Most people in the office seem to be rooting for the Lakers. Kobe is pretty famous here in China and I wonder if they are largely just rooting for him?

I also learned today that in the many encounters the Celtics and the Lakers have had in the NBA finals, something like 11 times, the Celtics have won 9 of them. I didn’t realize that head to head the numbers were so lopsided. Both teams have racked up an impressive number of championships though.

The next day I was pretty hungover and didn’t really get out of bed until pretty late. When I finally did, I dragged myself out to eat some food followed by… more drinking. Possibly not the best plan but it was a more relaxed setting and we were just chilling. The weather was still beautiful so later I headed home and did some reading on the roof while drinking water and trying to get back to baseline. At some point I thought to myself, “hey, I have a bunch of old chocolate sitting in a bag in my room I better use that up.” In the process, I ran out of water and since there was none to be found anywhere in my apartment I went and bought some for me and my roommates as well. In short I am the best roommate ever. I have some faults, no doubt, but come on, I get drunk and bake stuff.



It’s just kind of a shame I suck at using a camera in our poorly lit dining room. The chocolate chip cookies were a new recipe that I got from my sister in Cali which she got from one of her friends and I don’t really know the whole history but it’s pretty much amazingly delicious and I will probably have to use it more often. It calls for a kind of ridiculous amount of vanilla extract which is (in my opinion) not necessary to use anywhere near that quantity, especially considering how outrageous the price is here.

So that was all the weekend of the 4th. Last weekend, that is, the last couple days, were also very good, but I don’t really have photos.

There was a party (alas, a farewell), a few hours spent lost near the SE corner of 4th ring road, and then drunken kickball (I never did make it on base.) The only photo I’ve got is from when I was lost and biking around and I ended up on this overpass that was closed so I just sat there and ate a sweet potato.
Unfortunately this lifestyle has caught up with me and seems to have left me once again fighting off illness, so, time to take it slow for a while, or, at least for the week. Next weekend I kind of want to go on this Great Wall retreat but I still need to resolve scheduling issues.

First, I read about this ridiculous thing here and decided I would try it. I didn’t realize that I would decide to try it quite so soon but I ate it. Surprisingly not horrible but entirely too much of a mess.

Second, I wish I understood what that sign up there means. I’ve seen it a few places now and I still don’t really get it. No exploding here!

And lastly I saw this car flipped over and a bunch of people gawking (like me) the other night while biking home. This was like a block from home, awesome.

While I was sitting around, I was presented with this bowl. What could be in these shiny wrappings? Candy? Yum!

But wait, what is this? This isn’t candy?

Oh no, it’s meat! Strange preserved beef products shaped into cubes and wrapped in shiny paper. It’s a trick! Oh well.
Dinner ended up being Chinese food, which was actually pretty good. Here’s a blurry photo of the spread:

And to follow it up, a less blurry version of the fried fish. It was a little bizarre to have dinner looking back at me.

All said, I enjoyed it a lot. It’s nice that they thought to invite me over so I wouldn’t be sitting around at home, as I likely would have otherwise.

The music was… Christmasy, that’s for sure. It was this sort of generic mall-sounding music, heavy on what I assume are synthesized instruments. That and the fact that there were these strange instrumental-only versions and we only had one CD so I heard it all many times through the evening. I tried to record some but it didn’t really work out. I also didn’t manage to get get any of my great aunt singing along. That surprised me. But I guess she takes a class where they sing popular Western tunes, and lately they’ve been on a Christmas kick.

So, all that survives as photographic evidence are three photos of [tag]dessert[/tag]s.

This photo shows all of the deserts, before anybody showed up, and before they were plated nicely. On the far left, kind of out of view, is a little bowl of candied ginger. Under the plastic cover is a Chocolate Hazelnut torte. The two pies stacked over each other are both pumpkin pies. The pie with a crust on top is an apple pie. Next, moving right, is an apple tart. Finally, just at the right of the screen under plastic wrap are individually sized almond cakes. Though, the almond cakes are big enough that each one really serves two.

This is a better photo of the almond cakes, before plating.

Unfortunately, this came out pretty blurry, but depicted here are two of the deserts, plated. On the left is half of one of the almond cakes, with some berry compote, two fruit sauces (raspberry and apricot) and some whipped cream. On the right is the chocolate hazelnut torte over raspberry sauce, garnished with whipped cream and a piece of hazelnut toffee my mother made. The toffee is not pictured otherwise, and though it was made as a garnish, it was incredible and should have been featured as a dessert unto itself.

The whole dinner was a lot of fun. There were some 18 or 19 people there, most of whom were expatriates living in Beijing, plus a couple people like me who came up from Shanghai for the occasion. My mother had made most of the food and desserts over the course of the previous week. Other people contributed potatoes and wine, though I think nearly everything else was made there. Turkey, cornbread stuffing, cranberry sauce, the sorbets that were served both as an intermezzo and the sorbets that were served as a dessert (cranberry-lime for the former, apricot, pear and hawthorne for the latter), the vegetables, the shrimp toast appetizer and pumpkin soup. Oh, somebody did bring a salad, and somebody else brought some cheeses and bread too.

All told, it was an incredible meal and though I haven’t yet been feeling particularly nostalgic for Western foods, I’m sure that this meal did well to delay that from happening. It was basically two straight days of stuffing my face with amazing [tag]food[/tag].

I feel like I should go up to Beijing just to help them out with the leftovers or something.

This photo is of the front door, taken from just inside it.

Here is the same space, with the door closed. You can see a slightly broken umbrella that was lent to me by my great aunt (it’s been raining since I got here), as well as some of my shoes.

Here is the kitchen. Mounted on the right above the counter is the water heater. If I want to have hot water for anything (such as doing dishes or a shower), I have to turn on the gas, and if I expect to need a lot of hot water, I have to open that window so I don’t inadvertently run out of air to breath, apparently. Honestly though I suspect this is a largely unnecessary step given how incredibly drafty the place is. Mostly I just use the microwave and the electric kettle though, in terms of feeding myself.

Here’s one angle on the bathroom, depicting the shower stall and sink.

And here’s the other angle, showing the fancy western-style toilet I am so fortunate to have. There is indeed a telephone on top of the toilet, and I’m not really sure why. Not only because it seems like a strange place for a phone, but also because there is no functioning phone line in this apartment.

Here is a picture of the bedroom, taken from the entryway. The refrigerator there doesn’t actually work, nor does the TV under my ties and a sheet on the left.

Here is a picture looking in the opposite direction, back towards the front door.

In this unfortunately blurry photo, I was going to show how there is a little balcony area where I would hang laundry to dry, if it were both not raining and not nighttime.

And finally, to give some sense as to how everything flows together, here’s a very short video clip of me walking through the apartment.

As a final note, I’d like to say how great it is to have a cell phone that not only works (much unlike the one it replaced), but also can take photos and video and so forth, and then best of all, transfer it all to my computer by way of bluetooth such that I might present it to the rest of the world like this.

The photos that are specifically mine, as opposed to mixed in with all the other camp photos I’ve managed to collect so far, are easier found on flickr actually.