some more excerpts from the china scene section of the china daily

Student flees through window to Net cafe A 15-year old boy who was so obsessed with the Internet fled home last Wednesday through a window to go to an Internet cafe, reports Yangtze Evening News. The boy cut his bed sheet into pieces and escaped with the rope made from the sheets. But he fell from the second floor, waking his neighbors who called the police. The boy was finally found in an Internet cafe the next morning.

Here's a quick sketch of where I've been and where I'm going - click on the small images for larger versions. The original maps were taken from worldatlas.com and the cia factbook.

cape verde	south africa	south america	china

TEACHER seeks pupil. Must have an earnest desire to save the world. Apply in person. (4)

But the tiger you see madly pacing its cage is nevertheless preoccupied with something that a human would certainly recognize as a thought. And this thought is a question: Why? "Why, why, why, why, why, why?" the tiger asks itself hour after hour, day after day, year after year, as it treads its endless path behind the bars of its cage. It cannot analyze the question or elaborate on it. If you were somehow able to ask the creature, "Why what? it would be unable to answer you. Nevertheless this question burns like an unquenchable flame in its mind, inflicting a searing pain that does not diminish until the creature lapses into a final lethargy that zookeepers recognize as an irreversible rejection of life. (11)

Man's place is to be the first. Man's place is to be the first without being the last. (242)

after nearly two months of language classes and regular internet access, i've finally left beijing. it was a great place to be for two months, and for the first time in the past year i was able to establish a quasi-life, complete with a quasi-routine and quasi-friends. and poof, now it's gone. bye-bye favorite dumpling store, bye-bye yellow bicycle. well, i'll be back in july, and it looks like edward middleton tilghman will be there to meet me. trouble.

one thing i discovered a few days ago - which i really wish i'd seen sooner - is the China Scene section of The China Daily, one of the government-sponsored English language newspapers. i'm not sure if they're trying to be funny when they write these blurbs, but they're as good as the onion (reproduced verbatim):

Drunkard drinks boiling water: A drunk man in Nanjing drank boiling water directly from a thermos bottle and seriously injured his throat, neck and chest, reports Yangtze Evening News. The man surnamed Liu, 35, likes drinking spirits very much and is always getting drunk, according to his wife. Liu had a gathering with several of his friends and got drunk again one night last month. When he returned home, he shouted that he was very thirsty. Before his wife could offer him water, Liu took the thermos and started drinking from it.