alone....

In the last couple of weeks my 4 room/work mates have headed to India (along with 8 other students), so I tried to keep sane by having some students come in and help me and from going to meetings or CSR conferences. Unfortunately it means i have not been back in my appt befroe 11pm for 10 consecutive nights, due to eating and drinking out.

I have realised how boring it is living alone, and working alone too! Look forward to the evenings or seeing other people...plus of course its harder to be productive (living and working in same room..) for example although i still get up at 7.30 for run and study, i tend to start work at 9.15 now, not 9 :( -so fire me! by the way, pictures of the appartment/surrounding area are on the imagestation website as usual.

Last week went on another day trip trying to avoid the smog (and not really succeeding, even 2 hours away by bus!). Today its nice again (apparently over 250 days a year are 'good days', but the definition of 'good' is pretty low!) and makes such a difference to feeling good, walking around and running as well. so tomorrow we'll take advantage and do the legendary 4 hr hike on the great wall -can't wait (there might be lots of us, due to a recent invasion of american alumni!). Last night we finally went to Wanfujing food night market -to eat silkworms etc, although did not go much further than that..the scorpions, frogs, sparrows, snakes, cockroaches and more were quite expensive! fun to look at :D

Also been nice catching up with Mitch (Michelle does sound so much more feminine though!) a fair amount, since she arrived for a traineeship -she was a friend in UK, 1 year behind me in AIESEC. unfortuantely before she arrived 4 workers left the company (so just the boss..its a small PR firm), and hoping she would be busy, Mitch was excited (although not sure of the reason for them leaving)...but now spends her time sorting business cards (on a good day). poor her :(

so less about me..today i realised that the chinese government is stupid, since you can access the wikipedia (a very famous free encyclopedia online) site for tiananmen square protests. so i read it, learned some more and downloaded the famous photo (and discovered the 'unknown rebel' was named 1 of the 100 most influential people of the 20th century! -Mao is also there of course.) Amusingly the wikipedia site on the 'tiananmen papers' which was the 'official' government response of what happened is blocked..so i wonder. granted the wikipedia site is very neutral about the protests, but still....

passing comments... when Bush flies over New Orleans, does he realise that the CLIMATE was responsible? when he sees oil refineries in his own country sinking, does he realise his invasion of Iraq has only made the oil price go UP? When France joined the EU, did their PM not read the chapter on free movement of goods, trade etc? And if you ever read about the big chinese (state owned) companies donating money, don't think of it in a western mindset, think of it in a chinese mindset (the government told them to). Meanwhile i hear 100,000 UK students did not get a university place this year -go Blair... your strategy to get 50% of the country into higher education is working wonders!