Happy Birthday to me, Happy Birthday to me, Happy Birthday to me-ee....Happy Birthday to me!

24 great years, 1.5 of them in China, all of them spent knowing all of you wonderful folks.  Thanks for making these years so meaningful.  Here's to the next 24!!

Happy Birthday Lawrence!  I know you aren't quite 22 in the States, but over here it is November 4th, so deal with it.  Actually, due to Chinese age-reckoning standards, you are now 23.  In China, for no reason, babies are born at age 1.  So, happy 23rd birthday, Lawrence ( Read more... )

It’s been awhile since I last complained about the Chinese language, and I’ve got a wonderful illustration of its craziness too.  Here goes.

I just had a Chinese lesson today.  While there, my teacher informed me that she was planning on getting me a nice gift for my birthday.  It was to be a small piece of wood on which she would write some ( Read more... )

There has recently been a bit of a brouhaha over the so-called “rare earth metals,” China’s control of them, and fears that they may restrict supplies to the rest of the world.  Before I get to what I really want to talk about, I want to say that the name “rare earth metal” is a terrible one.  These minerals are only rare in comparison to other ( Read more... )

Today I had some time to kill after my Chinese class.  I didn’t have to be at school to work for another hour and a half, so I went for a walk.  Today was one of those perfect autumn days.  Shockingly for Beijing, the sky was pure blue.  The temperature was around 55 degrees.  There was no wind.  With my hoodie on I was as comfortable as I’ve ( Read more... )

I’m curious what any of you who cared enough to anticipate this entry thought the interlude would be.  Anyway, I hope ya’ll will agree that Hook is an appropriate choice to follow up my Peter Pan write-up.

I remember seeing this movie in theaters when it first came out, and hating it.  The reasons are lost to the mists of time now, but for ( Read more... )

Today I came across an article in Popular Mechanics*.  The gist of the article is that we should switch from using uranium to power our current nuclear reactors to using thorium.  Thorium is several times more common than uranium (and thus cheaper to mine for), produces 200 times as much energy, yields waste products that can be fed back into the ( Read more... )

Last Friday I assigned my kids a simple task: write a story with at least two characters and at least three plot points.  Predictably only about half of my kids did it*, and most of them wrote the bare minimum.  That’s fine, writing English sentences of any length is challenging for them, so even the bare minimum was an impressive feat.  However ( Read more... )

I had plans for today.  There were all sorts of things I was going to accomplish.  I was going to run some errands.  I was going to do some shopping.  I was going to visit friends.  I was going to sightsee.  I was going to go jogging.  I was going to conduct an impromptu jugband jamboree in the park.  I was going to shoot a man in Reno, just to ( Read more... )

I had one of those moments that make teaching worthwhile yesterday.  I was teaching the kids in my best class some words pertaining to stories, specifically “character,” “setting, “and “plot.”  To practice I went around the room a few times and had each student add a few sentences to a collective class story*.  For homework I told the kids to ( Read more... )