China Bedhead

Chinabedhead is sleeping at Blogger now

clearroads — Sat, 02 May 2009 16:13:57 +0000

Dear friends, please note that this blog has been moved to http://chinabedhead.blogspot.com.

This wordpress blog will no longer be updated.

RIP Chinabedhead (April 5th 2009- April 24th 2009)

clearroads — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 06:34:54 +0000

Dear friends,
Because the Chinese censors have blocked WordPress, I’ve decided to move my blog over to MSN spaces. Up till this Tuesday, everything had been A-ok but things got weird on Wednesday. Since then, I haven’t been able to access any of the WordPress blogs, including my own, unless I use a VPN software. I didn’t know what that was until this past Wednesday night. Anyways, long story short is that I can now blog using a VPN, but it makes my internet connection super slow, and spits out mad pop up advertising. Uploading images is out of the question.

It’s a shame. It’s been fun blogging here, and I rather liked using WordPress. But in light of what I mentioned above, I have to move the show onto MSN. As a result, I’ve decided to move over to MSN as of today. Do look out for it when it comes up. Just give me a couple of days to dress it up!

Ok just before I sign off on this fella, here’s what I’ve been up to:

Wednesday: Visited a Lama Buddhism Temple..I never realized how different the Manchu language is from Mandarin. Also, the Tibetan and Manchu written scripts remind me of Elvish from the LOTR mythology. Will upload photos of that visit real soon. And in the evening I attended a talk on the UN talks for Global Climate Change. I learnt 1 thing. The talks are taking forever!!!

Thursday: Gave a lecture on personal branding to a bunch of seniors and juniors.

Friday: Woke up at 6.30am to make an 8.20am classes on International Capital Markets. Super tired. I am not made for mornings, and neither are the kids here, for that matter. Some of them dozed off during my lecture. I don’t blame em! ha!

The Great Firewall of China

clearroads — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 06:05:07 +0000

I suspect that WordPress may have been blocked by the censors here in China. Over the last 2 days, I haven’t been able to access my blog at all. Anyways, I did a bit of snooping around and found a VPN tool called Anchorfree, which allows me to surf undetected so they claim. It seems to be working. The only drawback is I now have to deal with annoying advertising pop ups in the browser window. If you have any suggestions on other VPN tools that don’t embed advertising in them, please do let me know.

In view of the difficulties I have been having accessing my blog, I would add “Internet Censorship” as the last entry to my list of gripes of living in Beijing.

My first real lecture

clearroads — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 17:12:46 +0000

今天，我本来是想告诉大家我喜欢北京的十个原因。But I thought people might be interested to see some photos of me teaching class today, at my first real lecture. It was to about a hundred freshmen students. I spoke of my career, the credit crisis and about being socially responsible, in a smattering of English and 中文。It was pretty fun.

See how captivated they are!!

Top ten most annoying things about life in Beijing

clearroads — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 15:49:23 +0000

In no particular order.

1.) The spitting
2.) Right turning vehicles: they have the license to run down pedestrians
3.) Zebra crossings that don’t mean a thing, except to indicate where crossing zebras died before.
4.) My “hotel”. You have to see this:
http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=199486875200
5.) Smoking. Everywhere.
6.) The spitting again.
7.) Rude waiters. I want to give them a white bunny. And by “white”, I mean “upper”, and by “bunny”, I mean “cut”.
8.) Bad breadth.
9.) Smog

Ok, only 9 things to gripe about. Let me just say that there are so much more things to like about Beijing – a list of which will be forthcoming, dear reader.

Today, the sun came out. Here’s proof:

This is the main walkthrough the university campus. Library to the left. Basketball courts to the right.

In the pleasant weather, a homeless busker tried to entice students of their pennies

I thought this was pretty funny

clearroads — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 08:36:44 +0000

I have to give a 3 hour long lecture (broken into manageable 45 min breaks) tomorrow to 100 freshmen. University says it can be on anything so I am putting together slides about my life, career, the global financial crisis, and environmental finance. I thought this cartoon was hilarious so I’m gonna stick into my presentation and see if the kids figure it out. Then I’m going home to do my part to fight global warming by jumping straight into bend.

