A couple of notes regarding the furniture:

• The Expedit bookshelves rock, like they’ve always rocked, though apparently the larger 5 by 5 cube ones are being discontinued.
• The Efektiv filing cabinets are great too, though they don’t come with pre-drilled holes for the handles since there are so many different kinds you can get, so that sucks
• We bought a power drill! W00t it came in sooooo handy!
• The Pax wardrobes are MASSIVE, exceptionally heavy, and exceedingly difficult to build. The instructions also suck, don’t follow them. I built the 2nd one much better than the first, in what Ikea would consider the “wrong” order of operations. What’s also stupid is that our apartment is essentially collapsing on itself. We had this piece of pre-existing dresser that came furnished with the apartment, and no matter which wall we put it against, the top drawer would slide out of its own accord. This meant that I had to intentionally build the wardrobe “wrong” to account for the extra lean due to the floors. What this means is that if you look closely, the wardrobe is leaning back to overcompensate.
• The Utby bar table is excellent as well, sturdy, solid, very utilitarian in look with all metal legs and frame. We got a nice speckled stone effect counter top for it, and 4 Stig barstools which, though plastic and very inexpensive, seem more than satisfactory.
• We didn’t go with the expensive Ikea couch, but instead bought something sight unseen from NYFurnitureMan.com, a dealer we found on Craigslist. A third the price, and it folds down into a bed. Now that I’ve built it though, the quality is obviously not great, it’s obviously very cheap, but well, whatchagonnadoeh?

Well, it’s almost 4AM heh, I should go to sleep. But I feel so productive! The only thing left is to move out the rest of the existing furniture from before (the dresser, a chair, a desk and mirror), and get 2 rugs (it’ll really tie the room together). What’s unfortunate though is that we currently have no room for a coffee table. We were originally planning to loft the bed, but given the way the apartment leans, I’m a little hesitant to do so. Nevertheless, it’s still an option, and definitely one to seriously consider since well, we have very little room right now heh.

It really makes a difference though, the new layout and everything. And it looks like we’ll be able to do the renovations we want to the kitchen as well, after which the apartment will feel even more open than it already does thanks to the new layout. There’s still a couple items to get, I think another 2 by 2 and 1 by 5 Expedit bookshelves, and a shoe rack. We’re gonna build in some more shelves for storage, and it’ll be great! What a difference a little work makes. I feel quick handy actually!

So there were like, 10 different companies that I ultimately interviewed with, running the whole spectrum from management consulting to applications design to non-profits to marketing firms to all around web development and etc. Many of them I had multiple rounds of interviews with even, going to the recruiters office to interview, going to their offices to interview, doing interviews over the phone. I must’ve interviewed at least 2 dozen times by the time all was said and done (not all of them progressed beyond a first round). In the end, I had 3 offers, and went with my BRAND NEW JOB THAT I START NEXT MONDAY!

Not bad eh? 2 weeks, 24 interviews, hundreds of blocks walked, and I’ve got a job! More on the job later when I know more, but I anticipate many good things.

Other things that took up lots and lots of time, Maria and I went up to visit her sister in Boston! This would be my 3rd time ever in Boston, and first time with Maria. They live in a cute little town outside Boston proper with rivers and parks and tall grass. Oh and a giant murder of crows one night as we were walking back from a park we had gone to so we could get some exercise and air and some quiet, alone time because Maria’s sister has twin boys and they’re a handful so it’s good to have an opportunity to spend time alone with her. We also went to Chuck E Cheese (anyone been to one of those recently?) and met up with a whole bunch of their friends in one of those settings where you’re all grown up and you get to refer to your friends as couples by last name only, like, the Smiths, the Wallabees, the MacCaroos. It was good to go though, and to drive around. New England is lovely in the winter, and this winter is really a WINTER. I’m sure everyone’s heard of the recent snow trouble and all the flight cancellations and everything, well it’s just been snowing non-stop as far as I can tell! I lived here for like, 4 years before and I don’t think I remember it ever snowing this much I was just telling Maria this afternoon as we were walking in the Upper East Side looking, and failing to find, white sauce/hot sauce. And even though its snowing, and cold, it’s still better than China no bitterness intended.

We also spent a lot of time looking for an apartment. The place we’re in, lovely though it is, is still small, and we thought we’d want to move some place nicer and bigger and where we can see ourselves staying for a decently long period of time because I think we’re both sick of moving. So we tromped our way all through the Upper East Side, Midtown West and Midtown East, and the Financial District. We had different kinds of targeted searches going on between 4 different realty brokers. In the Upper East Side, we were looking for something with a nice outdoor space like a terrace or balcony where we can BBQ and have a fire pit. In Midtown West we were looking at high rises with gorgeous views of the Hudson and the city. In Midtown East we were being practical, cheap but good, if possible, because it’s the closest to where my car’s currently parked and the Harvard Club; so we were trying to be efficient. In the Financial District we were looking for something that reminded us of Downtown LA, concrete forest type imagery. In the end, we only managed to find apartments in the Financial District that lived up to the searches and standards that we were looking for. We even put in 2 applications for places. And we’re talking gorgeous places, brand new buildings and renovations, top of the line kitchens and bathrooms, generous amenities like gyms and rooftop terraces and lounges and libraries. I had my job you know, so we knew what we could afford, so we were skinning the top of our budget, but it was doable. But then came why all these are in the past tense and not for a necessarily good reason: the one and only places that we really wanted gypped us out of 1 month’s free rent because “that concession is no longer available,” wasn’t proactive in letting us know where our application stood so we had no idea if we were accepted or not or whether or not we would be able to get it, and in the end was just delayed by 3 days in the entire process before they decided they wanted us after we decided we wanted it, and by then we had mulled and discussed and drew out intricate floor plans and everything ad our minds had been changed. So without further ado, I introduce you to our new apartment, our current apartment. It’s gonna be great. We’re gonna renovate a little with the management company’s help. We’re going to get good furniture and be comfortable; something about nesting procedures. We actually spent close to 5 hours at the Ikea in Brooklyn yesterday (photos coming soon of the Water Taxi ride!) looking at everything we thought we’d want, making sure we both liked them and that they’d work within our space. I stayed up late into the evening mocking up floor plans (to follow). I think, it’ll be great.

Otherwise it’s also New York Restaurant Week, so we’ve been taking advantage of the fact that I don’t have to be at work yet during the day and hitting some of the lunch spots. So far we’ve been to Bobby Flay’s Mesa Grill and Les Halles (a French bistro) down in the Financial District. We’re going to a couple of places for dinner tomorrow and Saturday with Maria’s NYC friends. We’re also putting together fancy job applications for Maria and getting our car in our names and with New York places and getting New York drivers licenses and getting New York car registrations and just a whole bunch of logistical/administrative stuff.

In short, been busy! But this brings us up to date :)

Now, photos!

Our new (otherwise known as current) apartment!

