Left turns and directions: there are few things more exciting in Beijing than a left turn in a cab in the face of an ongoing tour bus with no intention to ever slow or stop. I am now squeezing in behind the driver’s side of the back seat, figuring that gives me a couple feet of dead air when the right side of the vehicle gets stove in. All cab rides are high drama. Non-Mandarin speakers must carry a card with the destination written on it. The drivers always, without exception, scrutinize it, look puzzled, shrug, and then take off with great determination. I spend the ride worrying I am about to get launched into an episode of Lost. I always make it and have started to relax.
Score: I hold rowing finals tickets: that’s right, I was all freaky this morning, looking at the number one resolution I made with myself which was to see Elle Logan and Caroline Lind row in the US Women’s Eight in the rowing finals on Sunday afternoon. It wasn’t looking good. I was searching scalper sites and the damage was going to be ugly, then lo and behold our “Ticketmaster”, Steve Crutchfield said, “I think we have rowing tickets.”
Well, Lenovo did have tickets and I am now holding them because no one else wanted them. I am going to Shunyi Sunday afternoon at 3:30, ready to cheer and see my first Olympic rowing, the medal finals for both men and women.
Wuatodetwect: when I log into the hotel network at the Grand Hyatt sites like Google assume from the origin of the IP address that I am in China (which is correct) and therefore want to see their site in Mandarin (which I do not). I can’t find the link on the mandarin page that says “change the language” so I end up blindly clicking until I get to where I am now, which is Elmer Fudd.
I also see that Google thinks I am in Hong Kong, which I am not, but which leads to me think of the conspiracy theory something is going on with IP addressing that will insure people in high end hotels like the Hyatt see what they want to see when they are online (I literally have nothing firewalled or blocked right now).
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