The last couple weeks have got to be one of the most interesting times in my life so far.
Specifically, I am currently in a Beijing hostel waiting for it to be late enough to be late enough to go to sleep. I spent the last hour talking to a conspiracy theorist about why the Whitehouse being colored pink for breast cancer awareness month was actually a sign of collusion with the Chinese. Its nice that my Chinese is good enough that I can follow conspiracies in both English and chinese, I guess. The middle aged conspiracy theory lady was interspersed with a teenage girl from Jiangsu taking pictures of me and giggling. Once the lady left she told me it was because a friend thought I was cute, rather than my ineffectual attempts to change the topic of conversation.
This is on the other side of an airplane ride from staying up all night in New York and somehow getting dragged to Korean food at 3am (the rationalization was that I had to leave at 4 for the plane anyways). This was my first trip to new York as an adult, and it seems like a fun place – if somewhat expensive/fast paced.
The conferences were excellent. Bigger media deals than I had come to terms with previously, but a very good set of connections to start making.
The only glitch so far is that I was planning to bring a bottle of mustard back with me since it seems almost impossible to acquire it at PUST, however the supermarkets I visited this evening didn’t stock it either. I guess it doesn’t have quite the following here as elsewhere in the world.