just an update

So it’s been about a week I guess, and I can’t complain. China continues to be China, and the summer continues being hot. Lots of touring with Louis and his gang, a rainy trip to the great wall, and a couple of kickass concerts, and now I’m heading south to the city on the sea, Shanghai, for the weekend.

I’ve started working as a freelance consultant, polishing interviews. It’s fairly mindless work and the pay isn’t too bad. I’m still trying to be a journalist, and doing a little better than before. A new podcast is up by the way. Last night I went to my first expat dinner party of this trip. I never cease to be impressed with how smart and cool a lot of the people living here are. Others are less so, but there are enough people in Beijing that you don’t have to be friends with someone purely based on shared heritage.

Because louis was here, we’ve been treated to some truly fantastic meals by friends of the family. Heaping dishes, groaning tables. It’s a big change from the street food I’ve been eating on a pretty regular basis. We even went to an old Beijing style restaurant, which serves my favorite dish, a kind of fermented doufu resembling brains. The dish is grey, spreadable, and undeniably delicious. Kind of like cottage cheese mixed with….something else. Other highlights included a foot and a half tall leaning tower of fried potato sticks, a delicious (and fancy) round of peking duck, and a plate (ordered by accident) of bitter melon which we finished in spite of its rather terrible taste.

For day to day account’s look to Kyle’s blog. I’ll be putting a new batch of pictures up soon.
Heart. Martin.