Monthly Archives: April 2007

Returning To Dalian

I’ll likely be offline for the next few days, as later this afternoon I’m packing myself into a sleeper bus for the 15-hour journey from Suzhou to Dalian. Though I’m always quite keen to go back up to my old stomping grounds in 东北, and Maggie’s thrilled to see her father for the first time …

April 28, 2007
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Linktastic V

It’s been a while since I’ve done a Linktastic entry (though a bunch of other posts have started to pollute the category). Anyway, I’ve a few sites/stories I’ve run across lately that deserve mention, but I can’t seem to muster the words/time for an entire post about each one. A victory for Wangs the world …

April 25, 2007
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No Sham, All Rock: Shamrock Open Mic

Right, so as I mention last post, Suzhou finally has a venue for any wannabe musicians to come out and get heard. I “opened” the Shamrock Open Mic Night last night and it was a modest success. With no advertising, I fully expected to be the only one going up to play – something I …

April 24, 2007
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Open Mic Night In Suzhou

The masochist in me has long been craving the sick-nervous feeling I get when I play in front of an audience. Despite playing for years, I’ve only minimal talent. This, however, doesn’t curb my interest in belting out a few tunes any chance I get. Just before coming to China I was living in the …

April 22, 2007
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Put Down The Chalk & Pick Up The Language

My road through the Chinese language has been a bumpy one full of roundabouts and dead-ends. In the more than two years I’ve been here I’ve not had any formal Chinese education, and I’ve really no excuse for it. I’m often praised and then quickly chastised by Chinese co-workers on my level of Chinese. When …

April 22, 2007
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Survivor: China – The Best Worst Idea Ever

I like Survivor. There, I’ve said it. Please scroll down and immediately flog me in the comments. I don’t care. I’ve had this romantic notion of being trapped on a deserted island since I was a kid and saw Brook Shields’ (ahem) assets in The Blue Lagoon. When the reality TV show debuted back when …

April 19, 2007
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Everything was beautiful, and nothing hurt

Today Kurt Vonnegut joined Hunter S. Thompson in the list of seminal counterculture authors of the 60s and 70s that have died since I moved to China. Like Thompson, I read Vonnegut in those trailing years of adolescent angst; a time full of chemical-induced searching to put texture to the confusing “adulthood” I inexplicably found …

April 12, 2007
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Time To Face The Book

After endless pestering from my friend Sarah, I’ve finally jumped on the Facebook bandwagon. I’m not a huge fan of social networking sites, mostly as I’ve just been over exposed to them. From back in the day when my friends were on Campus Kiss, and then migrated to Friendster and MySpace and now they all …

April 9, 2007
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Bring On The Easter

It took until my third Easter in China, but I’ve finally celebrated the holiday with some amount of pomp and circumstance. Sadly there were no chocolate eggs, but I did manage to pull together a sampling of some of the Easter food Maggie might experience had we been in Canada. We managed turkey (though it …

April 8, 2007
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Road To Wedlock VIII: Thai’d The Knot Pt. 2

… continued from Part 1 Where were we? Right… Koh Chang – or rather, the journey there. I’ve travelled most the various forms of mass transit in Thailand, and when possible I’ve avoided the VIP tour bus solutions. I’m not entirely sure why, maybe because I heard packs were commonly rummaged through in the luggage …

April 7, 2007
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