• Today, a new Olympic-centric rule goes into effect that effectively removes half of the vehicles from Beijing’s roads by prohibiting cars with even and odd numbered license plates from driving on the same day.
  (Hint: More people are pissed off about this than you read in the news.)
• Hundreds of factories around Beijing and Tianjin have been ordered closed to further reduce air pollution and will remain “turned off” until the end of September.
• The internet censors who man the Great Firewall are burning the midnight oil — websites of all flavors are randomly down, garbled and outright blocked more frequently than normal. This is a major grievance.
• Quasi-security check points are emerging around the city. Some reports of people being hassled, but nothing really substantiated.
• Areas of the city (specifically Gonti, Sanlitun) geared more toward ex-pats are being turned into zones that are cryptically called “limited access.”
• Visa extensions until October for student visas are more than 6500RMB (1000USD). Visas are being revoked randomly depending on the make of your jib. Clean cut, shaven = greater odds of not being denied entry.
• For a Chinese L-Visa (tourist) you need proof of return air ticket and evidence that you have at least $3000 (that’s USD not RMB) in financial assets to ensure you can “afford” to be in China.
• Construction efforts are reaching fever pitch, with parks emerging overnight from debris fields — complete with grass and grown trees. This is a freakishly surreal sensation; waking one morning to a neighborhood that’s magically changed literally overnight.

Speaking of surreal, the weather is nice when it’s not raining. When it is raining it’s still pleasant. Smog is down considerably. Gray skies are blue.

Astounding to few, but Beijing residents know otherwise.

You gets the feeling that the entire city was forcibly dragged through a make-over TV show and spat out with new clothing that doesn’t quite fit as snugly as it should and walks as though it really doesn’t belong wearing it.

Let’s hope that they don’t slide off too quickly.

And much to my surprise, lo and behold, an Apple store!

This is mainland China’s first official Apple retail outlet.

The store is two stories — first floor is the show room. Apple lets us play with all their products with minimal documentation or sales pitches. Just a table with the stuff for our grubby hands to fondle. The second floor is a multi-lingual “Genius Bar” where free advice and tech support can be had.

Do note that Apple products are considerably pricer when purchased in China than America. For instance, a 15″ MacBook Pro costs roughly RMB 17,500 (2,600 USD) compared to the $2,000 (RMB13,600) it costs back in the States.

Also note that the majority of Apple products are manufactured in Shanghai. Go figure.

Pictures of the store and the Village area galore:

There are no shelters. Strays, when rounded up, are usually euthanized. Pets are usually set lose to seek their own fortunes when families move. Discarded domesticated animals usually lodge in groups ranging from small to astonishingly large.

For example, the Embassy district north of Sanlitun is renowned city-wide for being a mecca for stray cats.

(In case you’re looking to adopt — the Kenyan Embassy and the Saudi Arabian Defense Attaché office are the primary hot spots for freelancing cats. I’ve seen up to thirty at a time cowering behind the fences.)

Dogs are something of a different deal. With the One Child Policy, older couples who have dogs treat them something akin to children. Usually these are smaller “barky” dogs whose names and breeds elude me, and, frankly, are of little interest.

They are also not discarded as frequently as cats are when people move.

One reality of city life is that the government prohibits larger dogs from living within 4th Ring. However, the law was recently amended to allow pets to visit the inner city. Now Saint Bernards can be seen marching their owners proudly down the urban streets of Beijing drawing crowds and curious gazes.

My friend Li, who lives beyond 4th Ring, recently “adopted” two girls — Lumie, a Spitz, and (my personal favorite) an Alaskan Huskie named Nena. They’re both 5 months old.

And, of course, we brought them down to the Liang Ma river to play where I couldn’t help but take a dozen overly redundant photos which I now present to you for your viewing pleasure.

Initial reports had a few dead. Hours later the number exploded.

The number is just going to get higher.

Here in Beijing we felt only a brief tremor — rattling. I thought it was the crazy old woman who lives beneath me banging on the pipes again.

The only damage I’ve seen in Beijing was a small pedestrian bridge in South Third Ring. The government was quick to block it off and a day later the affected segments — pure concrete mind you — have been completely removed and carted away to wherever it is that pedestrian bridges go to die.

The rest of the nation’s capital remains largely isolated, or really insulated, from the tragedy out west.

No matter how far away we are we are always a world away.

