tbaroundtheworld

I guess I'm a regular at Starbucks now, the night guy just told me my order before I even opened my mouth. I threw him a curve ball though and ordered a Vente instead of a Grande. It might be time to change the music though because "Autumn in New York" now seems to always be playing when I walk in the door. The tape has moved on to a classic rendition of "Black Coffee", an appropriate tune considering the locale. My weekend was pretty full, to say the least. I spent the early part of yesterday out on foot scoping out the big park on the far side of the light rail tracks as a potential spot for bike riding. From my place it's hard to see what's in there, although there seemed to be sort of a dirt boundary road that might bear some use given that one of the bikes I brought was rigged for off road riding. I met a friend for coffee and then headed off in the direction of the park entrance. I cut across 5 Colour City and spent some time marveling at how borin...

The name of the building I live in is Jun Yue Hao Ting - something, something, imperial mansion. It's neither of those last two things. As buildings go in Kai Fa Qu, it's pretty nice but "mansion" is not a word I would use to describe it. Apartment living here is a bit different than it is over there. First of all, they're all owned by individuals, more of a co-op than a true apartment. Secondly, the builders tend to move a bunch of people in long before the building is complete in order to generate some cash flow to pay for the finishing touches. So while we're living here, the management office consists of two card tables, a phone and three folding chairs in a roughed in room the size of a dirigible hanger. I suppose someday it will be quite impressive, today it's quite unfinished. We do have a doorman, some of the time and when he's on duty he often has the security door propped open with a chair so that he can go outside and supervise the guys fini...

It only takes one little thing to dissolve you into a puddle of despair in this place. Every day seems to be made up of a series of sharp highs and blunt lows and not much regular life stability in between which makes it hard to manage your time and plan your activities when you never know what’s just around the corner. Of course this is true of life no matter where you live, but here because it’s so alien, the little things just seem to be more crisply in focus and capable of knocking you down right quick. I was thinking about my eating habits at work today and recalled a time when I was not a bad practitioner of Chinese cuisine. I had this big thick cookbook, the right tools and a full set of ingredients on hand, procured on weekends at the local Asian market. Cooking Chinese is really not that tough and it doesn’t have to come out perfect to be good enough. I’d created many a meal in the past that was at least minimally worthy of the worst Chinese restaurant I’d been to. And some we...

We had a work holiday today and it being a Thursday many people turned it into a 4 day outing. I went back and forth a couple of times about going “somewhere” before deciding that I had so much house stuff to do that it might be better to just find a way to enjoy the day without getting on a plane to an exotic locale. After all, I still had a pile of IKEA stuff to assemble, new kitchen ware to clean and put away as well as a load of laundry. The latter meant it was time to understand the washer and dryer. So staying in town was the decision. But that didn’t mean that I had to turn myself into a domestic worker for a day, there were still places to be explored and what better day to do them. I settled on another trip to Da Hei Shan (Big Black Mountain) and enlisted a friend in the excursion. Recall from one of my February blogs, I’d been there before in late afternoon when climbing the mountain was pretty much out of the question due to the waning light. On the way down I’d had that dep...