Auf Wiedersehen, Kamelhaar Socken!

 Curses! Carrying a new local vacuum flask this morning, its bottom decided to give up on me, did a plummet to the floor, shattering into lots and lots of tiny pieces of glass, and spilling hot water everywhere. Probably not an example of 6 Sigma manufacturing. Would it hurt to dab on more glue in the inside?

Rather fortuitously, I happened to be padding around in an old pair of German camelhair socks, which were very thick and quite comfy. They did a brilliant job of shielding my feet from all those shards of glass that exploded on floor. Needless to say, now it’s time to say goodbye to the socks!

I’ve been strenuously avoiding made in China milk, but it looks like made in China portable vacuum flasks are suspect too. Speaking of milk,  only a few days ago, the local supermarket carried rather a lot of  UHT “100% pure New Zealand milk”,  but someone’s just bought the lot, even though there’s lots and lots of fresh domestic milk in the chiller section.

Was also going to sally forth today and look for the FT Weekend, but looking out of the window, the weather seemed to have acquired an extra piquancy that certainly wasn’t around yesterday.  Good thing I declined the invitation to climb the Great Wall this weekend, too.

 The view outside my apartment, circa 11am on 13 Jan

Asia One reported that this weekend in Beijing, the pollution was “worst on record”, 30-45 times above recommended safety levels, and residents were advised to stay indoors.

Hence I decided to stay in today too. Next week, time to use again my nifty Totobobo mask- invented by Singaporeans, made in Singapore, comfy, looks cool to wear, what more could I ask?

First week in Beijing

 Hello! Today I make my triumphant beginning in blogging. What jolly Beijing adventures shall I document here?? Hmmm. I’m still a new bug at this blogging stuff, so I’ll have to learn along the way. Heeding the suggestions of J and Dl, I’d set up my strong vpn before I left for Beijing, but spent a week being thoroughly mystified why it didn’t work in China. Belatedly discovered that the Great Wall of China has been assiduously blocking foreign vpns, blogspot, FB, and seditious materials like the NYT. But thanks to the timely technical support team at vpn (it really was 24 hours service!), who tweaked my setup, now I can blog, and the www is available to me! Hurrah! Let joy be unconfined.

My language school is excellent, and lessons are hugely enjoyable.

Everyone has been talking about the Southern Weekend newspaper (南方周末)， which as one Beijing friend explained, is exceptionally popular because of the quality of its investigative journalism. We are looking for “the truth”, my friend explained. I read some of its articles, and was pretty impressed. Pollution, water issues, the exploitation of the hukou system etc.

Chilled out at Starbucks at historic Qianmen, which is south of Tiananmen Square, before heading off for dinner last night, and was quite tickled by faux Chinese teahouse façade of the Starbucks joint. Dinner last night was at Liqun Beijing Duck Restaurant （利群烤鸭店）, at Qianmen, with Dl and his journalist chums. Funny that a famous restaurant should be in the middle of a crumbling hutong in Qianmen!