Another dripping scorcher here in SH. In the ongoing battle against heat my face is continuing to discover ever new upper cheak sweat glands. I think even my eyes know how to sweat by now.

Stuffed ourselves on fish hotpot tonight. America, you are missing out on the wonders of fishballs.

On the way to drinks afterwards with a few visiting friends our cabbie fell asleep at the wheel. In an inverse irony, this cab actually had seatbelts and we were all strapped in safely. Fortunately, he fell asleep off the pedal and not on the accelerator. I’m not sure what makes me sympathetic to this guy as opposed to the many others I’ve given a piece of my mind, but he stopped the meter for us and seemed nice enough. These guys work 20 hour days just to break even, I guess I’m almost surprised this kind of thing hasn’t happened more often. Anyway, phew.

As usual, my brain is overflowing with news from the the last week and I can feel the important little details evaporating with each passing day. I really owe Guilin a solid dedicated post, which I hope to put up with pictures in the near future; here’s the interim recap:

Visited my old China home town of Yantai on business last week. A lot has changed. For one thing the new boardwalk is complete and quite impressive.

After a few weeks of China experiences, David is off to Thailand for the continuation of his summer escapades. A great time, though I wish I’d been able to give him more than just evenings and weekends. Check out his blog for the inside story.

Fortunately, he didn’t depart before we managed to fit in a few adventures in the Southern province of Guilin. Lou, David and I hopped a Friday flight south and spent a weekend of squelching fun amidst the gorgeous karst peaks of backpacker haven Yangshuo. 100% of our time there was sopping wet thanks to Monsoon Bilis, but the damp only added to the fun (that’s right memories, I’m shaping you already). Highlights include: floating down river on an inner tube and finding ourselves two hours past the intended destination (a big thank you to our boat-full of Taiwanese saviours); cycling along (though it felt more like “in”) the Yulong river, getting completely lost (“so many old women with cows can’t be wrong”), and eventually making it to the Buddha Water Caves; and Guilin soup noodles. Anti-highlights: Yangshuo’s famed banana pancakes and the over-hyped village of Xingping.

We arrived back to Shanghai on Monday night and it’s essentially hard to believe Thursday has already rolled around.

Couscous at O&K’s (with visiting friends Martin and Anna) on Tuesday followed by Superman Returns. We’re still trying to figure out which controversial scenes the censors felt in need of cutting (we counted about 8 visually jagged and aurally jarring clips in the middle of the film).

Last night was Scotto’s 30th birthday party: a Punjabi stuffed, danc-arific time.

Will try to put up Guilin pics soon.

P.S. The tech savvy will know, but this blog is syndicated on RSS (see also the new link in the upper left corner). That basically means you can add my blog as an intelligent “bookmark” that will display the headings of my new posts, or you can have the posts appear on your home page (such as, My Yahoo, My AOL or Google IG) like news articles (only, updated less frequently).

Since this nifty web anonymizer is the only reason I can still use WordPress.com as my blog in China a quick note of appreciation, and by this I mean product plug, is warranted.

Tor is a small, downloadable, and all importantly free application that runs on both mac and windows. The technology is both simple and complicated, I’ll let Tor’s own website explain the peer to peer hosting techniques, but for the lay-user all that is needed is:

a) Download and install the Tor package (consisting of the Tor technology, and a GUI – Graphical User Interface)

b) Set it up. If you’re a Firefox user, download and install the Tor Button, which sets up your browser automatically. If not, Tor has instructions for other browsers on their download page.

c) When you want to be anonymous, run the Tor GUI and click the Tor button “on” in firefox.

Trust me, it’s trés simple. And a lifesaver in the land of censorship. There is a highly noticeable time lag in loading pages when using Tor, but it’s worth the wait. The Firefox Tor button also makes quick work of this problem – simple on and off when I need it. Wonderful.

P.S. Tor is available in multiple languages.

Hi folks,

I’m back, with thanks to Tor. But more on that later, it’s time for a real update:

David’s been here a week now, which has been great. Really fun to have friends visiting in this city, though I wish I were on holiday to explore with him… He’s managed to take in a few sites I haven’t even been to myself, for which I’m naturally jealous. Unlike when Katie was here earlier in the year, the weather now is incredibly hot and humid. Summer, aka wet Hell, seemed to arrive just as he did. Virtually every activity outside the the presence of airconditioning (basically, everywhere save my ice cube of an office) has become a bone sapping experience. The deluges have been incredible (the captioned pic is a view of our street two weekends ago) causing general flooding (already a problem in our building’s sunken entryway) and battering down our lanky, sun deprived basil shoots (don’t worry, we pull them inside when it gets too crazy). But, as it was discovered last week, the rats are still here; only now they’re not inside B For Time Tea, but outside in the Cotton’s garden playing in the trees… all according to the expectations of our waiter. Enjoy brave guests!

