Farrago

Hao Hao Report: New Look – New Features

As many of you likely know, I run a couple other sites, one of them being The Hao Hao Report. HHR is a social bookmarking site for all us sinophiles that just love reading blog posts and news about China. Essentially it works the same as other social bookmarking sites (digg, netscape, del.ico.us, etc.), whereby …

May 29, 2007
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Haier Ground

First, sorry. Sorry, I’ve been so craptastic at posting regular – but this sorta fits, as life in China, in EVERY way, is not regular (yes, that was potty humour, laugh damnit). Anyway… the reason is I’ve been working on a couple new “projects” – don’t you love that term, so vague, yet so official …

May 25, 2007
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Clinically Better

This morning marked the sixth and final bottle of antibiotics I was required to suck into my veins in an effort to quell the contagion running amuck in my foot. Rather than continually returning to the hospital to get the IVs, we searched out a local clinic that would give me my fix. Clinics in …

May 18, 2007
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One Foot Forward, Two Feet Back

Sigh. I lost the battle. Today – in a room full of a motley assortment of sickly folk and 30-odd blue plastic chairs welded to a steel bar for the juice to hang – I was pricked. I made the concerted decision with Maggie to ostentate a bit and visit the “best hospital in Suzhou”. …

May 15, 2007
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Not Out Of The Woods Yet

Well, it’s been a bunch of days and though the foot situation seemed to be improving on Friday, it got quite a bit worse on Saturday – helped in no part, I’m sure, by the large amounts of alcohol I drank Friday night in celebration of my friend Alicia’s birthday (c’mon, her mom and bro …

May 15, 2007
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You’re Never Gonna Stick Me

I write about this today, not because I think anyone of you cares particularly about my feet, nor the fact that one of them decided to swell up to the size of a small melon last night. No, I write this because I’ve not heard of anyone visiting a hospital in China and getting out …

May 10, 2007
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Joost: TV 2.0

One of the main gripes us expats in China have is the lack of decent TV. With most homes sporting nothing but standard cable, CCTV9 is about the only offering unless you’re fluent in Mandarin, and then, you’re still limited to the plethora of Chinese soaps that seem to do little but rehash classic Chinese …

May 9, 2007
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Close To Home

I tend to read a lot of news about China, and as anyone that reads any amount of news must feel, I tend to become desensitized to it all. China news, like news the world over, tends to focus on the negative, the crime, the corruption, the crazy… Because of this self-censorship, I breeze past …

May 6, 2007
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Girls of the English-language China Blogsphere

I got to chatting with Chris while I was up in Dalian, and we were talking about how the English-language China Blogsphere is a little under-represented by those double-X darlings some (misleadingly) call the ‘fairer’ sex… I quickly mentioned Meg, who’s now returned to the wilds of Americana to live happily ever after with WoW …

May 5, 2007
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Back From Dalian

Well, I’ve returned from the savage lands north east of the wall, and despite my inlaws doing their very best to stuff me to the point of explosion, I survived. I’m going to say this once, to be clear about things… NEVER TAKE THE FUCKING BUS IN CHINA. As I mentioned post-previously (c’mon, that’s kinda …

May 5, 2007
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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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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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