This bus is parked in the alley outside my window. It’s filled with fruit, and I don’t think it can move. When I moved in, the wall behind it enclosed a field of rubble. Maybe there were houses there before. A couple of months ago work crews came and started drilling the ground and digging a pit, and shipping out truckful after truckful of dirt. There is now such a massive deep pit behind the wall that I can’t see the bottom of it from my window. But the wall is still there and the bus is still parked beside the wall, as though there were no menacing gaping chasm behind it. I imagine some big yellow metal arm of a crane or digging machine reaching up out of the pit, chomping down on the bus and snatching it back over the wall.

Endlessly inspired by Beijing’s androgenous mascots, I drew this at work the other week.  My teammates on the B team going to the frisbee tournament in Shanghai liked it so much that they decided to name the team “Beijing Bling” or “Bei-bling,” hence the hat in my recent Flickr uploads.  I paid 35 RMB for the hat at Yashow, plus the half hour or so of walking in and out of the store it took me to get the price to that level.  The silver glitter came off on my fingers once I brought it outside.  They don’t make bling here like they do back home.

Last week I visited the XMLBoard website to show one of my coworkers how awesome I am, only to find that the sample site had been crippled under a flood of spam comments. Come to think of it, it’s quite surprising thatit lasted as long as it did.  But I suppose that’s only really by virtue of the fact that neither it nor any of the sites that used it were at all popular and worthy of spamming to begin with.  I took the script down and replaced it with a solemn memorial.

An hour ago the news came out that there will be a 2 to 6 degree earthquake from 10 to midnight tonight.  This is exciting.  My friends and I decided to meet up for some drinks.  Now the news just came out that the earlier news is a complete rumor, and that there will be no destructive earthquakes tonight, and we should keep on with our regular business.  I don’t know who to believe.  I was hoping we could all hide under some tables and drink champagne.

In the case that both of these news reports are false and we will actually have some serious destruction tonight, well, then so long and thanks for all the fish.

I took this video maybe a month ago now. Took me a while to get around to putting it together. These were just some clips I took during a really nice weekend visit to Beihai Park.

Ugh.

Check it out, I got paid for this. It’s out in print, too.

Just another 25 years and I’ll have written the great American novel.

I finally started a job on Monday.  It’s with New Oriental, the big English training corporation, but the branch I’m with is fairly small and new and does online Chinese teaching aimed at foreigners.  It’s supposed to be a new competitor of Chinese Pod, which is well known and seems to make a fairly decent product.  See New Oriental’s pitiful efforts at Target Chinese.  Note the panda wearing headphones, and of course the obligatory gong sound as you enter the page.  Fun fact: not only did the Chinese invent gunpowder and movable type, they also invented stereotypes!  Also key are the three sexy babes who really like learning Chinese, and let’s not forget Jack, the awesome black dude who will be teaching live class in 2 hours, 15 minutes and 38 seconds.  Better hurry up and subscribe.

Here is a picture of my cubicle:

I don’t know if the picture quite portrays how small this thing is.  I can’t really turn my chair if somebody comes to talk to me, and I have to scoot out the side to get up.  And see the tray where the keyboard is supposed to go?  I think maybe if they gave me a stool to sit on I could pull it out.

I didn’t see any small cubicles like this when I came into interview; everybody was sitting in pretty reasonable open workspaces, so as you can imagine, I was not happy about my assignment.  I was also surprised to discover on my first day that I was only going to earn 80% of my salary during my three month trial period.  And to add insult to injury, they told me on my second day that in order to get a work visa, I have to pay for a physical from the government’s exit and entry inspection bureau, which will cost me 650 RMB — more than a tenth of my salary during the trial period.

On Wednesday I stopped the HR guy in the hallway to tell him I quit.  He said, “Okay, I’ll get my assistant to help you fill out some forms.”  No, please, don’t try and stop me.  Really, it’s too much.

Well, I waited around for his assistant to come so I could leave already, and finally my boss came and told me she didn’t want me to go, and asked what they could do to keep me from leaving.  I told her they needed to pay me what I was originally promised, get me a human-sized workspace, and pay the costs of my physical.  She told me there was nothing she could do herself, but suggested I go talk to the general manager and try to negotiate.  I said I didn’t want to bother the manager myself, so my boss went and talked to her for me, and eventually the manager came over all smiles and invited me for a chat, where she agreed to pay me my whole salary, and get me a decent desk by Monday, but wouldn’t budge on the 650 RMB.  Fine.  Back to work.

The area around my office is really interesting.  There’s a big public square with trees and everything, and about half of it is actually built on the tops of a number of commercial buildings, with walkways across the roofs.  On one side of the square there’s a sort of garden showcasing big pieces of poo.  I don’t know how else to describe it.  Here’s some pictures:

Four pieces.

I don’t know why there are tarps there.  These two chunks must have recently been unveiled.

The red one on the left is apparently post-hot-pot spicy poop.  This amuses me to no end during lunchtime.

As to what my job actually involves, it’s nothing really worth mentioning, but you’ll probably see me appear in some of the free lessons on our website soon.  They say my voice is “magnetic,” but I think it sounds like I have a cold.