It’s a literal war zone and an impressive one at that. The Chinese don’t have any elite or exotic fireworks — ironic given this country originally invented them — but what they lack in creativity they more than makeup for in relentlessness.

Every city block has between 3-5 peasant groups firing them off creating a literal firewall sweeping across the skyline.

When I asked a friend why this was allowed by the government, he laughed and stated all the buildings were made of concrete and not to worry. And technically speaking they don’t allow it; they just can’t be bothered to enforce those specific laws.

Oh those lovable commies.

They know how to have fun, for one day a year at least.

For the last month, I’ve split my time between staying with friends who out of the goodness of their hearts can tolerate my presence in their homes. Being something of a prideful individual, this unadulterated exploiting of their generosity has been hard for me to swallow. So much that I’m now embracing my bum-bastic life.

…except that I’ve sorta signed a signed a contract promising to sign a contract for a lease.

Let me back up, two weeks ago the search began in earnest for a place to stay. The stipulations on this were it had to be close to my school and close to where my girlfriend intended to move. Since our lives basically revolve around each other — and spending time with each other — it makes a good deal of sense.

Emails and calls have been made in abundant quantities since. The first time we went to check out apartments, we were escorted by heavy-set Chinese lady.

Escorted on bikes.

We literally left her office on really crappy rusted bikes to get to the two locations she wanted to show us. Not having ridden a bike in about…oh 4+ years…it was a nice refresher course with the added bonus of being in heavy Beijing traffic.

Anyway, the Chinese apartment we saw was too dingy for the price. The Western style apartment was too sterile and too expensive for a studio.

Eventually we settled on a 23 year old real estate agent near the Lufthansa Center and have been pulling our hair out ever since. He’s a nice dude who has shown us some decent places, but the landlords have so far annoyed me to tears with their strong arm negotiation tactics.

Or worse, their SOB story sales tactics.

When I finally settled on a one bedroom (two bedroom technically, but the second bedroom is a joke) apartment, we showed up to do the paperwork only to find that a.) the price I asked for wasn’t accepted even though I told the real estate agent that was my top price and b.) most of the furniture had been removed.

The landlord had made a few overtures by giving us candy bars and fruit while “playfully” insulting the real estate agent for being too young and too stupid. We sat literally for two hours as they spoke about nothing while Faye looked uncomfortable and I wanted some much-deserved directness.

He wanted 3200RMB per month, I had made it clear my highest price was 3000RMB per month.

Naturally, he took my compromise of 3100RMB once he had spent 10 minutes rambling about something. The whole experience rubbed off on me wrong and seeing as I’m going to have to break my contract before the year is up, the thought of losing 6200RMB ($820) doesn’t help bolster the warm fuzzies I want to be feeling.

I’m scheduled to sign the formal contract and deposit 5 months of rent for 3 months of time on Friday. Ever since I’ve been scrambling to look at other options at the inkling of my gut. The alternatives haven’t seemed better yet.

Mostly I’ve decided that the intangible “blehness” that exists in my mind is mostly due to my own mindset of trying to get the best deal for the time I’ll be here while having the most options to have an efficient home office and occasionally entertain friends.

Really unrealistic expectations.

For now, I feel the need to get out of my friend’s hair by vacating his house and establishing my own place. The apartment, landlord issues aside (and they are issues), will be nice with a little work and more money.

We will see, one way or another.

Simply put, Mandarin is a completely new way of communicating. Unlike English, vowels receive the most enunciation focus. The basic A-E-I-O-U sounds are different requiring tongue to be strategically place in the middle of the mouth or touching the upper or lower teeth ridge line. Once the four tones come into play the sounds become even more problematic.

Thankfully, my mind is slowly adapting. In another couple of weeks and I feel confident that I’ll have this aspect — along with the “initials” and “finals” combinations — down.

My personal goals of keeping up with homework assignments have been met so far. My teachers are praising my progression whether by merit or their desire to maintain my 200RMB an hour clientèle.

What’s been forefront on my mind is how deep down the rabbit hole I wish to go. I’m living in a bubble — all my friends are Westerners and I’m still primarily communicating in English. If this train of thought is followed to its logical conclusion, I’ll know the technical aspects of the Chinese language by the time I leave but I won’t be natural or comfortable speaking it.

Where and with whom to speak is therefore the quandary I need to resolve.

