eight sales / marketing females. He proceeded to take a picture with them. i mentioned something along the lines of that is a lot of females to take a picture with and the person i was talking to said that it was because the vp and all of the females were Taiwanese. According to this person all Taiwanese are lewd and make jokes that are sexually offensive and politically incorrect. It was the first really strident anti-Taiwan comments i heard and took me by surprise. mostly Taiwan does not seem to be on people's minds (or at least they hesitate to talk to a foreigner about it).

on to the raffle, they started off by giving out random things like posters and what not and moved up to pdas and an xbox in record time. They must have given out about 30 presents in 15 minutes.

Another digression, i know the picture to the left is blurry but the important part of it is not. That woman's sweater ends at her shoulders and starts again on the arm. a fashion that seemed very popular at the party. i just wanted to let my female readership in on the big fashion here. And just think you don't even have to go buy a new sweater you can just chop a section out of your old ones.

here are the big monitors i was talking about and also a feel for how many people were at the event. Again everyone that was here works at Microsoft and is part of the Microsoft family.

in between the first part of the raffle and the final gift there was about a two hour and twenty minute break. During this break there was lots more singing. This time it was not professionals though but back to karaoke. It started off with the picture below on the monitors and everything else dark. That is the vp looking at what appears to be a Russian model. Apparently he studied in Russia. So after that had been up for a while he came out in full Russian gear complete with the hat. He than sang a song in Russia which i am guessing was understood by the majority of the crowd about as well as i understood it. NOTE: I recently found out that most older Chinese people speak perfect Russian. Back in the day all classes were taught in Russian when the countries were close (1950's - 1960's).

After he finished the Chinese laker girls rushed the stage. Alright they weren't really the Chinese laker girls but they were all wearing very short white vinyl skirts with vinyl halter tops, a fringed jacket that again only covered the arms (really a bizarre fashion choice) and vinyl cowboy hats. i made a comment about how surreal this all was and hua said that it was representing the diversity of china (tongue in cheekily). They proceeded to dance and generally wander about the stage while everyone went through a round of karaoke again.

Side note, generally i am not one to perpetuate stereotypes but there were two that i noticed at this event. One Asian women have no rhythm (or at least very few do, yachi, you are included in the do group). of the eight women on stage only one could even move her feet with the music. i forgot to mention this is 4 to the floor banging techno. if you did not try to move your body the volume of the bass would make you move at the right time. you had to go out of your way to be off beat a la steve martin in the jerk. Also taking pictures is popular. It took twenty minutes to get into the party because so many people wanted to take a picture in front of the entrance sign. everyone making a peace sign.

back to the raffle. After much singing and bad dancing they gave away a couple of laptops. i won nothing even though i had the lucky number of 886. screw numerology.

this is the companion piece to lonely shoes, lonely shirts.

the walk i take to work has become so much more interesting since basically moving across the street. i can almost see the hotel i was living in from the front of my building but it is very different where i am staying now. i am walking though a bunch of different apartment / living areas some of them nicer than others. It makes me feel like i am actually living in China as opposed to living on a really busy street. The area right by the train track is pretty decrepit, these pictures are the nice parts of the area. i will try to take more pictures but am struggling with the morality of turning someone's subsistence living into a memento if my trip here. also i am not sure how receptive people would be of me taking pictures of their homes.

went to walmart again last night (i know, i know hypocrite). i did find a different grocery store though were i can pick up everything else i need. walmart was pretty interesting, i think my being a caucasian in Beijing draws attention from the employees at the store. The first night i went, there was a guy who followed me around and looked at everything i was doing. i thought he was just trying to be helpful but because he did not know any English he was just following me around. i paid a little more attention last night and realized i had an escort everywhere i went in the store. Must be a rash of foreigners stealing humidifiers.

