12 hours in

Hi, everyone!

How yall feelin tonight? (this was the second half of one of 108 Tongues' songs, Don't Start Somethin'. The chorus went:

How many tongues in the house? [108, 108]
How yall feelin tonight? [feelin good, feelin great])

Well, it's 1:30 PM in Beijing - a sunny, muggy, hazy day. I just ran around my block...

hold up, let me rewind.

"Yesterday" - that is to say, in that span of time before I last fell asleep and after I last woke - my parents, sister, and I left Delaware around 11 AM, bound for JFK international airport. I arrived in a fantastically, even excessively, prompt fashion: 1:30 PM for a 4:30 PM flight, that later wound up getting delayed until 5:15.

Boarding the plane, I was greeted with the horrific sight of no in-headrest entertainment. That's right: you buy budget, you fly budget.

Well thankfully, this revelation was immediately followed by another, more positive one: that in place of the now-commonplace headrest-mounted touchscreen lay a standard 3-prong electrical outlet. So, ten minutes into the 15-hour flight, I happily pulled out my laptop and spent the rest of the flight alternating between watching movies (The Squid and the Whale, The Departed, Pulling John - all dope flicks) and powering through over a season and a half of 30 Rock, abetted by the empty seats on my either side - at points, I was alternately nearly fully supine and prone.

After a full day of this, I was greeted by the lights of Shanghai Pudong Airport



where I passed a quick layover, including a short 15-minute panic after a delay was announced "due to communications equipment issues" (the worst phrase to hear when travelling: "your flight has been delayed. a new departure time will be announced shortly").



Post-boarding, I settled into my seat and finally succumbed to the dull but growing urge to sleep. Slipping on my headphones, I leaned back like Fat Joe and woke to the even hazier yellow glow of Beijing.

Gathering my two 50-pound suitcases (guh), I motivated myself, plus wheeled encumbrances, into a waiting cab and sped through the night towards dongcheng





Making my way to the address my new roommate Steve gave me, my cab driver and i only got a little (read: a lot) lost. I caught up briefly with Steve before he hit the hay, got online through my VPN and caught up with emails and various work, then fell asleep just as the blue of morning began to tint the east.

Waking up, I began my unpacking, ran various errands (got keys copied, bought a new SIM card) and had a quick run around my new neighborhood.

Tonight, I'm going to swing by an older couple's house to talk to the husband, meet some friends for dinner, and then tomorrow I have a lunch and dinner with friends - and hoping to meet up with some of the Light Fellowship students in the afternoon to hang around in wudaokou. Saturday, practically all day, is my buddy Billy's wedding! and we'll take it from there...

Time to roll!


this machine is super fly. The bit closer to the camera slides into the groove of the key, and moves synchronized with the drill in the background, which carves out an identical copy in the blank.