sad mother's day :(

I have unwittingly spent the last week testing my digestive system. A dinner of Dog meat and a brunch (Chinese people call it 'lunch'. it's not lunch. it's at 11:30) of duck's stomach and that dangly thing under a chicken's chin have all been eaten. All completely finished, in fact (don't offend the host, now), by me with my newly expert chopstick claw. NB however many brownie points asking for the local speciality gets you, it's ALWAYS COMPLETELY RANK.

My not-that-supervising supervisor is away from Beijinjg for a few days, during which i've been trying to pimp myself out to any lawyer inside the firm. My pledges of perfect English, patience and a gentle touch remain untested. So i'm doing this at work again, whilst getting very exciting about seeing the Backstreet Boys next wednesday. That night promises to be the most spectacular two hours of pretending to be disinterested i have ever, or will ever, spend.

new events: backstreet boys tickets were thrown away, along with the remnants of our delivery macdonalds from the night before. one of the hotel 'Early Morning Room Boy' cleaners chucked them. sensible things like purchase insurance and paper trails don't exist in China so we've no hope. we're planning on turning up regardless, and taking the venue staff to our (empty) seats to try to let us in. two non-chinese-speaking young men describing the loss of tickets whilst inadvertently criticising the ridiculous ticket purchase arrangements? what could go wrong...

here you go mum!

and i will not be seeing:

before you criticise someone, you should walk a mile in their robe

the view from my window is typical of Beijing i think. There are high-rise modern apartment blocks, a shiny green glass office tower and a building site that seems to have lay dormant for the last two weeks. but when i woke up this morning and looked out of the window, the ground was covered in snow! so the view was slightly less grey. it was only half an inch thick, but meant that a) all of the taxis were full, b) the subway was absolutely rammed and c) the OAP Slo-Mo Tai Chi Regiment were not on parade. not that they should be barrack-bound for long, no one does organised snow clearing like the chinese. brighton and hove council take note!

hit a bit of a dry patch this morning work-wise, so i'm actually writing this out sitting at my desk in between reading about boring chinese contract law and reading a local litter reduction unfortunately titled 'BRING BACK TRASH!'

it's been a few days since i last wrote and i've seen a bit more of beijing. i went to a networking event at peking university and spent two hours trying to explain my (apparently quite complicated) plans for the future to a hundred different prodigal law students. met a 17-year old girl in her second year of university, reading for TWO degrees at the same time. it was a bit like meeting an oracle or shaman. nevertheless, she was mighty impressed that i'd been in a Student Union (read: infighting events committee) and so i talked it up appropriately. gave out some business cards to try and get some guanxi. got none back.

we did a lot of sightseeing at the weekend, the highlight of which was probably buying a traditional robe and then wearing it to the supermarket. it looked like this:

we also went to Tian. Square but that was a bit of a disappointment. just a square really! went to the forbidden city (not a city, more a decorated wind tunnel) and it looked like this:

also we went to the summer palace which was amazing - a giant park with a huge man-made lake. this sounds normal enough, but in true Beijing seemingly-normal-but-at-the-last-moment-completely-insane style, the next clearing we walked in to was FULL OF DANCING OAPs! there were hundreds of them all bopping around to the sounds of a crooner standing at the front. it was casual enough so we joined in but, in response to some subsonic cue that we must have missed, the OAPs suddenly moved into a line formation and started to dance choreographed dance in unison. a sort of maccarena meets the Cha Cha slide. needless to say, suddenly feeling very sheepish, we floundered in the sea of nimble oldies for a few minutes before breaking ranks and shuffling awkwardly away. we were delayed for a few minutes by this man's advances:

but we made it back to the hotel in the end.

side-stepping the authoritays with Hahwee

i'd underestimated how difficult it would be to trick the 'Great Firewall of China'. If you try to access blocked websites here you get an eerie 'NULL' page, but after a couple of days with the City Hotel coalition hard at work we've all found a way! Hurrah.

we went to the Olympic Village at the weekend. the term 'village' is probably as far from the truth as could be mustered in Chinglish. I shouldn't really have been surprised, it was exactly as you'd expect a sports center to be two years after it's held its only event. very cold and empty. The scale of the outside area was enormous, but the Bird's Nest Stadium itself was surprisingly small. Some others joked that it had only seemed big on tele because of the size of the chinese crowd members. I didn't find that funny and would never make that joke.