Last I wrote we were still in China. We had just finished packing up and shipping 8 boxes to Maria’s parents house in Ohio. Not all too much happened after that. We finished packing into suitcases, cleaned the apartment up as best as we could, left a whole bunch of empty suitcases, chocolates, posters, and maps for my father to deal with, closed our Chinese cell phone and internet and apartment telephone accounts, gave my cousin free reign to root through our pantry and kitchen for any leftover non-perishables we had left like flats of coke and sprite and diet coke left over from the party, and were hauled by said cousin also in the middle of the night in his Nissan versa hatch back that luckily fit all our luggage because we ended up being one piece over anyways to the Beijing Capital airport for our flight back to our home, the good old US of A, quite possibly in the end, the best place to live in the world. And this is sort of a rant here but I’ve been reading many articles online touting the possibilities and progressiveness of countries in Africa and Asia and how they’re the next frontier for science and technology because they don’t have the vestiges of old industry and commerce in place already so it’s easier and quicker for them to innovate and it’ll be better for all of us if the States would just be more like them but you know, those columnist tools don’t have a clue what they’re talking about and it’s so obvious they’ve never lived or even set foot in these countries that they speak of so fondly and that if they had spent any decent amount of time in these countries they’d know that well, it’s just not true, and the States is just, for all its faults and there are many, better. Let’s leave it at that.

The flight was painless, despite the blizzards that were happening across the Northeast, and after a relaxing layover after much careful scrutiny of my computer parts and electronics filled carry on by the TSA we landed very much on time indeed in Toledo, barely minutes before Maria’s parents arrived to pick us up in the van we will soon, and have as I write, inherit. And I realized that I’m not entirely in control of who reads this blog and all and that some of these faceless masses out there may actually include my parents perish the thought, but though I had the option I didn’t want to go back to LA and spend the holidays there. It was so nice being in Ohio. In no particular order, here is what we did:

• Visited my Emily in Cleveland and had lunch at a Irish pub, went to the Cleveland Museum of Art, and had coffee at one of the local hippie chain coffeeshops.
• Ate at Wilson’s (the Findlay burger joint that all the local politicians go to for photo ops), ate at Olive Garden with Maria’s Sarah, ate at Cracker Barrel with Maria’s Sarah and family (still my favorite country restaurant that’s distressingly absent from both the Eastern and Pacific timezones), ate at Mendoza’s (a wonderful hole-in-the-wall Mexican restaurant that’s apparently been there since Maria was in high school though she never knew about it), ate at Marie’s (a breakfast and lunch only place with wonderful skillets), ate at Dietz’s (I think I spelled that right but they have marshmallow topping for their ice cream), ate fancy pizza with Maria’s Sarah again to ring in the New Year, ate at Oller’s (and survived!).
• Walked around town.
• Had a lovely Christmas meal with Maria’s family after picking her grandmother up from Ada (think ONU)
• Decided seriously whether or not it was worth buying an entire, historic building in downtown Findlay (the Finder’s Records building) for 650K negotiable. In the flood zone, yes, empty since the 1960s, yes, in need of extensive renovation, yes, probably flood damaged from 2007, yes, but it’s HUGE and (in my mind) CHEAP! I’m thinking PBL headquarters come 2012 or 2014.
• Visited Maria’s Sarah at the library and decided I need to get a library card one of these days.
• Received lemon bars by mail.
• Saw Tron: Legacy as a matinee at the Carmike.
• And probably many more things that I now forget.

As I mentioned, we spent New Years with Maria’s Sarah, watched the whole TV thing, sent my Emily a text message. It was, in short, a lovely week.

We drove to NYC on January 2, 2011, officially starting this new, probably wonderful, chapter of our lives, and I think I have it in me to finish off and bring everything, in writing, up to date.

As we drove, and it’s a drive I’ve done many times in the past as well though we were thankful that my old GPS Daniel still worked like a charm (but I should update his maps), we listened to Maria’s MCLE, which is a lawyer thing having to do with the requirement that she keep up to date on new changes and issues in the law. Honestly, interesting, surprisingly. We made good time and met with France’s brother Jamey at our current home on East 75th St., lugged everything upstairs into our albeit small but currently exceptionally comfortable studio apartment, then drove the car down to our parking garage located on East 40th St. We got a good deal. Since then, and in no particular order, we’ve:

• Walked the blocks between 40th and 75th St. and 2nd and Madison Ave. countless times as we’ve explored, met with recruiters, took interviews, wandered, etc.
• Signed me up with 2 recruiting agencies who as it turns out are owned by the same parent company so lo and behold was I surprised when I could login to both sites after having only created one account with them but that’s a long paragraph for later, oh and took many interviews with them as well.
• Toured the Harvard Club, which we are eager to join.
• Went to the Costco up at the Stew Leonard in my old stomping grounds to pick up some non-perishable essentials (like Gatorade) and get Maria an eye exam and glasses/contacts prescriptions, got some stuff for my Emily, then did our laundry at good old Greystone Ave. (yeah our current complex doesn’t have a laundry facility).
• Switched us over to a non-contract family plan with T-Mobile and bought Maria a G2 cell phone, and since we don’t have internet you will not believe how much data we’ve been chugging through on the tether, I’m talking gigs…but it’s good to be on proper phone plans again, this whole pay-as-you-go thing is way overrated.
• Bought Maria a new laptop! A giant, 17+ inch Dell (yes, we’re switching back to PC from Mac, and Maria is loving it), and spent much time geting everything installed and copied over and put into place and customized so that it’s usable, and we’re not done yet, still have her iTunes and iPhoto libraries to copy over.
• Scoped out the neighborhood and went on delivery/takeout menu hunts with much success.
• Watched TV (on the computer)
• I’ve been on 5 job interviews with 3 more planned for the next couple of days, and more, and Maria’s been very successful at getting feedback on contract/temporary lawyer work in NYC.
• Maria’s been loving her runs here and is getting back in shape and into her normal running routine, and we even have a half marathon planned in the next 2 weeks! The NYC Half Marathon!
• Given our penchant for walking, we managed to go an entire week without buying a metrocard! At one point I walked over 100 blocks getting from interview to interview before I finally gave in and we’ve ridden it only twice so far. I guess we may not need to get monthly passes just yet.
• And like before, I’m equally sure many more things probably that I’ve just forgotten but there are so many more things in the works like visiting Maria’s Emily up in Boston this weekend and mini golfing. Oh, and can’t wait until Frances is back ’cause we’re gonna do a little house warming party. It’s gonna rock this world.

Things to do though include getting involved in music again, ultimately finding a job and the right apartment for the job (hopefully one with either a balcony, patio, garden, or all of the above so that I can have a fire pit), the continued administration of our business, purchasing a NAS, really getting settled and back in the groove of seeing friends especially and I’m serious when I say I want this to stick.

And this is just a mental note to me so that I don’t forget about it all, but man, these recruiters, these companies, these non-contract jobs, whoo what a riot they are! (hint hint)

Oh and I want to implement a new design for the blog. A new design for the new year. A new design for the new city that we are living in. Expect it soon. And that’s a wrap!

