禮拜天

禮拜六晚上我不知道為什麼睡不著。隔一天早上覺得還是很累。早上在家裡沒做什麼特別的事。中午去了松子(Matsuko)吃午飯。松子是有很多選擇的日本料理自助餐。吃了太多東西了以後離開了飯店﹐去買了朝陽劇場中國雜技晚上表演的票。買票是應該要排隊。可是﹐中國人大部份不受這種規矩。一直往前推。很討厭。買了票以後坐了出租車去王府井。通常坐出租車都很舒服。問題是﹐我們坐的那輛車有個很臭的味道。

王府井大街上就是一大堆店。我們一到先去了一家百貨公司。他們剛好有個TRANSFORMERS的展覽。有很多舊的TRANSFORMERS玩具﹐很多我小時候想要的玩具﹗參觀完以後﹐我們回到大街上繼續走下去。我們只是隨便的走﹐沒有什麼特別要看的。在走過的店比較特別的就是有很多賣奧運的店。也看到一個大書店掛了很大的新HARRY POTTER書的廣告。在回頭路上﹐我決定進去書店看看HARRY POTTER書有沒有英文版的。其實他們只有英文版的﹐而且有兩種--美國SCHOLASTIC版的還有英國BLOOMSBURY版的。我其實不是那麼愛HARRY POTTER﹐可是因為最近有很多朋友在念或討論這本書﹐然後因為有英國版的書﹐我就決定買了﹗

逛完街以後就去了朝陽劇場。其他的觀眾都是旅遊團或外國人。其實我六年半前跟旅遊團第一次來北京的時候去過了同樣的劇場看雜技節目。那麼久以前已經不太記得了。可是知道節目是有改進。他們特技表演的很利害而演的很不錯。

看完戲以後﹐我們還是不怎麼餓。決定去吃麥當勞﹗麥當勞和其他快餐在亞洲做的比美國好多了。吃完以後就回家了。

jumping on the bandwagon

so i was in the 王府井 district today to walk around and take it in a bit. at one of the malls there, they had a TRANSFORMERS exhibit going on with a lot of old school toys in display cases. talk about bringing back memories! after all these years (what's it been, 20 or more?!) i still would love to get my hands on an original Optimus Prime and certain other toys. they must've done a good job conditioning my brain as a kid, 'cause their programming's still there!

after prying myself away from the kiddie stuff, i noticed a big Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows sign outside a large book store. after walking further down, grabbing a drink and sitting a bit to rest, i decided to stop in on the way back and see if they had the English version and possibly book 6 as well. turns out they only had English versions, but two kinds! both the American version as printed by Scholastic, and the British one printed by Bloomsbury. quick recap for those unaware: i'm not a HP fan and haven't read any of the books. i've seen the first five movies, and tried reading the first book but couldn't make it even halfway through. anyway, since they had the British version, i thought i'd pick it up. my sis got the Brit version of first book when we were in Europe four years ago, so i figure i'd get the last. i figure i'll watch the 6th movie then read this book. then, if i make it through this book okay, i'll go back and try re-reading the first 6 books. since you know, i'll have bundles of time on my hand when school starts... (yes, i'm being sarcastic.)

練習“寫”中文

其實我的目的不是給自己練習寫中文而是給你們練習念中文。=) 如果我寫的有任何錯誤﹐請原諒我。更好就是在評論上提醒一下或送個 email 給我。

今天我早上起來以後﹐練了一下中文課本。我妹妹借給我她大學的課本--伯克利的100AX/BX (她的中文程度比我好多了)。我父親起床以後我們一起吃了早餐。吃完早餐﹐休息了一下﹐到了公寓的俱樂部去打乒乓球。可是到了俱樂部以後發現有人剛開始打﹐要一個小時以後才有空。那時候已經十一點半了﹐所以我們決定跑步和舉
重就好了。運動完了以後我父親問我還想不想打乒乓球。我當然說好﹐可是已經有另外一些人開始打了。我們決定晚一點再試試看。

我們回家洗個澡﹐換了衣服﹐就搭了計程車(出租車)去浮士德餐廳吃午飯。我們家人常常去這家餐館吃牛排。他們菜單只有套餐。我們兩個都吃了鵝肝沙拉﹐牛排﹐芒果摩絲而且喝了冰咖啡。我爸喝了法國洋蔥湯﹐我喝了奶油野蘑菇湯。吃了又好又飽了以後﹐我們去了潘家園舊貨市場逛一逛﹐買些小東西。市場三點半就開始收
攤了﹐所以我們就回家去了。

回家不久就去打了一個鐘頭的乒乓球--真好玩﹗玩完以後回家換衣服﹐又去吃飯了﹗晚飯去了鼎泰豐(鼎泰丰)﹗我們兩位吃了兩個半籠小龍包﹐一份痘苗﹐而且還吃了一大碗芒果冰。今天吃了那麼多好東西﹐還好有夠的運動量。我們晚飯八點鐘才開始吃﹐吃完就九點半了。回到家就休息﹐準備睡覺。

Blue Sky Day in Beijing

it was nice to wake up this morn to see a 青天 (try zhongwen.com if needing to translate 中文 words) in normally gloomy 北京. it was so nice that i thought i should go out to enjoy it. alas, i haven't. :P but that's not to say i haven't enjoyed my day!