There’s a pattern to entertaining guests: a dose of the city’s legitimate tourist spots (the bund, people’s square, yu yuan gardens, Cloud 9) interspersed with our own favorite experiential places (Dongbei restaurant, fabric market, Xiang Yang’s final day, World Cup at Freelance) and as many other classic China escapades as we can rustle up (the bike ferry, the subway, street eats, fish markets, and children peeing on sidewalks)

David’s in Beijing this weekend, another touriest adventure I haven’t checked off yet, but he’ll be back in town next week and our plan is to travel to Yangshuo for three days next weekend. Then he’s off to Thailand and we’ll be back to tottering around the large apartment and planning parties to fill the extra space. Actually, it will be nice to have a few solid weeks of relative quiet. It seems like we’ve been in continual travel or entertain mode for several months now.

I plan to spent the rest of today picking up my first foray into the world of (cheap) custom made clothing, contemplating the purchase of a second fan, gloating over the success of calling Dazhong taxi for a pick-up this morning (…Chinese baby steps) and, eventually, meeting the gang for Juliet’s farewell party (she’s off to Colombia U’s IR Masters program this fall).

Glad to be back online. Hope to have fun playing around with this site, more freedom than Friendster… at least now that I can access this website again anyway. H

I don’t carry my camera around nearly enough these days, a bad habit to be fixed, but I do get around a fair bit and tonight’s Lantern Festival was one for the albums. Thanks to Flickr for the Beijing (?) based pic of tonight’s festivities.

The experience was noteworthy not because it was a dazzling display of romantic Chinese tradition, but because we paid RMB50 to leave the throngs of sparkler vendors and children pulling lit-from-within, rolling, plastic bunnies to join the crush of humanity squeezed into Yu Yuan Market, which was very much open for business hawking a more absurd than usual range of cheap, flashing baubles and where there was no “attraction” per se but rather 10,000 lanterns sponsored by Coca Cola, a floating mish mash of Disneyfied frogs and Aladdins, and a static parade of glowing dogs perched on top of an over-sized money pile.

While walking the Lantern beat, a blend of babies hammocked between jostled parents, couples attending to a lost tradition and passive wares flaunters (comme grandmere qui brille partout) Tongshi Mathieu relayed an apropos story of a colleague who recently asked how he would celebrate Valentine’s Day. When Mathieu explained his family didn’t tend to celebrate this holiday the coworker was at first shocked, but then came to ponder how a western Hallmark holiday had established itself as such a widespread (consumer) event in China. “Perhaps we are losing something” he said. I think perhaps they are.

While waiting for our own evening’s resident photographer to share his proofs, I ripped these links right from Shanghaiist.com. They really are good.:

Movies!!
- http://www.danwashburn.com/movies/2006chinesenewyearshanghai.avi
- http://www.danwashburn.com/movies/2006chinesenewyearshanghai2.avi

Flickr Pics
- http://www.flickr.com/photos/danwashburn/sets/72057594055279913/with/92243244/
- http://www.flickr.com/photos/shanghaistreets/92108248/

P.S. Wednesday evening was even louder than Saturday. It’s really not nearly as fun as it would seem to be woken up by skull splitting explosions beneath your window every 45 minutes.

I’m not a ‘short format’ kind of guy. Maybe I need to work on that. :-O In any event, it doesn’t help my blogging habits. Half finished epic entries sit unposted on my desktop as my enthusiam and memory for the subject wanes. One way or another it seems obvious something has to change, and somehow I doubt it’s going to be the amount of time I get to devote to writing. (For now…) So we’ll give it whirl. Shorter, and hopefully sweeter.

One false inner mantra I’ve been able to effectively disprove here in China is that I only write when I’m emotionally inspired to do so. I mean, I do. But, thing is, I find myself emotionally charged and in awe of at least one dongxi per day, usually more… see entries November through for January for evidence of just how much inspriation does for my writing (hint: not much)

Anywho, there are a few events that truly set me lusting for a keyboard. One of them being Chinese New Year.

