In the morning I’ve been cooking eggs and bacon, quik hot chocolate, along with bread + jam or melted cheese;

Evenings have been eating Guo Bao Rou, Gong Pao Ji ding, lots of dan tan – egg pies from Macau, and occasional brooklyn pizza although if I eat it too much start feeling greasy

Running wise, have been on and off on the treadmill, drinking gatorade after

Finally thinking about registering a domain name etc not sure what a good name would be, thinking about doing a site about learning Chinese or just some sort of wordpress blog/ site for Glen, Sherwood and I, in either case going to have to figure out how to get my US credit card set up through paypal, because I would much rather have webhosting through the US, and will need paypal to get this started. I have online banking through US bank, but it seems like you need online banking and a credit card to get verified with sites such as paypal, a bit of a pain.

Final important thing I need to make sure to do today is go ahead and sign up for home visit leave, the process is you need to print out a form at work, get it signed by a manager and mail it to Beijing by the 31st, the first step I really need to get done today, than is to print out the form and get it signed by a higher up.

I’ve been messing around with making a basic website, based on simple ideas templates etc from W3 schools.com, also have added a picture template grabbing it from flickr, taking random photos than loading them into the page. It is about the only interesting thing I can add on there at this point, not sure yet what else would be completely useful. One thing I’m working on right now is looking at getting a simple blog template with out too much extra stuff I can add into the middle. One thing that I wouldn’t mind adding to the website, would be something related to recipes, for example, everytime I attempt a new recipe, I could add it to the page. Maybe it could motivate me to try and do more cooking, because cooking food is probably one of the biggest challenges that I’ve run into.

On a life level, I’ve been hiking a lot recently at a park in the downtown area of Dalian, not too far from here by bus. It is probably the only place where you can’t see a person within eyesite, or a car, and the place which most reminds me of home. The only difference perhaps being that the when I went up to the road to look at the drivers there, I notice that the majority of them were having trouble driving in a straight line, which reminds me again that I’m in China.

Final note, I’ve gotten back into reading the book ‘flight plan’ a basic motivational / planning type book, which is meant to give you thoughts/ ideas about progressing forward in life. The book is relatively interesting, forcing you to ask yourself some good questions – where do I want to be in 20 years, etc- and I also notice that I took notes in the book last time I read it, on what I wanted to accomplish, and I’ve actually managed to accomplish the majority of those goals within a year; I think that I can at this point revise those goals, and just reflect on the fact that I’ve been able to accomplish much of what I originally set out to do, rather than feeling a failure in any sense – at the same time, money is starting to become a major concern for me, because living in China, the salary is so slow compared to the US, that I am going to become locked here, and cut off from options, whereas if I was in the US, I would have a greater amount of money, and would be making more. The major question is, I need to figure out how to make more money if I want to stay here, and also figure out a freer lifestyle where I have more opportunities to visit my family.

I have recently moved up a floor into a new room here at the apartment complex, given my thoughts at going long distance, this actually proved to work out quite well, major perks of it being that it is on a one month lease as opposed to 3 months or a year, second, the place has a working TV and microwave, 3rd it is on a higher floor, final being perhaps that the deposit was 500 as opposed to 2000 a month; I actually can’t take any of the credit for the move or the finding of the spot either;

One thing that doesn’t work so well here is the toilet though, being that it doesn’t flush. To rectumfy this, I’ve discovered a new method of flushing toilets; basically you fill up a bucket with water, and dump it into the toilet bowl and voila! it flushes away the grime and the potential nasty treat.

I watched two versions of 2012 on youku today, the old one and the new one. Both of them involve situations in which the world is nearing destruction based on some sort of chaotic event. The older one actually seemed more interesting in that it brought up a philosophical discussion related to religion versus non-religion, although it did get out of control and silly when a main character blamed someone’s death as a punishment from god. I’m not sure whether the original producers of the movie were specifically meaning to be religious fanatics, because the movie could definitely be taken that way. On the other hand it suffers from some bad acting.

The newer version of 2012, actually suffers from worse acting, along with less of a philosophical / religious plot, which makes it pretty boring in general. Basically the same things are happening, but in a smaller setting. There is more of a focus on action, and special effects rather than any engaging ideas. If I had to pick I’d chose the first one.