i know i've been meaning to say, but i'm not sure if i have, how fortunate i feel to have had the past several weeks to relax and basically bum around in China and Hong Kong. although i've totally slacked on my Chinese self-studying, i feel like just being immersed here helps. it's also fascinating to spend time in a foreign place for a pro-longed period of time because you definitely can get a more authentic feel for life.

my first couple of weeks in China (北京 and 上海) were focused on enjoying time with family, since the whole fam was together. my time in 香港 was intended to be partly spent on studying 中文 and some creative writing, but time was largely focused on WingTsun and being a bum.

with my last week back in 北京 before returning to the states, i'm looking to catch up on sleep that i fell behind on in 香港, spend time with my dad, and hopefully get my self a bit more disciplined (without stressing about it) in taking care of personal projects (studying 中文 and creative writing projects).

the sky's a little less blue now, and the puffy white clouds are gone, but it's still a blue-ish gray that's far better than the norm i've seen here. :) here's another pic from this morn looking out the window of my parents' apartment here:


i think i may start diversifying my posts some. i'll keep blogging now and then on what (very little) i am up to, but also go back to blogging about things in the news that are notable to me or cool products that are coming out. i may also attempt some posts in 中文 as a means of practicing. the title of the post should usually indicate which of these "types" of posts you'll be seeing... or maybe i should quit blogging and focus on my projects... :P

Back to 北京 (Beijing)

i've never really had one city or town to call home. i always went with the cliché "home is where the heart is," meaning mainly wherever my parents resided. having grown up just 50 miles north of the city, and then living there the last few years have definitely contributed to making NYC home.

it was strange yesterday when i returned to 北京 because it felt a little bit like coming home. perhaps it's because my dad lives here, or that it's been my home base this summer, but i definitely felt the kind of relief you have after being away from home for a long time. of course not to the degree i'm sure i'll feel when i go back to California and then NYC, but i guess 北京 is now a home as well.

one negative thing was how poor the air quality was! made HK's air quality seem crystal clear. but this morning, after it was gloomy and rainy first, it became much clearer and even a little sunny (as much as can be expected here anyhow).

so since i had promised some ppl i'd update my blog with my last HK entries, i proceeded to go to this blog to update it to find it was CENSORED! hrm. i forgot about this issue while spending 3 weeks in censorship-free HK. i can at least still edit (and thus view old entries) and add entries, but sorta sucks i can't see the blog (as a design person i like to see what the final look is...). (sorry Eric, i won't be able to read or comment on your blog for at least a week.) i wonder if i could put up with the net censorship if i ever moved to China... i guess there are proxies out there, right?

so last night i just wanted to stay in and not do anything. since my dad was getting back later that night from a business trip, i had to figure out what to eat. i could've gone to the restaurant in the apartment complex (part of the members' club here), but decided instead to try to order a pizza.

they have a pizza chain that is (supposedly) owned by Pizza Hut and very similar to Pizza Hut (but no pan pizzas). i found the chain's web site and proceeded to attempt to order a pizza online. this took about 40 minutes. :P (to be fair, i was chatting with a few people at the same time...) this was largely due to my sub par Chinese reading skills. but with a bit of help from NJStar (Chinese Word Processing program), i was able to enter in my address, navigate through the pages (reading slowly), and place my order! it was actually not a bad way to work on my Chinese... definitely why living in a place is the best way to learn its language.

while doing this, i was struck with how helpful computers are. not that this is something i've been aware of (far from it), but i'm able to construct conversational e-mail messages in Chinese since recognizing is easier than recalling and the software presents with me with a list of choices to choose from. another example of how helpful computers were in this process: i could Baidu (sorry Google) my dad's apartment complex with the English version to find the Chinese text to copy and paste.

anyway, after getting my pizza and eating it (yum!) i decided to finally upload some HK pics to share. finally added pics to most posts from my trip in HK. i also spent way too much time adding photos to facebook... their system isn't horrible; it has some cool features, but it definitely wasn't the smoothest nor most pleasing experience...

it was actually kinda lonely getting back to the big apartment and being by myself. i was happy when my dad got home from his trip and the place definitely felt better.

since now i'm back to Beijing and my days will prob get even less eventful, i'm going to stop blogging daily and just blog when interesting things happen or when i feel like recapping a couple or more days at a time.

so the brief on today was sleeping in! i slept before midnight last night, got up at 9am when my dad was leaving, but went back to bed and got up around 11! i could've easily slept a couple more hours (or days) but decided to get up. god it feels good to be in a real bed!

i spent much time on the laptop, chatting in the morn and catching up on various things. i then met up with Jini (pretty 'ridicerous' that she's here at the same time) for lunch. we had a big and delicious meal at 鼎泰豐 (Din Tai Fung) in the new 新光天地 (Shin Kong Place) department store. seriously ate too much. oh, and we had mango with shaved ice. not quite 許留山, but it was still good :P. we then stopped by my dad's place before she had to leave to meet up with work people.

and now i'm continuing to 'catch up' on things (like email, blogging). i need to get more disciplined on my personal projects, since i have a week here in Beijing, then about a week in Cali (where i'm sure i'll have plenty of distractions) before heading back to the east coast. last chance to make progress or complete some things before i have to get ready for school. hopefully that starts tomorrow, as today was my "adjustment" day (good excuse, huh?). :)