well almost. The internet connection here is pretty slow so they are uploading and will be available in a couple hours. I already created China and Thailand links on the right side.

Long time since the last post. Had a couple very different months. From February to early March, we didn’t spend a weekend at home. I went to Singapore to visit Sriram and met Nhi in Hong Kong on her way back from Seattle. Then we went to Thailand and Shanghai. Lots of fun but somewhat tiring also. In March and April, we have finally started settling down and getting into a routine. We both started Chinese classes. Nhi is trying to learn to write better and expand her day-to-day vocab while I am taking the 101 class. I forgot how much I dislike language classes. The first class is kind of exciting, but very soon it gets overwhelming and frustrating. Still the payoff is pretty good, I can understand numbers ok now and words here and there. So in the end I think it will be worth it and be helpful during my time here.

So we are both adapting to our surroundings better, I wonder if we will go into sensory deprivation when we get back to the US. Things are definitely more lively here. The process has been somewhat subconscious. For instance, one very different part of the culture here is how you treat people. People seem to treat friends and colleagues very nicely, but treat strangers like dirt, or worse. There is no such thing as a line, and people have no second thoughts about doing many things that would be considered rude in the US, in some sense it folds into the true capitalism that seems to be the way to do things over here. eat or be eaten and such. One day a lady waiting to enter the metro paused at the turnstile for an instant to pull her metro pass out of her purse. Not really thinking I just stepped in front of her and swiped my card. Something I would never do in the US, but here it’s become second nature. So if I screw you over when I get back, don’t worry. Nothing personal.

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