First, we’re moving back to the States! NYC to be specific. That’s what the countdown is for. We leave early morning Christmas Eve for our new but temporary home in the Upper East Side at 75th and 3rd. We have many exciting and grand plans regarding getting jobs that actually pay when and what they say they will yet aren’t that overbearing on the rest of our lives so that we’d have time to maintain an active non-work life in the evenings and on weekends and take vacations throughout the year. I have grand plans for a balcony where we can grow fancy vegetables and set up a fire pit on which I intend to cook hearty soups with my cast iron pot, skewer vegetables and meats, grill different kinds of fish in one of those neat looking fish-grilling-baskets, and roast marshmallows, all under the glow of any and all seasonally appropriate skies. I’m going to be more revealing here than anywhere else public on the inter-webs, but you know, I’m feeling excited about these new prospects so any unforeseen consequences of my openness be damned. We’re also going to be stopping off first at Maria’s parents place in Ohio, and though it’s seeing her side of the family again in a relatively short amount of time, we feel its appropriate as it’s quite close to NYC and we intend to take possession of her parents old minivan. Yes, I will be driving a minivan, feel free to start the ribbing on that one. But I’d just like to point out the obvious benefits of one:

1. we can carry STUFF! (Costco, free stuff from Craigslist, people, moving)
2. we can go on ROAD TRIPS (which I love, and if necessary even sleep in the van)
3. it’s obviously free (they have more cars than drivers right now)
4. it’ll be reminiscent and nostalgic of those days when I owned a pickup truck, but minus the tiny little seats in the cab that faced each other whenever I tried to haul more than 2 people

We’re in the gigantically messy process of packing up our entire lives, once again, like we did a year and a half ago for our move to China. Feels kind of full circle in a way. We were lucky, having never settled that well, which was actually a problem in and of itself but at least it’s come to benefit us now in that though we’ve acquired some more things than before, we still don’t have that much stuff. We used to fit in 8 suit cases, we now fit in 10, and we still don’t have furniture. That means our temporary apartment in NYC is actually furnished (thanks to you know who!), and we’ve tentatively given ourselves 2 months to figure it all out, permanent jobs, permanent apartments, permanent routines, etc. This does also mean that we may have to remove our blog from the expat blog listings, but I’ll comfort myself by creating new NYC centric categories and tags. I will most likely still be working within the web programming field, and Maria’s thinking of re-entering law or perhaps finance. We will both of course still work with our fancy little Enterprise Consulting company in whatever fashion that “work with” may mean.

The explanation for the lateness of this entry is that we’ve been kind of sub-consciously messing up our sleeping schedules, I think so that we’ll have an easier time when we get to the States adjusting to US time again (civilized time?), but it’s not been easy these past 3 weeks actually, ever since we got back the last time to China after Thanksgiving. Immediately after landing we found ourselves smack in the middle of final negotiations to close our JV VC deal, a process that involved many Chinese lawyers and lots of legalese and staying up to the middle of the night every night hammering through all the details involved and trying to explain it all to our partners who aren’t native English speakers and were giving themselves headaches just trying to parse the individual sentences. I discovered I have quite a knack for this stuff actually, an innate ability to understand those massively long and complex legal sentences, and if nothing else I provided good translation services because wouldn’t you know it, though the JV is international and the governing documents are in English (and even governed by NY law), Maria and I were the only people with any thorough command of the English language and the negotiations even happened in Chinese, something brand new I’ve never experienced before in my life. Lots of fun, though insanely tiring, and happening all at the same time as my IFC concert. When it rains and all that. We did close, on time even, or basically, terms and conditions met and documents signed and all, and I had my concert, which I mentioned in an earlier post was a success, then I had another concert in Shanghai of all places which I also mentioned, and we go to see our new Enterprise Consulting company’s facilities at that incubator (which I also mentioned?), and well, the sum of it all was that in the span of 3 weeks, we’ve managed to:

1. negotiate and close a JV VC deal
2. sing Handel’s Messiah twice in Beijing with the IFC
3. sing Handel’s Messiah twice in Shanghai with the IFC
4. inspect our company’s holdings in Shanghai (at least some)
5. end Maria’s MBA program (I won’t say more than just this stated fact, though there’s obviously SO much more details that can be had here, but suffice it to say we’re obviously not continuing with the program if we’re leaving the country)
6. pack and finalize moving details
7. sing at the British Ambassador’s residence (did I mention that? We sang carols. It was good)
8. move all the furniture in the apartment back the way it was (we had optimized it, but now we need to un-optimize it since we’ve not going to be using it)
9. have a tiny little family oriented engagement party (yes, that’s the other thing, we got engaged! I don’t want to dwell too much on this point either as I’m kind of running out of blogging steam, but it’s self explanatory isn’t it? We’ve been together for almost 3 years now! This upcoming February! And we look forward to the infinitely better water pressure and hot water temperature that the States has to offer)
10. have a massive Beijing friends oriented engagement/going away party in which we either drank through or gave away all of our remaining booze, of which there were, and somehow still are, lots
11. actually get my work visa and residence permit (yes, I realize the irony involved in 3 days before leaving a country finally getting the necessary paperwork and documents in place to stay in said country easily and indefinitely really. Let’s chalk it up to “well now I can come and go as I please”)

What else happened? I think that about sums it all up. The plan for these remaining days is to finish our packing, close some necessary accounts (telephone, internet, cell phone), actually ship everything we want, then do some last minute tourist stuff like see the Great Wall and the 798 Arts District. It takes something like moving out of the country to really motivate you to do those little touristy stuff that you never had a chance or the motivation to, though that’s mostly me. Maria’s been wanting to do these things for ages, but I guess we had planned to be here for a lot longer so there was almost always more time. Ah well, we’ll take care of it. I also plan to, once we’ve finished getting everything shipped, have a proper blog entry on the details regarding said process as at the moment the inter-web’s information regarding how best to cheaply but slowly ship your material from this country to the States is limited. I will rectify this missing bit of much needed information. Oh, and in the process of packing, I managed to kill one of my computer’s hard drives, but it’s ok, it was the system drive which for some stupid (but in the end alright) reason also housed the backup of the system drive. Chalk it up to me forgetting which partition sat on which physical disk, but it means I actually didn’t lose any DATA, of which I had a lot, and would have been very sad were I to have lost it. My RAID drives are fine, my one off data drive is fine, I only lost my system and the backup of said system. I couldn’t have actually planned it any better if I were trying, otherwise I could have lost my one off data partition…I hate data loss, and considering I was very careful with the drive even and can’t imagine why or how I managed to mess it up so much, it really just points out and highlights once again the necessity to own a massively large NAS. I’m shooting for the 8-bay QNAP NAS with 2TB drives. Haven’t decided what RAID level I want though, maybe just Mirroring, maybe 5 + hot spare, maybe 6 + hot spare. At minimum, with Mirroring, I’ll still have 8TB of storage versus my piddling little 1.5TB now, and it will be wonderful. Today was the first time I realized but Maria pointed out how there’s a sort of religious aspect to technology. It’s “thank God” I didn’t lose my data, and the appropriate feeling of “relief” and “fulfillment” from having a really good plan and system to handle it all. It’s like “fate” or “destiny” that I messed up where my system backups were stored, otherwise I would have lost data. So once again I thank whatever technology God(s) there may be.

Oh, and I fully intend to keep up my QQ accounts. Gotta grow and steal those vegetables, those “farm” animals, and now maintain my little vegetarian restaurant.

