My dad: How did you happen to know < the contact info for a local business > ?

Meg: Google. Isn’t that the way we know everything?

My dad: Socrates would hate hearing that.

Forgot to mention this earlier, but I have new article on Beijing’s cosmetic changes up at CNReviews!

On Saturday, Germaine invited me to go to the NY Renn Faire. Germaine is Bethie’s friend from high school, but being sisters means I get to steal her clothes and her friends. Score! I was really excited to go, since it’s been a few years since I last watched a joust.

When Allison had her wedding, all the bridesmaids wore full garb, so I have a complete outfit, but it’s packed away since I didn’t anticipate needing a corset and full skirt in Beijing. I’m a bit disappointed that I didn’t get the chance to wear it again, how often do you get a second wear out of a bridesmaid dress?

Germaine’s friend, like a true geek, uses his iPhone to get directions.

After a great deal of ribbing and careful ID scrutiny, we got beers and went to watch the joust. The joust announcer said how worried everyone had been about the local pollution, but it turns out we’ve got a good clear day, so none of the horses have to wear breathing masks.

Then we went to the knife and star throwing games. This picture shows that it is far more dangerous to be right next to what I’m trying to hit.

Here’s one from the target’s perspective!

Seriously, American money has a big purple number on it now?

I’m doing some work for my mom, making a blog for her museum. It’s a great project, although I’m not exactly  knowledgable about history or art in the last 2000 years, so she has to keep me from writing things like “Come to an old house and look at stuff!” and “Some famous guy is going to talk about the pretty things here.”

We were talking about the tone for the blog, and how I won’t be saying “This wasn’t made by Romans, but it’s still old.” and about the colors my mom wants to use, and how even a small typo in a good article lowers the whole feeling of the site. Like teh for the, my mom says.

“Teh is so common it’s a joke in games journalism.” I agree.

“A joke? How can a typo be a joke?”

“If you really like something, you might use teh and a bunch of superlatives and a couple ones instead of exclamation points.”  This is not the most intuitive description ever. In my mom’s terms, teh coolest historically accurate arts-and-crafts movement furniture evah!!!1!1!1!

“That’s not particularly funny.” My mom says. I’m kind of with her there, internet jokes rarely translate well to actual verbal communication.

“It’s sarcastic.”

“How is that sarcastic?”

“It’s making fun of screaming fanboy game reviews.”

“Screaming fanboy?”

At least we agree on a deep dislike for anything that pops up, blinks or flashes.

It’s the first year of Vacation Bible School in my dad’s new church, and everyone wants it to be a success. Parents have been interrogated about their children’s allergies to avoid snack-time disasters. In addition to the usual contraband crafts materials (glitter and permanent marker have been banned from decorating Sunday school popsicle-stick crafts from time immemorial), I was asked not to use facepaint on the kids, in case they got it on their clothes or came out in a rash.

I set up the crafts table with washable Crayola markers and non toxic stickers, hoping no one would ask if they were acid-free.  There was no glitter, no facepaint sticks, no permanent colors, no sticky glue, and my name-writing Sharpie was hidden carefully away where no one could possible get black-dotted clothes. I smiled at my work, and went upstairs to the sanctuary.

I hadn’t gotten both feet in the door when the cry went out for an ice pack for one of the children.

Enthusiastic singing had claimed it’s first victim.

The world’s unending criticism of China saddens me. The fact that much of the criticism is well deserved saddens me more.

Elliot Ng Via Twitter

This so accurately describes how I feel when I read the paper or look at the news online.

There’s a Chinese Twitter meme going around now, Twitter users — I’m supposed to say “Twitterati” and not “Twits” — are adding #080808 to their icons and tweets. David Feng explains more on CNReviews, and Ryan has a collection of #080808 twitter icons.

I don’t have the awesome art skills of other people doing this meme (I’m looking at you, Ryan!), but I wanted to join the party, and add an American #080808. And what’s more American than McDonalds? (Even if is this is the one in Hohhot)

So here’s Ronald and me being meme sheep. Ba ba ba.

I got my license several years ago in Massachusetts, but it expired while I was in China, and now that I’m home in New Jersey, I’d like to drive legally. Today I spent a couple hours on the phone with various DMV employees trying to make that happen.

My license is both expired and out-of-state, which isn’t exactly the ideal state of things, so I didn’t expect the first person who picked up the phone at the Department of Motor Vehicles to know what I needed. But after speaking to several people who had no idea what I’d need to do and weren’t particularly inclined to find out, I started to wonder if everyone else times their international travel with their license expiration. The phone recording told me several times that they are experiencing heavy call volume, aren’t any of those folks calling about an expired license? Is it one of those things that everyone else gets right, and only I do wrong?

It was looking more and more like the only way to find out what I’d need to do was to gather all the paperwork I might need, and go down to the DMV in person, where I couldn’t be put on hold.  I called my dad.

“Dad? Are you busy?”

“I’m keeping my congregation from throwing each other to the lions right now,” (Note: This is not exactly word-for-word what he said. I think he said something less about lions and more about being in a meeting) “Do you need something?”

“Can you take me to the DMV tomorrow* to get my license renewed? And stand around in lines all day to see unhelpful people?”

“Ok. I’ll even wear my clerical collar, maybe we won’t get anyone really nasty.”

I knew being the pastor’s daughter was eventually going to work out for me!

*Before we left, though, I found out that I need to have my driving records mailed from Massachusetts, which is a bit of a pain but at least it’s an answer. And then I need to present my records, my 6 forms of ID and my self at the DMV, so I’m still scheduled for a day waiting in line.

Kaiser Kuo has written a brilliant Guide for Visiting Journalists, to avoid the awkward Bylines-At-Customs type of writing so scathingly described by Huo Lei Feng, and to avoid the shallow cliches that make us cringe. Here’s an excerpt:

Topping the list of forbidden clichés is the phrase “coming out party.” As apt as it may have been when first used with reference to the Games shortly after they were awarded to Beijing back in 2001, after appearing in 75.4% of stories about the 2008 Olympics in the seven intervening years, it now incites English-speaking expats to an ugly, violent rage. Use it at your own peril; you have been warned.

Please do not write “Beijing is a city of stark contrasts” and refrain from using any variation thereof — “a city of startling juxtapositions,” or (needless to say) “a city of yin and yang.” Not that it isn’t a city of, um, rather pronounced differences; it’s just too damned lazy an observation to make. A special enjoinder to photographers: please resist the temptation to position yourself in a hutong with a decrepit but charming tile-roofed courtyard home in the foreground and a shiny, hyper-modern steel-and-glass skyscraper rising behind. No using Blade Runner comparisons for Beijing. You’ll want to save those for Shanghai, believe me.

The bureaus of reputable western papers here in China have a rule against quoting taxi drivers. But since Beijing’s cabbies are so fabulously colorful, you will be permitted one exception. Make it a good one. Helpful hint: That story about efforts by our city’s cabbies to learn English phrases? That one’s been written several thousand times so please, anything but that one.

Dead on, Kaiser Kuo! (But it’s still ok to try to work “as if by an occult hand” into your stories.)

Via Forbidden Cliches: A Guide for Visiting Journalists