I’ve been in Beijing almost a year and loads to show for it, and not all of it good. First, a firmer grasp on a language I barely understood. Second, a lot of friends that I know I will find awfully difficult to stay in contact with. Third, an absurdly different view on the world from when I first set foot on the hazy Beijing streets.

College is coming up, and I am a bundle of emotions: I’m excited, nervous, hesitant, and full of unconcious expectations. My sheets have been ordered, my room assigned, my dining card paid for, but still clueless as to what life in Pittsburgh will be like. I even know my roommate’s name, where he’s from, and what his voice sounds like, but no clue how i’ll cope with a junior sharing the same living space as me. It shouldn’t be a problem, right?

As for now? I’m excited with the Olympic games just around the corner. The people in Beijing have never been commended for their manners, but the improvements from when I first arrived, are not small. There are still the occassional taxi drivers that no matter how patient I am, still manage to get on my nerves. Or the grocer, who will not care whether a born and raised in beijing or clearly a ‘laowai’ is standing accross the counter, and will insist that she can speak understandable english. The Olympics are coming up, and the locals are trying their best to welcome what is now a steady stream of incomming foreigners.

I heard somewhere President Bush has taken up residence at the westin hotel (all to himself) along with a enterouge of 600+ FBI security agents. Our president can never be too careful.

And for anyone that can read:

??????

Brief update from an airline lounge at SF airport. In a short span of time I will be embarking upon a journey that will land me squarely in a dorm at a college in the capital of Beijing. Feelings? Who needs them. But if I were to put them into words, I would describe my feelings as excitement and a bit of anxiousness. When I enter CMU next year, I bet it might feel like a breeze after having experienced a maelstrom of unknowns upon entering a college in Beijing.

I have finally gotten around to getting a pair of sunglasses (all my other pairs are either broken, broken, broken, too small or broken).

I feel a little silly. I went to an apple store a couple days ago (the day the new ipod nanos, ipod classics, ipod touch as well as the new ipod shuffle colors were thrown up onto the apple website. I have yet to see them in person so I cannot yet pass judgment on the new colors (i like the pictures…) or to the fact that the new ipod nanos look like crackers. Maybe their skinniness (is that even a word) and form factor will somehow make up for the immediately awkward looking shape. Just maybe the diet the nanos have been put on may make up for the stubbiness this new generation seems to have.

(note: now that I’m in Beijing, it’s going to take even longer for me to find out what the new ipods are like)

I found an amazing comedy Friday night. Browsing through the movies at Blockbuster, we picked up Keeping Mum with Mr. Bean (Rowan Atkinson), Professor McGonagall (Maggie Smith), and Patrick Swayze. An absurdly hilarious comedy that plays on the horrors of thrillers. Such movies as those from the Scary Movie serial series or spoofs like Shaun of the Dead cannot be compared to this european comedy about killing and grace. When I saw a poster of (something or other) Grace I could no longer focus on the movie itself but the character Grace from Keeping Mum. Oh, which, by the way, if you had not realized by now, I FULLY recommend that you watch.

P.S: Sorry about the down time. That will will not happen again once I get some passwords from a guy who has been trying his best to find excuses and to delay.

I want my harry potter books…

(What a totally random entry. This whole writing regularly is… hard. It’s easy to ramble about the most random things but even I’d have a hard time reading them.)

expectations were high and movie satisfaction is low. But it makes a good motivation to re-read the 5th book. I was planning on watching the 5th movie, re-reading the 6th book and then devour the 7th when it came out. However, after the movie, I have the unquencable desire to read the 5th book again and re-read all the movie left out, which is a lot. So I have to rethink my plan and read the 5th book again.

Short entry (rant). It could be longer…

I’ve tried drawing again. My first try rendered a terribly drawn face (proportions distorted). The second reared it’s ugly head but I quickly ran away from it. I do not actually know what I was trying to draw since I left it before it turned into more than just a blur. Third was nice that I might or might not try to color and last is a figure which I will color when I finish sketching. By drawing I mean pencil and paper and by color I mean scan and digitally paint. Truth be told, this will be a first. I’ve tried but I never get past the scan in stage. A pencil is so much easier to draw with.

I am starting to hate my layout again (basically because I made it in pixels first, then converted partially to ems and it never really worked in firefox/camino/ie as in safari). Also there’s a difference between minimalism and laziness.

I need to do something more during this summer. Let’s try mass reading again.

Today I visited ATDP. That was fun.

and happy birthday cindy (a lil early)

are mondays. ooo deep
so today’s a monday. monday monday monday. (thinking of what to write)…

-written yesterday (couldn’t come up with anything)

(the blockquote won’t look good until I come up with a blockquote)

what do I say here. Random stuff I guess.

visited TIC yesterday. That was cool and all. Played ultimate frisbee. That was fun as well. (I love typing in see-spot-run sentences).

Random stuff I’m drawn to:

• STKaiti (random chinese font… it looks nice)
• BEAN (the word processor)
• hot tubs…. @.@
• That whistling song (I’ll try to find out what it is)
• Never Say Goodbye by Mario and Nesty (from My Girl)
• HUGE screens

Random stuff I’m not drawn to:

• Chlorine… it lingers… IT LINGERS
• goggles that don’t fit
• as well as baggy swim trunks
• slippery floors

I slept so soundly last night. *sigh* That was an extremely odd feeling. Normally I am tossing and turning about waking up over and over again. And around dawn, I wake up and lie there thinking whether or not I should actually get myself out of bed.

This morning’s breakfast was odd especially since it was past the time I should have eaten lunch. There was this huge meeting/conference talking about all the IT stuff in this house. They needed input. So I ate a mango flan (oh so yummy). I want internet (fast internet) not this slow as molasses that is currently running. Apparently there was some hiccup that AT&T ran into while running lines. So we have a slug-speed version of high-speed Comcast right now.

I found out last night during my matrix marathon sometime into the second of the three that the trilogy was made before widescreens became common. So that’s why Neo looked a lil stubby. I never made it into the third movie. I needed some sleep. I wish there was a LoTR in Blue-ray or HD-DVD.

And another thing… I just broke my layout —->

It can’t handle long posts. I’ll fix that…

The first doctor’s appointment finally diagnosed something. Orthostatic Proteinurea (what a long name) but even though it has such a long name, it’s nothing bad. It’s a condition… that totally means…. nothing. This is not something that explains everything that’s gone wrong but apparently it is just a second condition that explains what may be viewed as a worsening of my first/original condition which is still being diagnosed (IgA Nephropathy). Neat huh. So while in fact I’m actually getting better, the second condition’s symptoms can be easily mistaken as the rapid worsening of the first condition.

This morning I had oddly high blood pressure >.> and earlier this week i had oddly low blood pressure (for me that is)