From the image stream:
Drinking beer with a couple of aussies arguing about football, footie, cricket. One of them, Doug, I knew from a long while back and so there’s really no surprise. I lean back and just let the scene wash over me. Horrible remixes of pop music from 5 years ago. Smatterings of conversation: some I can understand, some I can’t. Pool balls clack. Nothing all that unconventional really.
A street food pancake for what equates to about 15c. It’s huge and hearty, just a little ma la spicy. We walk back to our apartments via sleepy streets and talk about life.
There’s this crazy chinese lady yelling scat over the top of a french cellist. A trumpeter blasts out muted improvisation over two Chinese _qin_s. I whisper about how I recognize the jazz standard they’re loosely basing this piece off of. Returned whispers mention that she’s reciting a classic Mongolian poem.
We travel to a place called Sanlitun and walk through the most international parts of Beijing. A mall courtyard blasts techno music and we end up eating at an american steak house. I don’t know if anyone really wanted to, but the surreality was too much. Later we get Coldstone.
We go out for Korean food and everyone is again amazed that I can use chopsticks. Speaking Chinese is one thing, but using chopsticks is so very unexpected.
Playing ping pong in a separate meeting room/kitchen/ping pong room just outside the lab. Chen Liu shows me how to play Chinese style, and I show them all the things I know. I get my ass handed to me, squarely, but it’s still good, good fun. A few days later I teach the girls how to play US style. It’s a hot day and I’m sweating. Every time someone gets excited it’s an explosion of words too fast for me to follow. High fives, however, are pretty universal.