City of Nine Million Bicycles

After the most unprepared-for trip in my life so far, here I am in Beijing. =)

Will be reporting in for internship at Sigma Center coming Tuesday, and whiling time in (cheap!) internet cafes until then.

Hope I haven't missed notifying any immediate friend (i.e. whom I meet regularly) about this plan, which was decided on just one month ago. Was delaying the blog post cos I thot it wouldn't be nice if they found out about it here first, and in the end, I didn't have time for it anyway.

On the work front, there's the deadline I was still working on the evening before the flight.. minutes before packing the lab PC and heaps of printed papers into boxes, because SoC will be relocating in July while I'm away.

On the musical commitment front, there's Soracco concert just the weekend before.. and still squeezed in one recording session. =D

And personally, there's some family circumstance.. the farewell dinners.. while the movie plans all failed to survive. =P

That left the packing to eight hours before the flight. Strangely sober and still taking my time to do it, as is my operating mode whenever pressure mounts up. It's psychological immune system, I suppose? Fortunately I started my checklist way before, and it got ticked off all right, but with a bout of forced confidence (simply no time heh) I didn't recheck.

A half-hour sleep and a check-in queue later, found myself taking advices from my parents in the airport while thinking, "I'm really leaving already?" =D

Seeing Aug's much crazier schedule, I once suggested that he should learn to say no -- but even then I knew I wouldn't practice it myself, because certain things you just don't want to say no to. =D

And well, often, maybe because we're lucky, things do turn out all right after all. And of course I owe it to so many different people for this "luck". =)

Still a little work to do.. but for that I need to first attempt to install Adobe Reader on this public PC, and the download is taking forever (and gee I do hope I followed the correct steps since the pop-ups are all in Mandarin) so that gives me more time to slack. =D

Right, then, some weather report. It's hot. And they say it's going to get hotter. =D Me being a tropical creature can handle the temperature so far, but unlike the humid Indonesian/Singaporean heat, it is dry here, and my lips are protesting again. But call it a father's intuition this time, as he was the one who suddenly suggested bringing a lip balm when he helped me with the last-minute packing. =))

I do sport an umbrella when walking down the streets, and yes, it's the umbrella I brought along from Singapore. Dorky much?

Third day here, and got my eight-hour nightly sleeps very soundly so far. ^_^ Plus nap. Figures people like me will never sleep sufficiently until you take away all our usual toys, like in this trip. ^^;;;

Haven't been around much except to internet cafes, Wal-Mart (I avoid bargain-necessary places for now.. and probably ever) and Hard Rock Cafe @ Beijing last night, by invitation of my roommate, a fellow intern. Met up with a few other foreign Microsoft interns and researchers: US, Korea, and mostly Japan. Given the venue and the company, I started talking about J-rock and anime, har. =D

For simplicity, told them I'm from Singapore. (Back in Singapore I'll be from Indonesia. =D) But the history did come up in the conversation, and they have more complicated history themselves, anyway. =))

Got very few photos not quite worth posting and cannot do it here either... so that's all for now, I guess. =)

And hey, Adobe's installed, finally. =D