Killer party in an empty apartment aside (thanks Lauren S.!) the raw ludicrosity of Saturday night’s city-wide fireworks “display” was simply astonishing. The first firecrackers started ambushing Shanghai eardrums a few week ago. Here and there a shocking but isolated explosion in the middle of a crowded street, or subway station such to render the body’s sympathetic systems frazzled.

However, shortly after dusk on New Year’s Eve the real show started in earnest growing in phonic measure from the trampling of Zeus’ steeds to the amplified tectonic roar of colliding planets. This was no blitzkrieg, half-hour, Hudson River family event. This was seven hours of hours of increasingly frequent crack-crack-cracks, fizzzzles and B**MS; cardboard and spent mortar ricocheted off 10th story apartment windows. Hardly safer from our 40th floor rooftop vantage we took in the explosive 360 degree panorama and did our share of contributing to the fiery festivities. By 11:30 the city was shrouded in a sulfurous gun-smoke fog that stung the eyes and midnight struck with the confused, far flung violence of the dowager Tsu Hsi’s will. As far as the eye could see colored sparks engulfed every shikumen, da jie, nong and empty airspace. No window below 800 feet of altitude was safe for opening and as we watched lacy soot settled into the pile of the city’s collective wardrobe.

In many ways the scene, both a marvel and a treat, was the ultimate expression of humans enjoying the fruits and freedom of humanity. By God, we invented fireworks, so let’s all of us fire them off everywhere and anywhere we damn please, safety and sanity step aside for the wild moment please. There are so few places you can do this anymore.

So, I augmented my presence in the international banking scene yesterday by opening a second Chinese account. It’s not so much that one isn’t enough, it’s just that, well, I may have left my ICBC debit card in a gambling hall the other day (OK, the other week) and then may have gotten really ticked off at my bank for giving me the run around.

Yah, yah, not such a hot place to leave a card… no ‘aholic habits here though, the gambling hall is just the nearest cash machine on my corner (I swear…). Naturally, the staff had ‘no idea’ where my card went. And suddenly I give thanks for a 6-digit pin.

As for ICBC, largest bank in China or not, they’re awful. After visiting 4 different branches (over successive days) in search of a new card and getting the repeated explanation "we’re out of cards, come tomorrow" (ahem, bullsh…) I decided the solution was simply to open a new account with Bank of China. This I probably should have done from the beginning. So they only have 45 atm machines per square acre and not ICBC’s 478,000; they make up for it with an international presence and online banking (albeit in Chinese) that doesn’t require installing strange and suspiciously large software packages (PC only). Also, they actually keep spare cards lying around for customers like me. In the meantime, I can still draw down ICBC with my bar-coded savings booklet, a regional banking quirk that doesn’t quite fit into a wallet.

Opening a bank account in China is actually quite amusing. Firstly, it’s absurdly easy. Step 1, walk into account and present passport. Step 2, say any vaguely human sounding noise and they will immediately initiate account opening procedures. I’m guessing most foreigners don’t come to banks to conduct a multitude of complicated transactions. I’m also pretty sure I didn’t actually say anything to the teller, possibly I sneezed, before being presented with a bilingual sheet to fill in and then being prompted in digitized mandarin to enter my new password no less than 17 times… for varying reasons, in triplicate, plus a few for good measure. Then 4 more times to honor the gods and align my finances with current celestial happenings. Still, the whole shebang couldn’t have taken more than 7 minutes… after having waited in line for 25. A curious study in contrasting efficiency. And, to be sure, the kindly security guard peered over my shoulder inches from my head the entire time, fondled my backpack and ran mysterious paper errands with various documents, written in Chinese, that I had naturally signed without thinking twice about. I’ve probably just donated my living kidneys and spinal cartilage for raw consumption by superstitious Chinese athletes prior to important future Olympic events. I’ll make sure to text you all for help when if that happens.

P.S. Other regional service I’ve come to dislike: Malaysian Airlines

P.P.S. I’m fascinated by Hong Kong Money… it’s actually branded by individual banks. Feng-le Pianr!

P.P.P.S. Last night I ate hunk of wasabi the size of a baby’s fist. King Kong of babies. I absolutely do not recommend doing this. Jury’s still out on whether free dinner makes up for it. If my stomach doesn’t fall out by tomorrow, maybe yes.

CNN Headline: Teacher accused of giving ‘liberal’ quiz
Friday, November 25, 2005 Posted: 1838 GMT (0238 HKT)
Bennington, VT

"… School Superintendent Wesley Knapp said he was taking the situation seriously.