The most important and currently relevant thing is that I’m not feeling too well. Real nauseated for some reason. I had decided to go out and bike, it being the middle of the night and presumabely cooler and everything, but when I got out, about half an hour out to be precise, some odd combination of odors really overpowered me to the point where I felt like throwing up, not something good to do while biking I don’t think, not that I’ve ever done it before. I think the problem was that it had gotten really humid somehow. There’d been a cooling trend this week, and I’ve even been out and biking during the day and felt quite comfortable, but this evening the humidity had returned and it was just kind of putrid out, for lack of a better word. That plus the odors just put me over. So I high tailed it back, drank some iced green tea, lifted some weights, and after a cold shower felt decently better. The other issue is that, yes, it’s the middle of the night. My sleeping schedule’s messed up again, I’m not quite sure why or how this time. All I know is that a couple of days ago I was getting real tired in the early evenings, like 6PM or so, and just fell asleep, and that started the cycle of messing it up. Ah well. It’ll be alright, hopefully. The other issue is that I might have eaten too many pomegranates and that might have contributed to my nausea…these were the ones that I bought the other day from off the street and they were very good actually. A little different from US pomegranates, they’re light green on the outside and a much lighter pink on the inside. The individual um…whatever they’re called…were larger also than the ones in the States, packing more juice. I also find the process of pulling individual whatever they ares one at a time out of the fruit very relaxing and satisfying also. I’d go through an entire fruit, putting all the whatevers into a small bowl, then just chow down on them one big mouthful at a time. Um, but the consequence of which might be that part of why I was and am nauseated might be due to the odd combination of a weird sleeping schedule, over-fruiting on pomegranates, high humidity and heat in the middle of the night, and the plethora of odd odors that permeate this city in the Summer. Speaking of fruit though I’m also almost out of mini watermelons, which were also very good. One issue was that 2 of them had already split they were so crisp on the inside, so that’s why I ate them so quickly. Real good watermelons. I just make one small cut with a knife, then it’s crisp enough to peel apart with my bare hands. Lovely fruit in this country! I’m waiting for the citrus fruits to come back, and I’m sure Maria’s waiting for that as well. That should hopefully be soon. Right now the fruit in season seem to be grapes. Nothing else too specific seem to be overly prevalent.

I’m going to be taking care of my in country tourist visa renewal next week. I’m about at the end of my year long multi entry visa, it expires at the end of the month, the 20 something I think. And seeing as my work visa isn’t ready yet, the best solution at the moment is to essentially stall for more time from the Chinese government. We had looked into this before, decently early on when it seemed our work visas wouldn’t come through, so I know what’s required to get the in country renewal. I need to be registered in a proper Chinese household (specifically NOT a hotel otherwise I need 20K RMB or so in a bank account), fill out some forms, hand in my passport for processing, and wait a few days, after which I should be sporting a brand new 90 day single entry tourist visa. Pretty interesting actually considering how relatively easy it is. This means that any tourist can get a normal 90 day visa, then renew in country, and be allowed to stay for essentially half a year. Though I guess at this point all of this is theoretical, I’ll have proper information on how easy it actually was at the end of next week. Although my father also said that someone is “working” on my working visa again, so that might also come through. It does seem like things with my father may come together decently soon. He’s working very hard, every day, running all around the country, so who knows, maybe I’ll get paid soon and have a fancy new work visa. There’s always some chance eh?

Maria’s going to be home REAL soon now, within a week basically. I really can’t wait until she’s back. It’s been real lonely without her here. When she’s not around I also kind of don’t interact with other humans either. I guess we hadn’t yet gotten around to making many new friends in China yet and this point really hit home when she left. There just aren’t that many people I know anymore with whom I can go out, hang out, even speak to. I feel like both my command of English and Chinese have disappeared these past few weeks. It was quite noticeable when I was out with the apartment agent, during which time I spoke both Chinese and English and didn’t quite feel eloquent using either. Speaking about apartments though, I’m facing a slight dilema at the moment. I want to get a new place for Maria and I, but when you factor in fees, deposits, and the first couple months up front, I figure we’ll need 20K RMB to move in to a new place, a sum which I obviously don’t have. I’m going to try some other routes in finding places and hopefully shave some of those fees down so that I won’t need that much money up front. I also negotiated to be paid that much from my father for a web project of his, but he obviously hasn’t paid me yet. I’m going to talk to him about that tomorrow and hopefully get a timeline on when I might get paid. But I guess put shortly, it’s at least decently possible that we’ll be in a new place and neighborhood soon!

Which is exciting I think. The idea is to be close enough to campus so that Maria can walk to and from her classes, which means we’ll be in the Haidian district, the North Western one. Beijing actually has a surprising number of universities and they’re all up there. Off the top of my head, there’s Tsinghua University, Peking University, the Aerospace University, some kind of Forestry University, whatever that is, a Farming University, Beijing Language and Culture (Cultural?) University, some other one that’s across the street from that one, a People’s University, a Normal University (again, whatever the heck that is), and uh, that’s all I can recall at the moment. So yeah, all up there, basically right next to each other. Pretty neat, it makes its own kind of university town, though on a much larger scale. Haidian is also where all the electronic stuff is, also the technology part of town, so the geek in me finds that real neat. Plus, it’s far enough north, and big enough which is the more important part, that it reaches out to where there’s a lot more space between the buildings so it feels a lot less crowded. The farm is up there for instance. It’s quite foreign due to the universities, with lots of foreign students wandering around, but I’ve not yet decided whether I like that fact or not. I guess there’s a part of me that doesn’t quite like being around foreigners that much. Ah well. There should be lots of street fold though because despite the large influx of foreigners there’s a massive amount of local Chinese who run support for all of them and they enjoy their street food. Plus, we’ll be close to the Walmart, which will be wonderful. Quite unlike Walmarts in the States, but that’s how it is in this country with all major Western chains. The IKEA for instance, is also terribly much more interesting than the IKEAs in the States, not that the IKEAs in the States aren’t great also, but it’s an entirely different experience here.

I think it’s all mostly a question of scale. These things are are just much bigger here! Imagine a normal Walmart Supercenter in the States, with the groceries and everything, then stack 4 of them on top of one another as the ones in China are all multi-leveled up the wazoo. Same thing with the IKEAs, though IKEAs are multi-level in the States, these are just again, bigger. And they’re more of almost a social thing for people to do. Lots of the shoppers are kind of just hanging out, especially at the IKEA where you’ll find people taking naps on the showroom beds or sitting around tables in the cafeterias for HOURS. The only time I was there it was so crowded that when asking a group of people if they intended to leave so that we could find a table to eat at, they said no, it’ll be a couple of hours still. We eventually did find a table, but still. Hours? In the IKEA cafeteria? My mother has this really funny video. First we’re close up on a sleeping child, very peaceful looking, in a comfortable bed, then we slowly zoom out and all of a sudden a random person walks across the shot and we realize we’re in an IKEA and it’s a showroom bed we’re looking at with a sleeping child in it and dozens of other strangers milling about, looking at furniture, writing down notes, etc. I should get a copy of that video. It’ll be great to post here.

