Since I’m getting paid in USD, and Lucas is getting paid in RMB, we decided a while back that we’d live on his salary to avoid or minimize the hassles of trying to export any RMB savings later.
We’ve been here for a month and a half, and because of administrative issues, Lucas missed the accounting [...]
This morning we took a taxi to work, so that we wouldn’t be late for our weekly Chinese class. On the way, I dozed off briefly, only to be jolted awake with a bang, as someone slammed into the back of our taxi! Again!
Since I wasn’t fully awake until after this happened, I have to [...]
After we went to see Mao, we stopped by an art gallery downtown (in the old Imperial Archives) to see a collection of pencil drawings of the Beijing hutongs. We briefly considered buying this one for $3500 US, but settled for a 150-kuai print instead!
See the rest of the exhibition at: the gallery’s website
On Sunday we met up with a group of friends in Tiananmen Square and went to pay our respects to Mao. Every morning (except Mondays and days that he’s out for cleaning and maintenance) he’s put on display from 8:30 to 11:30 and hundreds and hundreds of people line up to file past him. There [...]
On Saturday night, we stumbled onto the best happy hour specials we’d ever seen. For one hour, the club we were at served a small selection of drinks from their menu absolutely free! With no catch! After plying the waitress with questions, and consuming an hour-long stream of free drinks, we still couldn’t find any [...]
Meet my new cell phone!
We finally went out yesterday and bought me a new cell phone, so I don’t have to use Lucas’s old one anymore. We found out that a new mobile is one of the things we can have reimbursed as part of our “setting up house” allowance, so all of my earlier [...]
Well, not knuckles really. More like the back of my hands. But I’m sure my knuckles aren’t far behind!
It’s no secret that the air here is dry. When Anais bought their army of humidifiers, she regaled me with horror stories of dry winter weather causing people’s skin to dry so much that it cracks and [...]
So it sounds like it’s a really good thing that we didn’t get our first choice apartment, 2502 in Tower 1. The word in the building this morning was that the 25th floor of the caught fire last night, and there was enough smoke to wake up the people on the 27th floor! This morning [...]
Right before we left Banana, we were in the middle of the floor, and there was a guy in the crowd right next to us who looked really familiar. In fact, he looked like a guy from work that I used to hang out with in Paris. I figured my recognition was skewed, because I’d [...]
Lucas and I went to Banana, one of the mega-clubs downtown, on Saturday night to see DJ Sasha. The place was incredibly crowded, and the dance floor was so packed that for the most part, you really couldn’t move much. It was good fun, but it reminded me of the mornings when our bus is [...]