Dear Blog

If you've followed the Dim Summary since the beginning, you know Tao. He's a good dude, and we've had many adventures together so far. We are also competing Beijing bloggers, sometimes vying to recount the same experience either first, most accurately, or just flat out best. We like to think of our blogs as complementary rather than competing, but there's a small aspect of competition anyway.

We write quite differently though and have different, although somewhat overlapping, audiences. I, for example, started this to update my family and friends back home. This includes my seven nieces and nephews (hi there, beloved spawn of my siblings!), so i've been limiting my profanity to "Crap". Which has worked out pretty well. Tao, on the other hand, has no such restrictions on content or language.

And Tao is without question the more prolific blogger; he has four blogs and updates them all regularly. I feel good when i do two a week. However, i submit to you Exhibit A below. Tao labels each post about things that are in it. If for example, you want to see all his blog posts about the Olympics, you can just click that one for a list of all those posts.

Check out his labels, ordered by frequency:

I am the 11th most frequently labeled "thing" on Heart of Beijing right above Chris Boehner, Baijiu, Poetry, Sex, Cats, and Time Travel. That's some pretty good company; I happen to know these are some of his absolute favorite things, his muses, if you will. Well, maybe not Chris.

Therefore, i propose to the ladies and gentlemen of the blogosphere that I am, in fact, a more important muse to Tao then Cats, Sex, Poetry, and Baijiu. Not combined, of course. Tao's insatiable love of Baijiu + Cats, and Poetry + Cats is legendary and also [insert bestiality joke here].

Discuss. Or don't. Whatever.

~Kev

Good, Bad and Neutral, Volume 4

Good - Apartment Searching!

Ace and I have made the decision to finally move out of the far west side. Right now, I have a 8 minute walk to work, and she has an hour-long, public transit nightmare. I completely understand how overwhelming that can be when you are new to a big city, and doubled when you can't speak the language. We've decided to move to the east side, where she will have a 10-15 minute bike ride to work, and i can do my commute in about 40 minutes.

In the back of my mind, i've always wanted to move closer to friends and conveniences. Out here, there are good restaurants, but no mandarin language schools, convenient gyms, or friends! Two of those on the list are new years resolutions, and i intend to get them going shortly. Plus, we now have to pay rent to live in this place since ace moved out. There's no reason to stay somewhere we aren't happy if it's not free anymore.

Bad - Public Sanitation

You read a lot about the pollution in Beijing. It's bad, but i can't imagine it's much worse than LA, NY, London, or Tokyo. Although, there are few, if any, government regulations regarding vehicle emissions here. Which can't help. But air pollution is hard to notice when you're on the ground. What gets me is the general disregard for their own city that the locals here have. I see Chinese discard their wrappers and plastic bags onto the street, when there are two different trash receptacles in sight. I see (and hear!) men and women hacking up foul, throat-turds and spitting them onto the sidewalk. Dog owners let their pets crap anywhere. And sewers are the worst. You can look down into a public sewer and see the stagnant, putrid filth festering below. And as you walk by, you train yourself to hold your breath at the first hint of stench, lest you get caught open mouthed or yawning.

In Beijing, you always take your shoes off when entering someones home. Not because it's a Chinese tradition of courtesy, dating back 1000's of years, but because you DO NOT want to track Beijing into your home.

I asked a Chinese friend why locals just throw garbage on the ground. He said, "Well, if people stopped doing that, a hundred thousand people would be unemployed".

Neutral - Strawberries

Beijing has an abundance of fresh and inexpensive fruit, mostly imported from tropical Asian locales. In addition to the regulars, you can find fresh pineapple, mango, papaya, dragon fruit, kiwi, and strawberries. Unfortunately, blueberries haven't been discovered in this region, and can only be found in a few foreign groceries. And even then there's usually only one or two cartons. But recently, the strawberries have been showing up everywhere, and really cheap. My coworkers come into work with bags of them, and the vendors stroll down the streets with carts overflowing. Naturally, i got swept up in the strawberry hype and got myself a half kilo for a dollar fifty. I did not realize i was buying mutant strawberries. I tossed a normal one on the plate for reference.

I DON'T KNOW WHAT YOU ARE TRYING TO PROVE, STRAWBERRY, BUT I AM NOT IMPRESSED! Seriously, i like you just the way you are, you don't have to go working out and getting all buff to make me enjoy you. And lay off the steroids, you know that stuff can make your stem shrink. (...my nod to FU, Penguin.)

~Kev

Spanky, Chuar Bar, and Apts

OHMYGODITSBEENANOTHERREALLYBUSYWEEK!!!

But the weekend was fun. Friday was a low-key, albeit late, night at our favorite chuar bar. It was another small, enjoyable gathering of Tao, Amy, Joe, Therese and i. We arrived at 8pm and were the only customers. Strange though... by 12pm when we were leaving, it was full. Reminds me of Spanish nightlife, where dinner often isn't served until midnight.

Ace and i arrived early and checked out the nearby pet store. The poodles were ridiculous, what with their ears and tail dyed pink, green, and blue and all. Poor worthless things. And then, i saw him. I don't know how he made it across the ocean, lost weight, and became younger, but it was Spanky all right. That's my old cat, spanky, from Colorado. The shopkeeper said his name was "Yea-Yea", probably because she couldn't say "spanky". Ace fell in love with another cat which she aptly named "Purr Factory". I changed it to PF Chang.


So dinner was delicious as always. Special guest appearances were made by Dapper Tao...


Vogue Joe...


and Satan, seen below feasting on chicken wings. (Notice the soulless, empty eyes... that's how you can tell.)


Also, Ace and I... and Amy and Tao.

Saturday was long, as Ace and I spent most of the day looking at new apartments. It doesn't make sense for us to live where we are, since she works on the other side of town. That was an interesting experience all by itself. The first agent we met with didn't speak a work of English, and i impressed myself with how well we communicated. It's amazing what you can do when you are forced to comprehend and be understood. We spent over an hour with him looking at two places, and i don't feel like there were any unanswered questions. All this from 10 months of living here and no formal classes. There might still be hope for me.

~Kev