It’s 55 degrees in my apartment

Spring is here, spring is here, it is light out when I come home from work, and colder in my apartment than it is outside [Uncle Hu turned off the heat first week in March].

I am glad to see March over, to be honest. Two of my good friends here left this month, and another good friend came to visit, but it really emphasized that this is a transient place. People don’t stay long here, and with good reason. I have recently made a pact with my sister to come pull me outta here at some point, should I get stuck and incapable of moving “home”.

Work is also going relatively well, although sometimes I wonder how mega large companies like Nokia can continue to produce decent phones. I had a conversation with a man the other day that went something like this: “we are all engineers and we don’t think about what will happen in the future. I realized that we are moving to this new building and maybe we should tell someone of our special requirements.” You think? The building is currently on level 3 [out of 6] and now people come to me to say they need their own special room built. So it keeps me on my toes.

It was my birthday on the 8^th and I did successfully turn 27 despite various and sundry lovely women returning to North America during that time period. I received lovely gifts including a flask, a stuffed schnauzer [a toy, not a dead animal], and my favorite gift, my carbon bike pedals.

Speaking of bikes, my race was Saturday, and I did not win, but I was the first loser. I don’t feel all that terrible about it because for 75% of the race I thought I was in first place. We’re still not clear where this so-called first place finisher came from, but it doesn’t really matter, as Floyd “I didn’t take performance enhancing drugs” Landis says:

"Everybody wants to say, 'I couldn't win because of this or that.' To my way of thinking, it doesn't matter if your *&*%$ head fell off or your legs exploded. If you didn't make it, you didn't make it. One excuse is as good as another."

In any case, I did win some $$ [with income tax taken out] and more bike parts. I have mostly my bike to thank, it really did make a difference. I look forward to beating the pants of the winner of this race this summer in Beijing. Unfortunately she was a very nice girl. I was the only honky on the podium for the women, so I guess it is good to see the Chinese women getting into the sport. More photos coming soon- this one is me on the 2 block, who knows what I am doing, but yes we did get big ridiculous checks that I later used to package my bicycle. If you are wondering where this mysterious 1st place winner is, she was off showering.

I know text messages are slowly catching on in the US, here in China we live through them. We even get spam text messages: usually in Chinese, and usually for airplane tickets or massage. I recently received one in “English” from my gym declaring:

"honorific member's friends, in chance encounter the store celeb rates one anniversary moment, the club of TheSpa will organize the member to leave for the Yesanpo of laishui he bei provi"

Ah yes. I’ve always wanted to go there.