Do I downgrade my apartment plans and find local flatmates?
Do I find a housemate for my current apartment plan?
Do I just launch myself into communicating with every street vendor and person who seems inclined to listen to me?

(I have Faye, but I hate burdening her when her life is busy enough as is.)

Between work, school, life and church my hands have been busy and this precarious juggling act I’ve been pulling off is taking its natural toll. I can handle it, but with little things like this apartment snafu and church responsibilities, my breathing has become decisively more pinched.

For this week, I intend to maintain the status quo. The brief reprieve will do nothing to hide the reality that there is a significant number of decisions rapidly approaching that will in great part determine the integrity of my China experience.

Ultimately, I went with “Ni Hao” because the latter phrase has already been beaten to death on various trips to California, Hawaii, Utah, Thailand, Cambodia and who knows where else and that other one contains too many self-censored words for my taste.

But I digress, the underlying point here is that I now claim home as Beijing, China.

No, I don’t speak any Mandarin.

Yes, it’s going to be a challenge / problem.

Yes, that was my strategic intent.

Between sensory overload of living once more in a big city (for real, not just a week long trips to LA or Honolulu), the thing I feel the most is an absolute loss of independence.

This is a difficult thing to reconcile because my girlfriend has really done a lot for me in making this transition smoothly. My (temporary) roommate has also greatly assisted in making me feel at home and showing me the ropes (how to register with the police, for instance) and then showing me how to get breakfast.

It’s an important aspect of this city to note how the people here are extraordinary, competent and fascinating to interact with. There’s much to learn and exchange and I’m grateful to be here and to experience everything Beijing has to teach me.

But the loss of being able to function on my own is still at the forefront of my mind.

My rationale for coming here was to fling myself into the jaws of culture shock and be motivated to learn at an increased pace. Having come the distance, the work looming ahead of me is on the surface daunting but not insurmountable as I begin to break goals and objectives down in my mind.

This week’s goals include memorizing 10 words each day (cake) and learning to count while I work my way through Survival Chinese. I’ve identified my primary weaknesses as a disconnect between my brain and mouth when it comes to enunciating the tonal pitch of most Chinese words. I can hear it in my mind but what emerges from my mouth is sloppy and woefully ineffective.

Moreover, what’s in my mind seems to become distorted over a pathetically short period of time. Practice and use are the buzz words that carry the day.

As a result, I need to pick and choose my vocab carefully so I don’t set improper habits and patterns.

In short, I really need to get to school and fast.

On another front, I’ve started making lines to and from my (temporary) residence and becoming better acquainted with layout and design of the community.

It helps greatly to understand and place how everything operates and functions — from the local shops and governmental outposts — to noticing the subtle ways in which the architecture has been augmented from the classical Chinese designs to the haphazard post-Cultural Revolution mish mash and the more recent beautification projects spurred by China’s emerging development and Olympic preparation.

Communities here are very much centralized hubs within hubs with interconnected support services laced throughout.

Anyway, other interesting upcoming events for this week are to get situated into working 13 hours behind my primary client and camping on the Great Wall with my new branch. That and spending time with a certain someone and her now ginormously enlarged family of cats.

So this is now my life, in a nutshell.

Excuse me now while I go out and immerse myself in it.

In traveling Cambodia, there was worse than the anguished feeling of finding a moment of solitude at an extraordinary location only to hear the rumbling of a pack of 20-30 deranged 1st world Asians who seemingly can’t do anything alone.

That’s what made this morning trip so wonderful — by visiting the smaller, more remote sites first in the morning, I successfully bypassed the majority of the the Japanese/Korean hordes.

The hallway ruins of this temple complex framed the Cambodian jungle elegantly I thought, despite the background being slightly washed out due to weather conditions.

Photo specifications are:

Canon EOS 30 D
17-40mm f/4.5 L-Series
ISO: Digital 100
Date: March 2007
Location: Siem Reap, Cambodia

More Cambodian temple photos to follow!

And I wonder; how can you know only a smile and a warm gaze and still feel like you know someone more intimately than possible?

Here is the remainder of the information that you might be interested to know about the capture of this photograph:

Canon EOS 30D
Canon 70-200mm 2.8/f L-Series
ISO: Digital 100
Date: March 2007
Location: Siem Reap, Cambodia

Soon the actual photos of Ankor Wat will be developed.