this morning we were ejected out of bed by a phonecall.

to me, it sounded like the alarm was ringing and since it’s p.’s responsibility to turn it off, i muttered my plea for the extra snoozy time. he answered the phone, barely being able to speak, while a lady on the other side shoved chinese sentences on his ears. his “hello? do you speak english?” were met with more chinese, so he passed me the phone. confused and sleepy, i only got the words “suan nai” and “men kou” and it took me a while to shuffle my memory for those meanings.

errmm… wait… “yoghurt”… “doorway”? what?!

and then my brain must have jump-started. i jolted out of bed, dressed and ran to the door, where a smiling girl in a white lab coat was holding a box with 8 small yoghurt jars. our first yoghurt delivery had arrived and they sure came early!
we had breakfast as soon as i closed the door and the yoghurt (unsweetned, unflavored, plain and natural) was really yummy.

despite the rough wake call, what sticks out is all this spoiling convenience that characterizes our life in china. some days, it’s so surreal.

yesterday the clerk at the postoffice gave up and spoke to me in chinese (which was better than his english) and a lady in the queue even told me my chinese was good :)

persistence seems to be paying off!

Everyone knows that literacy in Mandarin means hour after brutal hour of memorizing and practicing a script whose design clearly shows the influence of sadistic genius.

from Beijing sounds

to help the victims of the sichuan earthquake, postcrossing is raising donations which will be sent to the red cross society of china. as a bonus, we will send a set postcards to the first 100 people who donate over 15 US dolars or 10 euros.

the postcards are part of a set called “no man’s view” by chinese photographer phoebe jin who kindly offered the packs to postcrossing. “no man’s view” is a collection of 25 photographic postcards, with images in black and white or muted colors, taken in china and abroad.

all help is appreciated. thank you!

during today’s chinese class, 2:30pmish:

me - teacher, can we stop a bit? i’m feeling dizzy.
heidi - me too, strange.

a little silence followed, while we realized that the whole apartment on 31st floor was gently swaying back and forth.

heidi - is it an earthquake?
me - hum, you’re probably right.

scary mixed feelings: the urgency of getting cover and feeling safe ground, the panic of being too high to reach safe ground quickly, the fear of the building just collapsing on us (i don’t think many of the buildings in shanghai would resist a serious earthquake).

so after a bit of hesitation, we got our shoes on, ran downstairs and rested a bit in the park until we felt calmer… and eavesdropped on passerby’s who seemed to have either felt it too and seen the buildings moving - or not felt it at all.

i ended up canceling the rest of the class because afterwards i didn’t feel too safe up there and took a taxi towards a coffeeshop on nanjing. the driver had heard about the earthquake on the radio, but didn’t feel anything and proceeded to reassure me that in shanghai, earthquakes were very rare.

good.

description on the back:

It’s amazing to me that a society which has mastered the concept of fire is capable of making a film this bad.

Too insipidly, cloyingly cutesy to be edge, too crass, juvenile and vulgar to be cute, and not funny enough to be either. Additionally, there is not one single iota of genuine wit, emotion, or originality in even one frame of this odious film.

It’s as if someone took “At first sight”, “Daredevil”, “My big fat greek wedding” and “Bend it like Beckham” (among others) and threw them in a blender. Worse than that the film is insulting to every group it portrays: blind people, Italian-American, African-American, Indian-Americans, limousine drivers, therapists. Even the portrayal of prostitutes is somehow beneath the dignity of the profession.

The ludicrous, predictable plot would be easily forgivable. After all, this is a romantic comedy. We’re here to have fun and feel good.

what would your reaction be, if the movie you were about to pick had this (brilliant) synopsis? :D

“…those concerns about China’s human rights are legitimate and justified, but this is not the right time to over blow it into serious confrontation. …… to highlight these problems in the run up to the Olympics is inappropriate. It’s like on your daughter’s graduation ceremony, one of your friends tries to point out the fact that she is actually three months pregnant and doesn’t know who is the baby’s father.”

Great analogy! Unfortunately though, there are a whole bunch of people who are absolutely determined to use this moment to bring their concerns about Tibet, Darfur, human rights etc etc to the attention of the world. They see this as their only opportunity to exert pressure on Beijing and not only will laugh and point and catcall at your daughter, they’ll claim to have impregnated her themselves if it gets people to take notice.

again, from the time: blog.