My friends from UW Ruben, Mark, and I biked up from my house to Bothell on the Burke-Gilman trail today. It was my first ride of the season… 1.5 hours. Man… I am out of shape! My legs turned to jelly about 1/3 of the way back, and my butt is just completely sore. I also need to get new shoes… my feet were getting numb in these. Not a good sign.

Ruben’s trying to get me to take part in an Oregon Coast ride the first week of July… I’m thinking about it. Would get me out and about more, and I think that’s something that would be good for me. May just head down to REI and pick up a heart-rate monitor / trip computer + some new shoes. My dividend from them this year is gonna be huge… not sure if that’s a good thing.

Oh — and for all you readers out there who get notified (Hi Meg!) — sorry for the burst from China, didn’t realize they were all still in the queue!

On Saturday, MK, Laura, and I took Dodger to the Woodland Dog Park over in Greenlake. It’s a relatively small off-leash area on top of a small hill. For a while, Dodger was the only dog, or one of two, there. Then, about 3:30, a ton of dogs showed up, including one young and energetic pit bull. The pit was fine initially, just focused on fetching a tennis ball his owner through.

About 4ish, we decided to go, so I leashed up Dodger and tried to head out. Then the pit bull came over, and before I knew what was happening the pit was attacking Dodger!

We (the pit’s owner and I) managed to get them separated. I grabbed the pit’s collar and yanked back, and we got Dodger out of the way. The other owner stuck her hand in the way and took several nasty bites from the pit. We took Dodger down to the car, and he was bleeding pretty badly from a 1/4″ diameter wound on his left side. We went home, managed to stop (or at least slow to a small ooze) the bleeding, bandaged it up, and watched him. He was still his normal beagley self, so we thought he might have come through it OK. We exchanged information with the owner, and she said she’d be happy to cover any costs. At least she was forthright about it.

The next morning, he was not feeling well. He was also swollen on his left side, and couldn’t hop off the bed. So, off to Emerald Emergency we went. The kept him until 4 PM (although it took us 3 hours — noon — to get to see the doctor). They found another wound, shaved the area off, and cleaned it. They gave me some antibiotics (amoxicillian, same stuff you and I would get, but in a “for dogs only” bottle, and riyadl, a pain killer for pooches) for the next 2 weeks, and instructions to keep the wound open and clean. Apparently, if you patch the wound with gauze or a band-aid, the skin will heal before the underlying tissue, which isn’t good.

He’s doing OK now… he’s been his beagley self more or less today, and seems to be through things. Yay! We’re still giving him lots of love and attention, so with any luck he’ll be through this and it’ll just be a bad memory.

Oh, and the pit’s owner has agreed to take care of all the vet bills. We’re at $350 and counting… probably going to be around $500 when all is said and done.

Just saw this BBC article about Japanese whaling. It mentions how Australia is trying to get Japan to stop hunting a lot of whales for “scientific research” as new methods don’t require it.

I don’t think they really get it, but are just playing the politics. The thing is, at not just one but two sushi places I went to in Tokyo (and I suspect more, as these were fairly random sushi places, not at all the “high scale” places you might expect) had kujira, or whale. And, well, it’s yummy. Yeah, I know, it’s very un-PC of me, but about a billion people in India think the entire beef industry is an insult to their religion, so let’s just leave that be.

The thing of it is, the Japanese like whale. So they hunt whale and eat the meat. If you want to stop the whaling, you have to convince people that it’s bad, which won’t happen. So, you end up doing something like legalizing it a bit, and jacking the price way up, so it becomes rare, not common.

But I doubt that will happen either. Some people like whale, some people like alligator. Just the way omnivores are, I guess.

My friend Becky, whom I worked with at dear departed FizzyLab, is now working at MSRA (well, ATC at MSRA). She has a nice little place in the hutong near one of the back lakes (three small, man-made lakes behind the Forbidden City). We were planning on going to the Forbidden City (and perhaps getting some coffee at the Starbucks there… now there was a well-placed bribe!), but went to get some hot-pot for lunch instead. We ate quite a bit, went back to her place to digest, and started drinking some find Yanjing beer. Or Tsingtao. One of ‘em. Anyway, turns out they’re a whopping 3 quai (that’s 3 RMB) for 2 if you return 2 empties… that’s like $0.18 a bottle! for 750ml of beer! So we drank and chatted the night away. Another one of her friends, Jaime, from Mexico City, arrived in the evening, which was the time I needed to get going — had to catch a 9 AM flight the next morning, which means airport by 7 AM, which means taxi at 6 AM, and getting up at 5 AM…. ewwww…..

