March 5, 2002

Looked at another apartment this week. Listed at $3500 RMB a month (8.25 RMB = approx. $1.00). It wasn't all that bad , but needed some pretty heavy duty cleaning and the removal of the former tenant's things that had been left behind. The openly displayed rat poison on the kitchen counter was a little disconcerting, and after this latest attempt it wasn't hard to come to the decision to rent the best place we looked at. Like I mentioned in a previous journal entry, the price is a bit more than I wanted to go for (5,000 RMB), but it is only for a relatively short time and it was the most convenient of the bunch. I will make arrangements to do the lease signing soon.

Met my friends Zach and Anna in Beijing!! They were staying at the Grand Hyatt hotel in a very upscale part of the city close to Tiananmen Square. We went shopping together at the Silk Market and had a good time bargaining and making fun of all the knockoff products for sale there. - For anyone that doesn't know, the Silk Market in Beijing is a pretty famous place for buying all sorts of things at really cheap prices. Half of the enjoyment is undoubtedly haggling with the vendors, and usually they enjoy the process as much as you do! Sometimes, especially if they are having a slow day, you can negotiate them down so low that when you walk away you can still hear them grumbling and muttering to themselves. On this day with Zach and Anna, I was more of a bystander while the two of them hunted for bargains. As we were leaving the shopping area a young guy approached us and asked if we wanted to buy CD's and DVD's. We agreed to see what he had for sale and followed him into a bar that seemed to almost be serving as an unofficial office for the guy. After finding out how much the beers cost me, I had a feeling that the bar was more of a front for this business!! Crazy!! Anyway, Zach and Anna walked away with nearly 20 DVD's and I got 4.

After returning to my room that night I excitedly popped "BlackHawk Down" into my laptop DVD drive. As the movie spun up, I read the back cover of the DVD package and noticed that the credits were for the wrong movie! They were for some Bruce Willis movie called "The Kid".....lame! The movie started and sure enough, the picture quality sucked and the English subtitles were so inaccurate that anyone having to rely on them would have major problems trying to figure out what was going on....then again, a movie like that didn't need much explanation. Thankfully, the other 3 movies I purchased played well and had no signs whatsoever that they weren't legit.

Ah! First day of class (4 hours Mon-Fri)!! Dong laoshi (Dong is my teacher's family name and laoshi=teacher) seems to be a great guy and it is obvious he loves what he is doing. He is very animated and enthusiastic to say the least! My class has 3 or 4 other Americans, the same number of Indonesians, a few people from Hong Kong, a guy from England, a girl from France, and I'm not too sure about the rest. A small melting pot! Anyway, right now we are reviewing the 4 basic tones that are all too important to proper Mandarin (Hanyu) speaking. We are also learning Hanzi, which is the pictograph type character system. Both are VERY difficult to master and I can tell already that I am going to have to study a LOT!!! Oh, and I have a lot of class materials too. Makes me wonder how the Hell we are ever going to make it all the way through to the end!

Unfortunately, I couldn't really practice much after the first day because after class I had to buy Jessie a birthday gift, and later meet Zach and Anna for dinner. My friends from summer vacation, Vivien and Sandy, met me at the mall and helped me a lot with all my questions to the people behind the counters. Walked away with a VERY nice package of expensive Japanese facial products. After saying good-bye to Vivien and Sandy, I met Zach and Anna for dinner. I was pretty pumped because we agreed to go to Outback Steakhouse. I had never been to one before, but the thoughts of a nice tender steak had me drooling before we even got there. OK, so that was my first genuine article Western food since coming to Beijing. The steak was awesome, and so too were the cheese-fries, salad, and coconut shrimp. Oh, and as always, the Tsing-Tao beer was fantastic.

Zach and Anna, .......Thanks again for the GREAT dinner!!!

March 11, 2002

Wow! Almost a week since I last wrote something!! Guess I should start with the successful leasing of the apartment I had my eye on. Met with the owner and middleman at the place one night and what probably should have been a 1 hour process took something like 4. Part of the hang-up were the closed-door meetings between the owner and the middleman, presumably about the latter's stake my large lump payment. Seems you have to have quite a bundle saved to ever begin renting or staying somewhere in this city! The owner wanted not only a 2 month deposit, but also the first two months of rent paid in advance! Problem: A large hunk of my money was tied-up with the hotel I was staying at because of the same kind of prepay requirements. Anyway, because the owner had already accepted a down-payment for the place from a couple Korean girls, he wanted the money from me that very same night in order for me to snatch it away from them. I think he preferred renting to a single American guy as opposed to them anyway.

I'll skip the gory details (Trust me, they are!!) of getting my money back from the hotel and move into the actual signing of the lease. With Jessie's help, I added several amendments to the lease to cover my rear in case things were not on the up and up. Also, Jessie requested the owner for proof that he actually legally owned the place. 15 minutes after his phone call his father and mother appeared with the necessary documents. Signature, payment and the place was mine to use for the semester!! Want to add that through the entire process the owner was generally stone-faced and very businesslike. When the deal was done his mood changed dramatically....a very nice guy. The next day I moved in.

The apartment, despite being new, really needed some cleaning. Much of the week was spent doing this and buying all the necessities. Had to wash the floor 3 times before it really became clean! Back was a little sore from that ordeal!

Eclipsing the pain in my back is the pain in my ass from riding a newly-purchased bike. It's the first time I have ridden one in years and my butt reminds me of this fact every time I sit down!! Anyway, I bought it from a friend of one of my classmates. Seems he is moving back to Hong Kong soon and wouldn't be needing it any longer. 200 RMB complete with 2 locks and locked wheels. Turns out the former owner previously had 2 bikes stolen and had learned his lesson. When I picked it up from his wife one day, she described this fact and told me how her husband had intentionally scratched the bike just after getting it so it would look less desirable. It's nice despite the scratches. Oh, she also gave me a half-dozen tips on how to secure it and where to park it.

One thing you learn VERY quickly about riding a bike in Beijing is that you should always ride in as straight a line as possible. A simple little swerve can bring down yourself and a goodly number of other riders if your not careful! It's amazing the number of people that ride bikes here. They are seemingly everywhere! Each morning as I start off to class I carefully negotiate my entrance into a pack that can be as large as 50 to 60 bikes. It's every man, woman, and child for themselves, and common courtesy often gets lost in the process. Basically, these bicycle riding lanes can be more treacherous than the highways as other riders suddenly and silently zip past you almost brushing you as they go by. Hence the danger of changing directions without looking all around you. If this doesn't beat coffee for waking you up in the morning, I don't know what does!!

Had my first test today and scored a 54 out of 100. I know this sounds horrible, and it would normally never be acceptable, but I think this score may have actually been slightly higher than the class average, and if not, it wasn't the worst....thankfully! I studied a lot during the weekend and it's a good thing because it would have been a whole Hell of a lot worse!! I think this test served 2 purposes: 1. To make all the students kick the studying into high gear in the first place. 2. To make everyone study even more after receiving such poor scores! Dong laoshi seemed to revel in our anxiety before and after the test.

Took Jessie and her girlfriends out to dinner the other night. Tried to go to Hard Rock Cafe but there was a private party going on and we couldn't get in. Instead, we went to a swank (Always wanted to use that word!) place up the street and enjoyed a great variety of dishes. Jessie and her friends were quite entertained with my language difficulties and my curiosity about the different dishes.