"It’s absolutely unacceptable," Knapp said. "They (teachers) don’t have a license to hold forth on a particular standpoint."

Mmm, good standpoint Knapp. Wait, wait just one minute.

Ralph: Hi, Super Nintendo Chalmers!

Homer: Look everyone! Now that I’m a teacher I’ve sewn patches on my elbows.
Marge: Homer that’s supposed to be leather patches on a tweed jacket, not the other way around. You’ve ruined a perfectly good jacket.
Homer: Incorrect, Marge. Two perfectly good jackets!

Something’s going right when my corner Alldays, local equivalent of 7-11, staffed by 3 old crones is playing Sigur Rós (Starálfur to be precise) over their house system. Course, I think it was part of an advertisement.

I can’t tell if my tears are those of joy, or disapointment.

Hello all, apologies for "wetcat". I could take it down, but I’ll leave it as a testament to forensic computing. You see, I’m still beta testing ‘Flock’, but it ate my last blog. In an attempt [successful] to track where lost blogs go to rest I created wetcat as a ‘draft’. Apparently Flock had other plans for that too. Fortunately, inadvertent posting aside, It served it’s purpose  and I tracked down the offending *.rdf file. I’ll be posting the recovered data just as soon as I can pick out the coding burrs that stuck to its socks when it was tossed into the PC backwoods.

Alora, I have just officially returned home to China for the first time. I have lived in, and come-and-gone from China quite a number of times. But never back to a real apartment of my own choice before. It feels very nice. Having stuff is nice. Like leaves in a nest.

I even celebrated by joining a gym and yet further integrating myself into the local world. Apparently my gym, that is to say "Your Gym", has many members who are models. Thank you for asking but, no, I am not a model. And, no, I do not know the other American who goes to your gym and is black. I can’t say for sure whether this whole model business is true, I’ll keep my eyes peeled, but I do know it’s a pretty fantastic nearby facility, and for $187 a year, I’m sold. Thanks to Kaying and Amanda for the recommendation.

I’ll post more on KL in a bit, but I kind of want to say this: I’m actually here now. I know, I’ve officially been gone from the States for almost two months now, but I’ve really only been moved into my new apartment for one month. And I just spent the last two weeks in Malaysia. So I’m excited to really dig into this great big bowl of noodles known as shanghai and see what my chopsticks pull up.

As they say in Malaysian, Selamat Tinggal

asdjhfa;lkdsj

I spent the last two days staying at the Old House Inn and I have to say, nice place. To be sure, it’s an inn. No wake up calls, room service, gym, or elevator but that’s what gives it its charm. And frankly, with my new philosophy of ‘lower is better’, any building in Shanghai that isn’t a high-rise gets my approval. It had hot water, internet, comfortable beds, well appointed (if small) rooms and a television.

I suppose the only thing I really have against it, is that they kicked me out. Popular as it is, I’m fortunate to have even squeezed two nights there, which I managed only because someone canceled their Friday reservation and I was able to change rooms.

Given that I’m actually on a budget here (alas, no two weeks in the Grand Hyatt) I spent several hassled hours on Friday night and Saturday morning trying to figure out where I’d go next all the while thinking ‘if I can’t even figure out where I’m going to sleep tomorrow… how the hell am I ever going to find an apartment?’ But, just when I thought all was hopeless (bags packed in the foyer, bill paid, and echoes of ‘No Vacancy’ ringing in my ears) the kindly staff said ‘hey dude, chill out, we’ve already booked you into another hotel… and it’s cheaper.’ I really do love China.

The Shanghai Literature and Art Hotel isn’t going to win any awards, and it’s smokier than a Manhattan fire escape, but it’s contributing to my peace of mind since I won’t be run out on the street any time soon.

So, I walked around a lot yesterday. Feet much sore. I pretty much covered most streets within a 20 minute diameter (NW, NE and SW) of the Jing An subway station. For now, I’m sticking to my plan of finding something within walking distance of the number two metro line into Pudong. My vital resources have been the following:

Maps (with District names and ‘good’ area recs):

http://www.smartshanghai.com/en/travel/sshamap.php
http://www.shanghairealty.com/shanghaimap.htm
http://blog.wangjianshuo.com/archives/2004/02/28/map-shanghai-good.areas.jpg

Advice & Classifieds

http://shanghai.asiaxpat.com/property/default.asp
http://www.shanghairealty.com/district_introduction.htm
http://home.wangjianshuo.com/archives/20040228_rent_an_apartment_in_shanghai.htm

I hit a real low point in the afternoon. After hours of fruitless searching (I had been assured local real-estate offices would be scattered everywhere… ha) I was pretty well convinced that the Chinese suffer some kind of universal dementia-related affinity for sinfully ugly high rises.

