This weekend turned out to be both productive and fun. I got a lot of what needed to be done, although I didn’t make progress on travel plans for next month, so that’s now a priority.
On Friday there was class in the morning. I talked about a kids TV show I watched, and then read a newspaper article about France’s immigrant population, and the french reaction to Obama’s presidency.
In the afternoon Friday I went over to a market and bought a suit, or that is to say started the process. I’m going back tomorrow (monday) for the first fitting. The total price is $1000, which is in line with what I was seeing online and such. The place is in the expat area, so prices are a bit inflated, but after asking my tutors they said that it was hard to get western style clothing fitted elsewhere, and I was seeing other Chinese in the market so it’s not just a tourist trap. Spent a bit of time afterward in the official apple store which was between the market and the subway. Played with the new macbook’s – they’re really nice. Thought about getting a new pair of headphones for my iPhone, and then remembered that they don’t sell those in china because they don’t sell iphones in china.
Came back, and then went out almost immediately for dinner. Went with Jeremy to Ghost street (actually, the place formerly known as ghost street, now the ‘gui’ part of the street’s name means 3 legged pot instead of ghost). We walked a ways down the street, it was clearly the place to be, lots of restaurants, some with long lines out front. Lots of seafood looking places, but really a large variety with some hot pot, some that had fried duck, and more.
We ended up going into a muslim place fairly far down the street. It was pretty small and about 50% full. We got four dishes: a ‘mutton specialty’, a ‘mutton with pancakes’, a broccoli with garlic, and the potato hashbrown dish we’d had previously at the fried duck restaurant.
The food was really good. The mutton with pancake were small pieces of meat, onions and peppers with small rice wrappers, sort of like moo-shu but with a very spiced flavor. Not hot per say, just lots of spices.
The mutton specialty was simply amazing, 8 rectangular pieces of meat, which was largely fat that was breaded on both sides. one side with peanuts and the other with sesame seeds. The whole thing melted in your mouth and just tasted fantastic.
I spent saturday morning doing work. I began studying the chinese characters for monday, and got started trying to deal with internship stuff next summer. I also sent out another round of emails to mudd people.
In the afternoon I met with my tutor, and we decided to walk over to tsinghua university. It turns out that it’s not very far, just two blocks to the north east of beida. It’s campus is much more reminiscent of a traditional college, with larger parks and more western style buildings. It’s also a huge campus. We talked about the differences in the campuses for a while. On the way out we passed by google’s headquarters, and my tutor also pointed out a fried duck place in the same complex that’s part of the chain that apparently has the best fried duck. I had dinner with her and then went back to the dorm.
In the evening, (about 10 minutes after getting back.) I went to another talk I’d found online. This one was by the BMW head in china. An english guy that had studied at beida for a post doc. He talked about branding and how to brand your product. it was for the beijing university international MBA program. Mostly chinese students though, and most of them seemed to be their because they wanted to work at BMW. His talk was pretty generic, and he didn’t get into many of the specific challenges in terms of preserving brand in china. He was still a good speaker, although the talk wasn’t quite what I was hoping for.
Today has been mostly work as well. I’ve spent it alternating between learning chinese for tomorrow, and preparing a presentation on my research for tuesday. the powerpoint for that is mostly done, and shouldn’t be a problem.
Busy days these last two weeks of class. (this semester went by really fast. Two weeks of classes, and then two weeks of homestay left.) I need to go back and deal with the suit tomorrow. I also got a group to go to the hilton’s food & wine event in a couple weeks, just as a way to finish the classes. I made reservations but I need to stop by their offices to get tickets. I also need to make time pretty soon to get to a travel agency. I’m going to get that done this week – been delaying it too long.