Wow I’m tired all of a sudden, and I’m not sure I’ve written anything of note or interest. I think I’ll post this now and actually go to sleep. Hmmm…wonder why I’m so tired? Ah, can’t yet, I just remembered I need to call my mother. Still, no reason not to post this while I do that. More to come later!

i would like to comment a bit on the odd day to day expenses that occur in th is country. now it is very cheap, unreasonably so even, to eat out, buy groceries, cook, find entertainment, see friends, etc., so that in general, one does not actually need to make a lot to live very well. we buy massive bags worth of fresh produce for less than 30rmb, all the groceries we could want for less than 50rmb, plus fruit and freshly prepared cold chinese salads and we’re looking at no more than the equivalent of 20 dollars and we’re set for at least a week. by some estimate, one only needs a quarter of that to live very comfortably in this country. but then, there’s rent.

now maybe i’m unreasonable, but i have a certain standard that i find hard to give up, especially when it concerns the place that i call home, the bathroom that i do my business in, and the kitchen that i prepare meals for the ones i care about in. you can rent a place very cheaply, no more than 30 dollars a month, but it will be underground, is a literal room, have a shared bathroom with no gauranteed hot water, no gaurantee of windows, and definitely okitchen htough you can bring your own electric stove and many people do. that’s the bottom of the pole.

and then there’s the chinese style apartments which are, for most intents and purposes alright, but shoddy, feeling like they’re falling apart, and they are, with no regard for the common spaces of the buildings meaning you can be on the highest floor and all the lights will be out in the hallways so you’ll feel like you’re living in a cave. and the bathrooms, lord save me from the bathrooms. so that’s like, the middle, wh ich, unfortunately, from a standards point of view, i find difficult to accept.

now i realize this might make me seem like a snob or something, but for the same reason that i never understood why people don’t care about the quality of their hotel rooms while on vacation based on the flimsy pretense that they don’t plan to stay in that that often didn’t and doesn’t make sense to me i mean, you need a place to stay right, some place comfortable because what happens if you’re sick or too drunk you don’t want to passout in a trash heap i can’t come to terms with an apartment that i dread the thougt of taking a shower in, which is most chinese apartments. but that makes up the middle tier as far as quality goes.

then there are those places meant for foreigners to stay in, built from the ground up for them, and are of decent quality. noe i say decent only because even they could use a good bit of work. one common complaint is the abundance of mold on the walls of even the most expensive, and i do mean most expensive as these places can run for close to western prices, of places just still feel like they are falling apart, and they are. but, you can find places that will satisfy my standards, but again, they’re expensive.

which brings us to the point that i find myself in an odd employment state. you see, i’m no longer. the foreigner who’s willing to relocate and work in beijing, i’m the foreigner who’s already here and is looking for a job, with the major difference being that while the former has an allure of self sacrifice, and thus the appropriate compensation to go along with what ever jobs may fall under that category, the latter does not, and will pay close to absolutely nothing for work that in any other country will earn me a decent living. bottom line, i can’t make more than 700 dollars a month doing full time programming work in this god forsaken country. now that isn’t actually bad by chinese standards, and were my only goal to pay for our day to day expenses, i’m golden, but i need to pay for rent, and i need a place that i am comfortable taking a shower in, and that’s where the conflict comes into play, namely i for the moment just, can’t.

and the irony of it all, my father just got a new place in beijing and it meets our standards, and is cheaper by far than anything else out there we’ve found, but is in the wrong part of town, and i think that makes all the difference.

but the plan is to continue searching, both for a job and an apartment, and i think we’re going to venture way the far out of town to a place that’s still subway accessible, and easilly accessible might i add, but hopefully very inexpensive by virtue of it being far away, and we might be lucky out there.

let’s see, other problems that plague the sean. he needs to leave again out of the country by july 15 to get on his last entry into the country. and this will be the last one as his visa expires at the end of august, as in proper expires and he will need to go back to the united states to get a new one, which he really does not want to. for reasons beyond his countrol and knowledge and patience to sort through his working visa still hasn’t come through, and neither had maria’s, but she no longer needs to worry because a) she’s going back to the states anyways and b) she will get a student visa through tsinghua. the sean’s plan though is to get on his last entry, as cheaply as possible, then at the last mi nute switch while in country to a 90 day single entry visa, which he knows he can, so he cwn stay in the country until the end of november by which time hopefully some other, better solution would have presented itself. at the moment he doesn’t care which: his father comes throug, he gets employed elsewhere, or he pays somebody 1000 dollars and they give him the visa in that shady, underhanded, sort of grey area kind of way. it really doesn’t matter.

back to i here, i think. i had also planned on joining maria in the states and nyc for her internship this summer, but the feasibility of it is minimal. the expenses unfortunatly just far outweigh the gain, and if i go, i have to plan on staying, which is a decision i’m not yet ready to make. i definitely want to be here when maria starts her school so if i head back to the states it will be after that so no point making the expense now. startup expenses in general back in the states is also just in general prohibitive so even if i wanted to, maybe the best i can do is go back to los angeles which actually doesn’t sound that appealing. i’m kinda holding out that china will still work out in a bit way and we’ll all make our personal fortunes here and change the world for the better.

which at least there’s still a chance of, and having lost most of my steam for blogging, i will end here by saying that no matter what, the sean is trying to be optimistic, and hey, he hadn’t thought of this but maybe he and maria can get married; that’ll solve his visa problems.

oh and the restaurant is a complete bust incidentally. to summarize in the quickest way possible, there’s been management issues from the get go, the owners no longer like each other, for some reason one half viewed my desire to no longer be their full time employee as a sign that they should exit the business as well so they gave my dad some time to find someone to buy them out, and since it obviously didn’t happen fast enough they’ve been threatening to close down the business and then wanted to buy us out which, well, hey, seemed like quite a good deal actually because we were done with the stupid thing anyway and didn’t want to have anything to do with it and if you’ll listen to my father about it, he’s convinced the entire thing was a conspiracy to get the entire business by the other half owners at a greatly depreciated value by driving me out, driving the restaurant down, then lording over us the fact that they have more money to convince us to sell out to them, but things really came to a head when, afraid that they might steal our business licenses my father put up fake copies on the walls and, lo and behold, the next day they were stolen from us, and then when maria and i went to go check our mail because we’re using the restaurant as our mailing address because it’s convenient we find that they had changed the locks on us and were no longer able to get in, and that they had fired all the staff and closed the restaurant without telling us! what is wrong with these people? they were just in the middle of negotiating how to buy our half our when all of a sudden, chaos. so now maria and i have no place to get our mail which is a) a shame and b) just inconvenient as far as timing goes because we’re expecting her all important actual enrollment confirmation packet from tsinghua which should also have the confirmation that the chinese government is going to pay for all her tuition and housing and give her a monthly stipend to live on in. that was sarcastic by the way, though it’ll be cool if it happened that way, but we are actually waiting for this packet and it’s being sent to the restaurant and we’re not sure how to get it anymore because these people are insane!

…

so here’s to hoping it all comes together, heh, and that those we’ve wronged or disappointed in the past may forgive and move forward with us towards a brighter and better future.

So it’s quite late, and I’ve been tossing and turning in bed for a good while now. The issue is that I’ve been all of a sudden sick again, and it’s not been that great of an experience. I really do believe it’s due to the sudden changes in the weather and ambient temperature as opposed to any drastically low temperatures in and of itself; I don’t think my bodies knows what to do when things keep changing! It prepares and is ready for it to be warm or cold, but it can’t handle the shift, and so dies, metaphorically.

The point though, is that while I’ve been sick, I’ve been either not very productive at all, or decently productive on some of my web projects. So assuming I spend half my time productive, half of it not, and a good potion of the rest asleep or in a daze, accounting for time to spend with my Maria of course, I should have time left everyday to blog. Right? So why is it that I don’t, and why is it that it’s been nigh on three weeks since anyone’s updated this blog?