Put a basic website together for a friend, very exciting,

Perhaps more interesting being that I’m going to be moving in the next couple of weeks. And also have an extremely wandering train of thought, just looking back at my title for this entry and realizing how far away it is from my current thought. Wow.

What I was trying to say in the beginning, was that they handed out evaluations for teamleads/trainers at work today, which was interesting to see. Given the fact that the trainers/leads etc don’t have specific pressures on them most of the time, this is a very useful occasion to evaluate their performance and behavior, given that the vast majority of the team are being evaluated on a very detailed level. I think that it would have been better for the team to have an opportunity to choose a specific group to meet together and make evaluations, rather than trainers themselves giving out the data/ surveys.

So given that the team is being given constant emails related to ‘duty’ and ‘responsibility’, there are a few things which I see as being heavily valued. First is commitement; for example people who have stayed for 2 or more years, are given much more leeway and freedom than newcomers. It doesn’t matter how good performance is in relation to the new versus old, the basic fact is that the old-timers are given more freedom and power. There seems to be a large emphasis at work towards keeping people there for a long period of time, and they are attempting to enforce this by giving promotions to people who have been there for the longest.

What seems to be lacking though at times is that they are putting old-timers up based on the experience, but this don’t change the fact that some of these people may not be extremely detail orientated, or role models.

Starting to get cold out here, so has dampened my enthusiasm for running. I read an article online that it should be ok to jog if the weather is above 10F, so decided that I might as well give it a shot. It really has been quite necessary given that I work in an office, and don’t have many other opportunities to exercise, for me to get out there and run. So far I’ve gone twice, both times wearing fairly thick clothes along with a warm hat. Both times have gone well enough, never too cold and actually heat up quite well. There is a marathon in Dalian in around 5 months I believe, and am thinking that it would be nice to try to get involved in it, see if I can move my time up. Other than that things are the same as usual, working, recently have been getting into learning some html/css etc, atm have figured out how to put frames together, build menus etc, am now working towards making it all look good.

Second thing that has been occupying my mind recently has been relating to making food rather than going out to eat. Have been doing this for a couple of weeks, and so far the results have been satisfactory in making life different, but at the same time have possibly been eating less. Time will tell if I can stick with this pattern.

Just woke up at 2am am sick today and really can’t talk so didn’t go to work, unfortunately it is night time so not much too do out there, and there is also an extremely loud buzzing noise going on which is killing my ears. The winter time here up to know has been pretty slow, because of the cold my exercise regimen has been suffering.

A few major thoughts going through my mind at the moment ranging from continuing to study chinese, to making website/ learning something useful, to trying to figure out some new things to eat because I’m tired of eating the same foods every week. I’m also faced with a few choices in the future here, so going to have to deal with them before they run me over.

Most exciting thing which has happened to me recently, was going to Brooklyn bar/weekend for the past few weekends where I’ve finally been running into more westerners giving that where I am right now, and out and around, there are a major shortage of them. Not that I came to China specifically to meet/hang out with Americans but I do get home sick a lot of the time and a major cure for it is good food.

Final major thought need to think about here is that my work here in US terms is not paying well at all, although it may be good for Dalian, so it would not be wise for me to work myself into the ground for a job that is not going to make me rich, or put something extremely beneficial on my resume either. In fact it seems incredibly stupid that I am working a monthly night shift for a mere 300 dollars worth. I could get this same amount of money on a monthly basis simply teaching 3 or 4 days of english.

I’ve been wanting to go to the dentist to get my tooth fixed, look at new apartments in a more interesting area, study some web/design related ideas, sign up for a month or so pass at a gym possibly with swimming possibilities, and potentially get a bike + look into the idea of getting into tri training, except for the fact that my swimming is probably very weak; also look at ideas of studying and going to school again. I also want to figure out how to publish my wordpress posts on facebook, but unfortunately china wall is to strong, so might have to look at doing it at work;

Second, recent sickening thought/ comment, I am slightly disgusted by the notion that the entire universe is being restricted into the internet. It is good in a sense of opening up the world, but bad in the sense of creating extremely anti-social behavior. In terms of existing as a human being in some sort of a natural state, sitting in front of a computer may offer communication possibilities in a reading sense, but it only appeals to a few senses, so I would prefer if the future were able to deviate from the internet instead of being totally consumed in it.

Last thing I need to accomplish is to try and get in touch with a few graphics design companies here, preferably today.