Check out was intriguing as well, it was close to the time the store closed so they only had two lanes open. i had a good twenty minutes in line to watch the cashier. Again the night before the checker had been very thorough with my money but he had also been very thorough with the woman in front of me's money. The checker this night was letting everyone blow through including the person in front of me who bought 3000 quai worth of merchandise. When it came to my 300 quai purchase she put each one of those bills through their paces, finally bringing out the uv lamp to verify their authenticity. i cannot believe these employees think i would be capable of stealing anything just based on my appearance (tone of righteous indignation). next i go maybe i will wear all my really baggy clothes and try to appear as furtive as i can :).

here is a random traffic jam on the one lane street outside my apartment. It was caused by the first accident i have seen here at the intersection right outside my apartment.

you can also see the lack of street lamps illustrated. Props to my dad for actually spotting this (or at least saying he noticed it:) before reading the answer. What the picture does not convey is the amount of people laying on their horn, not just little beeps. Sounds like at least fourteen of the drivers had gone narcoleptic and fallen asleep resting on the horns. Supposedly my camera allows you to record audio with pictures. i will have to try that out and see if i can still post those pictures.

here is the dinner i had last night with William, grass (her English name), Michael and hua. It was good to get out and eat with people.

tonight i get to go to ms China's holiday party. It should be cool, it is in guomao where i went last week. Except this time the places will be open and we will be having dinner / party in one of the hotels. Also i will get to meet people from the other Microsoft building in Beijing. However i will not be meeting anyone's family. The event is only for full time employees. Instead of celebrating with your family you are celebrating with your Microsoft family (actual quote from the posters).

music for the day, s - puking and crying - suicide squeeze. a Seattle native who used to be the lead singer for carissa's wierd before they went kaput. What i imagine the postal service would sound like if all the singing were done by a female with a vulnerable voice and the music were darker than i imagine postal service to be. Of course that could be completely off base because i have never listened to the postal service album. The gist though is that her music is dark pop electronic. The first song on this album i end up listening to at least three times every time i listen to this album.

here are some pictures inside the inner sanctum. To the left is the second bedroom which also happens to be were all my clothes are are stored and hung.

there is some large thing to store them in. i believe it is an armoire but i don't really know what that is so i hesitate to call it such. The bed is kind of small but for those of you visiting we can play papers, rocks, scissors to see who sleeps here and who sleeps in the larger bed. Don't get that excited though. Both of the beds are firm. Actually that is an understatement the beds are pretty much a board.

this is my living room and desk area. Supposedly i have internet but have not been able to get it working yet. Hopefully tonight. The machine in the top right corner is a air conditioner / heater which is a lifesaver because that is what is keeping my ass from freezing. One of the cool things about this apartment is that there is one of these in both bedrooms and the living room. i have been able to put the living room heater on a timer but it appears the bedroom models are older. i brought the remote control for those into work and asked someone to tell me what all the buttons are for so i should be able to set it tonight.

here is my stereo as well. It was a good purchase. It is not the same as my event monitors but i can hear it from all the rooms and it sounds alright.

the TV is almost useless at this point because it is all in Chinese. It is good to have it on in the background so i continue to hear the language but there is not much i can sit down and watch.

i am doubting my ability to learn Chinese now though because of my laundry machine. i took a picture of the controls to bring them in this morning so i knew what it was i was doing and none of the people i asked to translate it could translate all of the settings. They needed to pull out a dictionary to figure out what some of the words meant. These are people who grew up here and they cannot determine what the words on a laundry machine are. at first i thought it was a translation problem, they could not figure out how the word translated but it was a "i have no idea what that word is" problem. It looks like Chinese is a bitch to learn.

here is my bedroom, it works well but the bed is a little hard. Another interesting note is that there is no top sheet just a duvet for the comforter. It was like this at the hotel as well. To be honest missing a sheet does not really change anything that much. Maybe it makes washing easier but you can just pull off the duvet (which is its whole purpose anyways).

taking a shower this morning was a slight debacle as well. The shower is not huge and i am so i ended up with an inch of water on the floor i had to mop up when i was done.

some random things that have been going through my head. Has anyone seen the mission impossible III trailer? What the hell is Philip Seymour Hoffman doing in this movie? Didn't he just finish capote which was one of the best movies i saw last year solely because of his performance in it. Now he is doing some blockbuster bad guy, at least his role in that Jennifer aniston movie was funny and introduced the word shart to the vernacular.

i watched the trailer through ifilm while i was watching the super bowl commercials. i did not want to be left behind on this coming years pop culture references. The only one that has been funny so far is the sprint crime deterrent commercial. Also i have been listening to this American life because of a sample in a books song that lead me to listen to the episode that was sampled. Thank god for the internet. i forget how great that show is.

music recommendation, death from above 1979 - your a woman, I'm a machine - vice. Two men have never made so much noise as these two. Bass and drums and a little synth. You cannot help but play this at ear shattering volume and attempt to sing along at the top of your voice. Who knew it could be sensual as well? Not me, until the suicide girls burlesque show. This was the only good part of that show.

