Eric's Beijing Diary

Dragged my old laptop here to the Reading Cafe this afternoon. I have been journaling on paper for almost a month, and now I have the task of trying to read my own handwriting, and put everything in a format which can easily be pasted into the blog client I use on the internet. The main reason I use Blogspot is because it is free and quick. I could write my own HTML code, I suppose--that's what I do for my student web site. But the Blogspot format is actually pretty handy, so I just use it, even though it can be very buggy at times. The reason I have not been updating it recently has nothing to do with that, though. What it comes down to is that I decided to leave my old laptop at home, so the only thing I had with me was my memory stick. Problem with that is that most of the computers I used at internet cafes along the way did not have USB ports. So I really was stuck scribbling in my notebook with my Mitsubishi pen.

This evening I went to one of those mixer things. A "networking" event, I guess you call it. I've been getting this invitation every month since I've been in China. Actually, since before I came to China--part of the extensive research I did in the three years that I was preparing for my China life. Well, I found out Monday that the lab will be closed until next week, so I have been kinda tying up loose ends this week, and I thought this would be a good time to take a chance on something that I usually don't have time for. So I show up at this club in the Chaoyang District, and everyone is dressed to impress. It's one of those kinds of things where everyone who wishes they were important comes to meet everyone else who wishes they were important. I was wearing what I happened to have on, which today is jeans and tennis shoes. Anyway, this lady comes up to me and says, "Excuse me, are you an artist?" Well, I'm definitely not an artist. But her question put another one in my mind...How do artists get off wearing anything they please? How come if an artist dresses really grubby its considered artistic, while if anyone else in the world dresses grubby it's considered sloppy? I suppose I should be glad she thought I was an artist. But if you ask me, I think artists are getting off too easy. I don't know...maybe they are just better at really not caring what anyone thinks of what they wear.

It was kind of a wasted evening—taxi there, taxi back, but I guess I had to do it once to find that out. I cut out early and went over to Annie's and had a plate of fettuccine (that place has a Caesar salad that won't quit) and got into an interesting conversation with a German businessman--the kind that is too busy working and doing business to worry about being important. So it wasn't a total waste.

Labels: Summer 2004