Of course, I’d actually walked by a fair share of low slung eccentric alley-way Shikumen. But the lack of agencies had me also convinced that finding a way into these bergs was probably an impossible task for an unconnected foreigner. Not to mention, I have been warned about living in these quaint alley ways what with their faulty wiring and dachshund sized roaches.

Hasty and illogical thinking, yes; disheartening nonetheless, also yes.

(Possible) Saviour came in the unlikely form of a Coldwell Banker office. Dark was falling, hunger was calling and I’d just finished ogling at the fantastic houses (actual houses!) on Ju Lu Lu and lusting after the quiet and endearing localness of Fu Min Lu and Chanle Lu when I reach the Urumqi Lu, An Fu Lu crossroads (haven’t we all be there…). Head home or  follow yet another long and winding block to another point unknown? The fancy art gallery on the corner persuaded me to keep on keepin’ on. The gallery was followed every 50 meters by another promising sign (wine shop, interior decorations, Kohler store!!) and I started to feel pretty good. Then it was there, a brightly lit office in whose window were hung pictures of property, like stockings at Christmas time. I hadn’t paused more than 10 seconds when someone came running out to offer assistance. Awesome.

As far as I have found, no website offers a reliable rundown of this city’s many, many  real-estate agents. There are plenty of people touting their own dodgy services, and a few third party raves about individual agents with companies named the likes of "Brian Real Estate Consultants". None of them, however, mentioned the thoroughly legitimate Coldwell Banker. Within 10 minutes, this guy was showing me old and new apartments alike… one of them even had an affordable garden. A Garden!

Now, I’m not holding my breath, the commission could be daunting, and the options less pleasing in person, but my outlook is thoroughly positive right now. Good people are on the job and I get to focus on enjoying other aspects of life. Like karaoke.

Hello all,

Aside from the mass extermination of birds in China, I have to fess up to tech geekedness and admit the title reference actually belongs to the browser with which I am posting this. Flock represents the bleeding buggy advent of Web 2.0, and naturally I needed to test it out. I’m already impressed just because it allows me to submit this without logging into friendster. Huzzah, 7 seconds saved.

Anywho, I finally made it back to the mainland after my two week detour in Hong Kong. Among the busiest two weeks of my career at Kroll, but still confirming to me that HK is a great city. And despite the work, I mightily enjoyed my harborview hotel, and partook of several excellent pseudo-British expat experiences (dining at the Foreign Correspondence Club, a cheeky pint at the Hong Kong Cricket Club – where I met, drank with and generally underappreciated the British ‘legend’ Phil ‘Daffy’ DeFreitas – and cheering on diminutive men in knickers at the Happy Valley horse track)

But I’m glad to be moving on. Life on the road isn’t exactly an adventure from the norm when the norm has yet to be established. Let the era of apartment hunting begin! Actually, I really hope it’s more like “the weekend” of apartment hunting… though my sources tell me that’s mighty unrealistic. And yet, it’s not as though there’s a shortage of housing around here. Just a shortage of general quality.

As always, it does’t take long for this city to remind you that is is, in fact, a giant modern-day Barnum and Baily act. While walking to my thoroughly inland B&B last night I came across a 7-inch blue crab scuttling out of the center of the alley. How such a creature arrived there is a mystery I hestitate to dwell on. I just hope wherever I end up living doesn’t have a seafood infestation.

I look forward to catching up with you all soon. In the meantime I’ll be taking my vitamins, avoiding poultry (especially poultry with fish sauce… thanks Dragon Air!) and looking for a place to call home.

Because I crave legitimate scientific recognition <whistle, whistle, whistle>, I give unto thee: more news of the disgusting Hydra-Monster. I know, I’m as surprised as you are, who’d have thought my fame would come from cymothoa exigua. But it will.

Yeah, well, you’ll see.

Ground breaking investigative journalism? Fortunate happenstance and too much time spent reading boingboing.net? I leave that to you to decide. What’s for certain is that this plus-sized ocean-pill is taking over the world. That’s my view on things, and I’m going places with it!