Wei-Ying hooked me up with two of his students, Guirong and Xinjing, who took me to the Pearl Market on Sunday morning to get some pearls for MK and Laura. It’s an experience… pearls are on the 3rd and 4th floor. The 3rd floor is a zoo, and it’s where the lesser-quality pearls are. You eventually find your way to the 4th floor (we were invited by one of the 3rd floor shops, and had to go up a sketchy stairway to get it). Then, it’s relatively quiet and the shops look like, well, shops. We went through a bunch, and it turns out Xinjing is a bit of a shark in negotiating for jewelry. Pearls by Amy was our second stop, and after a bit we returned as they appeared to have the best quality stuff. I let Xinjing negotiate… our plan was to get the price down at Amy’s, and if they wouldn’t hit what we wanted go somewhere else (we saw all the places on the side w/ Pearls by Amy, but didn’t go to the other side yet… some nicer looking places were there… Yonghong and Fanghua). I’ll not post the price quite yet, as I don’t want MK to know until we have the appraisal! but we got a good deal - Xinjing, a shy, demure female Chinese student is a total shark! It was impressive to see her in action. We picked up 2 21″ strands of 10mm pearls + matching earrings (8mm), one white and one black. Note: normally, you get 18″ strands, and that 18″ includes the clasp.

Now, you might be asking if they’re fake… after all, most everything else in China is. However, these are real. The deal is that the Chinese are using freshwater culturing and doing it at mass scale, so the price is very, very low. Check out this article from Nova.

Nick and I hired a driver for the day for 600 RMB. We started off at 7:30 and went to the Mutianyu section of the Great Wall — mostly to avoid the throng at the Badaling section that is closest to Beijing. It took about an hour and a half to get there, but that was fine. Once there, we went through the gauntlet of people shilling stuff — but they were mellow, as they knew we were going up and would come down at some point. We then took the cable car (i.e. skiing gondola) up to the wall, and started hiking about.

The main bit of this wall is a very steep section towards the left (I’d like to say west, but I have no idea, actually). It took us about an hour and a half to get up, but once there, it was well worth the view. It was also well worth the $150 buying some new Vasque hiking boots at REI two weeks previous! It was clear that the wall had been recently (within the past 100 years, probably 50) been restored… for example, I suspect they didn’t use 12″ square tiles back in the middle ages in China, nor did they use 1/2″ mortar. However, it did look like most of the supporting wall was original. This was confimed a bit as we got to the top and saw that the continuing section was overgrown and unavailable to tourists — that’s some old wall!

We headed back down and then through the hawker gauntlet. The first one (we forgot there were others, selling the exact same thing. After being lured by the call of “2 for 1 dollar!” Nick looked to buy two, then got haggled up to 150 RMBs for both. It appeared the real price was closer to 50 RMB (as some were calling that out), so probably more like 15 RMBs or 20 RMBs. Total tourist trap. I only imagine what’s at Badaling.

After hiking about the Great Wall for a few hours, Nick and I wanted to see a local site that was relatively compact. We ended up going to the Yonghegong, or Beijing Lama Temple. When Nick described it, and given China’s current issues w/ Tibet and the Dalai Lama, I assumed this was more of a museum than a, well, temple. The busses and ticket gate at the front also gave that impression. However, once you walk in, you realize you’re in the middle of a large, practicing Bhuddist temple. It’s kinda like Notre Dame in Paris… it’s a major religious center, and hey, lots of tourists gawking at people praying and taking pictures. Another nexus of holiness and tactlessness. But hey, nobody forced them to have a gift shop.

The temple is hard to describe, so I’ll link to some pictures when I get an opportunity. It was a really beautiful and peaceful place though, and a good visit after hiking about.

Nick and I then headed home afterwards… we had a very early dinner (about 5 PM), and were debating going to see Star Wars, but then we realized we were very, very, very tired. So Nick headed back to his hotel and I went to bed.

