New home

Hi. Well, the ole Great Firewall of China has been blocking LiveJournal for almost a month now, so I guess I'll try updating my blog here from now on, that is, as long as Blogspot stays open, which is certainly no guarantee.

Truth be told, I've been incredibly busy since coming back from Viet Nam. I know, I know, everyone always says that. I never call, I never write...and its all true. Well, this time I have a good excuse.
That, friends, is Iris, my girlfriend. Good ole Scrooge brought her to the cast party to meet me one night, and, predictably, I ignored her completely. But he was persistent, and after going out to dinner with Scrooge and her three days before I left for Viet Nam, I was so taken with her that I asked her out again the night before I left. Three weeks later, we met up again, full of travel stories, and well since then, we've been getting along like peanut butter and jelly (happy PB&J day, by the way- and yes, friends, its Peanut Butter Jelly Time, dey you go).




Anyway, we've traveled around China some, visiting Shanghai, and Tianjin, and numerous other places in Beijing, made all the more fun by together with her. In a twist, she is moving to Shenyang, Liaoning Province at the end of this month, which is almost cruel, but we are thinking of it in terms of how lucky we were to have ever met at all, given our time meeting each other was about the relationship equivalent of threading a needle. Shenyang is not too far, and I will visit her often, just as she will come to Beijing often. Before I leave for America on May 5th for a small vacation, we will travel around Yunnan Province, supposedly a beautiful area of China.

So anyway, I've been spending practically all my free time a few days during the week and every weekend with her, and very little doing other things, i.e. calling home, emailing, brushing my teeth, etc. I've also been keeping busy at work, helping schedule a conference between our research center and Arcelor Mittal next week, in addition to editing the next edition of our journal. I hope to start doing some more translation on this blog, instead of just personal diary, as I think its good for my Chinese learning, and there's plenty of Chinese stories I'm interested in outside the well-traveled areas of ESWN and Danwei. I'll hunt around for interesting articles or something and post a translation when I can. At least, that's my plan for tonight anyway!