Today, I: Woke late, had a so-so breakfast. Went to the Forbidden City and met my recent student Xue Chen. Had Peking Duck. Still feel tired. Tomorrow, more Beijing. Next day, Great Wall. Wednesday, fly to Shanghai to meet more students I know from their time in Korea. These student, actually: Damn… Flickr won’t load. Well, I’ll add the picture later. Or put a new one in its place. Anyway, things are going well. Off to buy some water, and get some sleep.
Category: GENERAL
Ni Hao
I’m in Beijing, in a little PC-bar near the hotel that my traveling companion Randy and I stumbled into last night. I was exhausted and slept the sleep of the dead, let me tell you. I actually am just about to go back for a shower and to call my ex-student to meet for lunch and an afternoon of hanging out. I’ll only be in Beijing for a few days, and then onward to Shanghai (another ex-student is helping us book cheap flights there, which cost about as much as a train ticket). First impressions? Reminds me a lot of …
At the Airport
Well, I just printed my e-tickets, and Randy and I are ready to check in. Of course, there’s other stuff to do once that’s done — travel insurance, for example, and a last phone call to Lime — but basically we’re here and ready to go. The snowstorm isn’t quite as intense here as it was on the way, so I’m hoping the flight goes as planned. In other news, important only to me, I decided to bring Stross’s Accelerando instead of the Borges. It’s all a size thing: same strain for the brain, at half the weight and cubic …
Off…
Right, that’s me heading off to Beijing tomorrow. I’m nervous, of course, given the anxiety over my health lately, but my doctor gave me the green light. I have another test to do when I return, but other than that, I’ve got a clean bill of health. He actually said my heart’s great (according to an 85% accurate test involving an EKG and a treadmill), my cholesterol and other bloodwork looks wonderful, my blood pressure isn’t significantly high, and that I’m going to live a long life if I cut back on the stress and get more exercise. (He also …
Weird Medical Fact of the Day
Yes, another that I realized I hadn’t posted yesterday. In the course of explaining her feeling that anyone considering plastic surgery should be required to see a surgery, be present for one and really experience how gross it is to cut open a human body and fiddle with it, Lime mentioned a weird fact to me… it surprised me, but of course, I know rather little about the practicalities of the practice of modern medicine. Anyway… apparently during operations, it stinks. It stinks something awful. You know what it stinks like? Cooking meat. See, in some operations, they use these …
2006 State of the Bookshelf
Saw a post by a title similar to this on Tina’s site and loved the concept. Decided to copy her (just this once), even though I’m still sure I’ve missed a few books. I’m going to post my book review log for 2007 in a category of its own explicitly to make this easier in the future. In 2006 I read the following books: italics = reread asterisk = new (to me) author (*) bold = my favorites this year exclamation mark = !unfinished strikethrough = never finished, never will Jennifer Government by Max Barry(*) Kabuki 1: Circle of Blood …
Things You Learn From Your Mother, Your Girlfriend, Your Urologist…
It’s funny, the things you learn from a urologist: The left testicle normally hangs lower than the right one, because of the arrangement of the circulatory system. The Chinese word for “not” is “bu”, which is important when you’re in Beijing but not so important in Shanghai, where many people speak English. If you’re getting weird sensations on the left side of your body, including heightened awareness of your circulatory system, it’s probably stress. Meanwhile, my mother and my girlfriend have been recommending green tea to me. Mom says it’s good for maintaining or losing weight, as it supposedly affects …
Deepak Chopra: Who Is This Idiot?
After reading Deepak Chopra’s discussion of Dawkin’s The God Delusion all I can conclude is that he’s an idiot who knows jack shit about science. OR, he’s a liar who is purposefully twisting the facts. On some level, I sometimes feel like the biggest war going on right now is one that has been going on, constantly, for ages: between reason and superstition. Don’t get me wrong: I can respect and care about religious people. But it comes back to me, from the television program “Root of All Evil”, that some religionists are so quick to say to atheists, “Don’t …
Recommendations?
Someone I know and care about actually argued to me today that 9-11 was set up by and carried out by the CIA. Anyone know a good, non-hostile book that explains the origin of this myth and why it’s nonsense, without being overly pro-Bush? And if such a book doesn’t exist, why not? Perhaps someone needs to write it.
Two Bald Patches
First I want to say I’m basically happy with the care I’m getting at Yonsei Severance Hospital. So today I headed in to give blood for a test, and to do my treadmill EKG test as well. I did the blood in the morning, so I could eat lunch, and then took in a movie — 조폭 마누라 3 (My Wife is a Gangster 3) — and it probably says something that I understood enough of it to get a fair number of the jokes, in essence if not in detail, despite the fact a lot of it was in …