On the weekend we went out in our area - mainly ex-pat bars but still very chinese. Met a very nice chap called Harry who i'll post a photo of later. He didn't speak any english but i told him, in chinese, what i'd learnt in my chinese lesson the day before. Had to stop because he thought i really wanted a menu! Anyway we swapped numbers so expect more of him. (although hopefully not)

Today was my second day and work and it's been really good so far. I'm correcting/drafting the english versions of the annual report and 2010 forecasts for the firm, so although it's not too riveting it feels quite important which is nice and i can do it, despite my legal experience totalling 3 days in the grotty bolton crown court. The journey to work is quite nice. The Beijing subway is quite a lot of fun - lines 3-13 were built post-2005 so it's all very new and flashy. We only hear about the negative aspects in the UK but when you see the rapid modernisation of Beijing in practice it's remarkable.

Walking to the station is a bit less relaxing. Lots of people gather outside the Workers' Stadium (just a sports ground but the government put 'Workers'' before everything) to do tai chi. This sounds relaxing, and i'm sure it is for them, but it's really sinister when you're watching. They all stand in formation, and when they turn to face you it looks like an army regiment of elderly people advancing towards you in slow-motion, like a slo-mo (slow-mow?) section of a battle scene in a film. Actually, it's not really like this at all but the martial undercurrent in bog standard chinese citizens seems to have become a Key Theme of this blog, so i'll keep it there.

In short, everything which is actually fairly normal in Beijing always seems completely terrifying to the ignorant foreigner, and it's quite fun wearing a suit and pretending to be a real adult like the rest of the people at the law firm. lots of love and i hope you're reading this mum and dad xxx

world traveller, plus!

we were upgraded to world traveller PLUS on the flight which was great. We got loads of legroom and a "cocktail table" (but no actual cocktails). Amazing!

It's often said of China that personal space is a seldom-mentioned luxury that is rarely respected. If this turns out to be true (it has turned out to be true) then the little fat screaming chinese kid sitting next to me seemed hell bent on teaching me this the minute we entered chinese airspace.

He wore one of those airline sleeping masks which was so oversized it covered half of his fat pug face like a police visor, like a horrible space age miniature policeman. Having been nudged away by his dad, he'd sit upright and flop, like some sedated bonsai jabba the hut, onto my lap. He was literally on me for about 2 hours. I tried to push him away but started nudging too hard so gave up. Me and my sister tried to take a photo but had to stop.. the flash woke his dad up. I'll post my attempt when i can upload a photograph (joe green how do you do that?)

My sister lives in the Embassy district of Beijing which is really odd. The countries seem to model their Embassies on the architecture of their country. It's quite strange to be walking along with loads of Chinese people, and pass the Alhambra or some drab Portuguese villa. Funnily, the USA one is just absolutely massive. (By the way, one of the weirdest things about China is the number of Chinese people. There are so many! Like Chinatown but in a whole city. It wouldn't be weird but i'm a foot taller than all of them and they openly laugh at you..haha)

Today was fun - went to Sanlitun which is a shopping area with a really posh mall called the Village. Felt a bit weird on my own being laughed and pointed at by lots of people so went to Starbucks to have a coffee (say 'americano' in a chinese accent - so funny!). Felt guilty so did lots of walking around the markets. Then went for dinner with some current interns and people from the company which organises them. We had a 'hot pot'. It's like a pot of boiling really spicy soup which you cook things in yourself. Almost ate a chicken foot by accident.. The restaurant was nice, with big red lanterns like you'd imagine china to have.

xx thanks for reading

boring pre-departure maiden blog

just spent half an hour walking around the (massive) Heathrow departure lounge/shopping centre looking for somewhere to buy batteries and disposible razors. Got some funny looks asking a customer service lady where to buy blades..won't be doing that again.

Wasting £1.50 on 15 minutes internet access is a fantastic way to escape Terminal 5. But it's actually very nice, very grey, lovely vibe. Don't believe the negative press. Saw a couple of smelly travellers with big backpacks at the check-in desks. Felt a very warm bond between us, but got nothing back. Maybe i'll try something more assertive when i stink as well..

Boring still-in-England first blog over! woop de doo xxx