I think it has to do with the actual concept of blogging. Before now, as in, literally a couple of minutes ago, I was suffering quite contentedly in bed, unable to sleep, dreading the possibility that I might be disturbing Maria’s rest as well. And my mind was racing. I was thinking about my restaurant’s website (which isn’t up yet), my art website, which is up here, and some new stuff I’m planning to do for my choir, which, obviously, isn’t up either, neither is the West Campus site. Incidentally, this would be the first time I’m plugging my art website…everyone go and look at it! It represents the “best” of Beijing’s urban youth, or so the propaganda page tells me.

West Campus, incidentally, is a school I’m starting in Beijing! It will at first only offer year long intensive Chinese language and culture courses, hopefully starting Fall 2010, but will move on to offer full study abroad options for a liberal arts education, hopefully with a Fall 2011 availability so we can start searching for partner US institutions. Grandiose, no? They also get a website, one to provide information, brochures, contact information, and a way to register online…hmmm…I wonder if I’ll get paid for any of this web work; they’re all decently complicated…

Um…but yes my mind was racing, and I was even mentally ranting to myself, “hmmmm…this would make a good blog post.” So here I am, finally. Partly also due to he fact that I got tired of lying in bed unable to sleep and I wanted to spec. out the requirements for the IFC website.

So what this post will be about then is just a mish-mash of everything’s that’s been going on, with the hopes that it will make some greater sense, and that it will in some small way make up for the lack of anything interesting floating around here. Ah I’ve also modified the layout a bit to have static headers and footers; I’m not sure I like it…

So I think the restaurant’s a good place to start. We’re switching owners. My aunt and uncle, God bless them, are no longer going to be working with us, thank God. This means that we have to find somebody to buy out their 50% stake in the restaurant for $$$K, plus work out some way to repay the $$$K RMB that they “loaned” to the business to cover operational costs. Without going into too much of the details because I’m not entirely sure I’m at liberty to say at the moment, it’s being worked out, and it should be good.

What I am most excited about is the possibility of greater interactions with a local farm that my father is associated with. This should allow us to get good dairy and meat supplies, plus develop new foods like homemade cheese! I’ve been missing cheese in this country, and I have grandiose dreams of being Beijing’s one and only source for freshly made mozzarella. There is also the possibility that we may partner with another good friend of ours and jointly open yet another restaurant in the same complex as Connections. This will be a all vegetarian restaurant, specializing in fresh juices, fruit and vegetable cocktails, and entree size salads, something wholly lacking in this country. This will also entail greater cooperation with the farm as we will need to grow the entree salad vegetables, things like endive, mescalin, arugula, also things either lacking or inconsistent in this country, and which I will even admit to missing. Again, I have grandiose dreams of being Beijing’s one and only source for fresh, home grown, specialty vegetables.

I am also leaving my role as full time manager of the restaurant, mostly because it’s too time consuming. I have faith and confidence in my staff and the training I’ve provided them, and will still be on hand in a very part time manner, perhaps a couple of hours every other day. I’m going to promote on waitstaff and one cook to be my eyes, hands, and ears while I’m away, and they will be responsible in my absence. We’ve been kind of operating this way for the past week, mostly due to circumstance since I was sick, but also due to premeditation because I was just sick of being there 91 hours a week, and things seem quite smooth. Again, I have faith.

The only other thing interesting about the restaurant is that I think I’ve finalized with my choir, the IFC, the option of using Connections as their “home away from home,” or “home base,” the most pertinent bit of which would be the using of it as their ticket distribution hub. I needn’t tell you all the great benefits this entails. I had always wanted a stronger tie between the restaurant and my choir, and this provides it. Part of the reason why I got a piano for the restaurant was so that there can be impromptu rehearsals, sections, or other music related events, open mics, sing alongs, etc. that can happen at the restaurant and involve the choir. If I can be the one and only place to get tickets for our upcoming concerts, then that’s a step in the right direction. The website I’m spec’ing out for them is to give them the ability to handle online ticket sales on their own without using a third party service that charges an obscene service charge per transaction. Plus, it looks like my Epiphany music center idea may come to fruition at some point relatively soon as well, and all these things will work so well together I just know it.

Which is a great segue for that topic! I got Cary, my father’s business partner, interested in Epiphany. I think he’s always been half way interested, though no one’s taken the initiative to develop it really. My father had done some work, and I’ve built off of that to come to where we are now. Again, without going into too much details because I may not be at liberty to say, but it’ll be good, and it’ll be THE place to go for all your classical music needs in the “heart of Beijing” so to speak, or so the propaganda page states ;)

Also since I am no longer going to be the full time manager at the restaurant, I’m relegated myself to the status of “owner,” which means I get paid when the restaurant is profitable, or if and when that is. This means I’ve been on the prowl for a normal job, hopefully something in a programming vein. I had interviewed with and received a very decent job offer from Pixomondo, a visual effects company opening their Beijing office. Unfortunately, the timing had sucked because I was just getting deep into the running of the restaurant so I turned their offer down. Or more, I didn’t respond when they asked me if they could negotiate my offer with me…my defense on this issue is that I was really busy, as I’ve always been, and it was during New Years so things were extra hectic. But yes, I should have gotten back to them no matter what and it’s my bad for not. The point also being then that I feel awkward approaching them again since I sort of brushed them off earlier. I’ve also interviewed with Wokai.org, a micro-financing company. They’re in first round interviews, and they’re supposed to get back to me. And if any of you reading this know of any good PHP Programmer jobs, let me know! I’ve already been thinking about posting to this blog post photos of my new Connections menu, I think I’ll also post my resume. I NEED A JOB!!! PLEASE HELP!!!

Our visas are also expiring, again. This will be our, what, third entry? Haven’t figured out where to leave to yet, but need to soon, we have just under a week left to clear immigration. Part of the other reason a “normal” job sounds appealing is that they should be able to help me sort out my work visa issue. At the moment, the stand still is that VSM hasn’t gotten back to me yet on my employment verification letter, which is the last thing I need before one round of work visa applications with my father can be filed. They’ve sort of fallen off the face of the earth at the moment, I wonder if they’re alright…But since I’ve stepped back from the restaurant, this next trip promises to be much better, and longer, and more fun, I promise, my dearest Maria. I know I’ve been sucking lately, being sick, being busy, but I promise better times ahead.

Whoo I’m on a roll aren’t I! And real tag happy :)

Regarding Maria, since a lot I’m not at liberty to myself say, I will say that she did very well on the GMAT, finished her MBA applications to Tsinghua and BiMBA, is plowing her way through her Chinese government scholarships, was NOT late for any scholarships at Tsinghua or BiMBA, and has many promising projects coming up involving Chinese lawyer and my father. And that’s all I’ll say.

Let’s upload that menu now shall we? And don’t laugh at the over the top English; it hasn’t been edited yet.

Let’s also get the resume uploaded shall we? Download now

And now I’m feeling a little dehydrated and shaky. I should probably stop now as I think I’ve got most things covered, and those that I haven’t, I’ll try to list out real quick. I also need to upgrade this WordPress install before I’m finished.