Why? You see, aside from parasitically eating and then REPLACING (!!!) the tongues of its fish victims, the BBC reported this week that scientists are "excited" to have found this species in Britain, whereas it was previously known only to live in the Gulf of California. California, Britain, Jiangsu province… you see where I’m going with this people. Look for excitement to become acute terror and emotional unbiased, lopsided well-rounded reporting on a local news station near you when the international scientific community realizes this crustacean has perhaps coincidentally drastically branched out of its native territory, and jumped species due to accelerating animal husbandry in China (ok, now I’m just making this up)!

An alternative explanation you say? Unpossible. Me is genius. But while I can live with an oversized IQ, if my tongue ever happens to turn into this, please, I’m begging you, put me out my misery. And then use my skin to make you all look pretty.

eBay To Buy Skype for $2.6 Billion

Now that is one heck of an investment. Someone cool is now very, very rich.

P.S. My skype user name is the same ‘ol same ‘ol: harryalverson

Newly minted for my debut on the double-sided business card scene:

   艾睿奇
    aì rùi qí

[Update:] As deliberated and bestowed by Juliet Lee

Hu’s messing with human rights again? Yup, China. As if the blights of heredity and style weren’t painful enough, here’s CWCC to pour salt on your wounds:

Oddly Enough News Article | Reuters.com

BEIJING – In a bid to spruce up the city’s image, authorities in China’s Nanjing are banning taxi drivers who are bald, wear their hair too long, have moustaches or wear too much make-up, media said Tuesday.

The new rules are part of a 10-point plan to smarten up Nanjing, capital of eastern Jiangsu province, ahead of October’s 10th National Games which will draw viewers from across the country, the Chinese news Web site www.sina.com.cn said Tuesday, citing the Nanjing Morning Post.

"Male taxi drivers cannot have long hair or strange hairstyles, cannot be bald and cannot grow moustaches or goatees," the report said.

"Women drivers must not use too much make-up and should wear appropriate clothes."

The report did not mention penalties for drivers that break the rules, but did say that cabbies who refused to pick up passengers could be kept off the streets for up to 15 days.

The strict code comes at a time when middle-class Chinese are embracing all kinds of fashion thanks to two decades of market reforms that have rendered the Mao suit a relic of the past.

[Update:] Incidentally, October 10 is Swedish Names’ Day for "Harry". Though, clearly "Helmar", also celebrated on the 10th, would be much, much cooler.

To all the awesome people who responded to my advice-fishing email with comments, lamentations, well wishes and suggestions on staying (or whether to stay) in China: Thanks You!

I mean, really, thank you so much. No two letters were alike and all of them are now permanent heart warming keepsakes that I’ll read again and again over the next year, or print out and then use for heating fuel. Why? Well, because I’m staying.

In short, I’m doing this all for you. I know that deep in your nethers you’ve all been crooning for the opportunity to visit China but needed more of a draw. Yes, something more inspiring than the Great Wall of China; more compelling than 5000 years of history; more handsome than the verdant rice paddies and karst tors of guilin; and tastier than Beijing duck. Yay, in service of friendkind, I thusly throw myself onto your collective timebomb of ‘adventure-regret’ and provideth unto thee said opportunity: the chance to visit me. Come one, come all and enjoy a tiny apartment that looks like marble but is actually concrete and cardboard and we can set out for points absurd and unknown to eat xiao long bao and ‘act’ bewildered at all we see.

There was also this offer that may have been too good to refuse (starting with mandatory intensive Mandarin lessons supplanting a day of work for the first few months) but, mostly: for you.

Fear not, I’ll still try to annoy you all with regular emails, skype calls, blog posts and maybe even the occassional visit. And I’ll still be applying to schools too, so expect to see me poking around your neighborhoods come spring, but seriouly: come on out and join the fun.

In the short run, I’ll be back in the States as of September 17 to sort my life out. I hope to see many of you then. For now, I leave you with a quote from my new face scrub, the prestigioius 1872:

The joss-stick of France that derive from the technique fumes the dress grass whole effect essence researches to manufacture to use adopting the DEEP permeate system, delicate and clean white in fresh skin in quick instauration.

Sorry I’ve been away for so long. My half started entries are starting to pile up across cyberspace, and each new day of memories is superceding the last. Time to switch to short entry blogging style. Up first for your enjoyment: my office, gold monstrosity by day, giant television by night. Funny, our New York office is next to a Citibank building too… I sense a Burger King-esque location strategy.