So it’s been a very long time since we’ve posted. And it may be even longer until the next post. Nor will this post be very substantive as far as its text is concerned. To summarize though…

• Our visas still haven’t been processed. We need to leave the country again come March 15th.
• My mother, who was coming for the Chinese New Year and would have lived with us and thus applied lots of pressure on us to move before she got here, is no longer, not until June or so, so the pressure’s off, though we’re still looking for a new place.
• We have yet to find a new place, though Season’s Park, which Maria found, seems decent. The search will continue and there will be stories about the whole process now that Maria is doing it herself with English speaking agents.
• I’ve been busy like no other, working 13 hour days 7 days a week, but the restaurant is doing well, or at least better
• I’m having some trouble deciding what I want to do with my future in China as far as where or how I want to work
• It will soon be Chinese New Year, my first one that I will remember in China
• It’s snowing again, and this after I was told by everyone that it doesn’t snow in Beijing any more like my memories from my early childhood and was very disappointed by the news.
• To follow will be more detailed posts, I hope.
• And to immediately follow will be photos of my restaurant’s food! (Which everyone should come to…)

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Posted by sean x. l. on February 7th, 2010 - 7:09 pm
Filed Under :: photo albums

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Seoul was lovely, though we both thought it looked very much like any major city in the US, specifically San Francisco. By the time our trip was over, we were calling it San Francisco. We were quite lucky with the weather, which was gorgeous. A funny story though, we had trouble finding trash cans while we were walking around. We finally realized that it was because the US President was visiting. And when we got back to Beijing, our road was closed…because the US President was visiting. He’s a stalker!!!!!!!! Obama’s stalking us!!!!!

This was all over a week ago by the way, the entire Korea trip; we’ve been sick.

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Posted by sean x. l. on November 26th, 2009 - 12:53 pm
Filed Under :: photo albums

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It was an early snowfall this year. Apparently it’s good fortune. If it snows in November, it means the next years harvest will be bountiful, or something like that. It came on real fast, completely out of the blue. Incidentally, the mosquitoes are quite hearty and are STILL around somehow. And it looks like it’s going to snow again, later this week. Now I like the snow, and I like the cold. Any excuse to wear a nice wool coat is fine by me. But I wonder if this was all my fault, somehow. My father had told me that the past few years there had been little to NO snow in Beijing. I had been quite disappointed actually, because I remember from my childhood that the city was beautiful in the snow. Now that I actually show up though, and now that I actually need to get places, wouldn’t you know it, and the snow starts coming down :)

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Posted by sean x. l. on November 8th, 2009 - 2:42 am
Filed Under :: china, photo albums

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These photos were taken when we first went to visit the two campuses. Maria had arranged to sit in on some of the classes at both schools, and we wanted to be sure we knew where she had to go. It was also on the way to ZhongGuanCun where we tried and failed to purchase our electronics (see previous post). I’m posting on her behalf, because she uploaded the photos to her computer, and they never got to mine. It’s an interesting issue we’re having because we have different cameras and respective camera habits; hers go in her laptop, mine in mine. It kinda means our photos get segregated, which is not necessarily a good thing, and leads to such situations where I’m stuck grabbing these photos off of where she’s already uploaded them, only to re-upload them again. I’ve also ported over her captions. Speaking of which…how’s it look with them…? This is the first time I’m using them.

Either way, here we go:

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Posted by sean x. l. on October 21st, 2009 - 1:42 am
Filed Under :: photo albums

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So my father is partners with this company that has a dairy farm up in the northern part of Beijing. It’s very rural up there, very pretty, and apparently the government is trying to attract some big name companies to move in for the sake of saving the environment and all, with somewhat limited success. What happened was, we were moving out of my grandparents place and into our own. My father had offered the use of his old furnishings and such since he used to have two more apartments than he does now and had to consolidate such things. My cousin was kind enough to pick us up and drive us there and we figured we’d see the farm at the same time.

Um…so pictures to follow, and better blogging later.

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Posted by sean x. l. on October 13th, 2009 - 10:26 pm
Filed Under :: photo albums

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So this time next week, we’ll be in China! Ah! It’s a little overwhelming actually. Exactly three days time left since it just became Friday. And what a Friday it’ll be. We have lots of last minute finalizing we need to do, plus packing. There’s lots of logistics and telephone related errands to run before we’re ready. The plus note is that the reason there were no posts this week is because we were on vacation! Our last one in the States. We went up to Carmel, where Maria had never gone, Monday morning, taking the scenic route up, and just got back this evening. Without going into it too much, it was a lovely time. It’s nice getting reassurance that we travel and vacation so well together. I’ll keep this brief because I want to upload some photos, but there’ll be more to say tomorrow.

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Posted by sean x. l. on September 18th, 2009 - 12:19 am
Filed Under :: photo albums
Tags :: vacation

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This was a dinner I cooked for Maria while still at Bunker Hill Towers. In case you couldn’t tell, I’m in the process of re-importing all my images into my new blog now. I thought the meal was wonderful: pan fried eggplant, zucchini, and broccoli rabe stacked then baked with fresh mozzarella and basil on top, baked garlic bulbs with olive oil, basil, and balsamic vinegar, and toast points.

Edit: The baked garlic also had tofu in it, I just realized. And I should try to look up when these originally took place so that I can add them to the relevant posts.

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Posted by sean x. l. on September 6th, 2009 - 2:33 am
Filed Under :: photo albums

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These photos were taken from the view of my apartment in Downtown LA, at a building called Bunker Hill Towers. It’s kinda stalker-ish I realize, but I think the city looks lovely at night.

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Posted by sean x. l. on September 4th, 2009 - 8:02 pm
Filed Under :: photo albums

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