Category: Beijing

Weirdness weather

Am in Beijing today and tomorrow, flying back through Typhoon Wipra perhaps on Wednesday.

Was a strange weather experience.  Overcast this morning and hazy. Ok but then the weather took a turn for the nasty ugly.  After lunch time, the weather turned darker and from the 19th floor, couldn’t see anything. By 3pm, it was like night time/midnight.

Air quality was noticeably stuffy.  Autumn is supposedly the best time for Beijing.  Temperature wise, it is very comfortable.   It’s the other stuff that makes it difficult to handle.

Last night, supper with one of my colleagues. We went to grilled meat place Beijing style.  Think of it like a Beijing style churrasco.  I even tried grilled silkworms. Tasty actually, but the crunchy skin was a little difficult to take.  It was like eating shrimp skin that was fried/grilled.  A little tough and not a fun experience.  Taste was good admittedly.  Will try again I think.

ready silkworms for grilling!

TGIF! or How Weather is Weird

Nor’easter – signs of… snow? Well, drizzle and flurries, anyway. Umm, this must also mean that May is going to turn out beautiful – sunny and pleasant – or else we’re facing a heat wave in “spring.” All the more to remember that Earth Day is coming; let’s save the Earth!

Umm, yeah, I am waiting for the return of “Heroes.”

Alma Mater Law School’s AALSA Alumni dinner on Wednesday night – good food as usual; the inspirational speeches; the realization that yes, we APAs (and APA women as a subgroup) have ways to go.

Yahoo posts this AP article on Beijing’s National Aquatics Center (where the Olympics swimming events will be held) as a “Bubble Wrap” building. Seeing the pictures – well, I kind of see what they mean. Feels like you want to pop the bubbles. Then again, I’m just not into modern architecture – just feels weird, period.

With the upcoming 40th anniversary of the US Supreme Court’s decision in Loving v. Virginia (legalizing interracial marriage), the trend in the US demonstrates a rise in interracial marriage; how this changes race issues and how America views the issue of race — well, our country is a work in progress – the democratic experiment (warts and all) – and how the diverse people in this country relate to one another – well all of that continues.

A link on a literary blog led me to this: an article on Qiu Xiaolong, the Chinese mystery writer based in St. Louis. Quite interesting.

Beijing 北京 back to Taipei 臺北 (台北)

hey FC, wanted to mention I like what you’ve done with the little tweaks here and there.

Arrived back in Taipei yesterday. My traveling seems to be always rush rush these days. I forgot my laptop battery pack at my friend’s home in Beijing. The trip out to Beijing airport early morning was pretty busy for 6 am. Most of the highway roads are at least 6 lane highways, 3 each way and plenty of road traffic hmmm. Got to Beijing airport by 6:30am ish and wham, road jam as everyone just stopped at the international airport. I have to say, they got to do a better design and quickly speed up the build up of Terminal 3. There’s no way that they can support Beijing 2008 with two terminals which are about the size of CKS Airport Taiwan.

At the Beijing airport with the mad rush of international flights early morning, there was a remarkable 5 immigration agents on hand to check your passports …. so everyone was feeling the squeeze. But before then they had a system I’ve never seen before in any other international airport.

So, you arrive at the terminal and you need to check-in. But before you check in, you need to pass the Customs gatekeepers with your “Goods to Declare” or “No Goods to Declare” card. The problem is that there were only 3 lines but then in the middle of it, they closed down one of them! So all the folks in that line had to go back to the end of the line in the other two custom lines. Ouch. The reason? They were only for the airline crews. Huh? But can’t they also service the other people? By that time, we’re talking about a few hundred people queued up. So everyone’s trying to cut into line and moving forward (just like on the highway, roads of Beijing). Once you’re through, then you go to the airline counter to check in. My Cathay Pacific agent was very nice. He put a priority check-in tag on my luggage so that it would arrive first when I got to Taipei. (It did, I didn’t have to wait long and it came out fast, instead of last). I’ve travelled so many places before and never knew that you could get this nice customer service feature. Great because I hate waiting at the luggage claim carousels.

So then after the speedy efficient Cathay Pacific check-in (Cathay is starting to get my vote for top airline award here in Asia-Pacific), I hit the immigration check-in wall. When I get there, they saw my English written declaration/exit card but with my Taiwanese Tai Bao Zin “passport” and he said I had to fill it out in Chinese. WTF! Apparently, someone who was Taiwanese had to know how to write in Chinese, not English. So anyways, I did that quickly as best I could (thank God for my drawing abilities learnt as a kid), and then on my way. Had about 10 minutes to spare before boarding time.

Flight into HK, I had 10 minutes to spare before my transfer onto CX406 to Taipei. One of the downsides of the hub system is that they really cut the transfer times close. By the time I got there, they were already boarding. Luckily there were other planes feeding that flight so I was able to settle in and deposit my bags in the plane’s luggage compartments. Managed to catch the latest Batman movie. Liked it a lot. Wasn’t sure but was that Gary Oldman as the good cop? I was surprised because he seems to always play the bad guys.

Taipei is very warm and the weekend is good. Catching up with B- with some QT time this weekend. It’s been nice to decompress from the work and enjoy.