Hang Li, one of the senior folks at MSRA, took Nick and I along with John, another researcher at MSRA, to Chinese Opera at the Lao She Tea House. Now, when someone says opera, you’re probably thinking traditional German or Italian operas, or perhaps even something akin to modern British and Amerian musicals. Or at least you’re singing, “Kill the wabbit!” You may be thinking Chinese Opera is those people dressed up in costumes and whiteface recounting historical stories… and you’d be wrong as well. That’s kibuke, and it’s Japanese. No, there’s only one way to describe Chinese Opera.

Chinese Vaudeville.

I’m not trying to slam it in any way… at the Lao She Tea House, you get a table and are treated to a number of acts. We saw a Mongolian bowl dance, where a young woman danced and shook herself while keeping three bowls and a candle perched atop her head. We also saw someone apparently very famous sing a song while holding this three-rose / candle thing clenched in her teeth. Another memorable act was these two 50-something guys who did animal impressions, and quite good ones. They asked the audience to name any animal, and they promptly did the animal. They were just a hoot. Finally, the best IMHO was this guy who spun this huge ceramic pot on his head… in one bit the pot would be facing towards the audience and he’d rotate under it, and another bit would have him toss the pot on his head such that the lip (and a wide lip it was) would be right on his head, so the pot was balanced perfectly at an angle! This was impressive. We also saw a guy do magic, using two Americans as part of the act and a woman do the Dance of the Mask where different masks would keep popping down — this was also impressive!

So, if you’re looking for a good evening — check out the Lao She Tea House, near Tian’an Men Square. It’s a lot of fun!

After the wall, the driver dumped us out at a nice restaurant somewhere between Mutianyu and Beijing. Naturally, nobody there spoke Chinese, and I found out the hard way that “Kung Pao” isn’t pronounced like that in China, as the waitress had no idea what I was trying to say.

Sparing us from picking randomly, as the menu was all in Chinese and we didn’t bring a guidebook (foolish), the waitress picked two dishes, the second being a large dish. We babbled enough to get two beers — 750ml YanJing if I recall. Or TsingTao (which is pronounced chin-dao). The food arrived…. beef with breen and red peppers! Yum! This was just what I wanted. And then we were served a fish dish… large meant two full fishes (including the heads!) cooked in a soy-base sauce. Also yummy! — you just had to watch out for bones.

Time came to leave, and the waitress gave us the check… we then tried to ask how much it was, as I didn’t see a total. They brought out 48 RMB… and yes, 48 RMB was at the bottom of the receipt in Arabic numbers, so we could read it. So 48 RMB it was… totally shocked me! That’s just cheap… like about $7 for two beers and two big plates. Wow!

Sadly, I have no idea where this place is, nor its name, as I asked the driver when we arrived back at the hotel and he didn’t know. D’oh! I’ll post some pics that Nick took, perhaps we can deduce the name from them. Doubtful, but ya never know.

Tonight, I had dinner with Nick, Josh, and Frank Seide, a German expat working in speech at MSRA. Josh and Nick decided to hit the sack, so Frank and I hooked up with Dave Vronray and his wife along with Neema Moraveji and his girlfriend at karaoke! Now, in the US, when someone says karaoke, I’m sure you’re thinking big crowd, lots of alcohol, and major public embarrassment. Karaoke in China, and from I understand Japan, just involved lots of alcohol. You’re usually in a private room with 2-8 buddies, and the embarassment is relatively private. At PartyWorld (and that is the name… some Chinese outfits do use English names), we had a room that could fit about 12 comfortably around a U-shaped couch, with the opening of the U facing the TV. You then pick songs from a nearby computer and sing! They have both English and Chinese subtitles, so it all works.

However… for English songs, instead of the music video you’d normally see, you see this random video that has clearly been pirated from… well, who the hell knows. One of the videos we saw was as near as I could see a “Welcome to Georgetown University” video from the early 90s they probably sent to freshmen! You’d figure if they’re already snagging the audio, they could at least find something somewhat close for the video…

At any rate, we had fun. And the embarrassment was minor. I sung some Frank Sinatra… ‘cuz he doesn’t really sing, he just talks to words. And women love it…