here is my awesome apartment. It works pretty well for my purposes. The one drawback is that the doorways are pretty low so i have to duck going through every one of them. i was pretty good about avoiding them last night when i was aware but not quite so lucky this morning when i was half awake. It kind of snuck up on me. i turned my head into the doorway and almost knocked myself down. It is going to make me hard headed (something i have never been).

i started out doing wash as i was unpacking my bags because i was getting low on the delicates (underwear). i was going to have to start turning them inside out and wearing them again. Drying might be a little bit of an issue because it takes them a while to hang dry. Hopefully they are done tomorrow morning as i need a pair. Hang drying your clothes always equated to being extra clean and smell nicey in my mind but i feel like that is not really the case here. The air is pretty polluted and it is in the middle of a city so it probably will not have that line dried freshness. we'll see.

this is the street outside my building. Lots of places to go and explore. There is a convenience store also right on the street that has stuff i can grab and try to figure out how much to pay for. Calculators are a boon in this case because they cut out the need for a common language.

the walmart is pretty close so i can grab more traditional supplies. Sheets, toilet paper, and what not. i am not sure how i feel about shopping at walmart seeing as how i disagree with almost everything they have done in the us. i have been looking around for another department store that i can walk to and avoid walmart going forward.

lets play a quick game. Look at the picture to the left and see of you can notice what is missing. My guess is that no one will see it because i did not until later.

the difference that i have been noticing every night when i walk home from work is the lack of street lamps. It makes it dark when walking around through different alleys to get home. It just seems to be a part of the way things are done here. i would be curious to know if it adds to the violent crime rate or not.

the building below is my building from the outside. i am living on the second floor though so not much of a view.

so on the left are the keys to my new apartment that i move into tomorrow morning. i don't think i can convey how excited i am to be moving out of the hotel. i will finally unpack my suitcases and have a fridge i can fill (not like i will but ...). The place is pretty nice with an extra bedroom so if you want to visit there is a place to stay. The living room has lots of room so i am thinking about opening a disco to make some money on the side. One cool thing about the key is that it has four ridges on it instead of the normal two.

here is the stack of money that i had to pay for rent. i felt like Tony montana. Everything is done with cash here.

some random observations i have after being here for two weeks. The first time i saw a cop car i was amazed that no one pulled over to let it pass. i thought that was pretty dangerous ignorance on the part of drivers. Turns out that cops always have there lights on here. Every time i have seen one driving around the lights are on and they don't really seem to be going anywhere in a hurry.

the other thing i was going to talk about i cannot remember but once i remember i will post it.

recommendation, Bruce springsteen - Nebraska - Columbia. This album pushes springsteen to Johnny cash type heights. The album defines Americana to me and evokes such strong emotion that you have to be ready to listen to it. Raw honesty and sincerity deliver these tales of America.

Monday, i ended up waking up way too early to catch the super bowl. i think that is the first football game i watched all year but it sounded like fun at the time.

i watched it at jay's place with a bunch of people who had / do work in Redmond so everyone was a seahawk's fan. Too bad for them ;). The game was good. Did not get to see any of the commercials though. We were watching the espn international broadcast on pirated Filipino satellite. We did get to see the same nike commercial twice for every break though. They would show the commercial then a commercial for nokia football crazy (an espn show) then the nike commercial again. In the words of Lewis black, they could have only been targeting one segment of the population, those with alzheimer's.

allow me a little bit of maudlin indulgence. i got to talk to chris' party back in Seattle before i left that morning which was nice. It was good to catch up with people briefly, even those distracted by chili or the game :). It did make me a little homesick though. It would have been nice to be eating chili and watching the game there.

it snowed about three inches as well. It started when i left the hotel and was done by the end of the game for the most part. This was the first and supposedly only snow for the season. Unlike Seattle the city kept chugging along. They have a limited number of salt / plow trucks which they use mostly for the ring roads. For everything else they rely on the snow being worn away and an army of old Chinese women to clean off the sidewalks.

i also found an apartment last night. It is a two bedroom near work. i will post more about it tomorrow.

my music recommendation for today is the white stripes - the white stripes - v2. Not my favorite album of theirs ?(de stiijl is) but the one i listened to yesterday. If you have not caught on yet, i am only recommending albums listened to that day. This album was the white stripe's first. this album shows a lot of their influences and it probably the most sprawling (except for get behind me satan).