Friday, July 20th, we headed to Beijing West Railway station for our 12-hour overnight train to Xi’an, in Shaanxi province. Our 4-week adventure through China was about to begin!! When we got to the station, we fought our way through the great unwashed masses to our gate and then pushed and shoved our way through security. We’d gotten tickets for a soft sleeper, which is one step below the top class. So we were hopeful that we’d have decent people in our cabin with us. We found our car and set ourselves up on our beds, which were the two bottom bunks. Our cabin-mates were a young couple which we were very grateful for – they didn’t speak English but they were polite, quiet and not smelly so that’s all we need! We both had some ... read more

For the second time in my life, I get to celebrate a “birth-weekend” – an event which occurs when you find yourself on the other side of the international date line and your birthday falls on a Saturday - because then Saturday is the day of your birthday but then Sunday is when your birthday happens back home! The first such “birth-weekend” happened exactly 5 years ago in the great country of Australia and you can conveniently read about it on this blog: http://www.travelblog.org/Oceania/Australia/Western-Australia/Perth/blog-186009.html Anyways, Saturday, July 14th was indeed my 26th (!!!) birthday. And the Weather Gods (aka the official Chinese government weather controllers/cloud seeders – because even the Gods are a government agency in China) decided to shine down on me! The weather was reminiscent of Southern California aka the greatest weather possible. Sunny, ... read more

Monday, July 9 was the day of my big presentation to my department about Mississauga, Niagara-on-the-Lake and how they compare to Hai Ning, the growing suburban city I went to visit. I spent the morning polishing up the presentation and practicing, and I presented in the afternoon. It took about 1.5 hours to present, since there often need to be translations, explanations, and questions from the crowd. But my supervisor was really happy and apparently his supervisor wants to send my presentation to the city officials in Hai Ning. So that’s good! I had a few follow-up questions from the crowd which I spent the rest of the day answering. That night, me and the Zach’s went back to Trivia Night at The Bookworm. Jeff joined us late. We didn’t do as well this week, but ... read more

I am going to open with an appology – apparently the Zach’s spell their names with an ‘h’. They have become fans of this blog and were quite upset by my spelling error. So I appologize. Monday, July 2, the Zach’s agreed to join me in what used to be a Monday night tradition – Trivia Night at The Bookworm! We actually did the best I’ve ever done so clearly these two are good partners. Tuesday evening was Zach 1’s birthday so we headed to Houhai to a place called Hutong Pizza which apparently has the second-best pizza in town. It was really, really good. The cheese was amazing. Wow. So good. We then wandered around Houhai a bit and Zach 1 bought himself a panda trucker hat as a birthday present to himself. Wednesday was ... read more

Hey everyone, I realize I didn’t post a top 10 last week so I’m going to make it up for that now! I’m currently at work and I was inspired by a rather hilarious occurrence to make this list. You see, we have this internal messenger system, and I’m often included in group conversations. I normally use google translate to understand what’s going on – though this is shady, especially for Chinese to English. But regardless, I can get the jist of a conversation. Well, this morning, I thought I had figured out that a group conversation was about a lecture happening on Monday. However, somehow the discussion devolved into pictures of (wait for it) CATS. I kid you not. The pictures do not lie! Anyways this got me thinking about some of ... read more