Back in the CCCP

05.07.2006 34 °C

So it's taken me a little while to end up here, writing. It's about 8:00 PM on July the 5th, which means I've been in BJ for about 40 hours. You'd think I'd have had the time to sit down and bang out a couple of sentences for the folks back home but that hasn't been the case.

After getting in at 6:00 AM on the 4th, I took a taxi into the city, finding it pretty much as I left it: enormous, growing, covered in a thick, yellowish fog. I was surprised to find that some part of me had missed it, even the fog.

Having made my way to the university, I wandered around different labs that Prof. She works in until someone found me that had some idea of who I was, or at least who She was. In the course of this wandering, I accidentally bumbled (with two large suitcases and two satchels) into the nuclear engineering lab, from which I was whisked - politely but by no fewer than three guards - back to the street. As my wait stretched on, I reflected that had a corresponding incident occurred with a Chinese graduate student at an equivalent American lab (e.g. Los Alamos), I don't think the word 'polite' would be used in the description. After another half hour I was discovered by a graduate student in the turbulence lab, who brought me back to his office to wait.

I spent the remainder of the morning finding an apartment, or, more accurately, following and watching Chinese people negotiate for me, and occassionally attempting response to some softball questions (e.g. "Do you like China?"). Finally, having found a place that was acceptable and negotiated the unbelievably Byzantine taxation system, I got settled: I wondered around WuDaoKou, found some food, bought some groceries, had a beer, and went to sleep.

Also, here is a photo I took on my walk to work this morning. Notice the actually blue sky. Those pollution controls for the Games have really done their work...