Terminal 3

Posted on June 9, 2008 by Meg

Hugo and Diana are here! We picked them up in the new Terminal 3. It’s been said before, but that place is gigantic! It’s brand new and well organized, except for a few sets of escalators where down is on the left.  And by well-organized, I mean that there is a Starbucks where you can sit in a comfy seat and see the Arrivals board. Not that we did that, we rode up and down on the moving ramps and watched people trying to go up the down escalator.

I made a sign that said “Hugo Boss and Lady Friend!” in glitter pen but Hugo was chosen for random inspection, they were some of the last people off the plane and very easy to spot. We had an extremely enthusiastic greeting, and we discovered an underappreciated aspect of Terminal 3: it echoes!

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Please Get Ready For Your Arrival

Posted on June 8, 2008 by Meg

My friend Hugo likes to laugh. I mean, he really likes to laugh. He can’t tell a joke because as he’s telling it, he thinks of how funny the punchline is, and laughs too hard to keep talking. He’s a professor’s dream student because he always laughs out loud at the semi-funny jokes classicists toss in to see who smiles and who’s sleeping with their eyes open. Also he’s an awesome friend because he makes everything seem really funny. He’s reading this post and laughing right now.

Stick and I were looking over Hugo and Diana’s itinerary and had a moment of confusion where we thought for a moment that they had developed time-travel powers, but we were actually reading the wrong column of their schedule.

“Good thing we figured that out,” one functional, employed adult said to the other, as if we’d just split the atom instead of locating the arrival time, which is cleverly labeled arrival time. “It would be awful if we got the time wrong and didn’t meet them in the airport!”

“No, it wouldn’t.” said the other. “Hugo would laugh.”

(Post title thanks to David Feng and the Beijing subway!)

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Mojito Competition

Posted on June 7, 2008 by Meg

When I saw this on the first sign a few days ago, it was pretty funny, but now I think it’s a trend.

Guess it's good...

I think it’s the two colors and the lovely font that really do it.

Edit: Stick thinks I may not have been clear enough that this mojito is down the other place.

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Pre-China Travel Note

Posted on June 6, 2008 by Meg

Dear Hugo and Diana,

Don’t forget that all traffic signs and road markings are purely decorative and should never be used as a guide when assessing traffic patterns.

Love,

Meg

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Directions Home

Posted on June 5, 2008 by Meg

To get to our new house, walk past the bakery with long lines on the sidewalk and a sweet sticky smell, like sugar and sesame. If you get to the Muslim butchershop, with cow halves hanging from ceiling hooks, you’ve gone too far. Go past the keymakers, you’ll know it by the shiny key blanks on wires in the window and past the streetside tables where the shirtless old men play boardgames and laugh in their throats. Pass the street barbeque stand, and the dumpling shop with steam pouring out of the door, pass the doorway with tiny caged songbirds. Look out for abandoned balls and tricycles on the ground, especially after dark. Anyone taller than me should watch out for our neighbors’ overhanging roof, as well!

If you go the opposite way, and turn onto progressively wider streets instead, you end up by Qianhai lake, and the surrounding bars and coffeeshops, which puts not only brewed coffee, but coffeedrink concoctions involving hazelnut syrup or steamed milk into our daily lives.

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There Goes The Neighborhood

Posted on June 5, 2008 by Meg

As we carried our bags and boxes down the winding carless alleys to our new hutong home, we passed our new neighbors, grandparents and toddlers having dinner in the doorways and staring curiously at the heavily-laden foreign couple. Stick turned to me and asked “Do you think they’re saying ‘There goes the neighborhood’?”

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In The Same Boat

Posted on June 4, 2008 by Meg

I gave one of my classes a lesson on idioms, as part of my ongoing guest to eliminate certain abused phrases (like overuse of what a pity or using not at all as a response to thank you) from my students’ English. I gave them a handout with a list of idioms and some example sentences using those idioms, and we talked about the literal meaning and the figurative meaning. Then I asked my students to write a short dialogue using one of the idioms we’d discussed.

Most of the students made minor changes to my example sentences, but one group of usually unmotivated boys really stood out from the crowd.

Tracy: Hello. Bill is the president and David is the mayor.

David: Hi Bill.

Bill: Hi David.

David: Haha! I have just embezzled 1 billion dollars!

Bill: Now I know your secret! You must give me half of the money!

David: You have stolen from the embezzler, we are in the same boat now.

This is exactly why I love teenage classes.

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In Which I Prove I’m A Complete Dork

Posted on June 3, 2008 by Meg
If we were Sims, we’d be married now.

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Blog Schizophrenia

Posted on June 3, 2008 by Meg

Sorry for the recent blog schizophrenia! I think I’ve got most of it worked out now…

My PayPal adventures became less funny when they decided that I didn’t really pay WordPress for domain forwarding, and canceled the charges as an added benefit for my security. I’ve called a few times and sent 4 or 5 emails to explain that the charge for a blog about a Jersey girl with my name living in Beijing really is me, but they weren’t able to help me because I’m calling from Beijing, not New Jersey. My options at this point involve photoshopping my name onto a utility bill from my parents’ house.

PayPal assures me that their primary concern is my security. Unfortunately, my primary concern is being able to spend my money, and I’d prefer not to do that on listening to the hold music on Skype calls to customer service.

So I installed the WordPress.org package on Simpsonsparadox.com, which was what I intended to do with the site eventually, but I wanted a few months of regular blogging with regular WordPress to learn my way around. Fantastico makes setting up WordPress pretty easy, but it’s still a work in progress for me. The next steps are figuring out how to change this template to black text on white background, adding my Violet Eclipse blogroll to the sidebar, and making sure all of my links actually go somewhere.

On the plus side, I found this cute new banner!

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DJ Stick

Posted on June 2, 2008 by Meg

I didn’t notice when I snapped the picture, but the old lady in the background seems a bit confused by DJ Stick’s turntables.  Maybe he needs a microphone.

This little one got a kick out of taking a picture of me taking a picture of him taking a picture of me taking a picture of him taking a picture of… well, you get it.

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