A Czech in Beijing

clearroads — Sun, 19 Apr 2009 17:32:43 +0000

“In 1955, a painter named Zdeněk Sklenář visited China and in his three months there, was deeply influenced by what he experienced. He took a deep interest and Chinese calligraphy, art and culture, and it continued to create works featuring the country till his passing in 1986.”

Check out Zdeněk Sklenář’s work below!

Goddess of Mercy and some admirers

All this from the Chinese Museum of Art located west of the Forbidden City. It’s definitely worth a visit! More images below.

Mongolian Art. Simply gorgeous. I have to visit the country some day.

Typical scene outside the Tiantan temple (Temple of the Sky). Loads of people can be seen there singly loudly at make shift jam sessions.

Just random video still at the museum. I like the fella’s hat.

Ok and now for some weird shit. I saw this in a market on Saturday.

That’s a fish…Ok no problem.
But all those pale things underneath…

Those are baby frogs.

Thankfully this wasn’t at a restaurant but at an outdoor pet store. Still gross looking though.

The cutest dog ever!!

clearroads — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 17:07:55 +0000

RUFF!

How these did these fellas ever survived in the wild?
Just toooooooooo cute!!!! Check out this video

At the subway part 1. Time: 9.15pm

At the subway part 2. Time 9.30pm

Chess is played everywhere. I can take on these guys! Time: 10.15pm

Teaching is a royal pain in the ass

clearroads — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 16:29:24 +0000

More shots of life at BUU for today. Today I taught my first class. It was a pain in the ass. Teaching is a pain in the ass as much as learning.

Things are ramping up

clearroads — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 10:20:55 +0000

Checked out Greendrinks Beijing yesterday at this really cool place called the Bookworm located in the Sanlitun area of Chaoyang. Sanlitun is well known for its bars and chic clubs, which are very well frequented by expats and foreigners. To be quite honest though, I have avoided hanging out in the expatriate areas as much as possible, so that I can learn more about the real China, so to speak, and to get my Mandarin in order. It’s freaking frustrating. There are so many Chinese words that I don’t know! Every night I try to zone out my thoughts, which are in English, with Mandarin ones, by reading the Chinese newspaper or watching the Telly, in the (as yet) vain hope that I will dream in Mandarin. It hasn’t quite happened yet. Anyways, back to Green Drinks. Met a nice guy from Greenpeace China yesterday, and they are running some climate change awareness campaigns here. Greenpeace is awesome man. Their guerilla campaigns are the stuff of legends and I am eager to get myself involved at some capacity. It was also interesting for me to learn that they have a relatively respectively relationship with the local authorities. Definitely need to learn more about how to they thread this narrow path. Sorry no photos to share from the event as my camera batteries were dead.

TODAY: Well things are really ramping up for me now. The early honeymoon is giving way to real work and I find myself being asked to get into all kinds of teaching arrangements. The school lacks so much in terms of programs, facilities, teachers and infrastructure, so Austin and myself, among other foreign “experts” here, are being asked to fill in the gaps as best we can. It’s a open platform, and there is so much we can do. As it is now, I have been asked to teach International Monetary and Financial Economics, Corporate Social Responsibility, Marketing, and to conduct seminars on the Credit Crisis. Holy Crapola!!! WT%$! Thankfully its going to be English, and from what I can gather so far, I think could just wing it. My first class is coming up next Tuesday. If you are super curious, you can check out my slides..

Office of International Exchange Programs at the Beijing Union University

Lunch time with Mr Wang Shuguo who one of the jolliest persons I’ve ever met.

Standard Beijing fare: Large portions, lotsa oil, gravy, and intense flavors. Also a lot of small grain sticky rice or bread.

Lastly for today, have been hanging out with a language buddy called “Momo’ whom I met over Couchsurfing. She’s super curious about the world and we have great conversations, that’s a mindf*ck for my brain because it’s mostly all in Chinese. Momo writes for a local youth mag and she is as cool as her name suggests.

Momo