Peaceful Rise

Ugh.

Check it out, I got paid for this. It's out in print, too. Just another 25 years and I'll have written the great American novel.

I finally started a job on Monday.  It's with New Oriental, the big English training corporation, but the branch I'm with is fairly small and new and does online Chinese teaching aimed at foreigners.  It's supposed to be a new competitor of Chinese Pod , which is well known and seems to make a fairly decent product.  See New Oriental's pitiful efforts at Target Chinese .  Note the panda wearing headphones, and of course the obligatory gong sound as you enter the page.  Fun fact: not only did the Chinese invent gunpowder and movable type, they also invented stereotypes!  Also key are the three sexy babes who really like learning Chinese, and let's not forget Jack, the awesome black dude who will be teaching live class in 2 hours, 15 minutes and 38 seconds.  Better hurry up and subscribe. Here is a picture of my cubicle: I don't know if the picture quite portrays how small this thing is.  I can't really turn my chair if somebody comes to tal...

China Daily came to do a piece at Go Club a couple of weeks ago.  Sadly I had neglected to shave that day, and soon all of China will see how filthy I am.  They don't seem to have put the footage up yet, but you can see a couple of pictures of me on the Go Club website.  As you can see, I was happily destroying my opponent: http://www.beijinggoclub.com/february.html I'll post another link when I find out that China Daily's piece is up.

Today I visited a park I hadn't gone to before. There were lots of people skating around on chairs. I took a video. These things are too cute. You can also hear the Chinese music playing in the first clip. That's how you know I'm in China.

I moved out of my friend Frank's on Wednesday and into a place near Dongzhimen. It's working out really well since a friend happened to be leaving for a month in the Philippines, so I'm paying for his rent for a month and staying in his room. I'm living with a French guy and a Chinese girl. It's a really nice place, it's incredible what you can get when you split the cost with housemates. I took some pictures but I'll have to post them in a few days since I left the USB cable to my camera at Frank's. Although this isn't quite as close to the center of the city as Frank's, it's still pretty good. We're right on the loop line. It's hard for me to get oriented, since I'm so used to being way out east near the fourth ring, and now I'm right on the second ring, and it's confounding that I have to go east instead of west to get to some of my old haunts. It's almost absurdly luxurious. I registered with the local polic...

Alleyway Originally uploaded by arewethereyet My first day back in Beijing was blessed with beautiful blue skies. I posted some pictures on Flickr, although there seem to be some censorship problems with the site for me so I'm not sure if I'll keep using it. But then again my blog is also still censored. I was very productive on my first day. I got a new phone number and a bank account. Liu Shaochun (the special effects props guy) called me and said that Ken was talking about coming back for some production in February or March. Xu Ke (my old roommate) invited me to spend the spring festival at his family's in Hunan. By freak chance, I ran into the behind-the-scenes cameraman from the Kite Runner on one of the new subway trains (what are the odds?), and he gave me his card and said he'd be in touch. I met up with a bunch of other translator friends for dinner. It's been a long time since I ate in a smoke-filled restaurant. Quite a different feelin...