1) We’re still looking for an apartment. We’ve had a reprieve because my mother’s not coming until June, but that’s feeling like it’ll be here real soon. We’re playing around with the option of living in the complex that Connections is in because we have so many things going on there (Connections, Epiphany, the new vegetarian restaurant), plus we also want to start our own business so it seems also appropriate, but there’s a lot of logistics involved with that mostly due to the fact that it’s commercial real estate and so is more expensive and lacking a kitchen and plumbing.
2) My best friend from high school’s wedding is coming up in mid-May, so we’ll be both going back to the US around then. Maria’s going to go earlier, see some family, and run her first marathon in Cincinnati! I will, unfortunately, be unable to attend. But this should mean we’ll have exciting things to look forward to come October and the Beijing marathon :)
3) I only need 40 some odd words to get to 2000 at this point, so I’m just stalling and rambling until then. It seems like a nice, round, number, and may very well be the longest blog post we’ve had. I had been toying with the idea of separating this one entry into multiple entries, and just post them all at the same time. But that also felt stupid. Not that this monster of a post isn’t stupid in and of itself, there’s just no lesser evil with those two choices…

Edit:

Already had to correct a couple of typos, and I just realize I never tested the new sites I’m developing in IE, because I don’t have access to IE anymore! I should get around to that huh…?

First, my IFC (International Festival Chorus) Messiah concert has been postponed until the 19th of December. Apparently they’ve been having more and more problems getting government approval to perform Handel’s Messiah in a public venue, and it was going to be a GREAT venue (sorry, Chinese site only, but it does illustrate just how weird Chinese web URLs are: www.zxyyt.com, it’s the first letter of the each Chinese character as written using English letters). So what they’re going to have to do now is perform it on the sly, at an independent location, specifically the International School of Beijing. Apparently it’s a big deal, the Messiah I mean, and subject to lots of government scrutiny before it’s allowed to be performed. Either way. This just means it pushes off my performances and rehearsals a bit.

Secondly, thanks to my connection with the IFC, I am also performing at the British Embassador’s Residence, singing Christmas carols. We’re also “performing”/”rehearsing” at the Bookworm, a coffee shop in Sanlitun, the bar area of Beijing, this coming Thursday for either “Beethoven Basics” or “Basic Beethoven” or something like that, for their classical music open mic night. Who knew such things existed huh? Sanlitun itself is weird, and not quite my cup of tea. There’s this huge “Village” complex they’re building, basically a tricked out shopping promenade, with massive numbers of massive stores. We’re talking three stories of Nike and the world’s largest Apple store; completely out of the locals price range, but trendy, I guess. Um, what was my point?

Right, thirdly, I’ve actually signed a contract with Connections. I am their full time manager now, for the next year, unless terminated in writing with 45 days notice. The restaurant is for most intents and purposes ready. We’re just missing staff and suppliers. There’s still a big part of me that’s unsure of whether or not I should really be continuing with this, but that’s all part of some much larger general concerns of mine regarding my relative success or actually lack there of since we’ve been in China and the almost irrational and unreasonable way that I am treated or considered by my parents and extended family that I will not get into here.

Fourthly, we saw 2012 in theaters. This is Maria’s first time, and only my second. So in China, apparently, the movies are expensive as hell by local standards (35 RMB/5 USD on a weeknight, 75 RMB/11 USD on a weekend), you pick out your seats before hand and they’re assigned, if there are any English subtitles in the original movie you can kiss those good bye (which actually means we’ll need to watch 2012 again since there were lots of time when people were speaking other languages that we have no idea what was going on because there’s only the Chinese subtitles), and before the credits even begin rolling, the lights come on, the movie is over, and the theater empties. No staying for the credits in this town.

Fifthly, and related to the “Fourthly,” we wandered around Wanfujing a good bit. It’s about 5 miles from our apartment, and we wanted a walk, and I hadn’t been there in a while and I remembered that there was a movie theater there, so we headed out. We passed what the internet is apparently calling the “night market” which is this long city block of nothing but street food, most prevalent of which were things on skewers, with an emphasis on the weird and gross, like still moving scorpions, starfish, sea urchins, bug “pods,” various internal organs, etc. The place has really gussied up since last I was there. A couple of new shopping malls have opened, all selling high end durable goods. What we’ve come to realize is that brands that in the stores one would find only in department stores, for some reason have their own massive stores. They definitely like their things big.

And lastly, construction at the apartment should be finishing up relatively soon, within the week actually. Which means that for once, and finally, we will have a place that is all our own, livable and clean. Thank god for small favors.

And as a side note, we’ll be revisiting some of these things and hopefully that means there’ll be pictures!

(Weather)
It was like this when I was in New York; as the seasons noticeably change, I would get sick. This meant once when the summer months ended and winter began, and again when winter ends and it starts to warm. I probably got lucky the year and a half or so I was last in LA because there are no noticeable season changes there. But here, in Beijing, wow; it was quite warm when we first arrived, then all of a sudden, snow! Photos to follow incidentally. It’s been like that since the end of the month. It’s actually quite appropriate really, as November began, so did winter.

(Sick)
But I don’t like being sick. It throws off my sleeping schedule because I just sleep when I’m tired, and that happens at random intervals during the day. Other times I just can’t sleep because of the symptoms, like now. And in general, I’m just completely sapped of energy. I do think I’m getting better though. One of the good things about China is that most drugs are over the counter, including antibiotics. I’m taking those, and some other random Chinese medicine, to good general effect.

(Maria Runs)
Maria’s been getting more and more adventurous in her running lately. We’ve uploaded maps of her runs for anyone who’s interested.

(IFC)
I auditioned for and successfully got in to the Beijing International Festival Chorus! I was actually very nervous for some reason. I’m actually always nervous during auditions, never so during rehearsals or performances, but something about auditions rattles me. It looks pretty interesting, and the venue that they perform in is quite grand. They’re also very English which I find very amusing. The first rehearsal is tomorrow and though I am sick, I doubt I’m contagious, and I’d very much like to get back into the swing of things. Part of why I may have been nervous as Maria points out is that it’s been over a year and a half since I last sang. A pity really. I also hope to join their smaller group, the International Festival Chamber Choir. I don’t know much about hem yet though, but it seems like an added opportunity to sing and perform, which is always good.

(Updates)
As far as general updates go, I’ve been obviously a little bit absent from the renovation work going on at Connections Bar and Grill. Incidentally, the IFC people had heard of my restaurant! A testament to our current marketing scheme! I foresee great things in the future; this looks to be the start of a beautiful friendship! The schedule is still set though; we will open in one week. Next week will be the all important perfecting of our recipes, our new supply lines, and the hiring of new employees. As my father put it, I missed some of the craziness this week, but there’s plenty more next week, and it’ll all be mine. Yay. [insert sarcasm tag] I keep going over and over the operations of the restaurant in my mind, and it scares me.

You see, unlike in the States, where restaurant layouts make sense, apparently in China, regulations prohibit such things as a large open kitchen where one person can have easy access to all the supplies, utensils, plates, and cooking. You need a separate room, with its own wall separating it, for your dish washing and your produce preparation. This means that for one person to operate the kitchen in its entirety is for most intents and purposes impossible. That one cook will have to go to the “salad prep” room to get the produce ready, then go to the kitchen to cook everything, then go to the “dish washing” room to get the necessary plates before putting it all together. Apparently it’s a hygiene regulation.

So to get around this, I’m thinking we’ll keep the separate rooms because we have to, but just not use them. It just means there’s a lot of pressure on the cook, a.k.a. me, to make sure all the prep is done in the mornings and MOVED into the kitchen so that I won’t have to keep running back and forth between quite distant places…I’m thinking, down the line, once the restaurant is highly successful, a complete and utter overhaul of the kitchen will be needed. We’ll speak of this when the time is appropriate.

