After work, left with two women from the office who are also from other places and staying at the same hotel. One from Japan the other from Singapore. They also wanted to go shopping, then eat, and I didn’t have anything better to do… One Thing I Really Don’t Like In traffic back home, if someone speeds up into a merge lane, and tries to get ahead of everyone else - it’s considered rude, and overall the majority of people will not do that....
I’m pretty much over my jet lag, but I feel like I’m getting sick. I went to bed early last night, to try to get some much needed rest. I didn’t eat dinner, but I had a huge lunch. I had dinner two nights ago at this really great Korean style BBQ place. They cook the food right at the table. The menu has pictures and a few English descriptions which helps me a lot....
October 14 Zhong Guan Cun District, Beijing 3:50. Really? No, can’t be. It feels like I slept all day. Yep, 4:10 AM. Still pitch dark outside. This must be that jet lag people kept warning me about. I’m already unpacked, no chance of going back to sleep. I spend the next 45 minutes watching the end of Karate Kid 2, dubbed in Mandarin, with Chinese sub-titles. I was totally lost until the big dramatic fight scene at the end....
Haidan District, Beijing There’s a building a few blocks over from my Hotel room that has strobe lights on top of it. It’s tall enough to require them if the building were in a flight path, but there are buildings as tall around it, and they don’t seem to need strobe lights. Hmph. So, I close the hotel curtains all the way. If I strain, I can still sense the strobe, but with the curtains drawn and my eyelids closed, it doesn’t exist....