As far as renovations go at my apartment, I think we’ve hit a snag. Apparently it’s out of my hands, as it should since these are my mother’s renovations, but I think they’re doing it wrong. The plan was to rebuild the sun-room, this nice, enclosed patio type space on the second floor. There was some water damage because the roof was leaking, so they were supposed to tear it all apart, and redo it. Well the tearing apart went fine, but it looks like they’re walling up the windows! They’re just turning it into…a room. I doubt that’s what my mother had in mind. The problem with informing her is that this construction is already way behind schedule; they were supposed to be done by November 1st. And now if it looks like they’re doing it all wrong and will have to do it again but correctly, it’s just going to take even longer, and I just can’t wait for the day where I won’t have to worry about construction workers trampling through my home!

I think that’s all for now…I’m going to sort out some beautiful photos of Beijing in the snow and upload them next.

I know, the original point was for convenience, same with the cell phone (I have to text “YE” to some number to check the balance, then call some other number to refill it using a card I buy from a newspaper stand…?…), but I’m finding it to all just actually be a complete pain! Why can’t I give them my bank account, and they’ll just bill me, like it is in EVERY other civilized country that I’ve been in? I don’t want to have to go out and make sure I fill my cards, of which I’m going to have many, and make sure to swipe it in front of the electric meter or I’ll have my power turned off. Just take my stupid money, please!

So that was the rant against prepaid stuff. Just as a point then, in case anybody is reading this…

Gas and electric utilities are prepaid, you’ll see a meter that indicates how many “units” you have left at the meter. If you’re low, below 200 for electric, I don’t know what for gas, you can swipe your card at it and it’ll refill it. You get this card from I don’t know where, and you refill it at a bank. It was much easier in the States when they just took money out of my checking account.

Cell phones you can buy from any China Mobile store, and you can pick the type of plan you want. There are two kinds of prepaid, plus one that’s more traditional and akin to the contract plans in the states. You refill your prepaid phones using cards you buy from newspaper stands and the likes. There’s a scratch off spot that’ll have a special password code that you enter when you call some number from your phone and this’ll add the balance.

Only locals, meaning people with ID cards, can sign up for telephone and DSL service. There’s a form in triplicate that needs to be filled in, all in Chinese, then you take it to a guy behind a teller and they give you what you want. Since it’s DSL, and DSL only, you’re bandwidth is limited by the type of line that’s in place, and since my current apartment, great though it is, is in a very old part of town, my available speeds are limited by the old lines. Of course, I can shell out to replace the ENTIRE block’s lines, but that’s a whole other can of beans… The real problem with this method of signing up for phone and DSL service is that if you want to make any changes to it, you need to bring along the original person that registered it for you. So when we first got to the apartment, the service had lapsed for some reason because somebody wasn’t paying it for some reason and I had no idea who it was so when I went to the telephone bureau or whatever it was called with my cousin to try to sort it out and get our service reinstated, they couldn’t do anything because we needed the original person who registered it there with us, and of course, we have no idea who that is! Apparently, if we were unlucky, they wouldn’t have been able to set up service without this “person” there. So I spent a harrowing afternoon and much time on the phone trying to track down who the original person was, and if they’d be able to come with me to the telephone bureau to sort things out. Obviously, we were lucky, and that particular branch of bureaucracy decided to ignore the original person. But still, it’s pretty annoying.

And now the phone doesn’t work for some reason even though I’m sure it was working when the people came to install my service and I had originally thought that since there was a slot for batteries and no batteries that getting batteries would fix it but it didn’t and now I have no idea what’s wrong with it and I just want a landline phone because I’m paying for it damnit and it’s free to receive phone calls so it’s cheaper than my cell phone to use if someone’s calling me and now my father thinks it’s the new DSL line that killed it and if that’s the case, then I have no idea what to do…

So the word of the day is…CONVOLUTED!

But as the title says, EVERYTHING’S GOOD!

Everything is actually so very good, it’s absolutely great. It’s been three weeks, and even longer soon and we’ll be celebrating our one month anniversary of moving to China. Impressive how quickly the time has flown.

Perhaps our greatest triumph of recent note is acquisition of cheap produce. And I mean CHEAP. For the equivalent of $1.50, we purchased 3 lbs of bok choy, a bulb of garlic, a huge thing of ginger, one whole leek, 1.5 lbs of spinach, 5 tomatoes, and 1 head of napa cabbage. For the equivalent of 20 cents, we bought a block of fresh tofu. We also got 6 eggs, and two apples, spending in totality less than 3 dollars. And everything’s fresh. We had originally be stymied when it came to purchasing produce because, I suspect, we live so close to the center of town, where it’s very much a tourist part of town, so the usual on the street vendors of vegetables are lacking. So I did some exploration, clued in by some sightings of produce that Maria had this morning on her run, found that what she saw was actually people selling non-edible plants, wandered around randomly some, and came upon this trove of edible greenery, tucked away in some completely out of the way alley.

So that’s part of the everything’s good.

Another part of what’s good, though this may be more neutral in its respects, are all the “businesses” we’re involved in, and the quotes are there to indicate some vacillating on my part in declaring these are viable, things that I want to be involved with businesses, or “head in the clouds” type things that may be best touched with a ten feet stick.

But, to count, we are, I am, Maria may be or is (I’m lumping things together):

1) Becoming part owners of a Western style restaurant, of which I will be the general manager of. This restaurant will need to be renovated and retrofitted from its original inception into an “All Day Breakfast” and “Burgers and Pies” place, with alcohol. I have a plan to make this a 2 million yuan a year business (that’s 300K US) and to have it be self sustaining within a year so that I can move on to more important things, like expanding the restaurant onto the GORGEOUS roof that we have open to us.

2) Creating a online gallery and silent bidding system for the world at large to purchase “Young, Urban, Beijing” original art created by the born in the post 1980s crowd.

3) A good bit of fund raising, apparently…

4) Something to do with Swiss helicopters…?

5) Something to do with proteins…

6) Editing essays and/or teaching Legal English.

Obviously, some of these have more well formulated actual ideas than others. It’s all a lot of fun, but quite busy heh.

Um, but everything is good, and it’s late, and I can’t sleep, but I really should, and my schedule’s all messed up but I intend to fix it, if I have to stay up all night I will fix it. The idea being, I will get up tomorrow, if I sleep, and stay up all day, and I’ll be right as rain again.

Speaking of rain, the weather’s been lovely here! Perfect Fall, actually, something I realize I’ve not seen in a while.

We are lacking a few near-essentials, and short on others, and I don’t yet know an easy way to get some of this stuff (do I really have to walk for miles to buy toilet paper?) but I have a water-boiling pot, a supply of tea, a shower that has hot water most of the time, a great place to run, long-desired internet, produce in the fridge.

Key to all of this: the running route. It’s a park, but I don’t have to pay admission (unlike my prior route). It gets crowded–I left at 730 this morning, and it was already quite populated–and I don’t think it is reasonable to expect to run there after noon at all, but I got my 6.5 miles (admittedly through multiple looping) quite satisfactorily. Some of the terrain is also hard on the feet/knees. I am going to go out earlier tomorrow and see if I can do some street running, but it’s nice to know that, if I plan appropriately, I can get a good run here.

As most of the essentials are falling into place, I am now steeling my nerves to get on to the real agenda–return emails re work, schedule Chinese class, get my recommendation letter templates out. This is almost real life.

The view from the stairs